> NATO-Russia conflict
Can you explain your framing?
Can you explain your framing?
There might be no NATO troops on the ground but it's a bit of a stretch to say that it is purely Ukraine vs Russia.
And without the navy Russia annexed [1], or it’s Soviet military kit, much of which was designed and built in Ukraine, Russia wouldn’t have much of a start.
Ukraine repelled Putin’s forces on its own in the early days of the war, when Western intelligence was predicting another Kabul. That it later attracted sympathy is further testament to its diplomatic strength (and the Kremlin’s isolation).
"On 8 April 2014 an agreement was reached between Russia and Ukraine to return Ukrainian Navy materials to Ukraine proper. The greater portion of the Ukrainian naval ships and vessels were then returned to Ukraine but Russia suspended this process after Ukraine did not renew its unilaterally declared ceasefire on 1 July 2014 in the conflict in the Donbas."
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_Fleet#Russian_annexa...
That's a pretty basic idea in international politics, having been developed over decades of similar proxy wars. Same reason the US didn't consider itself at war with the USSR in Korea or Vietnam.
Don't underestimate the massive value (and massive expense, for NATO) associated with providing that intelligence. Ukraine is basically playing Starcraft with a "disable fog of war" cheatcode activated.
It's also something that has established precedent in the proxy conflicts I mentioned before, with the USSR and US both in turn providing strategic and in some cases tactical intelligence to the other side. As long as the aircraft gathering the intelligence aren't flying inside the battle zone.
Ukrainian military spending: $5.4 billion
I have serious doubts the outside world dumped more than $5 billion on Ukraine's side. Russian made a serious error in how much territory they tried to hold as opposed to the re-positioning / fighting over Donbas that's happening now.
If the US ($801 billion) tried to conquer Canada ($26 billion), I would expect a similarly poor outcome based on Canada's size. If the US tried to annex specific oil rich areas under the guise of "protecting" oil pipelines, it's be reprehensible, but so was Crimea.
This means a large portion of Russian military spending can't be used in the current war. OTOH, almost every Ukrainian military asset they have was acquired with an eventual defense against Russia in mind so they have a much better rate of available fighting power per dollar spent.
They did send about $5 billion worth of equipment. It is probably a factor why Russia isn't currently sieging Kiev.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/ukraine-weapons-mil...
[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/15/politics/biden-ukraine-ai...
That said... I believe Russia see the invasion on Ukraine as a necessity to block Ukraine from joining NATO.
A lot of people thinking Russia wants to just conquer Ukraine risk a massive escalation.
Ukraine did a lot of things that pissed Russia off after it started to get closer ties to USA...
Among them:
1. Ban on Russian Language
2. Threatening to close Sevastapol base (before Russia claimed Crimea back)
3. Accepting Azov battalion as part of the official army.
4. Allowing army members use SS symbols on their uniform (to be more specific, Galizen)
and so on.
But the most important one was: Adding in the constitution that they will join NATO, and accepting billions in military aid from USA (yes, USA was pumping a ton of weapons in Ukraine BEFORE the war, USA itself said so!)
Ukraine joining NATO is a risk Russia can't take, yes NATO is defensive but Russia has beef with NATO members already, if Ukraine joins NATO for example it becomes way riskier for Russia to defend Armenia as ally if Turkey attacks them for example, and there is the fact NATO members been actually on the offensive a couple times now, and the whole NATO bombed the shit out of Serbia officially in the past (Russia was helping Serbia in that conflict)
So why I said this risk massive escalation?
Well, if you understand your enemy wrong you will make wrong decisions.
Russia doesn't want to conquer Ukraine, they want to keep NATO away from that border, and there are two ways of doing that:
1. Convince Ukraine to not join NATO (what they are trying to do now).
2. Just bomb Ukraine until there is nothing left to join NATO in first place.
A lot of people are thinking Russia won't try the second option because they want to conquer Ukraine, they are wrong about this, Russia knows very well they don't have right now the capability to conquer Ukraine, the only rational decision to go about this is try a "diplomatic" victory, and if that fails, then the real "War" comes (I suspect this is why Russia don't call this a war yet), where Russia will finally use all their equipment, including a large amount of strategic bombers and intermediate range missiles to utterly destroy everything in Ukraine, this way they don't have to bother with occupation and will still win regardless of how much NATO weapons are inside Ukraine (in fact the more NATO fills Ukraine with weapons, the bigger target it becomes for indiscriminate destruction, when else Russia will have opportunity to wipe out all the equipment of enemies like that?)
EDIT: I hope all downvotes aren't because people are believing I am wrong in claiming Russia WILL flatten Ukraine if they feel the need to do so and support more war...
If Russia wants to keep NATO away from their border (which already exists in the Baltics), then why did they create the scenario where Sweden and Finland are now joining NATO? Do you think Putin is stupid?
Why would they be afraid of a NATO offense on Russia when NATO won't do defense to protect an invasion against Ukraine?
Watch this: https://youtu.be/MkrLUFAcjH0
and this: https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw
If we did NOT anticipate that this would provoke a hard-power response, then we are incompetent for failing to understand the decision-making process of our adversary.
