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I agree with most of this, and I really want to highlight that the 'no-fly zone' concept is something that can only come from a great power fighting a smaller power. A no-fly zone is, 'we're at war with you but we're so much more powerful that we're going to do it at minimal risk and there's nothing you can do about it.' The US can do that with Iraq and Libya and Kosovo and any number of small countries. I would have thought Russia could do it with Ukraine until last week. But for two major powers there's no such thing as a no-fly zone...there's just war. The internationally accepted step down from war is proxy war or armament, which is what we're doing. Maybe Russia is so weak it would adhere to the polite fiction of a 'no-fly zone', but I doubt it.

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>Two persons close to the Russia-Ukraine negotiations (including back channel talks) tell me Russia proposed (1) Zelensky remains pro forma president but Russia appoints Boiko as PM, (2) Ukraine recognizes L/DNR and Crimea, (3) No NATO. Ze told them emphatically no.

Boyko was the Putin proxy candidate in the last election, getting 11% of the vote in 2019. Though I suspect that number would be vastly lower now.

(https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-real-russian-candidate-in-ukraine-s-presidential-race/)

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500812687009267712

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I think the peace agreement needs to be a formal, tripartite agreement between NATO, Ukraine, and Russia. Ukraine is formally declared as neutral and not eligible for NATO as well as being a nuclear weapons free zone, Russia agrees to allow the residents of the Donetsk/Luhansk to have an internationally supervised referendum on being independent/joining Russia/staying in Ukraine and to not send in any troops into Ukraine to back any government, etc.

And yeah, we really need to not do the idiotic No Fly Zone idea. Thankfully, Russia made it clear recently that they'd consider it an act of war by any country that did it. I'm not worried that Biden is going to cave on that - the guy held firm on Afghanistan withdrawal even with a big chunk of the national security press and "Blob" railing against him over it, and so far the US has done exactly what we threatened to do before Russia invaded (sanctions, arms to the Ukrainians, etc).

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> Ukraine ceding them does nothing except take away Russia’s casus belli for future wars.

During the big state address teh casus belli was 'we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.'

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Super duper quick note on the university that banned Dostoevsky: 1) it was a lecture series, not a class, 2) the official notice said it was postponed, not outright banned, 3) they've since reversed the decision.

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Related to the jingoism section: lots of western businesses have taken action against Russia beyond what government sanctions called for. So western unity against Russia has gone beyond "being very pro-Ukraine on Reddit"!

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"Is it imprudent? It’s a risk, but at least it was taken in the defense of real principles, which is better than most of the imprudent things we do."

1. Sure the argument that this is in defence of real principles is better than normal, but on the other side of the ledger the risk of blowing up the world is much higher than normal. As has been pointed out now, when critics as diverse as Kissinger, Chomsky & Mearsheimer are all saying "this might blow up the world", it's probably genuinely dangerous. Prior to all this happening, there appeared to be something of an intellectual consensus around the idea that NATO expansion eastwards is dangerous -by intellectuals left, right and centre- *among everyone except the people who actually got to make the decision*.

To turn the rhetoric around, we had the option to say "too bad, too sad, but great power politics mean that Ukraine is Putin's toy". We've done much, much more ruthless things than that, and this one would have been for a brilliant cause- in the service of not blowing up the world, as opposed to many of the ruthless things we do, which are in the service of enriching very wealthy people.

2. Also, to mutilate a phrase from law "one who appeals to principles must have clean hands". The argument the west is justified in some kind of deontic sense is limited by the fact that, as best I can tell, the west funded and encouraged literal Nazis knowingly at several points during this process, including during the "Revolution of Dignity".

On the topic of the culture war elements in this new cold war, I really think we need to clamp down on this frame [Based Russia versus Woke West]- it's both ridiculous and dangerous. I discussed it a little here:

https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/dont-be-deceived-this-is-not-world?s=w

Mostly just to plant my flag in the ground as someone who really hates this framing.

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A nice, safe, status-quo point of view, very sensible. Reminds me of any number of thoughtful "detente" essays I read in the 70s arguing a policy of indefinite accommodation.

But I personally find it a a little too Neville Chamberlain for my tastes, and I prefer Reagan's reformulation of the problem, id est, no we don't *have* to accept paying the Danegeld indefinitely. We can win, and they can lose, and that should be our priority goal.

The US and Europe combined easily have the economic might to drive Russia into ruin -- I'll note in passing that Germany alone has twice the GDP of Russia, and even Poland has 25% of it. And the Ukrainians want a lot more than mere honor at this point -- not with dead children lying on the road. They want to kick Putin's teeth in and see blood. I'm perfectly comfortable with helping them do that, and I think it can be done -- just as it was done in the 80s to the USSR -- without resorting to an exchange of ICBMs. But you do need to keep your eye on the ball, and you need to not start rationalizing horrible things as just some kind of existential tax bill that it's prudent to fork out indefinitely. It's OK as a temporary strategy, but as an end goal in itself -- nah.

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I'm too sleepy to write out better thoughts. I just want to say I find it utterly unbelievable that if Ukraine had announced "We promise not join NATO" Russia would have done anything different here, beyond tweaking language. And I'm surprised that this seems to be a semi consensus.

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I come here with a simple request: If anyone can cast doubt that my assertions are wrong. In my world view, I view the United States as a flawed power, but never annexed (at least within recent memory) a country unlike what Russia has done to Ukraine. I'm a critic of the United States flouting international law, I think the Iraq and Afghanistan war as it currently transpired shouldn't have happened, that America should have gotten approval by the UN security council instead of running roughshod of them, but still believe the United States' motivations weren't primarily driven by imperial conquest or done out of material interests such as oil. (Instead I believe it was a result of foreign policy democracy promotion gone awry from neocons and converging interests by businesses/the military.)

Am I wrong? That Russia's invasion of Ukraine isn't comparable to the United States (still very wrong) invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan? And is Russia being punished unequivocally for something America themselves did?

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

This war is much more personal for me. Not personally involved but people all around me who have lost property in Ukraine, who are trying to get out their relatives from war zones etc.

I understand Scott's concern about WW3 but he also doesn't realize how the world has changed since then. Russia is not the same as the USSR (speaking about favours). Ukraine is as much a former USSR than Russia. This war is really not about NATO but about racism (this should be the correct term) at the highest level. Putin simply hates Ukrainians for introducing impurities to his Russian world.

I don't think that Putin needs to save a face. I read Russians on vk.com, some of them people who are my good acquaintances I have known for years are now completely brainwashed by accepting everything that Putin tells them. They will not dishonour him even if loses the war. It may only increase their conviction that the west and not Putin is evil.

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

Also, this is my first time being here! I admit sometimes I lurk around here on occasion

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A good tactical summary and analysis of the first few days of the invasion, and the assumptions Russia seemed to have. I'm linking to 24 minutes in when Michael Kofman begins speaking:

https://youtu.be/zXEvbVoDiU0?list=TLPQMDgwMzIwMjL94cIjiDzQsQ&t=1475

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

Some thoughts:

1- Ukraine signed an agreement with Russia, USA and (I think) UK back in the day that says in exchange for indefinite respect to their borders and sovereignty they give up their nukes that carried over from USSR. Back then they were like 3rd biggest nuclear power. Russia’s not honoring that and West’s not defending that by not putting boots on the ground shows to all middle powers that are anxious about their sovereignty to Just Go For Nukes. It shows how correct it is for Iran and North Korea to try to obtain nukes and it shows it’s their rightful right. Also if some other countries like South Korea, Australia, Turkey, Poland should obtain them as well. Basically if you can afford it and there’s a real threat to your sovereignty nukes are the most cost effective way of protecting yourself since when you’re the one with nukes everybody suddenly starts to walk on eggshells around you.

2- The peace proposal Russia made (if I’m not mistaken) includes the demilitarization of Ukraine which means they’ll just annex it altogether in a couple of years. That’s unacceptable.

3- Russia will not and cannot counter a if you fly we’ll shoot down zone with strategic nukes because it’s a losing game for them. West isn’t afraid of that but using it as an excuse so they don’t fight against a real Air Force. West hasn’t once fought against a serious country with a serious Air Force since WW2. I’m not saying they’re afraid of losing because they’ll handily win. I’m saying they’re afraid of seemingly being invincible. This airplane shot down 100 without getting shot down once, and this other one 200 with getting shot down only twice or whatever. Well it was against Serbia and Iraq and Yemen and Syria and whatnot. West is afraid of tarnishing their invincible reputation. Turkey is the only NATO country to have fired a shot in anger against a Russian airplane. I would’ve liked to see USA to have a go at it but the risk of some expensive programs losing some face is more important to them than showing to everyone going non-nuclear / not going nuclear is a viable thing to do. One doesn’t need to base squadrons in Ukraine to achieve this, range from bases in Poland etc is enough. Shoot BVR missiles from afar. Fly AWACS planes on NATO soil they’ll see far enough to give radar support. Do other stuff that me as a civilian cannot think of. But it’s all risking the reputation of very expensive programs that made a lot of people Very Important so they cannot do it. Turkey is the only NATO member have fired a shot in anger against a Russian airplane. I would’ve liked to see USA to have a go at it but the risk of some expensive programs losing some face is more important to them than showing to everyone going non-nuclear / not going nuclear is a viable thing to do. One doesn’t need to base squadrons in Ukraine to achieve this, range from bases in Poland etc is enough. Shoot BVR missiles from afar. Fly AWACS planes on NATO soil they’ll see far enough to give radar support. Do other stuff that me as a civilian cannot think of. But it’s all risking the reputation of very expensive programs that made a lot of people Very Important so they cannot do it.

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There's a really good Vox piece on Zelenskyy's narrativomancy, so to speak, of the sort discussed in the second-to-last link:

https://www.vox.com/world/22955262/zelenskyy-videos-ukraine-russia-war

It's one of the things fascinating me about this. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the fact Zelenskyy knows how to handle Narrative is why his country is not currently Belarus 2.

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You might add to your definition of 'Pax Americana': Print a few billion dollars as an indirect tax on all Americans; Resettle the victims to Arkansas.

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I'm really shocked that you are still promoting Anatoly Karlin on this blog. He has consistently shown that he believes Russian state media which for one, is denying that there is clearly a war going on, alongside a bunch of other easily verifiable lies. I think that as a popular blogger, you have a little bit more of an obligation than saying that something may be Russian propaganda, but it is funny nonetheless. Is there anything really funny about what Russia is doing in Ukraine? I would hope not, based on my judgement of your character from reading the blog. I really think you should not promote him in the future.

On his blog, he also actively supports rhetoric that the war is the West's fault and that "All the blood is on their hands." NATO is a defensive treaty. Russia's claims that Ukraine joining would result in a security threat for them is not credible. I'm not for active censorship - but there is also a point where a source becomes untrustworthy, and the responsible thing to do is to not promote that source. I think Anatoly has crossed that line.

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So do we get Trump in 2024 as the peacemaker since he is the one who most speaks Putin's language?

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

"As far as I understand it, the offer is: Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home."

I don't think this is the Russia's current demand, unless it has changed.

More importantly, it certainly was not the extent of Russia's demands before invasion. Their initial demands of Ukraine included ban of some offensive weapons (I don't recall the details, not sure if they ever provided them) and full implementation of Minsk II (a bit tall order when the Russian backed separatists were not eager to hold the ceasefire, and the Minsk II is extremely unfavorable to Ukraine). Before the invasion, as Putin amassed troops on the border, Putin escalated his demands. The final round included complete demilitarization, complete denazification (whatever Putin means by it -- common interpretation is "purge of Ukrainian leadership"), stop an alleged genocide in Donetsk (very difficult to implement, because Western observers have not witnessed any), and bunch of other demands from EU and NATO.

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founding

Something I've not seen mentioned enough is that this is also a war for long term Russian influence. Putin wins = directly subordinated or annexed Ukraine, but also a more solid grip on Belarus, likely regime change in Moldova, extra influence in Romanian politics, and continued mingling in European politics.

Putin loses - their politics will turn internal for a while, and they'll have to reorient efforts to keep the Russian Federation in one piece, work hard not to lose client states and work hard to destabilize Ukraine and sabotage its entering EU. Not much resources left for stuff beyond that, which means Europe gets a decade of peace from Russian interference. Plus a better integrated Ukraine as a bonus.

This being a sliding scale, of course. And the peace terms are what puts the pointer on the scale.

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

A point:

You listed "Georgia" in the list of the "next time"places that people want to invade, but won't because of the pax americana's enforcement actions against Russia "this time".

