Comment by Barrera | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrera | Hacker News Reader

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Answer:

> ... if we boil it down, there are really only two paths toward ending the war: one, continued escalation, potentially across the nuclear threshold; the other, a bitter peace imposed on a defeated Ukraine that will be extremely hard for the United States and many European allies to swallow.

Considering some of the calls from those who should know better for no-fly zones over Ukraine, Option (2) is indeed going to be the harder path. All it would take is a humanitarian incident such as the extended siege of a city. The calls for military action would be ferocious. The accusations of weakness would cripple many leaders trying to hold back a military response. The lack of any sense of what nuclear escalation actually means throws yet more fuel on the fire. And the real clincher: the US hasn't taken on a power capable of defeating it since the 1940s, if not earlier. Confidence in the US military to solve all problems, foreign and domestic, is alarmingly high.

The easy path is, unfortunately, the one that ends with the unthinkable.

So fortunately these kind of life-and-death decisions are far above my pay grade. My personal skin in the game is roughly: live in San Diego. So my opinion and five bucks gets you a latte.

There might come a point where a cautious, politically-acceptable, consensus-driven approach actually increases the risk that the big game starts.

When the stakes are this high, if there is a realistic path to de-escalation that has to be the goal.

But there may or may not be a realistic path to de-escalating the situation.

Money may be a lever: 2T+ stimulus packages are becoming the norm in the US. That’s significantly more than the GDP of the RF. If a ton of aid gets the world to a better place, that’s most likely way EV+. Russian sovereign debt it yielding 20%+, maybe money can help.

But if the internal dynamics of Putin’s situation make it impossible for him to back down? It’s probably better to do something decisive than to wait for the wrong sanction or just ambient pressure to kick off the big one anyways.

> the US hasn't taken on a power capable of defeating it since the 1940s

Wait so Russia is struggling to even take Kyiv and you’re implying that they are an equal foe to the highest spend armed forces in the world? Allied with the countries that constitute 75%+ of global wealth?

Putin’s propaganda is WILDLY effective.

You don't seem to have a good understanding of the difference between the kind of war Russia is waging on Ukraine right now and an all-out war with all options on the table. The two are not comparable.

Yeah the kind of war Russia is fighting right now is already a snipe hunt because no modern nation has occupied an unwilling people since the fall of the Raj. The US’s involvement is more a function of time to Russian failure.

I think you’re the one who doesn’t understand the nuance of war.

That’s the thing. A big part of Ukraine’s citizens are willing. Crimea and the two breakaway republics are for sure.

The other issues are that Russians view Ukraine as their ancestral homeland[1], every major invasion of Russia has gone through it, and they view Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat.

On the other hand if Russia wins the only real consequence for the USA and EU is basically the status quo.

There is no way Russia backs down here and anyone with even a modicum of historical education knows it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus'

> A big part of Ukraine’s citizens are willing. Crimea and the two breakaway republics are for sure.

This is over-simplifying it: Crimea has a big divide between the 60% ethnic Russian population and everyone else (e.g. the Tatars know they’re much better off in Ukraine as an ethnic and religious minority), and while the other occupied territories definitely have some supporters of rejoining Russia it’s not clear that this approaches even a plurality — and especially after the invasion, a lot of people will have reconsidered their positions as they see an illegal war featuring indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

> no modern nation has occupied an unwilling people since the fall of the Raj.

The number of IED used against the US says Iraq wasn't willingly occupied.

>no modern nation has occupied an unwilling people

Russia did exactly that in Grozny. They seem to be trying to do the same thing here in the same way :(

Wait wait wait.

At what point in history was Chechnya an internationally recognized free state a la Ukraine?

Sure there was a period of time when Chechnya was a semi-recognized failing state [0], but to say that it was in anyway comparable to Ukraine is disingenuous at best.

[0] news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/135716.stm

> At what point in history was Chechnya an internationally recognized free state

Since when does “an unwilling people” require “an internationally recognized free state”, or are those goalposts jet propelled?

Because what evidence do you You have that the majority of Chechnyans supported the non-Russian government?

When they briefly broke away from Russia, they were dominated by warlords. Not exactly a clear indication that there was a popularly supported free government (unlike Ukrainian which has formal elections with broad turnout).

Maybe apply a critical thinking lens?

You didn’t say anything about a state you talked about “an unwilling people”. States and peoples are different things.

Because what evidence do you You have that the majority of Chechnyans supported the non-Russian government? When they briefly broke away from Russia, they were dominated by warlords. Not exactly a clear indication that there was a popularly supported free government (unlike Ukrainian which has formal elections with broad turnout). Maybe apply a critical thinking lens?

