Ukraine accepted to NATO cyber defence centre
ccdcoe.org
ccdcoe.org
There's so much naivete and ego here. It reminds me of people who are more concerned with being right than winning. Many define winning as one or more of:
- Ukraine has the right to self-determination (a principle applied extremely selectively);
- We can't reward Putin for his unjustified aggression;
- "Appeasement"; and
- We (the West in general and the US in particular) have done nothing wrong so why should we give anything up?
None of this matters. What matters is ending this war. It's the best outcome for pretty much everyone who isn't Lockheed, Boeing or Northrop. Or I guess the hawks in Washington who see the strategic value in Russia being mired in Afghanistan 2.0.
There are only three likely outcomes here:
1. Russia conquers Ukraine and rules it directly or through a puppet regime. This seems... unlikely, at least without massive loss of life;
2. Russia is mired in another decades-long insurgency before collapsing. Despite Lindsey Graham's cavalier comments, Putin dying or his regime getting toppled is going to create a huge power vacuum, lots of instability and is probably not going to be good for anyone; or
3. Through diplomacy.
NATO won't enter this war. Put that out of your head.
From a game theory perspective, you lose absolutely nothing pursuing a diplomatic end to this. If such efforts fail, you're in exactly the same situation you are now. There's no downside.
Putin is bad. This war is wrong. But US foreign policy here has been abysmal and is a significant contributing factor in precipitating this war. I'm amazed at how many people can't (or refuse to) wrap their heads around the simple concept that this isn't victim-blaming or apologism for Russia to point say both sides can be wrong even if one side (Russia) is way more wrong than the other.
Or more importantly perhaps: the big supporters like China and India that might otherwise have been able to get a word in edgewise and seen sanctions as justified to some degree.
(Edit to clarify: "big" here refers to the countries' size/population/power, not that their support is as "big" as Syria's or North Korea's.)
What's more, countries like Germany have deeper econmic ties to Russia because of natural gas in particular. European countries are, as a general rule, less interested in alienating and isolating Russia.
And there's really no difference between political parties in the US either. George W Bush's open door policy from 2008 has survived 3 subsequent administration from both parties.
It's US foreign policy that drove invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, supports Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Israel in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/world/europe/03nato.html
Ironically, this is the same logic used by many Russians who support Putin.
But your simplification of "losing absolutely nothing" is not how Ukraine sees it.
Because Russia (currently) has the upper hand in military strength, a "diplomatic end" means ceding more territory to Russia including the southern Black Sea coastline. Becoming a landlocked country beholden to Putin would be a big downside.
Proposed solutions to end wars are "easy" if one over-simplifies the problem.
Notice that your option #3 (diplomatic end) actually overlaps with your #1 (Russia rule) based on today's military situation. #1 & #3 are not mutually exclusive choices.
Ukrainians have every right to kill the Russian invaders. The West has every right to put sanctions on Russia and support the Ukrainian resistance.
no one doubts that the west has every right to do that but i fail to see how it helps to stop casualties
The only sane justification anyone can make is that we have progressed, but the tragedy for the rest continues.
US and EU war economies need an enemy and for long time, it was something abstract like drugs, terror etc. Now, they have something concrete in Russia and I see the rest as propaganda set to grow the outrage and anger to start another long war so that money can be minted.
No, it doesn't. It says that different rules apply when you're fighting a nuclear power. There is no military option here. None. That's the point. When there are no military options your only options are a proxy war (GGs for Ukraine) or a diplomatic solution.
> I would rather fight for certain values
You're not fighting for anything, most likely. It's pretty easy to sit in perfect safety thousands of miles from a war and tell other people they should fight for certain values.
But you've actually made my point. You're more interested in the principle (being right) than the outcome (winning).
> If someone comes to your house and takes it by force you should let him because it's the path to least violence right?
Does that person have 6000 nuclear weapons?
Russia being a nuclear power, "winning" probably means the house is destroyed and the land its own is littered with weapons and mines for years to come and I can't possibly afford to rebuild it.
> I did offer to go to Ukraine ...
Noble.
> ... but they are not taking untrained civilians.
Ok, I get it now. You simply have no conception of the realities of war and the aftermath. Got it.
And even after the Russians leave, the country is awash with weapons and newly-emboldened extremist groups. With the uniting threat of an invader gone, the country becomes fractured. Extremist groups are bound to decide whatever administration Ukraine has at that point isn't doing enough and now they're a problem.
We've seen how this plays out so many times and it always ends badly.
- Intervention in Syria created Asaad.
- Intervention in Iran created a fundamentalist regime that has been an issue for decades;
- Intervention in Iraq to counterbalance the Iranian fundamentalist regime created Saddam Hussein;
- Intervention in Vietnam wrecked the country;
- Intervention in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation wrecked the country and created Osama bin Laden; and
- 20 years of intervention in Afghanistan resulted in the exact same regime (the Taliban) controlling the country.
But yes, this time will be different.
To be clear: War is very low on the list of Ukrainian's wants, but Ukraine wants war more than it wants surrender.
Yes, they want to wage a defensive war against the invaders.
Putin and Lavrov have said Ukraine is a historical mistake. They want to assimilate Ukraine into Russia and commit cultural genocide.
Ukrainians have every right to kill the Russian invaders. The West has every right to put sanctions on Russia and support the Ukrainian resistance.
You can easily end this war and any war by always surrendering.
I am anti-war, and my country is installing war and conflict in several places. So there is my reason.
That’s fairly doubtful. There’s some proponents of the NATO-provocation theory but geopolitics is way more complicated than than a single indicator.
Putin would still have invaded if the US was an inept backwater that had no foreign policy
- Chechnya (internal hence doesn't matter)
- Georgia 2008 (after they aligned with the US and decided to join nato)
- Ukraine 2014 (pretty much the same reason)
- Ukraine 2022 (once nato-ukraine relationships were intensifying at unprecedented rate in 2021)
All of these actions were reactions to what putin considers to be crossing of "the red lines" made clear like 20 yrs ago.
This is not too different from the Cuban Missile Crisis. How would the USA react today if Russia attempted to put missiles on Cuba, for defensive purposes of course? Or better, how would they have reacted 15 years ago so that we keep the Ukraine conflict out of this thought experiment?
In no way do I want to defend this war, I want to see Putin defeated as much as everyone else, but unfortunately this is what you get if there are incompatible interests and no one backs down or tries to reach a compromise.
While I think it does play a part, that's not what their propaganda is even using as a reason. This indicates a multitude of reasons and not any one "excuse", which is my point
It is not only incompatible interests. Both groups of actors weigh the case of Ukraine differently. While Putin (et al) are ready to go to for for it, it does not seem to have the same level of priority for NATO countries/USA. One might even say that to a degree, USA is not aligned with the EU in this case (oil imports made by USA, Nordstream 2).
US and EU are certainly aligned in some aspects, they oppose war in general and the resulting humanitarian crisis, they want to uphold international law, they want sovereignty respected, they do not want further escalation, but I would agree that the US could potentially profit from the situation when the EU adjusts its resource dependencies, especially oil and gas. But I am not sure if gains in specific areas are not offset by the consequences of the entire situation in general.
All Russian attacks in Georgia and Ukraine followed the Bucharest declaration from April 2008 which states that Ukraine and Georgia will become NATO members. Under Yanukovych Ukraine decided to not go ahead with the NATO membership and remain unaligned. After that the situation escalated again in 2014 as Ukraine started again to seek NATO membership.
That seems too strong a statement. Unless you have personal or expert insight you do not know Putin is thinking.
> - that US nukes will end up right at his borders.
I thought there was no real advantage to moving nuclear weapons close to borders any more. I am no expert, my impression was the static location made them vulnerable to attack and counter measures. Submarine launch platforms were the priority for this reason.
If that's true then it would not make sense for Putin to have any real worry about this. Though it might make for a good public argument.
Putin has always said that an eastward NATO expansion to the borders of Russia is unacceptable as this poses a security thread to Russia. And because it is hard to know what somebody thinks I will just assume that he thinks what he says unless there are good reasons to assume he was consistently lying about this concerns for decades.
I thought there was no real advantage to moving nuclear weapons close to borders any more. I am no expert, my impression was the static location made them vulnerable to attack and counter measures.
For a first strike it might still be good to be as close to the target as possible because it minimizes reaction time. And for a first strike you are not so much worried about them being in a static location.
But I was a bit sloppy there, I just wrote nukes but I am not actually sure what kind of military assets would be the most worrisome. Maybe it would be an anti ballistic missile system close to your border that weakens your nuclear posture. Maybe it would just be a hand full of military bases with a few hundred tanks.
In the end it doesn't really matter, I think a NATO presence close to Russian borders is unlikely to be a security thread to Russia, no matter what kind of assets, but Putin thinks otherwise.
This seems native, there is a history of politicians and political parties hiding their motivations, or at least some of, for years/decades. For example it seems plausible that Putin thinks it hurts his personal power or his friends rather than hurting Russia or Russians at large. I can not tell, and it would take considerable insight to tell, the difference between that and Putin thinking of Russian security, but being mistaken about what would increase security the most.
> For a first strike it might still be good to be as close to the target as possible because it minimizes reaction time. And for a first strike you are not so much worried about them being in a static location.
First strike is not really important in my understanding. I thought the current doctrine was there was no way to first strike enough assets to prevent massive retaliation. There is no victory with nuclear war only mutual destruction, first strike or not.
> But I was a bit sloppy there, I just wrote nukes but I am not actually sure what kind of military assets would be the most worrisome. Maybe it would be an anti ballistic missile system close to your border that weakens your nuclear posture. Maybe it would just be a hand full of military bases with a few hundred tanks.