If we DID anticipate this kind of response from Russia, and we did what we did anyway, then we are malicious, for precipitating a chain of events that are getting innocent civilians killed. Geniuses for getting the Russians to shatter their hard AND soft power without it costing a single NATO military life, but definitely malicious sociopaths nonetheless.
Azov battalion would never exist if Russia did not invaded in the first place.And funny enough, fascists split there - some of them went to fight for Russia others for Ukraine. Not even speaking about fact that Russia neo-nazi problem is much larger then Ukrainian one, except Russia does not see it as problem and welcomes those guys. Also funny enough, Ukraine did then worked on pushing these guys out of the army, modifying and reforming that batalion in years in between.
Going back to politics, Ukraine joining NATO is not a risk for Russia, the issue there is that Russia then cant invade as it pleases.
2. Yes? Maybe Russia shouldn't have been engaged in heavy-handed meddling in the country before that and the population wouldn't be pissed off at them and want the military base to go away.
3. Most indications are that Ukraine also reigned it in significantly.
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> and accepting billions in military aid from USA (yes, USA was pumping a ton of weapons in Ukraine BEFORE the war, USA itself said so!)
The war has been ongoing since 2014, with Russia arming the other side in the occupied areas.
Again, if Russia didn't want Ukraine to be desperately trying to leap into bed with the West....it shouldn't have invaded it in 2014 and should have respected it's sovereignty. Quite frankly, they probably could have kept it neutral or pulled it back in orbit in the long run with disinformation campaigns like have worked elsewhere.
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Beyond that, in your last paragraph, I think you are vastly, vastly, overstating the capacity of the Russian military.
Which many did before the war - people believed Russia's claims of reforming and rearming their military, but is clearly off the mark now.
Russia has committed pretty much the entirety of it's active ground forces to the campaign beyond the bare minimum to not leave the rest of the country totally undefended. It is watching massive quantities of it's men and equipment being destroyed, including many of it's best units and equipment.
Much of what Russia is losing right now in every area of equipment is likely irreplaceable given the impact of sanctions and their inability to produce crucial parts in country.
The premise that Russia is somehow "holding back" as some master strategy to look like complete idiots on the world stage and watch all their stuff get blown up first, is absurd.
If they had larger stocks of intermediate-range missiles, they'd be using them and things would look like the US "shock & awe" of the Iraq War. They aren't because they can't.
Not to mention that the Ukrainian Air Force still has a majority of it's aircraft flying and still has significant long-range anti-aircraft weapons active. Again, there is zero reason for Russia to not have destroyed all of this immediately....if they could. The obvious conclusion for the inability to do so is that they can't, not that they're waiting for some mysterious future time when they'll show their true power.
Why would he be afraid of a NATO offense on Russia when NATO won't do defense to protect an invasion against Ukraine?
What were they thinking? Were they stupid? Why would they risk worsening the situation by messing with Cuba?
And while we are at it, why do the United States have any say in whether or not the Soviet Union stations missiles in Cuba? Cuba is a sovereign state, if they want Soviet missiles, they should be allowed to have them, right?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
You say the United States handled Cuba incorrectly, I do not know what exactly that means, but this is also not too important as long as you are consistent. We will probably disagree at least somewhat in our judgment. In my opinion it was not unreasonable for the United States to demand no missiles on Cuba given the tensions and mutual distrust in order to not increase tensions further. I could maybe also understand if Cuba or the Soviet Union had rejected that demand as reasonable in principle but not justifiable in this specific situation because of the aggression by the United States. In the end the Soviet Union did the right thing and deescalated. And they still got somewhat screwed by the United States because the concessions by the United States were no real concessions - removing the missiles from Turkey was already planned before the crisis because they were obsolete.
In consequence I also think that it is not a totally unreasonable demand from Russia to not want NATO at all its borders. With that said, is still do not think that attacking Ukraine is an acceptable way to achieve this, for example sabotaging or destroying NATO military installations once they pop up in Ukraine would seem much more justifiable. But then again, once Ukraine is a NATO member, Russia would have to deal with article 5. In the end I think this should never have escalated this far to begin with, Ukraine and NATO should maybe have aimed for a limited membership like Norway or no NATO membership at all.
This is of course only reasonable if you think that sovereign states sometimes have to accept limits to their sovereignty because of the interest of other states. You can of course disagree with this, but then I would ask you, for example, for your opinion on the destruction of Iranian centrifuges by Stuxnet. Justified or an act of war? I also want you to consider that it is easy from today's perspective to argue that the United States should just have accepted Soviet missiles in Cuba, therefore it might be better to consider how the United States would act today if China and Mexico reached a deal to station Chinese military assets in Mexico in exchange for economic support, maybe not even missiles but say a lot of ground forces. Would the United States be fine with that?
And you can of course completely reject the idea that NATO expansion is an important factor for the Russian aggression, then the discussion has to shift completely to evidence for different explanations.
Pointing out that in the same circumstances someone did the same thing is a strong argument that they think it is morally justified, or at least acceptable.
The argument here is that the escalations in Ukraine are geopolitically unwise and that NATO doesn't have a moral reason to be involved after the shenanigans they pull. So why are they funnelling in weapons and working so hard in support if not to provoke a NATO-Russia conflict? We can rule out the idea that they are good people by looking at the organisation's past actions.