Comment by davorak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davorak | Hacker News Reader

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> 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.

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.

I have made this comparison in other comments, I see this conflict as a repetition of the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you are convinced that nuclear weapons will not be used for a first strike and if you - as the USA - are committed to not perform a first strike on the USSR, then there is no risk from USSR missiles on Cuba. But the USA didn't like the idea, so either they were not convinced that the USSR would not perform a first strike despite the dire consequences or they were not committed to not perform a first strike and feared the retaliations.

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.

> I have made this comparison in other comments, I see this conflict as a repetition of the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you are convinced that nuclear weapons will not be used for a first strike and if you - as the USA - are committed to not perform a first strike on the USSR, then there is no risk from USSR missiles on Cuba. But the USA didn't like the idea, so either they were not convinced that the USSR would not perform a first strike despite the dire consequences or they were not committed to not perform a first strike and feared the retaliations. ...

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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...

> 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 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 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 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.

> 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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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

I will try to shorten this a bit again by not addressing your points one by one.

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...

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