A while back, I criticized Richard Hanania’s anti-anti-Putin position as not only mistaken, but inconsistent with Hanania’s plausible general principle for assessing such things. Now Hanania replies. Enjoy! Responding to Bryan’s piece puts me in a bit of a tough position, since I’m basically having to more explicitly defend Putin using specifics rather than make a more general argument, but whatever.
This essay is a bit of a muddle of what-about-ism. Why does it all start with an American backed coup in Kiev, and not the Russian backed coup in Donbas and Crimea? Why not start with Russian conquering Ukraine way back when?
Further, why only care about how governments treat foreign nations? If Russia is going to annex parts of Ukraine into its regime, shouldn't we care afterwards how it treats those people? The biggest moral reason to not want China to take control of Taiwan would seem to be that China would proceed to treat the Taiwanese as badly as it treats its own citizens, which is a pretty big step down.
And why should Putin have any say on whether Ukraine "forcibly assimilates" (whatever that means) the Russian speaking population that left Russia to live in Ukraine under your model? And why should we judge that differently in light of how the US tries to meddle in Middle Eastern politics? Can't both be bad and worthy of condemnation? Are we to have no principles of behavior other than "be least bad, with bad determined entirely arbitrarily because we have no principles to judge badness by" ?
"Why does it all start with an American backed coup in Kiev, and not the Russian backed coup in Donbas and Crimea?"
Because the Maiden coup came first. The liberation of the separatist regions was in response to the Maiden coup. Had there been no Maiden coup then foreign involvement by Russia would be less legitimate.
"If Russia is going to annex parts of Ukraine into its regime, shouldn't we care afterwards how it treats those people? "
Do you have any indication that Russia treats people in these regions worse than Kiev.
Try to remember that Kiev is a failed regime. It's a worse government than Moscow whose people are less well off than the Russians. The separatist regions in particular have been mistreated by Kiev.
Your right that if Kiev was a successful regime making life good for its citizens, and then Putin invaded for no reason and made life worse for the people involved, that would constitute a strong reason to oppose the invasion. But that isn't what has happened here. It's not clear that having the Donbass ruled by Moscow instead of Kiev is a downgrade for the people of Donbass.
Is that his point? Can you really identify that point in the essay? If so, can you please point out to me where he states that thesis? Admittedly it does not seem like a well thought out and structured piece, but I am pretty sure it isn't hiding in there anywhere.
It seems to me that Hanania's point is that we should be weighing comparative villainy, and excusing villainy as bad or slightly less bad than the US's. His focus in this essay (and the other linked) seems to be to say all the bad things Russia has done are matched or exceeded by bad things the US has done. Alright, let's grant that; now what? If we want to stop doing bad things as a species, we have to draw the line somewhere on "Don't do this" and Hanania explicitly rejects that in his point #2. So if we don't accept that there are standards of behavior we should demand, even if many people break them, what does that leave us with? I could get behind some rationalization of the principles that take into account realities of interstate conflict, but Hanania isn't getting anywhere near that, or even suggesting that near as I can tell.
""If Russia is going to annex parts of Ukraine into its regime, shouldn't we care afterwards how it treats those people? "
Do you have any indication that Russia treats people in these regions worse than Kiev."
Well, yes, actually: those people choose to live in Ukraine instead of Russia. That's a pretty strong revealed preference, unless Russia has blocked immigration of ethnic Russians from Ukraine, which would be a red flag that Putin is actually concerned about their treatment. By analogy, if lots of Mexicans migrate to the USA then complain about conditions here, but refuse to go back to Mexico, the conditions here are apparently an improvement, even if not ideal.
Failed regime or no, voting with your feet is a very strong indication of preference. Choosing to remain when you could leave is strong indication that you expect things to be worse elsewhere.
Re: Maiden Coup and where it all started: Ukraine has a lot of history before the Maiden Coup, and a lot of it involves Russia. Claiming the Maiden Coup is what caused the other coups is one thing, claiming that the Maiden Coup would never have happened without US/Western backing is another, and claiming that nothing happened before that for which Ukraine and Russia might harbor grudges is yet another. There was a rather famous famine, you might recall, for instance. It is not true at all that Ukraine and Russia had some wonderfully buddy buddy relationship before the mean ol' USA got involved. It was always messy.
"can you please point out to me where he states that thesis?"
My own thesis is that the US shouldn't be involved in Ukraine because doing so is a bad idea. I find the justifications for involvement in Ukraine uncompelling. All of them seem to rely on exaggerations or outright forgeries about Ukraines goodness and Putins badness. If they are both bad actors then this certainly isn't worth risking nuclear war over.
Richard can give his own thesis, but his main beef appears to be with the ideology that is used to justify US interventionism around the world. He thinks that ideology is more evil than Putin, who at least seems to be operating based on some kind of understandable objectives in his own sphere of influence.
"Well, yes, actually: those people choose to live in Ukraine instead of Russia."
Most people don't move, even when things are bad. I didn't like crime in Baltimore, but it took me over a decade to move away. And I didn't move to an entirely different country.
Very few people fled Crimea in 2014, so I guess Crimea wants to be part of Russia. Kiev should respect that, but never has.
Moreover, if "where people move to" is the measure then Ukraine is a failed state. Huge swaths of its young people abandoned it to move to Europe. Millions more, including young fighting men, fled at the start of the invasion (they had to be conscripted by force).
Personally, I think all the people at Maiden really wanted was a passport to get the hell away from Ukraine.
"claiming that the Maiden Coup would never have happened without US/Western backing is another"
I think there was a higher probability of a peaceful transfer of power without US backing. Furthermore, the fact that we, an outside power halfway around the world, meddled in the internal affairs of Ukraine made war more likely and justified the meddling of Russia.
People not moving after the annexation is evidence that things didn't change a lot, just as people not moving after the fall of the Soviet Union is evidence that they were ok there. All in all, it isn't obvious that a lot of Russian speaking people thought Ukraine was horrible enough in the intervening 20+ years to leave just across the border to a country where they speak the language and are ethnically tied to. To your analogy, leaving the Ukrainian Crimea to go back to Russia in eg 2012 is rather like moving from Baltimore to Pittsburgh (or Baltimore to say Dallas.) Yes moving is hard, but it isn't so hard that people don't do it to flee bad political environments for nearby superior ones. Like you said, people were moving to Europe despite language barriers.
Thanks for clearing up your opinions on the matters.
If you don't think things will change a lot of Kiev in charge instead of Russia, why do you support the war? Every day a part of your earnings are being used to supply weapons for the conflict.
If it doesn't matter who controls Donbass...why are we risking a nuclear war that could destroy all of humanity?
Did I support the war? Are you perhaps confusing me with someone else?
I would much rather Putin lose than win, all else equal, because I think that encouraging invading countries in Eastern Europe is going to lead to Very Bad Things, such as nuclear war. On principle I don't much like invading other countries for all the reasons Putin gives for doing so, and I hope Ukraine wins. The war shouldn't have been started in the first place.
I don't know whether Ukraine is a lot better for its people than Russia is for its people, but I do know there isn't obviously enough of a difference that ethnic Russians were fleeing Ukraine for their homeland close by.