...except that Russia already invaded Georgia in 2008, and got exactly what they wanted from that action. Georgia had been actively courting western powers and pushing for NATO membership. Russia ensured that in response it It lost territory, lost lives, and received a warning that if it didn't stop trying to join NATO the next thing it lost would be its existence as an independent state. Georgia got the message, and so did NATO members. While they have continued economic and military cooperation on a more limited scale the talk of actively pursuing membership dropped. Of course, now that Ukraine has demonstrated to Georgia that they're in danger anyway, they are asking for EU and NATO membership again because they believe they have nothing to lose.

Either way, it seems odd to put a country that in fact DID get attacked on your list of countries that are protected. Even odder when you consider that it was the Russian success (from their perspective) in Georgia that led to them planning and executing the grab of Crimea and backing separatist movements in Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine.

Perhaps "this time" the response will be strong enough to deter a "next time". But this will be the third time in the past 15 years, so I am not particularly hopeful unless sanctions extend rather longer and are more severe than I expect. If Russia IS deterred, I think it will be by the bloody nose they get from the Ukrainians being far more willing to fight than they had counted on, and the weaknesses revealed in their military, not by the western response.

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It's not clear to me that "providing fighter aircraft", as long as they're piloted by Ukrainian pilots, is the same sort of escalation or proxy war norm violation as the others described. As far as I know the North Koreans and North Vietnamese flew Soviet-supplied planes.

(In Korea there were even Soviet pilots, though they at least made a vague attempt to keep that fact a secret at the time.)

So supplying Ukraine with Polish MiGs (if it can be negotiated) seems as cricket as other arms supplies. Not risk free, but not in the same class as shooting down Russians ourselves.

The zone gets a little grayer if some officially Ukrainian pilots turn out to be volunteers from NATO countries, or if the donations go from planes Ukrainians could plausibly be flying with existing experience to, say, their suddenly being able to handle F-16s.

(I'm not sure where providing that sort of training falls if the war lasts long enough. There were certainly opponents in our 20th century proxy wars who'd studied in Moscow.)

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It's worth noting that most Presidential candidates (including Clinton as well as most of the Republicans apart from Trump and Paul) in 2016 supported enforcing a No Fly Zone against Russian planes in Syria, which would have been just as dumb an idea then as it is now: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/19/us/elections/presidential-candidates-on-syria-no-fly-zone.html

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I'm on board with almost all of this so don't have much to add. Except this part struck me -

"Russia has miscalculated, they know they’ve miscalculated, and the best ending for everyone is for them to leave in a way that sort of preserves what’s left of their honor"

One of the glaring features of this fiasco for me is the fact that Vladimir Putin is responsible for it. The miscalculation wasn't by 'Russia' or the Russian people, it was by a single individual, however common it is to anthropomorphise a country or a government or a people.

My point is more general than saying let's blame that very bad man Mr Putin. It is to observe that when one individual gains ultimate power, it's always a very real possibility that he'll be driven mad by it (if he wasn't already) and enormous catastrophes will ensue.

Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc etc. None of them could have caused the deaths and destruction that they did if they hadn't achieved megalomaniac power.

I could be wrong of course. The Swiss could have one of their periodic referendums and vote to start bombing Lichtenstein. But I think the odds are against it.

There are many lessons here that Scott has ably described. But for me the most instructive is the picture of Putin at one end of a table with the nearest other human being 40 feet away. That's the problem right there. Not even Putin the individual, just the structure that permits, if not encourages, all that follows. Power has the very real potential to poison.

I think Tolkein wrote a longish book making just this point.

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Obviously tangential, but the demonym for Chechnya is "Chechen", not "Chechnyan"

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

"Other times it was almost incomprehensible: we’ll debate what happened with Iraq II forever."

It's not incomprehensible if you stick to realpolitik instead of rhetoric.

1) Iraq I was because it was in pretty much nobody's interest to to let Saddam Hussein control the less-expensive-to-extract half of the world's proven oil reserves. Whether Kuwait was inside or outside Iraq really wasn't a matter of intense interest to the US or anybody else; rather, the US and pretty much everybody else wanted an outcome where Hussein could not use military force to control the oil of the whole Arabian Peninsula.

2) In the end, the ground phase of Desert Storm was a failure, because Saddam Hussein and his regime survived (against the expectations of the Bush I administration that it would be shattered by a civil war), complete with the chance to rebuild his military to threaten the Arabian Peninsula again. The US had to, in practice, indefinitely extend Desert Shield and the air phase of Desert Storm (garrisoning Saudi Arabia and enforcing the no-fly zones) to indefinitely contain Hussein.

3) Containing Hussein became untenable because the US presence in Saudi Arabia provoked an escalating series of terrorist attacks by Arab Muslims who saw it as a desecration. The Khobar Towers, the US embassies in Africa, and the USS Cole culminated in 9/11. Remaining in Saudi Arabia would continue to provoke similar attacks, because plenty of Arab Muslims agreed with Osama bin Laden about that desecration enough to do something about it. A US withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, would end the ongoing offense.

4) But simply pulling out would end the containment. The logical move for the US accordingly seemed to be to repeat the Desert Storm ground invasion, and this time not stop until the Hussein regime was indisputably destroyed. WMD programs and democracy were advanced as excuses in public for the same reason Iraq being an aggressor was advanced to justify the first invasion of Iraq; because US and world public opinion won't tolerate a simple explanation of "The invasion is in our interest, so we're launching one".

(4a - The huge difference in international support between Iraq I and Iraq II is that many countries that saw it in their interest to not let Hussein dominate the Arabian Peninsula didn't have any particular interest in taking domestic PR hits in the interest of easing US efforts to resolve its Saudi garrison difficulty by invading Iraq.)

5) The US invaded Iraq, disbanded the Iraqi government and army, and went ahead and declared "Mission Accomplished". Unfortunately, it couldn't immediately go home (leaving just a few advisors in Baghdad), because Hussein himself managed to hide in a spider hole. There was an ongoing risk that if the US withdrew, he'd manage to wind up on top again, and the whole problem would start over.

6) Between when the US wanted to withdraw and when Saddam Hussein would up in custody (December), the civil war that was an entirely expected result of shattering the Hussein regime (even desired, since it would put off the date a stable regime in Iraq could threaten the Arabian Peninsula) broke out. With fighting going on before US troops left, there was no way compatible with American public opinion to simply declare victory and go home, like would have happened Hussein been killed in the same fight his sons died in. This public opinion is why the major Democratic candidates for President talked about a Pottery Barn rule.

7) Every hour the US was in Iraq from the point of Hussein's capture onward, including Obama sending troops back in after he withdrew them, accordingly was the US administration of the day trying to figure out how to leave without the American people perceiving it as a defeat and punishing the party of whomever was President.

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As a non American I have to question the idea that Afghanistan was understandable. Granted I formed this opinion at the ages of about 10-14 but my impression was that the connection between the people who did 9/11 and Afghanistan was fairly tennuous, and that America's invasion looked a lot like a bully punching someone who happned to be there when were angry.

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For Ukraine to formally accept that Crimea and the Eastern region that Russia controlled pre-war are no longer part of Ukraine isn't a concession in name only. It's a massive concession, for reasons connected to the importance of rules that you discuss elsewhere.

If Ukraine formally accepts that they're gone, it's much more likely that they won't ever be part of Ukraine again. That's bad for Ukraine, but it's also bad for everyone, because it means that Russia has arguably succeeded in getting what it wants by invading a peaceful neighbour.

The decision on what peace terms to accept is one for Ukraine to make. They're not part of NATO, we're not going to fight alongside them. But we shouldn't be encouraging them to accept terms that strengthen Putin and make it more likely that something like this happens again.

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re: 3 3: A strong response right now isn’t just about Ukraine, it’s also about the next time.

"This is about Taiwan, Georgia, Iran, and all the other places that great powers want to invade but don’t."

Taiwan is under the protection of the US. The Ukraine never was. Georgia is too complicated for me to grasp quickly, but I'm unsure if Russia actually wants more than what they already have with South Ossetia? And as far as I understand, the threat to Iran would come from the United States itself? Did that not happen, because Russia threatened nuclear war? Pretty sure, this was just a lack of will on the American part. If the US wants to invade a country in the Middle East, they do it. Don't see why that would change either.

re 4: International norms may be annoying, but they’re all that stands between US and nuclear war, so we had better respect them

"No sane person thinks it’s worth risking nuclear war just to protect something as minor as the Aleutian Islands. But then the US gives Russia the Aleutians, and next year they ask for all of Alaska. And even Alaska isn’t really worth risking nuclear war over, so you give it to them, and then the next year…"

That's US territory. National Souvereignity is not an international norm. It's what a nation will always defend or it'll cease to exist. Maybe the Aleutian Islands could be traded away, but if Alaska is worth going to war for. This nebuluous concept of "international norms" is absolutely not "all what stands between us and nuclear war". That's just stupid. It is explicit defense treaties like NATO, that keep the peace. Or more implicit ones like the US has with Taiwan. And generally the threat of MAD. So far, I have not seen a convincing "it's about the next time"-argument.

Nor how protecting the Ukraine or sanctioning Russia is even of strategic benefit to the West.

Can someone make better arguments please or strengthen them?

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> I don’t know what the visa situation is like now and it might be terrible.

It was terrible before COVID (e.g. if you're invited to a conference, you have to fly across the whole country to a single consulate that maybe has a chance of giving you a visa within less than a year), then there were admittedly mutual vaccine-related problems, now it's just impossible (e.g. many Green Card lottery winners from more than a year ago still can't get their visas). Maybe one could go to a USA consulate in a neighbouring country (Poland? Georgia?) and ask for a visa there, except, well, not right now.

My colleagues had submitted abstracts to a US conference. They now estimate their chances of getting a visa as <1%.

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

The "Stability-Instability Paradox": the notion that mutual vulnerability ("MAD") at the strategic nuclear level can actually make conflict more likely at lower rungs of the escalation ladder. Twitter Thread:

Haven’t tweet much on Ukraine crisis for multiple reasons. But developments in the last 24 hours are heartbreaking and a preview of great brutality I fear is coming. A few observations here on the nuclear & conventional dimensions. 1/

Putin’s pointed, not-veiled nuclear threats are really remarkable, signaling a willingness to turn to the country’s arsenal if the West interferes with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. /2

This is about the clearest evidence I have ever seen for the Stability-Instability Paradox: the notion that mutual vulnerability ("MAD") at the strategic nuclear level can actually make conflict more likely at lower rungs of the escalation ladder. /3

Deterrence theorists associated with the Nuclear Revolution often dismiss this idea, arguing that nuclear stalemate means both sides will avoid crises and conflicts out of the fear they could escalate. The result should be peace, stability, and less military competition. /4

Yet Putin’s behavior suggests that revisionist actors are not so inhibited and may instead use their strategic nuclear forces as a shield behind which they can pursue conventional aggression, knowing their nuclear threats may deter outside intervention. /5

Now of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, nor a U.S. treaty ally. But then neither is Taiwan. So if you think nuclear stalemate is going to keep the peace in the Strait, you would need to do some hard thinking about why it hasn’t kept the peace in Eastern Europe. /6

China, in fact, is developing the same types of forces that Putin references in his remarks: not only a survivable second-strike capability, but also theater nuclear forces suited for limited strikes for coercive escalation. Not a coincidence.

More broadly, as a student of military operations and foreign policy, it’s hard for me to see the Russian end game here either operationally or strategically, for reasons @jeffaedmonds and @KofmanMichael and others have identified.

Yes, at a tactical level Russia can steamroll Ukrainian regular forces, though I expect Ukraine can make this more costly than Russia has anticipated. Urban warfare is unkind to invaders, even strong ones. 8/ https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/1595.pdf

But beyond that, what is military endgame? Regime change and then puppet government? Difficulties of indefinitely occupying a nation of 41 million should be apparent after Soviet experiences with Warsaw Pact & Afghanistan, among others @dmedelstein

Russian invasion likely to provoke higher European defense spending, tighter NATO, deployment of NATO forces east, hostility with West. Ukraine was not headed for NATO membership any time soon, so a destabilizing invasion wasn’t necessary to forestall that perceived danger. 10/

At the strategic level, Russian invasion gives off big Schlieffen Plan energy. It is like committing suicide for fear of death, bringing about the very problems it is supposed to solve, and generating new ones like risks of inadvertent escalation. 11/11

https://twitter.com/ProfTalmadge/status/1496837475901362180

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I just watched some videos on russia subreddit and one video about Russian police arresting unruly protesters caught my eye. The commentary was that if western protesters had been so aggressive they would have been already shot by police. It's obviously propaganda because they wouldn't but I remember seeing police dealing with Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa and it is clear that Canadian police is much more professional and capable than Russian one. It is just a pity that its potential is used to support completely irrelevant and even harmful vaccine mandates. If all this energy was used for real issues we could have world peace in no time.

