War in Europe is not a hysterical idea | Hacker News Reader

War in Europe is not a hysterical idea

washingtonpost.com

37 pointssmacktoward42 comments

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I realize that this question sounds hysterical, and foolishly apocalyptic, to U.S. or Western European readers.

Not to this one. Putin's casual delivery of his remarks yesterday about the ongoing potency of Russia's nuclear arsenal was a startling rhetorical escalation, unprecedented in recent decades. I have considered a hot war a strong possibility since the Crimean action in February and think it's a virtual certainty now, and only a question of scale.

I think many readers may find this (non-paywalled) article by Henry Kissinger published yesterday to be worth their while: http://online.wsj.com/articles/henry-kissinger-on-the-assemb...

EDIT: corrected a few typos.

>hot war [...] think it's a virtual certainty now, and only a question of scale.

I'm not so sure. I don't see a proper hot war happening between the major countries. Three reasons: 1) Everyone is too busy buying Ikea furniture and iPhones. 2) A proper hot war will end in MAD imo 3) The overall mentality has shifted among the 1st world population. Sure everyone is still patriotic but if you tell a German to go kill a Brit/Russian/American they'll think you're mad.

1) In 1939 Polish were also too busy just living. 2) That's the point. 3) If a German/Brit/American see Russian tanks in their towns killing their people, they will go and shoot in response. "Overall mentality" means very little in existential circumstances.

They will don't want to attack other country, sure. But Russian forces are doing just that right now, and you know, under proper propaganda, most Russians support Putin (86% as of the most recent surveys), and think war in Ukraine is organized by Americans.

So regular Russian troops think they're going there to _defend_ Ukrainians from Americans, same as they did in 1968 in Czechoslovakia.

Actually, regular troops appeared there only recently, conflict was started earlier by local pro-Russian people, heavily supported by Russia by means of contract warriors from Chechnya, arms, including heavy: tanks, anti-aircraft systems that brought down MH17, and most importantly -- military instructors (their leader was Russian from KGB/FSB).

So mentality is not a stopping factor there. Before WW2 people mostly thought it's impossible to repeat cruelties of WW1.

I'm Belarussian, so I know Russian mentality. It's not as smart and humane as you're assuming.

Russia is defending its self interest, much in the way any other country would and does where they can to the extent that they can. Russia's capital elite aren't dummies, they have avoided having their wrists tied by the West so far but that will change in time. Americas military budget dwarfs Russia's, it would take a relatively large collective group of the mentally ill to want a direct confrontation with the US. I'm Russian and we aren't as any more or less so, dumb or inhumane as any other people. Don't demonize entire group of people you happen to disagree with.

>I'm Belarussian, so I know Russian mentality. It's not as smart and humane as you're assuming.

I'm from a country with 6x the murder rate as yours (per person) so no my reasoning is not based on assuming people are "humane". Oh and my neighboring country is currently busy with a military coup (Lesotho - check google news - started ~12 hours ago).

My point is bad sht happens. People get shot & die. I can deal with that. A proper hot war is an entirely different beast altogether though & is something I hope to never see.

I can address your specific statements in more detail if you wish but it seems a little superfluous tbh.

thank you for that link.

Any article by Applebaum on central Europe needs a bright red disclaimer, "The author is married to the Polish foreign minister."

I really can't believe the Washington Post lets her write this alarmist claptrap without pointing out the conflict of interest.

everybody has an agenda. some are more obvious than others.

My god...hysterical won't come even close. I fear more the possibility that the media could CREATE this war then that either side would push it the conventional way.

I don't even want to go into this ridiculous parable comparing the times before WW2 and today...

>the media could CREATE this war

Could they though? As far as I can tell the main consumers of media are barely capable of going for a jog, let alone going to war.

I don't believe it either, but why not? What's changed? I don't really think we have grown much wiser for one thing.

Globalization. Everybody is 'invested' everywhere. If there's a war everybody looses. Politics (unless there's a crazy one and I don't think that's the case) will only play till some limits. Economics rule, not governments.

You're forgetting the people who sell missiles & guns.

it has been approximate 1 generation since the fall of the Soviet union. it was never a question of "if" Russia would restablish itself as a very important world power, it has always been a question of "when."

Russia will go to war because it has to in order to be recognized on the world stage as a serious power player. if they back down now, they will look like fools and lose immense political power.

the only question is if it will go nuclear or not. my hope is that the nuclear option is simply rhetoric to keep the west out of their invasion of Ukraine. but that's the thing: it is impossible to know if it is or jot, so we have to assume they are willing to use nukes to accomplish their goals.

cold war 2 has already started, no question about it. let's keep it from going hot. mutually assured destruction is still very much a possibility.