>
> In the end it doesn't really matter, I think a NATO presence close to Russian borders is unlikely to be a security thread to Russia, no matter what kind of assets, but Putin thinks otherwise.
I think this leaves us in a place where we do not have any concrete example of how Putin thinks NATO's threat to Russia will be substantially changed with Ukraine joining NATO.
And whatever consideration made the USA not like the idea of nuclear missiles close to their border, the same considerations may make Putin dislike its neighbors become NATO members. And this was just ignored. This seems, at least in my opinion, a much better and more rational explanation than some vague ideas of what Putin might be thinking. At it perfectly aligns with his actions in the past. In 2008 Ukraine and Georgia started the process of becoming NATO members in Georgia was promptly attacked. The Ukraine under Yanukovych no longer really pursued a NATO membership until 2014, then this became again more and more a priority and Russia reacted with Crimea, eastern Ukraine and now this. In reaction Sweden and Finnland consider a NATO membership and Putin immediately reacts with a warning.
This analogy does not work. Nuclear weapons technology and military doctrine has changed since the 1960s some people thought an effective first strike was possible, that is no longer the case and has not been for over a decade(decades?) to my understanding.
> And whatever consideration made the USA not like the idea of nuclear missiles close to their border, the same considerations may make Putin dislike its neighbors become NATO members. And this was just ignored. This seems, at least in my opinion, a much better and more rational explanation than some vague ideas of what Putin might be thinking. At it perfectly aligns with his actions in the past. In 2008 Ukraine and Georgia started the process of becoming NATO members in Georgia was promptly attacked. The Ukraine under Yanukovych no longer really pursued a NATO membership until 2014, then this became again more and more a priority and Russia reacted with Crimea, eastern Ukraine and now this. In reaction Sweden and Finnland consider a NATO membership and Putin immediately reacts with a warning.
Maybe you think I am objecting to something I am not. I asserted your claim/statement was too strong. I objected to the claim that you know Putin's thought process about Ukraine joining NATO. In particular that it threatens Russian security. Claiming Putin's actions are consistent with your assertion is much stronger, but also leave open the possibility for other explanations, for Putin to have other motivations.
My main point here is not the nuclear thread, I am focusing on the fact that US security concerns outweighed Cuba's defense interests, they asked for the missiles after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. So while ideally every sovereign country should be free to decide whether or not they want to join NATO and which kind of military assets it wants to place there, I think one should not plainly dismiss Russia's security concerns about its neighbors becoming NATO members.
Maybe you think I am objecting to something I am not. I asserted your claim/statement was too strong. I objected to the claim that you know Putin's thought process about Ukraine joining NATO. In particular that it threatens Russian security. Claiming Putin's actions are consistent with your assertion is much stronger, but also leave open the possibility for other explanations, for Putin to have other motivations.
I am not claiming to know what Putin thinks, when I write »Putin considers Ukraine becoming a NATO member a security thread.« this is of course just a shorthand for »Considering everything I know, especially what Putin said and did, it seems to me the most plausible explanation that Putin considers Ukraine becoming a NATO member a security thread.«, nothing more, nothing less. I don't think anyone could reasonably mean anything else with a phrase like »Putin thinks« in this context, therefore I didn't think it is necessary to use really precise language.
But that also means that I am unwilling to accept a simple »But you might be wrong.«, »Politicians often lie.« or »Maybe he fears looking weak.« as a counterargument. Sure, they all might be correct and I know this, but I think assertions alone are not good enough. I have written quite a few comments on this topic today but I think there was only one good counterpoint, namely why does Putin not openly justify the war with those ignored security concerns and went instead with the protection of Russian in Ukraine? And if I am not misremembering, no one tried to make a different case for the primary reason, not for natural resources, not for Crimea and Sevastopol, not for actually protecting Russian minorities, not for the water supply to Crimea, not for an easier to defend western border, not for a delusional desire to return Russia to past power or enter the history books as a hero.
That argument does not work since you have not come up with a new security argument after a pointed out there was not concrete security argument after you withdrew the nuclear threat: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30570482 For the argument to work, for the analogy to work, NATO's threat to Russia needs to substantially change if Ukraine joins NATO.
If there was such a security argument the next step would be to ask if Putin is going about insuring his security in a reasonable and efficient way which I have not seen a good argument for.
> I am not claiming to know what Putin thinks, when I write »Putin considers Ukraine becoming a NATO member a security thread.« this is of course just a shorthand for »Considering everything I know, especially what Putin said and did, it seems to me the most plausible explanation that Putin considers Ukraine becoming a NATO member a security thread.«, nothing more, nothing less. I don't think anyone could reasonably mean anything else with a phrase like »Putin thinks« in this context, therefore I didn't think it is necessary to use really precise language.
My observation over the last ~10 years is that claiming to know the personal thoughts or moral character, feelings of political leaders has seen(edit sp) an uptick in political conversations/arguments. If I were to do a rough estimate I would say I have seen more arguments like that, or at least are indistinguishable, than not. I am just comment on what I end up interacting with rather than claiming a global trend(edit added sentence). Enough that I can not, without wasting everyones time, assume, without verifying, that people are arguing and thinking with nuance when using such language.
Russia does not trust NATO and especially the USA, any neighboring country joining NATO allows them place more military assets close to the Russian border and having military assets close to a target is obviously more threatening. Russia had all those assets that are in Ukraine now all the time but moving them to the Ukrainian border made a heck of a difference.
I have now also looked at more resources and they mostly support what I researched before. I am somewhat worried that I accidently got trapped in a bubble as the pieces fit together almost to well, so I will have to look more for opposing opinions.
M. E. Sarotte: Not One Inch - America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate (2022) [1]
John Mearsheimer: Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? (2015) [2]
Vladimir Pozner: How the United States Created Vladimir Putin (2018) [3]
Vladimir Putin: Speech at Munich Security Conference (2007) [4]
As a probably opposing opinion I found »Documents Talk - NATO-RUSSIA Relations after the Cold War« [5] but it is 600 pages and I really only read a few paragraphs from a few documents so far. It is however co-sponsored by NATO, so there is certainly the possibility of a bias in document selection.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXBKGRPwfZw
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ58Yv6kP44
[5] https://pism.pl/publications/Documents_Talk_NATORUSSIA_Relat...
I do not think this justifies your analogy to the USA during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Cuban Missile Crisis we are talking about first strike nuclear capability when people thought it mattered, and it really might have mattered. The ability to destroy a nation, kill millions of it civilians, without risking equal retaliation, and where that ability would not have existed otherwise. Compare that to Ukraine joining NATO, there is no comparison. NATO does not gain any new abilities that are even close to that. This disparity is why the analogy breaks down.
> I have now also looked at more resources and they mostly support what I researched before. I am somewhat worried that I accidently got trapped in a bubble as the pieces fit together almost to well, so I will have to look more for opposing opinions.
I am probably not going to have time to go through the multiple hours of videos here. Some of them look interesting so I will be listening to one or two in the background when I doing something else so thank you for the links.
I do not think this additional info is likely to reconcile or explain the difference in view point we have here. Exploring how we see your analogy might. Exploring how I seem to think there is a larger divide between publicly shared motivations and all of the hidden layers of motivation which are not public than you might.
I get your point, you want me to demonstrate that a Ukrainian NATO membership would be an actual increased threat to Russia. I can not do this from the top of my head, I would have to research this. At best I vaguely remember concerns about anti ballistic missiles system, ICBMs are especially vulnerable during early flight when they are still slow but this requires of course being close to the launch location. Why does it matter? Because this may be able to weaken retaliatory strike capabilities and therefore make a first strike by the other side more viable.
But I am not sure that this even matters, what if the threat is only perceived but not real? At least before the current mess I would have been reasonably confident that NATO would not attack Russia and only use its assets for defensive purposes. So there is no real threat, only a theoretical one, NATO could but would not. You could also imagine the inverse scenario, where there is an actual threat but the threatened country does not know or misjudges the situation. So what really seems to matter here is how the situation is perceived by Russia. If you think their perception is wrong, you can try to convince them otherwise.
I could even try to make the case for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cuba requested the missiles as a deterrent against further invasion attempts and if we assume for the sake of argument that they and the USSR are sincere, then there was no actual threat unless the USA tried to go after Cuba again. But it seems of course very unlikely to me that the USA would have this amount of trust and confidence.
It sounds like you are talking about nuclear first strike here again, ICBMs are primarily for nuclear weapons after all, and there is no advantage to having them closer, see my first comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30569822
> But I am not sure that this even matters, what if the threat is only perceived but not real? At least before the current mess I would have been reasonably confident that NATO would not attack Russia and only use its assets for defensive purposes. So there is no real threat, only a theoretical one, NATO could but would not. You could also imagine the inverse scenario, where there is an actual threat but the threatened country does not know or misjudges the situation. So what really seems to matter here is how the situation is perceived by Russia.
This makes it so the most delusional or paranoia person/country, or those that act like it, are given advantages over those that are acting reasonable. This, used as a general rule, can/would cause a negative feedback cycle making the world worse over time.
> I could even try to make the case for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cuba requested the missiles as a deterrent against further invasion attempts and if we assume for the sake of argument that they and the USSR are sincere, then there was no actual threat unless the USA tried to go after Cuba again. But it seems of course very unlikely to me that the USA would have this amount of trust and confidence.
No, because the threat of Cuba and/or USSR in this case would have drastically changed, unlike with Ukraine joining NATO. This analogy breaks done for the same reasons the pervious does.
