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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3.

How could you know that? Are you a time traveller? It is unlikely in any specific year, but over 100 years a 1% chance is likely to happen and the risks seem elevated right now. There isn't anything in particular stopping WW3 and there are lots of ways it could happen (open war with Russia, China or Iran spring to mind, civil war in the US spiralling globally is thinkable, the EU is re-arming and something absurd might happen there for a 3rd time). The US doesn't have the economic sway it used to either, it appears unable to just dictate military terms to its competitors right now which has been a major factor for the last 70 years.

Even a good argument isn't comforting. There were really good arguments why WW1 and WW2 wouldn't break out. In the case of WW2 for example, it was pretty foreseeable what could happen - devastation of Europe, probable defeat of the Germans by a large coalition and a roughly century-long occupation. No real upside for them. Happened anyway. And famously before WWI there was that book that correctly argued that the economic interconnections between European powers was so great that war could only bring economic ruin - which also happened to be right in hindsight, WWI set up some of the most catastrophic economic conditions ever seen and was also the death knell of Europe's long term economic dominance.

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> Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3.

>> How could you know that?

We're rather close. All it would take is a major blowup in the Ukraine war. The war has stepped up a notch in the last two days. Ukraine has been attacking Moscow with drones.[1] What if they stop hitting apartment buildings and level the Kremlin? Or Russia steps up attacks on Latvia, a member of NATO.[2]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/10/europe/ukraine-drone-strikes-...

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-drone-crashes-i...

> Ukraine has been attacking Moscow with drones.

That's not new, see this from a year ago:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65475333

Russia, controller of the worlds largest arsenal of nuclear missiles, currently has foreign troops on its land that are attacking it. The US is publicly signalling that this might not be going far enough to pressure the Russian homeland [0]. This attitude floors me. I can't figure out if people legitimately believe that we can just ignore the nuclear war risk because they can't conceptualise how bad it'll be [1] or if the plan is to purposefully explore for a limit where Russia snaps. I suspect we've literally never seen such reckless escalation against a nuclear power.

[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-uk-discuss-lifting-m...

[1] EDIT - Fun fact for the day, the shockwave from Tsar Bomba circled the globe thrice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba#Test_results

You can't ignore the nuclear threat (and the constrained escalation approach the US has taken is exactly the opposite of ignoring the nuclear threat; it is entirely because of that threat), but you also can't surrender to it unless you are prepared to surrender everything to it.

It has become uncomfortably clear over the last 5 years how Europe triggered its world wars. But 4 posts ago Animats was drawing our attention to the fact that Moscow is being bombed. Are we supposed to give serious consideration to the idea that leaving Moscow un-bombed represents some sort of surrender to Russia?

The US has launched invasions of multiple countries with less of a pretext than even the Russians and nobody pretended that bombing Washington was clever. Or even particularly justified.

> and nobody pretended that bombing Washington was clever. Or even particularly justified.

Save for Osama Bin Laden who not only "bombed" the Pentagon in Washington he also took out the twin towers in NYC and tried for other targets.

Further back the Canadians firebombed multiple targets in Washington, including the Whitehouse, in retaliation for similar US actions in Canadian territory.

Looking back, would you say that Bin Laden's controlled and calculated escalations against the Pentagon, etc, was a move resulting in a reasonable response? He wasn't even an official representative of Aghanistan and the US still went full-on crazy and got ~150-200,000 people killed.

And it isn't even obvious how linked the war was to Bin Laden or Al Qaeda, when he was eventually killed it wasn't in Afghanistan and it didn't take an invasion of Pakistan to achieve. The Taliban controlling Afghanistan obviously wasn't a problem because they still do. In hindsight the whole thing looks like a futile dick waving exercise to keep the military industrial complex profitable.

Provoking the Russians in a similar way is not clever.

The USA screwed up in funding the mujahideen in Afghanistan, which included Bin Laden, against the Russian invasion, which in turn led to 9/11, which in turn led to a USA invasion of Afghanistan instead.

Some rather tenuous assertions of cause-and-effect we have here.