I was talking exclusively about shelling and occupation.

I've been seeing the word "propaganda" thrown around a lot lately. It's been bothering me how quickly people stop seeking the full picture when they start using that word. That is a really vulnerable position to place your intelligence and curiosity.

Propaganda: Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence an audience and further an agenda which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented. - from Wikipedia

Question: How can you determine when an individual is under the influence of propaganda?

Answer: When they stop looking for the truths that either or both sides of a conflict use as the foundation of their propaganda.

>Putin’s propaganda is WILDLY effective.

I'd argue so is the United States, much more so than Putin's. If you compare the evils committed by the US to Putin's, Putin cannot hold a candle to the US. The difference is that Putin bears that burden across multiple decades, while the US changes figure heads every 4-8 years, and with that washes away the stains of the country into the haze of time.

With all that being said, I am not pro-Putin nor pro-US regarding this conflict, and I agree with the article that the best course is for the United States to admit defeat, (and additionally, not in the article) stop expanding eastward (through NATO), and to keep their promise to Russia (which was to stop expanding NATO).

Edit: I'd like to add, the seed of Putin's "fascist/nazi" claim is that in 2014, Ukraine's new government eliminated minority rights (i.e. the Russian minority, which represents less than half of the population). And, the US started funding the neo-Nazi faction (Azov battalion) of the Ukrainian army. A quick duckduckgo search will pull up articles for both of these claims.

Putin is a particular kind of evil; the autocratic, personally liable kind. He murders and jails opposition, which I find more abhorrent than the bureaucratic and societal evils of American power. While American atrocities have equaled autocratic ones, there’s rarely a single person you can hold accountable for embodying our bad ideas and behaviors.

Yet the United States have tortured POWs, arguably worse than murder for the immense suffering that causes both physically and psychologically.

>There’s rarely a single person you can hold accountable for embodying our bad ideas and behaviors.

Which is much more dangerous than being able to place responsibly on a non-amorphous, single person. The US has an extensively long history of interfering in the matters of other countries. You can overthrow and point fingers at one figure head, but you can't overthrow a system, systemic, and systematically unaccountable foreign policy that changes face every 4-8 years.

Dick Cheney.

>I am not pro-Putin nor pro-US regarding this conflict

I wasn't aware that the US was a party to this conflict where Russia invaded a neighbor without cause. Weird thing to hear from an enlightened centrist.

You're proving my point.

I don't think you've made it as convincingly as you think you have. I might go a step farther and say you haven't made a point at all. You implied the Russian military could beat the US military. How? In what circumstance[s]? Based on what evidence?

>> You implied the Russian military could beat the US military. How?

If it goes nuclear both sides will defeat each other. Neither is known to have any viable defense against nuclear missiles. It seems really odd to have to make that point. It seems even more odd that putin is threatening it.

He has to threaten it, it doesn't cost him anything.

It costs him karma.

Bro, no I’m not.

In conventional warfare, the US 1000% has the resources to make an invasion of an unwilling nation impossible.

In nuclear warfare you and I are both dead so this debate is pointless.

> And the real clincher: the US hasn't taken on a power capable of defeating it since the 1940s

Laughable

I’d say it hasn’t happened since the revolutionary war

1812 the US achieved none of its war goals and had its capital burned to the ground. If the British hadn’t had higher priorities in Europe things could have gone much worse. Not like they won in Korea either.

Or Vietnam. Or Afghanistan.

None of those wars were about winning them, just acclimating an anesthetized public in to accepting the military industrial complex.

I don't know as much about the European theater but had a few major battles gone differently in the Pacific the war would have, at the very least, ended much differently.

Indeed, if the US had just blockaded and mined the seas around the Japanese home islands and ignored the rest of the Pacific Theater the war would have been over in a year, possibly two. Surrender or starve to death. Those are the joys of not being self-sufficient in food and going to war with an economy more than four times the size of yours.

yeah but could have Japan defeated the US? It's clear they could have won their objectives, but Japan could not have rolled tanks all the way to New York to defeat the US.

Once Japan was at war with the US it had already lost. They’d have been better off invading the British and Dutch colonies and hoping the US wouldn’t get involved.

You're right. Hitler or Hirohito winning their war means something so utterly small compared to the US losing theirs.

Russia has not taken on any power it can defeat nor does it have the economy, allies or even approval of it's populace. The neighbours that has been invading lately don't really count for "powers" and it's already struggling as it is.

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