No, I am talking about boost phase ANTI ballistic missile systems. During the boost phase ICBMs are especially vulnerable because they are still slow, but you need your interceptors close to the launch site because you have to detect the ICBM launches, launch your interceptors, and catch up with the ICBMs. If you have an effective ABM system, you gain a better first strike capability because you can weaken or ideally neutralize a retaliatory strike, i.e. the opposing ICBMs are no longer or at least a weaker deterrent.
This makes it so the most delusional or paranoia person/country, or those that act like it, are given advantages over those that are acting reasonable. This, used as a general rule, can/would cause a negative feedback cycle making the world worse over time.
But look what we got now. Even if my reasoning is incorrect and we ended up with this mess for other reasons, I think it is at least plausible scenario and we could have ended up in the current situation this way. But there would have been options, Norway is a NATO member but has all kind of additional rules like no ICBMs and foreign troops on their soil. You could pave a way for Russia to also join NATO. You could at least discuss concerns and try to find some middle ground. You could try to reduce concerns. It's not binary, you can work on reasonable perceived threats without being compelled to address absolutely outlandish concerns.
No, because the threat of Cuba and/or USSR in this case would have drastically changed, unlike with Ukraine joining NATO.
No, there would have been no actual threat if Cuba would have gotten those missiles purely as a deterrent. The threat would be only in the heads of the Americans because they don't know and can not be sure that the missiles are purely a deterrent. If I point a realistically looking toy gun at you, there is no actual threat. But you don't know or at least are not sure that it is not a real gun, so you will act according to the perceived threat. And now that I am rethinking this I actually tend towards making a stronger claim than last time, you always act according to the perceived threat. Why? Because the perceived threat is everything you have, you don't have access to the actual threat.
My first comment still handles this, mobile, and submarine platforms exist in part to counter this. I will quote my second comment:
> "First strike is not really important in my understanding. I thought the current doctrine was there was no way to first strike enough assets to prevent massive retaliation. There is no victory with nuclear war only mutual destruction, first strike or not."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30570482
> But look what we got now. Even if my reasoning is incorrect and we ended up with this mess for other reasons, I think it is at least plausible scenario and we could have ended up in the current situation this way. But there would have been options, Norway is a NATO member but has all kind of additional rules like no ICBMs and foreign troops on their soil.
Putin demanded that Ukraine be unable to join NATO, not the smaller demand of not having ICBMs while in NATO. I would be surprised if If that was not on the table from NATO and/or Ukraine's side. If you have any evidence this was turned down I would be surprised and interested.
> You could pave a way for Russia to also join NATO. You could at least discuss concerns and try to find some middle ground. You could try to reduce concerns. It's not binary, you can work on reasonable perceived threats without being compelled to address absolutely outlandish concerns.
Russia joining NATO has been discussed over the years with the idea coming from both sides. I do not know the specifics of why it has not worked yet, but long term I am sure that is still on the table.
> No, there would have been no actual threat if Cuba would have gotten those missiles purely as a deterrent. The threat would be only in the heads of the Americans because they don't know and can not be sure that the missiles are purely a deterrent. If I point a realistically looking toy gun at you, there is no actual threat. But you don't know or at least are not sure that it is not a real gun, so you will act according to the perceived threat. And now that I am rethinking this I actually tend towards making a stronger claim than last time, you always act according to the perceived threat. Why? Because the perceived threat is everything you have, you don't have access to the actual threat.
This seems like a definition difference causing a problem. Threat is often short hand for 'ability to do harm' in national security context. So if Cuba has the missiles they have the ability to do harm and therefor are a threat. The national security threat is the ability and nothing else. In the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis, "The ability to destroy a nation, kill millions of it civilians, without risking equal retaliation, and where that ability would not have existed otherwise." form: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30570482
I have been using 'ability' in pervious comments for this reason for example in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30578979
With regard to NATO expansion being a threat to Russia. It's well beyond my abilities to assess what kind of military assets in which places pose or do not pose a threat to Russia or how Ukraine becoming a NATO member would affect the status quo. While I am pretty sure that someone has done the math and figured out by how many percentage points your chances of wining a war go up if you buy another 1000 tanks or move your ICBMs 500 km in that direction, I was not very successful finding something relevant.
If you can dig up an analysis that clearly shows that border proximity does not influence the expected outcome of a military conflict, then I will accept that Russia's threat perception is not justified. How one should deal with unjustified viewpoints would still remains a separate topic. For the moment I will stick to my intuition, when you buy a gun at the other end of the world that is a different threat than when you show up with that gun at my fence. If you park your tanks 500 km away with a third country between me and you that is a different threat than you parking your tanks right at my border, at the very least with respect to how much preparation time I might have and how long your logistics chain might need to be.
Even though it doesn't add too many new aspects to the discussion, I will quote from an Australian Institute of International Affairs article [1] that touches on many of the points.
In March 2004 NATO accepted seven new member states including the three Baltic states. For the first time, NATO was right on Russia’s border. Twelve hundred miles had separated Saint Petersburg from NATO during the Cold War, but that distance had been reduced to less than one hundred miles. [...] It was quite reasonable for the Kremlin to view NATO’s incorporation of the Baltic States as an outright threat. Unlike the existing NATO members and former Warsaw Pact states, the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which was designed to prevent any country from amassing the weaponry required to launch an offensive war, didn’t bind the Baltic nations. NATO now held the legal right to deploy an unlimited quantity of troops and military hardware in the Baltic. Plans were made for the Baltic states to accede to an adapted CFE treaty, but a series of diplomatic stalemates resulted in the US and its NATO allies refusing to ratify the new agreement.
In 2007, the Bush Administration announced plans to construct a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe. The pretext for this decision was that it was necessary to protect Europe from an Iranian nuclear attack. However, Moscow quickly realised that the shield would have the potential to undermine and perhaps even neutralise Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Putin suggested an alternative, namely the construction of a joint Russia-US radar warning system in Azerbaijan, but the US rejected this proposal. At this point, Putin was forced to abandon his conciliatory approach. In his 2007 State of the Nation Address, the Russian President characterised NATO as, “a real threat”. Russia formally suspended its observance of its CFE treaty obligations a month later.
At a summit in Bucharest in April 2008, NATO released a statement affirming that Georgia and the Ukraine would be offered membership. US pressure was the chief driver of this decision, as several Western European alliance members expressed opposition to the plan.
This was NATO’s most threatening and provocative move towards Russia yet. Ukraine, as the biggest country is Europe, constitutes an important strategic buffer between Russia and NATO. Napoleonic France, Wilhelmine Germany, and Nazi Germany all invaded Russia through south-eastern Europe and consequently, the Kremlin is extremely reticent to allow the armies of those countries to once again be stationed there. Georgia borders Russia’s volatile Caucasus region, already rife with minority nationalism and secessionist sentiment. Furthermore, both Georgia and the Ukraine are proximate to Russia’s Volga region, its agricultural heartland and its access point for Caspian Sea oil. The Kremlin cannot and will not risk its control over these assets being compromised.
[...]
Russia regards NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance, as a dire threat the its security. Russia’s goal of trying to halt NATO’s eastward march is rooted in a defensive realist view of international politics. The Kremlin is attempting to safeguard its security; it is not looking to reclaim lost status or recapture an empire. Analysts such as Derk Eppink have contended that, “Putin’s mind-set is largely rooted in the 19th century. Politics [for him] is about power.” Those who dismiss this worldview as outdated would do well to remember that Russia was almost destroyed twice in twentieth century by invasions through Eastern Europe. At least twenty-seven million Russians were killed during WWII, roughly one third of the war’s overall death toll. It should hardly be surprising that a sense of vulnerability still pervades Russian strategic thinking today.
It is also worth noting that the US’ worldview is not significantly different to that of Russia. The US has pursued the Monroe Doctrine for almost two centuries, often employing violence and subverting democracy to prevent foreign powers from establishing a presence in the Americas. As John Mearsheimer explains, “this is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory… Imagine the American outrage if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico.”
With regard to Russia's demand that Ukraine must not become a NATO member, I think the point in time is important. Now I would also demand this, in negotiations you could then offer a limited membership as a concession. I did not find any proposals for a limited NATO membership from any side.
With regard to threats, I was indeed not aware that it has this technical definition. This simplifies things a bit because we can focus on ability and ignore intend, but I am not sure that this helps much, we are still stuck with assessing how much border proximity affects the threat posed. And it also does not change the fact that actions will be determined by threat but perceived threat. If I line your border with inflatable tanks, then I am not a threat, but if you fail to realize that I don't actually have any real tanks, then you will still act as if there was a real threat.
I think keeping it short didn't work.
[1] https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/th...
Nobody tried to install nukes in Ukraine.
There are NATO nuclear weapons in Turkey, I don't know where exactly, but Turkey is as little as 170 km (100 mi) from the Russian border, separated only by Georgia, which is also supposed to become a NATO member according to the Bucharest declaration. So is it really that hard to imagine that Russia might be worried about nuclear weapons at their borders?
And I am no expert, I am not sure what kind of assets would be of the greatest concern, maybe it would be anti ballistic missile system weakening your nuclear posture, maybe it would just be a large number of tanks. So don't focus too much on me saying nuclear weapons but think more broadly about military assets in general.
If you're thinking that not many HN users have personal and familial links to the countries involved in this war, that is already completely mistaken. And the number of users who have enough of a personal connection to history to feel intense emotion about this is...approximately everybody.
If one is for war, this should be downvoted.
