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Comment by amai | Hacker News Reader

> “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.”

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And that is why what Zbigniew Brzezinsk writes is outdated nonsense.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.

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It would be easier to take your opinions seriously if they weren’t contradicted by events happening right now; events which match Brzezinski’s “outdated nonsense” from the 90s perfectly.

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!

Predicting the future is hard, specially if you think in 20-30 years forward. But, giving enough predictions, you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses. A lot of development happened in the middle that could had turned things in different directions. Also, beware of hindsight bias.

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.

> you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses.

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

Yesterday, I read your comment, but it is now flagged. Can I read more about that stuff on a subreddit or website?

> But, giving enough predictions, you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses.

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?

Comparing him to Nostradamus is kind of grotesque.

He wasn't hallucinating, pinning the tail on a donkey or trying to hit a piñata blindfolded.

The creative accounting was done by others. They say that Nostradamus "predicted" this because they choose what they read, when they read, and apply it to particular situations that fit, and not to others that don't, being aware of that or not. There is a bunch of cognitive biases around that, with fancy names like selection bias or Texas sharpshooter fallacy, to name a few.

It may not be for this case, I just point out that you should be aware of the possibility.

The Mongols didn't need an economy to create chaos and conquer most of Eurasia. Babylon was conquered by Macedonia, Constantinople fell to the Turks, and Rome to the Vandals. Mixing up economic power with willingness to bleed for a mythical cause is a mistake. Also, who needs an economy when you can just have a big army and take booty? Definitely not Russia.

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).

I disagree with that analogy.

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.

Which happens to command a very large arsenal of nuclear weapons which they can deliver around the globe on 15 minutes notice.

How do you think they will use them to conquer land?

As a very credible threat. We will now do 'x', and if you interfere we will nuke the capital of those countries that interfere.

Note that Putin has nothing to lose from all of this.

Not only does Putin have nothing to lose from all of this, there is more than a hint that he has nothing to lose full stop. More than one analyst and political aide has observed that Putin has changed significantly on a personal level, and appears to be paranoid about Covid and about all his generals and advisers.

It's not just a threat; at this point it is a risk.

Agreed. The attack on Ukraine is actually rather later than I imagined that it would happen (I thought this would happen immediately after Trump lost the election).

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.

As we have seen before, only very recently: bad things happen when psychopaths start to unravel, especially malignant narcissists.

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.

When a narcissist goes down they'll take anybody that is a witness to that with them if they can.

> I thought this would happen immediately after Trump lost the election

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.

Maybe he has nothing to lose from threatening. But he would have a lot to lose (namely Moscow, and any place where he's known to usually spend time) if he actually fired a nuke at some EU capital.

I'll bet that that would not be Paris or London. But to try to guess what someone who has nothing to lose will do is folly, Putin might very well be beyond caring even about such stuff: he wants his legacy cemented and there are two ways out of that that would satisfy him: the fact that he is remembered as a great Russian or that there isn't anybody left to remember what kind of an idiot he was.

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.

> I'll bet that that would not be Paris or London.

Doesn't really matter which one he picks: NATO article 5 would ensure retaliation.

But yeah, I agree with the rest of your point.

NATO article 5 is a meaningless piece of paper in and of itself if the will to retaliate isn't present and we will only find out about that at the moment someone wants it invoked. I would not necessarily bet on knowing how that ends. The response against what happened just now is underwhelming, and the various investments in fomenting nationalism/isolationism may well pay off. These are very dangerous times.

If they’re launching nukes, you think the rest of the world is just going to sit by and watch?

> I highly recommend the movie Der Untergang, which is as historically accurate as they could make it

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.

We all have a lot to lose here. If Russia lobs a nuke, US is next, followed by the rest of the powers. Who knows who China would target.

Once one nuke flies, WW3

Come and see. They don't have to hold land and in most cases, the strategic goal is to have puppets hold it for them. USSR was three levels deep in puppets (four if you count "republics").

They tried puppets in Ukraine for some time. They also have a dependent client state on another of Ukraine's borders, in Belarus, "led" by a terrified semi-lame autocrat who needs to prove his loyalty to Putin to continue in office.

Bad things (and increasingly belligerent, isolated psychopaths) on two sides.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world. -- George Bernard Shaw

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6809999-old-men-are-dangero...

