Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack
reuters.com
reuters.com
Some choice quotes:
“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
“However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.”
He claims that without any proof. This maybe would have been true in the 19th century given the technologies for war and power at that time.
But we have the 21st century now. Why should the Ukraine be so important? Why could Russia not be an empire without Ukraine? Russia is the biggest country with the most sources of raw materials. It has the most nuclear weapons. It has a huge fleet. It is feared by all of its neighbors.
But that all doesn't matter nowadays. Because if you want to be a world power in 21st century what you need is a huge economy. And Russias GDP is as big as Italy. But invading Ukraine wouldn't help Russia to increase its GDP.
And that is why what Zbigniew Brzezinsk writes is outdated nonsense. Everyone who believes that still lives in the 19th century.
You could very well be correct, perhaps the leaders of these countries are living in the 19th century. But the fact that the current leaders of Ukraine, USA and Russia are acting in line with/on these older assumptions makes them relevant still today.
Also there’s plenty of information backing up his claims in the book, you’re welcome to go read it. It’s an excellent window into the way geopolics is rationalised, written by one of the people who have shaped it!
Anyway, it is not just one data point what matters. What comes after in his predictions and how adjusted is to what happens in reality (without creative accounting, like with Nostradamus predictions) may tell how right that was.
Your whole NATO core staff been voicing this in unison for 2 decades in a row, only for Western politicians to dismiss it. Lookup my other posts today, and especially this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453790
I somehow doubt that he made the range of varied and contradictory predictions necessary to make this hypothesis correct. I don't know what to call this muddled assertion that so many people seem to be making about hindsight bias or survivorship bias. It's like a bias towards claiming bias, which seems absurd to me. Is everyone just hunting for places where they can use some witty sounding assertion that they saw someone else use and so they're incorrectly applying it everywhere with little discrimination?
He wasn't hallucinating, pinning the tail on a donkey or trying to hit a piñata blindfolded.
It may not be for this case, I just point out that you should be aware of the possibility.
Putin's move here is like what you do when your character is about to die in CK3 so you just throw all your armies at a neighboring territory while you still have a claim you can press, even if your casus belli isn't accepted by the neighbors.
The strongest reason for me to believe his thinking is rational in terms of the Russian interest is that there is very little that could make Russia worse after his rule, and there are many reasons to suspect he's facing his own mortality. So here he's making a high-price choice which will dent his bank account and possibly his short-term popularity. As the richest man in the world and the most popular man in Russia, he must be dying and trying to make one last push. Otherwise there's no reason for him not to rest on his laurels: His massive wealth and the total ownership of Russia he has already. The man should retire. But he wants to make himself Peter the Great or Ivan the Terrible; to put himself into the annals of the Orthodox Church, he must conquer the cradle of the Rus'.
My theory on Putin is that he may be suffering from cancer. It would explain his terror of close contact with people, and this extreme move --
My fear about him is that he may want to take the rest of the world with him when he dies, including Russia.
I kinda feel bad for him, he must live a rather unhappy life.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/10/1697580/-Back-in-...
I've met little "non-political" Russians like Putin playing guitar, working illegally at restaurants; accidentally overstayed a visa, have to go home to visit Moscow; you know because there's a soviet pin inside the jacket. Yuri Gagarin, or something. He's one of a type that exists and travels around Europe now.
[Edit: I saw this article had never been posted on HN so I just put it up... but it's been immediately deleted, for reasons I don't know].
Wasn't it hilarious how in 2008-2012 (? or thereabouts) the Prime Minister was suddenly more important than the President, when before and after it's been the other way around?
https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-intervi...
Thinking of things in terms of raw GDP is what is getting the west into a total mess. For years now people have said Russia won't do anything and couldn't possibly be a threat because their GDP is so low. China will never be a major player because their GDP per capita is so low.
But that's, frankly, stupid. People in Switzerland pay $20 for a sandwich. People in Vietnam are paying $0.75 for a sandwich that tastes twice as good. People in China are getting locally made phones with the equivalent of US pocket change and riding high speed trains for the cost of a slow and janky NY subway trip. GDP means absolutely nothing outside of international trade within the global sphere. GDP didn't help America beat Afghanistan, one of the absolute poorest countries on earth. It didn't help them beat North Korea or Vietnam either. They still haven't succeeded in removing communism from poverty-stricken, bottom of the barrel GDP Cuba. If Russia decides to keep moving into western Europe, their GDPs mean nothing. Seizing that land just means Russia gets all of what those countries have, forever, without the high price tag.
GDP isn't motivating angry dictators to invade. They're doing it because they can.
[1] https://amp.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3127644/c...
When I look at numbers, for example, which China spends on military spending, and research? Then try to equate it not in USD, but in local buying power?
And also consider many Chinese companies are state owned, including resources (mining), refining, and producing weapons...
Compared to almost everything the US GOV and the West do, being for profit...
It seems to me that China's military budget dwarfs all of NATO, in terms of buying power.
Yet most seem to not consider this. Even in planning.
US air superiority means little, if each US plane costs 40x a Chinese plane, and each US plane is swarmed by 100 planes at once...
(Just an example, viable or not)
Even then, some places like Afghanistan don't change much--and they're still completely unbeaten by modern militaries.
Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan all lacked coherent political goals. "Destroy military forces supported by half the country" is not a valid strategy.
There is, it's called GDP PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). It adjusts for local prices, so countries like Russia and China rank higher than they would at a nominal level. Keep in mind though global commodities are typically priced the same (or similar) worldwide; PPP only applies to goods produced internally.
This is not the modern-day version of USSR vs USA. It's the modern version of the Mongol Horde vs Civilization. (No offense to current Mongols; you guys are cool).
Modern Russia is not an unstoppable army of nomadic warriors with a strong martial culture arising from their making their living as herders. It's a badly run kleptocracy trying desperately to remain relevant.
Note that Putin has nothing to lose from all of this.
It's not just a threat; at this point it is a risk.
What happens next is anybody's guess and that's a very bad feeling to have in times like these, the fate of the world as we know it is in the balance.
Putin has long kept his narcissism under a kind of control.
A bit of bare-chest, bareback horseriding. A few ice hockey matches with opponents who comically offer little resistance. A gigantic pseudosecret palatial residence that looks like a seat of power for a Bond villain, but is actually his safe space.
But even in Russia's nationally televised broadcasts Putin appears to be struggling to control his emotions and his temper.
It's not particularly difficult to see that loyalty to a psychopath loses its currency when that psychopath has no use for you, but also that using your loyalty as a constant mediating influence becomes impossible when the psychopath departs from reality.
The question for any kind of diplomacy, hardball or softball, is this: is Vladimir Putin still in full control of himself? Because he's behaving unusually on the basis of his prior record. Only a handful of years ago he was a very different figure on the world stage. If his narcissism has no supply, no moderation, things could get even uglier.
And yet again he is signposting it -- "all relevant decisions have been taken."
We kept pretending his signposts were diplomatic noise, when in fact he's just a psychopath telling people what he is going to do to them.
It took a minute for them to realize we have two feeble minded and weak kneed presidents in office currently. The cats outta the bag now.
For some idea of this mentality, if you haven't seen it yet I highly recommend the movie Der Untergang, which is as historically accurate as they could make it, and which gives a unique perspective on how things could get so bad that parents would poison their children to avoid them having to live in a world where they weren't the victors.
Doesn't really matter which one he picks: NATO article 5 would ensure retaliation.
But yeah, I agree with the rest of your point.
And in case anyone didn't make the connection, is also the movie where the scene used in all those "Hitler hears about..." YouTube clips is taken from.
Once one nuke flies, WW3
Bad things (and increasingly belligerent, isolated psychopaths) on two sides.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6809999-old-men-are-dangero...
In addition, if Putin tried to launch nukes, I doubt the other oligarchs would go along with his mass suicide plan.
As he explained it, plutonium warheads break down over time. They create helium gas pockets and sometimes internal fractures that prevent detonation.
The solution is to reform the warhead every few years.
The problem here is that plutonium has over a dozen crystalline forms. If they don't achieve a uniform crystal, the warhead will fail to detonate due to the imperfections along the lines where the different crystals come together. This takes a ton of time and money (and often many, many attempts).
Together these mean that the warheads are getting very old and the upkeep to keep them working is huge. Russia can keep a few in working order, but not nearly what their previous arsenal would imply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overkill_(term)
Welcome to the eighties...
Lol being a world power was never about the economy, it had always been about military strength. Americans might think that they are a superpower because they have one of the largest economies in the world, but that’s being totally small-minded and missing the fact that the reason why their economy is that big in the first place is that the purpose of economies is to power the military with networks, talent, and money.
Russia’s GDP is 25% smaller than the U.S. State of Texas.
It sounds like a joke but it isn’t.
Texas GDP is $2.0 trillion.
Russia GDP is $1.48 trillion.
Most of Russia’s GDP is selling oil and gas which is one of the reasons Putin is able to do this now. Through higher oil prices he’s amassed a war chest of $631 billion in foreign currency reserves that will enable him to weather sanctions. That along with the friendship treaty with China giving them a market to sell their oil and gas and sanctions will prove fairly toothless.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russia-counts-reserve...
Also those petrodollars will slow if Russia has a single buyer.
Not to mention, carbohydrates’ days are counter. Gulf countries are diversifying like crazy, Russia not so much.
But yes, pre coffee booboo.
Side note: you've used the old-fashioned (and Putin-favoured) english nomenclature for Ukraine as "the Ukraine" in the first sentence, and the Ukraine-preferred nomenclature in the second.
This is actually the crux of the issue in two sentences. Ukraine is a sovereign state, but Putin politically asserts it is merely a territory they control, harking back to a pre-WWII time; Ukraine was a territory regularly divided up and under the control of different neighbouring states as a bargaining chip, gift, settlement, or conquest.
This is I guess why Brzezinski talked about it as it was and as it is. Ukraine used to be passed around and fought over as a set of territories without a home. Post WWII, it is a nation state and its existence as a nation state historically perturbs its neighbours, most notably Russia.
Ukraine still has all the geographical significance it had. It's the second-largest country by land mass in Europe, it is fertile (a nearby breadbasket, geopolitically), it is also mineral rich, etc.
So Brzezinski wasn't wrong to say it was still a source of conflict, a prize, but now being an independent nation state it has the right to defend itself and enter alliances. That makes it a risk strategic point -- even perhaps a pivot -- in a future conflict.
> Why could Russia not be an empire without Ukraine?
If Russia is to (re)build an "empire", it needs Ukraine to do it, for all the reasons above.
Bold to say Brzezinski wrote nonsense, though. Good for you: put yourself out there as an international statesman.
In fact the part of the problem is precisely because it is not a nation state.
I'm not entirely sure I agree with you, but I certainly should have used sovereign the second time instead of nation.
But there is a funny thing going on right now at great speed. For a while in Europe it has been Putin's world and we just live in it -- he's been the most sophisticated single backer/instigator of discontent across the continent. But it looks like there is a chance, right now, that this bubble could burst for him, and burst domestically. It's going to be a turbulent fortnight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/ukraine-crimea... :
Dugin serves as an adviser to State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of the ruling United Russia party who has loudly supported Russian intervention in Ukraine, and has made widely viewed television appearances to discuss the Ukraine crisis alongside high-ranking members of the government. [Economist Sergei Glazyev] is also an associate of Dugin's.
https://www.hoover.org/research/russias-new-and-frightening-... :
Few books published in Russia during the post-communist period have exerted such an influence on Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites as Aleksandr Dugin’s 1997 neo-fascist treatise Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii (Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geo-political Future of Russia).
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/27/geopolitics-russia-mack... :
The Foundations of Geopolitics sold out in four editions, and continues to be assigned as a textbook at the General Staff Academy and other military universities in Russia. “There has probably not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period which has exerted a comparable influence on Russian military, police, and statist foreign policy elites,” writes historian John Dunlop, a Hoover Institution specialist on the Russian right.
https://azure.org.il/include/print.php?id=483 :
The publication of The Foundations of Geopolitics in 1997 was received with great interest, and brought Dugin to the attention of powerful figures in the Russian government. He wisely befriended the oligarch Aleksandr Taranzev, who recommended him to the military general staff.
...
Dugin’s book was incorporated into the curriculum of the Russian military academy and became required reading for the next generation of officers. One year later, Dugin was appointed senior political adviser to Gennadiy Seleznyov, a former member of the Communist Party and chairman of the Russian parliament, who headed the Center for Geopolitical Analysis, a think tank dedicated to policy recommendations on internal security matters.
...
The radical intellectual’s stature reached new heights with the appointment of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency. Slowly but surely, Dugin succeeded in ingratiating himself with the new president’s inner circle. He forged strong ties with a hawkish, security-oriented clique of insiders, mostly composed of ex-members of the military and the security services. First and foremost among them was Igor Sechin, a former KGB official who has served as Putin’s closest adviser for the past fifteen years and is now deputy prime minister. Other members of this powerful faction include Security Council secretary and former head of the FSB Nikolai Patrushev; former deputy prime minister and Security Council member Sergei Ivanov; and Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the lower house of parliament and chairman of Putin’s ruling United Russia party.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=0qQixjX1hwoC&q=Gennady+Sele... :
The activities of the copious and studious Eurasianist intellectual Alexander Dugin are making progress, and it is known that he has close relations with the Academy of the General Staff and once headed an advisory group in the office of Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov.
The United Kingdom, merely described as an "extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.", should be cut off from Europe.[9]
Aaaand now Brexit is a thing. A long-term pseudo-thing, but still a thing.
*Reads the rest of the list*
With "unofficial" translations you will never know if the translators didnt censor/change the meaning somehow.
With official translations, you don't know that, either. In fact, for the same reasons that politicians who speak in multiple languages often give speeches, on a given subject, with substantially different content in different languages, official translations of books that are designed as political propaganda or advocacy often shade the content to different anticipated audiences in different languages.
First, you need to understand values of a person, then their goals, then their methods to achieve the goals. 90s in post-USSR countries were a relatively free environment (from state prosecution) and it naturally selected for individuals which wanted as much power as possible and were willing to take it. For these individuals power is given only to those, who are powerful enough to have it, and must be taken from those, who are not powerful enough to keep it. If you are having your power, than it is moral for you to keep it until you don't.
This way of thinking is not something new or unique to post-USSR 90s - we as humanity have lived with this way of thinking for millennia and our thinking gave birth to countless empires and kingdoms. Those, who were powerful enough to be emperors, also had a right to be. Those, who challenged them in their power, would be new emperors, if proven powerful enough, otherwise would be painfully killed, their property and wives taken and their name forgotten. Let's call this mentality a "Cult of a Warrior". When you are living in this mentality, nothing is worse than feeling shame of abandoning your ideals or friends; you must be a truthful Warrior of the Cult until you die. But in the same time you can freely take anything you like which does not already belong to any of your friends, because if somebody is not powerful enough to fight you, than this person is not worthy of keeping this thing in the first place.
Some of us (humans) during a course of time have countlessly discovered and rediscovered that people can be treated as equal in principle, independent on their physical/economic/political power. This arrangement led to a more productive economic environment where zero-sum-game of Cult of a Warrior changed to a positive sum game of "Everybody Must Be Soft Cult". Also less overall human suffering is kind of cool, but economy thing is always first. In Everybody Must Be Soft Cult power over people can be used only with great care, everything is governed by a bureaucracy and no-one is unwilling to take too much responsibility for any action. This Cult uses a strong moral system to prohibit each of its members from using too much power on the others and those, who do not accept this system, are gradually punished with worse and worse strikes of punishment each time to learn their lesson. At the end, those individuals, who do not understand the reason for given punishment (its always abuse of power over others), are brought to death or exiled. Welcome to the Western civilization as we know it.
So let's go back to Putin and Ukraine. If we accept as an axiom that Putin is an adept of the Cult of a Warrior, then we can make the following conclusions:
1. Putin sees himself as a Chief Warrior of his tribe and therefore has factual and moral power to make any decisions for his tribe as he likes it. I will call him the "Chief Warrior" from now on.
2. The Chief Warrior sees that as time goes on, more and more fellow members of his tribe are turning from Cult of a Warrior to the Cult of Everybody Must Be Soft. From a point of view of a Warrior nothing is worse than to convert yourself to an Everybody Must Be Soft person. Worse is only when your children convert to Everybody Must Be Soft Cult and become all PC and LGBTQ drug loving hippies. No Warrior wants that to their children.
3. So from the Chief Warrior point of view he (in the Warrior cult its always he) does not have any choices at all regarding what to do with his life and how to guide his tribe next. First of all, he must save the tribe from this fucking Everybody Must Be Soft epidemy which is happening right now and must do so ASAP.
4. To save the tribe from Everybody Must Be Soft epidemy it must be separated from the source of the illness in the first place. That means economic and information blockade. All key technologies and industries must be developed in house, all external communication must be ceased, the nation must be quarantined until it find its Warrior soul again. Also its awesome if some of the most active bad blood from the Everybody Must Be Soft movement emigrates in the process.
5. So how to turn a course of a nation of 100+ million people, rapidly integrating from 1990s into Western economy and system of values? It is not so easy. You nee some help from your opponent in doing so. Remember Eastern martial arts - it takes less power to use your opponent against himself, then to do everything all by yourself? So you need to use Everybody Must Be Soft system of punishment to get yourself excluded and expulsed from its system. Economic sanctions is the name for it. For all sanctions the national economy will get a strong hit in the short term, but will become independent from the Everybody Must Be Soft economic system in the long term. Everything, which does not kill us, makes us stronger - said a fellow Warrior (or something like that) once.
6. How to get economic sanctions from the West? Everybody Must Be Soft always punishes for abuse of power, so we must show it to them. Crimea in 2014 was a nice start and we also reminded our fellow Warriors that our soul of the Warrior is not lost yet to the illness, that the times are turning. Also have to make internal reforms regarding freedom of speech, independent news media and political parties to smoke out all the Everybody Must Be Soft elite, so that this liberal pus comes out of an ill body of the Warrior which always has been and always will be Russian Empire, or Russia as it is simply called right now.
So what can people from Everybody Must Be Soft Cult can do to gain advantage in this fight? First of all, get their heads out of their arses and imagine that some people from another culture living on another continent might think differently than they are regarding fundamental ways of living and morality. Take some LSD and watch Chinese martial arts movies for Christs sake if you have so limited imagination.
Second, launch a program of giving free Western university education to Russians with a condition of returning back to their shitty dictatorial country as it is right now and starting improving something in this regard. Subsidize creation of Russian voice-over for all Western movies, give free English language classes to people over 30 and overall increase cultural transfer to people living currently in Russia. To kill Putin you have to convert all these people into the Everybody Must Be Soft mentality.
Third, in NO CASE create any new economic sanctions to Russia and repel all the old ones. Going the sanctions route would be like giving the Chief Warrior exactly what he wants on a silver plate. Give large amounts of aid to Ukraine to compensate for inconvenience of having a bully neighbor at the same time.
Fourth, either Everybody Must Be Soft Cult wins by converting everyone over, or it dies from hands of the Great Russian and Chinese Warriors who are getting stronger in the meantime.
PS. Sorry for my grammar and typos, not a native speaker. Also slightly edited regarding grammar/typos.
Also, you could choose more neutral labels. The point of the egalitarians isn't that people should be soft but that people have rights even if they can't defend them. And really Putin believes this too, he just ignores this when convenient. He isn't okay with harms done to Russia when it was weak. If he really accepted this warrior ethos, he would think they were perfectly fine. Russia couldn't defend its interests, so it deserved whatever it got.
A neutral term for might makes right is kraterocracy. "Democracy" doesn't quite capture the alternative, but will do. Perhaps "egalitarianism" is better.
Except currently Europe desperately needs oil and gas from Russia.
> Also, you could choose more neutral labels. The point of the egalitarians isn't that people should be soft but that people have rights even if they can't defend them.
It was partly irony, partly an attempt to show how we (West) could be seen from their (Warrior) side. Because Warrior clan's people deeply despise the other ones.
> And really Putin believes this too, he just ignores this when convenient. He isn't okay with harms done to Russia when it was weak. If he really accepted this warrior ethos, he would think they were perfectly fine. Russia couldn't defend its interests, so it deserved whatever it got.
If your friend is badly beaten physically, you do not leave this friend behind to die because he is a weakling, you help him heal his wounds and make revenge later. If your friend has became weak emotionally, than it is time to dump or even kill him because of mercy. Because true strength of the Warrior lies in his spirit first and in its body second.
Russia in 90s was very weak economically, but spiritually was at its peak of Warrior (or bidlo/gopnik) ethos.
> A neutral term for might makes right is kraterocracy.
Kudos for the right terms!)
Ten Minute Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDSK_Lb7xxI Long Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESwIVY2oimI
There are sanctions on the NK leadership and you have to convert them and their children into the Western way of thinking before they can even give open information to regular people. Right now Russia just started to censor its internet and Western values together with Western media cat still freely flow to Russia's people. This window of opportunity is closing rapidly, over though.
> Compare that to China for whom we gladly swept the Tiananman Massacre under the rug, respected their sovereignty, made them a top trading partner and they have also not bent an inch.
Because China has ~ 1B people and it heavily censors its media from the start. You cannot change mentality of so many people so fast.
China also bent. But in a way that is very different from what people expected. There was this idea that economic freedom must lead to political freedom. It was the cornerstone of political calculations for a century in the west. But it turns out China bent on the economic side without bending on the political side. This wasn't preordained, if hardliners in China had won their battle against reformers China would still be trapped. But by the time that it became clear that this was the greatest miscalculation of the last half century, it was too late. China became too entrenched economically in the global order for any sanctions to be possible.
But sanctions have worked. Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons because of sanctions.
What sanctions don't do is they don't lead to regime change. But they absolutely lead to massive behavioral changes.
I have traveled to Ukraine and Russia several times, dated a Russian briefly, then a Ukrainian, worked with Ukrainians in DC for several years, learned a bit of Russian and Ukrainian along the way... One of the things that I did not anticipate at first was the shared philosophical heritage with the west - my Russian ex-girlfriend's favorite book was Seneca's Letters to Lucilius, for one random example. For another, take a visit (in better times) to the Hermitage in St Petersburg and notice how the museum honors greek/roman philosophy and empire as much as any western museum.
The philosophical position upon which this country was founded - the rise of what recon517 is calling the "Everybody Must Be Soft" philosophy - has only been a dominant force recently, really only coming onto stage in the 20th century. It is not what has ruled the world for the majority of our 6,000 years of civilization and there is no guarantee that it will continue to do so. The idea that those who take and keep power by whatever means have a moral right to it is not new. I recently finished reading Xenophon's Anabasis (aka The Persian Expedition), and this philosophy seeps through just about every page as the Greek army lays waste to anyone not deemed of benefit to them, even fellow Greeks. Xenophon was a close friend of Socrates, remember.
Xenophon addressing the army, Anabasis book 6: "As long as you stay together united as to-day, you will command respect and procure provisions; for might certainly exercises a right over what belongs to the weaker."
My point with all of this is 1) we have more shared history than you might think, and 2) that if you enjoy the fruits of an equality mindset over the fruits of a winner-takes-all mindset, then do not take it for granted. Its dominance in politics is not guaranteed, at home or abroad.
Live it, understand it, be it, calmly share it, never force it. We cannot win this war of ideas by treating it like a war. The irony is that in the end it is far more powerful to cooperate than to take, but the success rests upon preventing individuals from concentrating and exercising that power.
My two cents, another imperfect model for consideration.
The Americans had their noses rubbed in it for 20 years in Afghanistan, only to see the warrior Taliban spring right back up overnight. I can’t imagine a more effective wake-up call than that.
It would have been better if they had just called Gorbachev and asked if invading Afghanistan could ever work or they should just drop it. He has the experience and I’m sure he would have been happy to share it.
I've tried to map this model onto Afghanistan but I think that's a bit of a different beast. America was 100% foolish to invade, I agree. But an equality mentality and a warrior mentality are not the only cultural philosophies. Religion alters the picture in yet another way.
Russia is outclassed by NATO both economically and militarily.
If NATO intervenes economically, Russia will lose much.
If NATO intervenes militarily, Russia will lose much (but at great cost to NATO).
The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss.
But it doesn't make sense that a nation as sophisticated as Russia would accept such a high risk of loss. Which means that they might actually believe the risk of NATO intervention is low.
How could the risk be low without some kind of collusion or hidden knowledge (hidden from us common folk)? Are "they" ("the global elite", "the military industrial complex") all "in it" (profiting) together? Is Russia just suicidal? If (when?) Russia loses out, how do they react?
But how would the nuclear option play out?
Here I am, a Russian oligarch. I ordered the Ukrainian invasion because I bet that NATO wouldn't intervene because of my nukes. But it turns out I was wrong and NATO is pushing back my invasion.
So I fire some nukes.
But then they fire nukes back at me.
????
Did I profit?
Of course, I don't believe there is such a system, or if there is it's very local; if it comes to nukes, they will come from anywhere (e.g. nuclear submarines) and can end up anywhere. If there was an effective anti-nuke system, we'd see launchers pop up everywhere, or if it's a space based one, see many launches of those to get enough coverage (like starlink).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpos...
I think the mistake here is to assume that the invasion is dictated by economic interests (be they oligarch interests). I don't think what's happening is driven by oligarchs, but by other geopolitical ideas (insane as they are).
As far as I can see it there's no bet. Russia pretty much knows the US will not react, and the US has no interest to start WW3 over Ukraine.
Look at where they sit strategically. The amount of resources they supply to an increasingly resource hungry world. The amount of math and science talent. The possession of advanced nuclear weaponry.
Look at what they are doing militarily right now and how effectively they are doing it.
They are an extremely significant country. This is true no matter how you feel about their government.
Overpriced healthcare, insurance and banking services might not be as valuable as oil, minerals and manufacturing going forward.
I just feel it's a huge conceptual mistake to underestimate the relative weights of forces.
Russia's economy is dependent on fossil fuels. While the decrease in Europe's use of nuclear power has been a gift to Russia, the future for fossil fuels is not bright and Russia's kleptocratic government has starved the nation of economic innovation.
I don't know what "extremely significant country" means here, but Russia is objectively a country in decline both in terms of economic and cultural power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
But that's the only thing they supply. At least in Europe (I hope) they'll start decoupling from Russian fossil resources asap.
> The amount of math and science talent
Pales in comparison to the US, China or the EU (taken as a block) and possibly even in comparison to the UK or Japan.
> The possession of advanced nuclear weaponry
This insures that MAD still works, but not much more I think.
Which is the last thing anyone should want because it will simply deepen ties between Russia and China.
Russia in 2022 has a GDP of $1.5T, and NATO has a combined GDP of $42T (2). Even if you make the case that Russia's current economic activity translates more effectively into wartime industry, I don't believe you can possibly make the case that it is 28x more effective.
Germany also had military technology and strategy advantages (see France in 1940) over its (early war) opponents. As good as Russia's "math and science talent" is, I would be shocked if it was even a quarter of the capability that the US alone has.
So no, Putin in 2022 is not comparable to Hitler in 1939.
(1) - http://www.zuljan.info/articles/0302wwiigdp.html. (2) - https://countryeconomy.com/countries/groups/nato
China is taking Russian engineers and cheap resources. In the meantime, Putin complained that they didn't invest enough back.
Total GDP ain't big either. Military is 6% of their gdp with a lot of older material too ( = maintenance cost)
Very low vaccination rates, means very low trust in the governement.
Russia is doing this because of a weak position. Not from a strong one.
China is giving something to give Russia confidence, but really not much.
I don't believe this, unless you define "significance" as nothing more than having your name in the world newspapers, even if it's for the wrong reasons.
Does NATO intervene when Russia starts (or really continues) courting pro-Russian politicians?
Does it intervene if that minority starts protesting?
Does it when that minority starts resisting?
Does it when Russia smuggles them arms?
Does it when little green men show up?
Does it when the rebels (now mostly little green men) advance West?
This go around the West tried sanctions and it obviously didn't work. Estonia is far more Western and fewer historic ties to Russia than Ukraine did. So it might not progress past step 1 in the playbook. Almost certain that Putin is going to try and likely will try for at least a couple decades to come.
For instance, we've seen it dramatised in season 3 of Berlin Station: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5191110/episodes?season=3
My imagination says: as soon as new facts are established (let's say blitz invation of a city), you are tempted to not respond because you don't want to start a world war. Of course this fails the overarching theory (MAD, tit for tat etc), but I wouldn't think it's impossible. Maybe for example USA would say it wants to respond with sanctions to avoid a larger war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
* Use subversive tactics to destabilize countries
* Use natural resource control to pressure countries
* Use military as a last resort when influence fails
Basically, make energy deals with Germany, ignore the US and UK and install puppet governments in Eastern Europe through bribery and propaganda until they can be annexed or granted “special status”.
But how can you establish facts, when you have to kill hundreds or thousands of US soldiers in NATO country first? Do you think that the US will say "shit happens" lets do some financial sanctions? Biden already said that as soon as russians shoot US troops we have WW3. And I think no other conclusion could be drawn here.
Or the war could turn into a route against Russia and defeat would mean the end of Putin's life. Why would he not draw a red line of threatening nukes, and mean it, in that situation?
I am a NATO Commander, I order the attack on Russian Troops in Ukraine. Russia retaliates with Nukes and I fire mine back and they fire theirs back on my Home Nation.
Did I profit?
This is just a slightly different version of a Cuban Missile Crisis. It has nothing to do with economy.
This is a classic game of "chicken", and NATO has basically told everyone they wouldn't get directly involved.
All your arguments happen to apply to NATO commanders too.
Here I am, head of a NATO member. I see Russia invade a country that we don't really care that much about. If we intervene there's a chance the world might end (and I will die). If we don't do anything except say some stern words online we'll lose some face but our money and lives are safe.
Do I intervene?
In a game of "chicken" the side with the most to lose and the side that believes they are most "rational" will lose. That losing side seems to be NATO now. Putin's image of being an irrational dictator willing to win at all costs is why he's winning this "chicken" game easily.
After all, Putin told 2 days ago he wants NATO out of Romania and Bulgaria:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/01/21/get-out-of-romania...
This is a very good question.
My guess is there will be a period of consolidation (one year, maybe two) and then the next target will be set, either Belarus will be pulled back in or Kaliningrad will be re-connected to the mothership. The fact that it isn't is a serious issue for Russia, they have to cross NATO controlled territory to get to one of their more important bases.
For instance, I think it's not one but two separate Citizen's Initiatives for joining that have each gathered enough signatures to qualify for debate in Eduskunta, the Finnish Parliament. (Not that it was all that far below that before this either.)
An attack on Moldova is not beyond conceivable. Bulgaria and Romania however are NATO members with US troops stationed there - Russia will not risk WW3 over those countries.
Serbia is a bit far to be invaded without a lot of other things happening before that.
Let's say afterwards Russia nukes Western Europe/the US. What then? That's the thing with MAD, you have to be mad to toy with the possibility.
What would make him desperate enough to sacrifice the entire current and future of Russia? Losing an invasion of Estonia?
When you are 70 years old, spending half your life revered as a great leader of a nation, you would be desperate not have your historical legacy ruined by losing a war and possibly your status and pride in your final years.
I'm definitely of the opinion that this would be an unlikely scenario, but then, are you willing to bet the future of the planet on a hunch that a single person that you don't know personally is actually not unhinged and desperate?
I don't know about you, but I'm personally going to avoid betting on anything that has a mere 1% chance of resulting in nuclear winter.
The scenario that we have been discussing is NATO's response to a Russian invasion of a NATO member such as Estonia. What are NATO's options?
1. Full scale (offensive) war. They attacked us, we will end this in Moscow 2. Repel the attack, take no aggressive action beyond what is required to come to a stalemate 3. Do nothing
I have argued elsewhere with you that I don't see 1. as being at all likely due to NATO's goals, defensive posture, and military superiority.
Doing nothing would only embolden Russia and destroy any pretense of an alliance at all. If not in Estonia, when would NATO intervene? Poland? Germany?
Thus, repel the attack and take no aggressive action. De-escalate and give options for Russia to save face.
We don't have to bet that a single person is not unhinged enough to press the button. There are command and control limitations purpose-built into even Russia's nuclear arsenal. Putin also wouldn't want his historical legacy ruined by the thorough destruction of the present and future of Russia. I'd go further to say that he knows all this, and wouldn't invade a NATO member in the first place.
I hope this is not how nuclear strategy and tactics is prepared. If sane people are in charge, retaliations will be proportional and exchange will be limited.