I don't really see why the US is getting involved, and I don't think we should. I don't care if US companies sell weapons to Ukraine, but I don't think US tax payers should be forced to fund it. I don't care if private people want to spend their blood and treasure on the matter; that's their business.
I certainly think there are worse Russia and Putin apologists. I respect that he is willing to defend an unpopular opinion.
I still find his argument flimsy. It seems to me all about: "Putin isn't relatively as bad, if we compare with Washington."
He even goes into the direction of "if it would have been done better, it wouldn't have been as bad."
You could make this point more easily in favour of the Iraq invasion (not saying I'm doing that). At least you were looking to replace Baathist totalitarianism with democracy. Naive and misguided as it may be, if you did it "quick and effective", it would certainly not be as bad.
Putin is trying to replace a flawed democracy with lots of corruption that is on its way to develop towards something better, into the pawn of a nationalist, autocratic aggressor.
Would you dare say "democracy or authoritarianism" is just politicians' talk, and doesn't really matter? I does matter greatly for Ukraine and Ukrainians, it makes a massive difference.
Like David Friedman said: "I much prefer to be ruled by Washington than to be ruled by Moscow."
The 2003-2011 Iraq War was a horrific overreach by the United States, and certainly the invasion that the US should have "not done" if they could only pick one invasion in a counterfactual history tournament.
However, how confident are we that the Iraq War killed more Iraqis than the counterfactual of allowing Saddam to remain in power? The credible estimates for civilians killed in Iraq from 2003-2011 usually come out to about 100,000, or ~12,500 per year.
Saddam ruled Iraq from 1979 to 2003. During that time, there were an estimated 250,000 arbitrary internal killings [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein] or ~10,400 per year. Plus there was the Iran-Iraq War (100,000 - 500,000 Iraqis killed) and the first Gulf War (20,000 - 50,000 Iraqis killed).
Exactly - Saddam was a fever dream nightmare. He mutilated and tortured people to death in public as a deterrence. Baathism is the ideology that comes closest to National Socialism.
Certainly not enough justification for the war ... but many Iraqis were in fact willing to risk their lives to have a better future without Saddam. I'm thinking especially of Iraqi Kurdistan. I know people from there and they are quite happy that Saddam is gone and the USA liberated them.
I dare to say that most Ukrainians (both West and East) don't want to be ruled by Putin. That is quite clear. And many are willing to risk their lives to defend their country. I speak from first-hand experience - I helped 1000+ Ukrainian families find accommodation to escape the war.
The USA supported Saddam up until Kuwait, including the same neocons that supported the Maiden coup. They don't care how things turn out. They want to justify their existence and get defense contracts.
The War in Iraq was a failure and the people of Iraq ended up worse off as a result of it. It never should have happened. It's a huge lesson in how we shouldn't be involved in this stuff.
I believe that our decision to promote war in Ukraine will end the same. It's the same extension of neocon bullshit.
Many are willing to risk their lives on both sides. Many are pressed into service against their will on both sides. And many who both volunteer and are conscripted die for causes that don't make sense and aren't justifiable. That's why you should be anti-war.
It's not clear why the Iraq War shouldn't have been done. Iraq is pretty clearly a better place right now than under Saddam, and it's less of a danger to the US and its neighbors.
From the perspective of US foreign policy, the Iraq War is a very clear and expensive failure. It cost the US a lot of international prestige & good will, a lot of US government dollars and attention, and wasted the unipolar moment that could have been spent laying the groundwork for a 2nd American century. Instead we got the Iraq War and a 2022 world that's a lot less US hegemonic than it could have been.
It’s a corrupt shit hole run by Iran. Things were way better for both Iraq & Iraqis and for the US regional influence under Saddam, who was even willing to step down from government to avoid the invasion but was told by Richard Perle that “we’ll see you in Baghdad”. The audacity to claim that “things are better” after 20 years war, both against the US, then a civil war, and then a decade of ISIS running loose, and the carnage that followed that, is utterly stunning. For every 1 person saddam tortured, 10 more were whisked away to CIA blacksites and 100 more died due to the 20 year war. No one living in Iraq would agree with your statement
Saddam killed 250,000 internally, so you are claiming that 2,500,000 where taken to CIA blacksites and 25,000,000 were killed in the 20 year war? Your numbers are very wrong.
Gotta source to that claim bud? According to Madeleine Albright and the UN, over 500,000 children died due to US sanctions alone from 1991 to 1999, forget about ISIS-Stan & the hell that followed after 2003
I don't see a strong case that Ukraine was on its way to develop something better. It was clearly an inferior country to Russia (pick any common metric) and "flawed" really understates the failures of its sham democracy. In Feb 2022 there was zero indication that Ukraine was "on the right track" to anything.
I don't see much evidence that Kiev can provide a better life to the people in the region then Moscow, especially those in the pro-Russian separatist regions where the fighting is currently taking place and in which Ukraine has stated they will use violence to recapture.
The US should make clear to the Ukrainian government that it will not provide a blank check to pursue unrealistic political objectives that won't accomplish anything for the people on the ground.
So a high-GDP polity has the right to impose its will on a low-GDP polity. I trust then you're not the sort to get indignant when New York tries to impose its favorite policies on Alabama (by all the same metrics as Ukraine/Russia the latter is a failed state compared to the former)? New York in fact is positively magnanimous, as they spare the artillery shelling. Following this reasoning the whole deep south should be put into permanent receivership by New England.
New York does impose its values on Alabama all the time. Are you not aware for instance of this thing they are debating now called Roe v Wade.
In some extreme cases I think it would be moral for more functional states to impose order on less functional states. For instance, Europeans probably did a better job of running Africa than Africans. I oppose this mainly because I don't think fixing Africa is worth it, even though it would probably improve the lives of the Africans. It's a waste of our time.
Domestically, Congress took over the budgetary powers of DC because it was being run into the ground by the democratically elected black mayors.
In the case of Ukraine and Russia I think they are both failed states.
Let's recall the proposition here. You think which incompetent failed state controls the Donbass is worth starting a nuclear war over, and you're supplying the weapons to keep the fight going.
Your proposed justification for this is that you believe Kiev can provide a dramatically better life for the people in the conflict zone, so the war is justified based on their future well being. I think that is bonkers, there is no evidence for it. I don't expect anyone to end up better off due to this war. I think the best outcome would be for the participants to end it as soon as possible based on realpolitik and the reality on the ground. I favor a de-escalation of rhetoric and I think that the USA should make clear to Kiev that it does not have a blank check to fight a forever war with unrealistic and unproductive ideological goals detached from reality.
Nations are just ideas, but those ideas become very concrete and pointy when people are willing to fight and die for them. Ukraine is proving that it is a very real nation.
Third parties are not morally obligated to help a nation being invaded by another nation, but neither are they morally obligated to avoid helping the nation being invaded. Providing arms to a nation being invaded is at worst neutral and probably tilts moral in a vacuum. This is not a vacuum though. This is a situation where an aggressive American foe is putting its army into a position where it can be cost-effectively blown up without risking a nuclear war.
