More than 600 Russian scientists sign open letter against war with Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

More than 600 Russian scientists sign open letter against war with Ukraine

chemistryworld.com

102 pointsbased239 comments

I hope we keep seeing more of the Russian people waking up to what is going on. It’s hard to know what information gets to them or what the public sentiment in Russia really is.

Did public opinion ever have any influence on high-level politics? In my corner of the US (more Republican than one might think) majority opinion is that the Ukraine is an intra-European matter that US/NATO would be well advised to stay out of.

Absolutely, many examples of that historically. Revolutions, mass strikes, protests and elections are all ways in which public opinion has had influence on high level politics.

> In my corner of the US (more Republican than one might think) majority opinion is that the Ukraine is an intra-European matter that US/NATO would be well advised to stay out of.

That's for Putin to decide, like it or not. Just like Hirohito decided to bring the United States into WWII.

That's for Putin to decide, like it or not. Just like Hirohito decided to bring the United States into WWII.

That's what I mean, this kind of decision is made at highest levels of government, and meanwhile the rest of the country is fed propaganda to drag it along. (The conspiratorially-minded amongst us notice the weak state of American defenses at Pearl Harbor in 1941. If the Pacific Fleet had decisively repelled the Japanese attack US isolationism might have continued.)

> That's what I mean, this kind of decision is made at highest levels of government, and meanwhile the rest of the country is fed propaganda to drag it along.

Propaganda is one thing, the simple facts by themselves sometimes suffice. I'm pretty sure if the true scope of what Germany was up to had been revealed to the United States at an earlier point in time that they would have jumped in unprovoked.

> The conspiratorially-minded amongst us notice the weak state of American defenses at Pearl Harbor in 1941. They knew that something was up, but not what was up.

> If the Pacific Fleet had decisively repelled the Japanese attack US isolationism might have continued.

No, then they would have been at war. That's with acts of war: they change the status from not being at war to being at war, regardless of whether that is then affirmed by a declaration of war. Plenty of historical examples for this. What the response would have been is anybody's guess but it certainly would have moved the US out of the 'neutral' column with respect to the Axis countries.

Care to share the polling results and the polling methodology you used to determine the majority opinion in your corner of the US.

Most of my colleagues at my institution in Western MA are center-right to far right, not what you would call Putinversteher. Enthusiasm for a war with US involvement is completely absent. That's just observations, but at some point anecdotes turn into data.

A dozen or so miles east of you, I’ve been observing ubiquitous support for Ukraine—but that doesn’t necessarily translate to support for direct engagement with Russia. The people with whom I interact seem to acknowledge that our direct involvement may become necessary, but are concerned about Russia’s reaction if our troops are visibly present in significant numbers.

So a itsy bitsy tiny little corner of the US from which you have extrapolated anecdotal observations into data.

I'd like to see it go a step further: brain drain Russia again, as happened after the fall of the USSR. Poach the talent.

Russia has plenty of brilliant, highly skilled people. Get as many of them to abandon the nation as possible (and make their journey to a new home as easy as possible). The US, EU and their allies can easily make this happen.

Confronting Russia obviously has to be a many front effort. Oil and gas are valuable resources, yes, and they get a lot of attention in terms of how to best constrain Russia. A well organized brain drain against the Russian economy would also hurt enormously across the next decade.

No, rather the opposite: you want Russia to be as smart and wealthy as possible. The more a country has to lose the less the chance that they will start wars with their neighbors.

Germany had to be brain drained 3 times, and then destroyed as a nation, and rebuilt to force it to become "normal."

I see rationality in what you say in principle, but the window of opportunity for applying that method was lost in nineties, after the West disengaged from trying to make Russia a normal country, and left it to become a rouge state.

The West stopped propping up democratic politicians in Russia shortly after they felt that "job's done," and, bizarrely to 16 years old me 15 years ago, started working for the anti-democratic camp. What's the point I asked myself? And this was the time when I discovered the "our bastard" theory, practised religiously by some Western politicians.

Similarly to how Putin turned into "our bastard" for the West 20 years ago, NSDAPers were once propped up into power on hopes of getting pliable "our bastards" for major powers in light of their own problems.

Curious what those 3 times would be? I am, of course, well aware of the atrocious self-brain drain after '33.

Other than that, most scholars would disagree: the treatment of Germany after WWI (notably no destruction due to the war, Germany capitulated before the war reached German borders) in Versailles is what made Hitler's rise possible in the first place.

Rebuilding (Marshall plan) rather than destroying (Morgenthau plan) made Germany what it is today after WWII. Japan shows that one could have skipped the whole 2nd act in Europe: Japan wasn't destroyed at all, but rebuilt after WWII, and seized to be a threat to the world.