Russia obliterates Katowice, one of several countries obliterates Volgograd. What is the next move? You just ended the lives of a million of your citizens. You just stop there?
No way do the hawks win that argument.
Imagine you're the engineer involved with launching a nuke. In times of peace even if you get a phishing call to launch a nuke, you'd have second thoughts and probably take a couple more steps to confirm. In war time, you're already primed for the possibility of the nuke being used and it takes far less for a malicious actor to end the world as we know it.
Same for all levels of decision makers. It really just takes one trigger-happy maniac to make a wrong decision somewhere.
One reason I think this to be true is exactly the risks that you mentioned - the more hot the war gets, the more bodies, the more likely mistakes are made.
In a hot war where multiple countries are involved you can't expect the fighting to just stop once you hit a border. Even when you have the upper hand, the temptation to carry through once you are already engaged in a conflict is real.
I agree that NATO would be very reluctant to so much as fire an artillery shell over the Russian border, but Russia might well forfeit a great deal of personnel and equipment in such a move, anyway. Having troops & equipment abroad is a major liability if you pick a fight with a country (or coalition) that badly outclasses you.
look at the US: Trump is Putin's buddy, and he pushed the 'America First' tagline.
Look at the UK, they broke away from the EU.
Look at the eastern countries, Poland and Hungary; they have right-leaning governments that broke the rule of law and the separation of legislative branches, which caused them to get sanctioned by the EU, which fuels anti-EU sentiments. And in eastern Europe, anti-EU is pretty much equivalent to pro-Russia.
I haven't heard about it myself, but I'm sure anti-NATO sentiments will increase as well. It's only a matter of time before they get people to leave NATO. Especially if NATO does not come to the defense of a NATO country, they will lose their trustworthiness then.
But if anything, Eastern European countries will cling to NATO more than ever, they most certainly won't leave it.
Just look at the most recent speech of the Czech president, who is generally pro-Russian (the president, not the whole country). In the speech he absolutely condemned Russia's aggression and expressed support to Ukraine. Moreover, he urged to kick Russian Federation out of the SWIFT system as soon as possible.
But Russia doesn't need to fight those countries. They are hundreds of kilometers away from the Russian border. Ukraine on the other hand is hundreds of meters away. Having Ukraine in NATO or in the EU is a threat to Russia and its leadership today. So Russia will look to poison Ukraine for these 2 organizations and make it an unattractive member.
When EU got too close in 2013-2014 Russia responded in exactly the same way. Both the US and Russia have reacted in the same manner when the enemy tried to reach their borders in any way (via Cuba or via Ukraine). So in 2022 pursuing any relationship particularly between NATO and Ukraine could not have had any other result. It is absolutely inconceivable that this was unexpected given the obviousness, so it's a safe assumption that the goal is to keep Russia fighting and draining the little they have left, with Ukraine paying the (biggest) price. "Buffer" countries always do.
This seems a leap, or am I misunderstanding your comment?
My view is that this is about maintaining a fading colonial empire. Ukraine has been drifting away from Russian influence at least since 2014 and since Russia does not have the economy to re-assert its influence through trade it has to do so by military means.
I have no facts to base it on other than news propaganda, but I think they are too late to re-capture Ukraine and this rather desperate move will only bolster the Ukrainian nationalism. The Russian forces also will not be able to hold the Ukraine well enough to extract any sort of economic benefit from it. 45 million is a lot of people.
Putin has stated that he views Ukrainian membership in NATO and the presence of NATO forces on their border as an existential threat to Russia so that is at least the public reason that they are doing this. If we take that at face value then the objective is to destabilize Ukraine to the point where they are ineligible to join NATO for a long time. That doesn't bode well for the Ukrainian people.
Any intent with Donetsk and Lugansk -- such as "protecting their borders"; which "borders", the ones with Ukraine? -- is an intent with Ukraine. Donetsk and Lugansk are "countries" only in the eyes of Russia and Belarus; in the world the rest of us live in, they're parts of Ukraine. (Like Crimea.)
> Putin has stated that he views Ukrainian membership in NATO and the presence of NATO forces on their border as an existential threat to Russia so that is at least the public reason that they are doing this. If we take that at face value...
Here's a better idea: Let's not.
And yet no single (super)power in the world would accept this assurance and allow adversaries to take positions at their borders. The US didn't allow Russian missiles in Cuba, and most definitely wouldn't allow China to set up base there today despite any assurances that China would never preemptively invade the US.
There may be many reasons behind this war that we'll never know but the one you don't have to guess. It's been tested and proven accurate over our entire history.
Without centralised command issuing computerised targeting info, it will be for missile officers own initiative to launch them, fully knowing from what they learned in the military academy that an uncoordinated launch will likely be futile.
USA missile defences in Arctic, and North Pacific can guarantee intercept a dozen uncoordinated launches, if what Raytheon says is true.
This is very dangerous nonsense.
Russia has >6000 Nukes. If most were launched and missile defense systems have a 99% success rate that is still 10s of Nuclear strikes on the US Mainland. This would be the end of the US and likely irradiates large parts of North America...
32 Bulavas on 2 Yasens in Pacific
46 R36, 6 with 20MT warheads, 40 with 10 1MT MIRV. 406 warheads total.
36 UR100
162 Topols
The Russian airforce doesn't have serious nukes, the land force don't have megaton scale weapons either.
R36, and UR100 in silos are the only genuine first strike option, everything else is a retaliation weapon. Only a coordinated first strike gives Russia a chance on victory, it's impossible with military C3 beheaded. The surviving military officers in bunkers in far reaches of the country would know that each of them don't have enough forces under their command to continue the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...
> Only a coordinated first strike gives Russia a chance on victory
The idea that a nuclear war can be won died a while ago too.
Wrt economic reprisals, Putin probably did the math and found it acceptable. They might be kicked out of SWIFT, they will probably get closer to China.
I assume military belligerence, aggression is about domestic political power moves. Meaning, in this case, Putin's calculus gives more weight to tightening his grip on Russia than any economic impacts.
--
IIRC, studies have shown that economic sanctions empowers the hardliners. The hardships impacting the citizens drives them to embrace the hardliners more. Also, the sanctions expand their internal domestic inequity.
So while I totally understand the European and US response to Russia -- what else are they gonna do? -- the cynic in me knows it'll prove counter productive long term.
Nor do I support military involvement. That option is even worse.
There really are no good options.
You can in fact strangle these regimes and it's very effective. We did it to the USSR, we did it to Cuba, we did it to Venezuela, we did it to North Korea. The outcomes were excellent in fact: those regimes were largely held in check and their ability to maneuver was made far more difficult. Crippling regimes like Putin's and making it difficult for them to function at max power, is a very reasonable outcome. Putin isn't going away whether we make it hard or easy on Russia most likely, so the rational choice is very obvious. Containment and strangulation is just fine.
The best options are what should have occurred over the prior eight years, for which it is now too late.
The good options going forward are to topple Lukashenko in Belarus (civil war, flood the nation with weapons, arm the resistance at any cost), aggressively move on Moldova and Russia's interest there (immmediately; as in eight years ago), and generally take Russia's few proxies away from them to weaken Putin's dreams of a new empire, that includes declaring a proxy war on Russia's off the books military activities in Africa and elsewhere. We have drastically more resources and reach than they do, we should kill their proxies anywhere we find them by funding it appropriately.
Very aggressively target Russia's currency and any international use of it. Attempt to destroy their economy. That includes by working with Western Europe to build nuclear energy and move away from Russian energy. This isn't solved in a day, but it can be solved over 10 and 20 years.
Cyber attack Russia's interest anywhere and everywhere they can be reached. They do the same to us, stop pretending we can be their friends. Russia isn't interested in being a liberal democracy or a pal to the civilized world, Putin's Russia is interested in power and conquest.
Blockade Russia off from the global Internet, which would be relatively easy for the US to accomplish. Enhancing their isolation that much more.
Remove them from Swift and make them a global pariah economically ex China and select few others.
Return the people of Russia to the conditions they enjoyed under the Soviet Union economically by strangling the nation, until or unless they get rid of Putin and return to the civilized fold and give up their ambitions to conquer more of Europe. It's probable that only the people of Russia can stop Putin, that includes people nearest to him (which is always an outsized threat to dictators; I assume Putin will do some purges if the pressure gets too great). Russia is well acquained with revolutions, our task now is to squeeze Russia until another one occurs. We outlasted the USSR trivially, the next task is to end the Russia that exists today (prompt revolution and see it broken into numerous smaller nations).
1. Tactical - chokepoints are a major element of military tactics, and I guess there's a spot that leaves Russia completely defenseless with wide-open spaces if it doesn't own Poland and Ukraine.
2. Wheat - apparently, Russia owns quite a bit of the market, and Ukraine would carry another minority.
With that in mind, I see this entire thing as a coercive and brutal M&A, but with people's lives being destroyed instead of just their long-term career plans.
We're talking about a guy who thought that Lenin and Stalin were too soft.
His speech a couple days ago was unhinged and offering justification to invade almost all of Eastern Europe.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?518097-2/russian-president-put...
One benefit is that China (supposedly) approves of this invasion. So it's possible that the sanctions won't have as much of an impact as they otherwise might've.
As others have pointed out, there is no risk of NATO retaliation due to Russia's nuclear arsenal. If China also reduced the risk of sanctions, then the net result is that there's very little downside for Russia to invade.
If we want to make a difference, we need to think of ways to make it a net loss for Putin to invade. Right now it's a net benefit.
Maybe he views it as a price tag but in a different way - it has a cost, but what use is resources/money if you can't use it to do what you want? I.e it has a big cost but it's how we wants to use the resources he has at hand, no matter the bottom line.
Putin is delusional about history and his place in it.
But he's not about to literally destroy everything he owns and then some by triggering art 5.
Assuming Putin is rational is a dangerous thing.
"I think also that we need to realize that Ukraine is a highly valued partner. We support them with military support, with political support, with the cyber defences, with equipment. Different Allies provide different types of support. But when it comes to NATO Allies, we provide absolute security guarantees. Meaning that we make it absolutely clear that an attack on one Ally will trigger a response from the whole Alliance. One-for-all. All-for-one."
I agree the military intervention risk seems low, but what about economic intervention? Isn't this going to have some serious economic repercussions for Russia?
Near term impacts of climate change will very likely leads to crop failures in many of the EU's largest producing regions.
When you don't have enough food to feed your people, politics and economic sanctions become extremely flexible.
When resources run low controlling food and oil will be a very big deal.
Links to actual expert analyses, on the other hand, would be much appreciated.
Russian and Ukraine combined account for 29% of global wheat exports, much of that to the EU.
Near term climate change will most certainly lead to massive crop failures, particularly in currently bountiful parts of the EU.
Countries like the UK (I know not EU) already cannot feed their people without imports, something like 50% of the UKs food supply is imported.
It is nearly certain that within a few decades, perhaps even sooner, we will be at a point where there is not enough food. We've already see notable crop failures in the EU.
Most of us have grown up in a time of plenty, but that time is running short.
All of this is fairly well established, so is my "delusion" in that Putin is aware of this and acting on it?
After some conversion through various bad units of measure (bushels->pounds->calories), and assuming ~2250 calories a day average), it looks to me like current US corn production could feed somewhere around 1.6 billion people their entire yearly caloric needs, if it was actually directed entirely at feeding people as efficiently as possible.
And that is rather obviously not the only crop or source of food originating in the US.
Math sources:
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2022/01-12-2022.php - corn output.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-... - bushel/pound/calorie conversion
------
In short, I don't think it's very realistic to think that Europe is going to face a literal inability to get enough food even if the entirety of Ukraine never grew another plant again.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/17/infographic-russia-...
France exports 15,228,664 tonnes of wheat, not far behind the Ukraine with 17,314,278.
Other significant wheat producers in the EU include Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wheat_exp...
What climate change would let crops fail in all corners of the EU, but not Ukraine and Russia?
When Ukraine was flirting with the idea of a relationship with the EU in 2013-2014 the Crimean invasion happened. It was absolutely predictable even at that time and in fact many EU officials I have spoken to (including high ranking ones) agreed as much since back then. The signs of a regime which doesn't stand any proximity of a threat to their rule was obvious.
> The reason for the conflict is entirely in Putin's head
I have never been in Putin's head, nor met or talked to him. But to my pride I do forget more history every day than most people will learn in their lifetime and can't think of similar example of a superpower happily accepting adversaries at their border.
In recent history look no further than when the US ordered a naval blockade on Cuba after Cuba's request for Russian missiles to be placed on the island to defend in the event of another US invasion attempt. Putin is literally taking a page from that book.
I don't need to be in Putin's head because he's not some brilliant tactician doing something unheard of, he's just playing an old song to a new audience. If it's the first time you hear it you just have to pay more attention to what came before today.
Not to burst your bubble, but the USSR accepted Turkey with nukes on their border, and before them, Japan. China accepts being essentially surrounded by hostile powers, many of whom are part of NATO.
However, the idea that all superpowers inevitably go to war to preserve this state is just wrong. If you consider superpowers starting from antiquity to today, the only state that has achieved this situation (at any point?) is the USA. Every other has had at least one significant land border with an adversary.
(PS: Probably the biggest one is, of course, between the USSR and China, which was a very hot border since the sino-soviet split).
PS: it was nice while it lasted... https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/russia-and-chin...
(Of course “Turkiye” becoming a member of Nato in these times would have been a joke considering Erdoğan. But maybe I’m just showing my naivete.)
Georgia, Syria, Libya, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan are all places Russia and Turkey banged heads one way or another. Just like Russia is taunting NATO to bang heads in Ukraine. China, US, India, Pakistan, Israel, Russia, Turkey are other powerful countries constantly putting out a fire and starting another one. The single larger difference being that the sphere of influence of most of those countries expands far less than US' so their conflicts are generally closer to their actual geographic border rather than on the other side of the world. Otherwise they're all fighting to maintain that buffer in all possible ways.
And at a completely different scale, people in rich neighborhoods rarely accept inconvenient buildings or neighbors right next to them as long as they can do something about it. It's not an indictment on either the people or the countries named above. Just the state of things.
Perhaps the only place with nukes and no sabre rattling today is Western Europe. Then again they have the US to do the rattling for them and pay for the service. The picture will be a lot clearer when this too becomes history.
Well, except for the fact that the US never actually invaded Cuba.
It was a grave mistake for Ukraine to give up the nuclear weapons they inherited from the USSR.
And in 2014 forces which were definitely just pro-Russian militias as they clearly had no Russian insignia invaded Crimea the moment Ukraine started contemplating a relationship with the West/EU.
This kind of rationalization or nit-picking in order to reach the conclusion you had already settled on has no value, just because there are sides doesn't mean you have to blindly take one. Education and critical thinking help.
Don't compare an authoritarian regime sending militias to conquer the territory of a democratic country to a democratic country training and supporting exiles to get rid of their tormentor. Intent matters.
When you do a good job you don't need to explain your intentions. It's a lesson you learn the very first time you do a good job.
The west doesn’t really hold the cards at the moment.
You claimed that this wasn’t inevitable. From today’s vantage point, it seems pretty clear that this was Putin’s intent all along.
- If Nato had put a memorandum on Ukraine membership: Russia would have less of a reason to attack but Nato wouldn’t be able to help defend Ukraine in case of an attack
- Nato stays ambivalent about eventual membership: Russia is more likely to attack and, as stated by the Nato general secretary and the US president, Nato won’t help defend Ukraine in case of an attack
I assume you mean "moratorium"?
No something I welcome, but the calculations you are making don’t match up with reality.
How would you have it? Just let any nuclear armed state invade any country it wants? There has to be a place where the line is drawn.
Russia has agency in this scenario. If they drop nukes first they are starting a nuclear war.
Of course, Putin may have hoped that the Ukrainian public would "see the light" and realize that they are really Russian people (as Putin seems to think they ought to) and align themselves accordingly, but that would have been a pipe dream.
Remember how the Russian government was recently talking about how what goes on inside of their borders is only their business? That they may move their troops anywhere they like inside of their borders (the obvious lie by Putin & Co that was obvious at the time)? Yeah, that's the same principle.
And you don't have to imagine, just remember Cuban missile crisis (in response to US deploying missiles in Turkey, Italy)
I've heard this "analogy" brought up several times in the last couple days, but I just don't find it persuasive or similar, or really actually matter.
If Mexico decided to invite the Russian army in for whatever reason, that is their choice as a sovereign nation. I (as an American) would be super worried about that, but I would also think that the US should probably be asking itself why Mexico had chosen to do this instead of allying itself with the US.
And that's really the heart of this for me: despite Ukraine's history with Russia, they seem to feel that joining NATO is better for their security and safety. Russia should take a hard look at themselves and ask why that's the case, and maybe adjust their behavior so they'd be considered a more trustworthy partner.
But of course that would never happen; instead we have a dictator who believes Russia has some natural right to Ukraine's lands, and will take it by force if necessary. If the US were behaving that way toward Mexico, I absolutely wouldn't blame them for looking for outside help. It would be irresponsible for them not to.
You know of what Ukrainians are even sicker than this conflict? Russian imperialism. Each instance of sabre rattling brings them closer to the West.
Russian economy is in decline since 2014. COVID-19 pandemic has increased its decline even further.
So it seems that the upcoming EU + US economic sanctions will be used by propaganda as the ultimate explanation of the decline. I mean Kremlin actually looks forward to more sanctions in order to have plausible explanation ("we are at war and our enemies made your life worse; we need to stay strong around our leader mr. Putin" shit).
The vast, vast majority of the growth in US and EU economies since 2014 (really, much earlier than that, though) has been in fundamentally non-productive sectors like finance, real estate, entertainment, social media, and hospitality.
This is all well and good in peacetime, but the GDP calculation changes dramatically when you're on a war footing and need to produce actual tangible things. Russia looks much, much, much better economically than GDP suggests in the context of its ability to produce theater materiel, power that materiel, and man that materiel.
It's going to be a fun day for us when our pathetic "service-based economy" workforce of ad spent optimizers, real estate agents, attorneys, starbucks baristas, ReactJS programmers, UI designers, Buffalo Wild Wings servers, twitch streamers, instagram influencers, and "hustlers" of all kinds get drafted to fight hardened alcoholic roughnecks who've spent the last 20 years actually building things, backed up by Chinese rangefinders, optics, and target acquisition systems.
Good luck to us.
What worries me is the idea that some ex-soviet apparatchik (someone like Vladimir himself) might want to take eye-for-eye, and reduce western infrastructure to the same level of ruin of the Soviet’s, after ‘89.
Their industry and economy was struggling and fell apart overnight but the West wasn’t happy to just win, it wanted to Win Big. We rubbed the unproductivity of it in their face, kicked the market wide open to fire sales and mass demobilization… these humiliations create resentment, and you never know who’s the more spitefully determined.
I'm not familiar with this; can you elaborate or link me to something?
I'd say they've anticipated those serious economic repercussions to some extent. But I also suspect Russians may be more willing to tolerate things such as a weak economy if it helps achieve other goals. I kind of see it like a parallel with Russia shooting a bullet at its own economy, while the Soviet Union in the 20th century shot plenty of bullets at its own people...for various reasons.
It looks like Putin is making the correct calculation that the west would suffer more.
Look at the Chinese reaction, it is very unlikely he would be making this move without at least tacit Chinese support. He has an outlet for all of that energy and grain.
Where will Europe recover that supply from?
Oil is fungible to a significant degree, but oil politics are not.
The key balance here is with the Iranians and the saudis. In all likelihood the nato response hinges on how much support they can count in the Middle East.
She said, they are now in a state, where they can't be pressured trough gas deliveries from Russia. Whether this is true, I have no idea.
You can't build LNG transfer depots to replace half of your pipeline deliveries in years, let alone weeks.
Looking at this, Russian LNG imports makes up 20%. Doesn't seem to be completly impossible for the other countries on that list to cover for it at maybe a higher price. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51358
Russia's been sanctioned for nearly a decade. They're probably the most resource-rich nation on earth and have a nearly fully self-sufficient economy. What little they need they can get from China.
Also, when people look at Russia's GDP, they need to look at REAL numbers (ie. Adjusted for PPP). Russia's real GDP is ~3x higher than their nominal GDP (because sanctions drive down currency trade and make the nominal number basically useless).
It might look so like we have a self-sufficient economy, but it's not true. We have lots of resources, but to mine them and produce things you need technology. We're mostly importing needed technology and it's not something that can be changed fast. And things didn't change much for the last 10 years. China is a good partner, they can produce and export all needed tech things, but I doubt that in the current world is a good option to depend on one partner.
I'm Russian and I don't understand the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine. And I don't agree with our country leaders' decisions. It doesn't look the peace could be brought by war and aggression. And I'm feeling that we already lost. We lost opportunities to partner with Ukraine and other countries. We lost momentum to grow our own economy.
I think I do.
It seems to be the same as the reason for invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Ukraine also started a transformation, slipping away from Russia's influence and opening to West. Russia's rulers (whether that is Putin or whomever) understandably got pissed by this loss of influence "in their backyard" and they decided they have to do something.
It was clear to Russians for a long time now that NATO was fractured on Ukraine and that even the hawkish Western powers won't go into direct war with Russians because of Ukraine. It's not that important to anybody in the West.
Considering the fact West won't fight in Ukraine, and it did not provide any real concessions to Russia's demands, it is not surprising that Russia has taken initiative. It makes perfect sense, for Russians it is the only way to make sure NATO/EU won't happen and also win control and resources in Ukraine at the same time (which may be a substantial reason as well, despite the fact Putin does not talk about it).
Considering the disproportion in military powers, I think now it would be best for Ukrainians to capitulate, admit defeat and avoid unnecessary deaths. Also, the West bears some responsibility for this misery in Ukraine. Even from western point of view, West should have never started this overture process with false promises and predictable bad results. Unless the Russian invasion was actually a desired result in some secret mastermind plan made in the West... which does not seem likely.
When you talk with people around you in Russia, does support for the invasion feel like a wedge issue? No pressure to respond if you feel like it's not easy to talk about.
For a bit of context, where I live there's some controversy of whether or not the federal government needed use certain reserve powers. [1] I personally felt the government's actions were pretty measured, but I understand (at least on a theoretical or emotional level) why other people might not have been comfortable with it. I sometimes wonder if support for Russia's invasion is very polarizing internally. That said, I don't speak Russian or know much about the public consciousness there.
[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-federal-gover...
Military intervention is the best solution Russia has a large army but its old and would be unable to deal with western military, but there is no real path for that to happen.
The world's police has abdicated a while ago. This is the kind of thing that happens in the vacuum left behind.
This was already the case though this does make it clear to me that Taiwan will likely fall in short order.
There have been unsubstantiated rumors for years that the Taiwanese military has outfitted TSMC fabs with explosives that can be rigged to go off in the event of a mainland invasion in order to deny China access to TSMC capabilities. Even physical destruction may be unnecessary. Due to the complexity of the semiconductor supply chain, many say that an embargo of materials and the removal of experts are enough to paralyze the fabs for many years.
For their pro-Putler colleagues, one of those phrases is "Ukrainian coup of 2014".
"Asked twice during CNN's town hall whether the US would protect Taiwan if China attacked, Biden said it would." [1]
Contrast that to the stance on Ukraine:
"We have no intention of fighting Russia."[2]
From other statements, it seems clear the administration thinks Taiwan is a critical national interest while Ukraine is not.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/21/politics/taiwan-china-biden-t...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/23/biden-troops-russia...
This is true. And it is the main driver behind the United States' renewed interest in domestic fab capability:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/7178
Taiwan isn't explicitly mentioned but it plays a large role in the reasoning behind this.
Semi is the most globalised industry spanning 28 countries, with USA, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, SK, Japan, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands being able to singlehandedly stop the whole of it.
It's a naive thinking "once TSMC will complete Arizona megafab, we can abandon Taiwan." There, are as I said, hundreds of critical single supplier globally pieces of equipment, services, and materials that most of the world had zero idea about. How about nanoneedle probes capable of testing M0 the entire industry depends on, for which there is 1 small company for the entire world.
US semiconductor equipment from LAM, and Applied Materials are more than half imported parts. US semi industry never used OSATs, until it had to ship their chips to Asia for that, and thus missed out on most of new packaging, and test tech which evolved outside of the US. Similarly for almost everything else.
Replacing Asian material suppliers for the US will be as hard as for China to develop a domestic photolithography stepper.
Ok, then we'll stop talking.
"We will betray our allies, and they will leave us alone" is a form of defeatism, and entertaining others into this way of thinking is not what a citizen of NATO country should do, let alone a public figure.
The DoD has identified the loss of manufacturing capability as a national security risk. Maybe lower labor costs were the impetus of off-shoring manufacturing, but nearly 40 years since globalization took hold there's also a lot of manufacturing that has to go overseas simply because America is no longer able or willing to do it. Could the US bring back that capability? As you said, even if there was the will it wouldn't happen overnight.
Never mind various economic measures from all parts of the West. The developed world is already doing things about China's Taiwan ambitions, and have motivations far stronger than altruism to continue doing so. Ukraine by contrast is not as well integrated as Taiwan, and it's their desire to be integrated that set Putin off in the first place. If said integration meant nothing, Putin wouldn't be invading.
> Taiwan has semiconductors western industry depends on.
For once it isn't about oil.
> And the primary reason for AUKUS and giving the Aussies nuclear sub tech is precisely so their subs will have the range to help counter China.
I'm sure the Chinese are most impressed. But Australia too will stand by when the Chinese invade Taiwan.
> China just "sanctioned" (largely performative) Lockheed and Boeing over a $100 million arms sale to Taiwan.
You need to separate out the economic incentives from the political ones there to get a clearer picture of what is happening.
> Never mind various economic measures from all parts of the West. The developed world is already doing things about China's Taiwan ambitions, and have motivations far stronger than altruism to continue doing so.
China doesn't care about any of that: they care about the United States and them alone because that is the only country that can credibly put up enough force projected into that region to put a stop to it if they decide to move.
> Ukraine by contrast is not as well integrated as Taiwan, and it's their desire to be integrated that set Putin off in the first place.
You could Swap Ukraine and Taiwan and substitute Xi and you have a winner at some point in the future, provided Taiwan would express a desire to join NATO.
> If said integration meant nothing, Putin wouldn't be invading.
Put would invade regardless, and this is the mistake that everybody is making: the NATO approach is a figleaf, that only happened after things had already started to slide inside Ukraine. But I'm pretty sure that only a very small fraction of HN is aware of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych
Was placed to serve as a Russian puppet to keep Ukraine out of the influence of the West, which the country overwhelmingly wanted. After being tossed out (he's since moved to Russia) the whole separatism affair started fueled by Russia. Ukraine had every right to do so, and the occupation and subsequent invasion are proof positive that Ukraine was right about Russia's intentions, not the other way around.
You will find a lively corresponding sentiment in lots of other former USSR states.
Regardless, when I say "western integration" I don't mean hard NATO membership. Taiwan is a greater economic player than Ukraine, and a very defensible island, with a very different set of political entanglements. The situations may look similar in the abstract, but it's comparing oranges to lemons.
I'm also not sure why you think the Aussies would stand by. They're already in their own economic war with China and by joining AUKUS have made their position abundantly clear. New Zealand would probably stand by, but honestly they don't matter that much militarily.
China is making enemy after enemy on the assumption that their enemies are fundamentally weak/corrupt and can be rolled over, while uniting under an ethno-nationalist/cult of personality leadership. They aren't the first in history to make that mistake. And if they continue down that road it ends in bloody defeat.
Could some trouble have been avoided if Yanukovych had left office via election rather than via coup? How many Ukrainians really considered his negotiation tactics with EU so unbecoming that he should have been summarily removed via "extralegal" means?
I'm not really sure what you are trying to argue here, this is pretty much settled history.
You mean 'under the Russian boot'. They already know what that is like, hence their resistance to a repeat performance.
The rest of the alternative reality stuff I'll not respond to, feel free to take that any way you want.
One guess how I'm inclined to take that...
The vast majority of Ukrainians are not responsible for their misfortunes over the last decade. Certainly they have my sympathy. Violent coups usually harm the societies in which they occur, so the tiny minority of Ukrainians who took part in that coup have harmed their nation and their fellow Ukrainians. That harm has taken the form of a Russian invasion, but if it had happened somewhere else at some other time (e.g. Iran, in 1953) the harm would have come anyway.
Eventually, if we survive long enough, humans will learn to organize (and re-organize!) ourselves without large-scale violence. Some had imagined that democracy might be a part of that, but few today seem to agree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHH10jIRJmQ
Ukrainians (and Georgians, and elderly Hungarians) are already well aware...
Either way, the reason it can't have a simple answer is that it's an invalid question, since it presupposes something which isn't true. (As further explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30539775 .)
And IMO it's a bit suspicious that so many of the "simple questions" on this subject just happen to be couched in Putlin propaganda terms.
USA has gone on record saying it will fall on the sword for Taiwan. [0]
USA never said any such thing for Ukraine. The closest commitment is Biden saying "we will defend every inch of NATO territory." [1]
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59005300
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/biden-warns-russia-us-defend-21054732...
I'll believe that when I see it, under Biden, maybe. But that may also just be posturing and probably won't last longer than the moment that the USA can become independent of Taiwanese manufacturing capabilities at which point it would actually be in the US' interest if Taiwan would no longer be able to produce.
The US made their commitments when their opponents were at their nadir neglecting that they'd be challenged when the opponents were at their strongest. Walking back those commitments to what the US is willing and able to defend will continue to be the challenge of the 21st century. There needs to be a strategic re-evaluation of what the US should defend and what they can defend.
IMHO, ultimately the either should not or can not defend Eastern Europe bordering Russia, The Caucasus, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan. How to wiggle out of those commitments without giving Russia, China, & Iran ideas is the tough part.
The possible what-if scenarios arising from unchecked expansion of superpowers is disturbing.
The West however cannot be seen to do nothing, so sanctions are the logical next step.
A part of me thinks that Putin at 69 years old, senses that he have to create a great legacy for himself and invading Ukraine seems like a perfect opportunity.
I sincerely hope that the sanctions will include removing Russia from all sports and excluded from as much trade as possible.
That said, I'm worried that the sanctions will be weak/ineffectual as I doubt NATO countries will want to risk economic harm, especially in Europe where they've allowed themselves to become so dependent on Russian natural gas. Personally I think Ukrainian lives are worth an increase in energy prices.
And now gas and oil prices seem to be rising, triggering Biden to state that these increases will be dealt with.
So no, I'm not optimistic about sanctions even though I also think Ukraine must come first.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/ukraine-russ...
With words.
EU has also supported Ukraine with words recently.
I've seen ads on the telly making an emotional statement that "Ukraine is Europe".
Europe as a continent does not exist: it is a small corner of Asia. Eurocentricism needs to stop. This us-vs-them game needs to stop.
This invasion is terrible for normal people, Ukrainian (bombs), Russian (sanctions) and everyone else (instability, high prices). It could have been prevented if the "west"/NATO was not "pulling on" (arming) Ukraine. The NATO already have plenty places to make bases on Russian border.
See what happened to Cuba. The US/NATO also do not like bases on their border. They should have understood Russia also does not like that.
But then I believe NATO is more into the business of war then the business of peace.
According to Wikipedia, many NATO members are either Arms or non-lethal aid suppliers.
""" Arms suppliers: Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States
Non-lethal military aid: Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Sweden, European Union, Belarusian opposition """[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...
The US alone provided $2.5 Billion of aid [2]. That doesn't include Biden's $200 Million military aid package in 2022 [2].
[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/can-jaw-jaw-in-the-west-r...
[2] https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2022/01/25/200m-in-jave...
Because Joe Alzheimer is the weakest dictator in the US history.
Russia has no other choice. When USSR in 1962 [0] did something similar to USA, USA was not happy and it could end up really bad. How is this situation is different? National security is paramount.
No NATO country has ever invaded Russian soil and never will due to their massive nuclear arsenal.
I'm willing to admit Putin may have convinced himself and some Russians that there's a national security concern, but the evidence is severely lacking.
I never said it has to be nuclear missiles. Tomahawks will do for 800km range. And that's a threat for national security.
>I'm willing to admit Putin may have convinced himself and some Russians that there's a national security concern, but the evidence is severely lacking.
If your neighbor says your dog is a concern, you better listen to your neighbor and do not adopt 10 more.
If my irrational neighbor says my quiet, well-behaved dog is actually barking all day and night, growling at him as he walks by (even when the dog is inside), and if I don't stop it he'll break into my house and kill my dog: I keep my dog inside, put up some cameras, clean my gun and file a police report.
ps: the good thing the master is safe and fine. he will adopt another one just to annoy the neighbor again.