But it also means that we clearly overestimate Russia's military capabilities. Maybe the truth is that they are indeed as bad as they look like due to corruption and self-deceit?

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Over the last few days I've been helping some of my friends to leave Russia. Fleeing to the US is a no-go, I don't know how to even begin there. Much more realistic is moving to Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and other neutral Asian countries that don't require visa from Russian citizens. You can settle there for a couple of months while applying a digital nomad visa to some European country.

A very important part of the process is opening a bank account outside of Russia. Reportedly you can easily do it at least in Georgia and Kazakhstan. I heard that in Georgia you need to sign a paper stating that you don't support the Russian invasion. This theoretically makes you criminally liable back in Russia under the recent laws, but it's unlikely that Georgia will share these declarations with Russia, so you are probably fine.

Once you have a bank account outside of Russia, you can still transfer some of your money from Russian bank accounts, as long as your bank is not disconnected from SWIFT. This transfer is limited to 5000 USD though. (You can also cross the borders with up to 10k in cash.) Visa & Mastercard are about to stop working tomorrow, so don't rely on them. You can probably use a UnionPay card if you have one.

I've used this list of digital nomad accepting countries: https://nomadgirl.co/countries-with-digital-nomad-visas/. Based on it, the easiest countries to immigrate to are Czech Republic and Portugal. Czech Republic requires a proof of ~6000 EUR in assets, Protugal requires a proof of ~700 EUR of stable income or ~17000 EUR in assets. It goes without saying, but you'll need to double-check the actual requirements in the official sources for any particular country that you want to move to.

If you are still in Russia, try getting apostille on your birth and marriage certificates and get a memo that you don't have criminal record. These documents are impossible to get outside of Russia and are required for getting long term visas or residence permits in many countries.

If you have questions or need any help (tickets, booking a place to stay etc.), reach out to me on Telegram at @eterevsky or email at oleg@eterevsky.com. Feel free to also reach out if you are a Ukrainian fleeing to Europe (the logistics there is completely different obviously).

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On the peace deal Russia has offered: I think there's a good chance it's NOT just 'give up Crimea/Donetsk/Luhansk and don't join EU/Nato'. It also included 'Zelensky remains president, but Russia chooses a prime minister'.

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500812687009267712

Could be something the Russians will negotiate on, and maybe walk back from as time goes on, but I think if this is true it changes the flavour of the deal considerably. Russia isn't asking to slink away with a few bits of land; they want to permanently and powerfully influence Ukrainian politics so they can continue with their project of turning it back into a satellite state. It seems way less reasonable for Ukraine to agree to that.

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I’ve read some comments about Putin’s “long term strategy.” He’ll turn 70 in a few months. What would you say if you heard someone 70 talking about their long term career goals?

With a median life expectancy of 73 for men in Russia presumably Putin knows a lot of men his age who are already dead. How do folks think that plays into his planning and decision making?

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The Russian troops don't seem really all that into martial valor, at least not yet. Phrased more positively, they appear to be relatively humane and un-bloodthirsty. Further, the Russian domestic media strategy appears to be to spin Mr. Putin's war to the Russian public as a nearly bloodless "special military operation," showing little of the type of exciting combat footage we've seen from the Ukrainian side.

In general, Russians other than Putin don't seem all that interested in an old fashioned ground war in Europe. Perhaps human beings really are getting less warlike, as Steven Pinker suggested a decade ago?

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Ad donations, I suggest to consider giving money to People in Need, Czech humanitarian NGO with considerable experience in war situations (they were in Chechnya, Syria and similar places). Their english page for help to Ukraine is here: https://www.peopleinneed.net/people-in-need-continues-support-ukraine-8586gp.

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The intro omits the single deadliest war, the one everyone forgets: the Second Congo War of 1998–2003, which killed 40,000 people *a month* for a total of 5.4 million if you include the victims of starvation and disease. I am as guilty as anyone, I consider myself well-informed on world affairs but while aware of the free-for-all conflict, I was oblivious to the scale of the carnage. Of course, those were black lives and it's now well-established those do not matter, even less than brown lives.

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“ Russia has miscalculated, they know they’ve miscalculated”

If metaculus is any guide, Russia is not the only one who miscalculated (see the odds of Russia taking Kyiv by April plummet). In fact, we don’t know for sure what Putin was thinking, so we may be projecting our own failure on him.

The take away is just to remember that “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. We should have similar concerns as far as our ability to even enforce a no fly zone.

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One thing came to my mind when you wrote "to call its bluff": Americans play poker, but russians play chess.

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I don't know that I agree with "EU has previously allowed members to join its economic community without joining the EU proper, and this would probably provide most of the relevant benefits to Ukraine without angering Russia." Having skimmed Putin's big essay on Ukraine, I think that having Ukraine tie its economy to the EU rather than Russia would be something he would very much have a beef with.

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

Agree with much of this, especially regarding the no-fly-zone nonsense. Couple things which came to mind:

1) ‘liberal redditors getting mad on Twitter’ feels like an uncharitable illustration which downplays the remarkable display of unity and (dare I say) strength by liberal democracies.

2) I am not sure this conflict supports the concept of meaningfully superior ‘martial’ cultures. Russia seems to take pride in their macho outlook, but we may find out that boring nerdy planning and accountable power structures are more decisive war-winners than selecting Invincible Macho VdVs and right-clicking Kiev.

The people I know who fought in wars seem to emphasize the importance of initiative, leadership, coordination and intelligence, and they tend to get annoyed at the notion of inherently (genetically or culturally) superior soldiers. This is far outside my own expertise, admittedly.

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>"This is what it looks like when a civilization that’s got strong and well-functioning norms against aggressive wars encounters one and launches an immune response."

I'm sorry what? The Iraq invasion, the Afghan invasion, the Libyan bombing and the Yugoslav bombing would seem to indicate otherwise. Not to mention the fact that countries have been financing the Saudi war machine and Israeli war machine for decades. I'm sorry Scott but you need to step outside your neoliberal foreign policy bubble.

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Scott, I'd change the skimpy clothing example to something like 'holing up in your apartment all the time' vs getting pick pocketed?

That way you avoid any culture war distractions?

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 9, 2022

> In this spirit, I hope they encourage Ukraine to consider Russia’s recent peace offer.

> As far as I understand it, the offer is: Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home.

The problem is that Russia has negative credibility.

In case of signing that Russia would renege on it and break it. Either they would never leave or attack again within 10 years. I would give 85% probability to that.

And at this point, sadly, "Russia promises to not invade" and similar should not be treated as serious in long term, and encouraging others to treat it seriously is a bad idea.

I am willing to bet money on that, as long as it is not requiring use of cryptocurrencies. I can also bet funny Manifold points, I got some from that broken Trump market.

I am also expecting that this relatively reasonably proposal is not what they proposed: I expect that they demanded at least one of following:

(1) purge of Ukrainian leadership

(2) installing their puppet(s) as rulers

(3) destruction of Ukrainian military

(4) stopping improvements to Ukrainian military

(5) forcing Ukrainian government to lie about what happened

Overall, I expect that Ukraine considered it but it was as fucked up and unreasonable as their previous public offers.

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(1) If I understand Fukuyama's position correctly, he was not saying that there would be no more wars. He was saying that the dominant ideology of 'liberal democracy + capitalism with a safety net' would never again face another ideology that could compete with it on a global scale. Once this ideology converts everyone, then there won't be any more wars. The 'Dictator Book Club' is a more effective argument against Fukuyama than this war.

(2) I agree that nuclear war is a much bigger issue than conventional war in Ukraine. But I'm surprised that you didn't address the question of whether you think that Ukraine can continue to hold out and whether the sanctions help then with this.

(3) A no fly zone would probably also requires destroying Russia air defenses so we can fly our planes there. Russia's surface-to-air capabilities are mostly located in Russia. The problem isn't just that we would be shooting down Russian aircraft (like Turkey has done once in Syria): we would also be shooting targets located on Russian soil.

(4) I have a different take on Russia's peace offer. They do seem to want all of the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. So it sounds to me like: please abandon your strong defensive positions in eastern Ukraine (which have mostly held so far), and give us a few months to fix our logistical problems.

(5) If you want to help victims of war in the most effective way possible, you should probably focus on the wars that nobody cares about instead of the wars that everybody cares about.

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I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, Scott, on the odds of nuclear war (or just the odds of nuclear deployment) in the next couple months

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“Fine, you can invade if the country is literally the Nazis, committing the literal Holocaust” - and then Putin says Ukraine is run by Nazis and genociding its people.

I have no good solution to this problem...

Why not just litigate the cases as they come up, and accept that there will be hard cases, and gradually work to push your failures out another std deviation?

I mean this in all good faith - this is indeed a very real problem. Also, this is genuinely one naive solution to this problem. Roll up our sleeves and just try. Is the flaw in the naive solution that, we are just really bad at this sort of thing, and adversaries are too good at finding loopholes to try to confront them? If this works 99.9% of the time, but is occasionally exploited, is it still that bad of a solution?

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With reference to the "Bright Line" argument: Would it be useful to set up a prediction market for determining whether an invasion is "good" or not? Perhaps all countries in the UN could vote on whether the majority would vote "Yes" for annexation or "No". Unless there is universal consensus/collusion, the best strategy would be to vote for the "morally good" option, which humans are pretty good at figuring out unless they are motivated by personal gain.

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“I hope they encourage Ukraine to consider Russia’s recent peace offer.”

Last time Western countries encouraged Czechoslovakia to accept a similar offer it did not work so well. What is the reason to think this time would be different?

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An even will quickly make up for everybody, Putin will be pleased to take the Russian part of Ukraine as his failed blitzkrieg isn’t something to brag about. Transnistria & Gagauzia (yes, these are autonomous regions in Moldova) could get recognised by Russia while Moldova join the EU as it has strengthened ties with the west in the last years.

Nato would gain the western part of Ukraine and might draw new borders pushing further east.

https://antarctica.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-predictions-day-10?s=w

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1. If Putin is irrational to the point of starting a nuclear war, and we don't want a nuclear war, we have to give him anything he asks by whatever pretext he gives. The details about NATO, Iraq, history etc are irrelevant, they could as easily have been aliens and spirits. And we're doomed anyway.

2. Putin could also be some sort of rational. What sort?

From what we know, he's not a religious fanatic, not an addict or esoteric fan.

He is a long-time KGB officer, and their modus operandi is well-known since

1930s, when they've given up the global permanent revolution and exploited the

same framework again and again.

The framework is:

- find a relatively weak/unstable/isolated democratic country

- create some underground spy network

- create a list of talking points to polarize/split the public and push those through diplomacy and local media

- if the convenient dictator wins, use him in your favor

- if not:

- do a false flag operation

- invade

- if it goes ok, install a puppet government

- if it fails, annex some territory, put it in gray zone and use to destabilize the rest of the country

- if this also fails, incorporate gray zone into your territory

Since then it was exploited in Finland, Bessarabia, Baltic countries, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Georgia, etc.

And we can see that's exactly what happens here and we're being the public fed Putin's talking points, no?

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Perhaps I am being nitpicky, but there is one thing I would like to point out: NATO didn't ''expand''. It admitted Central European countries which seeked protection, because they correctly predicted that Russia would try to reestabilish it's sphere of influence over them once it regains strength to do so. We wanted to join Western institutions, we wanted it badly. For instance: only about 2% of Poles want Poland to leave NATO(poll from 2019).

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> Everyone can sanction Russia as much as they want, and it can win anyway.

Lol, no. It's already losing because of logistics, it's going to lose because of logistics harder, and at some point you end up with a 1984-esque war economy where your citizens have nothing because the resources go to a war that won't be resolved.

If they take Kiev they'll get killed by a regular army coordinated from Lviv. If they take Lviv they'll get killed by guerillas and IEDs.

I don't even know if there is a "next time". The current situation has a realistic chance of causing a regime change in Russia, at which point the sanctions would be lifted. The West is close to using every metaphorical nuclear option and leaving just the literal one.