Note that the US is still well short of the USSR's historical upper limit of supporting its proxies fighting the US -- in the Korean War Soviet pilots pretending to be North Korean fought American pilots over the skies of the Korean peninsula, and in the Vietnam War the Soviets had thousands of troops on the ground: "From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in Vietnam was observed by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces. In addition, Soviet military schools and academies began training Vietnamese soldiers—in all more than 10,000 military personnel."
Purposely creating a Vietnam seems like a terrible and immoral idea. If you'll recall Vietnam ended badly for everyone involved. If that's your goal, I think its immoral.
I don't regard Putin as an aggressive American foe (well, we've certainly made him that, but I don't think that was some kind of inevitability). I see us as the aggressors, and him as reacting to our aggression. If we stop aggressing him, we may be able to de-escalate the situation.
Vietnam was a conflict that lasted 20 years, including a long phase of an insurgency bloodily attempting to seize control of the country to enact their disastrous form of ideological economic management, followed by partition into non-ideological and ideological halves, followed by insurgency in the non-ideological half, followed by defeat of the insurgency, followed by fullscale military operations, followed by defeat of the aggressor's fullscale military operations, followed by a bombing campaign of the aggressor with minimal ground fighting, followed by an uneasy ceasefire, followed by the Americans abruptly leaving for irrational domestic politics reasons, followed by collapse of the non-ideological government. The relevant control case for the Vietnam War (the Korean War) shows that there are massive benefits to human flourishing when an American military intervention prevents a communist revolution from taking over the entirety of an East Asian country.
This is nothing like Vietnam and is instead more like the Russo-Polish War of 1919 since we are talking about two states (not insurgencies) fighting from the outset (albeit with the non-Russian side more heavily disadvantaged and thus needing much more aid). The other relevant case for this conflict is the Afghanistan War, which contributed to the collapse of Communism with massive gains for the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, and more modest gains for the peoples of Russia and Central Asia.
The goal of the West in arming Ukraine should be relatively timely defeat of the Russian invasion force with the war ending in a status quo ante (either status quo ante c. 2022 or status quo ante c. 2014, depending on the scale of the Russian battlefield defeat). Failing that, the way to reduce the risk of a nuclear war is to see that the Russian military is sufficiently damaged that a Russian attempt to repeat this playbook in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, or Finland is unthinkable.
You mention upthread that relative to the West both Ukraine and Russia are failed states (economically). I agree, which is why I think that a Ukraine that successfully integrates into European manufacturing chains stands a chance of attaining a Hungarian or Czech or Polish or Slovak level of success, given time. Pre-2014 Ukraine was dominated by oligarchs, many of which maintained a decidedly pro-Russian orientation that made signing the sort of trade deals that would lead to long-term properous European integration extremely hard.
EDIT: Missed addressing your claim that Putin is not the aggressor. He seems quite ideologically committed to the idea that Ukraine is not a real country and thus must be re-united with Russia. That view is in violent disagreement with enough Ukrainians that it will be a perennial source of conflict until resolved. Defeating Russia on the battlefield is a smaller-number-of-deaths way to resolve it than Russia fighting a Ukrainian insurgency for years or decades.
Does Hanania care to comment about Putin's remarks about Peter the Great? That seems to really undermine the argument that Putin invaded Ukraine because of NATO.
Also, I keep hearing about an "American-backed" coup? Really? Is Hanania arguing that the Ukrainians peacefully protesting were backed by the CIA? Has he seen the footage of Ukrainian protestors shot to death in the streets? The Obama administration pretty much stood by and did nothing in 2014. I'd like to see Hanania's argument there flushed out further.
If the US hadn't supported the coup then in a year Yanacovich would have been out and if people wanted an EU deal that bad they could have had one. No war. But where is the profit and political advantage in that.
The standard left take before it became a Current Thing was that neocon warmongers had destabilized Ukraine on purpose for their own ends.
Are there audio recordings of diplomats discussing the merits of various potential leaders of Ukraine *after* events were set in motion? Sure. But that is exactly what you would expect any country's ambassadors to do. I'm looking for evidence that the US planned, funded, or provided military backing to this "American-backed coup" in advance.
So we provided military training to Ukrainians in the lead up to the 2014 "coup" to violently overthrow the Yanukovych regime? Yes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But I haven't seen a shred of evidence to support that view. Are we funding Radio Free Europe and other outlets, sure. But unless you can provide more compelling examples, I'll have to place this in the "yet to be verified" bucket.
Okay, fair enough. I've listened to the Nuland recording before. Once it was probable that a pro-Western government was going to come to power, the US definitely held sway. The West held the purse strings, so any leaders needed to be acceptable to us (in other words, not corrupt) if they were going to get any international support.
Full disclaimer: My wife is from Kyiv, and so it's hard for me to be unbiased here. She was in tears when the protestors were being gunned down by regime forces.
It's weird how this ethical discussion never seems to talk about what people in Ukraine want? Do they want to be conquered by Russia? Do they want support from other countries to resist the invasion?
Richard dismisses deontological rules, since “everyone violates [them] when they want to[,] anyway.” But some rulers are much readier to violate them than others, and it is precisely by their willingness to violate these rules that we are to judge their character as practitioners of foreign policy. Since American leaders also violate the rules, Richard can still claim that Putin is no worse than they, without dismissing the validity of traditional rules in foreign policy. But, contra his case for Putin, the rule not to try to conquer and absorb the territory of a neighboring country is an *especially important* one.
This was an unnecessary war. President Obama got it right in his January, 2016 interview in the Atlantic:
Jeffrey Goldberg: "Obama’s theory here is simple: Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there."
Obama : “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” he said.
Seems like an important reason why Ukraine is a core Russian interest is the fact that it has a border with Russia.
If Ukraine becomes a part of Russia, by the same logic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova, and Romania will become core Russian interests. Perhaps we should let Putin take them, too. The problem is, then Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, etc. will become core Russian interests...
While reading this piece, I was thinking about the U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein's Iraq from the Reagan Admin. to the invasion of 2003 and the subsequent guerilla war. Conflict in a particular area takes a long time to develop. While we aren't currently fighting the Russians except through surrogates, many relish the 1980's and Afghanistan and probably think the Ukraine offers a similar opportunity. None of it is pretty, but with politicians and power pretty much expected. Putin could have stayed home and attempted to make an egalitarian free market country out of Russia, but has chosen his course and until the invasion of Ukraine had been successful. Next we'll see how long before the U.S. and Russia go toe to toe over Ukraine. Will Putin still be around?
P.S. The success in occupying and subjugating a region has to do in how ruthless you become with those that resist. But is it worth it?
In early February, many ostensibly informed people (including one of Richard's podcast guests) were seriously talking about how Russia would reach the Rhine or even the Atlantic in a matter of weeks in the event of a war with NATO. Now it's doubtful they'd win in a 1-on-1 match with Poland, and their economy is propped up by high gas prices that won't last since they've (likely permanently) lost a few of their biggest customers. I think that's quite a disaster, whether they know it yet or not.