The comparison is that missiles in Cuba = "disturbs the Mutually Assured Destruction equation". Anti-Ballistic Missiles in Russia's near abroad....disturbs the MAD equation. That is the national security concern. It's the same thing Russia has been saying since....2007? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6599647.stm
Do you think Putin wants to until US ABMs are already deployed in a NATO Ukraine to then voice his concerns? That would be too late. Consider this a very drastic preemptive action, but it's entirely in keeping with Russia's approach to security in their near abroad for the past ~15 years, for anyone who has been paying attention.
Regardless, the only thing Putin has to fear from NATO ABM systems, and NATO membership for Ukraine in general, is an end to their ability to conquer Eastern Europe militarily.
I'm sorry if that explanation doesn't suit Russian paranoia, but I see no upside to tolerating said paranoia either. And neither, apparently, does Ukraine, despite standing to lose the most in this situation.
Around 9/11, the Russians were focused on Chechen insurgents and terrorists, and our relations with them thawed significantly: https://carnegieendowment.org/2001/10/24/u.s.-russia-relatio...
Later in the 2000s, Russia discussed NATO and EU membership but had generally been rebuffed. Still, they tried to maintain dialogue with NATO, even after slapping down Georgia: https://euobserver.com/news/27890. I think they considered their point made about keeping NATO in check, but we didn't get the message.
For about 15 years, Putin ran Russia without even possessing the capability for a major nation-state offensive in Europe. That changed with the reformation of the 1st Guards Tank Army, stationed west of Moscow, in 2014. The question so few people are investigating is "What are the things WE ("the West", generally speaking) have done to trigger the changes in Russian foreign policy? This is the introspection that I find deeply lacking. Everyone just chalks it up to "clearly he's a megalomaniacal madman! Nothing else needs be said!"
Exactly this. The western world has this infallible belief that what they are doing if right and everyone else is wrong. They don't even stop to think the consequences. They are doing things which if reciprocated they won't accept and they say .. Oh we just want to spread democracy everywhere"
I think that it's a mistake to assume there must be an endgame.
What was Andropov endgame in invading Afghanistan. If you read the planning strategy sessions that lead to Afghanistan, it is clear there was no endgame. First it was Afghanistan is not strategically important let it fall. Then it was Afghanistan appears to be important to the US so we should involved. Then finally Afghanistan is strategically critical the Soviet union must invade and do anything it takes to ensure they remain pro-Soviet.
What was the US endgame in Afghanistan after Al Qaeda was defeated? What was Bernie Madoff's or Pol Pot's endgame?
I think in case of someone who attacks there is always an endgame (something they want to gain/achieve/posses ...) and reasons are post action justifications.
I could actually say this in general: everybody is doing something (or choose not to) to gain something. What is true is that sometimes the final stage is not consciously expressed. But in my view se are an organism that is spending energy to gain something at the final of the exchange. In this inaction is also a form of exchange.
I do think we are using the term endgame to mean different things. I'm thinking about it not as a mere end they wish to achieve them like a chess endgame.
I agree people have reasons for the things that they do, but endgame implies that they have a longer term plan that wraps up the follow on consequences of that decision. For instance someone might rob a bank for the reason that they want lots of money, but they might not have fully considered how they are going spend that money without getting caught or how they will evade capture by law enforcement over the next twenty years if they are exposed.
Or consider the American Civil War, the South did not have an endgame. They had a bad plan to break away from the US by aggressively attacking the US, but they didn't have a good strategy for winning the war and even if they did, the what would their post-war state look like? Given their internal factions and divisions the CSA would almost immediately have had another civil war within themselves. The north could then play the warring factions against each other. It was remarked at the time by people in the know that the Confederations didn't really have a workable long term plan and their short term one was bad. They had reasons but no real endgame.
What was Bernie Madoff's endgame? Die of old age before the house of cards came down?
Putin is Slobodan Milošević with less hair and a nuclear arsenal. Milošević was clearly a clever man but what was Milošević's end game? Did Milošević expect to die in a cell in the Hague?
Putin sees the west as weak. Germany has a new leader. France is about to have elections. The UK is still dealing with Brexit. The EU is fractured with Poland and Hungary and has no out. The US is so divided that a previous president is encouraging Putin to invade and the current president is likely to lose the House and the Senate very shortly.
This is the perfect time if you believe the west is weak. The problem is that what's next on the menu (maybe after Moldova? But that's not very tasty, sorry friends!) Are all NATO members.
And.. Putin lives in the echo chamber you create when you're a dictator who regularly throws people out of windows to their death. He might decide it's time to test NATO. And that's world war territory.
But you'll always be lost if you assume there is a them. There's no them. There's Putin. Read his speech from last night, this thinking and desires are very clear.
I've started hearing this a lot this morning and I don't see where Trump actually said this. From what I can tell he's blaming the current administration for allowing this to happen and saying that Putin is brilliant for taking advantage of Biden and outsmarting him. Seems like he's primarily calling Biden inept rather than encouraging Putin to go further.
A selection of quotes: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/28/politics/donald-trump-vla...
> would destabilize NATO
Trump is also hostile to NATO. For him, win/win.
Crimea was invaded under Obama. Russia made no expansionist moves under Trump. The current conflict was started under Biden. Hate Trump all you want, but to say that he would have been worse under these circumstances is a hard argument to swallow.
[1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clint...] [2: https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/politics/steele-dossier-recko...]
> “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. ‘I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. ... We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/23/trump-pra...
I suspect "Oh that's wonderful" is not meant to be literally interpreted as him thinking it's wonderful. I also don't think he actually sees those military forces as true peacekeepers either. "That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right." To me that sounds like he's mocking the idea that the force is actually for peacekeeping because it is the size and composition of an army.
Yes he abso-fucking-lutely means it's "wonderful", only not in the way you apparently misinterpreted it.
> I also don't think he actually sees those military forces as true peacekeepers either.
No, of course not. Where on Earth do you even get such an idea from? You're literally the first person I've seen even entertaining that hypothesis.
> To me that sounds like he's mocking the idea that the force is actually for peacekeeping because it is the size and composition of an army.
Yes, of course he's mocking that -- in admiration of the sheer audacity of using such a transparent lie. That is what's so "wonderful" about it, in his world -- it's exactly his own MO, but on a scale he has never got close to himself. He's (possibly literally) pissing his pants with glee over Putler's chutzpah.
And that's why you can clearly hear from his voice that "We should do that on the Mexican border" was not sarcasm: It's a 100% serious recommendation that the USA should do the same, unilaterally declare some piece of Mexico "independent" and then go in and "peacekeep" it for themselves.
Poland is in NATO since 1999.
The reasoning here is pretty sound, and the more I think about it the more I come to believe that NATO should be fighting Russia right now - at least deny them air superiority. Russia wants a war, whether NATO wants one or not, so you might as well give it to em' with the other consideration being letting the Russian military get ground down in Ukraine and seeing how that plays out.
What will happen is that if Putin wins Ukraine and invades, say, Latvia, he'll invade and then when NATO responds he will use one or more tactical nuclear weapons on the military bases that forces are responding from. So if NATO is launching air assets from a Polish airbase, he'll nuke that. And then he'll say - let me have what I want or I'll use more. Now what? Will NATO nuke a Russian base in exchange? Will it be a base in Belarus? Ukraine? Russia itself? It's easy to see this spiraling out of control. But if you believe Putin will use nuclear weapons (and I do) the endgame is that he destroys NATO and pushes "western" influence out of continental Europe.
Putin believes there are 3 pillars: US, China, Russia. He does respect the US, but thinks he can win. His goal is to create an ethnostate, similar to China, centered around Russian culture. Taking Kiev is super important to that because despite his rhetoric that Ukraine isn't a state or whatever, it is the historical cultural home of the Russian people. So he's going to want that to create a new shared ideology around the glory of the Russian people. He'll then look to cut out the US, UK, and any "liberal" sympathies.
> What about sanctions?
He doesn't care. He doesn't want to integrate with the US or the west. Russia has plenty of natural resources. Ukraine gives them plenty of farmland. Why would he need western money?
Currently we're playing along just like he planned. We tried negotiating, he went through the motions. We enacted sanctions, which he knew would happen. They shut down Nordstream 2, which he knew would happen (and leave Europeans with higher energy prices). And now he's just executing his plan and NATO is saber rattling about defending NATO territory, which... goes back to the Baltic question. Will NATO go to nuclear war over those countries? I think conventional war absolutely. But when Putin nukes a Polish air base or a Romanian one. Now what?
So we need(ed) to do something unsuspected. And I think the only option was to immediately go to war and force the issue on NATO's term. Unfortunately I think NATO is in a bad position.
Oh... and that's without literal traitors like Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, and others who are "pro-russia" while we're about to be in a war with Russia. So now we have to figure out how to deal with those people too.
MAD is dead.
Hell the German military might do some actual fighting for once if their Polish buffer state is threatened.
My take is basically he has gigantic ambitions, because otherwise everything he is doing makes no sense whatsoever and I can't help but think he's a rational actor.
If he's willing to risk that level of escalation then we're beyond rationality. The world is not going to let Putin dictate international politics of entire continents at the point of a nuclear gun. Even the Chinese wouldn't be on board with that. I'm not sure what the best course would be in such an event, but if Russian forces can be otherwise conventionally defeated nuclear retaliation may not even be necessary.
If nuclear retaliation is deemed necessary, it would likely be of similar magnitude (targeting invading Russian military formations or something). To turn the question around, is Putin willing to launch ICBMs because NATO won't let him take Estonia?
I'm also not sure about the Chinese. I don't think they care. I think they love this.
> To turn the question around, is Putin willing to launch ICBMs because NATO won't let him take Estonia?
My take is yes. I don't think he's nuking New York and London... but military bases in central and Eastern Europe? I mean will NATO nuke Moscow and then actually trigger MAD over that? If we're being honest what are our actual red lines? For America probably US, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany. I honestly don't know about any other country in Europe.
What do you think?
-edit- (really sad to see people have downvoted you for having an interesting discussion and different point of view. I'm sorry to see that has occured at this point.
If he opened an attack on NATO with a tactical nuke he's just escalating things faster. After the shock wore off that would probably increase the odds of a tactical nuclear response in kind, at which point the Russian forces remain defeated. Or perhaps if the West remains restrained and no further nukes are launched, a conventional defeat in spite of Russian tactical nukes.
If his goal is to restore the Soviet Union's influence there are reasons to conquer Ukraine (food supply, gas line, black sea access, etc). Starting a war with NATO would be a quick end to those dreams, tactical nukes or not. The West has already proven less complacent than I think he anticipated. He was probably hoping for us to just collectively shrug our shoulders "oh well it's just Ukraine, something something human rights" and just let him have it. Instead we sent Javelins and canceled Nordstream 2, among other measures. On the spectrum of possible responses from "loud noises" to "all-out military intervention", we're closer to the latter than the former. Over a non-NATO country.
The West's institutions may be diminished, but they only diminished in the absence of a common adversary. If Putin wants to restore that adversary, the best he'll accomplish in the medium term is restoring our institutions.
Putin is attacking before Ukraine has this protection, I think no one wants hot conflict with NATO including NATO members.
Because Russia in general has always seen Europe as posing a threat of invasion, and with reason. In WWII, Germany invaded Russia. In the Crimean War a bunch of European countries invaded Russia. In the early 1800s Napoleon invaded Russia. Putin is taking advantage of this general Russian attitude towards Europe to improve his own political position.
I'm not the one you need to convince of all this (especially the "everyone in the West is cool just making money" part). Putin and the Russian people are. From where I sit, they aren't convinced.
> I just do not have sympathy for the point of view anymore
Considering that Russia's history for many centuries has been one of having to deal with external invasions (it took them three hundred years to learn how to deal with the Mongols, for example), and that Europe's history up until World War II has been filled with wars, I have a hard time having sympathy for a point of view that thinks that half a century of so of Europe apparently behaving itself must be sufficient to outweigh all that and convince Russia that they can chill because everyone else is ready to play nice.
I don't think so. I emphasize Russia's history in order to explain why it is entirely credible that Putin does not intend to continue invading country after country after the Ukraine. He is not trying to conquer countries just for the sake of conquering. He is trying to establish a buffer around Russia. And, in doing so, to consolidate his domestic political power.
In other words, your belief that Putin must be bent on invading country after country was based on your inability to see any other rational reason why he would be invading the Ukraine. I am giving you such a rational reason. The fact that the beliefs on which it is based appear to you to be out of sync with current reality in Europe is irrelevant because your beliefs about current reality in Europe are not driving Russia's actions; Russia's beliefs are. Rationality does not require that all of one's beliefs be correct, only that one's actions make sense in the light of one's beliefs.
If Putin wants to I guess further expand his buffer, then we'll have a nuclear war because there is no doubt that the United States will absolutely go to war with full force against Russia over any NATO country. There is no reconciliation to be had here. If Russia believes NATO is out to get it, despite a world of evidence to the contrary, then they can stop at Ukraine or keep going, but if they keep going, which is likely (because Ukraine isn't worth the devastation being caused to Russia) then we will just have nuclear war. If Russia believes this then we might as well just go ahead and have it out. I mean there isn't anything else to that. I'm not sure why you're suggesting that I'm "out of sync with the current reality in Europe". The reality is that the United States will go to war and fight Russia to defend NATO. That's why I'm concerned (OP) - it can easily spiral out of control.
Huh? It's right in between Russia and Europe. Right on the route by which previous invasions of Russia from Europe have come.
> He's also going to have to occupy a country
He doesn't have to permanently occupy it. He just has to prevent it from joining NATO.
> he's galvanized NATO
I think "galvanized" is a little strong. No NATO country is going to actually try to help Ukraine resist the invasion. The worst consequence is economic sanctions, and the historical track record of economic sanctions is not good. I expect Putin believes that his country can manage no matter what economic sanctions NATO nations throw at it.
> Finland and Sweden are going to join (in my view) by the end of the year
I think that's highly likely, yes. And it doesn't change Russia's threat environment in the least because no invasion of Russia is going to come via Sweden and Finland. If Russia intended to invade Finland and Sweden, them joining NATO would be a negative consequence, but I doubt Putin intends that.
> and people aren't going to associate with his country anymore.
I don't think Putin cares about that either.
> the devastation being caused to Russia
What devastation? If you mean economic sanctions, I think you are drastically overestimating their effects on Russia.
> The reality is that the United States will go to war and fight Russia to defend NATO.
So all Putin has to do to avoid that is to not attack a NATO member country. Which Ukraine is not. In fact, your argument here is an argument for the view I've been taking, that Putin does not intend to keep on invading country after country--because he knows invading a NATO country would bring consequences he doesn't want.
Well it's in Europe. But yea you can just keep on invading that same route. Not that an invasion is going to happen anyway.
> He doesn't have to permanently occupy it. He just has to prevent it from joining NATO.
???? What? Yes he does? If Russians leave than Ukraine goes back to what it was. Unless he tries and installs a puppet government, and then he might be facing some insurgency. Not fun.
> pdonis 1 hour ago | parent | context | flag | on: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders a...
> It doesn't actually provide any buffer that makes sense from a geographic standpoint Huh? It's right in between Russia and Europe. Right on the route by which previous invasions of Russia from Europe have come. > He's also going to have to occupy a country He doesn't have to permanently occupy it. He just has to prevent it from joining NATO.
> I think "galvanized" is a little strong. No NATO country is going to actually try to help Ukraine resist the invasion. The worst consequence is economic sanctions, and the historical track record of economic sanctions is not good. I expect Putin believes that his country can manage no matter what economic sanctions NATO nations throw at it.
I mean now all of a sudden we're about to add Finland and Sweden to NATO. NATO allies just got woken up to the fact that war can still break out in Europe, which means militaries that have been languishing are going to get beefed up. Etc. The sanctions may not "work" but it also doesn't matter. No reason to deal with Russia if they're going to be a bad actor.
> I think that's highly likely, yes. And it doesn't change Russia's threat environment in the least because no invasion of Russia is going to come via Sweden and Finland. If Russia intended to invade Finland and Sweden, them joining NATO would be a negative consequence, but I doubt Putin intends that.
Gotland
> I don't think Putin cares about that either.
I agree - this was in my OP.
> What devastation? If you mean economic sanctions, I think you are drastically overestimating their effects on Russia.
Why?
> So all Putin has to do to avoid that is to not attack a NATO member country. Which Ukraine is not. In fact, your argument here is an argument for the view I've been taking, that Putin does not intend to keep on invading country after country--because he knows invading a NATO country would bring consequences he doesn't want.
But then his invasion of Ukraine doesn't make sense. All he did was cost himself a bunch of money to invade a country that definitely doesn't want him there and is now pissed off, he lost the Russian people a lot of money, and he's no more "safe" than he was before because the Baltics are still on his doorstep. What was gained?? If he believes that he gained security by attacking Ukraine than I do believe he's not a rational actor.
I'm not sure that's true. But that may be because I have a different view of Ukranian internal politics than you do. See below.
> Why?
Because, first, I don't think Russia's economy is all that dependent on the products that Western sanctions would cut off, and second, I don't think the sanctions are going to be all that well enforced long term, since that is the way sanctions usually are. (And I expect Putin thinks that too.) For one thing, Europe is dependent on some key products from Russia, such as the natural gas that is now not flowing. Past experience suggests that European countries will find ways to route around the sanctions while publicly giving them lip service.
> a country that definitely doesn't want him there and is now pissed off
Some Ukranians are. I'm not so sure a majority of them are, at least not in any sense that matters for Russia. Eastern Ukraine, in particular, I think is generally sympathetic to Russia.
I agree that Russia isn't "dependent" on the west. Again going back to my OP I assert that this is a non-factor for Putin as he seeks to create a Russian-lead Slavic ethnostate in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Baltics, and more. Ukraine is a key piece not for security reasons - again Russia has 6,000 nuclear weapons and if you feel insecure than you are actually irrational - but because of the extensive amounts of resources which he'll need to feed the Russian people and create industry. Russia has all the resources it needs, they won't have iPhones but they'll build rockets and cars and stuff like that.
Since, as you point out, the consequence of invading the Ukraine has been to cause a lot more troops to be deployed in the Baltics and other places you say Putin wants to eventually conquer, I don't see how this "Slavic ethnostate" is a rational goal.
I agree that the resources in the Ukraine are a rational goal, but if that is Putin's goal, we would not expect him to invade other countries. The resources in the Ukraine might be worth what it will cost Russia to get them (or at least that might be how Putin has calculated it); the resources in other countries, particularly NATO countries, would not.
I just have such a hard time thinking he invaded Ukraine just to get resources. Or just for security.
When Putin intends to use nuclear weapons against NATO members, then the one and only answer that NATO will come up with is nuclear. This brings us either back to a cold war scenario or doomsday.
The New York Times map [1] of the build up prior to invasion is enlightening and encouraging for Finland and Poland, less so for the Baltic states.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/world/europe/ukrain...
And... the US and allies and also Russia because if Russia attacks them we're 100% going to war with Russia to defend those allies. There's 0 question of that. It goes back to my OP which is what happens after that starts. Putin knows he can't take on NATO 1-1, so why would he attack those countries? Well he has nuclear weapons and can launch tactical nuclear strikes on NATO airbases and dare the west to risk nuclear war over these countries.
Fight with what? The Bundeswehr has almost no tanks. https://www.dw.com/en/german-military-short-on-tanks-for-nat... https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/german-military-short-tanks-...
Diplomatically, it wouldn't be advisable to give an adversarial foreign power control over the membership of your alliance, so NATO can never give those guarantees. My belief is that Putin only sought those guarantees to fabricate a casus belli.
[1] https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/precision-stri...
You are trying to justify Putin's actions by inventing a hypothetical while ignoring the fact that the NATO borders within 500 miles of Moscow is a reality for years.
What is paranoia and what isn't has just materially changed, the question now is not whether or not the poster is paranoid, but whether they are too paranoid or not paranoid enough.
Trump looked to increase NATO defenses and aggressively pump oil and gas to crash the global price of Russia's chief source of foreign exchange. That's hardly pro russian. Ironically, Biden comes in and kills oil production in the US, forcing us to then rely on external oil markets for our resources which gives Putin money to pull shit like this.
Trump also unilaterally left the assymetrical US-Russia missile accord. Hardly pro russian.
Trump ordered lethal force to be used against large numbers of Russian mercenaries who attacked a U.S. installation in Syria. He also sold offensive weapons to Ukraine.
Where is this pro russian Trump you speak of?
https://theweek.com/russo-ukrainian-war/1010547/fox-news-hos...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/putin-eyes-ukraine-invasion-...
The oil and gas pumping you mention started under Obama, and responding to an attack on American forces with lethal force is an incredibly low bar. The other state department actions don't change that his administration was vocally pro-Russia.
I heard that the German president's speech mentioned Nordstream being done. He didn't specify Nordstream 2 as expected. I read somewhere that referring to both Nordstream 1 & 2 caught Putin by surprise.
Or they see it like Poker as an "all in" move. Either lose now on their own terms in Ukraine or eventually they lose anyway as Ukraine joins NATO and Russia's nuclear advantages are "neutralized". Meanwhile there's the chance NATO may not intervene so take the risk...
Which is probably why the US doesn't want to split efforts across two theaters again.
So far China didn't threaten nuclear war for anybody helping out Taiwan, the way Putin did just today.
https://kutv.com/news/nation-world/in-propaganda-video-china...
The “all in” move was when they suggested they NATO not meeting their demands to permanently commit to excluding Ukraine and withdraw allied forces from Eastern European members of NATO was an aggressive act pushing them to war in Ukraine. When NATO didn't fold, they either had to invade or show the Putin regime as a paper tiger, which is a mortal blow for an authoritarian regime.
They spent many years on efforts to weaken governments of the West and relations between them for the purpose of doing something like that and having Western unity collapse. Maybe they misjudged and thought that would pay off.
I don't understand how the west didn't see that they should at least accept to exclude Ukraine from NATO. Why, giving in to Russia's demand (even partially) would be a loss for NATO?
Probably not, in the long term, and the ability to prevent similar coercive efforts against other nations near Russia would be far less.
What would the world have got in return from Russia? A solemn promise, a ratified agreement in writing and everything, that Russia would make no demands or incursions on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity?
Yeah, something like that would be great.
Except that's what the world already got from Russia, in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes back in the 1990s. And look how much that piece of paper was worth.
Let's not pretend we can just torment Russia until a "good Russian leader" emerges to attend to our every desire. No politician who would ever receive 1% of the vote in Russia would support Ukraine joining NATO. NATO was formed to impoverish Russia and its allies, and that is still its obvious and declared purpose. Likewise, USA has relatively few politicians who would support China installing missile batteries along the Mexico border.
Let's not invent ridiculous strawmen to argue against. Pointing out that Putin was politically all-in long before the invasion began doesn't even remotely imply what you are arguing against.
Perhaps I misunderstood because the idea that Russia has no options remaining is goofy. Putin wasn't "all-in" years ago, not least because he isn't "all-in" even now. He hasn't even turned off the existing pipeline yet, and it's still February.
You agree that tormenting Russia is unlikely to bring about the political changes many claim to desire. That being the case, why do we persist in tormenting Russia?
Snide comments insinuating that penalties on HN are based on particular views are always a dumb idea, but not nearly as bad as characterizing your apologia for Russian aggression as “excessive pacifism.”
> Perhaps I misunderstood because the idea that Russia has no options remaining is goofy.
I never said Russia has no options remaining. I said that Putin, having setup the propaganda position he did of framing NATO failure to accede to his withdrawal demands as a provocation of war I Ukraine, had no good option to avoid showing weakness from the standpoint of his domestic political position within Russia except invading Ukraine when the threat of force failed to get the West to capitulate.
> You agree that tormenting Russia is unlikely to bring about the political changes many claim to desire
I have neither agreed with that, nor agreed with your ridiculous characterization of Western actions as “tormenting Russia”.
. . . .
Let's not invent ridiculous strawmen to argue against.
. . . .
You agree that tormenting Russia is unlikely to bring about the political changes...
. . . .
I have neither agreed with that, nor...
Either you agree with it or you don't? Perhaps I should leave this argument, as you seem capable of continuing it all by yourself. Anyway, those who have a clue about sanctions agree that they harm innocents most of all. [0]
[0] https://sanctionskill.org/2021/10/06/sanctions-punish-childr...
>> I have neither agreed with that, nor...
> Either you agree with it or you don't?
No, an invalid statement requires neither agreement nor disagreement. And statements of the form "You agree that [premise] is likely / unlikely to bring about [consequence]" are invalid if the premise is invalid. I can't answer either "yes" or "no" to "You agree that the Moon being made out of green cheese is likely to bring about an oversupply crisis in the dairy industry once it comes crashing down"; the only valid answer is "Mu".
Likewise nobody here knows whether "tormenting" Russia would be likely or unlikely to bring about political changes there, since nobody in this world is doing that. You'll have to pop back over to your alternate reality and check how it works out there.
Putin just wants to move domestic attention away from all the misery that people will hold him reponsible for. Now war will dominate the agenda. And if someone complains about life getting worse, it's the war, not the incapable president.
Exactly what Putin's always maintained: that Ukraine joining NATO is a red line, so they're preventing Ukraine joining NATO.
> The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss.
The risk of NATO intervention is exactly zero. NATO hasn't done shit except attack random non-NATO countries (Serbia, Libya, Syria, etc...). What did they do when Turkey invaded Cyprus? Nothing.
US-led NATO is sacrificing Ukraine in order to get at Russia, the real question is why getting at Russia is so important? Ukraine could have joined NATO in the 1990's, or 2008, or NATO could have given them a guarantee of security. But no, instead the EU and NATO rolled out some long road-map and antagonized Russia along the way.
Hell, why didn't the west try to integrate Russia when Gorbachev and Yeltsin were amenable to the idea? Or when Putin was trying to increase cooperation with GWB's US government before the Color Revolutions?
Edit - for those downvoting me, it's obvious the west sold-out Ukraine. They forced Ukraine to leave an economic cooperation union with Russia in order to have more European integration (Yanukovych wanted both FYI) but didn't provide a road-map to join the EU, they sold them on NATO membership but without any actual guarantees, etc... Why isn't the west defending Ukraine?
Edit2 - also Joe Biden is useless. What was the point of all his warnings? What was the point of every western country pledging to "support" Ukraine? Now the news is talking about Biden announcing "sanctions". No real support. What's the point?
It already was the case since 2014, NATO wouldn't accept a country which isn't at peace because they'd be forced to intervene and that would mean a war between Russia and NATO, Russia didn't need further intervention for that
Ukraine got played by the West... Even Zelenskiy realised it... Where did any of this lead? The West didn't give any actual guarantees but kept forcing Ukraine to choose between the two...
> "Moreover, I will say something I have never said publicly, I will say it now for the first time. When then outgoing US President Bill Clinton visited Moscow in 2000, I asked him how America would feel about admitting Russia to NATO.
> I will not reveal all the details of that conversation, but the reaction to my question was, let us say, quite restrained, and the Americans’ true attitude to that possibility can actually be seen from their subsequent steps with regard to our country. I am referring to the overt support for terrorists in the North Caucasus, the disregard for our security demands and concerns, NATO’s continued expansion, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and so on. It raises the question: why? What is all this about, what is the purpose? All right, you do not want to see us as friends or allies, but why make us an enemy?"
https://web.archive.org/web/20220224100924/http://en.kremlin...
But the west was more concerned with encircling them and "winning" the Cold War than actually having good relations...
Being of Ukrainian descent and interested in where I come from, I've followed the politics there (Russia and Ukraine) since the late 90's... I remember when Putin and Bush cooperated after 9/11 too. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/09/08/t...
Getting to where we are today was a long road where the US chose to antagonize Russia many times...
These are the sections of the address that back up this view:
"they are trying to convince us over and over again that NATO is a peace-loving and purely defensive alliance that poses no threat to Russia. Again, they want us to take their word for it. But we are well aware of the real value of these words. In 1990, when German unification was discussed, the United States promised the Soviet leadership that NATO jurisdiction or military presence will not expand one inch to the east and that the unification of Germany will not lead to the spread of NATO's military organisation to the east. This is a quote."
The quote referenced is by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker speaking to Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...
"There can be only one answer – this is not about our political regime or anything like that. They just do not need a big and independent country like Russia around."
"its military infrastructure has reached Russia’s borders."
"positioning areas for interceptor missiles are being established in Romania and Poland as part of the US project to create a global missile defence system. It is common knowledge that the launchers deployed there can be used for Tomahawk cruise missiles – offensive strike systems."
He is referring to the Aegis system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defens... He is correct that Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles can be part of that system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System
"It is like a knife to the throat."
No one can know if history would have played out differently after that meeting in 2000 if he had been assured that Russia could join NATO if it worked towards meeting the requirements. We also cannot know his true motivations, perhaps all of this talk of the West as a threat to Russia is simply a ploy to justify their actions. His statements are consistent with reality though and so this could actually be the way he feels about the relationship between Russia and NATO. If that is true, then his actions in Ukraine would be motivated by a now or never viewpoint. If he does nothing and Ukraine eventually joins NATO, they will have two fronts placed very close to Moscow and Belarus will be held in a pincer rendering it next to useless. His gambit seems to be to secure the breakaway republics as a buffer and perhaps extend them to the Dnieper or even further creating a more advantageous position when Crimea, Moldova, and Belarus are considered.
Regarding economic sanctions: yes Russia will suffer from them, but the thing is that it is impossible to know how high Putin values the prospect of dissolving Ukraine into Russia, so it's pointless to try to reason about it (not that I'm saying you shouldn't).
Putin is 70 years old. He might just feel like he hasn't done enough with his life and decides to go all in, who knows?
bypass paywall https://archive.is/xDqsY
People on HN tend to be in denial about the current state of the world, but I don't think Putin is.
We're already starting to see some food shortages across the globe due to climate change, this will only intensify. Together Russia and Ukraine produce 29% of the worlds wheat exports. As climate change worsens food will become as big of a concern as oil.
We are also running out of oil, and not for the naively optimistic reasons most people hope. We're not getting "greener" we're depleting resources and oil still runs economies.
If Russia secures Ukraine they will also secure a place in the end game of civilization, radically altering the power dynamics of the EU.
The point of all this is there is a lot more at stake here than people realize (or are willing to admit). Russia has a lot to gain by control of Ukraine, and therefore can also justify tremendous risk. They have a powerful nuclear arsenal, and are likely more willing to use it than ever before.
MAD only works if you have a future that nuclear war risks throwing away. People that understand energy and climate understand that these things are going to very rapidly change the world stage. All of our futures are at risk, and the time to secure a spot is now. People on HN might be deluded in to thinking "this is fine" but I very much doubt Putin shares this naivete.
On the other end of all this, NATO countries have lived in relative security for a long time. They are still largely terrified of nuclear threat and I believe many of them don't fully realize the situation we're in. Liberal democracies likely have plenty of people in power that really believe Germany is near a truly green future.
I absolutely believe Putin is willing to go nuclear if necessary and I do not believe NATO is really ready to go nuclear in return. I don't believe the US would immediately attack Russia even if Russia wiped Paris off the map, because doing so would guarantee we are all wiped off the map. There is a risk asymmetry here which weakens MAD and give Putin a lot of power, especially if his immediate goal is simply to take Ukraine.
Also his reference to the german green party hits home because I'm from there. And I can see my electricity prices right now go to 90 Cent/kWh _before_ the war.
I think it is obvious that FRANCE would retaliate with nukes.
France also has nuclear weapons, estimated as the fourth largest stockpile in the world. Even if the rest of NATO were to hesitate Moscow would already have been hit unilaterally by the french in retaliation. No one is going to fold here.
This move by Russia is intentionally timed because countries themselves struggle to act with a unified voice, much less transnational alliances.
Trump might admire Putin as a leader, but he actually shored up the eastern flank of NATO and banned the NS2 pipeline, which Biden rushed to open back up.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-launch-new-sanctions...
This isn't a 1-dimensional scale (NATO > Russia). China can always weigh in. Europe can have mixed reactions. etc. That's how world wars start, which would be catastrophic for everyone. Nukes are also on the table if Putin really feels cornered.
Economic sanctions won't deter Putin. Europe still has to deal with them for energy, and a pro-west Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia. (Imagine if Mexico were to join the Russian Federation.) This is Russia's sphere of influence, which has historical precedent. Stalin's post WWII foreign policy was to maintain a buffer zone in eastern Europe.