*I'm on my phone. please excuse spelling mistake.

>my hope is that the nuclear option is simply rhetoric

Forgive my ignorance, but this is the first I hear of Russia & nuclear? Sure lots of posturing on the border etc...but talk of the nuclear option is quite another matter.

Putin's rhetoric took an ominous turn this week with references to nukes and Nazis.

I'll discount Putin's statements to his adversaries. More importantly he appears to be preparing his domestic audience for war.

From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/29/putin-kiev-nazis_n_...

  [Putin's] tone grew intense while he spoke about Russia's military
  might, reminding the crowd that Russia was a strong nuclear
  power. "Russia's partners... should understand it's best not to
  mess with us," Putin said.

  Putin compared Kiev's assault on the rebel-held cities of Donetsk
  and Luhansk to the 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad in which
  1 million civilians died, perhaps the most powerful historical
  analogy it is possible to invoke in Russia.

Then Ukraine played the NATO card. It's hard to see how this ends peacefully.

  Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk told a government meeting on Friday
  the cabinet would "bring before parliament a law to scrap the
  non-aligned status of the Ukrainian state and establish a course
  towards membership of NATO".

Thanks - highly relevant response & good info. I still think it won't come to an actual war though (in the sense envisioned by the article) per my logic here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8248025

By the way -- don't trust too much Putin's words. He said on camera that there were no Russian troops in Crimea. Russian Minister of Defense (Sergey Shoygu) did as well. Now he's saying there are no Russian troops in Ukraine, right after they captured Novoazovsk city yesterday and are advancing to Mariupol' right now.

It isn't a hysterical idea, it is a retarded idea.

For starters her example of Poland circa 1938 completely ignores that the Poland in question was actually a re-incarnation of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and not Poland-the-country-of-Poles we have today (one which took close to a third it's territory though ethnically cleansing Prussia and Silesia of Germans, courtesy of the Soviet union at the end of WWII). One in which Poles were the minority population in the majority of the territory[1] and those territories would eventually become the countries of Ukraine and Belarus.

For comparison here is the same map of Ukraine today for Russian speakers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukraine_census_2001_Russi...

Who is shocked that regions with more than half the population being Russian want to get back into Russia, especially considering the first move of the new Ukrainian parliament was to ban the use of Russian in government (something the president himself vetoed so it wouldn't look like his cabinet was filled with right wing nationalists)?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polish_language_frequency...

> completely ignores that the Poland in question was actually a re-incarnation of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth

Does that matter? That attack didn't have much to do with which population lived in Poland. It was supposed to be a quick move through Poland, rather than attack on it.

Even then, the area which was actually affected in the first days was actually completely on the current territory of Poland. And that's the population that could potentially take part in the defense.

A Russian native speaker does not equal a Russian. About 2/3 of the population of Donetsk region identify themselves as ethnic Ukrainians. More than half of those name Russian as their native language.

Putin won't do anything that causes a major reaction I think. He will however push things to the limit & stop just short of that.

Its a good strategy from Russia's point of view - I doubt any of the other leaders can match Putin for pure brass balls and a willingness to not flinch in a game of chicken.

It'll yield some incremental gains that are imo justified for playing the game well, but I don't see "War in Europe" happening. (Ukraine skirmishes aside).

I'm not sure that the EU has the stomach or organization capability for a land war. In last year's NATO maneuvers only 6-7000 trops were involved, whereas Russia's exercises a few months earlier with Belarus seemingly involved tens of thousands - up to 70,000 by one sober-seeming estimate: http://www.jamestown.org/regions/europe/single/?tx_ttnews%5B...

Viewed in this light, the Ukraine cris becomes more and more worrisome. The US is deeply politically divided; not do most Republicans consider Obama a weak President, but there are large divisions within each party party about what the correct course of action is, which is (I think) one reason taht most of the Republican critique of Obama has been on matters of style rather than on substance. None of them want an American that looks weak, but there is nothing approaching a consensus about what action we should take instead - for every proponent of bombing ISIS or funnelling arms to Ukraine, there's someone else questioning what exact interests we have there.

This isn't so surprising; Europe's internal politics are badly fragmented (IMHO due to a failure to pursue full federalization over the last couple of decades following the introduction of the Euro) and Middle Eastern politics are in a weird flux that I don't know how to read at all. Paradoxically I think the US has greater common interests with Iran than it does with Saudi Arabia right now, the opposite of our nominal affiliations.

They have a saying in Russia... http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/30gza6/jason-jones-live-fr...

"We're sorry, but this video isn't available in your location"

I'm not in the US so the video won't play, care to transcribe it for us?

'Anything in life is possible if you just say "Don't be a pussy"'. It's a real cultural thing.