I am not sure all those claims are simultaneously true, or can be. Did Russia win the war? Last I saw the majority of Ukraine was still in Ukrainian hands, with Russia having largely retreated to the eastern areas and the the strip to the Crimea. Things seem to have stalled, and so "winning" before there is a resolution seems like an early call.
Likewise claiming the Ukrainian military is "broken" seems odd. A broken military does not provide resistance, and so if the Ukrainian military was broken you would expect to see Russian forces moving to claim land in an offensive war, not retreat or hold ground. At the very least, a country with a broken military would be looking for a cease fire agreement. It could be true that Putin wants to keep a low intensity conflict going as a training tool, but it isn't at all obvious how he is going to "take everything he wants from he country" he has not held more than the eastern sliver of (unless by "the country" you meant just the eastern bit).
I don't know, it all seems like a bit of over correcting away from the silly "Putin's army is 30 seconds from collapse! Ukrainians will march on Moscow!" nonsense some put about.
I don't think we can call the war won, or close to over, until one side comes to the negotiating table asking for it to be over. Either the Russians offering a truce based on having achieved their objectives or the Ukrainians based on recognition that they are not getting any of that land back.
It may well be that the eastern 100 miles of Ukraine is the good part. From what I have seen of population density maps the west has a lot of people too, so I can't really tell. Likewise, production maps show the east is good, but the center and some parts of the west are doing pretty well too. So, I am not so sure.
I beg to differ on Japan and 1943. The US was taking territory from the Japanese during that time. Remember, I said that if the Ukrainian army was broken the Russian forces would be taking ground, and if they weren't at the least Ukraine would look for a cease fire. That is to say, Russia wouldn't be taking more ground because they were at the bargaining table. If the Russians are not pushing back the Ukrainians and taking more territory, and neither are they negotiating to end fighting, they are not facing a broken enemy. (Or they don't realize that they are, and just aren't trying to take more territory again. Never underestimate incompetence!)
I don't disagree that they might be at a stalemate. I do rather doubt they are sending their men into the artillery kill zones to the point they are no longer going to have an army. That sounds a lot like the wishful thinking of propagandists. If Russia were already so dominant, they would dominate. More likely, both forces are sufficiently defensively powerful that the other struggles to make meaningful strategic advances. A stalemate. That happens a lot.
Industrial production appears to be completely cut off from foreign parts, requiring cars to be produced without traction control, passenger-side airbags, or air conditioning. Hard to believe that that isn't producing snarls in tank, missile production.
Russian industry is currently valiantly trying to route around a bewildering number of shortages and missing parts, but if they are completely cut off from the global electronics supply chain they'll only have so long before they run out of spare avionics for their airplanes
A nation preparing to fight a long slow war probably needs to start talking about the existence of said war. It's harder to censor information now than it was in Soviet times, and the Soviets losing 14,000 soldiers over 10 years in Afghanistan produced significant domestic pressure on the regime. Putin's probably lost more soldiers in 4 months than the Soviets did in 10 years.
Considering the Japanese expansion ceased by 1942 and the US and allies were pushing back and taking numerous islands in 1943, I would say that is taking territory. Rather more quickly than the Russians are doing so, and the Russians don't have to do it by ship on the other side of the world. A broken enemy army would not be holding them back to the rather minor possessions you point out. I am fine with saying the Russians are taking territory, but they are doing it at a snail's pace, which suggests the Ukrainians are not broken. (It is also odd that there would even be that much mopping up to do, again within a few hundred miles of their own border, but whatever. I don't know the area.)
Yes, stalemates don't occur when one side has artillery and air dominance with no internal problems while the other side is wrecked. So... why aren't the Russians in Kiev? If things are going very well for them after the initial turn around, why not go back after their initial goals? Or, is it more likely that they are doing as well as they can, and that just isn't very good? It looks a lot like a bit of a stalemate, which tells us more about the hard to see factors than assumptions about what the hard to see factors are should tells us about whether or not it is a stalemate.
Ok, if you step away from the broken military claim and argue that the status quo is all Russia really wanted, then I would agree that all Russia has to do is maintain until Ukraine gives up and/or accepts a truce to win. Even if Russia keeps it going as a training meat grinder (which I am not sold on as a goal at all) if it can keep the internal problems of the area down to a business as usual level, then some sort of victory makes sense.
I don't know that I see Ukraine getting back to the status quo ante as you say, but I don't see Russia expanding more, either. At this point it might come down to war weariness, and which side gets sick of fighting first. It isn't clear to me which side that will be. A foreign invader on your soil is a great way to rally and keep popular support, and insurgency wars can grind on for a really long time, especially against a foe with which one has a long history.
Ukraine should seek a settlement based on the controlled territory and the present moment, or something close to it. It will end the bloodshed, and time is on their side. It should agree not the join NATO or station NATO weapons, troops, or trainers on the basis of formal security guarantees from outside powers. Economic EU membership should be permissible.
There are other clauses that could be noteworthy but that's the main issue.
This will be the best outcome for everyone.
I believe that factors not related to seeking the best outcome for the people involved are in the way of such a settlement.
Maybe. I suspect we outsiders are only going to know after the fact. I expect even insiders (Ukrainians and Russians) are going to be trying to figure out what happened for a while after the bullets stop flying.
It's an overly optimistic view that may serve as a counterweight to a delusional consensus.
There was a decent chance that Kiev would have fallen in 72 hours. It probably came down to the fact that the paratroopers couldn't hold the airport on Day 1.
Once Kiev didn't fall the war was clearly a mistake, but that's only knowable in hindsight.
That said Putin recognized pretty early on that his political objectives needed to change when Kiev didn't fall, and he pivoted. It's not as if the guy had a time machine, so he made the best of his bad situation. Now Russians are pounding the Ukrainian army on three sides with a 10:1 artillery advantage. And Kiev is stupidly pouring more and more troops into an indefensible salient in a part of the country that doesn't particularly want to be a part of Ukraine. To accomplish what???
This essay is a bit of a muddle of what-about-ism. Why does it all start with an American backed coup in Kiev, and not the Russian backed coup in Donbas and Crimea? Why not start with Russian conquering Ukraine way back when?
Further, why only care about how governments treat foreign nations? If Russia is going to annex parts of Ukraine into its regime, shouldn't we care afterwards how it treats those people? The biggest moral reason to not want China to take control of Taiwan would seem to be that China would proceed to treat the Taiwanese as badly as it treats its own citizens, which is a pretty big step down.
And why should Putin have any say on whether Ukraine "forcibly assimilates" (whatever that means) the Russian speaking population that left Russia to live in Ukraine under your model? And why should we judge that differently in light of how the US tries to meddle in Middle Eastern politics? Can't both be bad and worthy of condemnation? Are we to have no principles of behavior other than "be least bad, with bad determined entirely arbitrarily because we have no principles to judge badness by" ?
"Why does it all start with an American backed coup in Kiev, and not the Russian backed coup in Donbas and Crimea?"
Because the Maiden coup came first. The liberation of the separatist regions was in response to the Maiden coup. Had there been no Maiden coup then foreign involvement by Russia would be less legitimate.