Further, Ukraine has little real geopolitical value to the west. They're not a major trade partner, they don't have strategic resources, or control strategic ports. The west only wants Ukraine in order to gain leverage against Russia.
If you're wondering what the catalyst was, this is basically retaliation for 2014. [0] Russia believes the west is responsible for the revolution that ousted their puppet.
February 22nd, 2014 - protesters control Kyiv and Yanukovych has fled to Russia. [1]
Almost exactly 8 years later (Feb 23rd) this happens.
We have to assume Russia has been unable to "counter coup" Ukraine and regain a foothold, thus leading to this drastic action.
Putin has threatened severe consequences if any other nation meddles in the war, but he's not out for conquest. His mentality is simply: "I'd rather wreck Ukraine before letting it fall into the hands of the west." [2]
Putin will likely stop once the message is received.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140228013838/http://www.boston...
How is this not the case for Latvia and Lithuania (not to mention Estonia), which are both NATO members directly bordering Russia, and in fact separating them from their Kaliningrad exclave? On the other hand, if those countries _are_ an existential threat to Russia, then why is Russia "starting" with Ukraine?
More to the point, who gets to decide what makes for an existential threat? Doesn't "existential" mean "at risk of destruction from"? Does anybody really suppose that a Ukraine that is pro-west, or even belongs to NATO, poses a direct threat of invading/destroying Russia? This sort of language frustrates me, because it seems to carry more heat than light. To your specific hypothetical, I would not welcome a pro-Russia Mexico, but I would not consider it to be an existential threat to the US for precisely the reasons I suggest here - a pro-Russia Mexico does not mean a Mexico that is even somewhat likely to invade the US.
Maybe it has to do with pipelines or ports.
Maybe it has to do with a critical mass of bordering NATO states.
Maybe Putin is just short bald and angry and wants to flex on the west.
Foreign policy often seems more art than science. More poker than chess.
W.R.T Mexico, consider the Cuban missile crisis. It's not always about invasion.
W.R.T destruction, consider that the Axis lost WWII but Germany and Japan still "exist". It might be more correct to say "a pro-west Ukraine is an existential threat to the Russian Empire and their ability to project power beyond their borders, but Russia itself will always exist."
Latvia et al are not slavic. They don't share the language, they don't share the culture, and never were "Russia proper". Their success is easy to write off the same way americans argue that socialized healthcare would never work in the US due to cultural differences.
Belarus and Ukraine, in contrast, are very similar. Their threat to Putin's power is not physical, but cultural - if they became successful as free countries, they would set a blueprint for Russia (without Putin) to follow.
The discussion about NATO and nuclear weapons is a distraction. Putin is not playing a grand game, that's intellectualizing him too much. He is a paranoid thug who is afraid of getting overthrown and executed like Gaddafi. It's a very real possibility and almost happened to Lukashenko during the recent wave of protests.
However not all of these nations are within their grasp because many have joined NATO since the fall of the iron curtain. The ones that haven't have mostly been for the most part brought back within Russian influence through political manipulation. Belarus is a good example. The leadership there a little more than proxies for the Kremlin. Ukraine was like that until 2014 when its people chose self determination and overthrew their Russian puppet. This invasion is the result. If Russia can't have its puppet states through non-violent means then it will take them by force.
Now that the project is suspended, the EU is importing very expensive Gas from the US.
So basically: the USA gets money for gas, and Russia gets the eastern Ukraine. They both get what they want.
Enjoy the show.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2...
Doesn't look like US is a significant supplier of natural gas to Europe. Not sure how much capacity the US has at its LNG export terminals either.
You also have to think that this plan was started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. There was no going back from that point on. Ukraine was only growing stronger and angrier at Russia. You either assimilate them, or withdraw. The latter is not very Russian. So it is possible that the Russian gov also saw this move as inevitable not to lose face after what they started 8 years ago, and they will now suffer the consequence of western sanctions.
What is sad really, is that China doesn’t give a fuck.
It is better this way, instead of China openly supporting Putin and following suit with its own territorial expansions.
They give loads. They are watching from the sidelines, committing to nothing but learning a lot, and thinking about how they will proceed with Taiwan and the bits they like in South-East Asia.
Mussolini certainly didn't expect to be hanging by his toes either. Stalin didn't expect someone close to him to dose him with warfarin. Hitler didn't expect to be cowering in his bunker, ending with blowing his brains out. Gaddafi didn't expect the rebels to capture and shoot him. Saddam didn't think he'd end up hiding in a rat infested spider hole and then hung by his adversaries. And so on.
This is extraordinarily unlikely. Nuclear Weapons are in the mix which in my opinion closes the possibility of any actual confrontations between Nuclear Armed nations. I don't think any of the involved partied are actually suicidal so this doesn't seem a possible endgame.
In essence Russia has chosen a Ukrainian hill to fight on, and that hill is no more eastward expansion of western powers/alliances or unions.
The more direct initiation of this conflict was the EU which was to enter into an Association agreement with Ukraine in 2013. When the signing of this agreement didn't go through you had the Euro Maidan protest in Ukraine and the Russian puppet government where thrown out as a result. In response to this Russia backed 2 break out regions in the east of Ukraine and annexed/claimed Crimea with sevastopol(navy base).
So the endgame here, no matter the cost it seems is that Russia defines Ukraine to be in its sphere of influence and will not accept any encroachment by western powers - so Putin is basically saying back off.
Georgia also tried to align itself more towards the west and agreed to become a NATO member and the Russian response was resolute back in 2008 as well.
Obviously there might be a number of other reasons, this is just what I have gathered over the years and I am by no means a expert.
In short, I suspect this may be Putin's way of applying pressure to Russian elites. The actions proceeding from him appear desperate (i.e. the brazen assassination attempt of Nalvany) and suggest that Putin feels much less secure than his strongman portrayal suggests.
This war achieves something Putin lacks hegemony over, restricting the lifestyles and wealth of Russia's nomadic elite (and especially their assets). Elite members of Russian society will almost surely be targets of Western sanctions. This may secure Putin and his cronies and ensure a desirable transition of power by kneecapping potential contenders of the Russian throne (for lack of a better word). No doubt western sanctions will be leaky and allow some elites through relatively unscathed, but it may restrict their latitude of choice sufficiently.
I think this is Putin versus the elites. Elites who may be feeling comfortable usurping Putin and installing someone pliant to their interests. Putin may be simply reminding them of what he is capable of.
I suspect Ukraine was selected due to the presence of a large minority of citizens neutral or proponents of Russian rule. Other former Soviet states seem much more reluctant to be Russian subjects. I think Russia is simply conquering territory of peoples who will not oppose its rule.
Perhaps Putin is insane, or delusional, but evaluating public actions without knowing what went on behind closed doors feels too rash.
I don't understand this. Putin and his cronies are the elite. And by extension the children and other extended family of those cronies are the elite. That's what the oligarchy system is.
Yes, but within that elite, he may have felt that his cronies and minions had too much freedom: They have homes, bank accounts, and yachts abroad to retreat to whenever they need a break from him, and worst case -- if any one of them starts to to fear he's made Putler too angry with him, or suspicious of his loyalties -- they could just stay abroad indefinitely. Sure, at some risk from FSB assassins, if they've really annoyed him, but they can afford high walls around their mansions, CCTV to monitor those walls, and security services / mercenaries of their own to patrol them.
The GP's thesis (as I understood it) was that by more or less deliberately provoking the West into targeting the oligarchs, he'd weaken that option for them and thereby at least partly confining them to Russia, where he has more direct power over them.
(Dunno if I buy that this was his main goal with the whole thing, but certainly not claiming that it can't have occurred -- and counted as a plus -- to him.)
You outlined the severity of NATO intervention. That is to say, you only described half of the equation. It could very well be that Russia assumes the probability of NATO intervention is disproportionately low, meaning the risk calculation is also low. Maybe they think that balance outweighs the economic risk.
He already got high-score as a billionaire dictator of Russia with gigantic palaces and whatnot. He already did some 'small' wars and expanded Russia's territory.
Now he wants to play big and defeat a major country and be considered a major player like USSR was.
There's no profit in it.
1. Putin is a dictator. He is able to change Russian constitution to stay in power, etc. 2. He murders people in a very cynical way. Polonium tea, novichok, etc. 3. He is filthy rich, owns billions of dollars worth of assets, possibly hundreds of billions.
Do you have doubts that a dictator can have an ambition to get more fame after he got all the money he wanted? Or that dictator can send troops?
Look, I know about game theory, microeconomics and such. I was a co-author of a paper submitted to NetEcon conference, for example.
But in this case, you need to understand that money, or prosperity, or safety, is not the only metric people optimize for. Many people optimize for fame. This is what a lot of people on hackernews are missing.
The risk of NATO direct military intervention barring an attack on NATO is very close to zero. (Increased material support for Ukraine could happen, but that doesn’t have the same impact.)
Economic response by the Western powers (not through NATO, but independently and through the EU and other institutions) is already happening and certain to escalate.
> But it doesn't make sense that a nation as sophisticated as Russia would accept such a high risk of loss.
Anthropomorphizing nations can be misleading. The risks born by the nation are largely not born by the people committing the nation to a particular course. “Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
"In my 41st year of peacetime service, I would not have believed that I would have to experience another war.
And the Bundeswehr, the army that I am allowed to lead, is more or less blank. The policy options we can offer in support of the Alliance are extremely limited.
We all saw it coming and were unable to get our arguments through to draw and implement the conclusions of the Crimean annexation. That doesn't feel good! I'm eaten!
NATO territory is not yet under direct threat, even if our partners in the East feel the constantly growing pressure.
When, if not now, is the time to put the Afghanistan mission behind us structurally and materially and to reposition ourselves, otherwise we will not be able to implement our constitutional mandate and our alliance obligations with any prospect of success."
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6902486...
Yeah, the German military is in an abysmal state:
https://www.stripes.com/news/as-germany-prepares-for-nato-cr...:
> Among the failures: none of Germany’s submarines is operational, only four of its 128 Eurofighter jets are combat-ready and the army is short dozens of tanks and armored vehicles needed for NATO missions.
> In addition, troops are short on the basics: body armor, night vision gear and cold-weather clothing.
> The situation is so dire that 19 helicopter pilots from Germany’s Bundeswehr were forced to turn in their flight licenses because of a lack of training time.
> The reason: not enough helicopters for the pilots to fly.
War means higher oil prices due to decreased supply, lifting the Russian economy (60% of its exports), while if the US intervenes it will mean further supply chain disruptions and higher inflation - as seen in 1980s: oil price spike, gov. overspending.
Putin is testing the new administration, while China is watching on the sidelines over Taiwan.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30457490
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030315/how-does-pri....
[3] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/the-market/remem....
The “Finlandization of Europe”.
The idea is to use bribery and propaganda to destabilize Eastern Europe countries until puppet governments rise to power or can be installed, while holding Central Europe at bay through leverage on natural resources. Make deals with Germany and ignore the US and UK.
Basically, take over Europe and break up NATO. Military action is the backup plan when the above coercion fails.
Even Finland itself came out of Finlandization beginning thirty-plus years ago, so it's doubly ironic that Putler at least partly succededed in bending much of the rest of Europe to something similar since. The main culprit in falling for this is, AFAICS, Germany; from about the Schröder administration and onwards.
Putin's playing a long game here and on an economic front he's likely betting most of the sanctions won't stick. With 2024 looming large I wouldn't be surprised to a gradual reset in US-Russia relations depending on the election result.
No country with nuclear weapons is ever going to give them up again. No security assurances will be seen as sufficiently reliable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
I don’t know where you’re drawing such an assumption from.
Russia has repeatedly invaded its non nato neighbors for years (including Ukraine!) with zero military response from NATO.
Would NATO have the upper hand militarily? Yes, sure. Does NATO have the political will to incur that level of cost? No.
This isn’t “globalist” conspiracy, there is just no appetite for it at any level of society in nato countries. Not in France, not in Germany, not in the US.
You contrast this with the knowledge and memory of 1931 (when Germany was in no shape to fight a war) and 1941 (we all know), Russia does indeed have much to fear from NATO, even though NATO doesn't seem capable of threatening it today.
So on one hand, Russia does not want to coalesce a threat to it in Western Europe. On the other hand, Western Europe has already come to its doorstep. I think there's a lot of people who are legitimately asking, why are they doing this, and why now? I think you should listen to what Putin says (without reading the media commentary on it), and read between the lines. It should also be considered that Macron forced Biden to offer direct talks with Putin. That seemed rather telling. Consider the domestic situation in the U.S. Put two and two together, and also that Obama mis-stepped when he said that chemical weapons were a red line in Syria. There isn't really so much a "global elite" or just "military industrial complex" as there are heads of state, their diplomacy and spy corps, diplomatic backchannels, and then the human element. Something happened, we don't know what, but from the effect, it seems obvious enough.
Ultimately, Putin knows that the nuclear card is time-limited. Originally, they were the U.S./NATO's bulwark against the USSR. Now they are Russia's card vs the West.
Nukes are only useful if they can be delivered to their target. We've been living in a world where they have made major wars too dangerous to be waged, and the state of technology has been like that for the entirety of our lifetimes, and we don't remember it any other way. But history shows that the balance between offensive weapons and defensive weapons swings back and forth. Indeed in Israel they are steadily gaining credible (and cheaper) ABM. When that nuclear card is undone, I think we will see some terrible wars recurring through the world because a whole lot of geopolitical tension will be released.
Putin is calculating for that. Russia's only reliable defense is strategic depth. Something has pushed him to err on the side of possibly uniting Western Europe. There again, he may be ironically counting on the U.S./U.K., which have historically not been too favorable to a solid Franco/German-led EU. But the influence of the U.S./U.K. may further wane in this matter, and we are seeing a real gambit. Putin cannot possibly know. He is making a decision based on imperfect knowledge.
Maybe the interesting bits are the other players here. What will be the ultimate effect on France/Germany/EU? And what about China? This puts them in a tough spot and they seem to be caught a tad flat-footed. I bet that underneath all the official rhetoric and alliances talk, the rest of the world is pretty "annoyed" at the dynamic between the U.S. and Russia, both of them troubled/declining empires whose "traditional" power structures are stirring for legitimacy. It's been some interesting times.
TL/DR: Putin and the exKGB elites are dissentful of the cold war lost to the US, see NATO as a direct threat (even though military generals don't think it is), and the internal dissent with Putin seems to them inspired from abroad. They were shocked by Libyan rebel and by the Ukrainian in 2014. Of course, the only thing they do is brute force, and every step they make only makes the conflict more real.
Regarding the common folk, here's a survey[2] from December or January. TL/DR: they accepted the propaganda's POV that it's all the West's fault. When shown evidence of earlier military build-up, they'd suggest it was fake news.
[1] https://www.thebigq.org/2022/02/23/what-are-the-reasons-behi...
Especially now, after NATO's quick and easy victory in Afghanistan it's clearly seen that Russia is far behind NATO militarily. Putin is just stupid and suicidal.
I don't think they saw the risk as high. Crimea was their 'soft-launch' to test the waters and find out what would happen. Answer - not very much. Effectively they invaded and took over a country and everyone tut-tutted and did nothing about it. Given that, I'm assuming that they didn't think the international reaction would be as strong as it is.
Obviously they miscalculated, but if the whole thing had been over in 48 hours with little resistance would it have been as strong as it is now or would there have been an effective shoulder shrug like there was about Crimea? I don't think it would be the same, but I believe the conflict being dragged out has made the reaction worse (well done Ukraine).
For historical perspective, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the US economy was 7x larger than theirs. At the end of WW2 the red army had 12 million soldiers in uniform compared to the estimated 120K Russian soldiers now invading Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
How big is the Afghan economy in relation to the West?
Who is this "we"? For all the condemnation and claims about sanctions, everyone saw this coming and did not a damn thing. If sanctions actually are imposed, Putin can just turn off the gas to Europe. If anyone wants to engage militarily (and Europeans rightly had enough of that) they have to worry about nuclear weapons.
I see this as a big eye opener to the other European "Union" countries when they see nobody actually has Ukraine's back.
“Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world?” -- Dr. Strangelove
When your friend or relative comes back in a pine box, do you want to know it was just another bad decision with nothing good coming of that sacrifice?
That said, I think the US has options here. We don't need to "occupy" Ukraine as they have plenty of troops. What they need is air superiority.
We should consider establishing a no-fly zone around all of Ukraine (and maybe Crimea). The risk to American lives would be as minimal as possible while still severely restraining Russia's ability to wage war..
But ROI is all I can see that actually drives the US these days - why do you think the phrase "run the government like a business" is so ingrained? Personally, I'd prefer to run the government like a government, but I'm just one voter out of what... 150 million or so?
If you say a lot, then the ROI can be very high.
Russia formally has a new Stalin, a new Tsar, whatever you want to title him with. And the world should act accordingly. Putin will have to kill a lot of people domestically from here on out if he's moving into Empire mode, because the situation will get messy very fast and there will be real domestic opposition and he'll strongly dislike that.
Russia is a leper again.
And besides this, we should be defending the new, fragile democracy in Ukraine, on a moral basis. They're our friends and they want our help.
Putin thinks there is an upside - It will deter west from integrating Ukraine into NATO. In a way this makes sense. West just don't want to deal with a Russian headache like this.
The size of the economy doesn't so much matter, either - there's a limit to how much aid economic power can provide to a nation at war, especially one with such deep connections to illicit markets like Russia. It's really anyone's game if war breaks out over central Europe.
The US and NATO could trivially cripple Russia's army in the field. They're entirely unprepared for it and they're going to be operating far from their optimal protection (embedded in Russia where defenses are far greater).
The question is, when would Putin throw the nuclear card on the table.
I'm in favor of the US and NATO (or just the US by itself) immediately attacking Russia's forces inside of Ukraine and destroying the Belarus command structure, including assassinating Lukashenko and pushing a revolution there by any means necessary. Russia is weak militarily outside of their borders and the US could trivially defeat them. It would take most of 2022 for Russia to regroup for a full force projection into Ukraine if they're under attack from the US while doing it, and I doubt they have the manufacturing capabilities right now to sustain (that would take time to enhance).
The war's already started.
It could also a be a slower kind of suicide to let that nuclear power invade and take territory piece by piece, unmolested.
If this is how you feel, you should enlist. Otherwise, you're just demanding that other people's sons and daughters should be sent to die fighting for someone else's country.
Not that tired trope again.
> Otherwise, you're just demanding that other people's sons and daughters should be sent to die fighting for someone else's country.
That's how democracies work, and they can't work any other way.
I mean think it through: if what you say must be avoided, then no country could go to war, even to defend others, unless more than half the population was enlisted in a ponderously oversized military.
Because it's a superficially appealing idea that actually makes no sense. In a democracy, anyone gets to ask its government to do anything. Putting extra conditions who can ask is just muzzling democracy. Should the decision to go to war only be up to only the members of the military? No, since that would be clearly undemocratic.
And your idea can be applied to so many different questions, to equal nonsense: Are you a member of the police? Then you better not express any opinion that high crime rates should be lowered, since you're not willing to be the guy to stop them. Don't like trash on the street? Better not complain unless you're willing to quit your job and become a garbageman.
What you're suggesting is, on the other hand, completely immoral. It's far too easy for us to sit in our comfy homes, earning nice salaries for tapping away on our keyboards all day, while some poor kid from middle America or inner city LA has his life cut tragically short because people like us say, "Oh man, that Ukraine situation is really bad, someone should really do something about that"
It's also a bit presumptuous of you to assume that anyone posting this kind of thing on Hacker News has never had "skin in the game." I was still part of the 1st CAV headquarters in 2014 when we sent two brigades to Estonia in response to Russia invading Crimea. Military veterans are not exactly unheard of in software development or any other field of work. And, for what it's worth, I don't believe my vote should be worth more than yours because of that. We're not living in the world of Starship Troopers.
Additionally, even if they aren't willing to enlist themselves, that shouldn't disqualify them from having an opinion on this. They pay taxes that fund the military and other agencies for the purpose of national security. Countries have militaries for exactly these purposes. Citizens enlist in the military with full knowledge that they could be called to battle one day. Do you think the military should only engage in war if every enlisted member agrees to do so? No other input should be taken?
> That's how democracies work, and they can't work any other way.
Bullshit. This is how democracy works now because of universal suffrage. Historically it is not the only form of democracy and it is most definitely not a fair system.
That is literally the only sane and stable way to run a country. Otherwise you are describing a military dictatorship.
Advocating for military dictatorship is quite different.
> Advocating for military dictatorship is quite different.
It sounds like they're arguing more for something like a military oligarchy a la Starship Troopers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers#Setting), which is somewhat different but still not good.
They wouldn't be ordered to die, they'd be ordered to fight.
Russia is exceptionally weak compared to their prime Soviet days. Both militarily in terms of bulk and economically. The rest of the world has gotten a lot bigger, stronger militarily and economically since those days. We should press on Russia and reveal their weakness. They would be obliterated exposed in the field as they are right now by NATO's forces.
Are the Russian people all willing to die for Ukrainian territory? Let's find out what Putin's answer is and what the consequences are for him, when the people (including those around Putin that can assassinate him) in Russia realize what he's leading them to. Putin's expansion doesn't end until there are very severe consequences; some other nation in Europe is next after Ukraine.
If Putin threatens to kill everyone with nuclear war, then we'll deal with that as it happens. It's important to understand what you're really dealing with, and with Putin we need to go further to find whatever his lines really are. So far Putin has almost never faced a real push back from NATO / the West, we have no idea where he'll go or not, and we need to figure it out one way or another. Putin made clear his return to Empire plans, we already know what he wants.
Are the NATO people?
your notion of winning might be different to Putin's. If you haven't heard him saying "Aggressors Will Be Annihilated, We Will Go to Heaven as Martyrs" [1], then you don't know your opponent.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2018/10/19/aggressors-will-be...
As an American, I'll support another foreign engagement when I see the sons and daughters of presidents and congressmen shipping off the the Ukraine. Until then, I can't support sending American boys and girls to die in yet another foreign war.
Any talk of U.S. involvement should cease until the American public sees AOC, Hunter Biden, and Donald Trump Jr. (or maybe Baron) in uniform and on the ground in the Ukraine.
I guess that leaves AOC, but it might be worth remembering a fair number of Congressional reps and Senators actually have served or even continue to serve in the Guard and Reserve. A much higher rate than the population at large. It's currently 19% for Congress and 7% for American adults in general.
Just some minor amplifying info to the thread.
The USA has not fought an symmetric war since WW2.
Russian has some of the most advanced surface to air missile technology in the world, capable of denying NATO air power from operating effectively. Russians S400 missiles can detect and take out even F35s. A direct air assault like you saw in 1990s Iraq war would be suicide.
You would be looking at defeating 100,000+ soldiers equipped with armored vehicles and tanks with primarily ground forces. This is not the kind of scenario we want to see.
Pantsir-S1 has also shown limited success in Libya, Syria and Armenia. Granted, it was the export variant. So we'll see how the "full fat" version fares in Ukraine.
Dollars are poor defense against nukes.
Similarly, I don't think advanced weaponry make fighting more brutal. Also, MBTs are going out of style pretty fast, and some of those other things are outdated too.
It absolutely did. Ancient warfare almost never really consisted of the grand bloody battles you see in movies. A vast majority of it was siege and intimidation tactics. Routing your enemy from the field was the goal, not the annihilation of their forces. This old world of warfare persisted through the invention of early firearms into the Napoleonic era, but came to a crashing halt in the American Civil War, when generals finally had to leave those tactics behind in the face of modern artillery, repeating rifles, and industrially driven "total war". From that point on, warfare changed completely. The objective became destruction of the enemy forces, and their country's ability to wage war, and this came to a head with the American bombings of Germany and Japan in WWII; an event unparalleled in world history for its sheer brutality and number of innocents killed.
I'll mention the battle of Cannae, where 60% of the Roman army of 86,000 was killed in one day, in hand to hand fighting with spears, lances, and swords:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae#Battle_2
I could also mention the total destruction, leveling, and possible salting of Carthage.
Point being, Cannae is in the top 3 battles for the entire history of ancient Rome. That's 500 years of warfare, with a few instances of casualties at that level. Whereas, those kind of casualties were a normal occurrence that would hardly make the news on the Western Front in WW1, or the eastern front in WW2.
It's also about the sheer brutality of modern warfare. People were never disembowled into hundreds of pieces on a regular basis in ancient warfare. You never had the experience of watching an entire column of troops next to you be vaporized instantly. It's a completely powerless experience, as opposed to hand to hand fighting with an enemy you can confront face to face.
Poor comparison. This was total war at the time.
This is the fact that matters.
> The US economy is 14x larger than Russia's. The Canadian economy is larger than Russia's. The combined economy of all of NATO is 25x the size of Russia's. This does not even include Pacific allies like Japan and ANZUS.
That doesn't matter. Many countries may have larger economies than Russia, but none of them have been willing to translate that into anything that can counter Russia's actions.
IIRC, the US gives far more military aid to Israel than it has to Ukraine, and it's too late to change that. Germany sent Ukraine 5,000 hats for its defense.
It gives perspective to how Russia knows not to mess with anyone with a larger military or economic presence. These countries aren't getting involved because doing so means they have a lot more economic prosperity to lose compared to Russia.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the helmet offer had left him “speechless”: “What will Germany send next? Pillows?”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/27/a-joke-germany-mock...
There's a good joke in there somewhere: I'll settle for "Hats off to Ukraine's new [if short-lived] fearless leader, Vladimir Putin!"
"THE BEST 68 PUTIN JOKES":
Or if you already have nukes ready to go.
The general sentiment in this country for the past few decades is "it's not for me to decide".
Many people do agree however that while this kind of solution is not really a great one and likely not in our best interest - something has to be done regarding the NATO problem.
Because Russia just took Crimea a few years ago and NATO refused to allow them to join. And Russia has agreed Crimea was part of Ukraine as recently as 1994.
Again. Reason is something one has in this mind. You may find no reason where a different person sees one.
No need to justify any of that, because it all sucks and is ultimately utterly pointless. It does help so, to understand the other side. Because it makes it easier to find a solution that doesn't lead to all out war between nuclear powers. And no, I don't consider just handing Ukraine to Putin to be that solution. Or Taiwan to China, as far as that is concerned.
I think the inevitable result is war. I think the west should've decisively defeated the soviets when they broke apart, and prevented this, but instead, the optimism that an autocratic state would not do so is the true reality. But of course, it doesn't have good optics at the time to do this. I guess the future will tell if this war escalates.
That wouldn't have been feasible given military realities (nukes, the total impossibility of invading and occupying Russia), and even if it had been what would it have achieved? The age of imperialism is over. The west has won allies by respecting the right of their populations to self-determination. (And when it hasn't respected self-determination, it has often lost ground.)
The war that is on the horizon is not about the "good" vs. the "evil". It is about one revisionist, power hungry leader going toe-to-toe with another power-hungry block over territorial dominance. And about those people just wanting to live in peace caught in the middle.
Those countries became allies, not through force, but because we were able to devise a mutually beneficial relationship.
Cold war is much more likely than hot war, I’d expect.
The way imperial japan died, replaced by a semi-client state. I would say they're more prosperous today because of it!
But there's still Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to consider. These aren't Slavic, but they are of interest to both NATO and Russia. Well, Armenia is pretty firmly aligned with Russia for historical reasons and some semblance of security against Azerbaijan and Turkey. But the other two are already Western-oriented, and Georgia has applied for NATO membership in the past.
As far as Slavic affinity, it's a bit more complicated. For example, Bulgarians are Slavic, and Eastern Orthodox even, but being on the wrong side of WW1 and then WW2 vis a vis Russia/USSR overrides that. OTOH with Ukrainians, many Russians outright deny that they even are a separate nation or ethnicity, and claim that it's just a sub-branch of Russians who speak a dialect of Russian. From that perspective, occupying Ukraine is described as "re-unifying" Russia.
(Source: am Russian)
Germany makes deals with Russia to get their gas (NS1 and NS2) and only recently they declined NS2.
Basically we (EU) are giving Russia money to create army, instead of ditching their gas, oil etc. and buying one from Scandinavia and US (now when Russian gas prices are higher than the ones form the mentioned countries). And destroying NS1 and 2.
On one hand - NATO protects its members from our possible aggression, on the other hand Russia sees NATO's assets (lets say AA systems) as means to degrade country's capabilities to respond in case of attack from the West (no matter how are the chances of such an attack).
Has Russia perhaps thought for a moment why are countries making an alliance to defend against Russia? Why aren't countries in NATO worried about being attacked by other countries in NATO? Because *all the countries there don't want war*.
NATO is not to attack Russia, but to defend against it. The idea of protecting against counter attack from the West is like saying "I can't leave my house to protect against the possibility of a meteorite against my head."
Yeah, there's a lot of rhetoric coming from Russia denouncing "NATO expansion". NATO isn't some belligerent expanding force, annexing territory; countries are actively asking to join NATO. Perhaps Russia should ask themselves why all these countries feel safer being aligned with NATO and the West than with Russia.
The West isn't even defending Ukraine from a Russian attack. Did Russia think the West would defend Ukraine? If so, why did Russia still attack? If not, then why would Russia think there's any chance the West will attack Russia unprovoked?
Russian grand strategy is defensive. Their primary threat is a large-scale invasion. It happened once in the 19th century and at least twice in the 20th century. Maybe three times if you count Russian Civil War.
To counter the threat of a potential invasion, Russia tries to maintain a buffer zone of friends, puppets, and occupied territories. This is a continuous process, as politics change. Today's friends may be tomorrow's enemies, revolutions may overthrow puppets, and the costs of military occupation may prove too high. Russia fights wars and organizes coups to maintain the buffer zone. The rights of their neighbors don't matter to them when national security is at stake.
Russia fears NATO, because NATO has the capability to project power. They fear that NATO could be the next invader. The fact that NATO has no intention of doing so is irrelevant to them, because politics change. It's the military capabilities they are afraid of.
If there is going to be a change, it must come from inside. Russia must stop being afraid and become a member of the international community connected by trade. There was a chance of that in the 80s and 90s, but the chance was lost. Another chance may come after Putin, or the next leader and the next regime could be more of the same.
When I look long term, I cannot wonder how Russia will ever leave Crimea. Does that mean that Russia is the next Iran with "forever" sanctions? I cannot see another story, unless Putin leaves and the next leader is more centrist, like Medvedev.
The change is not in politics - for decades post-Soviet Russia wasn't worrying about NATO. Actually, no - even the point that Russia is afraid isn't correct - it's Putin who's afraid. NATO problem doesn't really exists.
NATO had the local armies of the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia and so on the Russian border (by definition). NATO had the US forces in Germany reasonably close to the Russian border. NATO had the forces supporting the war in Afghanistan on Russians southern border None of that was, as far as anyone not informed about secret NATO planning, can tell geared against Russia. If your neighbor patrols his fence with a huge axe while your children are playing in the backyard, so, you would be worried I assume. Even if it was just to cut wood. Especially if you have bad history with that neighbor.
During the cold war, both NATO and the Warsaw pact conducted war games about invasions of the other side. War Games, because they needed something build their defensive strategies on. As it turned out, both sides, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, never had any real invasions plans for Europe, instead both side focused purely on defense against such an invasion. Turns out that this fear of the other side never died.
Since all that lies in the past, the question where we (as in the West) draws the line. NATO, and the US, kept a ton of unresolved territorial disputes in check since the end of the cold war. Most of those conflicts have the potential to turn really, really bad. If Russia gets away with their attack on Ukraine, others will, potentially rightly so, think they can do the same. And then the World-as-we-know-it might pretty much just end. Well, it might as well if NATO goes to war with Russia over Ukraine as well. Only bad choices it seems.
I see this tendency within many, if not most countries that have seen a decline in national power over some period, and were nationalists wanted to "Make <their country> Great Again".
Examples: - Germany under Hitler - Italy under Mussolini - France after WW2, when they were quite nationalistic for decades, and certainly did NOT like that English had become the "Lingua Franca" - Britain under Margaret Thatcher - Russian under Putin - MAGA - And most important of all: China under Xi Jinping
Some of these movements were relatively harmless, some were (and are) very dangerous
And even then, they only did it half-heartedly, and the French pretty much threw away their weapons when the first German panzers arrived. Hitler knew that he had the stronger will to fight. Had it not been for a few other factors (Churchill, Russian winter, and the Hitler's obsession with the jews), he could have taken the whole of Europe.
Russia does not care about Ukraine's self-determination as long as NATO's systems are not there.
https://mobile.twitter.com/jmkorhonen/status/149604763196923...