However, since China is not controlled by a narrow circle of delusional madmen I’m confident that the West and China can continue to cooperate peacefully and there is no need to call for hostilities.
I'm not very familiar with Chineese leadership structure or any of the things you mention, and of course it is not a democracy. It's run by a narrow group of people and is heavy-handed. I'd never want to live there.
It's just that I think that the narrow group, corrupt as it may be, is neither delusional nor desperate.
delusional a bit, but I only know a few anecdotes of high-profile arrogance paired with stupidity, which they eventually fixed internally.
This remains true even if an unwillingness to risk war means that a people cannot stand up for itself.
I find worrying that Russia is being cornered into a position they did not consider when engaging in this military action and the consequences of what that might bring.
I think the west is not really trying to de-escalate the conflict and that feels a bit baffling. Also, I feel like a lot of the sanctions are targeting the Russian people as a whole, and because I do know some Russians I can see how tough the situation is turning on them... even though they are as innocent as any other civilian in this war. It is really sad to see so many people celebrate sanctions and so on.
It's a horrible situation! Where is our humanity?
Napoleon wasn't cornered when he was losing too.
There is no sane reason to let a bully just take what he wants, since that's exactly what Putin is trying with his threats.
Just visualize what would American response would be if Mexico or Canada considered joining a non-American Security Alliance. We already know how America will respond, when Venezuela brought up joining Russian security alliance, few years ago.
NATO is a relic of Cold War and should have been disbanded when Cold War ended, instead it became a tool for American imperialism expansion, 19 members to 30 members. And, now we are seeing the poisoned fruits of how it is threatening world peace. Ukraine has become an American pawn in geo-political chess.
NATO is just an excuse, Putin is not interested in an independent Ukraine with western values.
And if you don't think that Ukraine has a say it this whole mess then you are the imperialist.
I shudder to imagine what would the world look like if Russia loses and Ukraine joins NATO. North Korea will be proven right, only way to prevent US and NATO to bully, invade and destroy your country is to have a nuclear warhead on an ICBM pointed at a close US/NATO ally.
About what? No one is trying to invade neither Russia nor north Korea.
If there is anything that was proven is that even if Ukraine would become a strong western ally, as is South Korea, still no one would attack Russia, just like no one is attacking North Korea.
If anything Russia should be extremely wary about following the exact same path as North Korea, turning into a secluded prison state. It's all just extremely sad, and a lose for us all.
The problem with those hypothetical situations is that currently they have no reason to do that. If they had reasons, they could outweigh what the US thinks about it - because the US is already the danger.
Or to change that variable on the other side: if Russia want hostile in the first place, there would be no pressure for the expansion. "I increased bullying due to you joining the anti-bullying group" just shouldn't make sense when grown-ups are involved, and yet...
Yep, this is Putin's demand but it's a demand in bad faith as we'll get into in a minute.
> Just visualize what would American response would be if Mexico or Canada considered joining a non-American Security Alliance. We already know how America will respond, when Venezuela brought up joining Russian security alliance, few years ago.
This is just whataboutism. I don't know the details of Venezuela, but it's totally possible the US was in the wrong. Whatever the case, it has no bearing on whether Russia is in the right.
> And, now we are seeing the poisoned fruits of how it is threatening world peace.
This is the meat of my objection, since arguing NATO's a threat to world peace is empirically Russian nationalist nonsense. Between Russia and NATO, one has been militarily invading its neighbors for years now and the other is a purely defensive pact. Which is not to say that NATO is not an arm of American imperialism, but supposing a NATO member state wanted to start an aggressive war against Russia or its allies, NATO would not apply. When the US invaded Iraq, for instance (another popular whataboutism topic from Russian nationalists, but one with more merit than Venezuela IMO), they had to drum up support from allies without being able to invoke NATO. Those allies could have refused to support the invasion.
> Ukraine has become an American pawn in geo-political chess.
On this, however, we can agree.
Shouldn't we at least consider what's their view on this instead of painting everything as big power rivalry? Didn't they democratically choose to apply for EU membership? Considering neighbouring Poland has joined the ranks of high income countries and Ukraine has been stagnating under Russian protection can you blame them? Also, considering the blood ties between Russia and Ukraine before this war why would Ukraine consider joining NATO if it was not afraid of Russia (and still isn't apparently)? I think this line of reasoning of Ukraine pursuing NATO membership before all this started is a bit absurd.
https://freepolicybriefs.org/2018/03/12/polands-road-high-in...
Sure, but these aren't mutually exclusive topics. A terrible blunder on Russia's part may have been the sole catalyst, but that doesn't mean it's not a prime geopolitical opportunity for the US.
Edit: I see a lot of you really struggling with this idea. The good news is you don't have to take my word for it! Please read analysis from both of the mentioned authors and more. They're much better sources than me and other hackernews posters
Someone posted the following leaked cable here a while back from 2008
> Comment > 12. (C) Russia's opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is both emotional and based on perceived strategic concerns about the impact on Russia's interests in the region. It is also politically popular to paint the U.S. and NATO as Russia's adversaries and to use NATO's outreach to Ukraine and Georgia as a means of generating support from Russian nationalists. While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990's was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests.
Do these historians have an answer that what should those countries in east Europe do? Just accept the fate that you will always be a vassal of Russia because you are at the wrong geographical place?
- Option 1: NATO
- Option 2: Vassal of Russia
- Option 3: "buffer state" which means you are free to be destroyed by both the NATO and Russia, see Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia
There is a reason people wants to have a life like "the west" and not like Russia.
Can you elaborate on former Yugoslavia ? Who has destroyed it ?
Edit: I think most of you aren't really engaging with the substance of my comment. The idea being that all this bloodthirst that Russia currently has is due to conditions that we knew about and could have avoided.
Also, Russian government of 1991 =/= Stalin
You are assuming that Russia will stop conquering it's neighbours. Or that it would be a good neighbour if "it was left alone by the west" - what ever that means?
I mean after 45 years of Soviet occupation of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia etc. didn't know what people expect from those countries. Of course they don't want to see any russians ever again.
Or once again: is it their fate that they always have to be the vassal of Russia just because of their location?
Most of these countries were historically and culturally always closer to Germany, "the west", than Russia.
Since the start 1920s countries in central Europe are in constant fear of Soviet/Russian attack.
That is because it doesn’t have any.
The idea that NATO expansion caused Putin to be have in this manner is simply not a credible argument. The countries of Eastern Europe have the same right to self determination as those of Western Europe, the US or Russia itself. Being an apologist does not make you a substantive debater, it makes you a patsy.
? Yes, Putin has been trying that for 20 years.
Putin + Kremlin believe that Ukraine is 'not a country' and is a 'vassal of Russia'.
Straight up.
They have been actively doing things to support this for a very long time.
See: Yanukovich, the laughably clown dirtbag who is the Belarus/Lukashenko analogue.
Here is a good articulation of the Geostrategic and Historical Russian Nationalism:
(Article was put up by accident in Russia but taken down)
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...
here is the English translation:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z7zQiS-99mhqmJqJ-r-a2MJc...
This is not about 'defence and NATO'.
I guess I would like some source arguments as to how it was the pushing east, i.e. allowing Nato membership in former eastern bloc countries, that allowed hawks/imperialists to rise to power.
Yes, NATO expansion has been used as an excuse by hawks/imperialists. But given recent experience there is absolutely no base for assuming that they would have had any trouble making up others.
Putin has been playing this game since day one, he belongs to the group that wants Russia to be imperial again, ie. Right before the bolcheviques. The only “innovation” is he doesn’t see full on invasions alone as a viable option to accomplish that.
In reality, every month of Zelenskyj's rule, the country moved further and further away from democracy and closer to autocracy. This is an annoying feature of western geopolitics - despite all the talk about democracy, we always prefer a western-aligned autocrat to any anti-western democratic outcome
Just an excerpt of Zelenskyj's rule:
* banned opposition's TV channels
* urged Apple and Google to remove apps related to those TV channels from app stores, as well as fairly innocuous Russian apps like Yandex (search engine) and vkontaktu (facebook-alike)
* an already atrocious state of minority rights turned even worse in many aspects
* refused Russian COVID vaccines despite having no alternative (this plummeted his approval ratings)
* after seeing Russia-aligned parties leading in the polls, he bypassed the judicial system and froze assets of his main political opponent by a presidential decree, and put him under house arrest
* casually throwing people to jail with accusations of treason, including previous president of Ukraine (democratically elected ethnic Ukrainian), opposition politicians, as well as diplomatic negotiators
and there's much more. As a citizen of a Western country, it's really difficult to get a good picture of the situation. Putin is lying lunatic directly responsible for this war. Zelenskyi is a lying lunatic indirectly responsible for this war. Why are we acting like one of them is a saint?
But we have the present and must deal with the immediate consequences with our best foot forward. The Ukrainian people are blameless and deserve our help - more so because we are partly to blame for not exhausting every option of diplomacy available to us. Please don't try to throw them under the bus.
Let's confront this tragedy while acknowledging context so that we don't make the same mistakes again
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11...
Adding
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russi...
That's not accurate at all - the arrow of cause and effect cannot point backwards in time. The current powers in Russia are largely a result of privitization in Russia in the 90s. This privitization was deeply unfair to the average Russian, and was largely driven by the West's desire to turn Russia away from Communism. The result was the oligarchs and Putin (in charge since 2000). There's still blame for the West here, but NATO expansion came after Russia turned against the West; it wasn't the cause of it.
Don't agree.
1) The 'NATO' expansion issue is actually a distraction. This is absolutely not about 'NATO on Russias Borders'. While there is a kernel of truth there, it's used as propaganda.