"If Russia is going to annex parts of Ukraine into its regime, shouldn't we care afterwards how it treats those people? "
Do you have any indication that Russia treats people in these regions worse than Kiev.
Try to remember that Kiev is a failed regime. It's a worse government than Moscow whose people are less well off than the Russians. The separatist regions in particular have been mistreated by Kiev.
Your right that if Kiev was a successful regime making life good for its citizens, and then Putin invaded for no reason and made life worse for the people involved, that would constitute a strong reason to oppose the invasion. But that isn't what has happened here. It's not clear that having the Donbass ruled by Moscow instead of Kiev is a downgrade for the people of Donbass.
"Can't both be bad and worthy of condemnation?"
Isn't that Richard's point???
Is that his point? Can you really identify that point in the essay? If so, can you please point out to me where he states that thesis? Admittedly it does not seem like a well thought out and structured piece, but I am pretty sure it isn't hiding in there anywhere.
It seems to me that Hanania's point is that we should be weighing comparative villainy, and excusing villainy as bad or slightly less bad than the US's. His focus in this essay (and the other linked) seems to be to say all the bad things Russia has done are matched or exceeded by bad things the US has done. Alright, let's grant that; now what? If we want to stop doing bad things as a species, we have to draw the line somewhere on "Don't do this" and Hanania explicitly rejects that in his point #2. So if we don't accept that there are standards of behavior we should demand, even if many people break them, what does that leave us with? I could get behind some rationalization of the principles that take into account realities of interstate conflict, but Hanania isn't getting anywhere near that, or even suggesting that near as I can tell.
""If Russia is going to annex parts of Ukraine into its regime, shouldn't we care afterwards how it treats those people? "
Do you have any indication that Russia treats people in these regions worse than Kiev."
Well, yes, actually: those people choose to live in Ukraine instead of Russia. That's a pretty strong revealed preference, unless Russia has blocked immigration of ethnic Russians from Ukraine, which would be a red flag that Putin is actually concerned about their treatment. By analogy, if lots of Mexicans migrate to the USA then complain about conditions here, but refuse to go back to Mexico, the conditions here are apparently an improvement, even if not ideal.
Failed regime or no, voting with your feet is a very strong indication of preference. Choosing to remain when you could leave is strong indication that you expect things to be worse elsewhere.
Re: Maiden Coup and where it all started: Ukraine has a lot of history before the Maiden Coup, and a lot of it involves Russia. Claiming the Maiden Coup is what caused the other coups is one thing, claiming that the Maiden Coup would never have happened without US/Western backing is another, and claiming that nothing happened before that for which Ukraine and Russia might harbor grudges is yet another. There was a rather famous famine, you might recall, for instance. It is not true at all that Ukraine and Russia had some wonderfully buddy buddy relationship before the mean ol' USA got involved. It was always messy.
"can you please point out to me where he states that thesis?"
My own thesis is that the US shouldn't be involved in Ukraine because doing so is a bad idea. I find the justifications for involvement in Ukraine uncompelling. All of them seem to rely on exaggerations or outright forgeries about Ukraines goodness and Putins badness. If they are both bad actors then this certainly isn't worth risking nuclear war over.
Richard can give his own thesis, but his main beef appears to be with the ideology that is used to justify US interventionism around the world. He thinks that ideology is more evil than Putin, who at least seems to be operating based on some kind of understandable objectives in his own sphere of influence.
"Well, yes, actually: those people choose to live in Ukraine instead of Russia."
Most people don't move, even when things are bad. I didn't like crime in Baltimore, but it took me over a decade to move away. And I didn't move to an entirely different country.
Very few people fled Crimea in 2014, so I guess Crimea wants to be part of Russia. Kiev should respect that, but never has.
Moreover, if "where people move to" is the measure then Ukraine is a failed state. Huge swaths of its young people abandoned it to move to Europe. Millions more, including young fighting men, fled at the start of the invasion (they had to be conscripted by force).
Personally, I think all the people at Maiden really wanted was a passport to get the hell away from Ukraine.
"claiming that the Maiden Coup would never have happened without US/Western backing is another"
I think there was a higher probability of a peaceful transfer of power without US backing. Furthermore, the fact that we, an outside power halfway around the world, meddled in the internal affairs of Ukraine made war more likely and justified the meddling of Russia.
People not moving after the annexation is evidence that things didn't change a lot, just as people not moving after the fall of the Soviet Union is evidence that they were ok there. All in all, it isn't obvious that a lot of Russian speaking people thought Ukraine was horrible enough in the intervening 20+ years to leave just across the border to a country where they speak the language and are ethnically tied to. To your analogy, leaving the Ukrainian Crimea to go back to Russia in eg 2012 is rather like moving from Baltimore to Pittsburgh (or Baltimore to say Dallas.) Yes moving is hard, but it isn't so hard that people don't do it to flee bad political environments for nearby superior ones. Like you said, people were moving to Europe despite language barriers.
Thanks for clearing up your opinions on the matters.
If you don't think things will change a lot of Kiev in charge instead of Russia, why do you support the war? Every day a part of your earnings are being used to supply weapons for the conflict.
If it doesn't matter who controls Donbass...why are we risking a nuclear war that could destroy all of humanity?
Did I support the war? Are you perhaps confusing me with someone else?
I would much rather Putin lose than win, all else equal, because I think that encouraging invading countries in Eastern Europe is going to lead to Very Bad Things, such as nuclear war. On principle I don't much like invading other countries for all the reasons Putin gives for doing so, and I hope Ukraine wins. The war shouldn't have been started in the first place.
I don't know whether Ukraine is a lot better for its people than Russia is for its people, but I do know there isn't obviously enough of a difference that ethnic Russians were fleeing Ukraine for their homeland close by.
I don't really see why the US is getting involved, and I don't think we should. I don't care if US companies sell weapons to Ukraine, but I don't think US tax payers should be forced to fund it. I don't care if private people want to spend their blood and treasure on the matter; that's their business.
Am I one of the "shadowy figures" he mentions?
I certainly think there are worse Russia and Putin apologists. I respect that he is willing to defend an unpopular opinion.
I still find his argument flimsy. It seems to me all about: "Putin isn't relatively as bad, if we compare with Washington."
He even goes into the direction of "if it would have been done better, it wouldn't have been as bad."
You could make this point more easily in favour of the Iraq invasion (not saying I'm doing that). At least you were looking to replace Baathist totalitarianism with democracy. Naive and misguided as it may be, if you did it "quick and effective", it would certainly not be as bad.
Putin is trying to replace a flawed democracy with lots of corruption that is on its way to develop towards something better, into the pawn of a nationalist, autocratic aggressor.
Would you dare say "democracy or authoritarianism" is just politicians' talk, and doesn't really matter? I does matter greatly for Ukraine and Ukrainians, it makes a massive difference.
Like David Friedman said: "I much prefer to be ruled by Washington than to be ruled by Moscow."
The 2003-2011 Iraq War was a horrific overreach by the United States, and certainly the invasion that the US should have "not done" if they could only pick one invasion in a counterfactual history tournament.