I read that thread and found it very persuasive. I took his advice and read some of the translations of Putin's rhetoric, and I found his characterizations accurate.
We have fools believing the Kremlin is actually afraid of NATO, the defensive alliance, when Russia has NUKES. Kremlin isn't even afraid of NATO confrontation when they're invading another country, because of nukes. They're sure as hell not concerned about NATO confrontation in their own territory. The whole argument is schizophrenic.
Again, why would Russia be concerned about NATO imposing themselves on Russia, when NATO won't even defend a Ukrainian invasion?
Does that justify Putin's invasion of Ukraine? No, absolutely not. Does it mean NATO could have been a tad more cautious when it comes to Russians security interests? Yes. Now it's to late for that so. And as usual it is innocent people, just wanting live their lives in peace, that pay the price.
But isn't the real threat against Putin that the ideas of democracy spread via word of mouth?
I think problem with Ukraine is that Ukrainians and Russians have close ties and if Ukraine succeeds in becoming a western country their relatives in Russia will want to do so to.
One cannot ignore the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in this whole mess so.
Ok, so when Putin finds out NATO won't confront an invasion, then the Kremlin will back off their aggressions now, right? Now that they've found out there's no way NATO threatens the motherland? Does that sound right to you?
I'll make a guess. I've been on side "Russian invasion is imminent" for the past four months. I've been hearing a whole lot of "nothing to see here. Russia has no plans to invade. Just military drills. West should stop being threatening." for months. They were all dead wrong (sooo many on this site as of just days ago). So I'm inclined to believe I'm a bit more prescient on these issues.
Putin still won't back off, knowing Russia is safe from NATO, because that's not the issue.
War crimes and abhorrent nonetheless. I hope at least this time the responsible end up in The Hague.
The only reason Putin hates NATO is that it stops him from invading any country he wishes.
I don't really want to change anyone's mind and give a lecture. It's just that world is not as simple as it may seem.
After all they still have around 200 000 Russian troops at their borders. (6 feet under the ground but still very alive in their memories.)
For anyone who isn't aware:
- The Finnish are the ones who said - as Kremlin sent a million poor troops towards them - we are only a small country, were should we bury them all?
- The "Molotov cocktails" started as a Finnish joke about their practical invention to stop Russian vehicles. Russian diplomat Молотов (Molotov) had started the wittiness by telling that their bombing raids were just friendly Russians dropping suppplies.
Putin is clear that he wants to go back to 1917.
In 1917 Russia ruled in Finland.
IMHO, appeasement never worked with people like Putin (or Bush sen. & jun. or Napoleon,...). Thing is that war seems to be the only alternative. And most don't want that. At least not a shooting war against an opponent that can actually shoot back immediately.
Unfortunately, this means misery for the citizens, and nobody sane wants that. Ukrainians want to have an independent modern country, not to be Kremlin slaves.
NATO does not have "systems". NATO is a cooperation office between militaries of member countries, despite relentless Russian propaganda that makes it sound as if tanks and missiles magically pop up after signing the membership agreement.
It's funny how hard it is for Russia(ns) to get their head around the concept of self-determination: It's none of Russia's fricking business what alliances other countries join; and it's none of Russia's fricking business which countries other alliances accept as members.
See? It's not really all that hard.
> Russia does not care about Ukraine's self-determination as long as NATO's systems are not there.
Russia obviously does not care about anyone's self-determination except their own. (And even that only if "self" is defined along the "one man, one vote" principle: The dictator is The Man, and The Vote is his. The only people with any appreciable degree of "self-determination" are the dictator's cronies, and even that is fraught with risk.)
All that is water under the bridge so. I think if the "free" West (I mean that non-ironically, just to acknowledge that there are various ways to define freedom, not all of which are compatible with Western views. And that the West usually doesn't have problems ignoring those freedoms when needed (Saudi, China, UAE, Turkey,...)) doesn't act now, we will have to either roll over later against an aggressor or react much harsher then we would have to now. If Putin can redraw the maps now, China will be next to try. Followed by any other large country that has territorial interests against a smaller one.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-says-must-...
> Speaking in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying dismissed any link between the issues of Ukraine and Taiwan.
> "Taiwan is not Ukraine," she said. "Taiwan has always been an inalienable part of China. This is an indisputable legal and historical fact."
That's exactly what Putin has been saying about Russia and Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Rus...
> In the essay, Putin argues that Russians and Ukrainians, along with Belarusians, are one people, belonging to what has historically been known as the triune Russian nation. To support the claim, he describes in length his views on the history of Russia and Ukraine, concluding that Russians and Ukrainians share a common heritage and destiny.
> The essay denies the existence of Ukraine as an independent nation...
Well, not officially and certainly not effectively.
The US would have invaded Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis, if Khrushchev hadn’t backed down.
Putin is just another authoritarian ruler, a dictator. He will use any excuse he wants to invade; in this case he is using NATO membership and separatist movements.
Humans have been burying their dead for 100,000 years, living in cities for 12000 years, organizing states for 5700 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Age_state_societies), and organizing nation-states for 200 years. That is, for roughly the first 94000 years of humanity, there were no cities and no states; for the first 6000 years of cities, there were no states; and for the first 5500 years of states, there were no nation-states.
Even today, many people live in non-nation-state countries like the United States, Bolivia, and India.
It's not "natural", it's not "just the way it is", we probably don't benefit from it, and it's probably not even technologically determined.
Nation-states were by far the dominant political entities up until the age of exploration, around the 15th century. Name any ancient society, with the stark exception of the Romans they are all nations or nation-states. The Egyptians, the Hebrews, the Ethiopians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Greeks, all nations or nation-states.
Today, it is fashionable to pretend that race doesn't exist as an effort to remove racial barriers. The goal is noble, but the rewriting of history is profane.
I called them nations because they were a people of a common race. For instance, the ancient Greeks have described the features of the Perisans whom they fought at Marathon - and from this description it is clear that a Greek could identify another person as Greek or Persian. Hence, they are different nations. And even today the Ethiopians retain very distinct features. My country (Israel) has many Ethiopians, I believe that we are the only Western nation to welcome African immigrants as equals. And would any Westerner argue that the Chinese have physical features distinct from those with European heritage? Does that not qualify - for you - as a different race?
If you are referring to the Proto-Indo-Iranian ancestors, then I counter that their descendants have diverged.
If you meant something else, I am always grateful for corrections or enlightenment.
I agree that the Greeks who fought at Marathon were a nation, but they were not a state; they came from Athens and Plataia, which were different states, allied with the Lakedaimonians, another state, also of the Greek nation but missing in action that day. The Persians, by contrast, were a state but, as you surely know, they included many nations: Datis was Median, Artaphernes ruled the Lydians (though he himself was also Median), and Hippias was actually Greek; the Persian forces also included Thracians, Mysians, Phrygians, Hebrews (!), Macedonians, and so on, though I don't know if they were present at Marathon. You can surely forgive Herodotus for not dwelling on the internal ethnic divisions among the Persian troops his interviewees were facing. (However, he did mention the Sakai alongside the "Persians" (Persai), Simonides called the Persian force the "army of the Medes" (Medon), and Aiskhylos also spoke in his epitaph of facing the Medes (Medos) at Marathon rather than the "Persians".)
So that's the sense in which neither Greece nor Persia was a nation-state at the time: Greece was a nation but not a state, while Persia was a state but not a nation. Or, rather, there was a Persian nation, but the plurinational Persian state was immensely larger than the Persian nation to which its rulers belonged.
If we consider Homeric Greece instead, the Greeks look more like the Persia that fought at Marathon: Homer's Akhaioi are, perhaps, all ruled from Mykenai by Agamemnon, but they worship different gods, speak different (but related) languages, and have different descent. And, although we know many things in Homer are historically wrong, modern archaeology does back up this plurinational picture of the Akhaioi. So Mycenaean Greece, like the Persian empire of Darius, was a state but not a nation.
As I understand the situation, we can make similar arguments about most of the ancient history of the Hebrews: beginning with ethnic and religious unity with neighboring Canaanite peoples subjugated by Egypt (despite the later invention of myths like Abraham and the Exodus, which are not supported by the archaeological evidence) and proceeding through many historical political divisions --- not just the division between Israel and Judea of which the Torah makes so much, but also, at various times, Samaria, various city-states in Palestine, the Maccabee state, and the Phoenician cities, as well as subjugation by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, and finally Romans. The Torah narrative of 117 years of a united monarchy preceding the Israel/Judah split is generally not accepted by modern scholars, though the debate is certainly open, but even in the Torah most of the historically plausible action happens at times when the Hebrew nation was either divided into separate kingdoms or suffering under the yoke of foreign powers.
So I don't think it's accurate to describe any of the ancient Israelite states as nation-states.
I don't know how diverged e.g. the Scythians were from the Amyrgians (of whom I'd never heard of until yesterday), but it is clear that they distinguished one from another. However, would an Athenian distinguish between them? Would a Scythian distinguish between a Spartan and an Athenian?
It seems to me that there are no clear boundaries between "peoples" or "nations". For me a Han and a Manchu are both Chinese, but they might see a Polish Jew as no different than a Lithuanian Jew. And yet the Polish Jew from Loz will see his identity distinct from the Jew from Warsaw.
So back to the conflict at hand, from the perspective of Slavic history there is merit to considering the Ukrainian and Russian peoples as the same people or nation. From the perspective of wishing to live under different systems of values and authority, there is also merit to considering them as distinct. Note that the gift of Crim to Ukraine during the 1950s was "a gift from the Russian people to the Ukrainian people" so at that time the Russians were making a distinction between the two.
As usual when considering human relationships, it's complicated )). There's an old joke about the Irishmen talking about how close they are - until the end. You've probably heard it.
It's true that I'm an extreme liberal! But I think the Wikipedia article gives a neutral point of view.
Shouldn't this opinion be a hint that maybe the article is liberal too? ;-)
Race exists but not nearly relevant as you claim and has nothing to do with nation-states. I don't claim to side with the parent but you are not nearly correct either. IF there is a footnote to a source, you better read it next time. Wiki is not authoritative but not complete junk either.
However, I don't agree with some of the distinctions you're making. Tribes are nations. Like, literally, "nation" is the Latin word for tribes that weren't one of the the three tribes of Rome. "Race" is another synonym; Webster defines "nation" as "A part, or division, of the people of the earth, distinguished from the rest by common descent, language, or institutions; a race; a stock." If a tribe or a race is roughly coextensive with a state, that state is a nation-state. So race has everything to do with nation-states; this is one of the main reasons I think it's important to point out that countries like the United States are not nation-states, despite the efforts of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and that nation-states are something we can do away with.
Consider ancient Greece. Classical Athens was considered to consist of four tribes, and the state of Athens only governed a tiny minority of Greeks, so the political division into states just didn't coincide with a division by common descent, language, or institutions even very roughly; and Greece remained divided into such city-states until being conquered by the Romans. Mycenaean Greece was far more politically unified, but much more diverse in terms of ethnicity, language, and institutions; archaeological evidence confirms Homer's hearsay on this count. Biblical Israel was classically divided into twelve tribes, and the myths of Abraham and the Exodus was used to falsely claim a common descent for what archaeological evidence tells us were Canaanite people who spoke the same Semitic language as their neighbors but began to distinguish themselves by the cult of Yahweh; and we have both documentary and archaeological evidence of their subsequent divisions and reunions, continuing through the intertestamental period.
> You are confusing tribes with nations.
> Nation: ...directly from Latin nationem "... race of people, tribe,"
> - https://www.etymonline.com/word/nation > in American usage, the meaning of the word “nation” has largely
> shifted to mean the (entire) state or the country
In any case, no matter how Americans call their political entities, the word "nation" in the term "nation-state" has a clear, unambiguous meaning, referring to a race/tribe/nation.
Certainly there was technological progress thousands (and tens of thousands) of years ago: tools for hunting and later farming, making fire, the wheel, and so on. But could a society organized like that eventually progress to discovering how to generate electricity from nuclear fission? Could they ever have built rockets and traveled to the moon? I'm skeptical...
> Even today, many people live in non-nation-state countries like the United States, Bolivia, and India.
For the purposes of this particular discussion, I think "nation-state" and the slightly looser-organized nations you describe can be lumped together in the same category.
Moreover, the particular way in which the United States discovered how to generate electricity from nuclear fission and traveled to the moon with rockets crucially depended on it not being a nation-state: it was consequently able to assimilate foreign immigrants like Fermi, von Braun, von Neumann, and Einstein.
Certainly it's possible for a nation-state to make such advances in theory, but in practice they seem to depend on the kind of diversity of intellectual and cultural traditions that is anathema to nation-states. Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States nor the countries of the European Space Agency were or are nation-states.
Still, I think the US is better understood as a multiethnic, profoundly racist society, not a single tribe: 41 million people (12% of the population) speak Spanish, another 13% speak AAVE, and 2% belong to various Native American and Alaskan Native nations. In all cases most speakers also speak the language of the dominant GA-speaking tribe, and there are identifiable musical, culinary, religious, political differences associated with their varying descent, along with striking segregation in housing, schooling, and education. Subsequent to the initial English colonization there was also substantial immigration from Ireland (9% of the current population), Scotland (8%), Germany (15%, already 9% by the first census in 01790), the Netherlands (1%), Italy (5%), and Poland (3%), China (1.5%), India (1%), France (3%), as well as other countries. Some of these immigrants were also Romani (0.3%) or Jewish (3%). But, in the US system of racism, these differences are largely submerged in generalized "[non-Hispanic] white American" and "Asian American" (7%) ethnic identities.
Since only 62% of the US population belongs to its hegemonic "non-Hispanic white" nation, which is as you say built out of immigrants from various European countries, I don't think it's reasonable to describe the USA as a nation state. It's not even officially white supremacist, although its historical foundations are in genocide and slavery, and in practice its government treats its ethnic minorities very badly indeed even today. It's at least two more major genocides away from becoming a nation state, although Obama's horrifying mass deportations of "illegal immigrants" and their weaker continuation under Trump were a significant step in that direction, as is the ongoing GULAG-scale mass imprisonment of mostly African-Americans, many of whom are enslaved in prison.
From some of my own relatives, I can attest that at least some people sincerely believe this.
Вижу горы и долины, вижу реки и поля.
Это русские картины, это родина моя.
Вижу Прагу и Варшаву, Будапешт и Бухарест.
Это русская держава - сколько здесь любимых мест!
Вижу пагоды в Шри Ланке, и Корею, и Китай.
Где бы я ни ехал в танке, всюду мой любимый край!
Вижу речку Амазонку, крокодилов вижу я.
Это русская сторонка, это родина моя!
Недалече пирамиды, Нил течёт — богат водой,
Омывает русский берег! Русь моя, горжусь тобой!
Вижу Вашингтон в долине, Даллас вижу и Техас
Как приятно здесь в России выпить вкусный русский квас!
Над Сиднеем солнце всходит, утконос сопит в пруду.
Репродуктор гимн заводит; с русским гимном в день войду!
Вот индейцы курят трубку, и протягивают мне -
Все на свете любят русских, на родной моей земле.Now the behavior of Naryshkin is more clear. He knows they have to deal with a madman and sees no way out.
The majority public sentiment hasn't formed yet. The war started in early morning, and many people are still hung-over due to yesterday holiday (the Russian Army day, BTW).
My prediction is that there won't be a patriotic hysteria. People will be wary of possible consequences, which -- and I think everyone understands that -- may be severe. Medical drug prices will certainly go up, due to the fact that most drugs are imported. A high-tech / chip / electronics exports to Russia may be restricted. An oil & gas embargo may be imposed, which means that we're back to the 90's (though I think that Europe will be difficult to get on board, due to their dependency on Russia's energy).
My personal current sentiment is that we may get completely isolated from the west, and that we'll have to form a closer alliance with China -- which I don't like.
(A small consolation prize is that our corrupt "elites" will finally get what they deserve -- I expect heavy personal sanctions and foreign asset seizures).
You could also stop discussing and leave?
Of course, the prospect of personal enrichment is more important than millions of people losing their homes, homelands, loved ones and lives.
Which is why you stopped using any product coming from a country engaged with war, murder and torture?
I think that is hard to do.
It is also hard to punish a company for the actions of their government.
I don't know how to explain all this to my kids. And how to keep them safe. I feel really sorry for everyone involved on all sides.
You might see me se me support Ukraine or be angry about Russia, but rest assured that I have nothing against Russians as a people, only the ones who tries to invade Ukraine etc.
I'm living in the shadow of Russia too and I've just filled my spare water tanks with clean water and I'll fill my car and get some extra fuel for my cooking stove later today.
I've already been training for a few months now, but I'm still hoping for a good miracle to avoid a full European war.
For the rest of HN, don't forget the thing most preppers seems to ignore: as far as possible, be friendly towards everyone. If others want you to survive that should help a lot.
Have a nice day everyone.
Edit: when/if this ends maybe we can meet at the server again and play CS:GO or something :-)
Edit 2: if anyone wonders, the official rule for prepping here in Norway includes stocking up with 9L of clean water for each person in the household, keeping some food that has long shelf life, radio, lights, batteries, some way to heat food and rooms even if the electricity disappears and to cooperate with neighbors if you cannot fix everything yourself (e.g. not all houses here have alternative heating sources except electricity).
Stay calm people and don't make any rush decisions.
The time's been worse. We'll make it.
I nearly teared up reading the news this morning. Stay safe.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/l%27%C3%A9tat%2C%...
I hope that somehow they are someday able to grab their sovereignty into their own hands, and out of the hands of people who only see them as resources for their own gain.
https://www.sikkerhverdag.no/en/
Edit:
Just checked your profile and see you live next to where I officially work.
Stay safe in there, and the site is of course available in Norwegian too for anyone who prefers that: https://www.sikkerhverdag.no
I asked and nobody was rude against her because of her nationality here ( she's a nurse), so that's good news.
She did mention propaganda in Russia is in full force.
---
A intern collegue has far-family in Ukraine. But he's not aware in detail currently what they are doing, except fleeing the battleground areas.
Then, protest it on the street.
Best of luck
Not to make light of the situation, but the fact that you refer to l'viv as Ukraine (yes, I know we all agree it is) is a miniature proof that things do change and the way we look at things can be modified.
It's not that the "people of Lviv" at the time stopped seeing themselves as Polish, it's that nearly the entire Polish population of the city was forced to relocate to Poland's post-war borders.
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said this 6 days ago:
> If Russia enters Ukraine, it is assumed that this will lead to large numbers of refugees fleeing the country. Amnesty International warns of a humanitarian catastrophe.
> But Sweden will not be a major recipient country, according to Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. She believes that the responsibility lies with other countries.
https://www.dn.se/varlden/magdalena-andersson-andra-lander-f...
I am trying to help my programmer friend escape Ukraine, along with their elderly family: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30451497
The problem is, I don’t know anything about Ukraine. I have money, and I can book an Airbnb in a neighboring country for them. But I suspect (apropos nothing) they’ll discover that there’s no way to leave the country through traditional means.
Does anyone know if the buses are still running? Can they get out of the country? If not, my fallback idea is to help them plan a way to escape on foot. But which part of the border should they try to cross?
What I really need is for someone local to Ukraine to DM me so that I can ask some basic questions. If you know anyone, please forward them:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theshawwn
Telegram https://t.me/theshawwn
--
EDIT: Apparently other people want to do this too, so I made a twitter thread to pool our knowledge:
https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1496761074258952193
I'll tweet updates there (and I'll post them here as edits for the next hour or so.)
--
Updates:
- Someone DM'ed me on Telegram and mentioned that they're trying to do the same thing. They were thinking about evacuating them to Germany by "sending them an official invite, but the German embassy seems to be closed."
- A twitter DM pointed out https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1496724041520095235:
> If you know people who want to leave Kyiv, don't drive to Zhytomyr on the M06. Russian air assault will be taking cross roads. Go south to Bila Terskva to Berdichev to Vinnitsya to Kemenytsky. Fastest evac: go to Chernivsti crossing to Romania.
I really hope you will stay safe.
Ukraine can make Russia suffer if the West has given them enough weapons to do so. I'm skeptical that they did in time. They had seven years after Crimea to help Ukraine, and waited far too long to do it to a great enough degree.
[1]https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-finland-lost-world-...
If China does this overtly, "the west" / NATO may cut them off as well.
I hope this correctness of this assessment has no impact on your safety and well-being. If it does, the people in this thread cheering you on who are not 25 miles away from the Russian border should be ashamed of themselves and you would be well advised to make contingency plans for alternative scenarios were everything will not be fine, say one where Ukraine faces complete military defeat within days.
His elderly father is being drafted. I got a DM from a mutual asking me whether there’s anything I could do for them. I have money but no knowledge of the country; they live there but have no money.
During WW2, various affluent people helped smuggle Jews out of Germany. I’d like to help my friend’s family in a similar way. But the reality of doing this is very different than the stories from history.
Currently my only plan is to yeet some cash at them and say good luck. But I was hoping to come up with something better.
I could book an airbnb for their family in a neighboring country, for example.
Does anyone know if the busses are still running? Is it possible to leave Ukraine right now via traditional means, or would they have to hoof it on foot? If they need to walk, does anyone have a suggestion on which part of the border might be friendly for an elderly family to cross?
I know this sounds unlikely, but given the choice between unlikely and “do nothing,” I’ll bet on unlikely.
EDIT: I made a twitter thread to share updates: https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1496761074258952193
And a second HN comment further upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30451691
It turns out that other people are trying to do this too. If we pool our knowledge, our chances probably go way up. Definitely get in touch.
One good travel Option (was, but I think should be still, AFAIK only planes stopped because they could be shot down) to travel by train to Lviv, take a taxi to Przemysl in Poland for maybe 50€ worth, and then take a train from there to for example Berlin.
All the best to your friend and his family.
https://tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/currency says 29.7 hryvnia to the dollar at the moment.
I mean, I'm not saying cryptocurrency is a bad idea, but the hryvnia doesn't seem as totally pointless as you suggest.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/ukranian-bank-suspends-e-cas...
Also https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/25/4point1-million-in-cryptocur... says, "$4.1 million in cryptocurrency funneled to Ukrainian military since Russia invaded," by which it means "nongovernmental organizations and volunteer groups," aka militias or paramilitary troops, because the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense does not "use other payment systems ('Webmoney,' 'Bitcoin,' 'PayPal,' etc.)." (Though apparently some of the money is being used to buy materiel to give to the regular army.) So I guess Bitcoin is also good for sending funding to paramilitary militias in countries that are being invaded by much stronger armies.
Interestingly the article omits to mention that the most prominent volunteer groups like the Azov Battalion are neo-Nazis, even according to anti-Russian sources like https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/15/war-and-anarchists-anti-au....
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30447749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30435383
Edit: If they would decide leaving their country my very early tip is to download Google Translate with the all locales they know + country where they are. While you can find many people who speak Ukrainian/Russian in central EU countries, it is a priceless help for any foreigner. I had occasion to be a participant of a talk between people, who were writing the phrases on the screen to communicate. Since that moment, I have downloaded Ukrainian locale pack for offline use in Google Translate.
If the U.S. intervenes, a retaliatory cyber op from Russia against critical infrastructure would make america amish again. Then, wait until midterms when the president loses the house and senate and doesn't have the power to muster a draft when China takes Taiwan. This is one of those happening slowly and then all at once events in history I suspect.
Post-Vietnam the US hasn’t engaged in large scale active combat against communism or Russian-backed forces. It has instead favored selling weapons to Eastern European states and building the NATO alliance.
Putin has been clear about the breakup of the USSR being a mistake in his eyes. He’s been annexing territories (or in his eyes, re-annexing) since 1999. He looks for countries with strong Russian cultural and linguistic backgrounds and props up allies that will take over. If that doesn’t work he ratchets up the pressure until he feels comfortable using military force. See: Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and now Ukraine.
The US is far stronger militarily than Russia, but with nuclear weapons in the equation, no one wins.
It’s easy to be an arm chair hawk and say we should go fight, but it’s another thing to look you kids in the eye and explain they’re going to die from radiation fallout.
Instead, the US will likely prop up the resistance once Ukraine falls and try to make occupation as costly as possible just like we did in Afghanistan.
a band-aid solution at best. The fact that putin has desires to resurrect the soviet superpower, is the problem, and i doubt there would be any possible diplomatic solution to that.
Nobody likes war (least of all nuclear war), but if the threat of such weapons is shown to be a bluff, the peace brought about from it's use in WW2 would all but be in vain.
Somebody must back down, and i would say putin and his ambitions must be the one to back down, or the US & allies must escalate. Otherwise, the next authoritarian country is going to want in.
France has nukes, so this isn’t going to be Hitler 2.0 with Putin posing by the Arc de Triumph.
There are several ex-Soviet countries that are NATO members, so that’ll be the real hot spot if it gets there as the US et. al. will be required to act militarily in their defense (in theory).
Though, now that the invasion has started (again),
the alliance is already pretty consolidated. I think putin sees a NATO ukraine as more dangerous imho - esp. if ukraine becomes more and more democratic.
The invasion would be successful if the west does not deploy troops and intervene. I say the west has already failed, and this sets a precedent to which china would follow.
And if the west waits for too long, the military edge that the west has would diminish. Unfortunately, the public is reluctant to commit to war, because in the minds of those who are used to peace, diplomatic solutions seems to be the only cost they're willing to pay.
I agree that there are difficulties in developing arms in peace times, war can be a driver of innovation. But it is not the only one and there are preferable alternatives, even if arms suppliers see that differently out of egoistic ambitions.
A civilian population rejecting involvement in arms manufacture is preferable to one that calls for a war.
Which is why the Ukraine should have been accepted into NATO (and preferably the EU too) in 2015 or so.
If so, expect Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Saudi-Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and so on to test nukes within the next 10 years.
Or, to be charitable, since India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons and nothing happened.
We have no will to fight a war over this in the US. Any talk of that is absurd.
I keep thinking about the Scorpions song Wind of Change. That spirit is now completely dead. I just can't believe it.
Anecdotally, I've never seen so many people in my (wildly different) social circles agree on something political.
Cyber crimes with significant impact are still in the realm of fiction. Scare mongering about it does not help.
That said, one should not make stupid decision how to connect and control such infrastructure and you should prepare with working backups instead of another security product.
Basically, no one wanted to bear all the costs of having secure infrastructure components, this is the tragedy of the commons that government is supposed to solve, but when all the leaders are over 70, it’s hard for them to grok the new reality.
If you have a dedicated hacker with means to acquire exploits, security is probably almost impossible. This is why effective mitigation is very likely the safer approach. Manual overrides or air gapped systems would help too.
But it is wrong to panic about it. The best mitigation is boring, but yes, some investment in IT could really help.
So not an actual event.
Ukraine has been subjected to Russian cyberattacks for nearly a decade now. They’ve accomplished knocking the power off multiple times. It would seem the gun exists.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine they could have some success with cyberattacks against the US. How impactful that would be to disrupting day to day life though is a question that remains to be answered. When the power was out in Texas recently, there was quite an impact. Imagine millions losing power in the rust belt in the winter. There would no doubt be loss of life and significant physical damage.
I wish. The gas pipeline shutdown last year was just a rehearsal I imagine. If the Russian government went full send on a cyber attack, we would probably be completely fucked for months at this point.
And rightly so. I don't care enough about Taiwan to instate a draft. I don't care enough about much of anything for that.
Sure, that would make hypocrites of those who were draft dodgers back then, and advocate the draft now. But how many of those are there? I'd guess the vast majority of baby boomers who now advocate the draft weren't draft dodgers.
And AFAIK, compared to those who went, draft dodgers were a small minority.
No... fought their draft as in "We think the draft is bull, this war is bull, and we don't want to go."
Hey, I could be wrong - I wasn't there to observe first hand what happened in the 60s and 70s. I only assumed the Vietnam draft was unpopular based on pop culture. Maybe boomers didn't sit around college campus blocking up traffic, chanting slogans, and smoking pot? Maybe there were never peace marches? The soundtrack of Boomer's youth? Largely works of fiction! 80s anti-war films? Anti-American propaganda!
If you're telling me only those who actively avoided the draft were against it, I believe you.
I should have just used my own eyes and ears to observe what Boomers have done since then. Baby Boomers in Congress and in the White House sent troops to Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, with overwhelming approval at the time. Yes, there was lots of backtracking and second guessing after we stuck of fingers in those pies, but I guess that's a development that's arisen after Vietnam. Maybe the problem with those wars was there were no Commies to shoot.
I just didn't realize how much blood-lust Boomers held deep inside.
I stand corrected. Thank you for setting me straight.
Cut it out with the bullshit: You know very well I never said or meant any of that.
But how many people does it take to sit around and smoke, chant, and block traffic? It's not as if it was necessarily new people at every sit-in, is it -- they could very well have been the same pot-smoking, slogan-chanting, and traffic-blocking protesters at most of those protests, right? Sure, they became the cultural phenomenon remembered from the time. To a large degree because, as you point out, of those 80s Hollywood blockbusters... And how many tens or hundreds of thousands of Hollywood blockbuster producers and directors did it take to make thoseand leave this huge imprint on the collective consciousness of posterity?
OTOH, AIUI a majority of draftees... didn't dodge the draft. The USA sent what, half a million young men? (or more?) over there. I'm not saying they all went willingly -- far from it, AFAIK -- but at least, those who went cannot, by definition, have been "draft-dodgers". So by my reckoning, compared to active protesters quite possibly, and compared to actual draft dodgers almost certainly, there were more non-draft-dodgers.
And also by definition, pretty much exactly all of those young men who were sent to Vietnam to fight -- the non-draft-dodgers -- were baby boomers.
So "boomers are hypocrites because they all advocate the draft now but dodged it back then" just doesn't make mathematical or logical sense. For one thing, even if many of them advocate the draft now that's not all of them; maybe the ones advocating it now are the same ones who obeyed it then, and maybe they've been quite consistently and non-hypocritically in favour of it all their lives. And for another, of course the bit about "they all dodged it then" is BS: If they had, there wouldn't have been any of them there.
Your rantings and ravings about Boomer Bloodlust aside, all I was pointing out was the bullshitness of this collective-hypocrisy accusation.
This is bait and bad bait at that. The longer Russia continues to provide us with video evidence of their bullying only makes it easier for us to convince undecided countries to sanction Russia to submission.
Forever? Look at North Korea: Kim Jong-un is doing fine.
It's a fantasy that the "entire world" would sanction them: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/world/europe/china-russia...:
> China on Wednesday criticized the expansion of economic sanctions against Russia, saying that they were unlikely to solve the Ukraine crisis and that they had the potential to harm average people as well as the interests of Beijing.
Putin doesn't care about Russia economy the way you think he does: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/lavrov-rus...:
> Their intentions are different from ours too. Putin’s goal is not a flourishing, peaceful, prosperous Russia, but a Russia where he remains in charge. Lavrov’s goal is to maintain his position in the murky world of the Russian elite and, of course, to keep his money. What we mean by “interests” and what they mean by “interests” are not the same. When they listen to our diplomats, they don’t hear anything that really threatens their position, their power, their personal fortunes.
IIRC, Russia media is basically like having pro-Putin Tucker Carlson on all the channels all the time. And if, despite that, anyone in Russia has even a small chance of actually undermine Putin, they'll find poison in their underwear and get an all-expenses paid trip to a gulag.
Everyone saying "but we should let Putin do whatever he wants with lives of innocents because otherwise nuclear war" is Putin supporter, whether they know it or not.
But that's as far as it will go at this point. Russia invading Ukraine (again) has been universally declared a Dick Move, but since Ukraine is not an EU or NATO member and as far as I know there's no defense pacts either, there's nothing that they can do that would not be considered an unnecessary escalation.
Putin can be faulted for many things but not looking ahead isn't one of them and you can bet that he has priced this in already. If anything he is probably amazed at the lack of response.
> Russia invading Ukraine (again) has been universally declared a Dick Move, but since Ukraine is not an EU or NATO member and as far as I know there's no defense pacts either, there's nothing that they can do that would not be considered an unnecessary escalation.
Yes, there will be all kinds of justification for letting Ukraine burn, this one will be near top of the list for sure.
Why think it will work this time?
EDIT: of course, my opinions are shaped by being in non-nuke-equipped country in Europe, so depending on West's response this time, we're next. I'm sure it looks differently for someone sitting in New Jersey or Australia.
What people are saying is that no one wants to get nuked to save Ukraine and I'd be hard pressed to blame them.
This isn't Call of Duty
Oh wait there was an attempt, people didn't accept a democratic vote and decided to go and find politicians to lynch. I'm still pretty shocked that there hasn't been a more severe reaction to that one.
