Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced. To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples.
There is morality in a life of peace. But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others.
Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the soviet union. Makes you wonder why sanctioned india when they developed nukes. Makes you wonder why we currently prevent japan, korea, germany, etc from developing nukes.
> To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples.
Isn't russia the biggest producer of grain? Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?
We were in the second nuclear age, that of non-proliferation [1]. As the USSR weakened, MAD became unstable. Non-proliferation was the superpowers’ solution. The system sort of worked. It started coming apart between the second Iraq war and Ghadaffi’s toppling (showing the consequences of lacking nukes) and Russia’s invasion of Crimea (showing the power of having them).
With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO.
> Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?
Nobody is targeting Russian grain, which continues to trade [2].
[1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/russian-g...
Totally correct. It's impossible to talk of global peace when you know that 2 most malevolent political entities on the planet were not only let to live, but empowered by yesterday's victor, all knowing that internal elites of USSR, and PRC were burning with "Never forget USA!" It was totally the West repeating the folly of king Helu.
Yet, I believe the humanity was close to achieving real global peace after the USSR's collapse if more effort was made.
We already seen that UN based security can work in nineties, when Russia, and China were made to lay cathartic.
If we can defeat the USSR 2.0, and PRC, we would have a very real shot at working global security system as was imagined by UN's forefathers.
Does global here mean "the US, Europe, Australia and Japan"? I followed this a bit, but it's concerning that you don't consider the US a malevolent entity. By numbers alone, the in the last 30 years the US has done the most harm to innocent civilians worldwide.
I read the GP a lot more differently, in that non-proliferation was a mistake and if you are a nation-state it's likely of utmost importance that you begin to build nukes in order to prevent Russia (if you are Ukraine), China (if you are Taiwan) or the US (if you are Iran, Palestine, Libya), for fucking your shit up.
Are aspects of US power malevolent? Absolutely.
Did US protected trade routes also bring billions out of poverty by letting the spice flow? Absolutely.
Are all countries flawed? Absolutely.
At that point Russia was choke full of nukes. How can you possibly not "let them live" without being annihilated in return.
>"UN based security can work"
Remind me when did UN security ever stop the US doing whatever they've decided to do.
Partly because Ukraine never had nukes. They had Russian nukes on their soil, but no ability to use them. Letting Russia take them back was the only reasonable answer.
Also, it was hardly a guarantee that Ukraine was going to end up with a democratic government, could just as easily have been a string of dictators. We don't need yet more dictators-with-nukes.
But Ukrainians could not use these Russian nukes in the first place, so it would probably be better to let them keep these because they would end up not being able to use them anyway. I guess there is something missing :)
On a side note, given enough time, they presumably could reverse-engineer plenty of bomb design secrets even if the permissive action links couldn't be circumvented. Permissive action links are insurance against maniac generals, rogue commanders, wealthy terrorists, etc., not against a decade or two of nation-state-funded reverse-engineering.
My understanding is that some of the PALs for two-point nuclear weapons will result in the wrong timing of the two initiations if the wrong code is used... resulting in a small dirty bomb instead of a thermonuclear blast. I presume reverse-engineering the correct timings for the two detonators is significantly easier than designing the weapon in the first place.
I would advocate for the existing ones being destroyed as well, but I think that cat is not going back in the bag. It does make one consider the other short term (and longer term) man-made existential threats and why we aren't frantically trying to keep those cats from emerging from their respective bags.
The US has strong institutions and yet it’s still a risk.
If anybody can recommend a similar book about the Soviet side, I'd be extremely interested in reading it.
As it happened, Ukraine turned out to be less of a risk than Russia. Which is unfortunate. But the logical calculus is pretty clear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
Later on, not deterring Putin, and actually encouraging him by showing massive weakness/ineptitude - that is inexcusable.
You keep forgeting that Ukraine was basically a Russian puppet state like Belarus until the first Orange Revolution took place. Saakashvili tried it and lost because Russia would not allow a former militarised satellite which they do not control in its proximity. That's part of the reason for the Ukraine invasion: they would rather start a war or several wars than lose control over these countries. Kazahstan's Tokayev is playing the right card while Russia is being busy in Ukraine: diversifying, sharing and reforming power rather than militarising. I'd really like to see one or several trans Caspian gas pipelines to Azerbaidjan, Georgia and Turkey or through the Black Sea, allowing Kazahstan to sell gas to the EU. Militarising is an option when Russia grows weaker and Western money flows in your former Soviet satellite. It was also an option after '91, until the early 2000s, but the US was being busy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Central Asia and the Caucaz to a lesser extent is the key to further weakening Russia.
Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. War is certainly one tool in that can cause (eventual) peace, but it is not the only one.
It has been shown time and time again, if you are weak, it will be taken advantage of.
It is far far far cheaper to spend the money to have a strong military, than to get into an actual shooting war with someone who thinks they can take advantage.
3-5% of GDP vs. all the death, destruction and reduction of GDP (50%?, 75%?, all of it).