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“in ‘62, it was the Russians who agreed to back down to prevent nuclear war. We owe them one, so this time it’s on us.”

In 1956 and 1968, when the Hungarian and Czech governments attempted to get some measure of independence from the USSR, the latter responded with full scale military invasion and arresting or executing local political leaders. The western countries decided not to interfere in the Soviet sphere of influence.

In 1962, the situation was reverse - Castro decided to ally with the USSR and turned Cuba into a communist dictatorship. The US and USSR compromised by letting Castro stay and in return for withdrawing the soviet missiles from Cuba the US withdrew its missile form Turkey and Italy.

Is “Russians who agreed to back down” a fair description of what happened?

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> Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home.

Putin wants to _demilitarize_ Ukraine. How do you think further negotiations with a bully who declared he's out for your blood will go, once you handed him your weapons? Ceding anything to Putin at this point is being terrible at game theory, even if it's a trivial thing.

Also, everyone, especially Ukrainians, knows Ukraine is a corrupt shithole because it's an ex-USSR republic. This is what being in Russia's orbit does to countries, this is not a matter of opinion, this is settled. They correctly reason that their only chance for a modern country is joining the Western bloc - that's what Soviet satellite states did and it worked magnificently. "Keep Ukraine neutral" is code for "keep Ukraine like Belarus with an extra dose of military vulnerability".

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As usual, I agree with most all of this.

I rarely comment, but in this instance I MUST, because THIS quote left my jaw on the floor:

"Also, the last time this happened, in ‘62, it was the Russians who agreed to back down to prevent nuclear war. We owe them one, so this time it’s on us."

This leads me to ask, in all sincerity, "WHAT, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the F***???"

I can't even see the context into which this statement is hooked. It looks like a throwaway comment, but one possessed of the most staggering blitheness, which is not at all your usual MO, Scott.

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"NATO has shown no signs of being willing to accept Ukraine as a member anyway"

This is an incredibly inaccurate statement.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm

NATO agreed in 2008 that Ukraine "WILL become members of NATO" (emphasis mine). This is about as explicit a contradiction of the claim that NATO has no signs of interest in Ukraine joining as possible. They have continued to reaffirm this and still say it on their website

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49212.htm

The goal of joining NATO is enshrined in the Ukrainian constitution.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/15/explainer-nato-and-the-ukraine-russia-crisis

Biden reassured Zelenskiy 3 months ago, when he already knew invasion was an increasing probability, that the right to join NATO remained "in Ukraine's hands".

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-president-zelenskiy-holding-talks-with-biden-adviser-says-2021-12-09/

It is more than clear that the US and UK both wanted Ukraine in NATO even if other NATO members might have taken some persuading. NATO and Ukraine have both *explicitly* reaffirmed, over and over again, their desire to join together. The fact that there are obstacles does not mean that there is no serious chance it could have happened, or that there are "no" signs of willingness. Quite the opposite.

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10.g: The simplest explanation for what's going on in this video is that it was filmed in Russia. It's kind of hard to imagine this happening in Ukraine, and not just because it's hard to imagine a Russian military convoy politely letting Ukrainian civilian traffic pass; it's also hard to imagine that Ukrainian civilian traffic would attempt to nonchalantly pass through a Russian military convoy. But to get from Russia to Ukraine, a Russian military convoy first has to pass through more Russia, and Russian civilian traffic would have no reason to act differently than usual, so it's almost guaranteed that scenes like the one shown would occur in Russia.

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I'm pretty sure Putin is demanding that Ukraine recognize the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblast as independent.

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>9. In this spirit, I hope they encourage Ukraine to consider Russia’s recent peace offer.

The problem with this approach is that Ukraine and Russia already have a security treaty, the Budapest memorandum, whereby Russia agreed to, among things, respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty, not use force against Ukraine, and seek Security Council assistance should Ukraine be involved in a potentially nuclear conflict.

In the past few weeks, as well as other instances since Budapest was signed, Russia has flagrantly disrespected Ukrainian independence and sovereignty, use extreme force against Ukrainian armed forces and civilians, and may or may not currently be bringing nuclear missiles into Ukraine via train.

Why on earth would Zelenskyy sign any deal with Russia where Russia re-commits to the same security and recognition standards it just violated?

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>EU has previously allowed members to join its economic community without joining the EU proper, and this would probably provide most of the relevant benefits to Ukraine without angering Russia.

I *highly* doubt that Russia wouldn't mind Ukraine joining the Single Market. Such an action requires that you accept very close links to the EU.

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One case of creeping lines in the sand (aka created Schelling points) is the issue of Poland transferring jets to Ukraine. Putin seems to be claiming that as escalation but NATO countries have already been transferring lots of other military supplies to Ukraine so it's just more of the same. That looks like an attempt by Putin to shift the perceived line in his favor.

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Appreciate the thoughtful post, thanks. The logic behind #9 doesn't quite make sense to me, though - seems like it would send the message "invasion is a good way to get what you want when negotiation isn't succeeding", which does not seem ideal. Also pretty sure that more or less anything could be deemed a "violation of neutrality" if Russian nationalists wanted another justification of war in the future.

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Wasn't item j a fake? I suspect Ukraine heroism stories are amplified by 100x while their not-so-heroic stories are muted. If the population were so deeply valiant, why is it illegal for fighting-age males to leave the country?

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

FWIW, from what I've been reading it seems like that Reply of the Cossacks photo (item f) may be of the Azov Battalion back during the 2014 conflict, not the current one.

ref:

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1500120618972418057

https://twitter.com/TsunamixEDM/status/1500010540365721602

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

> The rare exceptions tend to be genuinely bad dudes - however unjust the Iraq War was, nobody wants to defend Saddam.

Yeah so this is just plain ignorant. Just because no-one in the US wants to defend Saddam, or because in the US Saddam is seen as a "genuinely bad dude" does not excuse the US invasion of Iraq. According to the Russians, Ukraine is similary ruled by "bad dudes"; regardless of the Russian rhetoric the Ukrainians certainly have their fair share of faults.

The correct take here is not "Russia is uniquely worse than the US", but "the US being bad does not excuse Russia being bad".

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I think Scott made some really great points here about social norms - as relates to foreign policy. I wonder what the community would think about normalizing the assassination of foreign leaders? It seems to me that it should be normalized for a few reasons:

1) In an authoritarian nation where the leader doesn't care about the well-being of their people, sanctions hurt the people rather than the leader. I know that CIA ideology states that causing more unhappiness within a particular country increases the chance of an uprising, but with the development of the modern surveillance state, I don't think that rule necessarily holds true anymore.

2) When a foreign leader has "skin in the game" they are more likely to make decisions that are not wildly antisocial.

3) To a certain extent, assassination is ALREADY normalized - most leaders have a certain expectation that crazy randos may try to kill them and already take precautions against it. So normalizing the assassination of foreign leaders as a tool of foreign policy may change the risk/benefit calculations of foreign leaders, but it's not like something radically new or different.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting this to resolve the Ukraine conflict. Putin is already REALLY well guarded against assassination - he not only has geolocation spoofing which stops people from tracking his own location through the cell phone towers he connects to, but he ALSO has his own personal ice cream maker. I'm just talking about a more general change in foreign policy that might work better than the system which we've currently got.

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Ok, so let's say that Russia conquers Ukraine and installs a puppet dictatorship (as they're likely to do). The next day, they say, "ok, we're taking Finland now, stay out or suffer terrible consequences". What's our move ? Do we say, "damn, it's a hard break, but no one wants to start a nuclear war over Finland" ? Ok, so they take Finland. Then it's Sweden. Then it's the Aleutian Islands. Then they say, "hey, we know Lithuania is part of NATO, but guess what, we're taking it now, stay out or it's WWIII". Is Lithuania worth a nuclear war ? Probably not, right ? And then, they ask for Alaska...

My point is, mutually assured destruction only works when it's *mutually assured*. If we have a pre-commitment to never even risking nuclear war, then it's the same as announcing that any dictator can have anything he wants, no strings attached.

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You've got the order just a little mixed up

First, The CIA secretly gives Stinger missiles to everyone involved, then one of them attacks their neighbor, then come the sanctions and the public attention.

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It's as good a time to say it as any - people in rationalist spaces talk a lot about various kinds of X-risk, but actually very little about the primary X-risk the world is faced with. As far as I can tell, there is no reasonable model where (e.g.) bioweapons or unaligned AI present a higher risk than nuclear weapons; in the case of nukes and nukes alone, development is done, the equipment for deployment is built, and geopolitical paths towards their use aren't considered far-fetched. Overall the risk of an apocalyptic nuclear exchange has been estimated, conservatively speaking, as being somewhere between 0.5% and 0.1% per year; look at how this level of risk compounds over time [0] and you can see that this is on level with forecasts for AI risk. And yet most discussion of X-risk centers around AI, while nuclear risk is mostly ignored.

Is nuclear X-risk not talked about simply because no one has any ideas? Or because there's no points of leverage on the problem? Neither of these seem likely- we have a lot of very smart people in these circles, and also a lot of people with significant resources are at least influenced by what rationalists have to say (see e.g. the money sloshing around AI alignment circles now.) To be sure, the U.S. and Russia are very large, high-inertia institutions, even relative to the resources available in the rationalist and rat-adjacent community. But it doesn't follow that in the vast space of things we could potentially do, *none* of them would help address the issue; if we think we have leverage on climate change, which involves planetary-scale atmospheric physics, or AI risk, which involves entities we essentially model presently as gods, nuclear risk should sound entirely tractable by comparison.

We're reasonably fortunate that the Ukrainian crisis occurred in a time where we have relatively skilled and cautious Western leadership, where other geopolitical events that could interfere are relatively contained, etc. It's all too clear how this could fail to be the case next time. Hopefully this situation will serve as a wake-up call that we've been tiptoeing around an elephant in the room for a long time.

[0] See e.g. https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1498945370935767040

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"They’ve seen American conservatives say nice things about enemy dictators because at least they’re not American liberals"

More that American conservatives have started questioning whether dictators designated by the national security state as "enemy" are really <I>their</I> enemies. What beef does Bashar al-Assad have with me? This is hardly exclusive to them, it's common when populations feel their governments are dominated by the outgroup. An increasingly smaller proportion of the population identifies with the national security state and feels like its enemies are their enemies.

That's not to say one needs patriotism to motivate people to fight. I'm sure plenty would do it for money if enough was on offer.

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Your suggestions would have been reasonable if Putin could be trusted to keep his promises. Even with a "saved face" he is unlikely to just stop meddling in Ukrainian affairs, even outside Donetsk/Luhansk/Crimea. Casualties and economic losses mean nothing to him (and never meant anything to any Soviet or Russian leader, not that the US is very much different in that respect), so a formal recognition of a Russian claim in exchange for "peace" would be a win for him and a loss for Ukraine (and the West).

Good alternatives are non-existent...

A no-fly zone (shooting down Russian planes) would definitely be calling Putin's nuke bluff (or not a bluff), and a few percent chance of a nuclear escalation is more than the West can stomach. It would still not assure Ukrainian victory, since presumably Turkish drones would be off limits, as well.

Russia eventually taking Kiyv would result in underground resistance for years, openly supported and armed by the West, with the sanctions lasting indefinitely long and ordinary Russians paying the price.

Russia retreating to the Eastern Ukraine breakaway zones borders seems a bit better, but still result in the continued border issues as well as sanctions.

Putin going away one way or another would probably be the least bad outcome for everyone, but it can spark a lot of internal unrest in Russia proper, as well as resentment against the West due to the internal recognition of Russia as a has-been, whose power needs to be restored. Any punitive damages Versailles-style going toward restoration of Ukraine would make it even worse.

Basically, it looks like a train wreck no matter how you slice it.

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The idea that American planes shooting down Russian planes in a proxy conflict as some red line seems strange to me. That happened during the Cold War with "volunteer" pilots who somehow "volunteered" their equipment and its replacement/refueling. In Korea and Vietnam at least. I'm not sure if it's a good idea for other reasons. But the specific line of argument seems strange to me. I guess it's an argument against specifically making a no fly zone. But the plausibly deniable volunteer/"Ukrainian air force" intervention doesn't seem meaningfully different and has been done several times. Likewise giving them bases in surrounding countries to attack from which we keep under our umbrella of protection.

Have the rules changed? Maybe they have. But it wasn't the actual rule during the Cold War. And if they have, then Russia shouldn't have buzzed our planes or tried to ram our ships. This all instead looks like the west collectively deciding to be asymmetrically restrained. Which might be the right move: Russia is worth keeping some dry powder for because they're just not that big anymore.