He's shown time and time again that from within Russia, he's untouchable and everyone who tries will either be killed or deported to gulag. No sources needed, just look it up quickly on your own.
I do not see an easy solution for dealing with him - left alone the assassination route.
But. Nuclear weapons are far beyond the ken and capability of humans’ intuitive game theory, the hueristics we apply in escalatory conflicts of all scales. Applying such intuition risks thoughtless apocalypse; MAD is a novel idea because such weapons required either an entirely new paradigm in power politics, or humanity’s rapid suicide.
Nuclear weapons are a deus, or devil, sprung from the machine of human civilization.
The possibility of their use, even by a bully who wields them especially to intimidate us, must inspire some cowardice in any soul who cherishes humanity’s potential.
The west must find its moral courage within the contraints of antiquarian post-Congress of Vienna style Realpolitik, as others have stated. Partition of Ukraine and many decades applying a new strategy of containment is the most realistic ‘victory’ that can be sought.
We might hope that Russia’s once promising liberal civil society will revolt and save this decade for peace - in vain, I expect.
Putin took control of Chernobyl tonight, you know. How do you think he thinks about this stuff?
And I am no HN founder, but I live in Eastern Europe. NATO planes and helicopters kept flying overhead all day and my house doesn’t even have a basement.
So I bet we are closer to the danger than you are. And I also bet that the ones doing the flagging and burying are other brave "class warriors" and "eaters of the rich" who can’t accept that their beloved ideology has created monsters like Putin while the capitalism they despise has given the world prosperity, (relative) peace and Elon Musk (the last one's a mixed blessing, I admit).
PG if you are reading this, I love you really, man. And if there's any room left down there for a resourceful fella, I will work for bunk and board. (In fact, I've been stockpiling tins since Feb 20, so I only need the bunk ;)
How long was it called that, and when did he start in the game?
I'm guessing most of his background is actually not FSB, but KGB.
Avoiding nuclear war is the top priority.
Problem is, "Avoiding all-out war is the top priority" is exactly what Chamberlain thought in 1938, too. And look what that got him: all-out war.
Great analogy.
But, fine, let's play this game. The US is sends troops into the Ukraine. You do understand this is right at Russia's border. What does Putin do? He'll engage. Great, now we're in a shooting war with our nuclear rival. Now do you want to roll the dice this doesn't escalate further. Does Putin go after neighboring NATO countries? Now the US has to escalate further to defend an ally. And if the US/NATO pushes into Russia, does Russia go nuclear?
This is why the Cold War stayed COLD. We didn't directly engage Russia on anything close to their borders. Yes, we fought two proxy wars in Asia and just look how that turned out.
Do you really want to roll the dice and hope your neighborhood isn't a parking lot in the next five years?
https://twitter.com/kasparov63/status/1496865471995523080?s=...
It is up to Biden now to live up to his tough talk of Putin fearing him (from during the election, if you have forgotten) and other western leaders to find an end that doesn't involve bending over.
Why are you singling out "the west"?!? AIUI, Russia also signed that agreement.
Then the NATO charter is useless.
What's happened in the last ~10 years was that Ukraine was Russia's proxy, then the West's, and now it will be Russia's again. That's a very different story than one that starts with "was a member of NATO".
Because when you admit state that has part of it's territory occupied into a defense pact, you are effectively declaring war on the occupying state.
Imo it's not quite arsehole thing to not start WWIII due to non-alliance country.
People are also forgetting that you can't just instantly admit Ukraine into NATO and instantly teleport all the alliance armies onto the battlefield. Trying to make it quicker would very likely just hasten the Russian invasion (because the head douche apparently wanted Ukraine all along), so it really boils down to "do you want to start throwing nukes for state that you never made nuke-backed promises to?"
It's appalling how many people here are not seeing bigger picture and would love to just try to end humanity just because some nation got dealt _really_ bad cards. Economically Russia is cratering, so the impatience to end it all here (or in 2014) is just irrational. They were already losing technology (e.g. see how their space program is faltering), this will just accelerate Russia's slide into irrelevance. Even their weapons tech is not keeping up, see the latest kerfuffle in Caucasus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war
Also the wording is fuzzy when it comes to conventional war, but maybe the wiki has wrong wording. Either way, that is nowhere close to full defense pact which NATO is (with forward allied military bases and such).
NATO treaty itself does not talk about rapid response forces, joint bases and so on. All of that comes beyond the treaty. What stops key states from retreating back to basic treaty and then finding an excuse when Article 5 comes? E.g. if Russia comes as non-marked „rebels“?
Maybe NATO has also weak wording in the treaty itself. So ask yourself - why did Ukraine want so badly to be accepted into it? Why is Russia opposing NATO expansion so much?
Why did Baltic states or Poland wanted into NATO so much? It's one more treaty you can show to media when shit hits the fan. One more treaty your supporters can use debating governments for help.
In reality, if Russia attacks a NATO member, it won't be automatic full-on NATO response. It will still be debates. But certain people will be much more uncomfortable saying „no we won't defend NATO allies“. Yet some will still say it.
Russia wants it's own NATO, with black jack and hookers. And countries joining the real NATO obviously won't join theirs.
EDIT: and wiki wording is unclear whether the treaty applies for conventional war. That's all I meant by "fuzzy"
Baltic states are undefendable, even compared to Ukraine. If Ukraine is down, Poland is as indefendable as Ukraine. Then we are back to Cold War state where Germany is barely defendable.
Yes, Sherlock, that was exactly my point: Dodging that responsibility is what makes NATO an arsehole.
Anything the West does directly they have to expect a response.
That said, I think the west should be using 'distance power'.
There are US Global Hawk drones over Ukraine right now doing surveillance, I think it would be reasonable for the US to launch cruise missiles at Russian targets in Ukraine.
The Russians could make things very difficult for ships in the Black Sea however as one opportunity for retaliation.
We just have to hope that Ukrainians can leverage the Javelins and Stingers to great effect and make it painful enough for Putin that he has no choice to step back, but it's impossible to tell, it's just as likely Russia may be able to just smash through Ukranian defences and leave them to some insurgency skirmishes.
Putin won't step back. This is his endgame and he has very little - if not actually nothing - to lose. Going back as a loser is not on the table as a viable option.
Putin is not all powerful, no leader ever is. He has to face realities of the situation, and also populism at home.
And he has a lot to lose, this is a risky manoeuvre. If Russia fails in it's publicly stated objective it will look really bad on him and Russia. Russia could feasibly fail entirely and lose some occupied territory. Unlikely, but it could happen. And then there's the 'overhead' cost of economic disruption.
If the Ukranians can hold off the main thrust of the attack, and especially if Russians start to come back in body bags - he will lose the momentum and have to make serious adjustments.
This is 'extremely expensive' for him in every way: political, populist, economic to conduct such operations and he can't do it for very long.
Or if they do actually 'win' and but then Urkanians can mount material insurgent attacks, it won't work.
Russian Oligarchs just had their wealth cut in half (they are pissed), a lot of Russians will be facing financial pressures, they were never really behind this war in the first place - this will take it's toll at home.
Russia lost 6 fixed wing and 3 or 4 rotary wing just this morning - that's not a good start and if those loses continue at that rate he won't be able to keep it up - he can't risk his Air Force for Ukraine.
Ukranians have 1K+ Javelin and hundreds of Stinger missiles. Those weapons do not require central coordination and can nullify air support and amour advantages, which makes it an ugly ground fight which will be bloody, and it's possible Russians don't have the veracity to fight. Russians soldiers are doing it 'because it's a job' - not because their homeland is under threat.
Russian paratroopers have taken Kyiv Airport this morning, but they are alone without armour or real support, Ukranians shot down 3 of their transport craft. It's entirely feasible that Ukranians take back that airport .
Although it would be risky, the West, particularly could cause serious damage to Russian forces in Ukraine.
I don't really think Ukraine will hold out, but they definitely could and Russia will have to eventually withdraw in some way.
My guess is that he would mostly withdraw to the Donbas region and then make some kind of 'declaration of objectives met' and then sue for a truce, making permanent claims to Donbas recognized by the West (which won't happen, but his claims will make him appear strong).
To believe that his future acts will be rational is missing what has already happened, clearly this wasn't rational to begin with.
If you're really clever, get all Sun Tzu on him and feed his fears until he chokes on them.
Most bullies are cowards. Threats and ultimatums like that come from a place of weakness. Did you hear America saying anything like that when they invaded Iraq? No, because they weren't scared.
Having a rogue state with nukes is a serious problem.
Putin's pre invasion speech has a striking amount of blood and soil rhetoric. And in addition just like Hitler he denies the right of existence of East European states between Germany and Russia.
He all but said that controlling these countries was Russia's "Manifest Destiny".
I wrote about such tactics in a blog post https://dandanua.github.io/posts/counterfactual-communicatio...
So, it was an impressive threat. I doubt he actually would follow through... but he might. That's his leverage - that we wonder if he might. Rationally, though, it's a crummy threat, because rationally his own downside is far too big.
Compared to those things, the power of nukes is trivial; all they can do is destroy. You can't surrender to a nuke, and the point of warfare is to convince the enemy to submit, not to damage the ecosystem. Damaging the ecosystem is just a side effect, so it's the wrong way to measure the strength of offensive resources.
"Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere And build them a home, a little place of their own. The Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings. ... Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead."
--- The Fletcher Memorial Home - Pink Floyd
Putin is at the top of the pyramid but he is not the sole ruler of the Russia. Its not like if he dies Russia will magically become exemplary democracy.
There were and still are people lining up and aiming to take his seat, but as long as Putin appears to be strong and gives his underlings enough he will remain on the throne.
Sure there are other perspectives and possible motivations for his actions. But it's the idea that he may not care any more and might do anything that I find scary. If he's willing to risk full scale invasion across all of Ukraine after the international focus that preceded it, would he also be willing to launch supersonic nuclear weapons? In his televised statement he said Russia is ready for all outcomes.
For the USA what probably worries me most is cyberattacks. The USA is such a soft target. Our government can't even secure it's systems after a decade of laws, warnings, bad reports, and actual attacks.
I do hope I'm wrong and Putin is actually sane and has a strategic plan that makes sense for his country.
I never believed him growing up, institutions and America seemed infallible. It’s sad to say but I think with global warming, covid, and the general decline of American soft power we’ll see more and more global turmoil
My heart goes out to Ukraine and its people
PS: I agree about the feeling of infaillible institution and international order..
Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times
The hard times in Ukraine now won't make anyone better. Men in west won't be inferior for not going through it.
And then you go on to express a not-so-objective viewpoint? OP is stating an idiom, a saying, a phrase. Let it be. There is nothing objective about it.
People regularly use this one as argument or to imply inferiority of those they look down at. Therefore, it is 100% alright to not that idiom stand.
Hmm, I disagree. I've seen it used as a statement of dysfunction in our society.
We were in a comfy peaceful era and yet we saw rise of extremism, neo nazis in germany, in the US even. Good times allow for forgetting the extent of what reality can be and then people start to have weird ideas when small problems come, only to react in shallow reflexes like nationalism, and war.
I may be dumb but I assumed people who saw wars just didn't want any of that anymore and would actually know what 'right value' means, not just school books or worse .. network propaganda.
Now sure, it can all be twisted, people can be brainwashed during and after war, there can be bad wounds for long too.
If wars _prevented_ extremism you’d think we’d have evidence of it by now.
Also I wonder what happened after “The Great War”? Did extremism decline then?
Yes. I too recall the many decades of peace after WWI. And the great leaders that arose in Europe after that conflict.
People with grit who struggle through puberty often produce children who wouldn’t bother to lift a finger to improve their lot or get a job:)
https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
Cycles in history is of course not "of course not true". in any complex system, there are oscillations. Most famous is economical boom and boost cycle.
Meme is not without merit. The reason we are able to discuss things like gender/race equity in marine corps promotions is precisely because these are good times. And this lack of focus may lead to bad times eventually.
> Ibn Khaldun, 14th century Muslim scholar from Tunisia
My point is: the dog whistle/modern meme is basically a reference to Spengler and others, because their ideologies align relatively well with the patchwork of neo-fascist ideas. That's what they hint to and promote. That's why I explicitly mentioned Spengler and the 20th century. Lot of other people developed some form of a cyclical history but that's not really relevant here.
which historians? And why should we pay any attention to their consensus?
Ascribing any fixed time scale to the cycle is going to be fallacious as it depends on environmental factors.
Comparing Rome to its enemies in this way as if “the toughness of the people” is THE variable that determined success, compared to say, coordinated mobility-based warfare tactics, is a stretch at best.
From my reading of history, the typical pattern is:
- Some set of tribes exist on the fringe of civilization (if one already existed). They have access to the bare minimum resources for survival. These are not strong men, yet, but relatively weak savages, probably not even worth conquering by the civilization closeby. What they do have, is an every-day reminder to stay efficient in what they do, so they don't starve to death. - After a while, one or a few of these tribes grow in competency and competitively useful cultural values. (Often, but not necessarily military.) They start trading with the nearby civilization, and learn from them, but maintain their focus on what is essential for survivial. Also, during this phase, this population is still facing survival pressures, often military ones. Gradually, these people become "strong", meaning they have competencies and a culture that makes it increasingly effortless to survive and prosper. Much of this comes from becoming cultured in ways that increase productivity or martial prowess. - Only at this stage, when survival is no longer a concern (and especially if all competetion has been eliminated), does the weakening stage start. Gradually cultural values seep in that reduce productivity/efficiency of the population. Meanwhile, essential survival skills fade to the background and are forgotten. Still, during most of this phase, this more civilized population has economic advantages and perhaps access to specialists that allow them to fend off nearby populations, often for centuries. - Eventually, though, some event (or series of events) occur that bring a shock to the sturcture of this civilization. Maybe a few bad harvests, maybe some barbarian invation, maybe a plague. At this point, the civilization has become brittle, and shatters easily.
I'm pretty sure I see this pattern repeat itself for the Greek, Roman, Muslim Caliphate, Ottoman and many Chinese civilizations. Then there are some cases that doesn't really go through all the stages. For instance, Mongols, Huns, Goths and some others spread themselves too thin to really build their own civilization, so they inherited whatever civilizations (including their corruption) they conquerd. Similarly, Europe form about 1000AD to the end of WW2 was always in a state of countries competing against each other, so they were constantly facing survival pressures that kept most of them from becoming _too_ corrupt.
Ibn Khalodoun had described a cycle of four generations of rulers and his theory echoes in Fourth Turning theory nowadays.
So nihil novi sub sole...
We (the west) are not what we once were. I’m so sorry Ukraine.
Dismissing those efforts because of a vocal few or because it's people you don't like is a disservice to those actually struggling.
In more normal bi- or multi- polar periods (50s - 90s), international order often submitted to great power politics. What was right or legal was less important than who wanted what.
I have argued, tons, that America is making the world more peaceful. It was hard to sell especially to Arab/Muslim countries but without a unipolar power, it's lots of small powers fighting each other for territory.
> institutions and America seemed infallible
Couple that with recklessness. Fatca, CRS, Trade deals, etc... lots of countries got screwed bad and treatment from the masters was as bad and discriminatory as it can get. If people sympathies with Putin, you are doing something wrong.
- Pax Britannica
- Pax Americana
Of the three periods of peace, Americana is the most peaceful.
That's not to say there aren't faults, but there are far fewer faults than previous eras.
The reason developing nations want a multipolar world is to have room to manoeuvre and develop themselves, to be able to bargain with multiple powers, there is not much bargain in a unipolar world, when the USA does not want you to get too big, or your interest conflicts with theirs you're fucked.
USA (and the west) has learned that colonialism with a foreign army does not work efficiently, so they colonize countries by choosing who gets elected or performing coups and putting people that serve that interests even on the detriment of their nation.
African nations make a good example for countries that are officially independent but have no sovereignty whatsoever.
It's a monopoly of power, what's worse is it thinks it's interests are what defines good and bad.
And another key question. What will Western governments actually do? What if the war gets really bad? Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime? And will this crash the economy?
It's like washing your hands in the face of an airborne virus.
I'd be very surprised if this extends too far past separatists territories.
Russia's ability seize it's desired positions is significantly greater if Ukraine has no functioning airforce or military infrastructure.
While this _does_ make it easier for Russia to invade the rest of Ukraine (again, because of a lack of military infrastructure) I still think it is a stretch that they will go for a full-country occupation.
While this is not exactly a parallel, think back to Operation Desert Storm. The US-supported coalition had no intent of occupying Iraq, but it's push into Kuwait was made _significantly_ easier after they completely annihilated a significant portion of Iraq's military structure (inside and outside of Kuwait).
If Putin pushes further then we'll know he's gone completely mad.
AIUI, Ukraine cannot join NATO at the moment; it doesn't control its own borders (Crimea, Donbas).
If Russia annexes Donbas, then they're back to the previous problem: NATO on the border. Note that Russia has not annexed the part of Georgia they invaded; it is now supposedly an independent republic. My guess is that they would settle for independent republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. They don't want Global Nuclear War any more than we do. It's a shame Ukraine didn't agree to give them autonomy earlier; now it looks like Russia is determined to destroy the Ukrainian military infrastructure, and autonomy isn't any longer up for discussion.
> What will Western governments actually do?
Nothing really.
> Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime?
No. Boris Johnson in the UK is already being insulted for his nothing sanctions. I highly doubt the West will go after the assets of Putin and the rest of his oligarchs.
> And will this crash the economy?
Possibly?
The US did sanction Russia, but is actually more of a sanction against Germany. China might even like an invasion for different reasons, although they probably will call them out on it officially.
You are probably correct that western countries won't do much.
The US also has plenty of volunteer militias, yet I doubt that could be seen as an indicator for Americans unwillingness to fight for their country.
I'll concede to your comparison to a US militia when some state like Florida leaves the union and the US has to arm some QAnon loons to take it back.
[0] https://de.rt.com/europa/132333-putin-verkundet-militarische...
He also said he'd "show Ukraine real decommunization" the day before. Not sure if that was propaganda or a threat…
I don't expect them to occupy the rest of Ukraine. They will probably settle for destroying large parts of the Ukrainian military.
Unfortunately this is what happens when countries are pressured to de-nuclearize, promises of Western protection and then fall to bullies.
> Does anyone have any projections for how this war will go? Is the Ukrainian military powerful?
There are many projections, though wars are notoriously hard to predict.
Ukraine has a military, but Russia is extremely powerful and has one of the largest militaries in the world. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-... Russia has tons of equipment & everything else it needs to overwhelm Ukraine.
Geography is a key issue in wars, and Ukraine's geography is awful for Ukraine in a Russia/Ukraine conflict. Again, here's my understanding. Ukraine is just a flat plain on the path from Russia, so geography provides relatively little protection to Ukraine. The Dnieper River (which runs basically North/South in the middle of Ukraine) does provide some geographic protection, but by that point Ukraine has lost a huge amount of its territory. Kyiv (the capital of Ukraine) is on the Dnieper river, but it's way to the north near Belarus, and thus Kyiv is relatively easy for Russia to reach via Belarus. The Carpathian mountains in the west and the Crimean mountains in the south make it harder for other countries to help Ukraine. The eastern part of Ukraine has a lot more Russians than the western part, so the eastern parts will be easier for Russia to hold since they'll get more help from the population.
One discussion of a plausible outcome is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9c_HhpvBpg
(Binkov uses a sock puppet to lighten an otherwise somber subject.)
> Will this turn into a guerilla war, or will it go the way of total war? Or will it result in total capitulation?
Russia can take whatever it wants from Ukraine, at least initially. Russia's military is just too powerful, and there aren't any serious geographic barriers to prevent Russia from taking whatever it wants in the short term if Russia really wants to do so.
Whether or not it'll become a guerilla war is up to the Ukrainians. However, if the Ukrainians are willing to make it a guerilla war, and that seems likely at least on the western side, they can make Ukraine very hard to hold (at a horrific cost in Ukrainian lives). In the long run, if the Ukrainians are willing to seriously apply guerilla warfare, I think there's a good chance they'll make at least the western side too painful to hold if Russia goes that far.
I would not be surprised if Russia only took part of Ukraine, e.g., the easternmost parts of Ukraine, perhaps up to the Dnieper River, and perhaps also take Kyev. Russia gets lots more land, and it creates fear (which they may interpret as respect) in everyone around them.
> And another key question. What will Western governments actually do? What if the war gets really bad? Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime? And will this crash the economy?
Western governments have already sent in a lot of military gear to help Ukraine. Western governments won't put troops in. They aren't obligated to do so (Ukraine is not a member of NATO), and the geography of Ukraine would make it hard to do anyway. Western governments have made that quite clear.
They'll put in sanctions. They will probably hurt Russia significantly. I think for Putin this is more about honor, and thus any sanctions will probably not be enough by themselves to force Russia out.
One huge problem is that the EU absolutely needs oil. Solar & wind get press, but they aren't enough today (or for years to come). The EU can't heat their homes or move their people without oil. Russia has oil.
Russia is more likely to grab eastern parts or the eastern side of Ukraine (east of the Dnieper). Russia could take the whole country, but is unlikely to keep it permanently due to guerilla resistance, so it either won't try or it will eventually give up western Ukraine. Sanctions by themselves won't be enough, but sanctions + guerilla warfare would plausibly recover at least the western side of Ukraine.
I do think that there will be serious negative consequences long-term for Russia, beyond sanction-related ones. It suddenly gives a powerful reason for other countries to join NATO (such as Finland and Sweden and a rump of Ukraine) and for them all to increase their military spending. It also gives them a very good reason to not trust Russia in the future.
This is a sad time.
Sanctions will have no effect on Russia. Think about it - what physical items does Russia need to obtain that it cannot produce itself or obtain from China.
What physical items does the West need from Russia - gas and oil because the 'net zero' belief in the West has stymied their ability to obtain energy domestically.
If you don't pay the gas bill then you get your gas cut off. If the EU stops transacting with Russia, then it can't pay its gas bill either. And the result will be the same.
The belief in the power of money in the West will be its downfall. Putin doesn't need the West's money. He has as many roubles as he wishes to deploy and the ability to impose whatever level of tax in roubles is required to ensure people sell their labour and output to him within Russia.
War is funded by manpower, energy resources and industrial production, not by US dollars.
Russia is certainly much more powerful militarily in pretty much every respect: it has significantly more manpower, more and better equipment, and economics to supply it logistically. I don't think there's any chance for Ukraine to win on its own.
That said, Ukraine isn't Syria. It has an air force, and, perhaps more importantly, capable anti-air. It has fairly modern tanks, attack helicopters, and cruise missiles. Russia will certainly take considerable losses taking over.
The other aspect is motivation. On the Russian side, there are certainly people whose dream is coming true right now, but most soldiers - especially not conscripts! - are not really willing to take a bullet in the process of "de-Nazifying Ukraine". I don't expect any massive anti-war resistance, but they won't fight to the end.
On the Ukrainian side, there is a mixed bag. On one hand, most of them - even those whose native language is Russian, who might self-identify as ethnically Russian, and who might even support greater regional and language autonomy etc - don't really want Russia to violently take over. People tend to be motivated to fight desperately regardless of ideology when their cities are burning. But there's also a minority that would really like to repeat what happened back in 2014 in Donetsk and Lugansk (and what was kinda sorta attempted but didn't work out in Kharkov and Odessa), and who genuinely see the Russian forces as liberators. Needless to say, those people will make fine overseers once the fighting is over, and might even help during it.
It depends on what you mean by 'win'. Like, of course there's no chance of Ukraine pushing back into Russia, but it's not impossible they do what Finland did and inflict enough pain that Russia pulls back with small gains at best.
The other thing is that the invasion has already triggered those massive sanctions, and they aren't just going away even if Russia pulls out. If Russia does pull out, it'll have paid that price for no gains. So I think that they will keep pushing even if the military costs are higher than anticipated. Putin especially, since this entire escapade appears to be his pet project - the elites who are hit by the sanctions would have a great excuse to remove him.
So I do think that it will be occupation and guerrilla warfare for a while.
It's all there in Keynes' how to pay for the way - except Putin isn't running a liberal democracy that may object to high taxes.
But given that it did happen, I don't think the Russians will back down now. My guess is that they'll occupy Luhansk and Donetsk with minimal losses while severely reducing the Ukraine's ability to do anything about that. Judging from the events last night, the Ukranian air defenses were basically not very effective and they likely suffered a lot of damage to what little offensive capability they might have had.
The question is what the end game is. It's important to consider all the other countries that border Russia. Georgia for example. Or Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. All former Soviet territory with pro-Russian regimes and some domestic anti Russian sentiments. I'd say that this is a not so subtle hint to those countries to fall in line and do as their told. It would be a mistake to assume that this is just about the Ukraine.
As for the West's response; I think we're seeing it and it seems Putin is neither impressed nor surprised by it so far. I don't think there's much else the West can or will do. I think when the dust settles, the EU will end up re-establishing some level of trade with Russia eventually but the relation will be an uncomfortable one for some time to come. But the gas will keep on flowing, for now.
I do think that proposals for e.g. new natural gas power plants are effectively shelved as of now in the EU. Given what just happened, increasing the EUs dependence on Russia for gas even more than it already is seems not advisable. Once that realization sinks in, I think Russian gas imports will start decreasing pretty rapidly over the next decade as countries move ahead with plans to basically stop burning gas on a much more accelerated timeline than what countries were talking about at COP26 just a few months ago.
Economically, we were overdue for a stock market correction and I think we're in the middle of one now; at least judging from my investment portfolio this morning which is looking like most of last years gains have been wiped out as of this morning. A lot of people are going to have a rough year economically. Especially in Russia.
Say Ukraine has ~100.000 trained~ soldiers, 10.000s with experience, and ~100.000 further conscripts, and more veterans/civilians.
It would need to end when russian military has enough presence in cities to make resistance meaningless. In order for russians to move by land into the cities, their tanks and road transports would (at the very least) need to survive handheld anti-tank missiles, of which Ukraine holds thousands, maybe 10s of thousands? Probably, weapons and ammunition will not run out for Ukraine as long as they are willing to put up resistance.
The losses for russia before this might amount to 10.000s?
At some point, losses will force a change of russian leadership, or willingness to fight among Ukrainians runs out.
Not selling somebody your tomatoes primarily affects your tomato growers who will go bust, not those buying the tomatoes - particularly if they have plenty of tomatoes internally, can easily produce them or can get them from those lovely tomato growers in China in return for oil and gas.
There's rather too much faith in the power of the mighty US dollar. Quite a few people are going to find out the hard way that electronic impulses on a computer don't mean as much in reality as gas and oil supplies.
Economy is important because it’s felt by ordinary people. In Moscow there were already pretty big protests. I think Putin made a mistake, he could just install fake democratic government and retire in peace.
Putin needs just enough territory so that the NATO can't get too much near Russian and a pillow territory to handle future conflicts without touching Russian territory
- Russia will want to make this war as short as possible. They have their objectives (occupy Donezk and Luhansk + some more, destroy the offensive power of the Ukranian army and destroy the infrastructure needed for reinforcements ) and then declare the thing a success.
- The US wants it to go on as long as possible, so they will indirectly intervene by financing and supporting any insurgents.
The war was over before it began. The Ukrainian government telling people to take up arms is completely suicidal. War in the 21st century begins and ends with air superiority. Nothing else matters at all. Once air superiority is established, the war is over. And Russia is flying with absolute impunity over all of Ukraine now. The smartest decision is total capitulation at this point. Because Putin will stop at nothing and will not respect any form of ROE. The alternative is Kyiv being reduced to rubble and tens of thousands dead.
If this were Bosnia or Libya, we would. But the reality is that we are now playing chicken with a lunatic that has his finger on the worlds largest arsenal of nuclear ICBMs.
Not enough to deny the airspace. And they are useless against high altitude bombers/attackers. But the real threat is not so much getting bombed from the air, but the fact the Russia will be able to move and deploy their artillery/MLRS completely at will due to air superiority. No doubt we will see cities flattened if prolonged urban fighting drags out.
Even Tucker Carlson is parroting Russian propaganda. https://i.redd.it/pr9tnneyemj81.png
I hope the Ukrainian people fight back as hard as they can and the governments of the world help them in any way they can.
Have they actually been to Russia? The country is intensely anti-Western and already on the verge of becoming a Chinese puppet state.
With EU human rights protections the undercurrent of liberalization for minorities in Ukraine is safe to flourish unlike in Russia. Even an extremely religious country like Poland has massive public support for abortion protections now and anti-lgbt laws were responded to with sanctions by the EU.
Eastern orthodox christianity is the only strong christian conservative power left in Europe. European right wing populists’ parties and christian conservative parties openly point to Russia as an example of a country that still has christianity at its core. The American christian right is ideologically aligned with them and they regularly share ideas and events.
If you actually followed European politics nothing I said is suprising and my first comment would have been obvious.
No, it's definitely not that.
It's just use Russian talking points to 'Blame Democrats' and get ratings. That's it. It's just a wedge issue.
For Trump it's different. He sees everything in terms of personal relationships, and this sounds odd but I actually believe he thinks being on 'good personal terms' with Putin would be good for the countries. Like two Dynastic builders in NYC, getting on each other's 'good side'. Putin however is not like that at all, he's thinking about the legacy of his nation of himself, and of course, both men are representing states, and Trump's 'personal relationships' have nothing to do with real diplomacy or strategic issues.
Secondarily, Trump sucks up to powerful people, Trump was trying to build a tower in Moscow before becoming president, he offered Putin the Penthouse for free as a brand building exercise but also to smooth the permits and attract buyers. Much of Trumps properties take investments from rich people from around the world, aka 'ill gotten money' much of it Russian.
Warming up to Putin in such a personal way and defending him in the press was a novel thing for America and a lot of the populist movement with with him on it. Fox, some GOP and a lot of pundits used the opportunity to flip the narrative as well.
So unfortunately, no, Carlson and the Russian-appeasers in the GOP are not thinking geostrategically. It's just cynical politics.
>I hope the Ukrainian people fight back as hard as they can and the governments of the world help them in any way they can.
I remember people talking like this at the start of the Syrian civil war.
I hope the fighting ends as quickly as possible. I don't care who "wins".
> British foreign secretary Liz Truss...sat down for talks with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. When Lavrov, in response to Truss’s demands that Russia withdraw troops from its territory bordering Ukraine, asked if she recognized Russia’s sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions, Truss replied that the UK would "never recognize Russian sovereignty over these regions" — prompting a more informed diplomat to jump in and explain to her those were Russian regions.
If your highest-ranked diplomats are conducting negotiations at Geographically Challenged Schoolchild level, maybe suggesting that you're part of the problem shouldn't be called flamebait and propaganda. This was yet another reveal to Lavrov that the British public is wildly uniformed about Russia, all the way to the top.
Ukraine may be an innocent victim of this stupidity. That doesn't excuse it in any way.
The thug accosts the victim, threatens and then proceeds to assault the victim in full view of a large number of bystanders who are numerous enough to defend the victim and alter the outcome but not convicted enough to take on the inconvenience of doing so.
Nevertheless all the bystanders voice words of encouragement and sympathy and even offer to sue the aggressor in court after the fact if the victim is harmed or killed.
But in the mean time, they’ll be able to kill a whole lot of people and destroy a whole lot of lives, and wreck Ukrainian democracy and economic prosperity for years if not decades.
In fact if NATO had moved in about 50 to 100K troops at the invitation of Ukraine sometime over the past 3 months, its really unlikely that Putin would have upped the ante.
If anything the multiyear patience and planning on his part suggests he absolutely wants to win and wont take a chance if he thinks he might lose or draw
It's useful to remember that "almost certainly" is a synonym for "not necessarily".
Meanwhile Russia being right on the border quickly invades Ukraine before the NATO troops can arrive and now we have NATO troops entering a war zone or pulling back and looking even weaker. Also, this sounds eerily like the start of WWI although then it was Russia mobilizing and Germany then decided to move quickly into Belgium and North into Russia.
Often I wonder which of our leaders has ever played poker. It seems like Putin has figured out that we won't push all-in, ever, so he steals another pot.
If the west really cared about this, the only way now is to retaliate way out of proportion to what's happened.
Before this happened, the west also didn't act like it wanted to contain the Russians, so the Russians got brave. If there had been some sort of response the Russians would have backed off. It's somewhat stable for both sides to bluster about this or that minor victory. Can't do that now.
There's at least one other world leader who clings to power because of this trait.
Recent mutterings suggest Trump thinks highly of Putin though, so it's hard to tell.
I don't think the president of the US has the authority to nuke anything by his own accord.