Is that possible?
Part of the reason the U.S. military is effective is because we are constantly involved in some conflict somewhere.
Russia's military is an embarassment right now and it's obvious they are out of practice.
1983 - Grenada
1991 - Gulf War
2001 - Operation Enduring Freedom
2009 - Troop surge in Afghanistan
They are out-gunned, because Ukraine is being helped by NATO.
Russia was robbed by Putin, and the military was casualty of this corruption.
Each generation must re-remember where we are at now--at the edge of self extinction. Lessons from a pre-nuclear age cannot guide us.
What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")
But they've taken that money and waged war against people who you can hardly blame for feeling like maybe the West isn't so great. The harder you fight against "Terror" the stronger it gets.
Of course I've vastly oversimplified it, but it just seems like a tragically wasted opportunity.
The easy rebuttal: they're using their schools to indoctrinate our kids into their culture. I mean... this is an argument that is already made today against similar programs instituted by several major global powers (e.g., China).
You can also easily make hay of the mere insinuation that much of the world is in a state where it "needs" to be helped by foreign powers--this is essentially one of the main justifications behind colonization.
as we have right now with Russia.
another aspect: EU is doing great job improving new member’s economy and standard of living but after 10 years or so people forget why their country is in better shape and take it for granted. or worse - some politicians might claim that without EU country would be even in better situation.
so.. I don’t think that spending money on random people will make them like you.
As a sibling comment says, Si vis pacem para bellum has withstood the test of time.
Of course the US wasting money having 10 aircraft carriers and 10 "mini" aircraft carriers ( the same size as other countries' 1-2 aircraft carriers) doesn't really fit into that and certainly isn't for defence.
Before that it was a fuckfest, name a country in Europe who hasn't been invaded at some point in time by a neighbouring state
NATO is only defence in military sense from external threats.
Internal relationships are much broader: trade, laws, internal politics, multi-country alignment towards same goals, even goal definition etc. there is european parliament where representatives from all member countries gather and discuss a lot of different topics. none of that provides NATO.
Totally agree. “The blood of others” can still flow in their veins. The point is it has to be staked. There is no evidenced system of peace that doesn’t contain a threat of violence. We’ve tried for decades with sanctions; they fail in everything other than degrading the enemy.
There are but only if both sides agree to it. Once once side decides to use war, what will you stop them with?
QED war will be forever with us.
It may be unrealistic, but the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances. The question is whether that cultural advancement will allow us to cut it off before technological advancement dooms us with easily accessible superweapons....
I have not seen rigorous evidence for this.
> the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances
Agree with this.
Russia was included in majority of international organizations; trade was increasing with Russia with hopes that they will start prospering and become less agressive than before. I think it was such sentiment especially from Germany and France, there were multiple cases of “we need to be friends with Russia, trade with it and everything will be great”.
what actually happened was that government of Russia took all those trade benefits, neglected their citizens and intentionally made them poor so they would be more depending on the government. everything was intentionally oppressive, abusive. how do you solve that?
I'm not convinced you've found the cure for violence.
As far as I can tell, it's a war for glory or destiny or power or something. Not food or shelter or school.
Populists and authoritarians are supported by those at the bottom of the pile with little to lose. Russia's actions are very much related to food and housing and education and jobs.
Which ways? Which way all invaded countries in WWII, WWI and other wars before could choose to sustain peace? They wanted peace and they got war because stronger nation invaded them. So which way? International organizations? UN security council? Didn't stop invasion of Ukraine.
There is an old saying Si vis pacem, para bellum which means - If you want peace, prepare for war.
One idea is the democratization of land, meaning that everyone owns all land equally. If everyone owns all land, then there is no reason to fight over who owns it. Of course, one must ensure that the benefits that ownership used to grant are broadly shared.
The democratization of land does not solve the problem that someone needs to have the right to work the land. It may be highly efficient for thousands of acres land to be worked by a single organization. This means there must be a method to delegate the process of working the land to a third party without giving them complete control over the land.
One approach is Georgism with a UBI. The land value tax is paid out as a dividend per person.
This sort of hysterical nuclear naivety denying the continued existence of conventional war is best left to the 90s frankly.
All of this conflict doesn't disprove the thesis that economic ties moderate conflict. It might disprove the thesis that economic ties prevent conflict, but that's a straw man. The only actual thesis of that sort was that democracies don't go to war, and one of the proposed, non-exclusive mechanisms was their tendency toward deep economic interdependencies. AFAIK nobody, not even Bill Clinton, presumed that economic ties were alone sufficient to guarantee peace with China and Russia, nor sufficient to induce comprehensive political democratization. Here's Clinton recently recounting in his own words his reasoning wrt Russia: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clint...
And vice versa in cases where west does something bad.
Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7687279-nothing-less-tha...
What is this a reference to exactly? Did they agree to disarm themselves or what was the history here exactly? Was there some treaty about being neutral and not developing a military like Japan post WWII agreed to? What's going on with Ukraine in this space?