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10.g. Russians stopping for Ukrainian traffic:

The vehicles in front are stopped, too, so it's not like they were yielding right-of-way. Although they didn't just block the intersection, which is something.

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Russia has miscalculated? How do you know that? By assuming that Western propaganda is true? The beginning of a war is called the fog of war for a reason. I don't see any mention of the clear information war that is going on. Of course Ukraine is going to say that Russia miscalculated.

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Three corrections, all in the area of facts:

1) Providing fighter aircraft is perfectly customary, the Soviet Union provided such aircraft for both North Korea and North Vietnam, during relevant wars.

2) Putin clearly stated that he wants full territory of D&L, hence broader than controlled before.

3) The United States was not into annexing any territory since the 1898 year, all further conflicts that were fought were never linked to annexation of territory.

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> My understanding is that Russia operationalizes neutrality as “don’t join NATO or EU” [...] Ukraine was not in either of these organizations before the war, and not being in them afterwards changes nothing.

I do not understand this argument. If I limit your options, it changes a lot of things. If you dream about joining The World Rationalist Alliance and I prohibit you from following that dream, would you say that because you are not a member currently, it changes nothing?

I grew up in a small country occupied by Russians. Sometimes I think that people from big countries like the US cannot imagine how if feels to have your options limited because some other country decided so. But this is the core of that freedom Americans so love talking about, isn't it?

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Interesting thoughts for sure. I also have a few thoughts (and questions) about what could develop out of this conflict going forwards, so here they are:

1. Will this conflict cause the public in Western Europe move more towards a "survive mindset" (as per Scott Alexander; https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/ ) or will they stay in their "thrive mindset"? Obviously, Western Europe is (or at least seems to be to me) the most "thrive" region in the World, especially if compared to the US. The reason for that is not obvious to me, since the US has more natural resources and a higher GDP per Capita. Maybe this is because Western Europe has such a strong social safety net, and because the US has provided defense to Western Europe since 70+ years now? Anyway, this might change a bit, with Germany now investing more in its military, and possibly supporting non-renewable energy (though I guess the biggest proof of Germany moving to a more "survive" mindset would be if the Nuclear Reactors were to be kept operational longer).

2. I think that the war shows that Eurasia is a rather unstable continent, particularly in the central part (so anywhere from Eastern Europe to South-Central Asia). The longitudinal ends - East Asia and Western Europe - look to be stable, as they have been since WW 2. Still, the Geopolitical advantage of North America is once again evident. Geopolitical scholars like Peter Zeihan and George Friedman have long ago written about this, but it wasn't evident as Europe looked to be "better" for many people than North America. As an European, I know that many other Europeans don't want to hear this, because a lot of the modern EU's identity is grounded in a background belief of superiority over the US and to a lesser extent the other "Anglo-Saxons", but Geopolitical Reality is what it is, and the US has all the advantages in terms of Geopolitics, while Europe has little, so (we) Europeans should continue to be on good terms with the US as much as possible.

3. So, obviously the US has many geopolitical advantages. This makes me more bullish on the claim (which George Friedman already put into writing more than 10 years ago) that the US will continue to be the most powerful nation in the World. The only real competitor is China, but then China has many geopolitical disadvantages, and is dependent on trade (unlike the US, which is basically self-sufficient, especially in conjunction with NAFTA). Also, the Russian army looks really weak - I am not saying that the US would necessarily be better at invading a large like Ukraine, but the "mood affiliation" by many alt-righters has given them a rather rosy view of the Russian Army, and the nation overall. Russia has a weak economy, and it's not an attractive place to emigrate to, so obviously the US and Western Europe have the economic and cultural superiority over Russia. Russia's only advantage are it's natural resources and military, and that only over the EU (and to some extent China), since the US (together with Canada and Mexico) is basically self-sufficient and militarily superior. Thus, the US should try to get more concessions from the EU, simply from a Game Theory perspective.

4. From a financial/investing perspective, the US (and other countries connecting to its economy like Canada, Mexico etc.) should do relatively well over the next decade. Western Europe, on the other hand, will most likely have (another) bad decade economically. This will probably shift capital flows towards NAFTA from the EU. China will also do ok probably, though it has to tread carefully so as not to become too isolated from the West. Overall, this decade will probably reaffirm US superiority in terms of Global superpower status. The Europeans might become resentful of the US again though, but I think many in Europe have a more realistic view now - the US is simply superior over Europe in most areas, and the Europeans better try to move more into a "survive" mindset, since this will lead to future prosperity, at least until there is a post-scarcity society.

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Completely crazy idea (sort of related to this post): To get a better understanding of Putin, someone could fine tune a model like GPT-3 or Jurassic to Putin speeches, conversations, etc., of Putin. Then one might have simulated conversations with Putin about his motivations, the war, and so on. Of course, this will not produce reliable information at all, but might still be a little bit insightful.

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9. I do not think that Zelensky has the popular support to concede on any of the current Russian demands, let alone all of them. And even if he tried to, I do not think that the current Ukrainian elites would let him to. In fact, the current negotiations are so unpopular that he struggled to put together a competent negotiating team. A good indication of these difficulties and of the general attitude towards the negotiations is that out of 6 Ukrainian negotiators at the first round, by the third round one (Kireev) was killed by Ukrainian security services while "resisting arrest" for high treason.

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

Re: jingoism, I suppose nothing promotes social cohesion better than real, bona fide external threats with big bombs and guns. Suddenly, Ibram Kendi's complaints start to seem a bit like first world problems when there are Russian tanks rolling into Kiev. Go figure.

Still, as I wrote elsewhere on the subject of Reddit-style jingoism: I remember during the whole Bari Weiss debacle at the NYT, she said "Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor." I worry that this is becoming true more generally: that private organizations and public institutions (including the federal government) are increasingly susceptible to the influence of Twitter or Reddit mobs, as if it were representative of public opinion. This is not good, because Twitter does not reward nuance, complexity, or even complete sentences. It rewards the opposite, really: indignation, us vs them thinking, stridency, snark, stupidity, etc. Ditto for Reddit.

Edit: forgot to add that Arnold Kling had a really good post on the subject, also. https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/twitter-mob-diplomacy-33?s=r

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> These are concessions in name only. Russia already has de facto control of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk, and has for years (I’m assuming Putin means the areas he already controls; if he means “Donetsk” and “Luhansk” in a broader sense, that’s a harder sell). Ukraine ceding them does nothing except take away Russia’s casus belli for future wars.

First, as others have pointed out, no, Putin wants both oblasts in their entirety -- not as currently controlled by Russia -- and as part of Russia, not as independent states, even if that's the current offer on the table (and it seems people in Putin's security council knew that already, before the invasion). Second, that this would remove any future casus belli seems wrong, as the stated casus belli was the need to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine, with a whole lot of questioning if Ukraine should even exist as a country (and there's plenty of evidence that Putin is, or at least closely hews to the ideas of, a Soviet irredentist at heart (see: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2015-09-20/putins-philosopher)). Ceding these territories in no way removes that nominal casus belli. The "special military operation" will still have failed, and Ukraine will still be a country that the "nazis" control, with an operational military. It's questionable whether the nominal casus belli is even strictly nominal and this really is about Donbas and Crimea. That the situation in both places was stable enough, was sufficient to keep NATO out indefinitely, and kept movement towards the EU at a glacial pace, seems like pretty good evidence that Putin's real aim is exactly what it sounded like: destroying the Ukrainian military and state, annexing it if he could find a good pretext (like the government fleeing into exile), installing a puppet regime if not. Unless Putin's rhetoric starts being primarily about Donbas and Crimea, and not "nazis" and the very existence of the Ukrainian state, he's going to have trouble backing down from the current posture over the long term. Those Russian people steeped almost entirely in state media won't stand for it (which is just how Putin wants it), so there will be a repeat invasion in a few years.

Even if it did, Russia has a very poor track record of abiding by its agreements with Ukraine. Who in Ukraine would believe it? Agreeing to the current Russian proposal would be political (if not literal indirect) suicide for Zelenskyy. That said, I do agree that western leaders should be pushing it.

I don't think anything more favorable to Russia than immediate implementation of Minsk II (but internationally run -- not just supervised) + an internationally run referendum in Crimea + Zelenskyy publicly resigning or agreeing not to run for President again, in exchange for no further blocks to NATO and EU membership, will provide Ukraine sufficient security guarantees for them to stop fighting back. I think that's why Russia is shelling civilians, to try to force an end to the war before Ukraine is in a sufficiently strong bargaining position to get those guarantees. Fortunately for the Ukrainian state, their patriotic fervor (jingoism, if you like) the population seems to be willing to sacrifice to prevent that from happening.

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> Sometimes its reasoning was noble: preventing genocide in Kosovo. Sometimes it was at least understandable: get vengeance for 9-11. Other times it was almost incomprehensible.

> The rare exceptions tend to be genuinely bad dudes

This does seem to ignore 1971, when the US strongly supported Pakistan in their genocide of the Bangladeshi people. (IMO, sending nuclear submarines for intimidation should be considered proper support)

The US has only ever had 2 real attacks on its shore. Pearl Harbor and 9/11, and we all know how they reacted to both situations.

> jingoism

I am mixed on the use of this word. When the unifying jingoistic identity consists entirely of white people and christians, you can't skirt around the race/religion question.

It is hard to find a good hypothetical. But, would the world have reacted in the same manner if the Philippines were under a similar invasion ? It is a Christian nation with strong cultural roots in Spain and the US. Clearly war in Liberia has never been much of a concern for the USA, despite being the only explicitly USA-inspired nation.

I can't believe that I am saying this.... But, could this be a fair instance of 'internalized racism' ?

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Russia not only expects Ukraine declares “neutrality” (as Switzerland) but that it makes a binding promise not to join any blocs. Not only military such as NATO, but also economic such as European Union. Basically Kremlin’s offer boils down to:

* Accept that 20% of your territory has been taken away, half of it annexed by Russia, another half turned into legal and economic blackhole used for organised crime, as other Russian quasi-republics.

* Promise not to join an economic alliance where 2 million of your citizens are already working and living, thus guaranteeing that your country remains at its income current level that is 3x less than Poland or Russia.

* Of course you won’t get any reparations for massive damage caused by Russian invasion.

* Accept the fact that Russia can and will inevitably invade once again, because neither a military alliance nor your own army (low income) will be able to protect you (Switzerland can afford being neutral because it has very powerful military force).

Remember, Ukraine already has been in "Russian zone of influence" 1991-2014. People actually know what it's worth in terms of life and death, not armchair geopolitics of "peace is a nice thing to have".

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Mar 8, 2022·edited Mar 8, 2022

Crimea, neutrality - something can be done there. Is it okay being neutral if powers are treaty-bound to defend you? And Crimea was a gift from Kruschev, after all. Even a token bit of denazification can be done by standing down the Azov Battalion. The Donbas are not so easy. The Russians control only a fraction, and Ukraine was starting to win the war. Only Ukraine can decide whether this is an option.

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Can somebody explain why the cat thing is notable, unless you're misunderstanding it as banning Russian breeds or something? The actual article quotes the org as saying:

"No cat belonging to exhibitors living in Russia may be entered at any FIFe show outside Russia, regardless of which organization these exhibitors hold their membership in,"

This doesn't seem that different from all the other private-sector BDS actions, and if anything seems less insane than the ones cutting off consumers, like Netflix.

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founding

FYI – I saw this post in my feed reader but didn't receive an email for it. I contacted Substack and they replied that you didn't designate the post to send an email (or something like that).

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Worth mentioning that no-fly zone doesn't just mean "shoot down enemy planes" it also means "blow up anti-aircraft weapons on the ground so it's safe for your planes to fly."

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I was confused by the "da dempre" part at the end of the Italian tweet defending cancelling Dostoevsky. (Google Translate said "from dempre", which didn't make any sense.)

Then I realized that it's a typo ("d" and "s" being adjacent on the keyboard) for "da sempre". So, it's something like

> Public figures also have this kind of responsibility. Forever.

or

> Public figures also have this kind of responsibility. Always have.

I thought I'd mention this in case anyone else was also puzzled about that.

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There's a tricky question involving international norms, and drawing lines in the sane, that I'd like to throw out for ideas.