Precisely.

Shit, we keep forgetting this!

Nuclear weapons require constant, ongoing maintenance if they have any hope of going bang. Russia doesn't have the assets to keep that up anymore. Their nuclear arsenal is probably a fraction of its theoretical capability.

In addition, if Putin tried to launch nukes, I doubt the other oligarchs would go along with his mass suicide plan.

If there is one thing I've learned about Russian technology then it is that in general it will operate 'good enough' to do what it was designed to do even if that means that it isn't designed in a way that we would consider elegant. Assuming that Russia's nuclear arsenal is dysfunctional or even non-existent would be a very large - and possibly fatal - mistake, especially given that it never was designed as a precision tool anyway but relied on massive overkill. You may well be right, but if history is any guide here making assumptions without hard evidence about the nature of an enemy arsenal, either positive or negative will lead to trouble.

I had a couple conversations with an engineer who worked a long career on maintaining nuclear warheads. I was rather surprised when he told me that he didn't view nuclear war as likely.

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.

It doesn't take 1000's of them to be effective.

I have always wondered this. Nuclear Apocalypse scenarios always assume the ICBMs will all function as specified. Maybe they will, but it's not like you can thoroughly test each one. But I guess they don't need to.

There were assumptions that lots of missiles would malfunction or not reach their intended targets and so various cities and strategic objectives were targeted with multiple warheads from different launch sites. This led to 'overkill':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overkill_(term)

Welcome to the eighties...

Ukraine has excellent farmland. Russia has their own local economy and can produce most of the things they need just with their direct neighbors. French cheeses, American-branded phones, and Italian cars may be too expensive for the Russian economy, but the Russian government doesn't care. Close-enough products can be had for a fraction of the price.

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.

All that might be true for consumer products, but it’s absolutely not true for weapons systems and cutting edge technologies. Their J-20 fighter jet has a cost between 30-120 million, whereas the F-35 costs 78 million. It’s also worth mentioning that the high speed rail in China only exists because of strict control over airways making trains artificially competitive. Despite this state rail system holds 850B in debt alone (with some numbers I’ve seen online indicating a total system debt of 1.8 trillion), and is losing money daily. Regardless of the rumored numbers, a debt level that high indicates that they have to pay near-western prices for advanced technology. Tanks, jets and high speed rail are considerably more challenging to produce cheaply than sandwiches or obsolete smart phones.

[1] https://amp.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3127644/c...

Agree 100%. The problem is really, GDP is in one currency. There should be a second metric, adjusted to local buying power, for countries with loads of internal resources, and production capability.

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)

GDP PPP is a more accurate measure. It factors in what things cost locally. The scales start to balance out more when looked from that angle.

Even then, some places like Afghanistan don't change much--and they're still completely unbeaten by modern militaries.

There's a difference between political failures and military ones. Apples and oranges. No amount of military power can compensate for a lack of (or unachievable) political goals.

Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan all lacked coherent political goals. "Destroy military forces supported by half the country" is not a valid strategy.

> There should be a second metric, adjusted to local buying power, for countries with loads of internal resources, and production capability.

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.

> Why should the Ukraine be so important?

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.

Just a very tiny nitpick. Ukraine is not a nation state. It is mearly a state.

In fact the part of the problem is precisely because it is not a nation state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state

Oooh -- that is a fascinating nit picked. And that will start my Wikipedia rabbit hole today.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with you, but I certainly should have used sovereign the second time instead of nation.

One of the reasons things like the EU are a good idea, is because there are very few if any nation states e.g Basque in Spain, Northern Ireland in Ireland/UK, Scotland in UK, Shetland in Scotland, Swedish Finns in Finland and so on and so on (and it's a global thing, Kurds in Iraq/Syria/etc). It's all a bit fractal and and subjective and shades of gray and often it's the drawing of sharp artificial boundaries over the top of that that causes the problems.

One thing that unifies the extreme socialist left and the extreme and alt-right in the UK is an almost rote belief in regional self-determination, as if all of those movements could have a place of their own if wider agreements can only be broken up. The paradox of both the extreme left and extreme right is that many among them admire Putin as a "strong leader" and believe Putin is acting out of Donbas's interests in liberating them. Their shock at the disconnect with what is actually happening -- that everyone free of motivated reasoning could see coming -- is fascinating.