Turns out Trump's general hard line on everything was useful for something.
Those laws are very very vague and like you said, it's possible someone in the chain of command could argue it's against the law since a nuke would likely cause collateral damage one way or another. I think it's technically incorrect to definitively say that the US president has complete and total control over nuking a target.
the nuclear football is basically a fancy sat phone though, so it's less clear if the generals who get the war order would actually obey.
Care to provide a source for this?
If you're referring to the podcast where Trump mentioned that Putin's move (annexation of Lugansk & Donetsk) is "genious", that's not some sort of fanboyism or admiration, but simply admitting that the move, tactically, was really good - a lot of people (myself included) did fall for it!
>“He’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to New York Times reporter Shane Goldmacher and video footage obtained by the pro-Democratic group American Bridge. “He’s taking over a country, really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, just walking right in.”
To anyone with basic reading comprehension, it's obvious that Trump isn't praising Putin, he's praising Putin's tactics, which, judging by the (lack of) response from the West, is pretty smart!
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nat...
It's actually exactly the opposite and the guy who wrote the book on containment called it a tragedy. We don't need to rewrite history.
But it's also the case that the west is straddling strategies here. Either do as Kennan says and just leave NATO the way it was and don't poke the wounded bear, or actually encircle Russia completely, stick nukes in their back yard and show them who is boss.
Don't pretend to do both and neither, that is the worst of all worlds.
Are you sure about that? Are you really willing to risk your chips betting on a retreat? This sort of geopolitical chicken would be incredibly dangerous.
Despite the bluster of "I'm the only one who's gone toe to toe with Putin" there is only so much anyone can do in this situation. If KSA decided to invade one of its neighbors, there is only so much anyone could do because doing anything would severely disrupt energy. But in the Caucasus and Dnieper areas there, I mean you have nukes involved. Like India and Pakistan.
Then there is the promise we made not to station missiles in territories bordering Russia and the whole Orange Revolution Obama thing. That's a big deal to them just as it would be a big deal if Russia stationed missiles in Mexico or Cuba. We'd throw a fit too. Just as China would throw a fit if we stationed missiles in Taiwan.
The US could do the same thing. People like to complain about how much a bully the US has been (Chile, Guatemala, Vietnam, etc)... Now they are seeing how real bullies act in Russia and a lesser degree China (but they are on the sidelines biding their time) They can do what they want because they have little constraint --with big players it's self-imposed.
Even Canada does not share nuclear weapons with the US. That genuinely surprised me. US and Canada have unbelievably interconnected militaries -- see NORAD and various Artic zone military bases.
This is obviously a terrible situation for the Ukrainian people but at the same time they could have done a lot more to prevent it. They essentially let their military deterrent collapse years ago through a mix of corruption and apathy. If they had had a real combat effective military back in 2014 then Russia probably wouldn't have invaded in the first place.
I'm skeptical. Russia has been harrying and undermining Ukraine for many years. Remember Viktor Yanukovych and all the turmoil of that era? It's not like Ukraine has been through a period of decadence where they slacked off — they've never caught a break.
And now the full force of Russian imperialism is crashing down on them.
Hitler did the same thing right up until 1939. From what I've read he was actually surprised that the allies finally called his bluff after Poland, considering they just rolled over after the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
Have you read his recent announcement? He warned every foreign nation not to meddle or else:
> To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside - if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history,’ he said on a television broadcast around 6am Moscow time.
How popular do you think Putin will be at home when he announces he's going to full war with NATO? How would he even do that? You think he's going to launch ICBMs?
Putin is not elected by a popular vote, the voice of the people does not matter there.
Estonia is a NATO member already, the current conflict has been escalated because of the previously announced red line demands (Ukraine never getting into NATO) that the US diplomats discarded. It is their job to negotiate peace in the region too. Negotiations is a nasty business and the outcomes are nasty too. Those who seek easy and pretty solutions that satisfy all parties in one step are destined to escalate the situation further up.
The alternative is to let him repeat 1939.
The lesson learned should be that if you don't stop the thug with force, then he will eventually become strong enough to stop you.
this is a lesson of a past war, the world has moved, this is no longer a WW2 era, if you try to apply a similar foreign intervention now the chances are you'll get a nuke on your lawn.
You don't get to put that one back in the bottle, and you're going to have to have more faith than the Pope to think that no one will respond.
Nuclear War isn't like Civilization. It's a momentary bang followed by a lot of whimper.
I think Putin wants to escalate beyond Ukraine and conquer at least parts of the Baltic countries. Hopefully NATO will stand firm against that.
You also have to take into consideration the last 2 times Germany entered a conflict it didn't work out too well for them, so they have all the more reasons to be reserved.
Practically speaking, perhaps you should avoid poking the aggressive neighbor next door, especially when you can't have definitive assurance from the police station three blocks over?
It's not just Putin; Russian leaders through most of the 20thC have feared encroachment on their western borders, and have launched invasions and installed puppet regimes to create a buffer. The fact that Ukraine has clearly expressed its desire to join NATO, and NATO's refusal to reject that possibility, means that Russia perceives a threat that their greatest enemy will suddenly appear right on their border.
Georgia also wanted to join NATO; so they got invaded.
The West has played this hand very badly. Instead of declaring that under no circumstances would they send troops to Ukraine, they should have kept silent, or possibly sent a division of ground troops, to be dispersed around the country. They should also have leaned hard on Ukraine to make Donetsk and Luhansk officially autonomous regions. The Donbas would then become Russia's buffer zone, making them feel a bit less paranoid about NATO encroachment.
FWIW, I think NATO should have dismantled itself following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The modern NATO is a global organisation, not restricted to the North Atlantic. It's no longer a mutual defence pact for countries at risk of Russian attack; its main purpose now is simply to intimidate Russia.
This is a disaster and heartbreaking for everybody on the ground, Ukrainian and otherwise. We shouldn't forget that when the USSR fell, folks had moved all over the place. Friends and families are very blended in the former Soviet Union, and there are many, many Ukranian-Russians as well. My wife was born Russian-Estonian, with a lot of Russian-Ukranian family, and it's unhelpful to have one half of your heritage bombed and the other half being called the wasteland of civilization.
Don't make the situation for everyone even worse, no one needs that.
Whether or not the Russian people supports the war, using racist slurs doesn't help the peace process.
> President Putin's approval rating among the Russian public increased by nearly 10% since the crisis began, up to 71.6%, the highest in three years, according to a poll conducted by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, released on 19 March.[346] Additionally, the same poll showed that more than 90% of Russians supported unification with the Crimean Republic
So it looks to me that most Russians supported the Crimea invasion. Why would it be different now? Why do you think a minority supports this?
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-ra...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_...
It is globalization, which, in principle, is a good thing. Maybe nor for climate change since we are talking fossil fuels, but if a country has an abundance of resources, it would be a shame not to trade. If Russia needs the world and the world needs Russia, there is more chance for the conflict to end with diplomacy than by killing millions.
That's a bit premature.
As for the rest: Russians could rise en-masse to put a stop to this. Call a general strike all over Russia tomorrow and you might be able to avoid those decades of isolation and stagnating economy.
I don't think so when looking at what has happened historically. Also, until Putin attacks NATO territory (which he most likely won't) there's not going to be an all out war. We in the West are being a bit hyperbolic. This is a serious issue, but not a "omg nukes are going to be flying next week" level of seriousness. I'd instead watch what China will do with Taiwan while we are distracted...
Russia isn't some democracy that is cool with protesting. There are plenty of Russian's living there that are still USSR brainwashed and support this.
Interesting, I think that taking history into account that's actually far more likely than the opposite.
> Also, until Putin attacks NATO territory (which he most likely won't) there's not going to be an all out war.
That's two assumptions, both of which may be wrong, independently.
> We in the West are being a bit hyperbolic.
Hm. I don't think our current reaction to 'war at 30 km away from our Eastern border' is something that should be labelled hyperbolic. If anything it is rather tame.
> This is a serious issue, but not a "omg nukes are going to be flying next week" level of seriousness.
I'm not so much concerned with the next week bit as I am with the fact that you are worried about the timetable, but not about whether or not they will be flying at all.
> I'd instead watch what China will do with Taiwan while we are distracted...
Well, China now already knows something that they didn't know last week: that the Western world will stand by while they do what they want to do, as long as they don't attack a NATO member.
> Russia isn't some democracy that is cool with protesting.
Neither was Poland in the 80's. That didn't stop the protests.
> There are plenty of Russian's living there that are still USSR brainwashed and support this.
Yes, but that doesn't help the people in Ukraine.
If you’re completely confused at why Putin is doing this and the best reason you can come up with is that he’s evil and stupid and just wants destruction, it’s only because you don’t understand the situation.
That doesn't really matter though, what matters is that they are there illegally. A lot of Germans supported the invasion of Poland as well to gain some 'lebensraum'. That did not make them right.
> If you’re completely confused at why Putin is doing this and the best reason you can come up with is that he’s evil and stupid and just wants destruction, it’s only because you don’t understand the situation.
I'm not confused at all. But it appears that you are given your alternative history regarding Donbas.
Putin has a country that is imploding, and if he doesn't find a way to make it seem as though he is a powerful leader then he may be out of leadership position soon. Him starting this war is an act of desperation: nothing to lose and everything to gain because whatever he stands to lose he would have lost anyway.
You’re moving the goal posts. You suggested that the Russian people could or should stage mass protests. I responded that you’re naive for thinking that Russians are going to stage mass protests against this because there’s large public support for the military actions here. Now you’re saying it doesn’t matter if there’s support for the war because it’s still wrong and illegal. Well, no shit?
So which is it? Is it Putin acting as a dictator against the will of his people in a desperate attempt to retain power, or is it just that the Russians support those in the Donbas region?
But it's not as simple as support vs a lack of support, the third option is apathy, something that Russia has plenty of.
I tried to show you - apparently that didn't work - that verbal support for Putin's safari does not necessarily equate to actual support, the alternatives are probably not even on the radar if you haven't lived under a repressive regime: you are very careful to toe the party line in public, no matter what you may think in private, and bitching against the state is a cottage industry in Russia. Given all this, what is surprising is that plenty of Russians are actually quite vocal against this invasion, which I consider to be a very positive sign.
https://www.voanews.com/a/moscow-warns-russians-against-stag...
and
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-arrests-anti-war-prot...
> Is it Putin acting as a dictator against the will of his people in a desperate attempt to retain power
Yes
> or is it just that the Russians support those in the Donbas region?
Yes.
So there: false dichotomies are false, reality is a bit more difficult than you can imagine.
The Russians did not just simply decide to up and bomb Ukraine. The world is not that simple. A majority of Russians support Russian support for the Donbas region. They are culturally and ethnically Russian in the region.
I’m not defending Russia here but if you don’t talk about the core of the conflict you’re not coming any closer to a real understanding.
What makes me crazy is that there would be people that fall for such an obvious ploy.
A majority of Russians is not the same as a majority.
What's next? Latvia splitting in half?
For some background reading:
The fact that Russia says it’s true is not a good reason why it cannot be true.
This has been going on for 8 years and we had peace and stable lines for the last 4. What changed?
I don't know where the puppet masters and the narratives came in, you were the one bringing this bullshit in here, I didn't see any Russians. Where you got your ideas only you know.
> The fact that Russia says it’s true is not a good reason why it cannot be true.
I read it in Pravda. What's written there must be true, right? Just like they wrote last week: Russia will not invade Ukraine, so therefore I am right now hallucinating.
> This has been going on for 8 years and we had peace and stable lines for the last 4. What changed?
Russia went to war. And there was maybe peace in your book but for the people in Ukraine there wasn't peace and now there won't be for a much longer time.
You suggested very literally that the separatist movement in east Ukraine was a Russian ploy from the start to justify war. Somehow to you that’s more reasonable that just assuming it came about organically.
> Russia went to war. And there was maybe peace in your book but for the people in Ukraine there wasn't peace and now there won't be for a much longer time.
Objectively, the lines hadn’t moved and people stopped dying. We had peace and the conditions for a peaceful resolution and new borders.
Then all of a sudden, things escalated. A big important gas pipeline blew up. Then Russia came in and got involved.
You can believe one of two things:
1. Russia wanted so badly to curb stomp their economy that they blew up their own important pipeline to justify war.
2. Either the CIA or the neonazi militias, or both working together, are responsible for these attacks.
Neither makes a ton of sense, but one has to be true.
It is. This was a response to Russia's puppet being ousted. I'll forgive you if you haven't been following Ukraine since 2010 or so. But then stop making out like you have some special knowledge about what has been happening there for the last 12 years because it is a bit silly.
> Somehow to you that’s more reasonable that just assuming it came about organically.
No, I know that it did not came about organically, as do most people that are informed about Ukraine. This is not subject to discussion, nor is it subject to your fantasy story suddenly becoming true, in fact this is exactly the propaganda line coming out of the Kremlin.
> Objectively, the lines hadn’t moved and people stopped dying. We had peace and the conditions for a peaceful resolution and new borders.
There was at best an unresolved situation, and this is what is happening today: the furthering of the same goal that was in view when this whole thing escalated the first time. Consolidate, move forward. Consolidate, move forward. Putin is not making the same stupid mistake that Hitler made, he is taking his time to consolidate, which makes him far more dangerous.
> Then all of a sudden, things escalated. A big important gas pipeline blew up. Then Russia came in and got involved.
What a coincidence.
I'm going to stop responding to you, if you want to take that as a victory of sorts be my guest but I don't have the energy to continue to debate this, it makes no sense, but if you want to persist in it be my guest.
Scary stuff.
Isn't that pretty much the argument Russia made, when the US supported Kosovo independence from Serbia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%27s_reaction_to_the_200...
In order to do that in effective numbers that wouldn't get squashed immediately, there would have to be people leading and coordinating the opposition.
Appearing to be such a person is a quick way to accidentally eat plutonium for breakfast.
Yet; it's a strategic move for now, but what are Russia's plans after this? Just sit there and pretend nothing happened? This is part of a bigger plan.
When people were drafted for ww1 they thought it would last a few weeks/months... wait and see.
At first most experts said there wouldn't be an invasion, then they said they'd only invade the eastern part, now we're talking about the whole country. Only time will tell
For those curious about the numbers, there were 2 soldiers and 1 civilian killed in the annexation of Crimea[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...
Nitpick: they absolutely have the tech for it. They were using laser-guided heavy mortar rounds in Afghanistan.
https://community.apan.org/cfs-file/__key/docpreview-s/00-00...
They're not being naive. This is a deliberate effort to downplay the events. Always keep in mind that a war is often fought with different types of weapons, including information.
Lay off the Vodka Sergei, there have already been airstrikes in a Dozen Ukrainian cities. The scale already far outpaces anything that happened in Crimea.
Two weeks ago: The Western media is creating fake drama. Russia is never going to invade Ukraine. We're just trying to protect our security.
This week: The Western media is overreacting. Yes, it's an invasion, but it's not really a war, there's not going to be that many casualties.
Two weeks from now: The Western media is exaggerating. Yes, lots of people are dying, but this is a war, it can't be avoided. But it's really exaggerated to talk about "war crimes" and "mass civilian casualties". And we must not forget that this all began because of Western provocations!
- Russian that lives in the states
This is the whole reason we have separate countries and government. Setting your own policy as a country is not supposed to result in war.
Ukraine is standing firm on its sovereignty. A belligerent adversary has started a war because it feels the sovereign country isn't sovereign and can't be friends with certain countries. That upends the whole concept of countries, which further erodes Putin's credibility, if he had any left. He first upended self-determination in his own country, then internationally, and now seeks takeover of an entire foreign country.
To answer your question, yes. A country with nukes is dominating people as much as the British empire, Romans, and Mongols did? How is that even a serious question? With military forces spread through Korea, Japan, Germany, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Poland, Lithuania, Arizona, Alaska, Dominican Republic, Cuba, you name it. From sea to shining sea, then another sea and another sea.
That trick of ours won’t work again.
Going to end up looking like a fucking 9000 IQ play by Russia here, but hopefully the world proves me wrong.
"Biden only wants to intervene because of Hunters business dealings!"
>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".
I don't know exactly what "Seek immediate Security Council action" means. What if the US seeks it and doesn't find it? Is that in compliance with the memorandum?
#2 Refrain from the threat or the use of force against Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Both violated in the Krimean annexion 2014. Since Russia could easily violate this treaty, they could easily invade Ukraine now. And they got no weapons from signatories, only a few from the Baltics.
Treaties with these signatories are not worth the paper, otherwise Ukraine would have kept the nukes, and would have somehow got the codes also eventually.
I don't see that in the list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
What I do see is a promise made by both the US and Russia to "[r]efrain from the threat or the use of force against [...] Ukraine." So Russia definitely broke the promise, and I don't see where the US broke it.
It should not be a surprise that North Korea refuses to disarm.
We should be grateful Ukraine does not have nukes. 12 hours ago the world might've gotten 4000C hotter if they did.
When you say "world peace", do you mean European peace? California peace? Where is your world?
And yes, in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Afghanistan again, Iraq, Syria, and others, one or more parties in the conflicts had nukes.
I don't care about the other parties in the conflict. Nukes stop you from getting invaded, not from invading. Afaik, none of these countries were nuclear when they got steamrolled.
I spoke with a guy who fought that war. I asked him "do you think the war would have ended without American intervention?" and he responded "no, I don't think it would".
I wouldn't describe the country as a blooming economy, but it's peace here, for more than 20 years and counting.
If LBJ stuck to his promise, we could have avoid a ton of mess in Vietnam: "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."
We don't have a dog in this fight.
Edit: Apparently arguing for the US to not get involved in yet another foreign war warrants my comment being flagged.
Many have argued that it was US intervention in WWI that created the economic and political situations that allowed such a bad outcome to take place in WWII.
The US getting involved in WWI arguably extended that conflict, the action that made WWII possible, and had many drastic unintended consequences for humanity.
The very short version is this.
* During WWI, there were lots of peace overtures being pushed in Europe because a lot of people were sick of fighting. Because a lot of powerful people were hoping to drag the United States into that relative stalemate, these peace offerings were not taken as seriously as they otherwise would have been.
* Because the US's entrance tilted the scales at the end of WWI so dramatically, Allies were able to enact a little revenge in the Treaty of Versailles and impose punitive and humiliating economic and political measures. Rather than a normal, face-saving peace-treaty, Germany was punished harshly and this tilting of the scales is what led to conditions for the Nazis to take power.
* If Russia's economic and political attention wasn't directed externally at the time, it's likely the Russian Revolution would have failed and the world would have been spared a great deal of grief from Communism.
Obviously this is all alternative history speculation, but there's a strong case to be made that absolute US neutrality in WWI would have ended WWI sooner, not created the economic/social conditions that led to Nazis taking power in Germany, and Communists would have never taken root.
When people are convinced that there is only one way, then the propaganda worked.
As sad as it may be for Ukraine, they're going to have to do what they can to defend themselves with aid and supplies.
The one thought I have around this is Canada. Spitballing: There's a huge Ukrainian population there and the deputy PM has personal ties to the region. It's entirely possible, especially given recent events, that Trudeau decides it's politically expedient to get involved directly in some meaningful way. They'd also have to try to convince the other parties helping them maintain government. Even if that happens though, I suspect that won't make a difference to the outcome and the rest of NATO would look at it as a Canadian solo operation. I'd give this about a 0.001% chance of happening, maybe less. Any politician who got boots on the ground (barring some unforeseen change in circumstance) would probably be skewered public opinion-wise and be essentially kissing re-election goodbye.
I hate to say it, but I agree. Germany sent Ukraine a few thousand hats to help them resist Russian aggression, for Christ's sake.
Western powers will drop a strongly worded letter in the mail and implement economic sanctions that'll do diddly squat to the Russian authorities, besides maybe push them into a closer alliance with China.
Honestly, the least they could have done is massed NATO troops in Poland, the Baltics, etc. and kept strategic ambiguity about whether they planned to actually use them (instead of explicitly announcing, like dumbasses, they weren't going to get involved in any way that would bother Putin).
> It's entirely possible, especially given recent events, that Trudeau decides it's politically expedient to get involved directly in some meaningful way....I'd give this about a 0.001% chance of happening, maybe less.
Definitely less. IMHO, if they were going to have to get involved, they would have needed to have been moving troops and equipment for quite some time. I don't think they've done that.
Honestly, while I admire the courage, it might be the better solution to lay down weapons.
Wasn't that the intel estimate on how long it'd take Russia to take over? I saw Biden's statement that he was sending thoughts & prayers while he watched this and would talk it over with world leaders tomorrow. Since the last few rounds of sanctions did nothing after Crimea, I don't see this changing things.
By the time there is a real response, it's looking like this may be over. Given that their urgency was "I'll talk to world leaders about what to do tomorrow" rather than "let's enact the plan we already prepared during the weeks of warnings" I think we know which way things are headed.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
Given that it's apparently not urgent enough to do anything but watch this on TV until morning, it doesn't look like a priority to me.
Does that even matter? Isn't the more significant fact that Russia has veto on the Security Council?
And you can help by asking your government to sanction China. And stop buying goods from China
I see no evidence for this statement in western Europe countries. EU negative interest rates are an indicator of failure not success.
It's perfectly consistent to be opposed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and also reject the myth that the US's military is the only thing that maintains world peace.
"only thing" Not the only thing by any stretch... but definitely a major reason and a hugely stabilizing force.
The US, in a brief moment of national clarify, participated in exactly two just wars in the last century. The outcome of one of those wars was the establishment of liberal democracies across Western Europe, which is indeed a tremendous stabilizing force. But it's not clear to me that the US gets to claim outsized credit for the subsequent years of peacemaking under those nations.
And that is me being lazy to lookup whether there were other conflicts.
The US has been in lots of wars over the last century; what I said was that only two were just.
I mean, there is a war; Russia has been bombing and rocketing Ukrainian military installations all over the country. But it's not a declared war.
Is not the same thing.
I guess we're ignoring the 200k+ troops sent to Iraq w/o a declaration of war by Congress? I will agree with you on one point though...the President wasn't a maniac.
Excerpt:
"At 5:34 a.m. Baghdad time on 20 March 2003 (9:34 pm, 19 March EST) the surprise[130] military invasion of Iraq began.[131] There was no declaration of war.[132] The 2003 invasion of Iraq was led by US Army General Tommy Franks, under the code-name Operation Iraqi Freedom,[133] the UK code-name Operation Telic, and the Australian code-name Operation Falconer. Coalition forces also cooperated with Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the north. Approximately forty other governments, the "Coalition of the Willing," participated by providing troops, equipment, services, security, and special forces, with 248,000 soldiers from the United States, 45,000 British soldiers, 2,000 Australian soldiers and 194 Polish soldiers from Special Forces unit GROM sent to Kuwait for the invasion.[134] The invasion force was also supported by Iraqi Kurdish militia troops, estimated to number upwards of 70,000.[135]"
Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Iraq "continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability" and "actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability" posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region."
Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population."
Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people".
Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War.
Members of al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.
Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations.
Iraq paid bounty to families of suicide bombers.
The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight terrorists, and those who aided or harbored them.
The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism.
The governments in Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia feared Saddam and wanted him removed from power.
Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.
And I would put some emphasis on the state of the relation on: Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
The world is not a 'peaceful place' with a bunch of wars now and again.
It's held together by force.
Peace is a balance of, and righteous management of power.
The US+NATO+Allies form the basis of that power. Unfortunately, without the US, that 'Team' would basically be dysfunctional and wouldn't really work.
The Panama Canal, Suez Canal, the Gulf, S. China Sea - all of it would be controlled by various regimes if it were not for US power basically keeping it all open for everyone.
Israel and Egypt the 'lynchpin' of peace in the ME is kept that way because of US power. All of he Middle East would be like Syria were it not for US/West.
Obviously Taiwan would be in China and Korea would be vanquished by N. Korea.
It's hard to know exactly how the cards would fall, but they would definitely fall one way or another.
Unfortunately, we don't have a solution for Ukraine, but thankfully, this will be mostly contained in Ukraine thanks to NATO.
The same sentences were written two weeks ago with respect to Ukraine. You can't make any assumptions about what Russia will or will not do. Taking over the Suwalki gap could easily happen. The frog is best boiled slowly, and with ample time to get used to the new temperature.
Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine is much more equivalent to America's unprovoked attack on Iraq.
The current Russian claims about Ukraine, however, do appear groundless, based on the consensus of international media.
Source: Former mouthbreathing analyst
I beg your pardon? Eastern Europe is eternally grateful to the US that they won the cold war allowing them to break free from the Big Bear. Nations comprising 100+ million people from Estonia to Bulgaria are living their golden ages right now, because of US.
I was not born yet when Germany started WWII, but I was alive to see the US declare torture as a valid means of interrogation and bomb civilians with no repercusions. And my living relatives who suffered under a US-backed military coup may not be as quick to forgive either. Maybe your children will live in a peaceful world, but for many of us that's cold comfort.
Western leaders should impose total sanctions on Russia but also calm their own populations that there will not be any military confrontation with Russia.
I suspect that it is in fact acceleration of China's plans to resolve the Taiwan Situation that triggered this whole Ukraine crisis.
It's like the run-up to WWI. Everybody can see which way the wind is blowing. Once you are sure that war is inevitable, the best strategy is, unfortunately, to grab what you can.
Who knows, I certainly don't. Except, I believe that Taiwan is much more important to the rest of the World than Ukraine, (no disrespect intended towards Ukraine). Also, Taiwan has been preparing for this longer and not sure but it seems they have better equipped and prepared military. Then there's the matter of about 100 miles of Taiwan Strait between them..
China is very happy with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But they will not subordinate their long-term strategy on Taiwan to Russian goals; Xi will stick to "slowly slowly catchee monkey". He is not a military opportunist, as Putin has shown himself to be.
"More than 150 senior Russian officials have signed an open letter condemning Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine as 'an unprecedented atrocity' and warning of 'catastrophic consequences'."
[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...
Our time to fight back has come - Glory to Ukraine! Слава Україні!!!
update: dont get me wrong, true Russians are against this war, I have alot of friends in Russia and they ALL sending me messages of support - мы поможем вам стать свободными, братья!
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
This would seem like the right thing to do, but apparently it isn't. I have a feeling that sometime in the future, we will look back at this as an oppertunitly where we could have stopped Russia.
The End of History? Not so fast. Free people not having a good run here.
This is an invasion of a peaceful country by its neighbor. They are complete opposites.
Maintaining the current borders does not advocate for self determination. War might not either, but the Ukraine isn't going to give up that land peacefully
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Rus...
US presence, aka expansionism in the MENA region, was very much the declared motivator for AQ and OBL. Thus the demands were also to pull US troops out of these countries, those demands already existed before 9/11.
Not to dig into this too much, but what I meant was that US wasn't there to permanently make Afghanistan a territory of USA.
Already got enough states trying to take care of and some territories existing in weird places, so I doubt there is much incentive to add even more of that, except maybe Cuba.
This is extremely short-sighted. I hope you will kick him out in a month.
Finland gets the next worst treatment, simply saying it should be “absorbed”.
Interesting that it says military action is to be avoided and that Russia should use it’s natural resource dominance to extract concessions from other countries.
I don't believe for a second that this represent Putin's strategy in any meaningful way.
Putin's Russia is committing a civilizational suicide.
Soon we will turn into a North Korea, completely isolated from the world, with no high-tech industry, and the only major "ally" being China. Lots of human potential will be wasted forever.
This will last for 10-15 years, then Putin dies (he's not immortal). I don't see Russia being chained to China forever, so I think we are bound to repeat the process of re-opening to the world -- the same process we went through in the 1990s.
I have pretty good chances of spending my entire remaining life in this predicament.
I know many people who have escaped Ukraine over the last century. I say escaped, because for most of the last hundred years the Ukrainian people have been in a vice. Their culture, society and history have been gradually erased. The expats I know who left a few generations ago don't consider recent generations of Ukrainian peoples to even be Ukrainian. Russia has been bitterly grooming their neighbor ever since they were divorced in the fall of the USSR, but even before that, too.
It's all so sad. Beyond the deaths, turmoil, economic destruction, if Putin sees this through then an entire nation will have been erased. Erased!
I don't want a world war, but we must ask ourselves when is it worth risking sacrifice of that which is personal. When the next nation is consumed? When it's too late?
I recently worked with some really lovely peers from that region, from Ukraine. I wish I could teleport them somewhere else.
All of this makes me feel so sick.
Kinetic attacks, of course, are easy to classify, even if they happened accidentally. For example near the polish border.
EDIT: though the wording might still be significant. If the question is worded "Should Russia support the sovereign, Russia-aligned republics of Donetsk and Luhansk", that might poll significantly differently from a question that's worded "Should Russia invade Ukraine" even though both mean the same thing. Just like how >50% of Americans answer "no" to the question of "Should schools in America teach Arabic Numerals" because they're misled by the question, not because they're opposed to teaching people about numbers.
Donetsk and Luhansk have declared independence, and Russia has recognised them. Secession is not a new phenomenon; Texas seceded from Mexico. Several regions seceded from the former Yugoslavia, and were rapidly recognised (and reinforced militarily) by western countries.
I think it's perfectly legitimate to argue that Russia is not invading Ukraine, but rather supporting the Donbas republics. I mean, I don't agree; and I think there's a fair chance that Russia will invade Ukraine, and install a puppet. But they haven't done it yet. I suspect that for the next few weeks, they'll restrict themselves to air and missile attacks on Ukrainian military installations, with troops-on-the-ground restricted to Donbas.
Beyond a few weeks, who's to say? No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia-uk...
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/02/09/yuval-noa...
Next we'll give China a pass when they "take back" Taiwan.
Fuck the "economy". Freedom is the most important thing, how many more millions need to die before we understand this?
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-21-2022
How much was being prepared behind curtains during previous weeks ..
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/russian-president-vladi...
None of that matters though, Putin is at war with us. We should wake up and go to war with him back, something we've avoided. Wars are costly, but this one doesn't have to cost lives. NATO isn't going to send troops into Ukraine, but we should economically shut down Russia. Kick them off Swift, close the gas and oil pipelines. Eat the cost.
Germany's gas infrastructure is much better integrated to the rest of Europe now than it was a few years ago, and the EU has extensive emergency reserves. We're also coming out of winter soon. We'll just have to buy more cereal from the US. Prices will go up, jobs will be impacted, but solders won't be dying. Not yet. If we don't bite the bullet and accept the pain now, this is only going to get worse. What's next, Georgia? Kazakhstan? Finland isn't in NATO. If China sees we're soft on Russia, what does that mean for Taiwan?
We need to wage all out economic war. The cost of doing nothing has gone up, and up, and up. How high are we prepared to see it go?
The world now looks at Russia similar to how it looked at Nazi Germany in 1939.
You've got to get rid of Putin.
What Putin does is far out of the conventional doctrine.
He is attacking Russia's sister nation. He is not defending Russia's interests.
- nyokodo | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27565836
And why couldn't a deal between NATO and Russia happen? Something like "Okay, Ukraine won't join NATO within the next 10 years"?
Who benefits from this the most? Is there anyone benefiting? I doubt it'd be happening if it wasn't the case, right?
Ukraine could have become an autocratic republic like Belarus or Kazakhstan easily. But people of Ukraine chose not to.
I think there should be a line added to the press codices of this world to never ever let this kind of meaningless "thoughts and prayers" line be transported. A politician should not even put it in their press releases, knowing that nobody will print it.
As a citizen, thoughts and prayers might be all you can do.
As a politician, it's your damn job to do things. Thoughts and prayers won't cut it.
Edit: This was screen grabbed from Weibo which was posted by Horizon News. (sorry got the wrong news agency)
https://twitter.com/lingli_vienna/status/1496097706493816833
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-news-outlet-ukraine-co...
For and article showing their cooperation. I would imagine China is. Wry curious about the actions and resolve of the West in this situation.
Personally I guess they will support Russia via trade and not partake in sanctions.
Form this I feel the west has to put tariffs or reduce trade on nations that trade with Russia for maximum effect. It could also be a useful way to rebalance the trade with China which is the aim of some western governments.
China is also in a bind as if they recognise the break away regions this gives political credit to Taiwan's independence. From this I suspect they will continue to publicly offer Ukrainian support, and appear as the peace makers, but do little in actual effect.
EDIT: China now calling West to blame for situation and there isn't an invasion.
If anyone had any doubts as to the morality of Chinese leadership these days...
That's simply the strategy of Mad Men.
The problem is, he really is mad and has thousands of nukes.