We know that, despite agreements to respect Ukraine's borders, NATO & its components have never made a formal commitment to defend Ukraine. But the real reason, everyone knows, is the risk of starting WW3 with a nuclear-armed Russia, because lack of formal treaties has never stopped us before when WW3 wasn't at stake.

So the question is, what if Putin's next step is to go after the Baltic states? Those -are- part of NATO, we have a formal treaty to defend them. But fighting off Russia would carry just as much a risk of setting off WW3 as it would in Ukraine.

So what's the difference? Are we counting on the formal commitment to the Baltics to scare off Putin? But Putin seems to think of the West as weak, in part because of its worry over what defending Ukraine could lead to, so what if he calls our bluff and attacks the Baltics? Would/should we actually go ahead and fight, with all the same risks that we're now avoiding by not doing it in Ukraine? Or would we shy away from the risk, in which case the international norm has become "nuclear-armed dictators can do whatever they want," which I fear is too close to the new norm already.

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Mar 9, 2022·edited Mar 9, 2022

>In this spirit, I hope they encourage Ukraine to consider Russia’s recent peace offer.

>As far as I understand it, the offer is: Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home.

I haven't been through the full lineup of comments yet to see if someone else has already made the same point, but this strikes me personally as a bad take.

As I see it, one of the main reasons the Western world has so much coordination behind Ukraine right now is that Russia has spent years playing the plausible deniability game, and finally overplayed their hand. Russia backed separatists in Ukraine in order to have an excuse to gradually subsume Ukraine. People have been arguing for years about whether they were *really* doing this, and they would obviously never admit to it up front, so so far there was never enough coordination to decisively punish them the way the international community as a whole would if they just openly tried to invade and annex another country. But the current situation has essentially left egg on the faces of all the actors who would have contended that Russia *wasn't* making deliberate arrangements to carve up other countries and annex them, and lying about it to maintain plausible deniability. Essentially everyone now can line up behind the position of "your claims not to be doing this have all proven to be consistent lies, and you have shown every intention to keep doing it."

If the rest of the world agreed to let Russia take Donetsk and Luhansk, it would essentially mean that they'd agreed to let Russia continue playing the annexation and plausible deniability game, and they wouldn't be able to achieve the same coordination again to punish the next infraction.

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> The Pax Americana playbook for international norm violations is: the US slaps sanctions on the offender. The EU expresses “concern”. The UN proposes a resolution condemning it, which gets vetoed by whichever Security Council member is most complicit. And the CIA secretly gives Stinger missiles to everyone involved.

I laughed out loud at this.

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For a Russian who hasn't travelled outside the country very recently, it's currently impossible to get a US visa due to COVID vaccination requirements.

None of the vaccines available in Russia are accepted as proof of vaccination for a US visa. (Sources: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/proof-of-vaccination.html , https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/country/russian-federation/ .)

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founding

"5: Really, I can’t emphasize this enough, a no-fly zone means shooting down Russian planes."

What needs to be emphasized is that a no-fly zone means bombing Russia, killing Russians in Russia.

Every "no-fly zone" the US or NATO has ever done, has included bombing surface-to-air missile sites from day one, lest those SAM sites shoot down the planes enforcing the no-fly zone. In the very hypothetical case where we tried to implement a pure no-fly-but-bomb-nobody zone, we'd switch to bombing as soon as we started losing planes and pilots to enemy ground fire. And really, we're not going to give them free kills, we're going to bomb the air defenses first.

Russian surface-to-air missiles have the range to shoot down American planes almost anywhere in Ukraine, from sites safely in Russia, Belarus, and Crimea. So, we're not just going to be shooting down Russian planes over Ukraine if it comes to that, we're going to be bombing Russians in Russia. It's a "bomb Russians in Russia zone" dressed up in fancy dishonest words.

Which, if we're going to do that to them, they're going to do something very like that to us in return. OK, not bombing Americans in America, but they've got plenty of Iskander and Kinzhal and Kaliber ballistic/hypersonic/cruise missiles and we've got plenty of nicely mapped and visible airbases in Poland and Romania and whatnot from which we'd hypothetically be staging the no-fly patrols. That's a kind of warfare the Russians are probably pretty good at, and we've hypothetically just shown them that bombarding the adversary's homelands is fair game in this Don't You Dare Call It War thing.

So that's the obvious escalation from a "no-fly zone". One that's perfectly legal under the traditional laws of war, which are unlocked when NATO fighters are ordered to shoot down Russian planes no matter what pretty words we use. It's the next step in that escalation that is unclear, and thus worrisome.

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1: This isn’t “history restarting” . . . yet

Fukuyama moved past that mode into an “order vs disorder” mode where the only vulnerability to established liberal democracies is their own decay over time. What we are seeing through the lens of Fukuyama is the engagement of two poorly ordered states except that one is trending towards liberal democracy and the other is not. The question is now of how order engages with disorder.

2: If the Pax Americana is dead, we need to try something different; but if it’s still alive, we should stick with what works.

Pax Americana never covered the spheres of other states. No one declared Pax Americana dead when Russia fought the two Chechen wars, established two breakaway states in Georgia or invaded Crimea and the Donbass. Why is what we’re seeing now a threat to Pax Americana where the others weren’t? The distinctions don’t seem very meaningful and a more appropriate explanation is that Pax Americana never applied if you had a border with Russia.

3: A strong response right now isn’t just about Ukraine, it’s also about the next time.

Sure, but I’ll hold you to this later.

4: International norms may be annoying, but they’re all that stands between us and nuclear war, so we had better respect them

The only international norm that stands between us and nuclear war is the norm of “don’t nuke other people, otherwise you’ll be nuked”. All of the other ones are peripheral to this question although much of your reasoning here seems to apply more directly to measuring response.

5: Really, I can’t emphasize this enough, a no-fly zone means shooting down Russian planes.

I’m amazed that more people don’t realise that establishing a no-fly zone is an act of war.

6: Huh, I guess we’re still capable of jingoism

This deserves a full post by you.

7: The Obligatory Acknowledgment That We Are Also Bad (1)

It seems like the solution you’re grasping around for here is a way of creating a hierarchy of rules that can be used to define which wars are more or less moral. Just War Theory has undergone thousands of years of development to try to do that for you and I think you should at least reference it if you’re going to dismiss it. I don’t mean to be snarky in saying this; I really think you should. What you’re doing is the international relations equivalent of doing a write up on a promising new antibiotic while dismissing the existence of germ theory.

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Mar 9, 2022·edited Mar 9, 2022

No-fly-zones - 3 or so longer points: 1. "Lines in sand" are not that clear cut as "red lines". And there are no good precedents to be sure what a US/Nato-NFZ over Ukraine would mean in theory. In practice it would mean: a) no one flies, but our planes, just to check no one flies b) if one shoots at our planes, we shot/bomb back c) if one threats he will shoot at us, we will attack his defense first - yeah, I admit, all this sounds like: WAR.

2. But modify and things get fuzzy:

a) one small step below a US-NFZ could be this scenario (by my former colleague Dr. Dr. A. Umland*) :

you lend/lease Ukraine "decommissioned" fighter-planes F14-F18 WITH trained pilots (US/UK/...) who will get an Ukrainian passport (as China's "national" Ice-hockey-team). You paint the UA-flag on the plane, land them on a save airfield in Ukraine's South-west and: up in the sky and make those convoys burn! Andreas loves Russia and hates Putin even stronger than me, he does.

https://empr.media/news/ukraine/how-to-create-a-non-nato-non-fly-zone-over-ukraine/

b) The actual plan of (not only) ex-Gen. Petraeus is: you get MIGs from Poland and a few other countries that have some, give them to Ukraine (they have some pilots who can fly those machines), and: Up you go! - This should be ok, the CCCP gave warplanes to the Vietnamese. Breaking news: Poland ready to fly them to Ramstein (huge US-base in Germany), the US-admin not decided yet.

c) Drones: Essentially "reusable Javelin-carriers", thus a much smaller step up.

+ less/no need of big airfields, thus less vulnerable to Russian missile attacks

+ more deniability: no one will ever know who was on the controls; might have been even the XYZ-trainer flying, the Ukrainian just pressing the "fire"-button. (Imagine instead a caught F18-pilot on Russian TV speaking English only. )

+ Ukraine already bought and employs some TB2 Bayraktar Drones. So give them more TB2 and then some much more capable Bayraktar Drones, too - training is much faster and I see a "smooth line of escalation" up to the Predator-drone (Burn, convoy, burn!)

+ Drones are the better weapon - and the Russian forces seem not really ready to defend against those. If they shoot down some, so what? If they hit an F-18 with an US-pilot inside: different story.

No minus? Must be my plan. But on similar lines a pro: https://taskandpurpose.com/analysis/russia-ukraine-resistance-support/

d) We continue sharing hundreds of Javelin/Stinger et al. . Putin until now too proud to really complain. Seems to work nice enough to defend the big cities for now - but not the houses, not the people. If you want to stop the invasion in its track: convoy-attack. Hungry soldiers make bad fighters, tanks need huge amounts of petrol, weapons need ammunition "tactic is for amateurs, pros talk logistics".

e) "revolutionary warfare": offer their soldiers asylum and green-cards, same to all their degree-holders. Obviously another crazy Caplan-idea: https://betonit.blog/2022/03/02/make-desertion-fast/ see me in the small comment section - When West-Germany did that to the East, the commies only defense was to build a really loooong wall, quickly. They called it "anti-faschistischer Schutz-Wall" - and Mexico did not pay. I am fine with Putin behind a wall - or four - and soon rather alone.

* Andreas Umland is THE expert for post-soviet "neo-nationalist historiography". And a much bigger expert than most on Russia and Ukraine. Worked for a think-tank in Kiev, last time we met. Said for many years Putin's nightmare is a a democratic Ukraine that succeeds (thus the Kremlin worked hard for Ukraine to fail. Remember Viktor Yushchenko? ). And Andreas went all in to help make Putin's nightmare come true.

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What probability would you assign to West rather then Russia miscalculating?

It looks like Europe went from "We don't consider SWIFT ban, too much risk" to "We go all-in with SWIFT and CBR sanctions" overnight without sufficient preparations to fallout of such decision.

Even potential for banning Russian oil, gas, and other materials - from either Western or Russian side - is already sending prices to all-time highs.

Sure, West can always issue more debt and try to buy even at inflated prices - but that doesn't release constraints on supply side. There will be bidding war between Western and Asian countries for remaining resources - war that West isn't certain to win.

Bringing new sources and logistic chains online will take years to decades even in accelerated timeframe.

Once Ukrainian military is down - wherever it takes weeks or months - how much incentive there will really be to keep pain on Western side of equation?

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Mar 9, 2022·edited Mar 9, 2022

The invasion of Yugoslavia was a formative experience for me. I mean, I get that a world superpower can invade any place it likes. It sucks, but that's how the world is. But I will never get over how it can invade a multiethnic country, turn it into an ethnically clean nation state fueled by a toxic nationalist ideology, claim it was done to PREVENT genocide, and have absolutely nobody call them out on their bullshit while gentle left-of-center peaceniks nod solemnly and admit that some wars are indeed just and unavoidable. (Bonus: while also demonstrating the ability to quickly and forcefully stop the exact same ethnic conflict right across the border, by essentially doing the exact opposite of what they did in their "peace" mission in Kosovo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_insurgency_in_Macedonia .)

Of all NATO war crimes, Yugoslavia is also the most impactful. It essentially showed the way forward for imperialist wars in the next few decades. Russia's invasions of Georgia and Ukraine (earlier on) are basically xerocopies of the pattern established by it. There is, however, a silver lining corollary to this - it appears a successful territorial gain requires support from a significant percentage of local population nowadays. Ethnic tensions are great to exploit, but they can only be exploited or ignited in select places, and without them, you need a clear PR advantage over local authorities (kinda hard when you're literally murdering people for territorial gain), otherwise you end up like Russia now did in Ukraine - stranded in a foreign land, surrounded by hostile population, unable to control anything but the nearest surroundings of your army forces.

But the ability of the whole world to essentially pretend a pile of shit smells like roses (except for Serbians, who seem intent to cling to their country's territorial integrity even when it seemingly makes no practical sense anymore - except, well, it starts making one when you think of the problem in terms of a line in the sand drawn at NOT BEING FUCKING GENOCIDED OUT OF YOUR HOMELAND) will never cease to amaze, disgust and scare me. I'll take a million successful anti-vaxx movements over the climate of conformity that allows for that to happen.