However, how confident are we that the Iraq War killed more Iraqis than the counterfactual of allowing Saddam to remain in power? The credible estimates for civilians killed in Iraq from 2003-2011 usually come out to about 100,000, or ~12,500 per year.
Saddam ruled Iraq from 1979 to 2003. During that time, there were an estimated 250,000 arbitrary internal killings [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein] or ~10,400 per year. Plus there was the Iran-Iraq War (100,000 - 500,000 Iraqis killed) and the first Gulf War (20,000 - 50,000 Iraqis killed).
Exactly - Saddam was a fever dream nightmare. He mutilated and tortured people to death in public as a deterrence. Baathism is the ideology that comes closest to National Socialism.
Certainly not enough justification for the war ... but many Iraqis were in fact willing to risk their lives to have a better future without Saddam. I'm thinking especially of Iraqi Kurdistan. I know people from there and they are quite happy that Saddam is gone and the USA liberated them.
I dare to say that most Ukrainians (both West and East) don't want to be ruled by Putin. That is quite clear. And many are willing to risk their lives to defend their country. I speak from first-hand experience - I helped 1000+ Ukrainian families find accommodation to escape the war.
The USA supported Saddam up until Kuwait, including the same neocons that supported the Maiden coup. They don't care how things turn out. They want to justify their existence and get defense contracts.
The War in Iraq was a failure and the people of Iraq ended up worse off as a result of it. It never should have happened. It's a huge lesson in how we shouldn't be involved in this stuff.
I believe that our decision to promote war in Ukraine will end the same. It's the same extension of neocon bullshit.
Many are willing to risk their lives on both sides. Many are pressed into service against their will on both sides. And many who both volunteer and are conscripted die for causes that don't make sense and aren't justifiable. That's why you should be anti-war.
It's not clear why the Iraq War shouldn't have been done. Iraq is pretty clearly a better place right now than under Saddam, and it's less of a danger to the US and its neighbors.
From the perspective of US foreign policy, the Iraq War is a very clear and expensive failure. It cost the US a lot of international prestige & good will, a lot of US government dollars and attention, and wasted the unipolar moment that could have been spent laying the groundwork for a 2nd American century. Instead we got the Iraq War and a 2022 world that's a lot less US hegemonic than it could have been.
Agree.
There are two truths:
(1) It was a very bad decision from a US standpoint
(2) Iraqis are better off without Saddam, at least they have a chance to improve things - as opposed to total despair and hopelessness
You don't have to be pro-war to acknowledge point (2).
It’s a corrupt shit hole run by Iran. Things were way better for both Iraq & Iraqis and for the US regional influence under Saddam, who was even willing to step down from government to avoid the invasion but was told by Richard Perle that “we’ll see you in Baghdad”. The audacity to claim that “things are better” after 20 years war, both against the US, then a civil war, and then a decade of ISIS running loose, and the carnage that followed that, is utterly stunning. For every 1 person saddam tortured, 10 more were whisked away to CIA blacksites and 100 more died due to the 20 year war. No one living in Iraq would agree with your statement
Saddam killed 250,000 internally, so you are claiming that 2,500,000 where taken to CIA blacksites and 25,000,000 were killed in the 20 year war? Your numbers are very wrong.
Gotta source to that claim bud? According to Madeleine Albright and the UN, over 500,000 children died due to US sanctions alone from 1991 to 1999, forget about ISIS-Stan & the hell that followed after 2003
Human Rights Watch, which also lines up with how many mass graves were found after 2003:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein%27s_Iraq#Number_of_victims
As for the claim that 500,000 children died due to US sanctions:
Madeleine Albright didn't claim that 500,000 children died, some reporter did and Madeleine Albright replied that sanctions were worth doing
https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-iraqi-kids-deaths-worth-it-resurfaces-1691193
That 500,000 figure was found later to be based on incredibly shakey if not outright fraudulent data:
https://misbar.com/en/factcheck/2022/03/26/us-sanctions-did-not-kill-500000-iraqi-children
I don't see a strong case that Ukraine was on its way to develop something better. It was clearly an inferior country to Russia (pick any common metric) and "flawed" really understates the failures of its sham democracy. In Feb 2022 there was zero indication that Ukraine was "on the right track" to anything.
I don't see much evidence that Kiev can provide a better life to the people in the region then Moscow, especially those in the pro-Russian separatist regions where the fighting is currently taking place and in which Ukraine has stated they will use violence to recapture.
The US should make clear to the Ukrainian government that it will not provide a blank check to pursue unrealistic political objectives that won't accomplish anything for the people on the ground.
So a high-GDP polity has the right to impose its will on a low-GDP polity. I trust then you're not the sort to get indignant when New York tries to impose its favorite policies on Alabama (by all the same metrics as Ukraine/Russia the latter is a failed state compared to the former)? New York in fact is positively magnanimous, as they spare the artillery shelling. Following this reasoning the whole deep south should be put into permanent receivership by New England.
Quick number check:
Russia, ~3x Ukrainian GDP per capita (pre-war), ~3x Ukrainian population (pre-war)
NY, ~1.9x Alabama GDP per capita, ~4x Alabama population
New York does impose its values on Alabama all the time. Are you not aware for instance of this thing they are debating now called Roe v Wade.
In some extreme cases I think it would be moral for more functional states to impose order on less functional states. For instance, Europeans probably did a better job of running Africa than Africans. I oppose this mainly because I don't think fixing Africa is worth it, even though it would probably improve the lives of the Africans. It's a waste of our time.
Domestically, Congress took over the budgetary powers of DC because it was being run into the ground by the democratically elected black mayors.
In the case of Ukraine and Russia I think they are both failed states.
Let's recall the proposition here. You think which incompetent failed state controls the Donbass is worth starting a nuclear war over, and you're supplying the weapons to keep the fight going.
Your proposed justification for this is that you believe Kiev can provide a dramatically better life for the people in the conflict zone, so the war is justified based on their future well being. I think that is bonkers, there is no evidence for it. I don't expect anyone to end up better off due to this war. I think the best outcome would be for the participants to end it as soon as possible based on realpolitik and the reality on the ground. I favor a de-escalation of rhetoric and I think that the USA should make clear to Kiev that it does not have a blank check to fight a forever war with unrealistic and unproductive ideological goals detached from reality.
Nations are just ideas, but those ideas become very concrete and pointy when people are willing to fight and die for them. Ukraine is proving that it is a very real nation.
Third parties are not morally obligated to help a nation being invaded by another nation, but neither are they morally obligated to avoid helping the nation being invaded. Providing arms to a nation being invaded is at worst neutral and probably tilts moral in a vacuum. This is not a vacuum though. This is a situation where an aggressive American foe is putting its army into a position where it can be cost-effectively blown up without risking a nuclear war.
Note that the US is still well short of the USSR's historical upper limit of supporting its proxies fighting the US -- in the Korean War Soviet pilots pretending to be North Korean fought American pilots over the skies of the Korean peninsula, and in the Vietnam War the Soviets had thousands of troops on the ground: "From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in Vietnam was observed by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces. In addition, Soviet military schools and academies began training Vietnamese soldiers—in all more than 10,000 military personnel."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
Purposely creating a Vietnam seems like a terrible and immoral idea. If you'll recall Vietnam ended badly for everyone involved. If that's your goal, I think its immoral.
