One of my favorite parts of Georgia HW Bush's memoir is where he was talking about how useful, hands-on and engaged he he felt, working the phones, etc, in rounding up and keeping together the coalition of world leaders that united to drive Iraq out of Kuwait after it attempted to do there what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Been a long time since I read the book, but my recollection is he felt like that was the part of his presidency where he really was the right person for the job and was able to put his lifetime of connections and skills to their best use. Don't know if that applies to Biden, but hopefully his lifetime experience herding cats and stroking egos in the Senate can be useful here.
I very much agree. Biden's greatest virtue is his ability to keep an even keel. He has his priorities completely straight and is acting correctly on all counts. We don't want Ukraine to fall to Russia, but the worst case scenario here is World War III and Nuclear Armageddon. Doing absolutely everything to help Ukraine *except* the things that would risk nuclear escalation and/or drawing more belligerents directly into the conflict is absolutely the right course.
I lack their wit, alas. However, what I take as probable sarcasm obfuscates your point and your true opinions, making it difficult to reply to whatever issue(s) you may have in mind.
ok. Highly experienced with foreign policy, sensible, and realistic. Consequences? 1: doesn't commit ground troops to Ukraine. 2: Has worked for months to build a Europe-based coalition to resist Russian aggression. 3: Doesn't freak out and soil himself when Putin rattles his nuclear saber.
"Highly experienced with foreign policy, sensible, and realistic."
Here's something Joe Biden actually said about foreign policy:
"There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy. Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind. Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic economic renewal."
That is, literally, nonsense. But a lot of what Biden says is literal nonsense.
I mean, you could replace "Biden" in that last line with the name of pretty much any politician, especially mainstream ones. They deal in nonsense publicly because it sounds good and helps them win votes at the margin. (After all, that speech might be nonsense, but it sounds great if you know nothing about how foreign policy works.) Literally any American politician of either party could have said that, so long as they hadn't previously given themselves a contradictory foreign-policy brand (which Biden hasn't).
I won't comment on whether Biden is "experienced with foreign policy, sensible, and realistic". But Biden's speeches are not where to look to prove or disprove that. Since we as the public don't have access to his private conversations or his thoughts, we have to look primarily to his actions to assess his qualities.
“When it comes to sanctions, the purpose of those sanctions is to deter Russian aggression”: Antony Blinken
“The purpose of the sanctions has always been and continues to be deterrence. But let’s also recognize the unique nature of the sanctions that we have outlined.”: Kamala Harris
“no one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening.”: Joe Biden
Clown Show. Apparently you like a clown show running the country.
I'm starting to think it may be pointless to engage you in an actual discussion, but I'll try once more.
"...you like a clown show running the country."
Your rhetorical ridicule is effective as insult and perhaps signals something to like-minded people, but it doesn't really speak to whether Biden has done a good job in dealing with the Russian invasion. It seems clear that you don't like Mr. Biden (though I doubt you know him), but it's less clear what you think he did that was mistaken, nor what a hypothetical better president would have done that would have led to a better current situation.
History, played here by Marshall MacLuhan, says, "Actually you know nothing of my work."
If only it were always a negative sum undertaking. Many (most?) wars have a clear winner who emerges better off than before. May I introduce you to the Romans over the Carthaginians. A million other examples supplied upon request.
The fact there's a winner doesn't mean the game is not negative sum.
However, I would make a stronger argument. In the industrial age, even the winners are generally worse off. Britain and France were much worse off after WW1, and WW2, which was also a catastrophe for the victorious Soviet Union. The Sino-Japanese war was a catastrophe for China. The Vietnam War was a catastrophe for Communist Vietnam, and so on.
Modern war is really bad. We've got too good at killing each other and destroying our valuable but fragile infrastructure, and the value of incremental territory has become very small.
I'm arguing it'd be better if there'd been no war, and Russia will very likely regret the war even if it wins, and even if the victory had come more easily than now appears possible.
You're arguing that if you get invaded, it's worthwhile to resist, even if victory requires sacrifices. That's something totally different.
Beat me to it due to the time zone (dis)advantage.
I will add that I read point #2 as ultimately reaching this conclusion. Russia may very well win this war, and end up coming out relatively "better" than Ukraine, but as the last sentence includes, "Russia itself will almost certainly be worse off". As will everybody to varying extents.
But the “cheap talk” in the Baltics has actually worked!! Putin is committing horrors without compulsion in Ukraine but wouldn’t dream of shooting a single Latvian border guard.
True so far. And I think one of the things that has everyone super nervous is the question of whether we were in some kind of equilibrium that's been being destroyed and the cheap talk won't work after this war.
I’m seeing a lot of wise chin stroking from the long term / x risk folks that seems pretty funny to me. Obviously I would also like to avoid nuclear annihilation! But there seems to be some thinking along the lines of ‘if we reduce the number of times Russia or us goes on alert then we are definitely reducing x risk!’ I dunno. I see the Occam razor type appeal here but it doesn’t seem super long term or even just correct in the short term. Acting as though reckless threats of nuclear holocaust are really important just seems to encourage the threats. Do these very smart x risk folks have some off ramp in mind for Russia (or US) nukes? Bc it seems like the plan is to increase the value of the stockpile and increase the value of the threats and just hope that at some future date disarmament happens. But why would it?
In fact if I were any non nuclear nation I would look at what Russia is able to get away with here and say ‘gee I better get some nukes’
Additionally, it is now quite hard to see any country voluntarily giving up its nukes in exchange for loose security guarantees the way the Ukraine once did.
I believe I read that Ukraine never really “had” the nukes. They had the warheads, but they were encrypted using keys that only Moscow and the Red Army had access to, and were essentially unusable.
Which only makes sense; if you were in charge of the USSR you wouldn’t want some Apparatchik Ripper in Kyiv deciding to launch the missiles on his own account.
"They had the warheads, but they were encrypted using keys that only Moscow and the Red Army had access to, and were essentially unusable."
1) Perhaps they didn't have the keys, but if they wanted working nuclear weapons, they could very easily have gotten them. The hardest part of making your own nuclear weapons is getting the nuclear material (which requires a difficult enrichment process). You don't need "the keys" to open up an existing nuke, remove the enriched uranium, and make your own bomb.
2) Moreover, I doubt they would even have to jump thru that many hoops. If they wanted to make their existing nuclear weapons work, they could absolutely have figured it out. If you give a mechanic a car without the keys, they can start it up and drive it off. It just takes a little time.
3) Finally, I'm pretty sure that there were both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The former have launch codes. The latter don't. They're meant to be used on the battlefield when you don't have time to wait around getting the ok from Moscow.
Nuclear weapons are much more complicated than that. They have a ton of components that degrade over time and would take years and billions of dollars that Ukraine didn't have at the time to refit. It would've been dumb and counterproductive towards integrating w/ either the West or former Soviet Union. North Korea starved to build their nuclear arsenal. I don't think Ukraine would be in a much better place, had they tried.
The maintenance costs of nuclear weapons are non-trivial but not nearly as high as you claim. Plus, they didn't need to keep the whole arsenal. They absolutely could have afforded to keep some tactical nukes. Again, they weren't starting from scratch here.
"North Korea starved to build their nuclear arsenal."
They starved due to a combination of economic mismanagement and bad weather. Spending money on a nuclear program was not the reason.
Ukraine would've turned itself into a pariah state. And no it would not have been simple. I haven't seen any proliferation experts say this would've been easy, but very many say that it would be impractical, given Ukraine's difficulties at the time.
No, Pakistan and India spent decades on their program. North Korea starved. Iran would've done it by now if it was easy. Pakistan's gdp was larger than Ukraine's at the time.
Having the materials, engineering know-how, and apparatus on hand means you effectively have the nukes, or at least will within a few weeks or a month once you've physically replaced the current launch security systems with identical ones built and encrypted by your own government.
It's not like they'd have needed to strip the fissile materials and build new bombs, which still would have taken less than six months with their pre-existing infrastructure.
If Japan today could go from no bombs to bombs in less than a year, Ukraine in 1992 could have gone from "bombs we can't set off" to "bombs we can set off" in far less.
This is a common misconception- the USSR stored their nukes on Ukrainian soil, Ukraine never 'had' nuclear weapons. The US stores some of their nukes in 3rd party countries, but we don't say those countries 'have' them
No, Ukraine was not 'among the recognized successor governments to the USSR', only Russia was. And no, they never had physical control over the weapons. You're wrong.
'Did Ukraine have nuclear weapons?
'When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, there were thousands of former Soviet nuclear warheads, as well as hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers, left on Ukraine’s territory, which it decided to transfer to Russia. Ukraine never had an independent nuclear weapons arsenal, or control over these weapons, but agreed to remove former Soviet weapons stationed on its territory'
'“If only Ukraine hadn’t give up its nuclear arsenal, Russia wouldn’t be able to bully it.” No.
There’s no way Ukraine could have kept the Soviet nuclear weapons stationed there when the Soviet Union ended. Some of us say it over and over and over again. I wrote a Twitter thread on it a few weeks ago, but I need a convenient piece to refer to, so here we go... Ukraine never had the ability to launch those missiles or to use those warheads. The security measures against unauthorized use were under Moscow’s control. The Ukrainians might have found ways around those security measures, or they might not have. Removing the warheads and physically taking them apart to repurpose them would be dangerous, and Ukraine did not have the facilities for doing that. Nor did Ukraine have the facilities to maintain those warheads. For only one example, the tritium in those warheads has a 12-year half-life and needs to be replaced regularly'
Ukraine had, at the time, the know-how and physical plant to replace the physical security mechanisms with their own.
It also had the know-how and physical plant to "gear down" and use the materials to produce enhanced fission weapons in year one while building back to fusion warheads over a few years.
I see your argument, but it's mincing legalese rather than reality.
Ukraine's post-independence government could have chosen to maintain an independent nuclear deterrent and did not, in large part because the US talked it out of doing so.
Cheryl Rofer, who wrote the piece, is an atomic scientist whose entire career was in the nuclear field, including decades at Los Alamos National Labs. She's an international subject matter expert on nuclear weapons. She wrote in unambiguous language 'Ukraine never had the ability to launch those missiles or to use those warheads'. I'm taking a subject matter expert over a guy on the Internet whose source is 'dude, trust me'.