OBL was a self-propelled force. There's no indication that the US supported him, or even knew about him until 1996. To suggest that the US operation in Afghanistan up through 1989 (make of it what you will) "led to 9/11" seems quite specious indeed.

The guy listed many grievances in his justification for the 9/11 attacks, but (AFAIK) the prior US support for the Muj (i.e. the very people he was fighting with), or any aspect of it doesn't seem to have been one of them. Rather, it was all that stuff about the Holy Sites, US presence in the gulf (on behalf of regimes he didn't like), and last but not least the fact of Clinton going after him directly (and trying to kill him in fact) which seem to have lit his flame.

(And then the idea of 9/11 "leading to" the Afghanistan invasion is a wholy different, and even more convoluted thread -- but which also seems to have been sufficiently addressed by others already).

The problem with this argument is that russia literally has no non-nuclear ways to escalate. America did and used them.

All you can say is "well this time it's over the line and they'll start using nukes" but that argument applies just as well to literally every action.

I think to say that "Taliban controlling Afghanistan obviously wasn't a problem because they still do" is inaccurate. The problem the US had with the Taliban is that being an Islamic fundamentalist political entity, they provided safe harbor for al-Qaeda. They refused to cooperate with the request to extradite Bin Laden. The west had every intention of eliminating the Taliban for good and failed to achieve this goal.

The prevailing wisdom at the time was to remove the Taliban from power and to establish a deradicalized, democratic Afghanistan that would hopefully cooperate with the west in fighting terrorism as well as removing the conditions that would cause jihadist movements to flourish. The template for this being the destruction of Axis powers during WWII and their subsequent rebirth as deradicized, prosperous, militarily benign nations.

It took a decade long man hunt to locate Bin Laden which was unanticipated. When he was found in Pakistan he was in hiding, not being intentionally harbored by the government as in Afghanistan.

In hindsight it was probably unrealistic to expect a rebuilt stable Afghanistan free of the Taliban. Perhaps a larger "surge" level of troops for a longer period of time and greater focus on Afghanistan rather than invading Iraq would have achieved a different outcome. Let's not forget that the US was not being entirely rational at the time. The government and the public wanted revenge in a big way.

When he was found in Pakistan he was in hiding, not being intentionally harbored by the government as in Afghanistan.

By all indications, he was being effectively harbored by the Pakistani ISI.

(There's also Hersh's theory that it was a "walk-in" from Pakistani military intelligence who actually tipped them off to, or at least provided strong corroboration as to the existence of Bin Laden's compound -- rather than the CIA sleuthing this out on its own from tracking various couriers. I never got caught up on how that particular theory panned out, as I've never been too obsessed with Bin Laden or the circumstances surrounding his extrajudicial execution anyway).

Let's not forget that the US was not being entirely rational at the time. The government and the public wanted revenge in a big way.

Indeed. My sense is that it wasn't so much a desire for revenge (thought there was certainly a large element of that). But rather fear, and a desire to send a "message". And so bombing the shit out of some dirt-poor country (whose population had generally no awareness of, let alone complicity in any of this) seemed to be the perfect way to do that.

> They refused to cooperate with the request to extradite Bin Laden.

Which almost sounds reasonable until compared to when the US went after Bin Laden in Pakistan they didn't bother asking. I'm no UN level diplomat, but to me maybe 2 months negotiating before launching an invasion would make sense. Maybe even 12 months. A little bit of patience before setting off on a path lined with mountains of corpses.

That really showcases how flimsy the US justification was; the fact that the Afghan government didn't completely overturn their own sovereign system in under 30 days is held up in some sort of weird way as a provocation. And I don't even exactly object to the outrageous hypocrisy on what justifies a US invasion vs a Russian one, I just think that what is happening in Russia is risky, has no upside for the West and a lot of upside for China. I'd like someone to be able to put out a cold hard case for how destabilising large nuclear powers is supposed to lead to a better world. It seems like a hard case to make.

> In hindsight it was probably unrealistic...

Yeah. Maybe in hindsight maybe they didn't think it through. Everyone move on. Broken eggs required for omelettes except we burned the omelette because it turns out we didn't know how to cook. Oops.