Pretty sure that phrase is in use globally regardless of culture.

Relativistic arguments break down for Russia in my experience, they're badass.

The math teacher says "We have a famous saying here we live by: don't be a pussy".

Thought-provoking article.

What does it feel like to be on the brink of world war? Would we even know before we were in it?

Maybe it feels pretty much like it does right now. Multiplying crises and conflicts in far-away places, increasingly hostile rhetoric, but pretty much business as usual at home.

Good business at home, actually. New "Lend-Lease" and "Arsenal of Democracy".

Key piece: "In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine."

There were ten Russian soldiers from the border patrol who were detained by the Ukrainian army. They have been just released and sent back to Russia. Strange reaction by a country who is apparently under an open attack by Russia, isn't it?

This BS is getting tiresome. I really hope this won't end like in Georgia where a Georgian attack was justified by Russian armored columns pouring the the Kodori gorge. Only later, when nobody cared a report of the Fact-Finding Mission dryly stated that the Georgian claims "could not be substantiated". I really want Ukrainian (and not only Ukrainian) politicians to eat all the sh1t they have been throwing on the fan.

Those "ten soldiers" was captured/destroyed earlier. Right now there are way more new Russian troops deployed in Ukraine right now. They captured Novoazovsk city yesterday, and are advancing towards Mariupol'.

Of course, this doesn't count everydays artillery attacks over the border by Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StTcWVSiDTY (more on youtube)

Are you serious? Regular Russian troops have been fighting and dying in Ukraine for weeks now.

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_112103.htm

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/08/28/uk-ukraine-crisis-r...

At first blush, the remarkable thing is that Putin can still get away with military aggression for the sole purpose of territorial gain in this day and age.

But the really remarkable thing about these events is that Putin, it would seem, enjoys a great deal of support, even from our native right wing pundits[1]. They wish that Obama was more "manly" and aggressive on the world stage.

The Fox pundits talk about war like other people talk about professional sports. And indeed, they do share one quality: they are both expensive pastimes for the elite. Remarkably, the Russian people are into it. They like Putin, they like his aggressiveness, they like doing something. Russian support of Putin implies that an entire nation has succumbed to simple human pride and greed, and they are collectively willing to kill (and be killed) to express it.

I want to shake the Russians collectively by the shoulders and yell: WAR IS EVIL. Don't send young men to die for your pride and greed. There are better things to do with your lives.

[1] http://www.mediaite.com/tv/colbert-happily-joins-fox-news-in...

War, or use of force to take or defend territory, is part of human nature. You cannot look at history and deny this. There is nothing fundamentally different about humans in "this day and age" than there was 100 or 1,000 years ago.

Yes, the fundamental difference is that we are wealthy. Wealthy enough to afford professional standing armies. This is a remarkable invention that gives leaders the tremendous power to wage war with hardly any personal involvement of it's citizens. War without a draft, without extra taxes, without rationing. Without widespread death, particular for the aggressor. I mean, look at the US in Iraq & Afghanistan!

War these days only costs a few thousand (American) lives. Just a few billion dollars.

Presidents have ridden war to political benefit for a long time. Presidents have extended the concept to "the war on drugs", and "the war on terror" and so on. Putin is taking this trend to it's logical conclusion: war is entertainment! Every good Russian will shout: the Russian team is going to win. In a few months or years, the Russian people will look at the territory that was once the Ukraine, the bodies freshly buried, and beam with pride: "We won!" they will say. Wealth has made the normal pushback (that stems from the unwillingness to die for no good reason) irrelevant, and political leaders know it.

Media is different. Until cameras could be used by everyone to distribute information about everything, people could only meet those who returned after a victory. People were recruited for crazy service for glorious goals before. These days everyone has seen painfully dying soldiers on all sides of recent conflicts.

Even now most real recordings from WW2 show running people, tanks, bombings from the air. There should be way more closeup dying and blood. The wars we get on the TV are way too clean.

I really wish that changes the minds of at least some people...

Look at a film like 300, which is awash in gore. There's a big audience for that sort of thing, based on some sort of physical dunning -Kruger effect - the same sort you see among a small fringe of gun aficionados who spend their time fantasizing about the collapse of society and their imaginary subsequent dominance - such conversations tend to involve a great deal more consideration of optimum ammunition loadouts then discussion of triage strategies or injury management, despite the presumable non-availability of hospitals or medical supplies.

"awash in gore" is not what I mean - 300 is full of the glorification which is the problem. Sure there are people who are going to enjoy real brutality - but that's a tiny minority. I don't mean stuff you normally see on the TV where big heroes die. I mean people being aware of what soldiers actually go through and see - what gives them PTSDs for life.

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