If your argument is that Ukraine could have created a nuclear program from scratch, i.e. not using those specific weapons but just building nukes in general- that's fine if you believe that (obviously alternate history paths are unfalsifiable), but I was reacting to Gunnar's statement that Ukraine 'gave up the nuclear weapons that it had'. It never had them
Much of US nonproliferation policy has now been revealed to be bullshit. If we’re not prepared to nuke Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, or Tehran (and we should not be) over Kyiv, Taipei, Seoul, or Tel Aviv, then we need to stop putting fingers on the scales with false assurances to that effect,
"If we’re not prepared to nuke...Pyongyang...[to protect] Seoul..."
Who says we're not? The US had tactical nuclear weapons on the peninsula until 1991, the point at which the US pulled its last troops from the DMZ. It was long the policy that nuclear weapons would be used if that's what it took to prevent Seoul from falling to a North Korean invasion.
You're right, of course. I should have set South Korea to the side as it is more or less formally incorporated into the US nuclear umbrella.
We have credibly shown that we'd nuke Pyongyang if it nuked Seoul or Busan.
Our mistake was treating Ukraine and Taiwan like South Korea in one way but not both. We've pushed them not to pursue nuclear weapons, without actually offering to formalize bi-lateral defense relationships that would ensure their security in the absence of their own independent nuclear deterrent.
Probably just as well that the ROKA can now hand the KPA its ass on a silver platter with no particular need to do that.
Nothing, even an immediate decision from the ROK and US to go nuclear, can save the northern suburbs of Seoul from a thorough pasting, but the ROKA can probably destroy or suppress most KPA artillery ranging on the region within a day and push them back from the DMZ fairly quickly.
The more firepower they devote to killing civilians in Seoul in the opening blow, the more quickly ROKA counterbattery fire attrits that firepower.
They really have no trump cards to play except for nukes, and given Kim's obsession with, well, survival... those're only useful as a threat in being.
I mean, maybe the world would be safer if the US were credibly threatening to nuke Beijing over Taipei, but I don't care to put the theory to the test.
In the absence of such a willingness, I don't think I can argue the world is safer when Kyiv, Taipei, and Seoul are entirely at the mercy of Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang. I certainly can't argue that Ukraine, Taiwan, and South Korea are safer, and that's what their governments should be aiming for.
As much as I generally dislike Israel, its policymakers were 100% correct to build nuclear weapons in secret and present the world with a fait accompli when they had a sizeable deterrent, then decline to ever dismantle it.
Ditto India vis-à-vis China.
If I were at the head of the Taiwanese government I'd have contracted with Israel for a "mobile-deterrent-in-a-box" long since. 2-3 submarines each with half a dozen nuclear-tipped SLCMs would do the trick.
The whole point of having them is to extremely strongly deter the immediate attack, so I think that's a bit backwards. China might *say* they'd attack if they thought Taiwan had nukes, sure.....
Taiwan could always go the Israel route and clearly have them while officially denying it
Of course. Unless they simply purchase a ready-made deterrent from another actor, a turnkey solution.
If Pax Americana does really fall to pieces over the next decade, and they weren't picked off in the process, there will be no shortage of folks willing to do that in 2032. At least India and Israel, and perhaps France and Japan.
Even the US might do it as a final fuck-you to China if we're mostly pushed out of the Western Pacific.
Obviously (!?) the goal is to make nukes irrelevant. Sure, you can kill a few thousand people, but their consciousness is backed up and their insurance covers the new bodies; sure, you can raze a city and irradiate everything, but we can just slosh around this barrel of sci-fi grade hyperpolymer and it's better than new, etc. Not to mention maybe, hopefully, possibly, shoot them down before they explode with, you guessed it, amazing shiny lazers.
But more seriously, the x-risk has probably run its course. AI and meteorites are the real deal, and there's not much (or more) anyone can do about them (or faster), so probably x-risk people focus their energy on malaria nets, and nowadays mini grants. (Eg. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/acx-grants-the-second-half )
Yes! powerful space lasers will solve our terrestrial weapons dilemma!
I don’t mean to be too hard on them, there is a lot of good work. But there’s also a fine line between some of these long termism discussions and just being a control freak struggling with the chaotic nature of reality.
The countries in Eastern Europe have a right to have security against invasion by Russia and to become more prosperous through ties to the west. It's good that the U.S. and NATO have provided those guarantees.
I'm an EU citizen and I strongly agree with the first sentence while disagreeing with the second one. I find it deeply embarrassing that EU member states are threatened and we are waiting for the Americans to send troops. We have a much larger population than the US, comparable GDP (depending on how you measure it), and nukes (France). The US should say something like "We don't expect you to defend New Mexico, so don't expect us to defend Estonia." not because I believe that Estonia should fall, but because I think that the EU should wake up and realize that it needs to defend its members.
It’s all well and good to take existing security guarantees and use them; it’s stupid to assume they’re indefinite, and it’s now clear that Europe, Germany in particular, has failed to plan for the day when the US wants to wander off.
That day may or may not come, but it behooves them to assume that it will, and quickly.
1. The EU (and its citizens) know they are better off as free-riders to US power, so they are generally demotivated from making these sorts of investments.
2. We (the US and the EU) don't seem to know how to make this sort of handoff "friendly." I think all of us here can agree that letting Europe generally mind its own backyard, while the US worries about China, would be a good thing, but too many people would interpret it either as the US "abandoning" Europe, or US "decline," neither of which needs to be true.
Agreed, and I've thought a lot about point #2. I've seen a lot of takes saying that the silver lining of the invasion has been that it reaffirms the need for NATO, and I completely disagree. It affirms the need for European military spending and coordination. But the structural problem still exists that there's no incentive for other NATO states to build capacity if the US remains committed to NATO, and as you said there's no clear way the US can pull out of NATO.
I agree, and would even say that the US-led continuing to exist has overall weakened the EU militarily, due to the free-rider problem and the unclear guarantee of action that Matt mentioned.
If NATO has disbanded post-Cold War, you could easily imagine an EU-organized military, or at least much closer military coordination and strategy among the western and northern European nations.
I think that this simplifies to many of the issues. Foremost being, the country most of us would agree that needs to step up is Germany. However, there would probably be a good number of countries in Europe that would be uncomfortable with a much more militarily powerful Germany. The advantage of having the US lead is that it provides a mostly benevolent power that is not that has no history of dominating many of the countries in Europe.
And for all that we bemoan the fact that most American's don't pay attention to anything outside the US, this actually can be a bit reassuring. If anyone in the US wanted to act like Putin and claim some type of reason to dominate a part of Europe - most Americans would just find this stupid and get back to arguing about pronouns.
That's an interesting point. Are you European by chance? I wonder what the EU attitudes are around Germany increasing its military spending. I haven't heard concerns so far, which is in contrast to concerns in South Korea when Japan increased military expenditure.
Unfortunately, the EU has historically been unable to deploy combat power as an organized entity. Frankly, I've been pleasantly surprised at the EU's willingness to stand up to Russia, since it has spent so much time appeasing him and his oligarchs for so long. The behavior of states like Germany, Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, and Bulgaria have not been impressive.
I'm extremely surprised that the EU woke up this time too! To be fair, I'm not advocating for a rapid US disengagement right now. But if we could remake our financial system in the wake of the economic crises within 5 years, we can make a common defense policy that people don't laugh at in a similar timeframe, and the US should push in that direction and then leave. Moreover, if Germany decides something, what Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, and Bulgaria say is totally irrelevant. The whole point is to have Germany make up its mind.
I don't see it as a "trap" as much as an issue with the design of NATO - like Matt's point #5, if the US is responsible for security of any NATO member, it needs to show credible signs they'll act (ideally before a member country is actually attacked), which has ultimately led to the US responsible for defense of all vaguely democratically-aligned countries in Europe.
Yeah, that' why I put it in quotes. NATO expansion as a real problem, ao Putin wanted Biden to own it. But it could have been solved peacefully. Or re-doing MINSK agreement signed only by Europeans.
It is strange that people refuse to see that Clinton and Bush were great presidents. Their decision to accept East European countries into NATO made countries like Poland and Estonia free and western forever instead of them sharing Ukraine's sad fate. Expanding NATO was a timely, lucky and ingenious decision to take advantage of the temporary weakness of Russia then.
The goal should have been to integrate Russia _itself_ into that web of alliances, while managing its transition into a stable, prosperous country. Instead we encouraged Yeltsin and his cronies to loot the place because a bunch of the usual suspects from U. Chicago saw a chance to dance on communism’s corpse, leading directly to the popular desire for a domestic strongman to clean house. Miss me with the idea that HW _or_ Clinton were good actors here.
One does not need to believe in the Green Lantern Theory of geopolitics to understand that Yeltsin ruled with explicit American support, and Yeltsin's rule was disastrous. We backed the wrong horse. Not the first time, and probably not the last.
Ah. Yes if only the right thinking West had gone in there and fixed Russia good, we’d have a vegan macrobiotist running Russia today. It was CLINTON and BUSH who allowed Russia to fall into despotic kleptocracy, so out of character for the Russians.
I couldn’t disagree more. The success of those Eastern European countries is far more due to the EU than NATO. All NATO expansion has done is antagonize Russia and turned a potential ally into a bitter foe. I will acknowledge that NATO expansion might have been fine if it had stopped before Ukraine, but the decision to offer it and Georgia membership in 2008 was a disastrous move that helped put us on the path to this current crisis. If you needed another reason to hate George Bush’s foreign policy, well, this is a good addition.
The late great diplomat George Kennan predicted exactly this outcome 25 years ago, yet nobody listened to him. Check out his full quote in Thomas Friedman’s recent article in the NYT: Kennan’s words are startlingly prescient.
Well, it’s sort of all tied together, isn’t it? Russia likely saw Ukraine’s move towards the EU as a stepping stone to NATO, considering many Ukrainian leaders expressly want both.
Is there any evidence that Putin finds the expansion of the EU in Eastern Europe any less threatening than the expansion of NATO? I would feel more confident about a unified West defending say Sweden than Turkey, despite Sweden not being an NATO member.
Who knew that George Kennan was a naif when it came to the Russian character? Soviet imperial ambitions were par for the course for Russia.