You know what? Maybe we should be more thoughtful before invading people. It'd give the West a lot more intellectual credibility when they complain about other armies launching invasions. I have difficulty even pretending to respect the idea that Russia is a bad actor here given the US record we're all expected to look past. The Europe is not somehow more important than the Middle East.

We need an actual case for why we are supporting what is going on in Ukraine. The moral case that people try to hide behind is farcical, we've seen exactly how the US military handles this sort of thing over the last 25 years. There is no material upside for us in this war, and lots of real and potential downsides.

The same people who didn't think that through now think destabilising Russia is a going to work out great. What does that tell us.

> We need an actual case for why we are supporting what is going on in Ukraine.

The case for me is that I live a few hundred kilometers from Russian border. If Ukraine falls, I'll be next and scenes like this will be happening on my street to people I know: https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1820831971573973385 (as they happened in the past to people I knew).

> The same people who didn't think that through now think destabilising Russia is a going to work out great.

Russia is becoming unstable because Putin launched an unwinnable war, destroyed foreign trade relations, hollowed out civilian economy and sent god knows how many to death while trying his best to keep the true scale hidden. Rest of the world is not "destabilising Russia", but doing what they can to hold the shithouse together while trying to end the war. It is not their fault that Putin is not taking any exit ramps offered to him and instead keeps doubling down on a obvious mistake.

Deserves a mention that overblown concerns about stability are nothing new. As the USSR was falling apart, George Bush Sr made a speech in Kyiv warning Eastern European independence movements about rocking the boat too much. NY Times dubbed it the Chicken Kyiv speech. The fears about nuclear war or weapons falling into terrorists' hands turned out unfounded. Instead, the lasting effect was that 100 million more people in Europe are free now than 35 years ago.

> I have difficulty even pretending to respect the idea that Russia is a bad actor here given the US record we're all expected to look past.

Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, millions of lives ruined, entire cities flattened, occupied areas littered with mass graves, ground contaminated with millions of mines that will take centuries to remove. And yet you can't even entertain the idea that the perpertrator is a "bad actor"? That shows a disturbing lack of any moral sense. Looting, torture, rape, murder and other crimes are disgusting and reprehensible and deserve a punishment, and if you insist on ranking countries, then Russia has committed these acts at scale uncomparable to the US.

> The fears about nuclear war or weapons falling into terrorists' hands turned out unfounded.

They're controlled by Putin. There is a pretty solid argument that his inner circle is a mafia with nuclear weapons. What ended up happening is only a few shades improved on terrorists; it isn't particularly encouraging to have dictators with weapons that powerful.

> Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, millions of lives ruined, entire cities flattened, occupied areas littered with mass graves...

If anyone had responded to the US invasions by escalating them to proxy wars the US would have the same blood on their hands. That is in fact one of my main points here - the decision to support the Ukrainians and try to bleed the Russians out was when most of the damage was committed to. The precedent here is the UN sends thoughts & prayers, the Ukraine government gets blatted and we all move on a la the Afghan or Iraq invasions. Ugly affairs, morally devastating but not quite the level of destruction that the US engineered in Ukraine.

But not only did the west decided this was a good one to escalate from disaster to bloodbath, but we seem to be pushing the limit to find out if we can make the Russians really angry. There is almost no way that is a good idea, there isn't a limit to how far this can escalate.

> They're controlled by Putin. There is a pretty solid argument that his inner circle is a mafia with nuclear weapons. What ended up happening is only a few shades improved on terrorists; it isn't particularly encouraging to have dictators with weapons that powerful.

Nothing changed then. The USSR was a reckless totalitarian dictatorship too, with the major difference being that the current version has managed to enslave 100 million less people than the previous iteration. Hopefully the next version will be even smaller.

> That is in fact one of my main points here - the decision to support the Ukrainians and try to bleed the Russians out was when most of the damage was committed to. The precedent here is the UN sends thoughts & prayers, the Ukraine government gets blatted and we all move on a la the Afghan or Iraq invasions.

