Nukes and Stability
wearenotsaved.com
wearenotsaved.com
If this ends with no nukes flying I'll be surprised. The stakes are high. Major powers are fighting an existential battle right now. But if it does, the world order is changed dramatically, either Russia controls Ukraine in which case other countries might decide they can do similar (which means it isn't really over) and we slow burn a global conflict, or or Russia loses out and is probably forever relegated to a minor player and someone else fills the power vacuum.
Forever is a long time, Russia has collapsed and risen before. It currently has hegemony over the ‘pivot’ of Eurasia and even in the event of a break-up of the Federation it is unlikely that anyone other than the Chinese will move into Siberia to fill the vacuum. I mean they haven’t in the last 2000 years that I know of. Maybe the Mongols again?
Sure Putin could catch a clue and announce that with the resistance, sanctions, inflow of weapons/goods into Ukraine, and world condemnation it isn't worth it. Withdraw all troops, and promise to be good the sanctions would end quickly, GDP/Trade would pick up, and the ruble would gain most of what it lost. Seems unlikely though. The weird thing is it's something like 10x as costly in lives/equipment as previous decade ish long invasions Russia has had, but they don't seem to be adapting.
Does seem like with complete control of the media they could say something like "We killed ever last Nazi and stopped the genocide in the Ukraine and have come home victorius.
He's on point with this looking like the runup to WWI. And with Putin wanting a multipolar world.
The Institute for the Study of War has a better analysis of what Putin wants.[1]
“For the first time in the past two hundred to three hundred years, [Russia] is facing a real danger of sliding into the second and possibly third echelon of world states,” - Putin, 2012. Putin has been consistent about his aims. He wants a world with a few Great Powers, with buffer states between them. That's very 19th century, when Europe had about five empires pushing back and forth.
Putin’s Russia—unlike its predecessors—has no state machine or elite capable of balancing out his instincts and narratives. This is extremely important to understand. After Stalin, no leader of the USSR had the authority to start a nuclear war. Unlike the US President, the Premier of the USSR did not have launch authority. Only the Politburo did. That was built into the command and control system. Among other things, the army controlled the launchers and the KGB controlled the warheads, so they both had to work together to launch.
That separation of control has not survived into the Putin era. It's now official policy that Putin has launch authority.[2] That's what so scary this time. It's one guy.
[1] https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISW%20R...
The US also hasn't tested since 1992. Given the situation with B-2 heat exchangers, F-22 spare parts and FOGBANK, I would not be interested in betting large amounts of money that American nuclear weapons are fully functional either.
Interestingly enough, both the US and Russia routinely test fire ICBMs. So we know the rockets work, but not the warheads.
A very awkward exchange would be if Putin goes nuts and orders a first strike, we do a "use em or lose em" ICBM launch, and all the warheads fizzle over their intended targets. What then? Awkward coughing and shuffling of feet? Roll the tanks for a full-scale war in Europe? If the nuclear umbrella truly was the only thing preventing direct Great Power conflict, then do we shrug and institute 20th century-style mass conscription and blow the dust off all the century old war stockpiles?
The last one, 2018: https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/201...
Putin is not crazy, he is acting rationally from his perspective (though it may be hard to understand). My suspicion is that the reports of him having cancer are correct, and the Ukraine invasion was a way to bolster and secure his position in the face of doubt caused by the cancer.
Although I (think I) know what you mean, the idea of starting a war, killing thousands of people, destroying cities and destroying the Russian economy all to avoid looking weak due to cancer... well, it certainty sounds pretty fucking crazy to me.
I think Putin believed that this would be a quick victory, capturing the Eastern oblasts, and either negotiating a settlement with the Ukrainians, or conquering the country and installing a puppet regime. This is what most analysts seem to have expected, and the fierce Ukrainian resistance is what's forced the West to implement strong sanctions.
I think “rational” and “crazy” are not incompatible; to me, a lack of empathy is a type of crazy, and yet I also think people who lack empathy can make rational or irrational decisions about how to reach their goals.
I’m not sure I’d count Putin as rational even given a lack of empathy, given what seems to happen to successful Russian generals even before this war.
Suicide is a terminal disease. Psychopathy is a chronic condition. You could suffer from both, but we've never seen suicidal tendencies from Putin.
A very naive and fatal flow of judgement.
Numerous times, Russia state media expressed Russian desire to attack Baltic States and Poland. Putin said similar things many times: i.e. that he wants USSR to be restored in previous borders.
If Ukraine is conquered by Russia, you will not get a world peace as an output.
Half of Ukrainians will be exterminated in the process (think Holodomor), but I know you don't care too much: "As horrible as this would be for the Ukrainians". I get it, it's not the point of this comment.
As an output, you will get a much stronger Russia with added power of Ukrainian people and military resources.
The problem is also not in Putin. If he dies, the situation won't be better much. The Russian regime is fascist-like and embraces Russian imperialism.
The only sane action is to help Russia to disintegrate into smaller nations and to show the world that aggression at such scale does not work.
Happy to be corrected...
>"Third, [these insights] imply that the odds of nuclear war might be higher today than in the Soviet era, because Russia is much weaker. The Soviet Union simply had more ground to give up in a conventional war before defeat appeared existential than does Putin’s smaller empire — which may be a reason why current Russian strategy increasingly prioritizes tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a conventional-war retreat."
The Soviets were actually most afraid of a decapitation strike, which is why their missile defense systems were focused around Moscow, and they put so much money into mobile ICBM launchers and SSBNs. Nuclear weapon usage would be more likely to destabilize the Putin regime than cement it, if you look at it through the lens of political game theory (I recommend "The Logic of Political Survival").
All these apocalypse talks of uninformed bystanders are really gnawing at my mental health lately...
Also NATO is a defensive alliance and it might break up if any member threatens other states with nukes.
Russia seems most interested in taking Ukrainian nuclear sites to give to Rosacom, establishing an oil/trade/military corridor through the black sea, and sealing up the holes in the natural physical barriers of defense that the USSR once controlled. Nuking Ukraine, or the world, or whatever, is counter to that goal. Putin miscalculated the sanctions the west would take in reaction to their invasion as most sanctions have been pretty tame in the past, so with the assumption that no or limited sanctions would be imposed, invasion might have made sense in a psychopath's world chess game. Obviously very little of this has gone to plan, but making things worse is not going to help him either.
Any real worry should go toward the primary real effects of the actual civilian casualties in Ukraine, including any real possibility of tactical nuclear warheads used (possible, but only semi-likely... still would be likely smaller than Hiroshima or Nagasaki if used) and the secondary effects of the wheat issues on the food supply in Africa and the Middle East in the coming years from low-yield of Ukrainian and Russian wheat crops. Oil/gas is going to be a clusterfuck but it'll adapt.