"I couldn’t disagree more. The success of those Eastern European countries is far more due to the EU than NATO. All NATO expansion has done is antagonize Russia and turned a potential ally into a bitter foe"
If anything NATO membership prevented Russia from steaming into the Baltics or anywhere else they didn't like looking west in the EU and falling out of their sphere of influence.
Lol, I don’t think you or anyone else has a right to call the architect of Soviet containment a “naif” about Russia. He knew what he was talking about. His point, which has essentially come true almost to the letter, was that if we had allowed Russia to retain a sphere of influence (like the US has in Latin America) and not pushed an obviously anti-Russia alliance right up to their borders, Russia would have remained friendly, as it was in the Yeltsin and early Putin years. At the very least, it would have no reason to lash out as it has been doing.
I was going to go with the opposite - Clinton pushed East into Russia's sphere of influence and fertilized the soil for Putin. I don't think it's that simple, but I think to some extent, the ability to build Russian nationalism off of some kind of ant-west grievance narrative is planted in the US's moving its security guarantees East.
Maybe (rather than just not expanding NATO) some kind of structure that included Russia or created some kind of larger multi-national structure could have worked.
Lately I've had the same reaction as I had when the housing market blew up: "oh great, we're paying for what Clinton's neoliberal dream-team did...again."
All of these models miss the fact that Russia like the housing market are both expansionist. (The former because path dependence, the latter because urbanization and population growth.)
It was only a matter of time.
Just a few days ago a video from ~1993 made the rounds here in Hungary. The then prime minister (Antall) was speaking about exactly this. People better not become complacent. The end of USSR was not a big shock to the ruling elite.
Oh, and don't forget fucking Grozny. Just like the US since its founding Moscow is also quite accustomed to power and imperialism, and with the conflicts and wars that come with the package. (Just as any big empire/nation. And in this regard the EU (and Japan) are the exceptions. Though it's not hard to know why, since the EU's supreme purpose is to avoid a war in Europe. And in yet another parenthesis maybe we can discuss that to get to this point first Germany, Poland, France, and Japan had to be bombed to the ground, and worse.)
An “expansionist” Russia was not an inevitability at all. In large part, it has been provoked by Western actions. Russia experts like the late George Kennan said so, all the way back in frickin 1997:
“Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”
I really don't understand how the US "provoked" an expansionist imperialist Russia. Could you point me to the action that the US took that required Russia to send troops in so many of its neighbors against their wishes?
If I was running Russia, I would look at the EU and think, let's take that from the inside. Join them, get the EU to fund a ton of development in the country - become very wealthy and powerful - and then because you're the largest country dominate it from the inside. Kind of like Germany has done.
Random aside on the last point... It's amusing that Germany within the EU has done almost exactly the opposite of what Germany under the Nazi's aimed to do within Europe.
The Reich wanted to subjugate the continent and peg their currency to an artificially high level to allow middle-class Germans cheap holidays to Italy, good French wine with every meal, cheap Polish grain, Nordic fish and seafood. They'd have impoverished the continent and significantly constrained their own growth prospects, but without our world to compare to, they'd feel well off, the masters of Europe.
Our Germany has decided to lock itself into the Euro as a means of keeping the exchange rate artificially low, hoard manufacturing employment, and push up the savings rate at home. While distorting the hell out of Europe's economy and ensuring foreign products are artificially expensive to German consumers.
I've seen estimates that German GDP per capita in nominal terms would be twice as high if they still had their own currency, simply because the exchange rate would be so different.
The Moscow based power structure is expansionist since centuries. I'm not claiming that their current behavior is inevitably a result of their past, but at this point the fact that "Russia" (in all its many forms throughout history) *is* expansionist, interventionist and very much supremacist. (NATO itself is a reaction to this.)
Again, of course, the future was not set in stone in the 90s, and it was obviously not an inevitability in that sense. But. States joining NATO instead of the Commonwealth of Independent States was not a coincidence. Russia having a worse GDP than EU is also not a coincidence.
Russia kept (and keeps) its neighbors as vassals, installs puppet governments, etc. See the recent protests in Belarus.
If Russia can meddle in Ukraine why can't the EU? It's just as much in its neighborhood. Plus the EU is extending, growing, isn't is just logical that Russia should respect it if it expects the same from the EU (or the "west")?
And it's not how Russians are, it's how totalitarian dictatorships are.
Yes! And our support of revolutions like Maiden was correct too. Moral relativism is a false idea, the world really does need democracy/liberalism/capitalism.
There are deep epistemological reasons for this, eg. error correction.
Bring back a strong & aggressive foreign policy in defense of it. MattY is still too soft.
Expand NATO to Sweden, Finland and whoever wants protection from Putin. Conventionally arm them strongly. Germany/France/etc has learned their lesson about supporting NATO.
After seeing how this war is going for his conventional military do you really see Putin invading Finland on even flimsier pretexts? The only scenario I could actually imagine that happening is one where Finland looks set to join NATO and he invades to preempt NATO "aggression".
If he's just invading state after state without fig-leaf justifications he's going to lose his few supporters internationally and possibly at home. The threat of further expansions seems vastly exaggerated.
I feel I need to emphasize - you and I and the West are not the only people whose opinions matter here. I don't like his justifications for war, you don't like them, the EU doesn't like them.
But plenty of other states are sitting this out and not taking sides. And plenty of Russians support this war, although many are lukewarm or even opposed. But that's partly because Putin has just enough justification for them to look the other way. If his next stop is Finland that probably changes, unless he can sell it as "NATO aggression".
Yglesias said in early 2020 that having Sanders as president was fine. However it is interesting to think about America having an anti America, anti imperialism type of politician as president in the moment of a great international crisis that threatens world peace. It is a very interesting question. If the simulation theory is correct, I am sure the simulation masters are going to try it in the future. Maybe with president Ocasio Cortez?
This might also be because Sanders himself seems like a fairly reasonable person with whom I disagree on various policy issues. It's possible there is some "rally-round-the-flag" aspect here (as long as the general policy stays within some acceptable bounds).
I agree and have been heartened more generally by Sanders sticking by Biden on lots of contentious issues, but there’s a *big* difference between Sanders following Biden’s lead and Sanders leading. And the 2020 campaign people surrounding Bernie (that would presumably be among those helping him lead) have not acquitted themselves well post-primary, to put it mildly.
It is completely possible that Sanders would have done everything exactly as Biden did. But still such a situation is so confusing for his basic instincts that America should try to appease every rival. Behaving otherwise is like Greece's Tziparas accepting European austerity demands.
I don’t think that’s accurate. I can’t find any direct statements from him to that effect and it sounds very different from the 5 minute video he put out last week:
Sanders policies actually have been in line with Biden regarding Ukraine and Russia.
In Europe he probably would be considered a moderate Social Democrat like the Chancellor of Germany who just called for increasing defense spending.
Most US allies (the UK, France, Israel to mention a few) have had leaders that where either social democrats or democratic socialists but because of circumstances unique to the US calling yourself a socialist makes people think you are a radical regardless of the policies you actually support.
While Russia's '90s economic woes clearly led to Putin, I'm a little skeptical of the idea that American advice and policy were primarily responsible for those woes. Was the advice we gave to Russia very different from the advice we gave to all the non-USSR Communist countries? Because those countries have done much better. And if we gave different advice, why did we do that? I would hypothesize that one difference was that, even after Russia lost the Cold War, the West really wasn't in a position to dictate to Russia what its economic policies should be. Even a weakened Russia was still too powerful to be dictated to like that, to its own detriment.
"Was the advice we gave to Russia very different from the advice we gave to all the non-USSR Communist countries? Because those countries have done much better. And if we gave different advice, why did we do that?"
I'm not an expert on this, but at some point I read an article (maybe in Foreign Affairs?) that answered "Yes (and we provided more than just advice)" and "Because we treated non-USSR Communist countries as victims and Russia as the perpetrator." If I have time, I'll try to dig up the article.
I worked for USAID in the 90s. The aid programs treated all of the non-Baltic post-Soviet countries including Russia under one umbrella, of course somewhat proportionate to size.
The point about the gulf states seems important to me. Pivoting away from the Middle East was happening anyway, but this crisis highlights how little our involvement has gotten us.
Absolutely. This is one more big shove toward cutting the Gulf states loose and wishing them good luck and all the best.
I also assume Ukraine is the final nail in the revived JCPOA coffin. I had heard that they were actually getting close to a deal, but I assume -- like the original JCPOA -- that would involve Russia being a signatory. That's a bit hard to imagine right now.
According to WaPo, the JCPOA negotiations are actually continuing along perfectly smoothly: "'It’s almost a parallel universe' from what is going on over Ukraine, said one person familiar with the talks."
Lyman Stone had a great thread related to this point. NATO has remained relevant because Russia been playing the “slice off bits of former vassal states while acting aggrieved” game since the moment it was born in 1991, and all the not-yet-invaded post-Soviet states looked at Transnistria and South Ossetia and Abkhazia and realized that it would eventually happen to them too.
I generally enjoy Matt but “NATO should not only have refrained from expansion but actually disbanded” may be the worst take I’ve read so far. Nothing happened in 1991 to fundamentally change the nature of the Russian regime, and certainly not to defang it. The point of NATO was to resist bullying under threat of invasion, of exactly the sort happening in Ukraine right now.
The idea that the US commitment to defense of European NATO is weak just ignores the reality that the US had committed enormous resources and taken human losses for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea with much weaker motivations.
I actually agree with that take (NATO should have been disbanded). In my mind NATO is the trans-Atlantic version of "The Blob", and I don't see a reason it should have continued to exist after it completed it's primary objective other than institutional inertia. You point to the need for it to deter Russian aggression, but in every other area of the globe we're able to do that without a dedicated organization. Another way I look at it is to ask: "If NATO didn't exist today, would we create the same type of organization to deter Russia"? I don't think we would. If you think we would, do we need to form a NATO-East (Pacific Treaty Organization?) tying Japan, AUS, NZ, SK etc. together?
You said “careless expansion of NATO,” but if a European country comes to us and says “we’re afraid of getting curb-stomped by Russia,” what are we supposed to say? “Sorry guys, realpolitik and spheres of influence dictate that we should let the Russians stomp you if they want to?”
Also, invoking Article 5 doesn’t mean launching a nuclear first strike. I hate it when people slippery slope their way into saying that war between NATO and Russia is automatically nuclear. Maybe it was in the 80s, but not now.