There's also a lot off about comparing Ukraine to Belarus. For starters, for a majority of the last 30 years, Ukraine would have very much loved to become a Belarus 2. Belarus was a regional success story, a peaceful, stable country successfully weathering economic turbulences while Ukraine's democracy was switching between several leaders, alternatively Russia- and west-aligned, all invariably incompetent and corrupt. Until the latter finally decided to just give up on its political class and elect the first complete and total outsider they could coordinate around. (A correct decision, it would appear.)

If Lukashenko is an abhorrent dictator now, was he a respectable dictator earlier on? No, all this time, the problem was him being a dictator. Dictators are not some kind of inhuman demons optimizing for maximum evil, they'd all very much prefer to be loved by their subjects for running a rich, successful country, and sometimes are better at achieving it than their democratically-elected peers. What distinguishes them from democratic leaders is that they can just refuse to leave when being asked to. (And that's it, democratic leaders are certainly not above brutally suppressing popular unrest. If they don't proceed with it, it's only because they have to worry about consequences at a subsequent poll.)

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I do realise when reading this kind of thing that people in the US don’t know their own history. US invasions of other countries, direct or indirect, are a dime a dozen. At least one or two a decade. Proxy wars today include Syria and Yemen. In neither side of those wars is the US on the side of democracy or liberalism, in the former the US has supported sectarian Salafist insurgents, in the latter it’s siding with Saudi Arabia - one of the least liberal regimes in history. Medieval Europe had more rights for women and homosexuals.

Then there’s Afghanistan, and Iraq. Neither authorised by the UN. Libya was partially authorised but not to the extent of the actual bombing campaign which overthrew Gaddafi, destabilising North Africa and Europe and bringing back slave camps.

And of course South and Central America.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America

(Prior to all that there’s Vietnam, the Philippines, and the expansion into what is now the US in general.)

I haven’t included Korea, Kosovo, or Iraq which were in fact authorized).

I’d like the UN to step in here. Some neutral country like Brazil or India, or both, gets to be in peacekeeping in Ukraine for a while - if the Russians leave.

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There’s one thing which I don’t see talked a lot about, and I feel that this is an oversight. Many corporations pulling out of Russia seem to be NOT doing that as a direct result of western governments-imposed sanctions.

(see e.g. https://fortune.com/2022/03/07/these-companies-exiting-russia-have-been-going-well-beyond-whats-required-by-sanctions-ceo-daily/)

If not that, then what incentive structure is it? Do their CEOs and shareholders believe pulling out of Russia is a good thing because of moral reasons? Is it the response to (expected?) shareholder fears about next-quarter profit? (fears of Russian government going full soviet and nationalizing corporate property?) Is it, perhaps, that the western governments have tanked the rouble and that would make sales of anything imported into Russia unsustainable? (that last bit might explain retailers pulling out, but what about Visa and MasterCard? what about Maersk?)

I have a feeling that this is one of the more impactful things to watch for here, because whether corporations, in the end, have more power to fuck you over than state actors is a relevant thing to consider for the whole world going forward, not just Russia right now.

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Michael Kofman is another Russia expert who predicted the war. https://mobile.twitter.com/KofmanMichael

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Ok, I'm going to be an attack dog for a moment:

Hillary Clinton wanted to start a No Fly Zone over Syria.

Lots of people in the vaguely right-sphere were *absolutely terrified* of this.

In your original endorsement of Hillary for President - you didn't spend any time on this at all.

Is this just because the idea of a shooting war with Russia is now just much more salient to you? Did that information not reach your typical circles?

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From my outsider's perspective, here's what seems like potentially a workable peace agreement

1) Ukraine official adopts military neutrality, i.e. not joining NATO. I think I saw somewhere that Zelenesky signaled this would be acceptable. **The sticking point: how do you credibly guarantee this?**

2) Russia drops any opposition to Ukraine joining the EU. I think I also saw somewhere that Russia signaled this would be acceptable, since the EU is an economic organization.

3) Ukraine cedes Crimea, but both sides agree to some sort of roadmap that eventually minimizes border checkpoints to facilitate travel to/from Ukraine. Maybe Russia agrees to provide some resettlement assistance to people who want to leave.

4) Both sides agree to respect the results of new referenda for Donetsk/Luhansk, to be jointly administered and observed by some combination of Ukraine, Russia, the EU, and the UN. Maybe the choices could be a) be a part of Ukraine like any other oblast/region; b) be a part of Ukraine but with some sort of special semi-autonomous status; c) become totally independent. Not sure how to capture all those options in one referendum (don't referenda usually offer a binary choice?) so maybe it requires two stages or something. Maybe Ukraine agrees to provide some resettlement assistance to people who want to leave if the choice is a) or b), and Russia agrees to the same if the choice is c).

5) Both sides agree to a UN peacekeeping mission in Donetsk/Luhansk.

I'm curious what people who are more knowledgeable about Ukrainian and Russian politics and history think of this? Does any of it seem viable?

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Section 9 sounds like what Finland got out of the winter war with the Soviet Union: fight heroically against a much bigger neighbour, then give up some territory and declare neutrality in exchange for peace. That sort of worked, but did lead to the foreign policy term Finlandization being invented (and someone has already added a reference to Russia-Ukraine to said wikipedia page).

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>"I hope they encourage Ukraine to consider Russia’s recent peace offer ... Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home."

I wonder whether it could be accepted, and what would happen, if Ukraine offered a concession of holding new referenda (with international oversight and proper secret ballots etc.) in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk: whether Russia would agree, and how citizens there would vote now.

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Charles Stross blogs a letter from Ukrainian artists, with bank data to donate:

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2022/03/a-letter-from-ukrainian-artist.html

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Mar 9, 2022·edited Mar 9, 2022

Don't take an action against a nuclear power, unless everyone believes that if they said 'stop taking that action or we'll nuke you', you'd call their bluff.

I had not properly internalised that. Sanctions fall into that category. Going to shoot down Russian planes does not. You've convinced me that it's a bad idea, previously I was all for it.

I think Russia (or more specifically, Putin) has recognised that better than anymore, and has been deliberately trying to limit the actions the Western world can take that fall into that category.

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“ did the West cause the war by expanding NATO?”

Does Eastern Europe get a say? Poland and the Baltic states came willingly to NATO and Ukraine wanted in too. NATO did not expand via conquest. Should Russia get to dictate who its neighbors turn to for defensive and economic partnerships? Does it matter that part of the reason those countries are interested NATO is that they have already experienced decades (or centuries!) of Russian hegemony?

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"But there’s a failure mode where every villain can come up with at least one rule they followed which the other villains didn’t, then guiltlessly condemn the other villains for their villainy. Putin says that invading Ukraine is okay, because they’re Nazis; maybe he even believes it."

You're making the opposite point of the one you're trying to make. If Putin needs to fabricate information (claiming the Ukrainian government is run by Nazis) to claim moral high ground, that suggests he *can't* come up with a reasonable rule that he actually followed.

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"Prevent NATO expanding", "Ukraine is not a real country", "Save russian people from Nazis".

All these assumptions have one thing in common. A dictator who has been selling out Russian oil(gas, metals) for the last 20+ years does not care about them at all.

A main concern which affects all decisions of Putin and his oligarch friends is to stay in power and to keep multi billion dollar fortunes.

So what current situation gives them from this point of view:

* Gives an excuse to ignore international corruption investigations.

* Pass more laws to push down on any attempts to grow opposition.

* Makes it harder for the Russian opposition to get support from the West.

* Consolidate his accomplices by making them unwelcome in the West.

* Blame the situation in the economy on a war and international sanctions.

* Give boost to patriotic propaganda.

* More control over the internet and mass media.

* More control over the finance system.

* An excuse to ignore the MH17 investigation.

* Have regions of instability instead of economic growth in neighbouring countries so they are not being an alternative for russians.

And all this is achievable independent of how his venture went.

Why move in a direction of locking down the county?

They already have quite a huge amount of money so staying in control becomes more important than making more. And selling gas and oil is gonna stop being profitable in the not so far future. So it makes focusing on getting more money even less justified.

Legalizing their fortunes in the West is not an option. As no western government will give a promise to protect these fortunes.

Building a strong Russia is not an option either. As it requires creating a good set of laws, independent courts system, integrating in the world community, separation of branches of government etc. And this new system will be incompatible with keeping corrupt money.

As a bonus some conspiracy points:

* international community happy to have a scapegoat for economic crisis.

* and changing the news focus from post covid issues.

* oil selling countries happy to return to $100/barral times

* China loves to exploit opportunities while Russia is locked from the West.

On the information side of a war.

Putin's strategy for information warfare is not to focus on pushing his agenda. But an overflowing information field with so many different conflicting points to prevent creating a consistent picture of what is going on.

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From my perspective, it looks like Ukraine shouldn't accept Russia's offer at this point. And if any offer were to be accepted, the international community would still need to keep heavy sanctions in place at least as long as Putin is running the show. Otherwise Russia (and worse, their whole strategy) win.

Above all, I don't think a NATO membership ban should even be on the table. To the contrary, I think a concrete plan to *join* NATO should be a non-negotiable demand by Ukraine. What Russia's done by invading like this is demonstrate in the clearest possible terms that NATO membership continues to be a invaluable goal for Ukraine's future territorial integrity. Without that guarantee, they have every reason to believe a peace deal would only be temporary in Russia's eyes. The idea that NATO is or ever was a threat to the security of a peaceful, non-expansionist Russia remains as preposterous as ever, and it shouldn't be legitimized. It's just a(n unconvincing) lie told by Russia to make their plans for expansion be less hindered by the West. NATO membership is the ultimate roadblock to that expansion. If Ukraine had somehow already been a NATO member, the invasion wouldn't have happened, plain and simple. Neither would the Crimean annexation.

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Mar 10, 2022·edited Mar 10, 2022

Re:" every villain can come up with a rule they followed to distinguish their behavior"

Maybe, but "Ukraine are Nazis" would be a terrible candidate for Putin's rule to disinguish from American behavior in Iraq even if it were true. Saddam's Baath party was LITERALLY a National Socialist party. Openly. It was founded in the '30s by Arabs residing in France and running in fascist intellectual circles, it grew in the early '40s as those people (successfully) lobbied the Vichy occupation government they were living under to get the Germans to sponsor resistance to British colonial authorities back in their home countries, and it became a dominant political force in Syria and Iraq as British authority gradually fell apart and the party's role in having resisted such authority (and its long-established habit of having been complaining about the Jews before Israel was a thing) gave it credibility with the local masses.

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> This is about Taiwan, Georgia, Iran, and all the other places that great powers want to invade but don’t.

What great power wants to invade Iran? The US? Or did you mean Iran acting as a big country here, e.g. in Lebanon or Yemen? (Probably true, but also true for some other regional powers)

Declaring a no-fly zone is a bluff that would likely be called, directly leading to aerial combat between NATO and Russia. To make matters worse, chances are great that it would not, in fact, stay plane-vs-plane only. I am not a military expert, but it is my understanding that there are ground based anti-aircraft weapons stationed in both NATO countries and Russia, which would likely be involved in aerial combat. The standard strategy to deal with annoying enemy AA would be to bomb it. Voila, you now have a ground attack with dead soldiers on the sovereign territory of a nuclear defended state.

I really wish I could accuse Scott of attacking this absurd straw-man of a no-fly zone, but actually some people were seriously discussing it.

The idea that primitive, macho cultures makes hardcore warriors which will then defeat the soft, decadent civilised people is thoroughly deconstructed by Dr. Devereaux here: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/ .

Morally speaking, any particular countries are just accidents of history and unlike humans do not have any intrinsic rights. Recognizing the sovereignty of a country per default is just a pragmatic way to avoid the horrors of industrialized warfare. Of course, to the degree that a countries government represent the will of their population, taking actions against that government is clearly an asshole move. Also pragmatically, outcomes of military interventions are often terrible from a human rights perspective. That being said, if a country is running Treblinka or trying to waken Azathoth, by all means invade.

Bret Devereaux has recently published an article on protracted war -- the way a weaker enemy can win by avoiding a quick decisive battle. https://acoup.blog/2022/03/03/collections-how-the-weak-can-win-a-primer-on-protracted-war/ Spoiler: it's terrible.

A few weeks back, a snarky remark to the effect that the West would defend Ukraine to the last Ukrainian soldier made the rounds. I still think there is some truth to it: when big countries think about geostrategy, the wellfare of smaller countries is not their top concern. For NATO, tying up Russia in a protracted conflict for decades could be considered desirable. For the Ukrainians, not so much.