The self induced detachment from reality like Angela Merkel suspected in 2014. In reality a corrupt second class paranoid ward boss of a corrupt second class paranoid former major power. With thousands of nukes. And he probably thinks his time is running out to establish a Russian empire in his lifetime. Despite thousands of nukes.
Do you recognize the repeating pattern above? Thousands of nukes.
So yes, he will use nukes if there is no other option left.
There will be a Russian Empire or there will be nothing. Your choice.
Pray some fraction from the Russian power apparatus eliminates him in time. But I doubt, there is anyone left, not infected by the same illusion.
When the Russian judicial system went after a few of them, and specifically Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the US immediately started to sanction Russia.
Since then I've lived through years of the West accusing Russia of interfering in democracy, and just endless nonsense propaganda, like blaming Putin for Trump winning the election. Zero self reflection on them interfering in Russia.
While I support Ukrainian independence, I understand why Putin would freak out about having a hostile neighbour backed by the West and capable of installing weapon systems within close Range of Moscow.
What do you call it when the Russian state hacks the the political party institution in America before an election?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_National_Committee_...
Russia's direct interference through social media over the past decade has paled in comparison to... what, indirect interference of supporting a neighbor who wants independence?
If everyone around you would rather associate with the other side of the planet, maybe you have to take a look at yourself. Russia is not equipped for such introspection and self-driven reform. Joining NATO is not remotely equivalent to annexation.
Think about it, he likes power so much that he has made himself the de facto dictator of Russia. People opposing him get murdered or jailed, or murdered in jail. He really likes power. He is said to be world's richest man. He loves money and power very much we can tell from his actions. If he can get more power he will take it.
Mainstream media is already using it as justification for the present extreme inflation in usa.
Is his propaganda that effective that Russians agree with any of it. I think if anyone can stop him, it has to be ordinary Russians. I don’t see sanctions or warnings from Biden or EU doing anything. And they will never directly step in and protect the Ukranian people.
https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/15/war-and-anarchists-anti-au... (note: the disinformation section is especially relevant)
I guess you are speaking for majority of Russians. Is there an independent survey to back it up?
And yeah not everyone listens to propaganda, and there is going to be a lot of diversity of opinion, but propaganda does work and a large percent of the population are going to get duped.
See: “principle of charitable interpretation”
> What I mean is – well, take creationists. According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country.
> And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth.
You could live in a circle that unanimously opposes the war, and still be in a country that's 60% for it.
Thing is, given the propaganda machine in Russia and the lack of free (even non-guvernamental) organizations we can't really tell if that percentage is 6% or 60%.
There's two major axes, here.
The government is pushing the 'Ukranian neo-nazis' propaganda, because it's a convenient bullshit excuse (as is all the spilled ink in Putin's essay about long-dead history). Some soft-headed people obviously believe that wholesale. What isn't an excuse, though, is that Ukraine did take steps to restrict its Russian minority. Many Russians who don't swallow the neo-nazi nonsense are sympathetic to that view on the situation (for, uh, obvious nationalistic reasons).
Now, whether or not sympathy for that is sufficient grounds to do nothing and respect Ukrainian sovereignty, to prosecute a proxy war, a limited war, or a full war all depends on how much of a warhawk you personally are.
My highly unscientific feeling is that public support rests somewhere north of 'most Russians believe that Ukraine has been repressing Russians, and would support a proxy war', and somewhere short of 'drive the fascist swine out - prosecute a full war and occupation of Kiev'.
"Dialect for peasants" has its roots in Ruthenian language, that was a main language in Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
And no, Russians were not written wholesale as Ukrainians, anyone who can check Soviet records can attest that.
>> people hear the chant all the time - “Moskalyaku na gilyaku Well, if they would listen to Russian TV, they would hear that.
But exactly how many people are you ready to kill over your sympathies? Could you give a ballpark order of magnitude estimate? 10? 100? 10,000? [1] 100,000?
On a scale of cultural repression, I can't say that this situation elicits even a small fraction of sympathy from me as what's going on with say, the Uyghurs in China.
[1] We're past that mark already.
The best realistic outcome at the moment is something similar to what happened to Georgia - occupation of the two territories, a referendum, annexation, and an end to the proxy war.
Whether we are going to get that outcome, or something worse, is, of course, unclear.
For example, just from today's talk (face-to-face):
* that Ukrainian forces supposedly committed crimes in Donbass region -- when I ask who in particular and how, these people fail to answer. When I say that they had full right to suppress armed riot of Girkin & co, they switch the topic.
* that the government were illegally overthrown in 2014. I challenged that with the fact that Yanukovich's own party voted to introduce an president interim and start new elections.
Both times I pushed the interlocutor and asked if I lied, and they have nothing to say, nor have more facts, but jump between topics all the time, switching from facts to questions -- like "did they start living better?" or "what about those who died in Odessa protest?" I guess this demagogy is enough for those who want to justify their stance, and to claim own moral superiority.
I asked if they support the invasion, and they say they don't. I'm sure they'll have to make up their mind, but I'm afraid people can choose whatever more convenient to feel ok.
A recent sociological surveys made in January showed about half of population being on Putin's side, even 40% of those in political opposition to him. Sociologists confronted people with evidence of Russian military buildup, and respondents usually answered that this was "Western propaganda" and tried to avoid further discussion.
I can't read minds of the elites and secret service generals who constitute the Security Council, but it seems this is partially what they think -- secret services are very suspicious of everyone and treat everything as a threat. This leads to believing in conspiracies, and justifies agression.
As for me and many others who value the open world borders and don't want back to USSR, I'm most worried that we're going to be under severe sectoral sanctions, with many industries in serious crisis, like in the 1990s.
Also, I'm old enough to remember the popular dissent with the USSR in the late '80s. We as kids would repeat the adults' discussions about how bad the country was, and our parents weren't political dissidents at all, just common dwellers, absolutely non-ideologized. Many wanted friendship with the West. Only very ideologized communtists wanted to keep the status quo when the USSR collapsed, and obviously even secret services where Putin served wanted to open the country and the economy and did not resist the collapse, nor support the GKChP coup.
The economic crisis of the '90s and the war in Yugoslavia where what changed people's minds. I remember seeing a woman carry a white plastic bag with large US flag on it, probably in 1991 or 1992, but that became unthinkable in 1999-2000. Even a liberal pro-Western TV presenter Parfyonov showed some sort of dissent in his historic program when he described the events of 1991.
Those years many changed their minds about the past, and went all way from complete discontent with the communist regime to believing that it was good and that it was destroyed intentionally.
I guess that Putin would loose his remaining following if the smartphones of the population became useless.
The only reason I can think of is that he just yearns for more power regardless of the costs.
Can anyone provide any possible reasons Putin would have for doing this?
It's interesting how this kind of language now suddenly starts emerging, wonder how long until everybody will be talking about "genocide".
There's never been a better time for Russia to annex it's neighbor, at least since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Eg.
- Crimea is running out of water - it's a strategic location for protecting the Russian heartland - control of ports
Putin never will accept, but Russians surely aren't all Putin's buddies...
It is childish to talk about "rights". The West needs to start thinking realpolitik again.
It is childish to focus on Putin. The West needs to get its head out of its arse.
I’ve come to the conclusion that democracy cannot coexist alongside unfettered propaganda divorced from truth. That is what social media represents - Twitter and especially Facebook - machinery for manipulating people without regard to truth.
Trump and Brexit have greatly harmed the West and their ability to respond to Russian aggression. Both were made possible by the social media companies.
We obviously need governments to step in to heavily regulate or shut down these companies, but their employees should also be asking if they are truly making the world a better place.
What we are seeing on our screens right now is the physical consequences of an asymmetric information war, aided by thousands of software developers earning large salaries.
Stop pussyfooting with the sanctions and fully block trade with Russia. Might need to consider sanctions with China as well...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-24/china-ref...
They see how easy it is and do it again and again until one day they're bombing your home because you're in their territory.
I live much nearer to the conflict, and me neither, but turning a blind eye to the problems only make them brew...
I'm no fan of war either, but this needs to stop.
Witness the internet's finest self decorated armchair field marshals sitting in front of their computer screens strategising with captain obvious on planning in hindsight on HN.
Your master war strategy can never be wrong after the event happened!
No chance in hell our elites will allow that.
We've ignored the Uighurs, we ignored China antagonizing Taiwan, we've ignored China antagonizing the rest of the Asian-Pacific region, we've ignored China lying about COVID, we've ignored China stealing our technology, we've ignored China spying on US politicans.
We've got corporations and universities bending over backwards to partner with China. We have our celebrities apologizing to China and asking everyone to play nice so the elites' meal ticket isn't ruined.
No sanctions of any substance are going to happen.
Who is this "we", that has a responsibility, nay duty, to protect the Uighurs from their own government? It sounds as if "we" must be the Global Police Force, an idea that I find rather frightening.
Bad stuff is happening all over the world; it's been going on forever. It's bad, and we don't like it; but that doesn't mean we all have some kind of moral duty to go to war to try and make things less bad. That would be a recipe for permanent global war.
There's too much money on the table for them to risk angering China.
Thing is, if you don't want to go for Global Nuclear War from the start, then you have to apply graduated sanctions. If you pile in with maximum sanctions as soon as the first bullet is fired, then you no longer have any purchase.
Suppose you apply maximum sanctions over Ukraine? What do you do when Russia decides to attack Poland?
I don't know why you think China needs to worry about Apple, Apple has been a faithful and lucrative partner to them. They don't just faithfully collaborate on censorship and cede control of encrypted Chinese iCloud data directly to a state-owned cloud provider, we now know that Apple has signed a $275B omnibus deal with China that includes Chinese startup investments, Chinese worker training, and R&D collaboration with Chinese tech firms. There is no government that Apple invests more into or collaborates more closely with than China's.
Why not just have Xiaomi phones where you have total control? Well, because you can have that and total control over a global tech giant that pours foreign money and technology into your regime. Why not have both?
But the wives and children of those who move them do. People in the West don't seem to notice a crucial aspect of modern Russia: extended families of those in charge live in the West. They study in Stanford and Harvard, mingle in Aspen, have holiday homes in the Hamptons. Russia is merely a piggy bank to finance that lifestyle. They are at the mercy of Western governments, because they've turned Russia into a stagnating shithole that even at its best is far below the upper-middle class standard in the West. Without access to Western resources, from mansions in Knightsbridge to accounts on Instagram, all that looted money becomes worthless.
All you need to do is let them sleep in the bed they've made. Freeze bank accounts, confiscate property, deny visas. Make them live that global jet-set lifestyle in Rostov oblast.
Also this will mostly affect relatively poor people who will just carry on with their factory jobs or whatever. They will just use landline.
To be clear I don't wish anything bad for the general Russian population, among which I have many friends, let alone Putin's opposition. And this may not be the best strategic idea, but it's a possible one that fits the theme of this community - so I think the snarkiness is uncalled for.
How does that possibly sound in any way like a good idea?
Any reclamation or reversals should be only made possible after last Russian soldier leave Ukraine.
NATO proposed Ukrainian and Georgian membership of NATO in 2005-2008, in the clear knowledge that this would destabilize the situation.
France, Germany, and others were against this. The proposal began the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJBQikfYyKs
We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev, an open act of aggression just as irresponsible as a military incursion. CIA John Brennan, Senator John McCain, and Diplomat Victoria Nuland were there in Ukraine when Yanukovych was being overthrown. There is also evidence to show that we were involved through NGOs in overthrowing and promoting an atmosphere desiring the overthrow of Yanukovych.
This war is about more than just Putin.
Research: George Friedman, Peter Zeihan, John Mearsheimer, Peter Hitchens, Noam Chomsky (more of an ideologue), etc. on this issue. You can start on YouTube OR read their books, I guess.
These are all PhDs or experts in some fashion that I just cited. You could just read their books too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zeihan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hitchens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
"F* the EU" said Diplomat Victoria Nuland -- knowing full well that the Germans and French would be against a coup in then-neutral Ukraine.
Meanwhile, once again, soon after the Iraq debacle: here we are getting dragged into another "war for democracy".
Russia and America turned Ukraine into a "if we can't have, burn it to the ground" situation. Further American intervention in Ukraine will just turn it into another Syria.
edit: Now I am downvoted too just for asking..? This just makes me think that there is not a solid answer?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-s...
I wonder, how would the world have turned out if NATO had made a different decision here?
(Just to be perfectly clear, I'm not arguing that NATO decisions justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine.)
--New members must uphold democracy, including tolerating diversity.
--New members must be making progress toward a market economy.
--Their military forces must be under firm civilian control.
--They must be good neighbors and respect sovereignty outside their borders.
--They must be working toward compatibility with NATO forces.
NATO's founding members in 1949 included Portugal, at the time ruled by a right-wing dictatorship (1926–1974). Turkey and Greece both joined in 1952, and both have gone through periods of brutal military rule even while remaining NATO members. For the majority of NATO's existence, most of these "requirements" you cite have been mere lip service at best.
Many political scientists classify Erdogan's Turkey as an anocracy – a hybrid form of government which is part-way between dictatorship and democracy, mixing elements of both systems. Yet, Turkey remains a full member in good standing of NATO. Putin's Russia is also often classified as an anocracy. Why demand genuine democracy as a condition to join NATO when its current membership includes a state which isn't one? Indeed, according to the Polity data series [0], Putin's Russia is actually more free than Erdogan's Turkey.
Don't get me wrong, democracy is a truly wonderful thing – but if welcoming non-democratic Russia into NATO might have prevented this war, wouldn't that have been a wonderful thing too?
And it wasn't the U.S.A. who sent troops to the Crimea and annexed in 2014?
Of course what is happening is tragic. We can all agree it should have been avoided, and I am curious if it could have been avoided.
1) Some parts of the Ukraine (the Crimea and Southern regions of the Ukraine) have a significant pro Russian population, e.g. they wouldn't protest a lot against Russian influence.
2) On the other hand the Western parts of the Ukraine are more EU/Western aligned, hence they don't want to do anything with the Putin's regime.
From Putin's perspective an independent Ukraine is no-no. And the West isn't willing to start WW3 over the Ukraine.
I think that this is the primary argument of people claiming that the USA MIC is partly to blame here. I do not have a good response to it.
Of course, Ukraine really wanted to be in NATO, for obvious reasons...
Here's the deal, from my standpoint. Russia is declining in relevance.
* Demographically, they're shrinking and aging.
* Economically, post-Crimea sanctions have blunted any growth.
* Trade / exchange--- petroleum becomes less relevant with time.
* Diplomatically, they're already pariahs from many past misdeeds.
* Culturally/socially, they've stagnated as well.
Clawing for land around them-- through proxy conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, etc-- offers them a small chance of continued relevance. It's probably not a winning strategy, but it's at least one which could be winning. When you're in a bad situation, if you want to keep playing the game, you need to make the moves that at least could lead to a win.
Euromaidan happened 2013. Putin already lost the Ukraine back then. By annexing the Crimea and sending Russian troops now he is taking the Ukraine back.
I may be mistaken but I think whether the Ukraine was actually joining NATO or not wasn't really relevant in this conflict IMHO.
>If Russia was going to invade anyway, why not at least try to de-escalate and negotiate for a sovereign Ukraine?
For the couples months there were negotiations. Was there a possibility to avoid the current conflict?
I think unless you're the U.S./Russian diplomat it's impossible to answer this question.
NATO proposed Ukrainian and Georgian membership of NATO in 2005-2008, in the clear knowledge that this would destabilize the situation.
France, Germany, and others were against this. The proposal began the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJBQikfYyKs
We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev, an open act of aggression just as irresponsible as a military incursion. CIA John Brennan, Senator John McCain, and Diplomat Victoria Nuland were there in Ukraine when Yanukovych was being overthrown. There is also evidence to show that we were involved through NGOs in overthrowing and promoting an atmosphere desiring the overthrow of Yanukovych.
"F* the EU" said Diplomat Victoria Nuland -- knowing full well that the Germans and French would be against a coup in then-neutral Ukraine.
Meanwhile, once again, soon after the Iraq debacle: here we are getting dragged into another "war for democracy".
Russia and America turned Ukraine into a "if we can't have, burn it to the ground" situation. Further American intervention in Ukraine will just turn it into another Syria.
The good news is that at almost 70, he doesn't have eternal life. The bad news is his replacement will probably be a similar sociopath.
Say, by similar vassalization as Belarus has gone through.
Ukraine was too free of a society for that as many of its members did not want that.
I am not a pro-Putin guy, but, if we don't recognize our part in this chaos, then, we're just promoting more of it.
We _had_ a buffer zone until yesterday. NATO was supporting Ukraine without much real intention of having it join, while Russia had Crimea and half of Donbass. This could have gone for decades - see Transnistria, which does exactly the same for Moldova for 30 years.
> We then openly backed the 2014 putsch in Kiev, an open act of aggression just as irresponsible as a military incursion. CIA John Brennan, Senator John McCain, and Diplomat Victoria Nuland were there in Ukraine when Yanukovych was being overthrown. There is also evidence to show that we were involved through NGOs in overthrowing and promoting an atmosphere desiring the overthrow of Yanukovych.
This is an aspect to this that way too many people just ignore as "Russian misinformation".
The Orange revolution was a prior US attempt [0] at facilitating a regime-change in Ukraine from pro-Russian politics to pro-Western politics, which failed.
In 2014 there was the next attempt McCain not only riling up protesters [1], but meeting with the future PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk and leader of right-wing militias Oleh Tyahnybok [2] that were the muscle behind the 2014 revolution [3].
Arseniy Yatsenyuk was already declared the US's "man" during the leaked "Fuck the EU Nuland" calls [4], same Victoria Nuland that was literally handing out cookies to Ukrainian protesters [5].
Yatsenyuk wasn't even too shy about these connections; His OpenUkraine foundation's list of partners reads like the who is who of US regime change actors, down to the CIA's a National Endowment for Democracy and literal NATO itself [6].
Tho it was a bit too blatant, so they ended up putting his wife in charge of the foundation and removing the partners list.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-uk...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-meets-oleh-tyahn...
[3] https://youtu.be/KfD_CaSIxmQ
[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
[5] https://euobserver.com/tickers/122437
[6] https://web.archive.org/web/20140407065419/http://openukrain...
And only power he got was that in autumn of 2014 his party got a fairly good numbers, that's why he became a PM, not because Americans have put him there.
It has to do with the fact that the country has been in a civil war [0] since he came into power after the "revolution of dignity", not only him, but literally Americans who were fast tracked Ukrainian citizenship [1] so they could act as minister.
But a whole lot of people in those East Ukrainian territories liked the old government, they voted for it, and they saw their votes burned in a revolution to be replaced with Americans and people sponsored by them.
Which prompted them to do the same in their parts of Ukraine, leading to the separatists territories and a low to high intensity civil war that has by now been lasting 8 years.
> And only power he got was that in autumn of 2014 his party got a fairly good numbers
In elections where the old party was not even allowed to be voted for anymore, consequently, those elections were boycotted in territories that voted for the old government.
And believe me, people never really liked Yanukovych so much to take arms. The leaders of “separatists” were literal nobodies, nobody knew who they are. Members of Yanukovych party themselves did not en masse supported separatists.
Second, politicians from Party of Regions participated in both 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections. Same politicians, top Yanukovych lieutenants, with the same oligarchic sponsors.
Third, those elections were not “boycotted” people still participated, on territory controlled by Ukrainian government.
You were there and then missed the following 8 years of civil war, complete with separatist territories, to now ask "What has any of that to do with the invasion?"?
> Yanukovych was nearing the end of his term, he ordered snipers to shoot at protesters, it was only right for him to step down.
Afaik there was no order for government snipers to shoot protesters, those sniper shots hit protesters and police alike, using hunting cartridges, and the government probe into those shootings was extremely flawed [0]
Just like to this day nobody was ever charged for shooting police officers.
> The next step was re-elections.
As somebody who was apparently there, do you remember who provided "security" for those elections at the Rada?
> The leaders of “separatists” were literal nobodies, nobody knew who they are.
Quite an accomplishment for "nobodies that nobody knows" to be representatives of state parliaments, like that of Crimea.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-killings-probe-sp...
NATO is a defensive pact and existing members have always been very hesitant about accepting new members, because it is intended as a cooperation platform between equals and not a substitute for building up own defense force. The initiative to join NATO has always been driven by Eastern European countries seeking to maintain independence and reduce the risk of Russian invasion. Together with EU membership, it's the holy grail of foreign policy.
The referenced Mearsheimer et al are irrelevant. They depict everything as a grand Russia vs USA standoff as if it were a board game, and ignore the delicate histories and current relationships between countries in Europe.
If you are a fan of history, I recommend rejecting grand narratives and reading a general history of every country in Europe. How has Sweden fared in the past 500 years? Why Russians have an inferiority complex with Finns? Why isn't Austria in NATO? The more you read, the more you'll see the complex network of relationships and understand what every country seeks to achieve. To treat all of them as pawns of the US or Russia is unbelivably ignorant. Even countries as small as Iceland have their own foreign policy, and sometimes have a great impact on international relations.
If you even say something other than "Putin is Satan" or "Russia bad", you get downvoted to oblivion. Enjoy. Don't bother mentioning the complexities of this situation or once again, you'll be downvoted.
(1) https://i.redd.it/iq2zlt0ldrj81.jpg
(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfk-qaqP2Ws
(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0PPaqnReu8
We still continued in order to destabilize all of Europe and prevent them from merging Central European industrial capital with Eastern European natural resources. It's the same old policy -- everything else is just bread and circuses.
Well, we still have Russia by the throat, now I just think we shouldn't squeeze so hard that they collapse -- which would lead to a complete and utter destabilization of a huge chunk of the world, and it would be detrimental to our short and long-term interests. Miscreants would take over and have a field day.
Do the people in Ukraine want to be 'used' as a buffer? What do they want?
Because without addressing that your comment has a ‘I’m in favour of sacrificing people’ vibe.
The comment above is pushing Russian propaganda.
Putin doesn't care about money - he has all the money he needs. He doesn't also care about welfare of average Russian citizens as long as he can stay within power.
He cares mostly about staying in power and by extension about others perceiving him as a good leader. It is incredibly obvious to me that dictators don't end well when they lose their power. I assume losing power is as bad outcome for Putin, game-theoretically as getting Russia nuked to the ground.
Over the last 30 years Russia was progressively losing ground within its' sphere of influence. Poland, Ukraine even Belarus are slowly fading further and further away. All the context for today we need is the Orange Revolution, Euromaidan and recent protests in Belarus which show high level of anti-russian and pro-western sentiment among society of these countries.
When those countries turn fully pro-western, with relatively wealthier and happier citizenry, it's a matter of days rather than years when the same sentiments will reach Russia, leading to a quick change in Russia's top-level government.
If Putin wants to stay in power, he must convince people in Ukraine and Belarus that it's in their best interest to stay on his side. And lethal force is really the only tool he has at his disposal for it.
So his options really are: - Hope that he can cling to some remaining bits of power until a reasonably peaceful end of life and be aware that probably soon afterwards Russia will start turning pro-democratic. - Do whatever is within his control to keep Ukraine and Belarus subdued.
Weighing pros and cons in this particularly hard situation, he must have chosen that option number two has a higher EV to keep him in power for longer. What can happen now:
- (best scenario for the democratic world) Ukrainian forces manage to defend themselves from the offensive. That basically means Russia's collapse as it is today. It's probably in the best interest of many western democracies to maximize the probability of this outcome, but I'm not sure how probable it is really.
- (worst scenario for the democratic world) Ukraine is taken over completely very quickly with minimal Russian cost and loss. World doesn't really have a chance to react. Russia weathers sanctions ok and gets into closer ties with China.
- Russia cripples Ukraine military, the war drags on guerilla-style. Russia manages to successfully occupy part of the country and the rest becomes warzone wasteland. Russia saves face, Ukraine and Belarus and under complete control.
- War drags on and Russian can't continue with the cost of it. Ukraine gets severely weakened but manages some resemblance of independence while Russia occupies only very minor territories. May be enough for Russia to save face, but I would bet not really and it would lead to another scenario where Russian government collapses.
- Western allies get involved in the conflict, but none of the sides decide to use nukes. Russian military will get destroyed and Russian government collapses.
- (worst scenario for the whole world) Western allies get involved in the conflict, and one of the sides decide to use nukes. Humanity's development gets moved back hundreds of years.
- China and Russia are in active cooperation. Russia will keep escalating the war in Europe until one or all western nations engages. On that day China begins offensive on Taiwan and attacks US. WW3 starts.
I believe in most of the countries in the world military command is playing out all of those and many more potential scenarios. I would like to live in more boring times.
Today's Reuters article text:
Russian forces invade Ukraine with strikes on major cities
By Andrew Osborn and Natalia Zinets
MOSCOW/KYIV, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Russian forces fired missiles at several cities in Ukraine and landed troops on its coast on Thursday, officials and media said, after President Vladimir Putin authorised what he called a special military operation in the east.
Shortly after Putin spoke in a televised address on Russian state TV, explosions could be heard in the pre-dawn quiet of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
Gunfire rattled near the capital's main airport, the Interfax news agency said, and sirens were heard over the city.
"Putin has just launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.
"This is a war of aggression. Ukraine will defend itself and will win. The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now."
U.S. President Joe Biden, reacting to an invasion the United States had been predicting for weeks, said his prayers were with the people of Ukraine "as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack", while promising tough sanctions in response. read more
"I will be meeting with the leaders of the G7, and the United States and our allies and partners will be imposing severe sanctions on Russia," Biden said in a statement.
Russia has demanded an end to NATO's eastward expansion and Putin repeated his position that Ukrainian membership of the U.S.-led Atlantic military alliance was unacceptable.
He said he had authorised military action after Russia had been left with no choice but to defend itself against what he said were threats emanating from modern Ukraine, a democratic state of 44 million people.
"Russia cannot feel safe, develop, and exist with a constant threat emanating from the territory of modern Ukraine," Putin said. "All responsibility for bloodshed will be on the conscience of the ruling regime in Ukraine." read more
The full scope of the Russian military operation was not immediately clear but Putin said: "Our plans do not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories. We are not going to impose anything by force."
Speaking as the U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting in New York, Putin said he had ordered Russian forces to protect the people and appealed to the Ukrainian military to lay down their arms.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had carried out missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and border guards, and that explosions had been heard in many cities. An official also reported non-stop cyber attacks.
Zelenskiy said that martial law had been declared and that he had spoken by telephone to Biden. Reservists were called up on Wednesday.
Three hours after Putin gave his order, Russia's defence ministry said it had taken out military infrastructure at Ukrainian air bases and degraded its air defences, Russian media reported.
Earlier, Ukrainian media reported that military command centres in Kyiv and the city of Kharkiv in the northeast had been struck by missiles while Russian troops had landed in the southern port cities of Odessa and Mariupol.
A Reuters witness later heard three loud blasts in Mariupol.
Russian-backed separatists said they had launched an offensive on the Ukrainian-controlled town of Shchastia in the east, Russia's Interfax news agency said, and explosions also rocked the breakaway eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
Hours earlier, the separatists issued a plea to Moscow for help to stop alleged Ukrainian aggression - claims the United States dismissed as Russian propaganda.
Global stocks and U.S. bond yields dived, while the dollar and gold rocketed higher after Putin's address. Brent oil surged past $100/barrel for the first time since 2014.
'DECISIVE WAY'
Biden, who has ruled out putting U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine, said Putin had chosen a premeditated war that would bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.
"Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way," he said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg condemned Russia's "reckless and unprovoked attack" and said NATO allies would meet to tackle the consequences.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking after the Security Council meeting, made a last-minute plea to Putin to stop the war "in the name of humanity'.
Ukraine closed its airspace to civilian flights citing a high risk to safety, while Europe's aviation regulator warned against the hazards to flying in bordering areas of Russia and Belarus.
Russia suspended domestic flights at airports near its border with Ukraine until March 2, its aviation agency said.
Shelling had intensified since Monday when Putin recognised two separatist regions as independent and ordered the deployment of what he called peacekeepers, a move the West called the start of an invasion.
In response to Putin's Monday announcement, Western countries and Japan imposed sanctions on Russian banks and individuals but held off their toughest measures until an invasion began.
The United States stepped up the pressure on Wednesday by imposing penalties on the Russian firm building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and its corporate officers.
Germany on Tuesday froze approvals for the pipeline, which has been built but was not in operation, amid concern it could allow Moscow to weaponise energy supplies to Europe.
Fuck Russia :(
Edit: They're a far-right/neo-Nazi group in the Donbas, apparently.
The US has a knack of dumping weapons on countries and having those weapons eventually end up in the hands of reactionaries, but I think at present those reactionaries make up a vanishingly small fraction of the weapons recipients.
I will also note that in the past, several elements of NATO's high command were former Nazi generals, so I really doubt there's a ton of angst about it internally.
And again, this is from someone who exercises extraordinary skepticism in the context of US international action.
But these hardcore Azov guys are anarchists by nature and a lot of them hate the Ukrainian government as much as they hate the separatists, so they still act independently without having to answer to the government. Some did eventually just merge into the military.
Putting a number on the size today of Azov is difficult because of how the two melded together. Some people joined Azov because they just wanted to help fight and didn’t care about the neo nazi stuff. Some are true believers. But one thing for certain is that it’s not some fringe group that exists on Wikipedia only.
Edit: watch this: https://youtu.be/wMMXuKB0BoY
> Putting a number on the size today of Azov is difficult because of how the two melded together. Some people joined Azov because they just wanted to help fight and didn’t care about the neo nazi stuff. Some are true believers. But one thing for certain is that it’s not some fringe group that exists on Wikipedia only.
This might be true, but it's not evidenced by the video. The video documents two independent groups, one of whom (the first) look like they might belong to Azov. I counted 7 people at the most.
OTOH, it's clear (from the end of the video) that there are protests in Kiev itself with reactionary (or at least hypernationalist) themes. It's not clear to me where the line is on those, probably because I'm not Ukrainian. But those protestors are in the capital.
In sum, it's not clear to me that we should discount NATO's current arms distribution because one of two groups in a video from 2019 has far-right members, members who cut a deal with the overarching military chain of command to secure arms for the broader military.
Fair warning though, it doesn't work the same way in reverse.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Most of Russia's demands were unreasonable nonstarters. IIRC, he demanded NATO pull troops out of some EU countries. Saying "no one was willing to negotiate" is very misleading. It's victim blaming, like saying a mugger was justified in shooting his victim because he wasn't willing to negotiate over the mugger's demand he hand over his cash.
Everything started in April of 2008, during the Bucharest Summit Declaration saying that "NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO". Russia immediately said that this is not going to happen because it affects their security - and it DOES make sense, doesn't it? That led to a war in Georgia. Today it's a war in Ukraine, my home country.
Once again, Putin is just a side effect. The core, the _root_ cause is the US's maniacal NATO expansion aspiration.
also, why Russia should decide on how other countries decide their internal affairs?
Ukraine doesn't need the approval of Russia to join or not join NATO.
Edit: I also want to add to this that the US is completely aware of the situation. They know exactly that their decision not to stop the expansion leads to a war. First, the US is not stupid. Second, there is a great example - Georgia, where war for the exact same reason took place. So, who's to blame here? Is it really Putin? My common sense tells the opposite.
There wasn't much support for NATO in Ukraine internally before seizure of Crimea. Who's in the wrong here? Hmm, I don't know.
If Ukraine wanted to promise Russia that they would stay out of it, they could have done that without any US involvement.
Why should the US tell Ukraine how to conduct its foreign policy?
Now I’m supposed to actually care about a Westphalian nation state? I don’t get it.
It is no surprise for me that westerners couldn’t care less about suffering of “other people”. You don’t need to invent complicated reasons why you do not care biggest war in Europe since 1940’s, or the lives of Eastern Europeans.
I’ve read the CIA world fact book entry on it; I’ve listened to a lot of the rhetoric, and I just fail to see any interest there compelling enough to make me support war with Russia.
If “suffering” is the bar for involvement, why didn’t we do anything about Rwanda?
Why is it unethical for me not to support involvement in yet another war, when I’ve been lectured for the last two decades about how bad it is for my country to go to war. Seems like cherry picking.
The American public is tired of wars and the USA is not in financial shape to begin a multi trillion dollar war, especially if there is no compelling national interest. If Europe cares, let them fight the war.
If Putin attacks a NATO country then we should fulfill our treaty obligations.
Other than that, we can’t fix all the problems in the world.
Besides, we are extremely likely to end up in a war with China when they invade Taiwan; we do have a national interest there (semiconductor fabrication) and we can’t afford to be bogged down in Ukraine with that looming.