I don't have a good answer to that. But I think the way we've gone about it puts Russia in an impossible situation. If China started expanding a security umbrella into Central and South America, then Mexico and Canada, with the goal of containing the US, and they form something like the TPP without us (and we don't have NAFTA)...I could go on, but you get the idea.
I fear the ship has sailed on a window to do this, but I think the only way the situation could have worked out better is if security guarantees for ex-Soviet Republics were combined with some kind of alliance that included Russia and some kind of trading block, so that the Russians were in the tent pissing out, and not outside the tent pissing in.
The whole point of containment was to keep the East bloc from expanding out and consuming Western Europe, particularly while it was weak post WWII. It's not in the US's strategic interest* to isolate Russia and cut them off from the world, but it's worth almost any effort to Russia to avoid that case.
* I don't mean right now in terms of war sanctions, but as a baseline posture toward the country. E.g. if Putin got out of Ukraine tomorrow, would we go back to zero on sanctions, or find some other excuse to squeeze them.
The problem with this and every related argument is that it just seems to deny agency to everyone involved except the good ol' US-of-A.
"If China started expanding a security umbrella into Central and South America, then Mexico and Canada, with the goal of containing the US, and they form something like the TPP without us (and we don't have NAFTA)...I could go on, but you get the idea."
Mexico and Canada would have to *want* security partnerships with countries other than the US for this to ever be an issue. If the US were acting towards Mexico, Canada, and our Caribbean neighbors as Russia has towards Eastern Europe, they absolutely would cozy up to China or Russia, and one or both would do exactly as the US and Western Europe have done in Eastern Europe.
There is no doubt at all about this; it's only the fact that we are no longer threatening to filibuster the Yukon or the Yucatan that has prevented that exact outcome!
So I really don't give a flying fuck about Russia's feelings, or China's. I am completely fine with hemming them in and ensuring that they understand they will not be permitted to conquer the neighbors for shits and giggles.
If they wish to not be hemmed in, they need to deny the US and Europe the willing cooperation of literally every single one of their neighbors, which would require them to stop threatening them.
Traditionally, minor powers near major ones have preferred to find major power allies that are far away enough not to subjugate them, because nearby major powers just wanted to eat them. The United States since the last quarter of the 20th century is basically the only major power in history to have (mostly) bucked this trend, with the exceptions of Cuba and Venezuela.
China and Russia have not. I wonder why?
Is it possible that America's flawed-but-often-genuine commitment to consensual governance and willingness to cultivate trade partners and allow the growth of prosperity elsewhere is, despite a lot of foreign posturing, just more attractive to reasonably free peoples than Chinese or Russian autocracy, lopsided trade relations, and neo-imperialism?
Wait - to be clear, the hypothetical "if it was us" scenario is _not_ meant to be even remotely realistic. It's beyond hypothetical, it's just meant to illustrate how itchy we'd get if foreign powers had military bases anywhere near us. My goal here is not to deny agency to e.g. Canada - in practice, having a 3000 mile demilitarized border requires both countries to want to coexist peacefully - it's about the greatest security arrangement a country could hope to have.
With that in mind: "So I really don't give a flying fuck about Russia's feelings, or China's. I am completely fine with hemming them in and ensuring that they understand they will not be permitted to conquer the neighbors for shits and giggles."
I think my case is: you should not feel that way because we (the US) aren't sitting on a large enough level of military superiority to create that situation, and we're not rich enough to be able to afford it. And pursuing a policy of hemming them in without the resources to back it will result in bad outcomes for the US. We'd be better off picking a more limited but practical set of foreign policy goals.
So long as Europe is paying a reasonable proportion of the costs of maintaining a credible deterrent for the eastern reaches of NATO, which it now will, the ongoing costs to the United States are vastly lower than the cost of the economic dislocation if general war were to break out between the EU and Russia.
As for East Asia, the costs of the PRC becoming global hegemon in our stead are so utterly *terrifying* that we should be willing to spend *any* amount of money and make virtually any sacrifice to prevent that from happening.
The writ of the MSS must be made to stop exactly at the water's edge, thank you. The edge on the *far* side of the Pacific.
I think you have misunderstood what I'm proposing/claiming here.
I am _not_ claiming that we should capitulate to the point of e.g. allowing the PRC to become a global hegemon, or abandoning our existing security commitments in Europe. I am not making an isolationist case.
I am saying we should not pursue foreign policy goals as if _we_ are a global hegemon, because we are not.
The United States, EU, Japan, and UK + Offshoots are, collectively, absolutely the global hegemon on literally every issue for which they can reach agreement.
Yes, the US should not pursue unilateral foreign policy as if it alone is a hegemon, but when the consensus among all democratic powers is unified, act on it.
And in the cases of both China and Russia, it is increasingly so.
So long as the "burdens of empire" are spread reasonably effectively across them, and the actual "empire" is our fundamentally benign and increasingly multi-lateral world order, preventing anyone from kicking it over in a fit of pique is a good thing.
It'd be different if we lived in a world of Princely States and Native Protectorates and were using chemical weapons to enforce "order" in Sub-Saharan Africa on the cheap, but we don't.
It's only an "impossible situation" in the sense that they are no longer free to invade those countries without risking nuclear war... the NATO forces actually stationed there are largely symbolic, and pose no offensive threat.
Surprised Matt didn't add the most obvious takeaway from this war, that from a self interested security perspective Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Germany should all be fast tracking their own independent nuclear weapons program.
Obviously, that likely doesn't make the world safer, but having aggressive revanchist dictatorships around doesn't leave good options.
German and France taking lead against Russia isn't going to happen. They had several decades to step up... they didn't. You would probably have a better chance of getting Poland and Hungry to step up.
There is no off-ramp. The end is almost inevitable. Cold War 2. A free western Ukraine that likely becomes part of NATO. An occupied Russian occupied and controlled Eastern Ukraine.
As someone who spent 12-years stationed in Europe with the USAF, and watched as we "downsized" multiple bases to save money... all that money saved was wasted in the Middle East for no discernable purpose. Hind sight is 20/20, but Russia was always going to be a bigger geopolitical foe than Iraq. (Yeah I am channeling Romney).
It's highly likely we will set up new overseas bases in Eastern European NATO Nation... fuck what good assignments. Hopefully though we go back to setting up permanent bases that have assigned personnel instead of rotating in a different unit every 6-months.
As someone who has deployed and been stationed overseas, permanent assignments provide more stability and allow host nation and American personnel to form personal relationships.
My example is Okinawa. The USAF has people assigned there. The marines rotate in and out. Okinawans hate Marines. Aren't too bothered by USAF.
My observation. Putin didn't anticipate the war going viral... overwhelming support for Ukraine on Social Media. He assumed the west and the world public would be apathetic. This has given countries cover and incentive to provide way more logistical, economic and material support than he anticipated. Between all the weapons and the economic sanctions, Putin's win is going to end up worse than the Status Quo, but he can't back down now... so he is screwed.
This whole thing is a result of idealist foreign policy. It's the one thing that I remain most conservative about. Other nations and people aren't like us... just because we "know" we would never invade Russia... Putin doesn't view it like that. We can't just assume that consumerism and McDonalds is going to usher in an era of non-border globalism. Borders matter, and they always will.
Obama's dismissive comments aged poorly, but Romney's haven't exactly aged like fine wine. Watching the performance of the Russian military in this war simply highlights how ludicrous answers like Russia, terrorism, etc. are to this question. The only peer power in the world is China.
Go read his entire interview with all the Nuance. His taken out of context soundbites might come across to you like this.... but the actually whole interview actually was quite astute.
China has been very big on projecting soft power—not just their effective building programs in Africa but their success in becoming the world’s manufacturing center give them enormous power over our economy. For decades now, manufactured goods have become more plentiful and less expensive, and if you check the label nearly all are made in China (except clothing, which is now coming from places with even lower labor costs). A good deal of pandemic-related inflation is due to manufacturing slowdowns in China (and associated shipping disruptions). No way could we afford to shut down trade with China the way we’re doing with Russia.
We can and are already moving to ensure that China remains trinket-maker-in-chief to the developed world rather than leveraging its large, state-sponsored IP theft capabilities towards climbing the value chain to become a peer competitor.
As for influence-buying abroad, I really want to go back and kick whatever journalist created that narrative to explain the BRI projects. It’s wrong, full stop.
Romney was more like the broken clock that is right twice a day. His explanation for Russia being our primary concern was not about the current scenario. The problem today has much more to do with the absence of effective policy under Trump. If Hillary had won, she would have picked up on Obama’s warnings and we would be in a different place today.
> My observation. Putin didn't anticipate the war going viral
Yes!
And, he didn’t do anything to prepare his people for the economic impact of sanctions or the conscripts coming home in body bags. He’s going to have some serious domestic problems before too long.
Well maybe. Hopefully. But betting exchanges still have him at 75% chance of retaining power in the medium term. And it's also not a given that significant domestic pressures work out well (for you and me and the West). They could trigger even riskier moves from Putin
The problem is that your first several paragraphs are basically describing an exercise in charity.
Our only reason to be involved in Europe, aside from sentiment, is that the potential costs to us of a general war there dwarf the few dozen billion we pitch into the cesspit of “European security” each year.
Europe simply must figure out its own security policy and fund it, because as long as it’s acting like a charity case there’s always going to be a risk, following every election, that the US just walks away.
If I were a European policymaker, I’d be working on the assumption that the US could throw up its hands and storm off any four year cycle from January 2029.
Unfortunately Merkel was an idiot on this topic, we’ll see if Scholz can do better.
We can pretend all we want. But culture matters. And the United States is culturally part of the west. A free Western Europe is critical to our National interests. I am simply observing the world how it is… not how we wish it to be.
Even if Germany were to decide to get serious about its military it would take two decades to get up to speed. The military is way more than buying tanks. You have to develop the officer and enlisted corps to operate and maintain them. A force that is culturally willing to win wars.
People underestimate how professional our military is. A professionalism that was developed over multiple decades.
I don’t claim otherwise regarding how hard it is to build a military tradition.
Christ knows “we are part of the west” doesn’t seem to be convincing Europe that our Pacific security concerns matter at all. As such, the only thing tethering us to this is your and my shared belief that European security is important to us, albeit differently worded. That means there is a very real risk to Europe that we simply leave at some point, because most Americans aren’t committed to that belief.