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.

And Russias GDP is as big as Italy

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...

China doesn’t need Russia as an ally, a client perhaps.

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.

I think you mean hydrocarbons, carbohydrates are sugars ;)

Can confirm carbohydrates market is still strong. I just had an almond croissant for breakfast

If Putin wins you'll have babka for breakfast

As it happens, Russia is. Big exported of carbohydrates too (grain).

But yes, pre coffee booboo.

Also the Italy comparison doesn't take into account GDP PPP per capita (Italy 44th in the world, Russia 77th and below several former Comecon states) or the extensive difference in the amount of stolen wealth in their respective diasporas.

This is all assuming you share an underlying rational with the leader of Russia, which you don't. Putin obviously doesn't care about having a good economy or making life better for the average Russian. He cares about making himself look strong and maintaining power, and showing strength. In the long run Russia is going to hurt over this, but that's not what Putin cares about.

+1 to this comment -- as you state it's not possible to apply western success metrics to Russian politics or Putin. Of that Italian-sized economy, the spoils go to Putin's oligarchs and the average Russian is apathetic about political influence and fed government-owned TV news. Historically, they haven't been able to influence things and their needs matter little. It isn't a western democracy or economy -- it's more like an authoritarian regime where it's the needs of the political leadership that matter. They should have seized Putin's super-yacht before it fled Germany last week.

The flipside though is that Putin wouldn't be doing this unless he thought it would be popular and cement his legacy as a czar; and he wouldn't commit his Russians to it if he didn't think it would make Russia stronger and benefit Russia in the long term. His thinking is rational in this regard. Barbaric, but rational. And it will take more than sanctions to shake the foundation of this medieval belief.

Is there a strong reason to believe that Putin thinks this way? As recently as two days ago, people in my circles were presenting this as an argument for why Putin wouldn’t invade, since it seemed so obvious that Russia would be stronger by claiming to occupy the moral high ground while protecting the separatist regions through deterrence.

Here are my reasons.

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.

someone should dose him with some acid, see if that won't make him chill out.

I kinda feel bad for him, he must live a rather unhappy life.

Hah. Did you ever read this? He seemed like he did some acid and had some fun..

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].

nice, thanks for the read ^_^

The author seems to admit in the comments that he made the whole thing up?

Hah. Wild. I had read this a few years ago and never saw the comments. It's a pretty great piece of writing, maybe even more brilliant if it's totally fake; but yeah, his comments call it into doubt. It's hard for me to tell whether he's being sarcastic, on drugs, or admitting to making it up. Or all three.

One theory being discussed is that Putin will declare Russia + Belarus + Ukraine a new country, and thus can be the leader of it and avoid difficult changes needed to continue to serve as President. They've done quite a bit of dancing to keep him in power despite term limits, and a new constitution would greatly facilitate his (and his cronies) ability to hold power

> They've done quite a bit of dancing to keep him in power despite term limits,

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?

There seems to be an "anschluss" underway with Belarus already. But it doesn't appear today that Putin needs any legal grounds to declare anything he wants; he's essentially president-for-life already, without changing the borders.

There is no reason. People are just projecting because geopolitical war is too nuanced. For more informed takes on this check out Peter zeihan. I’m not saying his take is gospel, but at the very least he reveals the plethora of factors that are at play that the news will never tell you about.

Ukraine has gas reserves that seem to be mostly untouched because of regional turmoil and therefore a temporary inability to get that gas out of the ground.

sadly, Putin lives in 19th century and wants everyone join him there

Russia is close to a modern day feudal state if you think about it. The only difference is that Putin splits the country's mineral resources with the oligarchy instead of the land. This is coming from an acclaimed Russian novelist, Vladimir Sorokin. This Spiegel interview with Sorokin dates from before the 2008 Russo-Georgian war:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-intervi...

at some level, it’s fair to say that serfdom just never stopped: you can call the leader “tsar”, “comrade”, “president”, or whatever else you want if it makes you happy, but “prole” and “serf” are more or less cognates too.

> Because if you want to be a world power in 21st century what you need is a huge economy.

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.

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