You skipped over the destruction of Ukrainian statehood, eradication of Ukrainian language and culture, physical extermination of entire classes of people (at least several million in total) and a totalitarian dictatorship for the rest, followed by further invasions westwards into Poland, using Ukrainians as cannon fodder like Russians have already decimated the male population of occupied territories by forcing them against Ukrainian Armed Forces.

For Ukraine, the alternative to war is another genocide carried out by Russians. Loss of people and loss of culture. Afghanistan and Iraq are nothing comparable.

> Ugly affairs, morally devastating but not quite the level of destruction that the US engineered in Ukraine.

No more has the US "engineered destruction in Ukraine" than it did when it supported Britain against invaders. Germans intended to use British merchant fleet to deport all European Jews to Madagascar, but they had to abandon the plan after failing to invade Britain. For lack of better options, Jews were burned in ovens instead. If you are inclined to blame anyone but the perpertrators, then this is your opportunity to pin the Holocaust on the Americans, because their aid was vital to British victory.

The same people who didn't think that through now think destabilising Russia is a going to work out great.

Russia chose to destabilize itself. The surrounding countries are simply ducking for cover, and doing what they have to do to survive.

> They refused to cooperate with the request to extradite Bin Laden.

Actually they said they would consider the evidence of a request. Bush invaded anyway.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1539468.stm

At the time (from Australia, having already travelled a good deal mapping and working in global geophysical exploration) my opinion was that OBL executed a carefully thought out and well executed plan with the specific intent of eliciting an over the top batshit crazy response from the USofA.

In this he succeeded without a doubt. (NB. I'm absolutely not endorsing his actions).

He delibrately provoked the US and he was extremely clever about it.

> He wasn't even an official representative of Aghanistan ... Pakistan ..

All immaterial from an OG Al Qaeda PoV - they were intent on starting a mass war between the Arab world and the West based on a dislike of the Saudi Royal Family, their corruption of "true" Arab values (for some intepretation of "true arab values"), the US support of the Saudi's, the US actions in Islamic countries and their support and or acceptance of atrocities committed against Muslims.

Very early on there was a teetering point when the US could have capitalised on a global wave of sympathy that included much of the Islamic world.

Then was the time to form a small group with international partners to target and capture the small Al Qaeda and leverage support from Muslims outraged at OBL's actions.

That opportunity was squandered badly with the Bush versioned War on Terror and sideshow invasion of Iraq, the search for non existent WMD's and the Coalition of the Reluctant Few.

The US went down an avoidable 20 year rabbit hole and squandered reputation and relations.

Firebombed? With Avro Lancasters?

The British Army burned the White House and a few other buildings in Washington, in retaliation, as they said, for the burning of buildings in York (Toronto).

That seems a tad alternative history.

Regular old throwable fire bombs | lanterns | incendiary devices | oil filled clay pots with a wick, etc. work just fine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons

It is difficult to take nuclear blackmail seriously every time Moscow simply accepted the 'escalation' everytime western powers provide more and ever greater aid.

It's all a bunch of bluffing and empty threats.

Nuclear weapons only deter the Western powers from simply marching on Moscow to make it stop the war in Ukraine. It is otherwise basically useless because precisely it is the nuclear option.

Russia [...] currently has foreign troops on its land that are attacking it.

Ukraine is the defender in this conflict. Every reasonable action it takes to encourage a Russian withdrawal is, by definition, defensive.

The US is publicly signalling that this might not be going far enough to pressure the Russian homeland.

The intent is to put pressure on the regime, not the "homeland".

This attitude floors me. I can't figure out if people legitimately believe that we can just ignore the nuclear war risk [...] or if the plan is to purposefully explore for a limit where Russia snaps.

There shouldn't be any mystery to this. The intent is to help the current regime in Moscow come to the only rational decision available to it, which to stop the war it should have never started in the first place. There is no intent to make it (and certainly not Russia as a country) "snap". That's just your projection.

On the contrary, the intent it is to help the regime come to its senses. Like the US was finally forced to do in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

And in parallel, to save Ukrainian lives, especially civilian lives -- which are being lost daily due to attacks launched from within Russian territory

You should read a bit of Dostoevsky for his analysis how 'rational' people are. Not to mention what decades of absolute power do to your ability to reason. I am also not sure what the end game is here and what 'defeating' a country with nuclear arsenal looks like. And why there is no more calls for negotiation (like there is in the case of Gaza).