Their existing policy choice is to pretend that possibility does not exist, but it does, and if they’ve not prepared at all it will go badly.
I would also say that Trump for better _and_ worse possibly changed this talk. His talk of pulling out of NATO probably made NATO a bit weaker, but that might also encourage the EU to start on its own defense.
And yeah it might take two decades, but we're not (hopefully) _about_ to abandon them, but the fact that the possibility that we might has been increased might make them start working on it.
I don't know though - there are some serious tail risks in different course of action.
I think you overestimate the Europeans. With few exceptions their militaries are all underfunded and undertrained. UK is different. French aren't quite as bad as some others.
I think Germany, France and the UK care deeply about the Baltic States and Poland. That's why they're in NATO. They would certainly lead against any Russian aggression towards those countries.
The problem here is that, fundamentally, Ukraine is not in that important strategically to the major NATO countries.
Yeah I always think of him and get patriotic warm and fuzzies while having a summer beer up in Maine. And The science isn’t totally settled on it yet. But I think everyone else does too.
He was 90+ years old in all of the incidents. Anyone going to the media claiming “sexual harassment” from wheelchair-bound senile old man is looking for attention and little else.
Matt seriously discounts the concrete benefits that expanding NATO eastward has provided. There's a reason Russia has attacked its own wayward republics in the Caucuses, Georgia, and now Ukraine, and not the tiny Baltic states. Consequently, the Baltics are both a) economically thriving compared to the non-NATO former USSR states, and b) fervent defenders and believers in both the Liberal Order and American Hegemony.
Not to mention, for the countries formerly under the boot of the Soviets, and the Romanovs before that, freedom has been scarce and repression common. They deserve a right to the freedoms we enjoy, and if NATO security provides that with little material benefit to the US or Western Europe, then so be it.
Am I supposed to feel bad for Russia that, since we deprived them the meat and potatoes of Poland and the Baltics, they had to settle for snacking on Moldova and Georgia? “We literally cannot stop ourselves from slowly eating our neighbors, but please, keep inviting us to dinner.”
No, don't feel bad for them. But feel bad that a war has broken out, a war that could escalate into an even more serious war.
There's seldom a set of only 1 morally righteous set of actions, and no country only factors in morality, which is subjective anyway. If different actions by NATO could have prevented that war, maybe those actions should have been taken?
Well, ok, but remember that you are suggesting that these other countries should have experienced what Ukraine or Belarus experienced, which wasn't cost-free either. Poland, for example, doesn't want to suffer another Katyn massacre.
What I'm suggesting is no outcome was or is predetermined. But war is one of the worst outcomes, and worse in my view than living as Belorussians now live. The worst part is even after suffering through this painful war, it's likely that Ukrainians end up where they would have been anyway if NATO had made different decisions.
I'd like to expand on this. So it sounds like your position is that if threatened militarily by a powerful foe, it is better to submit to conquest and occupation than resistance, because war is worse than conquest and domination (including repression of your culture/language) by a foreign power. Sounds like pacifism, which is a coherent philosophy but not popular anywhere, particularly in Eastern Europe.
You're assuming that the war in Ukraine wouldn't have just happened in Poland instead, with the Baltics and Ukrainians suffering under Russian domination. I'd like to see you justify that, since all these areas were dominated historically by the Russian empire and USSR. Russia has been an expansionist power since the 17th century and has never yet come up with a way to raise living standards on its periphery or offer them a better life.
My question is trying to highlight the fact that Jim_ed is basically saying "NATO expansion is good because look how Russia is attacking these other countries" without engaging with the fact that it's plausible that Russia attacked those other countries (partly) *because* of NATO expansion.
The question of whether Russia was *right* to attack those countries (no, they weren't) is irrelevant to this point.
Maybe I'm uncreative but I can only think of two reasons NATO expansion would motivate Russia to attack other countries: either they thought NATO was gearing up to invade Russia so they'd better deprive NATO of potential territory; or they thought "we'd better conquer Abkhazia etc. before they join NATO and we can't do that anymore." I think the second one is more likely, don't you? In which case it's hard to blame NATO for expanding.
I think a plausible model looks something like this:
1. Putin does not like and is afraid of NATO. Whether this feeling of his is reasonable or not is irrelevant.
2. Putin's/Russia's will-do-something-about-it meter is at 7 out of 10 because at least he has some buffer before the Baltics.
3. NATO expands towards Russia some.
4. The will-do-something-about-it meter is at 9 out of 10.
5. To Putin, Ukraine really starts to look like it wants in NATO.
6. The will-do-something-about-it meter is at 10 out of 10.
7. Ukraine invasion.
A key part of this model comes down to what Putin believes about NATO and it's intentions. Whatever their actual intentions is irrelevant.
I do not think any of it is more or less plausible than the scenarios you describe. My whole point is not that the root comment is wrong, but that it was overconfident and did not consider any alternate models.
I think having a plan for Russia in a post-Putin world would also be wise. Much like your proposed Good Neighbor Policy for Mexico, Central America, etc., it would be good to have a plan to bring Russia back to being a liberal democracy and to be embraced by the west.
I think we need to acknowledge that liberal democracy is not easy or automatic—we’re having a hard enough time maintaining it here, it’s been quite a struggle to build it in Ukraine. Russia had only a few years in the 90s (and short-lived attempt between the Tsarist and Soviet periods) of trying to be a liberal democracy, and given that those weren’t the happiest of times makes it all the more challenging to persuade the people of Russia to give it a go again. Meanwhile the UK parliament appears poised to pass a law cracking down on freedom of speech (prohibiting public protest), turning away from the tradition of liberal democracy that they were once a leading example of.
I think this undersells American culpability for the disaster of Russia in the 1990s. We embraced a reckless privatization that went poorly, we backed Yeltsin when he bombed parliament for not extending his emergency near-dictatorship authority, we helped dig the 1996 election for him when he was polling at 1%. Everyone's savings got wiped out, the economy shrank rapidly, there was a huge rise in crime... it was an enormous catastrophe. Endorsed and nurtured by Americans every step of the way.
This x100. I've been hating on Clinton's neoliberal advisers since 2008, so I'd say: it was a tragedy that they got our "help" when we were at peak neoliberal free market stupidity.
I think the combination of the disastrous post-Soviet privatization combined with NATO moving East set up a lot of the problems we see now. Imagine Russia without Putin. Who is there instead? A liberal reformer? No way - how would a western-friendly liberal Politician _compete_ in Russia in the early 2000s? Privatization and NATO expansion would be a headwind insurmountable to anyone we'd like to see as a leader.
I look forward to utilitarian philosophers ranking the great failed American rebuilding projects - Reconstruction, the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Which killed the most people? What if you rank it by qalys?
So how come neoliberalism worked in the rest of the warsaw pact nations? Perhaps the factors that caused Russia to fail were Russian specific - say, the manner in which the policies were implemented (selling off the assets for pennies a few oligarchs, and then having state olicy protect them from competition?)
When it comes to economic reform, it could be Russia specific factors. It could be the curse of natural resources (e.g. on average having oil tends not to be great for having a functioning non-corrupt elected government).
But in terms of any sense of grievance about being a former great power whose adversaries are taking over your sphere of influence, I think that's almost definitionally Russia-specific.
I think this disaster highlights the substantial (and under-appreciated) virtues of Joe Biden.
One of my favorite parts of Georgia HW Bush's memoir is where he was talking about how useful, hands-on and engaged he he felt, working the phones, etc, in rounding up and keeping together the coalition of world leaders that united to drive Iraq out of Kuwait after it attempted to do there what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Been a long time since I read the book, but my recollection is he felt like that was the part of his presidency where he really was the right person for the job and was able to put his lifetime of connections and skills to their best use. Don't know if that applies to Biden, but hopefully his lifetime experience herding cats and stroking egos in the Senate can be useful here.
HW also deserves credit for helping make the dissolution of the Soviet Union as peaceful as it was.
Yep. He was criticized for not celebrating the Berlin Wall falling. He said later, it would have been madness to stick Gorby in the eye over this.
I very much agree. Biden's greatest virtue is his ability to keep an even keel. He has his priorities completely straight and is acting correctly on all counts. We don't want Ukraine to fall to Russia, but the worst case scenario here is World War III and Nuclear Armageddon. Doing absolutely everything to help Ukraine *except* the things that would risk nuclear escalation and/or drawing more belligerents directly into the conflict is absolutely the right course.
Fantastic satire. Do you write for The Onion?
I lack their wit, alas. However, what I take as probable sarcasm obfuscates your point and your true opinions, making it difficult to reply to whatever issue(s) you may have in mind.
Let's start with a list of "substantial virtues" of Biden.
ok. Highly experienced with foreign policy, sensible, and realistic. Consequences? 1: doesn't commit ground troops to Ukraine. 2: Has worked for months to build a Europe-based coalition to resist Russian aggression. 3: Doesn't freak out and soil himself when Putin rattles his nuclear saber.
Your turn.
Even better, here's an article in The Atlantic asking "Why is the president so consistently wrong on major foreign-policy matters?"
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/biden-afghanistan-record/619799/
"Highly experienced with foreign policy, sensible, and realistic."
Here's something Joe Biden actually said about foreign policy:
"There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy. Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind. Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic economic renewal."
That is, literally, nonsense. But a lot of what Biden says is literal nonsense.
I mean, you could replace "Biden" in that last line with the name of pretty much any politician, especially mainstream ones. They deal in nonsense publicly because it sounds good and helps them win votes at the margin. (After all, that speech might be nonsense, but it sounds great if you know nothing about how foreign policy works.) Literally any American politician of either party could have said that, so long as they hadn't previously given themselves a contradictory foreign-policy brand (which Biden hasn't).
I won't comment on whether Biden is "experienced with foreign policy, sensible, and realistic". But Biden's speeches are not where to look to prove or disprove that. Since we as the public don't have access to his private conversations or his thoughts, we have to look primarily to his actions to assess his qualities.
“When it comes to sanctions, the purpose of those sanctions is to deter Russian aggression”: Antony Blinken
“The purpose of the sanctions has always been and continues to be deterrence. But let’s also recognize the unique nature of the sanctions that we have outlined.”: Kamala Harris
“no one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening.”: Joe Biden
Clown Show. Apparently you like a clown show running the country.