2) Russia, specifically Putin, has been trying to grab Ukraine back for 20 years. There is 100% legitimacy in the fact UKR/RUS have a special cultural relationship - but - that's skewed through Russian Imperial Chauvinism in that they view Ukraine basically as a vassal. That Chauvinism is probably a couple centuries old.
More recently, we have the Soviet Dystopian Unreality machine, in which the Truth can be manufactured. Putin is using this to great effect, literally making his bid for Conquest into an issue of 'victimhood'. It's all a bit 'Mein Kampfy'.
Putin has been 'very directly intervening' in Ukraine with his laughable stooge Yanukovich for a very long time - rigging elections, killing journalists and protesters, supporting corruption.
The West has definitely been intervening and more or less on 'one side' but it has been a lighter touch - and most importantly - the West will ultimately accept the choice of Ukranians.
Here's the Paradox:
Putin is ex-KGB/Soviet counter intelligence - cynical, repulsive, fearful, skittish + nationalist + authoritarian.
But imagine of Putin was a charismatic man. A great speaker. Someone who talked about 'hope' and 'people'.
Putin has a giant advantage vis-a-vis the West in Ukraine! Ukranians see Russians as 'bretheren'.
If Putin were to have created a 'Positive Russia', messages of hope, clamping down on corruption ... then in 2014 he may literally have been able to give a speech to protesters instead of shooting them.
I have peers in Belarus that can flee to Canada - but they don't want to. They are going to 'Georgia or Latvia' - because it's closer to home. This speaks to their natural cultural ties and choices.
The 2014 'Revolution' was bloody and a lot of young people were just killed.
Police can sometimes get really, really out of hand and that indiscriminate shooting of protesters is something Ukranians will not forget.
When the Russians invade, that's what they know is in the future.
I honestly think that if Dimitri Medvedev came to power, Ukraine would have joined a 'Eurasian Economic Union', Belarus would have dumped Lukashenko.
Literally Putin could have had the Eurasian Union and a more united 'Rus People' by just retiring and shutting his fat mouth.
But what is the end-game if de-escalation is no longer the goal? Is the West ready to commit to that end-game?
I don't see sanctions, insulation, and supporting Ukraine as military offense. It makes the Russian offensive much more costly though.
Lack of de-escalation is likely to mean further escalation. You can step into defense as you escalate a conflict, but you can't remain in defense forever as a conflict with a nuclear power heats up.
The elephant in the room is not escalation in itself, it's what comes at the end of the road.
If there are currently no attempts at de-escalation, and no one in the West wants to acknowledge that this leads to a nuclear conflict, what is the West actually hoping for?
I won't posture as an international policy expert, but I cannot believe there were no "stronger" responses to the initial seizures that would have prevented Russia from launching the Ukrainian invasion.
Sanctions are a least-politically-risky option for a democracy, from a popular perspective. Putin's takeaway was that he could invade sovereign territory with only an economic response from the west.
If you're going to pursue a course of action that Russia sees as endangering its strategic interests (promoting democracy and NATO membership in states that border Russia), then you need an equally strong threat (from Russia's perspective) to restrain their response.
Putin was too proud to enter NATO the bureaucratic way, he was asked to fill out the form. A big mistake hurting everyone.
We are now living in truly post-truth world.
We can condemn the Russia invasion without resorting to what is a complete inversion of the facts.
The US, for unexplained reasons, against the opposition of Germany and France has been stoking this fire since the age of the great neocons: Clinton and Bush Júnior and even after then it never really tried to de-escalate the situation or not try to isolate Russia from Europe. This is widely agreed between scholars and diplomats both from the right and from the left. It is not everyday when Chomsky and Kissinger agreed about something like this.
It wasn't the first nor the last attempt at a reset on relations with Russia. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/bush-putin-the-end-of-the...
But why should Russia start a war with Europe then? Please explain.
EU and Russia could be a very strong power, to offset the other powers in the world. But now Russia decided to fuck both EU and Russia. Nice play idiot(s).
He has no interest in deescalation, except maybe having all of Eastern Europe bow to his rule. Should the west kick the baltic states out of NATO too to appease Russia?
NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg press conference a few days ago:
From correct time: https://youtu.be/JvxqTGrZxwQ?t=64
Partial quote as of time above:
"...The Kremlin objectives are not limited to Ukraine. Russia has demanded legal binding agreements to renounce further NATO enlargement. And remove troops and infrastructure from allies that joined after 1997..."
I think we are in danger of applying the wrong lesson from history.
People today say you cannot be a "Putin apologizer", or that looking for reasons for Putin's behavior was a form of "appeasement".
People who say these things believe they have learned from history. They look back at Hitler in 1938. Czechoslovakia. Austria. And, finally, Poland.
They look back at England and France, who, not wanting to risk war, sought ways to "appease" Hitler. And by doing that, they lost valuable time and allowed Hitler to grow stronger, making the situation much worse for the world.
Now, people are drawing the conclusion: "You should never try to appease a dictator!"
But I'd argue that this is the wrong conclusion.
What backfired back then is not that England and France tried to appease Hitler. What backfired was that the leaders of England and France grotesquely misread Hitler and his goals.
Their mistake was not that they tried to understand Hitler's motives. Rather, their mistake was precisely that they failed to accurately understand his motives. They did not do too much understanding. They did too little.
This is why the English public finally turned to Churchill. Because Churchill actually "grokked" Hitler:
He had formed an accurate mental model of Hitler's motives.
Did that make Churchill into a "Hitler apologist"? Not at all. Instead, it allowed him to accurately predict Hitler's next moves. It allowed him to predict that making territorial concessions to this man would never help to guarantee peace long-term.
Churchill was actually one of the few European leaders who had troubled to read "Mein Kampf". He also read the books written by Sebastian Haffner, a German who had chronicled his life under Hitler from inside Germany.
Whereas the others sought to resolve the situation by ignoring and disengaging, Churchill engaged with Hitler's thoughts. And he did so intimately and with a grave sense of personal responsibility for the outcome of this conflict (even though he did not start it).
When I see people today saying they cannot stand Putin, and therefore they don't want to hear what he says, because it's all lies and propaganda anyway, that worries me.
Even if Putin was a Hitler 2.0 (which is very doubtful, since History rarely repeats itself and reasoning by analogy often leads to spectacular failures), then that would mean that we should pay even more careful attention to his motives, and not less. We should pay even more careful attention on the outside contingencies and the mental frameworks that drive Putin's actions, and not less.
Nietzsche has said, "If you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into you." And it almost seems that people are afraid of precisely that. They almost think that by not acknowledging a thing they don't like, it will go away.
Those who have been warning about a war in Ukraine have correctly pointed out that this strategy will not only not work. But that it will backfire.
So the true lesson from 1938 is not that one should "never negotiate with dictators".
The true lesson is that you have to make an effort to face the other party's viewpoint. To make an effort to understand the true motives, without any fear of what you might find.
That includes the fear of finding out that your own behavior might have contributed to the status quo. You need to let go of your comforting beliefs -- that things will "sort themselves out", that it's "just the other party's fault", that there's "nothing to learn or understand" because you already know exactly what the other party is really after, etc..
What made Churchill great, in my view, is that he was able to overcome all of those comforting beliefs. People respected him because he would tell them not what they would have liked to hear, but what they needed to know, and needed to face.
I think this is very, very different from what we're seeing today from our own leaders.
Our leaders are posturing. They claim that the inconvenient truth is that "Putin is worse than we thought", and that the necessary sanctions will require "sacrifices from all of us".
They try to sound like a Churchill. But they make no effort to be one. They imitate the outside posture, but they totally miss the inner essence.
Scholz said something very revealing. He said to Putin during that recent press conference (and I'm paraphrasing), "What do you care about Ukraine and NATO? It's not going to happen anytime during our terms of office anyway".
That isn't Churchill. That's Chamberlain.
What do you mean learning from history? The historic parallels to another leader are so overwhelming that I'm not even going to point them out to you.
Their "viewpoint" is that other, free, people should be forced with violence to bow to his will.
There is an interview from today from Durão Barroso that was President of the European Commission for two terms. He says in 2014 Putin told him: "I could take Kiev in 2 weeks if I wanted to"
https://www.portugalresident.com/durao-barroso-warns-we-cant...
https://expresso.pt/internacional/entrevista-durao-barroso-l...
Q:"What has changed? has Putin changed?"
A:"...Some say that the man himself has changed: has Putin changed or the situation? Both things changed. President Putin, whom I knew until 2014, was the leader outside the EU I met the most. My office counted 25 times. But what has changed is, above all, his perception of the circumstances. The Putin I knew was a person with a deep resentment against Russian decadence. He himself said publicly that the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the collapse of the USSR, not because of the collapse of communism, but because many Russians were left outside their homeland, and their Russian citizenship was not recognized. He's a man deeply scarred by resentment, but he's also someone who made rational calculations in terms of weighing the costs and benefits of each decision, and tactically seeing how far he could go..."
Putin is not some new piece on the table and this is not his first move, he done many moves so far and somewhere a line must be drawn.
I understand though that some people far away from this region would be happy to sacrifice Ukraine,Moldova maybe some Nordic countries just to keep Putin happy a few more years, but when do we say: enough, we don't want to do business with war criminals, we don't want to kiss killers asses anymore. Sure the innocent Russian citizens will suffer but that is preferable.
What is your solution though? And what countries would you sacrifice? How many people would be enough for you to say "I won't send our kids to fight but maybe I could be OK not to do business with this criminals" ?