"Neutrality" is more agreeable than Putins previous the previous goal of regime change and demilitarization. Still, I can't help being reminded of the Stalin-Note, where Stalin proposed to create a neutral unified Germany in 1952. Neutrality works great if you are Swizerland: armed to the teeth and in a terrain which bound to become a nightmare for any invader. It probably would not have served Germany well in 1952, and it will hardly be ideal if you have a big belligerent neighbor with a cavalier approach to respecting your souvereignity or even nationhood.

Still, there is something to be said for not fighting tomorrows possible war today.

I think sanctions are great. If you behave like North Korea, you get treated like North Korea. Still, it seems that the EU values not having a great depression because of natural gas shortages more than Ukrainian independence.

Also, I *really* can't stomach all the cheap signalling wrt the Ukraine conflict any more. If I turn on the local radio, I either hear about local industries affected in some minor way by the war or even nearby municipalities heroically flying the blue-yellow flag or even suspending twin township agreements with Russian towns. That will show Putin. By all means, suspend away, but please realize that this is neither newsworthy nor a Valuable Contribution to the War Effort.

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You wrote:

America has invaded a lot of countries, even within my lifetime.

Sometimes its reasoning was noble: preventing genocide in Kosovo. Sometimes it was at least understandable: get vengeance for 9-11. Other times it was almost incomprehensible: we’ll debate what happened with Iraq II forever.

My bright line rule: you don't get to start the war. You do get to join in once a war was going

1: Kosovo: Serbia was at war with the other parts of the former Yugoslavia, slaughtering lots of people because they managed to grab most of the heavy weapons when the country broke up.

We didn't start the war, but we helped to end it

2: Afghanistan: An act of war (the 9-11) attacks was launched against America by a group operating in Afghanistan.

We politely asked the Taliban to turn over to us the malefactors.

The Taliban chose to side with the malefactors. This put them at war with the US.

So we returned the favor, and engaged in acts of war against them

3: Iraq II. Iraq I di NOT end with a peace treaty. It ended with a truce, and a truce agreement.

The truce agreement required Saddam to give up all WMD, and not try to get them ever again

Saddam's threats to use WMD against attackers were a statement that he was in violation of the truce agreement. As such, the war was back on, and the US was free to invade

4: Iraq I: Iraq invaded a neighboring country. We went to war to reverse that illegitimate act of aggression / war.

No, we're not "bad". We're following a consistent set of rules.

Ukraine did not invade Russia. Ukraine was not hosting terrorists who were attacking Russia

Russia's sole grounds for objecting to Ukraine joining NATO was that it would make it harder for Russia to bully / invade Ukraine.

These are not legitimate grounds.

Russia is bad.

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You wrote:

Now the situation is different. Russia has miscalculated, they know they’ve miscalculated, and the best ending for everyone is for them to leave in a way that sort of preserves what’s left of their honor - one that doesn’t humiliate them any more than they’re humiliated already.

No.

The best solution is for Putin to get assassinated by one of his guards.

The only really acceptable outcome is for Russia to be completely kicked out of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donetsk/Luhansk. It must be clear that "overplaying your hand" is an extremely expensive thing to do.

How to do this? No surrender. I f Russia "conquers" Ukraine then NATO / EU / America keep the sanctions going. And NATO funds Ukrainian partisans, arming them with Javelins and Stingers and appropriate small arms, giving them training in Poland, then sending them back across to kill Russians, and keep on killing Russians and any local supporters until Russia is forced to leave.

That is how you protect Taiwan and Georgia

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Grenades via mail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2WcBglPjCg

2015. TV coverage of looting in "liberated" Donbass.

ammo and grenades in the socks, but the most funny part is the announcement in the Post office "Please, drain water from the washing machines before sending"

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Mar 11, 2022·edited Mar 12, 2022

> I am not an international relations expert. But every international relations expert whose commentary I have read claims that the extent of Russia’s recent infraction does not give the West the right to declare a no-fly zone in Ukraine.

I'm no expert either, but as far as I understand, under international law, strictly speaking, Western countries have every right to ally with Ukraine, and defend it from Russian aggression. However, doing so (in certain ways, such as shooting down Russian warplanes) would create a state of war between Russia and the Western countries in question, which we want to avoid.

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Does "neutrality" just mean NATO, or does it mean Ukrainians get to work in Polish nursing homes and Italian ports and send money home to their families? Can they as individuals, businesses and a state do business with whomever they'd choose with relatively fair courts, or must all offers be those you can't refuse? Euromaidan was over a trade deal and migrant work visas. I can't speak for Ukrainian calculation what sort of life and horizons are worth taking what risks over, but I suspect we'll run into these crises with more frequency and severity if we don't stand with them.

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Agree with everything.

I will make one quibble. The story of 2014 is a lot more complicated than "Russia invaded". Ukraine is a deeply divided country. Something like 90% of people in Donbass and Crimea voted for the guy that was overthrown in the coup (a coup the west supported openly). The Ukrainian government has passed laws and taken actions that persecute Russians, they have mistreated Donbass and Crimea, and Russians that protested the coup were killed (burned alive in Odessa).

If Trump had overturned the election on Jan 6th and California announced its independence and the army came in to forcibly re-integrate them and people that protested this were arrested or killed that would be a pretty messy narrative for us too.

Of course I can make a whole list of all the bad things the Russian side did too, but there are lots of people who are going to do that for me.

Ukraine is a somewhat artificial country. The far east and far west have little in common. They've had eight years to reconcile these differences since 2014 and they are still issues. Maybe a partial break up just makes sense for everyone.

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Seems like a very American point of view. From here in Europe it feels unintuitive that providing military assurance to a neighbor being invaded would be outside the norms of of interational relations while targeting the civilian population by e.g. freezing central bank assets is perfectly normal. I'm not sure how capable European air forces are of fighting in a large war away from their home countries and without US participation but if the Russians advance further west in Ukraine I have a feeling it will be on the table, at least as a threat.

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I am from Poland and live near the ukrainian border. Yesterday, Russian rockets fell close enough to the Polish side that window panes shook. My neighborhood is full of refugees that many people are helping as if Poland was attacked too. I and other Poles, including those with the most pro-Western mindset, believe that NATO guarantees do not guarantee our safety. There will be some kind of reaction from the alliance countries, but I suspect that the argument about not causing World War III will be what matters when the Americans are considering whether or not to do a no-fly zone over Poland. We probably won't be fighting alone, because people from the Baltic countries, as well as the Slovaks and the Czechs will show solidarity. Probably there will also be some limited reaction from the western countries. But this is what is interesting - people think of the NATO alliance in absolute terms. To consider what the reaction would be to an attack on Lithuania or Poland would put it somewhere between "Full US war on Russia" and "US delivers stingers near Polish border" or, which is also possible though unlikely, "we defend on our own". In considering the likelihood of Western intervention in our favor, I personally also take into account cultural factors. The West starts in Germany, not here. As one weepy reporter from Ukraine put it, "people here are almost European." Slavs will remain Slavs to their great civilized brethren - while the attitudes of many French, Americans, Germans, and so on contradict this, as they go to fight in Ukraine and help refugees in Poland, the societies of the West may be affected by such thinking sufficiently to influence their response to possible Russian aggression. So my guess is that the first non-fly zone will be over the rooftops of Paris, or over the Brandenburg Gate. This is how the world works, and frankly speaking, why should a guy born in Nevada or some other Alabama die for Dorohusk or Lublin, or even Chełm? But those are different issues. To me, the degree and shape of the NATO response is a taboo of forecasting.

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Mar 13, 2022·edited Mar 13, 2022

> Also, the last time this happened, in ‘62, it was the Russians who agreed to back down to prevent nuclear war. We owe them one, so this time it’s on us.

Are you sure about this? Because what happened in '62 is that Russians got exactly what they wanted - US removing missiles from Turkey and Italy. Only they let the Americans claim they "won" on Cuba issue, and not mention the whole Cuba issue was a pressure tactic to make US back down on Turkey and it worked. So they let Kennedy pose as Tough Warrior That Stared Down The Commies, while achieving 100% of their objectives. I feel like describing this as "Russians agreed to back down" does not give justice to what actually happened. It's more like "US agreed to back down but Russia agreed to make it look good for the US". It can be seen maybe as a personal sacrifice of Khrushev to Mother Russia - because while he did win on the ground, he also allowed himself to look weak, and maybe that contributed to him to be removed later - the only one of the Soviet leaders until Gorbachev not to die on his post.

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> As far as I understand it, the offer is: Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home.

Oh no, this is wildly incorrect. Besides that, the offer also includes demand for Ukraine to "denazify" - which basically means surrendering their public discourse to Russian control and suppress any nationalistic movements and anybody opposing Russia, but by the hands of Ukrainian government themselves; and "demilitarize" - i.e. ensure next time Russia tries to take over there wouldn't be anybody to resist. This is not a peace offer, it's an offer to surrender unconditionally, with Russian takeover delayed until they can fix their tanks up and change their troop's uniforms to a parade ones to look good on CNN, and maybe set up some "genuine Ukrainians" that would cheer incoming Russian tanks (those were already supposed to be there, but looks like Russian FSB officers responsible for it just stole the money instead of hiring the collaborators).

It'd be terminally stupid (for head Ukrainians, in a very literal sense, nunless they flee the country immediately) to accept such a "deal".

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Mar 13, 2022·edited Mar 14, 2022

> Maybe Russian propaganda, but still pretty funny:

It could have happened. But what also happened is Russian troops murdering multiple civilians in cold blood, including running their cars over with tanks, shooting their vehicles with tank weapons, shelling and machine-gunning humanitarian convoys in pre-agreed humanitarian corridors, and just murdering random civilians that happened to be around because they... well, because they can I guess.

Here's a witness report of a person spending 10 days under Russian troops and witnessing some of the murders himself (in Russian):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhvEV8vXgpM

Here's a journalist just recently murdered by Russian troops:

https://www.foxnews.com/world/ukraine-russia-war-nyt-contributor-killed-journalists-wounded-kyiv

NYT of course hastened to clarify this person no longer works for them, because of course that's the most important thing to say about this.

tSo no, Russian troops aren't "polite people" letting civilians go by unharmed. They are very brutal and murderous occupants. And yes, of course Anatoly Karlin, a Russian propagandist, is publishing Russian propaganda. Other people should know better than to disseminate it, though. If you were in the US in 1941, and there were Instagram and videos, would you publish a "funny video" about a Nazi soldier letting a Jewish girl go by and giving her a candy?

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>Also, the last time this happened, in ‘62, it was the Russians who agreed to back down to prevent nuclear war. We owe them one, so this time it’s on us.

Wrong. They backed down because they got what they wanted from us - removing nukes from Turkey. They didn't back down out of respect or because they wanted to maintain peace. They put missiles there to get us to remove ours (and used the bay of big invasion as a justification).

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Why didn't I get an email notification of this post? How many others have I missed :/

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Mar 20, 2022·edited Mar 20, 2022

"That’s because the Westernized Afghans were the kind of people who cared about trigger warnings and misgendering, and the Taliban was Traditional Masculine Warrior Types. The Taliban could say “kill the infidels!” and the Westerners would argue over whether considering the Taliban an “enemy” was racist."

Just because you see leftists in the USA who say things like that does not mean you should project that behavior onto westernized people in random 3rd world countries. It suggests a very warped sense of reality to suddenly throw these depictions of "newly westernized" people out as if they are based in fact rather than your mind's bizarre yin-yang-esque(a grossly exaggerrated, simplified assumption that all things fall into two groups of attributes, and allowing any vague similarities to immediately pull something into being assumed to be just like one of two sides) transmutation of US culture wars' sides.

"Theres some liberals who do X in the USA" is not a grounds to automatically assume that westernized people in other countries do the same thing in any significant number, and there are obviously an enormous number of steps in between "westernized" and "USA liberals circa 2021 or whatever".

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RE: No fly zone: What if we just shot down missiles and not planes (not sure how feasible/effective this could be). I guess one could say we're already doing this by providing some AA equipment, but we can do more there.

RE: Lines in the sand

1. If Russia drops a tactical nuke on Kyiv does that warrant our involvement?

2. What if they gas the remaining defenders of Mariupol?

3. Is there a number of cities we allow him to level before we got involved?

My feeling is the answer is #1 we get involved #2 - #3 we will stay the course.

The only thing that I think is really lacking from the Biden administration is rhetorical. We are folding our hand every time - perhaps if we played a couple hands of poker we could gather better intel on when Putin would fold.

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