I'm starting to think it may be pointless to engage you in an actual discussion, but I'll try once more.
"...you like a clown show running the country."
Your rhetorical ridicule is effective as insult and perhaps signals something to like-minded people, but it doesn't really speak to whether Biden has done a good job in dealing with the Russian invasion. It seems clear that you don't like Mr. Biden (though I doubt you know him), but it's less clear what you think he did that was mistaken, nor what a hypothetical better president would have done that would have led to a better current situation.
It really tickles me when people with absolutely nothing to say have blogs. I thought drive-by thoughtless snark died with Gawker.
Speaking of having nothing to say. Critics of others are a dime a dozen. Work on having some original thoughts and become relevant!
I pretty clearly had something to say: your contribution, or lack thereof, is shit, and you should have refrained from making it.
Ur Dumb. There, I contributed just as much as you did.
War is not a zero-sum undertaking, it is a negative sum undertaking
Strikes me as a variable-sum undertaking that often leans negative.
History, played here by Marshall MacLuhan, says, "Actually you know nothing of my work."
If only it were always a negative sum undertaking. Many (most?) wars have a clear winner who emerges better off than before. May I introduce you to the Romans over the Carthaginians. A million other examples supplied upon request.
The fact there's a winner doesn't mean the game is not negative sum.
However, I would make a stronger argument. In the industrial age, even the winners are generally worse off. Britain and France were much worse off after WW1, and WW2, which was also a catastrophe for the victorious Soviet Union. The Sino-Japanese war was a catastrophe for China. The Vietnam War was a catastrophe for Communist Vietnam, and so on.
Modern war is really bad. We've got too good at killing each other and destroying our valuable but fragile infrastructure, and the value of incremental territory has become very small.
I'm arguing it'd be better if there'd been no war, and Russia will very likely regret the war even if it wins, and even if the victory had come more easily than now appears possible.
You're arguing that if you get invaded, it's worthwhile to resist, even if victory requires sacrifices. That's something totally different.
Hopefully, if they're able to make themselves indigestible, the US and EU will commit to helping them dig out of the rubble.
Beat me to it due to the time zone (dis)advantage.
I will add that I read point #2 as ultimately reaching this conclusion. Russia may very well win this war, and end up coming out relatively "better" than Ukraine, but as the last sentence includes, "Russia itself will almost certainly be worse off". As will everybody to varying extents.
But the “cheap talk” in the Baltics has actually worked!! Putin is committing horrors without compulsion in Ukraine but wouldn’t dream of shooting a single Latvian border guard.
True so far. And I think one of the things that has everyone super nervous is the question of whether we were in some kind of equilibrium that's been being destroyed and the cheap talk won't work after this war.
I’m seeing a lot of wise chin stroking from the long term / x risk folks that seems pretty funny to me. Obviously I would also like to avoid nuclear annihilation! But there seems to be some thinking along the lines of ‘if we reduce the number of times Russia or us goes on alert then we are definitely reducing x risk!’ I dunno. I see the Occam razor type appeal here but it doesn’t seem super long term or even just correct in the short term. Acting as though reckless threats of nuclear holocaust are really important just seems to encourage the threats. Do these very smart x risk folks have some off ramp in mind for Russia (or US) nukes? Bc it seems like the plan is to increase the value of the stockpile and increase the value of the threats and just hope that at some future date disarmament happens. But why would it?
In fact if I were any non nuclear nation I would look at what Russia is able to get away with here and say ‘gee I better get some nukes’
Additionally, it is now quite hard to see any country voluntarily giving up its nukes in exchange for loose security guarantees the way the Ukraine once did.
I believe I read that Ukraine never really “had” the nukes. They had the warheads, but they were encrypted using keys that only Moscow and the Red Army had access to, and were essentially unusable.
Which only makes sense; if you were in charge of the USSR you wouldn’t want some Apparatchik Ripper in Kyiv deciding to launch the missiles on his own account.
"They had the warheads, but they were encrypted using keys that only Moscow and the Red Army had access to, and were essentially unusable."
1) Perhaps they didn't have the keys, but if they wanted working nuclear weapons, they could very easily have gotten them. The hardest part of making your own nuclear weapons is getting the nuclear material (which requires a difficult enrichment process). You don't need "the keys" to open up an existing nuke, remove the enriched uranium, and make your own bomb.
2) Moreover, I doubt they would even have to jump thru that many hoops. If they wanted to make their existing nuclear weapons work, they could absolutely have figured it out. If you give a mechanic a car without the keys, they can start it up and drive it off. It just takes a little time.
3) Finally, I'm pretty sure that there were both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The former have launch codes. The latter don't. They're meant to be used on the battlefield when you don't have time to wait around getting the ok from Moscow.
Nuclear weapons are much more complicated than that. They have a ton of components that degrade over time and would take years and billions of dollars that Ukraine didn't have at the time to refit. It would've been dumb and counterproductive towards integrating w/ either the West or former Soviet Union. North Korea starved to build their nuclear arsenal. I don't think Ukraine would be in a much better place, had they tried.
The maintenance costs of nuclear weapons are non-trivial but not nearly as high as you claim. Plus, they didn't need to keep the whole arsenal. They absolutely could have afforded to keep some tactical nukes. Again, they weren't starting from scratch here.
"North Korea starved to build their nuclear arsenal."
They starved due to a combination of economic mismanagement and bad weather. Spending money on a nuclear program was not the reason.
Ukraine would've turned itself into a pariah state. And no it would not have been simple. I haven't seen any proliferation experts say this would've been easy, but very many say that it would be impractical, given Ukraine's difficulties at the time.
If India and Pakistan could go nuclear in the 70s/80s, then Ukraine could have done it easily in the 90s.
No, Pakistan and India spent decades on their program. North Korea starved. Iran would've done it by now if it was easy. Pakistan's gdp was larger than Ukraine's at the time.
Having the materials, engineering know-how, and apparatus on hand means you effectively have the nukes, or at least will within a few weeks or a month once you've physically replaced the current launch security systems with identical ones built and encrypted by your own government.
It's not like they'd have needed to strip the fissile materials and build new bombs, which still would have taken less than six months with their pre-existing infrastructure.
If Japan today could go from no bombs to bombs in less than a year, Ukraine in 1992 could have gone from "bombs we can't set off" to "bombs we can set off" in far less.
This is a common misconception- the USSR stored their nukes on Ukrainian soil, Ukraine never 'had' nuclear weapons. The US stores some of their nukes in 3rd party countries, but we don't say those countries 'have' them
Ukraine was among the recognized successor governments to the USSR and had physical control over the weapons in question.
It had them, if it wanted them. In hindsight it should have wanted them.
No, Ukraine was not 'among the recognized successor governments to the USSR', only Russia was. And no, they never had physical control over the weapons. You're wrong.
'Did Ukraine have nuclear weapons?
'When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, there were thousands of former Soviet nuclear warheads, as well as hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers, left on Ukraine’s territory, which it decided to transfer to Russia. Ukraine never had an independent nuclear weapons arsenal, or control over these weapons, but agreed to remove former Soviet weapons stationed on its territory'
https://www.icanw.org/faq_on_ukraine_and_nuclear_weapons
'“If only Ukraine hadn’t give up its nuclear arsenal, Russia wouldn’t be able to bully it.” No.
There’s no way Ukraine could have kept the Soviet nuclear weapons stationed there when the Soviet Union ended. Some of us say it over and over and over again. I wrote a Twitter thread on it a few weeks ago, but I need a convenient piece to refer to, so here we go... Ukraine never had the ability to launch those missiles or to use those warheads. The security measures against unauthorized use were under Moscow’s control. The Ukrainians might have found ways around those security measures, or they might not have. Removing the warheads and physically taking them apart to repurpose them would be dangerous, and Ukraine did not have the facilities for doing that. Nor did Ukraine have the facilities to maintain those warheads. For only one example, the tritium in those warheads has a 12-year half-life and needs to be replaced regularly'
https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2022/02/06/could-ukraine-have-retained-soviet-nuclear-weapons/
Ukraine had, at the time, the know-how and physical plant to replace the physical security mechanisms with their own.
It also had the know-how and physical plant to "gear down" and use the materials to produce enhanced fission weapons in year one while building back to fusion warheads over a few years.
I see your argument, but it's mincing legalese rather than reality.
Ukraine's post-independence government could have chosen to maintain an independent nuclear deterrent and did not, in large part because the US talked it out of doing so.
This was, in perfect hindsight, a mistake.
Cheryl Rofer, who wrote the piece, is an atomic scientist whose entire career was in the nuclear field, including decades at Los Alamos National Labs. She's an international subject matter expert on nuclear weapons. She wrote in unambiguous language 'Ukraine never had the ability to launch those missiles or to use those warheads'. I'm taking a subject matter expert over a guy on the Internet whose source is 'dude, trust me'.
If your argument is that Ukraine could have created a nuclear program from scratch, i.e. not using those specific weapons but just building nukes in general- that's fine if you believe that (obviously alternate history paths are unfalsifiable), but I was reacting to Gunnar's statement that Ukraine 'gave up the nuclear weapons that it had'. It never had them
Germany needs nukes. Taiwan reallly needs nukes and would be foolish not to make them.
Much of US nonproliferation policy has now been revealed to be bullshit. If we’re not prepared to nuke Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, or Tehran (and we should not be) over Kyiv, Taipei, Seoul, or Tel Aviv, then we need to stop putting fingers on the scales with false assurances to that effect,
"If we’re not prepared to nuke...Pyongyang...[to protect] Seoul..."
Who says we're not? The US had tactical nuclear weapons on the peninsula until 1991, the point at which the US pulled its last troops from the DMZ. It was long the policy that nuclear weapons would be used if that's what it took to prevent Seoul from falling to a North Korean invasion.
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20051012000039
You're right, of course. I should have set South Korea to the side as it is more or less formally incorporated into the US nuclear umbrella.
We have credibly shown that we'd nuke Pyongyang if it nuked Seoul or Busan.
Our mistake was treating Ukraine and Taiwan like South Korea in one way but not both. We've pushed them not to pursue nuclear weapons, without actually offering to formalize bi-lateral defense relationships that would ensure their security in the absence of their own independent nuclear deterrent.