I don't regard Putin as an aggressive American foe (well, we've certainly made him that, but I don't think that was some kind of inevitability). I see us as the aggressors, and him as reacting to our aggression. If we stop aggressing him, we may be able to de-escalate the situation.
I think the risk of nuclear war is non-zero.
Vietnam was a conflict that lasted 20 years, including a long phase of an insurgency bloodily attempting to seize control of the country to enact their disastrous form of ideological economic management, followed by partition into non-ideological and ideological halves, followed by insurgency in the non-ideological half, followed by defeat of the insurgency, followed by fullscale military operations, followed by defeat of the aggressor's fullscale military operations, followed by a bombing campaign of the aggressor with minimal ground fighting, followed by an uneasy ceasefire, followed by the Americans abruptly leaving for irrational domestic politics reasons, followed by collapse of the non-ideological government. The relevant control case for the Vietnam War (the Korean War) shows that there are massive benefits to human flourishing when an American military intervention prevents a communist revolution from taking over the entirety of an East Asian country.
This is nothing like Vietnam and is instead more like the Russo-Polish War of 1919 since we are talking about two states (not insurgencies) fighting from the outset (albeit with the non-Russian side more heavily disadvantaged and thus needing much more aid). The other relevant case for this conflict is the Afghanistan War, which contributed to the collapse of Communism with massive gains for the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, and more modest gains for the peoples of Russia and Central Asia.
The goal of the West in arming Ukraine should be relatively timely defeat of the Russian invasion force with the war ending in a status quo ante (either status quo ante c. 2022 or status quo ante c. 2014, depending on the scale of the Russian battlefield defeat). Failing that, the way to reduce the risk of a nuclear war is to see that the Russian military is sufficiently damaged that a Russian attempt to repeat this playbook in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, or Finland is unthinkable.
You mention upthread that relative to the West both Ukraine and Russia are failed states (economically). I agree, which is why I think that a Ukraine that successfully integrates into European manufacturing chains stands a chance of attaining a Hungarian or Czech or Polish or Slovak level of success, given time. Pre-2014 Ukraine was dominated by oligarchs, many of which maintained a decidedly pro-Russian orientation that made signing the sort of trade deals that would lead to long-term properous European integration extremely hard.
EDIT: Missed addressing your claim that Putin is not the aggressor. He seems quite ideologically committed to the idea that Ukraine is not a real country and thus must be re-united with Russia. That view is in violent disagreement with enough Ukrainians that it will be a perennial source of conflict until resolved. Defeating Russia on the battlefield is a smaller-number-of-deaths way to resolve it than Russia fighting a Ukrainian insurgency for years or decades.
Does Hanania care to comment about Putin's remarks about Peter the Great? That seems to really undermine the argument that Putin invaded Ukraine because of NATO.
Also, I keep hearing about an "American-backed" coup? Really? Is Hanania arguing that the Ukrainians peacefully protesting were backed by the CIA? Has he seen the footage of Ukrainian protestors shot to death in the streets? The Obama administration pretty much stood by and did nothing in 2014. I'd like to see Hanania's argument there flushed out further.
The 2014 coup was anything but peaceful. Have you seen any video of it?
It seems just a likely that the coup plotters created their own massacre. Outfits like the BBC could report on that in the before time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJhJ6hks0Jg
If the US hadn't supported the coup then in a year Yanacovich would have been out and if people wanted an EU deal that bad they could have had one. No war. But where is the profit and political advantage in that.
The standard left take before it became a Current Thing was that neocon warmongers had destabilized Ukraine on purpose for their own ends.
Again, how did the US "support the coup"? Through Obama's empty rhetoric?
Are there audio recordings of diplomats discussing the merits of various potential leaders of Ukraine *after* events were set in motion? Sure. But that is exactly what you would expect any country's ambassadors to do. I'm looking for evidence that the US planned, funded, or provided military backing to this "American-backed coup" in advance.
Sure. But how were the protestors "American-backed"? In the same way that Obama said that we support the Egyptian protestors?
So we provided military training to Ukrainians in the lead up to the 2014 "coup" to violently overthrow the Yanukovych regime? Yes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But I haven't seen a shred of evidence to support that view. Are we funding Radio Free Europe and other outlets, sure. But unless you can provide more compelling examples, I'll have to place this in the "yet to be verified" bucket.
Okay, fair enough. I've listened to the Nuland recording before. Once it was probable that a pro-Western government was going to come to power, the US definitely held sway. The West held the purse strings, so any leaders needed to be acceptable to us (in other words, not corrupt) if they were going to get any international support.
Full disclaimer: My wife is from Kyiv, and so it's hard for me to be unbiased here. She was in tears when the protestors were being gunned down by regime forces.
It's weird how this ethical discussion never seems to talk about what people in Ukraine want? Do they want to be conquered by Russia? Do they want support from other countries to resist the invasion?
It's hard to find polls doing a direct comparison, but if you want to compare this to the US invasion of Afghanistan, it seems pretty relevant to point out that >90% of Ukrainians have a negative view of the Russian military (https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2022/03/ukrainians-want-to-stay-and-fight-but-dont-see-russian-people-as-the-enemy-a-remarkable-poll-from-kyiv/), while most people in Afghanistan supported the US military until sometime in 2006 or 2007 (https://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1083a1Afghanistan2009.pdf).
Richard dismisses deontological rules, since “everyone violates [them] when they want to[,] anyway.” But some rulers are much readier to violate them than others, and it is precisely by their willingness to violate these rules that we are to judge their character as practitioners of foreign policy. Since American leaders also violate the rules, Richard can still claim that Putin is no worse than they, without dismissing the validity of traditional rules in foreign policy. But, contra his case for Putin, the rule not to try to conquer and absorb the territory of a neighboring country is an *especially important* one.
This was an unnecessary war. President Obama got it right in his January, 2016 interview in the Atlantic:
Jeffrey Goldberg: "Obama’s theory here is simple: Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there."
Obama : “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” he said.
Seems like an important reason why Ukraine is a core Russian interest is the fact that it has a border with Russia.
If Ukraine becomes a part of Russia, by the same logic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova, and Romania will become core Russian interests. Perhaps we should let Putin take them, too. The problem is, then Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, etc. will become core Russian interests...
While reading this piece, I was thinking about the U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein's Iraq from the Reagan Admin. to the invasion of 2003 and the subsequent guerilla war. Conflict in a particular area takes a long time to develop. While we aren't currently fighting the Russians except through surrogates, many relish the 1980's and Afghanistan and probably think the Ukraine offers a similar opportunity. None of it is pretty, but with politicians and power pretty much expected. Putin could have stayed home and attempted to make an egalitarian free market country out of Russia, but has chosen his course and until the invasion of Ukraine had been successful. Next we'll see how long before the U.S. and Russia go toe to toe over Ukraine. Will Putin still be around?