First of all, I think we're on the same page in terms of what we want here. We want to end or, even better, avoid war. And we also do not want to encourage dictators, or let them get away with "salami tactics", i.e. taking one piece by force after another, each one small enough that nobody will bother to make them pay for it.
And I can tell you: When I first heard about this invasion, I also immediately thought of Hitler and Czechoslovakia in 1938. Hitler, back then, had sensed that Britain and France like to talk of peace and of the souvereignity of nations etc.. But that, deep inside, they are really way too comfortable to get involved in yet another war. And Hitler guessed correctly.
And I, too, thought that Putin might be thinking the same thing. That we are way too busy with Bitcoin and gender issues than to get our hands dirty for some slavic country that most of us couldn't find on a map.
So I can actually relate to the thought that such action needs to have immediate consequences. Not just to put Putin back into line, but to also send a signal to any other dictator now or in the future.
So if Putin was a Hitler 2.0, I'd agree with your prescription here.
I just think two things are different:
First, nukes. Even Churchill would have acted very differently if Hitler would have had nuclear weapons. That changes the entire equation. Outright conflict just isn't an option anymore in this situation. You have to find a compromise. Or, if the other party truly is a monster, like Hitler, and a compromise is completely out of the question (that is to say, not because of your own ego, or because it would mean sacrifices, but because it would mean an unbearable humanitarian disaster like the Holocaust), then you need to get this person removed, as fast as possible, AND ensure that nobody even worse is going to take his place.
Secondly, I don't think Putin is a Hitler. Yes, he is a dictator. Yes, he has invaded a souvereign country. And yes, he puts political enemies in prison. But that is what dictators do. And to claim that any dictator is equal to Hitler is to belittle Hitler's crimes.
You ask what I suggest as a way out of the current conflict. I have to say, I haven't paid any attention to Russia until a week ago. Until that time, all I knew about Ukraine was that there apparently are lots of beautiful women and that it's a popular place for digital nomads (a correlation that I'm sure is just coincidental). So I really do not have any "solution".
But the most reasonable thing I have heard, so far, is the suggestion by Mearsheimer, that NATO and Russia agree that Ukraine will be a neutral state. Kinda like Switzerland. So no NATO membership. But also no Russian influence.
Now I get that you could say, "But what if the Ukrainians want to join NATO? Isn't that their right?". But I mean, that's what a compromise is about. Everybody has to make some concessions. And, as far as I know, the main reason for Ukraine wanting to join NATO is as an endurance against a Russian invasion. Which such an arrangement would ensure just as well.
If I would see that "our guys" are making such offers to Putin, but Putin turns them down -- either for no reason at all, or for reasons that are obvious excuses -- then I'd be a lot more convinced that de-escalation of the conflict actually wasn't possible.
But I'm not hearing anything about such offers being made. I would assume that, if they were made, and Putin rejected them, it would be all over the news.
Still I'm very sceptical about sanctions that affects mostly innocent and poorest people and destabilise overal economy that is already very fragile. Just look at the history, what happened after Spanish influenza and escalated in 1928. Today, with technology all this could happen again but much more quickly.
Even more I'm worried about censorship. What make our values differnet if we implement exactly same politic that we fight against?
It is one thing if you have to be afraid that a Goebbels or Putin manipulates public opinion. But if it should turn out that it's people's craving for easy answers itself that leads to the emergence of mass delusions, then that would be much, much scarier.
In my country, one week ago private DNS provider CZ.NIC blocked 12 "disinformation" websites - it is probably more now. There was no law, no definition. Just private decision about few sites that was propagandistic from Russia. My question is... If we do not have definition of disinformation (who has patent on truth anyway?), then should we allow commercial TV's stream for example Putin's speeches?
Tech has increased our ability to spread messages. But what it has not increased is our ability to validate those messages.
In a sense, we have perverted the original idea of the computer. The computing pioneers of the 1950s and 60s saw the computer as a tool to help us deal with the complexity of the world's problems [1]. What we have focused on instead is to use computers to make our information landscape even more complex than it already was.
It is very telling to look at our advances in A.I.. GPT-3, for instance, can produce massive amounts of pausible sounding content. But what it cannot do is verify a piece of information.
That, right there, is our problem in a nutshell. We've already seen it play out in Trump, and in Covid. And we're going to see it play out in many, many more ways in the years to come.
[1] Doug Engelbart, I believe, had this system in the 1960s. He had the idea that organizations would input all their knowledge into that system. And the system would then help them draw connections, show them gaps in their knowledge, make predictions, give them suggestions on what questions to ask or experiments to run, etc.. He believed that, eventually, such a system could be used at a global scale. So that, ideally, no human would ever again waste his time trying to solve a problem that has already been solved by someone else, no matter where or when. And that we as a species would, instead, be able to focus all of our intelligence on those questions and problems that are yet unsolved.
History is famed for repeating itself and analogies are a powerful tool, some (Lakoff) even asserting that they are the core of cognition. That's the entire premise behind "learning from history". When a dictator starts invading his European neighbors while ranting about building an empire and restoring former glory, it is difficult to come to a different conclusion than Churchill did about Hitler.
I also think it is crucial to see the whole picture, and to take counter positions into account e.g. this [1] interesting talk by John Mearsheimer.
It is not only Russia that lost its position in the world, the West has been playing contradictionary set of games in the last two decades as well: The events in Iraq and Afghanistan, the approach that outsourcing of production and technology for short term capital gains that was sold as an act that will bring the world together and not carry any risk in the form of a shift of industrial and military dominance.
How did you come up with your position? Are you a pol.sci., or history aficionado?
While I don't have any deep insight what actually drove Churchill what you described to the be an almost inquisitive research on Hitler's motives, I do think that he was able to see beyond the first level array of interests of his political class and understood the second order and long term implications for the British Empire and the European society as a whole when it came to let fascist take power on the continent. I always thought it was not morals that drove him, but a strong sense of Realpolitik and political opportunity. He had the same reasons to be wary of the terror in Russia - an antagonistic system to the British order and tradition... it was just that they were the enemy of his enemy and thus a very useful ally that turned out to be critical for the war effort.
[1] #UChicago Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
> While I don't have any deep insight what actually drove Churchill what you described to the be an almost inquisitive research on Hitler's motives, I do think that he was able to see beyond the first level array of interests of his political class and understood the second order and long term implications for the British Empire and the European society as a whole when it came to let fascist take power on the continent.
I agree. And it seems to me that precisely this "seeing beyond" the immediate future, and paying attention to second order effects is suspiciously missing from public discourse, at least on the Western side.
You ask why viewpoints like this get downvoted. I don't know either. If I had to guess, I think it might have to do with the fact that most of us are overloaded with information and with decisions. We cope by employing a "swipe left" strategy, where we feel relieved if we can find a reason to dismiss a piece of input quickly without exerting too much energy on it. So we can get on to the next thing that needs to be dealt with.
Also, it's not very satisfying to most people if new questions are being raised without a clear-cut answer being provided. In a sense, it's almost as if that's inflicting a form of psychological pain -- creating an open loop with no resolution.
A few years back I had the opportunity to have a chat with the grandson of C.G. Jung, the psychologist. I asked him what he remembered as the most striking trait of his grandfather. And he said that it was C.G. Jung's ability to "stay with the tension" of two competing narratives. His ability to stay with a question without succumbing to the urge of arriving at a conclusion.
The same I have heard being said about Peter Thiel. And when I read biographies of Churchill, or JFK, I see that same trait as well.
And it's a trait that we, as the internet generation, seem to be losing. Because it's just so easy to swipe left and say, "Next!" That's why it sometimes feels as if you were talking to GPT-3. Use a few wrong keywords, and the reaction is pre-determined.
That being said, I also understand that, while we are philosophizing, people are losing their homes, or even their lives. So if someone has these pictures in mind, and they come across a post like this one, it can easily make them angry.
Even my own wife gave me the "stare of death" when I began voicing my concerns. She's not a random stranger on the internet. She loves me, and she knows me for more than a decade. And still, when I started speaking my mind about this topic, she initially resisted heavily, because it sounded to her as if I was somehow "on Putin's side". That's just how the human brain works, I guess. But the thing is: We only ended up having a conversation because she stayed with me on this, and actually heard me out. Random people on the internet are not going to do this. And for the same reason, if you are a newspaper, or a blogger, or a YouTuber, you would need to be very, very careful. Because if you say something that triggers that "stare of death" in your listeners, they will not hear you out. They will "swipe left" - or worse.
Actually, this dynamic of our internet-driven media is beginning to give me the chills. There is this part in Sebastian Haffner's account about living inside Hitler's Germany where he describes how intellectually isolated he became. All of his friends from university became Nazis. All stimulating books were banned. And so, if you had any doubts, any questions, or any dissenting views, you became a prisoner in your own head.
We are still very far from such a reality. Russia is a lot closer to that. But still, I would guess that there are probably many people who have views that are different from what is being -- reflected? No -- fed to us in the media. But they are going to keep quiet. Because they see that you cannot take any chances. They are afraid not of being wrong. That would be easy. That might actually be a relief. No, what they are afraid of is that people are going to "swipe left" on them, not because of anything they really meant, but because one other person did not hear them out and drew some grotesque conclusion.
I normally try to stay as far away from politics as I can. I also never paid any attention to Russia. It is not a country I am interested in. And when the news about the invasion hit, my own thoughts also immediately went to Hitler, and to Czechoslowakia.