"...we'd nuke Pyongyang if it nuked Seoul or Busan"
It used to be policy that we would use tactical nukes to stop a wholly conventional North Korean invasion.
Probably just as well that the ROKA can now hand the KPA its ass on a silver platter with no particular need to do that.
Nothing, even an immediate decision from the ROK and US to go nuclear, can save the northern suburbs of Seoul from a thorough pasting, but the ROKA can probably destroy or suppress most KPA artillery ranging on the region within a day and push them back from the DMZ fairly quickly.
The more firepower they devote to killing civilians in Seoul in the opening blow, the more quickly ROKA counterbattery fire attrits that firepower.
They really have no trump cards to play except for nukes, and given Kim's obsession with, well, survival... those're only useful as a threat in being.
Scary thought there.
I mean, maybe the world would be safer if the US were credibly threatening to nuke Beijing over Taipei, but I don't care to put the theory to the test.
In the absence of such a willingness, I don't think I can argue the world is safer when Kyiv, Taipei, and Seoul are entirely at the mercy of Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang. I certainly can't argue that Ukraine, Taiwan, and South Korea are safer, and that's what their governments should be aiming for.
As much as I generally dislike Israel, its policymakers were 100% correct to build nuclear weapons in secret and present the world with a fait accompli when they had a sizeable deterrent, then decline to ever dismantle it.
Ditto India vis-à-vis China.
If I were at the head of the Taiwanese government I'd have contracted with Israel for a "mobile-deterrent-in-a-box" long since. 2-3 submarines each with half a dozen nuclear-tipped SLCMs would do the trick.
"Taiwan reallly needs nukes and would be foolish not to make them."
That's one of China's red lines, along with Taiwan declaring independence. Taiwan attempting to go nuclear would prompt an immediate attack.
The whole point of having them is to extremely strongly deter the immediate attack, so I think that's a bit backwards. China might *say* they'd attack if they thought Taiwan had nukes, sure.....
Taiwan could always go the Israel route and clearly have them while officially denying it
Of course. Unless they simply purchase a ready-made deterrent from another actor, a turnkey solution.
If Pax Americana does really fall to pieces over the next decade, and they weren't picked off in the process, there will be no shortage of folks willing to do that in 2032. At least India and Israel, and perhaps France and Japan.
Even the US might do it as a final fuck-you to China if we're mostly pushed out of the Western Pacific.
I don't think Germans should have nukes.
Germany arguably has 20 of them (altho the only aircraft they have that can deliver them are going to be retired soon...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing
Obviously (!?) the goal is to make nukes irrelevant. Sure, you can kill a few thousand people, but their consciousness is backed up and their insurance covers the new bodies; sure, you can raze a city and irradiate everything, but we can just slosh around this barrel of sci-fi grade hyperpolymer and it's better than new, etc. Not to mention maybe, hopefully, possibly, shoot them down before they explode with, you guessed it, amazing shiny lazers.
But more seriously, the x-risk has probably run its course. AI and meteorites are the real deal, and there's not much (or more) anyone can do about them (or faster), so probably x-risk people focus their energy on malaria nets, and nowadays mini grants. (Eg. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/acx-grants-the-second-half )
Yes! powerful space lasers will solve our terrestrial weapons dilemma!
I don’t mean to be too hard on them, there is a lot of good work. But there’s also a fine line between some of these long termism discussions and just being a control freak struggling with the chaotic nature of reality.
The countries in Eastern Europe have a right to have security against invasion by Russia and to become more prosperous through ties to the west. It's good that the U.S. and NATO have provided those guarantees.
I'm an EU citizen and I strongly agree with the first sentence while disagreeing with the second one. I find it deeply embarrassing that EU member states are threatened and we are waiting for the Americans to send troops. We have a much larger population than the US, comparable GDP (depending on how you measure it), and nukes (France). The US should say something like "We don't expect you to defend New Mexico, so don't expect us to defend Estonia." not because I believe that Estonia should fall, but because I think that the EU should wake up and realize that it needs to defend its members.
It’s all well and good to take existing security guarantees and use them; it’s stupid to assume they’re indefinite, and it’s now clear that Europe, Germany in particular, has failed to plan for the day when the US wants to wander off.
That day may or may not come, but it behooves them to assume that it will, and quickly.
Trump should have been a warning sign
I think there are two issues here:
1. The EU (and its citizens) know they are better off as free-riders to US power, so they are generally demotivated from making these sorts of investments.
2. We (the US and the EU) don't seem to know how to make this sort of handoff "friendly." I think all of us here can agree that letting Europe generally mind its own backyard, while the US worries about China, would be a good thing, but too many people would interpret it either as the US "abandoning" Europe, or US "decline," neither of which needs to be true.
Agreed, and I've thought a lot about point #2. I've seen a lot of takes saying that the silver lining of the invasion has been that it reaffirms the need for NATO, and I completely disagree. It affirms the need for European military spending and coordination. But the structural problem still exists that there's no incentive for other NATO states to build capacity if the US remains committed to NATO, and as you said there's no clear way the US can pull out of NATO.
I agree, and would even say that the US-led continuing to exist has overall weakened the EU militarily, due to the free-rider problem and the unclear guarantee of action that Matt mentioned.
If NATO has disbanded post-Cold War, you could easily imagine an EU-organized military, or at least much closer military coordination and strategy among the western and northern European nations.
I think that this simplifies to many of the issues. Foremost being, the country most of us would agree that needs to step up is Germany. However, there would probably be a good number of countries in Europe that would be uncomfortable with a much more militarily powerful Germany. The advantage of having the US lead is that it provides a mostly benevolent power that is not that has no history of dominating many of the countries in Europe.
And for all that we bemoan the fact that most American's don't pay attention to anything outside the US, this actually can be a bit reassuring. If anyone in the US wanted to act like Putin and claim some type of reason to dominate a part of Europe - most Americans would just find this stupid and get back to arguing about pronouns.
That's an interesting point. Are you European by chance? I wonder what the EU attitudes are around Germany increasing its military spending. I haven't heard concerns so far, which is in contrast to concerns in South Korea when Japan increased military expenditure.
Unfortunately, the EU has historically been unable to deploy combat power as an organized entity. Frankly, I've been pleasantly surprised at the EU's willingness to stand up to Russia, since it has spent so much time appeasing him and his oligarchs for so long. The behavior of states like Germany, Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, and Bulgaria have not been impressive.
I'm extremely surprised that the EU woke up this time too! To be fair, I'm not advocating for a rapid US disengagement right now. But if we could remake our financial system in the wake of the economic crises within 5 years, we can make a common defense policy that people don't laugh at in a similar timeframe, and the US should push in that direction and then leave. Moreover, if Germany decides something, what Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, and Bulgaria say is totally irrelevant. The whole point is to have Germany make up its mind.
Fully 100% agree.
This whole thing should have been classified as a European problem. Biden fell into Putin trap making this an international issue of Russia vs. US
I don't see it as a "trap" as much as an issue with the design of NATO - like Matt's point #5, if the US is responsible for security of any NATO member, it needs to show credible signs they'll act (ideally before a member country is actually attacked), which has ultimately led to the US responsible for defense of all vaguely democratically-aligned countries in Europe.
Yeah, that' why I put it in quotes. NATO expansion as a real problem, ao Putin wanted Biden to own it. But it could have been solved peacefully. Or re-doing MINSK agreement signed only by Europeans.
It is strange that people refuse to see that Clinton and Bush were great presidents. Their decision to accept East European countries into NATO made countries like Poland and Estonia free and western forever instead of them sharing Ukraine's sad fate. Expanding NATO was a timely, lucky and ingenious decision to take advantage of the temporary weakness of Russia then.
The goal should have been to integrate Russia _itself_ into that web of alliances, while managing its transition into a stable, prosperous country. Instead we encouraged Yeltsin and his cronies to loot the place because a bunch of the usual suspects from U. Chicago saw a chance to dance on communism’s corpse, leading directly to the popular desire for a domestic strongman to clean house. Miss me with the idea that HW _or_ Clinton were good actors here.
Sorry but this comment sounds like "the-west-can-do-everything-so-it-must-feel-guilt-for-everything" complex.
One does not need to believe in the Green Lantern Theory of geopolitics to understand that Yeltsin ruled with explicit American support, and Yeltsin's rule was disastrous. We backed the wrong horse. Not the first time, and probably not the last.
Ah. Yes if only the right thinking West had gone in there and fixed Russia good, we’d have a vegan macrobiotist running Russia today. It was CLINTON and BUSH who allowed Russia to fall into despotic kleptocracy, so out of character for the Russians.
Pull the other leg.
I couldn’t disagree more. The success of those Eastern European countries is far more due to the EU than NATO. All NATO expansion has done is antagonize Russia and turned a potential ally into a bitter foe. I will acknowledge that NATO expansion might have been fine if it had stopped before Ukraine, but the decision to offer it and Georgia membership in 2008 was a disastrous move that helped put us on the path to this current crisis. If you needed another reason to hate George Bush’s foreign policy, well, this is a good addition.
The late great diplomat George Kennan predicted exactly this outcome 25 years ago, yet nobody listened to him. Check out his full quote in Thomas Friedman’s recent article in the NYT: Kennan’s words are startlingly prescient.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nato.html
Conversely Putin barely mentioned NATO in his hour long rant. The Ukraine moving towards the EU in 2014 is what sparked this.
Well, it’s sort of all tied together, isn’t it? Russia likely saw Ukraine’s move towards the EU as a stepping stone to NATO, considering many Ukrainian leaders expressly want both.
Is there any evidence that Putin finds the expansion of the EU in Eastern Europe any less threatening than the expansion of NATO? I would feel more confident about a unified West defending say Sweden than Turkey, despite Sweden not being an NATO member.
Who knew that George Kennan was a naif when it came to the Russian character? Soviet imperial ambitions were par for the course for Russia.
"I couldn’t disagree more. The success of those Eastern European countries is far more due to the EU than NATO. All NATO expansion has done is antagonize Russia and turned a potential ally into a bitter foe"
If anything NATO membership prevented Russia from steaming into the Baltics or anywhere else they didn't like looking west in the EU and falling out of their sphere of influence.