I am also not sure what the end game is here and what 'defeating' a country with a nuclear arsenal looks like.

The decisive US defeats in the aforementioned countries, and the equally compelling Russian/Soviet defeat in Afghanistan provide hopeful models.

>> Russia [...] currently has foreign troops on its land that are attacking it.

> Ukraine is the defender in this conflict. Every reasonable action it takes to encourage a Russian withdrawal is, by definition, defensive.

War is peace etc etc.

I'd like to point out that an attack is the opposite of defense and the scale of the attack does not make it not so. Your argument does not negate the GP statement which btw is true.

Both statements you quoted can be true at the same time. Russia is the aggressor in this war, and Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil have the goal of repelling the aggressor, and not conquer or subjugate Russia.

If Russia wants to stop these attacks, it can do so at any point. Their government simply has to stop their attacks on Ukraine and retract its troops. Surely, even to a madman like Putin, this humiliation would be preferable to global nuclear armageddon.

> Surely, even to a madman like Putin, this humiliation would be preferable to global nuclear armageddon.

I can think of numerous reasons why it wouldn't be preferable, even to a non-madman.

Feeling humiliated and driven to a point where one’s subjective feeling is that there is nothing left to lose, one does not need to be a madman to launch everything one has. Vengefulness is sufficient.

Note that subjective assessment of the situation is sufficient. Putin is dependent on nobody to come to such a conclusion, especially not the west, and why should he care anyway? Western war escalation enthusiasts apparently are willing to take the risk anyway or do not seem to understand this.

Where do you draw the line? Since you say this is purely dependent on Putin's subjective perception, and since you can't read his thoughts, would the logical consequence be that we need to just let him do unopposed whatever he wants to, out of fear that the smallest grievance could result in nuclear armageddon? This, to me, seems what imperialism apologists are arguing for. Ignore the war of aggression, ignore the genocide, rape and murder of civilians, sacrifice Ukraine to protect Putin's ego, and just pray that his greed stops at that and that he won't continue given another opportunity.

There is probably a point where things go from happening gradually to happening suddenly. Very few can relate to the horrors of nuclear war or have the consequences of nuclear bombs in living memory.

> On the contrary, the intent it is to help the regime come to its senses

It's funny how 'realist' viewpoints, when applied equally from both sides, lead to inevitable nuclear annihilation.

> can't figure out if people legitimately believe that we can just ignore the nuclear war risk because they can't conceptualise how bad it'll be

So what you're saying is, if a country has nuclear weapons they can do whatever they want to you and you'll just take it in the ass, is that it?

Im glad that a lot of people choose to stand up and fight.

More than 25% of the Ukrainian population have left the country or died. We're figuring out how much of their territory they lose, looks like more than 10%. Word on the street suggests Russia is committing war crimes against their infrastructure so they're unlikely to be seeing much economic success in the next 5-10 years. They've also made an enemy of Russia for the foreseeable future, and Russia seems to be part of the bloc with the economic advantage that is forming around China.

While surrendering in the first week is an uncomfortable option, I think they'd have been better off exploring that as an option even before nuclear weapons come into the picture. Russia in 2024 is bad but not the USSR. Ukraine'd be putting a brave face on to describe what just happened to them as mere buggery and they don't appear to have achieved much. There is a serious argument that their choice to fight was a mistake.

Russia (more specifically its current regime) is the one who has chosen to make itself an enemy to its neighbors, not the other way around.

What Ukrainians choose to do about their situation is up to them. If you think you have constructive advice to offer them -- as someone not facing that situation, yourself -- you're welcome to speak with them directly and see what this effort brings you.

Victoria Nuland and Boris Johnson enjoyed offering advice.

Obviously it was bad advice.

"Victoria Nuland on Russia-NATO relations, peace negotiations with Ukraine, and the U.S. elections"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiS2dg_atfc&t=3192s&ab_chann...