P.S. The success in occupying and subjugating a region has to do in how ruthless you become with those that resist. But is it worth it?
I'd add JFK and LBJ to GWB in "how much destruction [they] caused abroad and how negligent [they were] in doing so.
What specifically are you blaming JFK for?
Vietnam war.
In early February, many ostensibly informed people (including one of Richard's podcast guests) were seriously talking about how Russia would reach the Rhine or even the Atlantic in a matter of weeks in the event of a war with NATO. Now it's doubtful they'd win in a 1-on-1 match with Poland, and their economy is propped up by high gas prices that won't last since they've (likely permanently) lost a few of their biggest customers. I think that's quite a disaster, whether they know it yet or not.
I am not sure all those claims are simultaneously true, or can be. Did Russia win the war? Last I saw the majority of Ukraine was still in Ukrainian hands, with Russia having largely retreated to the eastern areas and the the strip to the Crimea. Things seem to have stalled, and so "winning" before there is a resolution seems like an early call.
Likewise claiming the Ukrainian military is "broken" seems odd. A broken military does not provide resistance, and so if the Ukrainian military was broken you would expect to see Russian forces moving to claim land in an offensive war, not retreat or hold ground. At the very least, a country with a broken military would be looking for a cease fire agreement. It could be true that Putin wants to keep a low intensity conflict going as a training tool, but it isn't at all obvious how he is going to "take everything he wants from he country" he has not held more than the eastern sliver of (unless by "the country" you meant just the eastern bit).
I don't know, it all seems like a bit of over correcting away from the silly "Putin's army is 30 seconds from collapse! Ukrainians will march on Moscow!" nonsense some put about.
I don't think we can call the war won, or close to over, until one side comes to the negotiating table asking for it to be over. Either the Russians offering a truce based on having achieved their objectives or the Ukrainians based on recognition that they are not getting any of that land back.
It may well be that the eastern 100 miles of Ukraine is the good part. From what I have seen of population density maps the west has a lot of people too, so I can't really tell. Likewise, production maps show the east is good, but the center and some parts of the west are doing pretty well too. So, I am not so sure.
I beg to differ on Japan and 1943. The US was taking territory from the Japanese during that time. Remember, I said that if the Ukrainian army was broken the Russian forces would be taking ground, and if they weren't at the least Ukraine would look for a cease fire. That is to say, Russia wouldn't be taking more ground because they were at the bargaining table. If the Russians are not pushing back the Ukrainians and taking more territory, and neither are they negotiating to end fighting, they are not facing a broken enemy. (Or they don't realize that they are, and just aren't trying to take more territory again. Never underestimate incompetence!)
I don't disagree that they might be at a stalemate. I do rather doubt they are sending their men into the artillery kill zones to the point they are no longer going to have an army. That sounds a lot like the wishful thinking of propagandists. If Russia were already so dominant, they would dominate. More likely, both forces are sufficiently defensively powerful that the other struggles to make meaningful strategic advances. A stalemate. That happens a lot.
Air Dominance:
https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Air+dominance
The Russians very much don't have air dominance.
War Economy:
Industrial production appears to be completely cut off from foreign parts, requiring cars to be produced without traction control, passenger-side airbags, or air conditioning. Hard to believe that that isn't producing snarls in tank, missile production.
https://autos.yahoo.com/russias-lada-resumes-production-stripped-151700916.html
Ticking clock, economy:
Russian industry is currently valiantly trying to route around a bewildering number of shortages and missing parts, but if they are completely cut off from the global electronics supply chain they'll only have so long before they run out of spare avionics for their airplanes
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/industry-news/russian-spares-airbus-boeing-aircraft/
Ticking clock, domestic politics:
A nation preparing to fight a long slow war probably needs to start talking about the existence of said war. It's harder to censor information now than it was in Soviet times, and the Soviets losing 14,000 soldiers over 10 years in Afghanistan produced significant domestic pressure on the regime. Putin's probably lost more soldiers in 4 months than the Soviets did in 10 years.
Considering the Japanese expansion ceased by 1942 and the US and allies were pushing back and taking numerous islands in 1943, I would say that is taking territory. Rather more quickly than the Russians are doing so, and the Russians don't have to do it by ship on the other side of the world. A broken enemy army would not be holding them back to the rather minor possessions you point out. I am fine with saying the Russians are taking territory, but they are doing it at a snail's pace, which suggests the Ukrainians are not broken. (It is also odd that there would even be that much mopping up to do, again within a few hundred miles of their own border, but whatever. I don't know the area.)
Yes, stalemates don't occur when one side has artillery and air dominance with no internal problems while the other side is wrecked. So... why aren't the Russians in Kiev? If things are going very well for them after the initial turn around, why not go back after their initial goals? Or, is it more likely that they are doing as well as they can, and that just isn't very good? It looks a lot like a bit of a stalemate, which tells us more about the hard to see factors than assumptions about what the hard to see factors are should tells us about whether or not it is a stalemate.
Ok, if you step away from the broken military claim and argue that the status quo is all Russia really wanted, then I would agree that all Russia has to do is maintain until Ukraine gives up and/or accepts a truce to win. Even if Russia keeps it going as a training meat grinder (which I am not sold on as a goal at all) if it can keep the internal problems of the area down to a business as usual level, then some sort of victory makes sense.
I don't know that I see Ukraine getting back to the status quo ante as you say, but I don't see Russia expanding more, either. At this point it might come down to war weariness, and which side gets sick of fighting first. It isn't clear to me which side that will be. A foreign invader on your soil is a great way to rally and keep popular support, and insurgency wars can grind on for a really long time, especially against a foe with which one has a long history.
Ukraine should seek a settlement based on the controlled territory and the present moment, or something close to it. It will end the bloodshed, and time is on their side. It should agree not the join NATO or station NATO weapons, troops, or trainers on the basis of formal security guarantees from outside powers. Economic EU membership should be permissible.
There are other clauses that could be noteworthy but that's the main issue.
This will be the best outcome for everyone.
I believe that factors not related to seeking the best outcome for the people involved are in the way of such a settlement.
Deleted a duplicate of this comment.
Maybe. I suspect we outsiders are only going to know after the fact. I expect even insiders (Ukrainians and Russians) are going to be trying to figure out what happened for a while after the bullets stop flying.
> The solution to being wrong isn't just to totally disengage from reality so you can feel you were right.
Physician, heal thyself.
It's an overly optimistic view that may serve as a counterweight to a delusional consensus.
There was a decent chance that Kiev would have fallen in 72 hours. It probably came down to the fact that the paratroopers couldn't hold the airport on Day 1.
Once Kiev didn't fall the war was clearly a mistake, but that's only knowable in hindsight.
That said Putin recognized pretty early on that his political objectives needed to change when Kiev didn't fall, and he pivoted. It's not as if the guy had a time machine, so he made the best of his bad situation. Now Russians are pounding the Ukrainian army on three sides with a 10:1 artillery advantage. And Kiev is stupidly pouring more and more troops into an indefensible salient in a part of the country that doesn't particularly want to be a part of Ukraine. To accomplish what???