The thing is: I just couldn't find an answer on what the hell Putin actually wants in Ukraine. It just didn't make any sense to me. As far as I know, the man practically owns Russia. Nobody knows his precise net-worth, but it doesn't seem like there is anything he could not buy if he wanted to. So self-enrichment hardly can be a motive.
Also, starting a war is a very dangerous move. He is putting his own power on the line. Not only is he giving the western world more reasons and more urgency to depose of him. But he's also risking a revolution from inside his own country.
And whereas the other statesmen just care about the term they are elected for, Putin practically "is" Russia (or at least he sees it that way). He is not merely putting other people's blood and money on the line. He has got to have a really strong motive for this.
Now, Hitler had such a motive. His motive was that he thought himself to be the chosen one to "free" Europe from an imagined "oppression by the Jews", and to build an Arian empire that should last for a thousand years. That was a lunantic motive, of course. But it was there, plain to see and hear for anybody who would pay attention.
(We can forgive those who read it and dismissed it as "not to be taken literally". Just imagine somebody predicting the Holocaust before the Holocaust actually happened. People would have laughed at you. But for us, who come after Hitler, that excuse is no longer valid.)
So for me, that thing about NATO and the U.S. missile defense system really does make a lot of sense. I've read a lot about JFK. And one of the big insights that JFK had was that in a world where nuclear weapons exist, world peace depends on an equilibrium of both powers having them.
If Putin is afraid that his country's nuclear deterrent is being "castrated" by an expanding NATO, that can hardly be counted as "just a pretext".
And there's also the human element. Posner talks about this in his talk at Yale [1]. The Russians want to be taken seriously. Let's not forget: They were the ones who paid the highest price in WW2. And they eventually lost out in the Cold War. We know from Germany what this can do to a country's psyche.
And Putin has, as I hear, voiced his concerns about NATO at Russia's borders frequently. He has pointed out that the West had broken promises that were made when Russia pulled out of Germany in 1990.
And now here we have this crisis. People are being killed. Homes are being destroyed. Families are being ripped apart. And we have our leaders fly to the Kremlin and hold six hour talks with Putin. But what I'm not hearing is that the concerns Putin has voiced and which look to be quite likely a major motive for his current actions are being addressed.
Instead, it is being said that Putin's fears about NATO expansion are unfounded, because Ukraine isn't going to join anytime soon, anyway. In other words, his concerns are being dismissed.
That's basically like when your wife has been complaining for years that you spend too little time with her. And now she's about to divorce you, which you claim you absolutely want to avoid. And what do you do? You tell her that her concerns are unreasonable. That she has no reason to complain.
I can tell you exactly how this story is going to end. If John Gottman had written a guide on How to Seed Distrust, Break A Relationship and Make Life Miserable for Everybody, this would be it.
In fact, Gottman has a term for what the West is doing with Russia: Stonewalling. "It's all your fault, I've got nothing to do with it, and I'm not even going to listen to you any longer. Or I'll just pretend to be listening, but then turn around and tell everything you just said to me to my friends to prove just how crazy and unreasonable you are."
Thas is not de-escalation. I don't want to call it "provocation", because I don't want to take agency away from Russia (that would be ridiculous). But somewhere, somebody must have been able to predict that this kind of behavior is going to increase the likelihood of Putin doing something stupid and dangerous.
I'm grateful for places like HN where thoughts like these can be discussed. Because, frankly, the possibility of this thing escalating into WWIII concerns all of us. And once that happens, the question "Who started it?" or "Who is to blame?" will have become totally meaningless.
I mean, whose fault was WWI? I think not even the historians can tell at this point. And with WWII, it surely is a lot easier to say who started it. But at the same time, with hindsight, it is also obvious how Hitler could have been stopped early on. Perhaps as early as Versailles.
I understand that that kind of reasoning doesn't make for as good as a Disney movie where it's just that one bad person out there that needs to be overcome. But then again, hasn't C.G. Jung shown that even such stories are just symbols? That the evil we see personified "out there" might very well be something inside of us? Some fear, some desire to be right, to exert power, to blame, to fit in, to be comfortable -- or even just to have all the answers.
very interesting and thoughful post touching a full spectrum of topics. Please let me come back to you this week - my schedule is full, and I need time to digest what you wrote.
Cheers!
Have a good week!
He said something similar about Crimea being part of the "historical Russia" and now Ukraine too.
It doesn't take much research to know how the russians feel about the Soviet Union..just ask them!
About Trust: >> The Kremlin has said Russia has no plans to launch a fresh attack on Ukraine and that the West appears to have convinced itself of Moscow's aggressive intentions based on what it calls false Western media stories.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-colla...
(And that other Soviet leaders betrayed Russia by allowing the Soviet Union to fall.)
Putin’s propaganda justifications for his wars of aggression aren't particularly coherent, but I don't think they are intended to form a logical theory of history so much as a powerful emotional appeal that neither invites nor rewards intellectual analysis.
Russia only needs to stop the war and withdraw their troops, and sanctions will go away in no time.
There is no way Ukraine will become pro-Russian any time in the future, though, but that's obviously on Putin. It's hard to win the hearts and minds of people by bombing them and occupying their country. Maybe Putin should have asked the US about their experiences with that before ordering the invasion of Ukraine.
Selective memory, eh. Iraq and Afghanistan like to have word with you about you going outside daily protesting against your country.
Edit: To add, consider the brutal history of British empire and how they invaded, occupied, and looted a large part of the world.
And go look what happens when military was withdrawn from Afghanistan. And see how that country looked in 1960s before the Taliban.
Having a blind eye doesnt solve problems.
Let's not get into whataboutery. We all know governments are shit. We shouldn't stop arguing for higher standards just because we've been inadequate in the past.
supplying arms and willing civilians to fight a war = bad Russia 2014
supplying arms and willing civilians to fight a war = good Liz Truss (UK Foreign Secretary) 2022 but before 2022 it was bad
*disclaimer -- both bad
We have been told my entire life that boycotting economies is bad (which is what is going on, this isn't just sanctions) and in some situations discrimination (on grounds of race) but now it's ok.
My brain hurts trying to reconcile these positions.
We just need to end this conflict ASAP and it doesn't help promising to speed run UKR into EU and NATO (even if that's the ultimate goal)
- In 2022 it was good because it was to defend a country from invasion that did not want it
In both cases the underlying reason is the same, defend the will of the people.
What is the underlying argument you are trying to pursue? We should not sanction ordinary Russian people because all governments invade/meddle in other countries not just Russia?
get around a table and talk it out rather than put Ukrainians and Russians in the firing line in an irreversible way -- while we pontificate from relative comfort in the Europe/US -- no one wins from this fighting
FYI: It was criminal as a Brit to fight against IS (the goal of UK) as a civilian
Afghanis hosted a terrorist group that did 9/11.
So the situations are quite different.
That doesn't necessarily justify invasion of either (but it possibly could) - point being those are not Ukraine analogues.
US invading Canada would probably be a better analogy.
NATO is not only America+GB. It is also, for example, Estonia, Latvia and Poland. All countries that have border common with Russia. It is also Slovakia and Romania - counties that will have border with them if Russia win. These countries don't want to become part of Russia or fall under Russia control again.
And in fact, Germany and France dont want that either, because the would mean having to deal with USSR right there again.
Our humanity is and must be placed squarely on the task of stopping the aggressor.
Authoritarians, dictators and despots do not stop by themselves. They stop only when they are stopped by external forces. They will ALWAYS try the next available outrage and takeover.
Appeasement and de-escalation has been tried, and the only result was yet another nation laid to rubble by Putin. He did not stop after Chechnya. He did not stop after Georgia. He did not stop after Syria. He did not stop after Crimea. He will not stop after Ukraine.
When would you have us stop him? When he is bombing Warsaw? Or should we wait for Paris? How about London? Or should we wait until the rockets are falling in Washington DC? When?
Nuclear blackmail is still blackmail, and it is a fools game to pay the blackmailer.
Moreover, all other authoritarians are watching. If Putin is allowed to succeed in Ukraine, we can be very sure that Xi will go after Taiwan next.
This is literally the fight for the free world. If we do not oppose it and stop it cold, it will continue.
It is better to die standing than live on your knees (but if you want to live on your knees, I'm sure you'll be welcomed).
The west was ready to talk but Putin's demands to return NATO to what was before 1997 were insane and impossible. It's the same when I say "I want your wife, 50% of your monthly salary and your house. See - I'm ready to negotiate, but these are my demands, if you do don't agree I will take your house by force anyway"
How do you suggest to de-escalate? Putin has attacked another country, what else should we do? Ignore what they are doing and wait until he attacks another one of his neighbours?
You just sound like one of the 'concerned' people who are Putin's trolls or apologists.
Unfortunately there are many of you here in the comments.
On the bright side, Trump did a lot of damage in 4 years but he didn't totally kill us, or the State Department. He demonstrated to our allies that America is not reliable as a principled partner in protecting liberal values, which has the positive effect of spreading the load, and getting others (notably Germany) more involved in common defense.
This is an important observation, the point of the wider sanctions is to pressure the Russian people to push back at their own leaders rather than the West/Europe.
It’s a very tight and difficult line to follow, the ideal outcome is to apply just enough pressure on the citizens of Russia to effect regime change. Starting at the top with applying that pressure to a small number of influential people and moving down to effect more of the population without the push back in the wrong direction.
I hope it works and they don’t go too far.
I feel for all ordinary citizen everywhere effected by this. It’s not their fight they have been drawn into.
And Moldova is next. We also do nothing when Russians do the same to Moldova?
At some point, you will have to draw the line: here and no further.