Obviously it was bad advice.

Without articulating what this advice supposedly was, or why it was bad (if it even was).

More to the point: if you think anyone has time to fish through 72 minutes of some interview about anything political on a summer weekend to sift out whatever insinuation it is that you're attempting to posit here -- then your worldview is quite dark and austere, indeed.

"In a surprise visit to Ukraine on 9 April, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with"

In retrospect, the attempt to win the war instead of negotiating was a catastrophic mistake that many people paid for and are paying with their lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russ...

The Ukrainians are facing the situation they're in, not you. And they understand the parameters of that situation infinitely better than you do.

They can decide for themselves whether to bend over and let Putin have his merry way with them is such a fine idea as you seem to think is, or not

Boris didn't make them do anything. That's just a myth, which presumes they are hapless fools with no agency.

> They've also made an enemy of Russia for the foreseeable future

Russian propaganda is always "Russia is the victim".

No, Russia made themselves their event.

One more step closer to war today.[1]

Suggested reading: "The Fallacy of Unambiguous Warning", from the current issue of Parameters, the U.S. Army War College quarterly. This is a study of what was known and not known just before some past wars started. The point made is that by the time enough people are convinced that there is an unambiguous warning of impending war, it's usually too late.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-west-will-be...

[2] https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

Not going to happen.

A conventional conflict between Russia and NATO would be short and would end with a Russian defeat. That is clear from the war in Ukraine. Russia would very quickly lose all the territory it has seized in Ukraine and NATO would press no further.

Nuclear conflict? Everyone loses.

> Are you a time traveller?

If only.

> over 100 years a 1% chance is likely to happen

This is extrapolated from two events that occurred 25 years apart?

> the EU is re-arming ...

First, the EU has practically brought peace in Western Europe. And it was disarming, and now sees itself forced to get back to previous levels. While rearming is technically correct, it's a sign of something outside the EU, not the EU being on the war path.

> The US ... appears unable to just dictate military terms to its competitors

I don't see how what that has to do with it. Are you suggesting WW3 didn't break out earlier because of the Cold War?

> Even a good argument isn't comforting.

True, but it doesn't somehow make the opposite true.

> There were really good arguments why WW1 and WW2 wouldn't break out.

And there were many people all over Europe steering towards WW1, and WW2 was famously predicted at the signing of the peace treaty.

But a world war requires more than two local, unrelated conflicts, one of which is not even a real war. It requires large groups of combatants, and one group should have some strategic goal it wants to pursue at all costs. But only Russia wants that, and its goal isn't that great, and it stands alone. So I don't see how it could explode into the next world war.

Anyway, let's hope for the best.

World Wars occur when competing great powers reach an impasse over sharing the loot (aka "the world"). The correct parsing of the phrase "world war" is making war for control of the world. We are yet again at such a juncture.

War with China is far, far from a reality, I really doubt anyone's intelligence if they claim so, maybe read less of your government's propaganda.

How high do you think are the chances of China taking Taiwan by force? And how would US or NATO respond to that?

They should fuck off to their part of the world. I am not Chinese but everyone in this region has gotten enough of you idiots fucking us up over colonialism dont you think?

China has no incentive to disrupt the status quo, they have already invaded Taiwan culturely and economically. It's only the western simpletons brainwashed by the military industrial complex who think that people somehow want war or that "those Asians" want war (I guess because we are stupid?)

Most of China's neighbours seem to also have a problem with the way it behaves around it borders and sees.

But maybe you would consider them simpletons as well or is that too transparent and close to the colonialism you supposedly despise?

I am Vietnamese. Of course I cannot speak for everyone, but I think, in general, I can call westerners simpleton in this matter.

Ah, Vietnamese. North or South?

If you wanna put people into boxes, I am northern Vietnamese - Australian

You can't, but oh well, good luck to you and your racism.

I think I can, this is the part of the world where I know the history & culture. I understand the nuances in the feud I am supposed to have with the Chinese. What do you know? Do you even live here or speak any of the languages?

That is true today. Will it remain true in the next decade? There’s troubling signs that the probability may rise.

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