I mean, obviously Japanese cities were systematically bombed, but there was no ground war. They could even keep their emperor.

The risk here is hiring a spy, same applies for hiring Chinese born as well.

Some might say that's a part of the problem. After the cold war, many Eastern European states received financial and other support and thrived as western-style democracies while Russia was more marginalised and went through period of economic decline, leading to rise of Putin as president after the "Chechen terrorist" apartment bombings and the demise in all but name of the fledgling democratic system. Parallels with history of Germany after WW1 / Weimar / Reichstag.

Ideal outcome may be that Russia ends up with different leadership after this disaster, and a strong, healthy democracy, with more of a stake in the global order - similar to Germany post WW2. Wishful thinking at this stage perhaps...

The US, EU and their allies can easily make this happen.

Can they? These days, China looks a much better option for a young ambitious scientist than the US. That said, if the war for control in the Ukraine brings more competition between the major powers I'm all for it, monopolies never did anyone any good, this includes the Wolfowitz doctrine.

I apologize if I'm misinterpreting you, but do you honestly believe that China is a more attractive location to a young ambitious scientist than the US? Or is this some sort of a joke that I'm not getting?

China is becoming a very attractive location for the sciences: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00084-7

No joke at all.

Fair enough. Many might consider things other than just the level of funding when choosing where to take up residence and do research.

From a culture and language viewpoint, most Russian scientists would find it much easier to adjust to your average Western country than to China. Plus, Western countries generally have much more experience at integrating immigrants than China does, which suggests they are likely to do a better job at it than China.

So your thesis is that now, Russia is a land of superior standard of living, where milk and honey flow, but if one could finally make that stop and make citizens struggle after an external force has taken away their good economy, then the Putins would just disappear and everyone would live happily ever after?

The comment above posits none of that, this is just a baity strawman.

What else is the above post offering then?

It's not even intended as a strawman, I cannot honestly see how any of that would have positive impact: In the history of mankind, having an external force that makes people's lives worse, will, if anything, give the autocrat more support. Also, it's not like well-trained Russians aren't already leaving the country.

Edit: I am honestly asking. Thanks for giving a comment. But to me, the above comment looks almost comically naive. What am I missing?

More positive news is that 2 oligarchs close to Putin made public statement against the war:

Mikhail Fridman : https://www.ft.com/content/9b3ab6bb-f782-43fb-8afc-42d937147...

Oleg Deripaska : https://t.me/olegderipaska/372

I guess that sanctions are effective after all.

"Effective" means the aggression and seizure stops, and they retreat. Letters from oligarchs aren't changing anything.

They've had this effect: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-orders-nuclear-dete...

I was always thinking that if Putin listens to anyone at all, then that would be his “friends” from Russian elite, such as Deripaska or Fridman

But I might be terribly wrong, of course, and you are right. Mr. Madman might be out is his mind for a very long time, and he does not listen to anyone.

The statement from Oleg Deripaska is ambiguous. Also Putin called for negotiations.

But no word from Roman Abramovich...

Abramovich is feeling the heat though. He’s distancing himself from his prize asset - Chelsea Football Club. He put out a statement that he won’t be involved in running the club in a bid to prevent it from being seized by the UK government.

my translation of Deripaska's tweet:

"Piece is very important! Negotiations should start as soon as possible!"

It is compatible with the official (is TASS official nowadays?) Russian position

https://tass.com/politics/1412389

Hard to tell if it represents a genuine will to back out of a terrible situation or an effort to weaken the Ukrainian resistance. Could be both off course.

Meanwhile, Putin just announced that they are increasing the operational readiness of their nuclear arsenal.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/vladimir-putin...

Anybody still feel that this is just a Ukranian or European problem?

I think it's a good sign for how I've curated my Twitter feed that everyone seems to understand how "regional" wars can spiral and how much this resembles the early days of the world wars. Add world-ending nuclear arsenals to that, and things get dicey.

Effectively we've been in World War III for a week or so but that realization does not seem to want to sink in yet. Europe is quite literally the battlefield of the world, we dodged a bullet in former Yugoslavia and may well dodge another one but it is definitely one of the most scary things I've lived through to date.

I hope it is ready so no madman can fire it on accident.

Other than that, I doubt there will be any nuclear action. We'll be back at the Cold War show where the script is: everybody dies and the question is who's first.

We are at a cross roads, and what will happen next relies a lot on people that should never have had that much power to begin with.

Yeah that was the case back than too.

This is the reason why we should always reduce the fuckup tools in peace times and that goes not only for nuclear weapons. Things like huge data sets could end up being your next Holocaust for example.

Yes, I wrote about that:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide/

Too many madmen with power on this planet.

It's a EU problem until nukes get involved

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/t2ha70/more_than...

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