And now me made a very clear statement: if you invade another country, you lose all benefits that we provide, and we lose all benefits you provide. It's just that the benefits that we provide seem bigger than the other way around.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO ( yet?). But it's a neighbour+trade partner.
"A proxy war is an armed conflict between two states or non-state actors which act on the instigation or on behalf of other parties that are not directly involved in the hostilities. In order for a conflict to be considered a proxy war, there must be a direct, long-term relationship between external actors and the belligerents involved. The aforementioned relationship usually takes the form of funding, military training, arms, or other forms of material assistance which assist a belligerent party in sustaining its war effort." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war
I see much more cooperation now to say: "it's enough." Merkel led Germany always preferred trade before blaming. Increase trade with a malicious actor and it will work out in the end.
There's a huge shift currently happening and if you didn't realize it yet. The position of Putin was one of weakness, not of strength and the west knows this.
And it's not a proxy war, Russia is literally invading a country.
Ukraine doesn't prefer the Russian model to keep people poor and stupid, so they wouldn't protest.
Are you saying Europe and US and NATO aren't scared shitless of what's going on in Ukraine? I am. Still, what's happening is the definition of proxy war, and I don't see the point of discussing semantics.
The recent western model is one of the most debilitating model mankind has ever known.
Putin is the richest in Russia. I think that says more than what you are claiming ( without proof).
And the politicians in the west are in the hands of the richest.
I’m not saying Russia is better. Only that the west is dumber and dumber. Less and less educated.
We should not be arrogant.
Which metrics are you even using? It's not universities for sure.
50% of Russia is under propaganda and can't even talk English. The ones that can speak English and have engineering degrees, a large part of them are currently fleeing Russia. The other halve doesn't even know what is going to hit them ( jobs, economy, ... ).
Favorite destination seems to be Europe, Canada, US, ... According to what I see in preferences of resumees. And I'm seeing a lot of resumees coming in.
Turkeye and Georgia is pretty popular too, but I'd think it's easier to get there too ( flights), could be wrong about this though.
Edit: removed links to 3 GitHub resumees of Russian engineers uploaded within the last 2 hours ( in English). From engineers that worked at zg. Google/Yandex and want to get out of the country.
I’m talking about huge IQ drops. About the language skills in all the western world. Just listen to cnn, fox news, to the charts’ lyrics and so forth. It’s staggering.
Also, speaking English is in no way a prerequisite for a good education.
Fyi. I speak dutch, french, English.
I'm able to communicate in German and I understand Spanish a bit (pero no habla ).
Most people here speak at 2-3 languages by default.
So I would say it counts as education level :)
And while we are discussing the sex of the angels as byzantines, to an incredible toxic degree, even in our top universities, we might lose some clout.
Also: I know some elders who read Cicero in Latin but do not speak English.
Classical teachings matter.
[0] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/14/yelt-j14.html
I remember all the breathless headlines when Trump and Kim Jong-un were trading barbs that nuclear war could happen any time.
Now its Putin whose the unpredictable madman or whatever.
So far Russia has shown they don't care. They will take this war as far as they can, to make the casualties they have already sustained "worth it". A deconfliction hotline is only as good as the parties on either end and Putin isn't exactly arguing or negotiating in good faith.
I remember one Nuclear Weapons specialist commenting once in a interview, that he worried about the fact that the new generation of Politicians had never seen a Nuclear explosion. And that might make it easier to even contemplate the possibility of using it. The previous generation was still alive before the Nuclear Arms Tests ban and seen the tests. They knew the horrifying scenarios they imply.
But Putin's appetite is not satisfied and once he has 'won' Ukraine (or whatever remains standing there) for sure he will push on. Moldavia was apparently already on the menu, I can easily see another sortie from Belarus into any one of the Baltics (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia in that order). This is far from over.
This was always true, even when Western leaders said otherwise. Some people in Ukraine learned from the examples of Georgia (and Hungary). Others did not.
Again a comment that subtly blames the West.
This is not a proxy war. The only war right now is an unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Where in my comment am I blaming anyone? Tone down the paranoia.
Russia invaded, the West can't help Ukraine without causing WW3, so they're by sending all they can to the Ukrainian people, praying they win and Putin kills himself or someone does it for him. This is called a proxy war. I can understand it might be a bit hard to categorize as such, but there is no blame anywhere.
Some comments are saying we shouldn't put sanctions on Russia or support the Ukrainian resistance because it will prolong the war and civilian casualties.
Putin and Lavrov have said that Ukraine is a historical mistake that should be undone. They want to assimilate Ukraine into Russia. Commit cultural genocide. How is the very existence of a nation and people not worth supporting?
The vast majority of Ukrainians are anti-Russia and pro-EU. Russia's actions since 2014 have also made them pro-NATO.
Arguing against a coup is meaningless given the nuland tapes.
You do not have to be a Russian apologist to understand that this is more complicated than bad vs good.
And it was only a mistake because they trusted the US and Europe that they would keep the promise of not surrounding them with NATO forces.
What Russia and Putin have done is nothing short of a war crime, just like when the U.S. invaded Iraq, but that does not mean we should blind ourselves to their side to do everything we can to avoid war.
Peace come with understanding.
It is just a fact. If you were able to follow some ukranian information channels not aligned with the current regime in Kiev you would see that this pov is not that uncommon.
Speaking of the sanctions. What are the goals? To destroy Russian economy? OK, but it won't help with Ukraine right now. To prevent future "invasions"? OK, but russia will morph completely into smth like North Korea with nukes. Is it it helping anyone now?
The U.S. could not give two shts about the Ukrainian people. They re being used as pawns for a larger goal.
If you think about it, that's really just a way of saying that the community is divided on this topic. Of course it is—any large-enough population sample is. It's the same with every divisive topic, and war is the non plus ultra of divisive topics. What's different in this case is not the mechanics of the discussion or the community, it's the intensity of feeling, which is inevitable and understandable.
The two most important things to understand are (1) the vast majority of commenters here, even when they're repeating points derived from others, are holding their views in good faith—they simply have different backgrounds (personal, geographical, familial) than the people holding opposite views; and (2) if this community is to survive for its intended purpose, we need to remain kind and thoughtful with one another across differences. Yes, even during a war.
I'm not saying it's easy, but it's possible to be firmly on one side of a war while remaining kind and thoughtful with the individual humans you encounter. Not only is it possible, it may even be one's human duty, at least for anyone who doesn't want to pour their little cup of personal influence into the ocean of collective violence. Be that as it may, it's definitely every HN commenter's responsibility, because it follows from the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), which are designed to keep this place alive for its intended purpose.
Many years of experience have shown (1) and (2) to be true in general, and they're especially true now. If it seems otherwise, that's probably because HN, being a non-siloed site, lacks the homogeneous subcommunities that other sites partition themselves into with their follow lists, social graphs, subreddits, and so on. ("Homogeneous subcommunities" are what internet commenters like to call "echo chambers", and that is precisely what we don't have here. We are all in one large room together.)
The irony is that HN ends up feeling more divisive precisely because it is less partitioned. It's necessary to understand this about HN or you will end up with quite a false picture [2]. I wrote a long explanation of this a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. It's even more true now than it was then.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
In essence Putin is surrounded with a group of thieves. The people in general hate this and try to defend against it as best they can. In Russia when the USSR was running, they were very good at cash sale fleamarketing - which was allowed as it helped people to exist. Now the next wave of ologarchic kleptocracy has matured. They have grabbed all oil/gas/mineral/wood assets and sell and grab the cash. The military is filled with klepto = theft of all manner of portable goods, metals etc - whatever they can get away with - usually by sharing up the line by giving a cut to the hierarchy. The 2 year conscript military means they have no capable soldiers - even the special forces are goof-offs, display soldiers. The paratroops proved also to be useless floating targets because they suffered huge losses when dropped into groups of well armed soldiers and public. They worked only when dropped onto a surprised soft civilian target.
Poland is training pilots for a few squadrons of A10 Warthogs. When word of the 60Km isolated convoy leaked the instructors who were skilled USA battle hardened pilots wanted to have a few Thunder Runs - they would have wrecked that convoy chapter and verse - wiser heads prevailed, as a debacle like that might have been the tipping point if a few USA people were shot down - always a risk with Soviet Air defences = quite good.
EDIT:
People down-voting it, looking away, fearing an atomic war in Europe, are just accepting Putins bluff. He has no reason to start a nuclear war, if no bomb is being dropped in Russia. And if Russia invades Poland or Romania, what are you willing to do? Keep looking away. That's has nothing to do with who signed with NATO or not,but do the right thing.
What happens when some Russian aircraft breachs the no-fly zone? Blow them out of the sky with an F35?
No thanks.
Funny how self preservation works isn't it?
Not wanting to die over someone else's war isn't cowardice, its sanity.
All loss of live in this conflict is tragic, no way to deny that. But a no-fly zone is not an option here.
Finland is sending 4,000 AT4s, Germany and the US are sending stinger missiles and javelins, other nations are sending Howitzers, fuel, automatic weapons, pistols and Turkey is sending its drones which have been remarkably successful.
I don't know what rock you're currently hiding under, but the EU is financing 450M euros of military aid to Ukraine. That isn't "looking away" or "staying quiet". I have no idea where this silly hyperbole is coming from.
We're also apparently doing Schroedinger's sanctions, which are simultaneously "nothing" and yet brutally repressive towards the Russian people.
(I don't mean nuclear wipeout, I mean in general based on army strength and weaponry.)
People on the internet are just getting waaaay ahead of themselves. It's been a week and they haven't conquered the whole country yet so they must be losing the war or something.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shoo...