Lol, I don’t think you or anyone else has a right to call the architect of Soviet containment a “naif” about Russia. He knew what he was talking about. His point, which has essentially come true almost to the letter, was that if we had allowed Russia to retain a sphere of influence (like the US has in Latin America) and not pushed an obviously anti-Russia alliance right up to their borders, Russia would have remained friendly, as it was in the Yeltsin and early Putin years. At the very least, it would have no reason to lash out as it has been doing.
I was going to go with the opposite - Clinton pushed East into Russia's sphere of influence and fertilized the soil for Putin. I don't think it's that simple, but I think to some extent, the ability to build Russian nationalism off of some kind of ant-west grievance narrative is planted in the US's moving its security guarantees East.
Maybe (rather than just not expanding NATO) some kind of structure that included Russia or created some kind of larger multi-national structure could have worked.
Lately I've had the same reaction as I had when the housing market blew up: "oh great, we're paying for what Clinton's neoliberal dream-team did...again."
All of these models miss the fact that Russia like the housing market are both expansionist. (The former because path dependence, the latter because urbanization and population growth.)
It was only a matter of time.
Just a few days ago a video from ~1993 made the rounds here in Hungary. The then prime minister (Antall) was speaking about exactly this. People better not become complacent. The end of USSR was not a big shock to the ruling elite.
Oh, and don't forget fucking Grozny. Just like the US since its founding Moscow is also quite accustomed to power and imperialism, and with the conflicts and wars that come with the package. (Just as any big empire/nation. And in this regard the EU (and Japan) are the exceptions. Though it's not hard to know why, since the EU's supreme purpose is to avoid a war in Europe. And in yet another parenthesis maybe we can discuss that to get to this point first Germany, Poland, France, and Japan had to be bombed to the ground, and worse.)
An “expansionist” Russia was not an inevitability at all. In large part, it has been provoked by Western actions. Russia experts like the late George Kennan said so, all the way back in frickin 1997:
“Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”
I really don't understand how the US "provoked" an expansionist imperialist Russia. Could you point me to the action that the US took that required Russia to send troops in so many of its neighbors against their wishes?
If I was running Russia, I would look at the EU and think, let's take that from the inside. Join them, get the EU to fund a ton of development in the country - become very wealthy and powerful - and then because you're the largest country dominate it from the inside. Kind of like Germany has done.
Random aside on the last point... It's amusing that Germany within the EU has done almost exactly the opposite of what Germany under the Nazi's aimed to do within Europe.
The Reich wanted to subjugate the continent and peg their currency to an artificially high level to allow middle-class Germans cheap holidays to Italy, good French wine with every meal, cheap Polish grain, Nordic fish and seafood. They'd have impoverished the continent and significantly constrained their own growth prospects, but without our world to compare to, they'd feel well off, the masters of Europe.
Our Germany has decided to lock itself into the Euro as a means of keeping the exchange rate artificially low, hoard manufacturing employment, and push up the savings rate at home. While distorting the hell out of Europe's economy and ensuring foreign products are artificially expensive to German consumers.
I've seen estimates that German GDP per capita in nominal terms would be twice as high if they still had their own currency, simply because the exchange rate would be so different.
The Moscow based power structure is expansionist since centuries. I'm not claiming that their current behavior is inevitably a result of their past, but at this point the fact that "Russia" (in all its many forms throughout history) *is* expansionist, interventionist and very much supremacist. (NATO itself is a reaction to this.)
"In large part, it has been provoked by Western actions." I think this is directly contradicted by this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia#Russian_Federation_(1991-present)
Again, of course, the future was not set in stone in the 90s, and it was obviously not an inevitability in that sense. But. States joining NATO instead of the Commonwealth of Independent States was not a coincidence. Russia having a worse GDP than EU is also not a coincidence.
Russia kept (and keeps) its neighbors as vassals, installs puppet governments, etc. See the recent protests in Belarus.
If Russia can meddle in Ukraine why can't the EU? It's just as much in its neighborhood. Plus the EU is extending, growing, isn't is just logical that Russia should respect it if it expects the same from the EU (or the "west")?
And it's not how Russians are, it's how totalitarian dictatorships are.
Yes! And our support of revolutions like Maiden was correct too. Moral relativism is a false idea, the world really does need democracy/liberalism/capitalism.
There are deep epistemological reasons for this, eg. error correction.
Bring back a strong & aggressive foreign policy in defense of it. MattY is still too soft.
Expand NATO to Sweden, Finland and whoever wants protection from Putin. Conventionally arm them strongly. Germany/France/etc has learned their lesson about supporting NATO.
Broke: Sell Ukraine weapons.
Woke: Admit Ukraine to NATO and the EU.
Bespoke: Admit Taiwan as a US state.
Probably like 5-10. They'd never accept just 2 Senators lol.
After seeing how this war is going for his conventional military do you really see Putin invading Finland on even flimsier pretexts? The only scenario I could actually imagine that happening is one where Finland looks set to join NATO and he invades to preempt NATO "aggression".
If he's just invading state after state without fig-leaf justifications he's going to lose his few supporters internationally and possibly at home. The threat of further expansions seems vastly exaggerated.
I feel I need to emphasize - you and I and the West are not the only people whose opinions matter here. I don't like his justifications for war, you don't like them, the EU doesn't like them.
But plenty of other states are sitting this out and not taking sides. And plenty of Russians support this war, although many are lukewarm or even opposed. But that's partly because Putin has just enough justification for them to look the other way. If his next stop is Finland that probably changes, unless he can sell it as "NATO aggression".
Yglesias said in early 2020 that having Sanders as president was fine. However it is interesting to think about America having an anti America, anti imperialism type of politician as president in the moment of a great international crisis that threatens world peace. It is a very interesting question. If the simulation theory is correct, I am sure the simulation masters are going to try it in the future. Maybe with president Ocasio Cortez?
It is an interesting question, but also should be noted that Sanders has been totally aligned with Biden on Ukraine all throughout this crisis.
This might also be because Sanders himself seems like a fairly reasonable person with whom I disagree on various policy issues. It's possible there is some "rally-round-the-flag" aspect here (as long as the general policy stays within some acceptable bounds).
I agree and have been heartened more generally by Sanders sticking by Biden on lots of contentious issues, but there’s a *big* difference between Sanders following Biden’s lead and Sanders leading. And the 2020 campaign people surrounding Bernie (that would presumably be among those helping him lead) have not acquitted themselves well post-primary, to put it mildly.
It is completely possible that Sanders would have done everything exactly as Biden did. But still such a situation is so confusing for his basic instincts that America should try to appease every rival. Behaving otherwise is like Greece's Tziparas accepting European austerity demands.
Sanders has been great during this crisis.
Oops, spoke too soon. Just read this: https://www.arise.tv/us-hypocritical-about-russia-ukraine-war-says-senator-sanders/
I don’t think that’s accurate. I can’t find any direct statements from him to that effect and it sounds very different from the 5 minute video he put out last week:
https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1497028266967945217
Sanders policies actually have been in line with Biden regarding Ukraine and Russia.
In Europe he probably would be considered a moderate Social Democrat like the Chancellor of Germany who just called for increasing defense spending.
Most US allies (the UK, France, Israel to mention a few) have had leaders that where either social democrats or democratic socialists but because of circumstances unique to the US calling yourself a socialist makes people think you are a radical regardless of the policies you actually support.
While Russia's '90s economic woes clearly led to Putin, I'm a little skeptical of the idea that American advice and policy were primarily responsible for those woes. Was the advice we gave to Russia very different from the advice we gave to all the non-USSR Communist countries? Because those countries have done much better. And if we gave different advice, why did we do that? I would hypothesize that one difference was that, even after Russia lost the Cold War, the West really wasn't in a position to dictate to Russia what its economic policies should be. Even a weakened Russia was still too powerful to be dictated to like that, to its own detriment.
"Was the advice we gave to Russia very different from the advice we gave to all the non-USSR Communist countries? Because those countries have done much better. And if we gave different advice, why did we do that?"
I'm not an expert on this, but at some point I read an article (maybe in Foreign Affairs?) that answered "Yes (and we provided more than just advice)" and "Because we treated non-USSR Communist countries as victims and Russia as the perpetrator." If I have time, I'll try to dig up the article.
I worked for USAID in the 90s. The aid programs treated all of the non-Baltic post-Soviet countries including Russia under one umbrella, of course somewhat proportionate to size.
The point about the gulf states seems important to me. Pivoting away from the Middle East was happening anyway, but this crisis highlights how little our involvement has gotten us.
Absolutely. This is one more big shove toward cutting the Gulf states loose and wishing them good luck and all the best.
I also assume Ukraine is the final nail in the revived JCPOA coffin. I had heard that they were actually getting close to a deal, but I assume -- like the original JCPOA -- that would involve Russia being a signatory. That's a bit hard to imagine right now.
According to WaPo, the JCPOA negotiations are actually continuing along perfectly smoothly: "'It’s almost a parallel universe' from what is going on over Ukraine, said one person familiar with the talks."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/02/23/iran-us-nuclear-deal/
"the decision not to disband NATO": Does Matt think that NATO should have been disbanded? I think that retaining NATO is an easy decision.
Lyman Stone had a great thread related to this point. NATO has remained relevant because Russia been playing the “slice off bits of former vassal states while acting aggrieved” game since the moment it was born in 1991, and all the not-yet-invaded post-Soviet states looked at Transnistria and South Ossetia and Abkhazia and realized that it would eventually happen to them too.
https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1498404747484839946
I generally enjoy Matt but “NATO should not only have refrained from expansion but actually disbanded” may be the worst take I’ve read so far. Nothing happened in 1991 to fundamentally change the nature of the Russian regime, and certainly not to defang it. The point of NATO was to resist bullying under threat of invasion, of exactly the sort happening in Ukraine right now.
The idea that the US commitment to defense of European NATO is weak just ignores the reality that the US had committed enormous resources and taken human losses for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea with much weaker motivations.
I actually agree with that take (NATO should have been disbanded). In my mind NATO is the trans-Atlantic version of "The Blob", and I don't see a reason it should have continued to exist after it completed it's primary objective other than institutional inertia. You point to the need for it to deter Russian aggression, but in every other area of the globe we're able to do that without a dedicated organization. Another way I look at it is to ask: "If NATO didn't exist today, would we create the same type of organization to deter Russia"? I don't think we would. If you think we would, do we need to form a NATO-East (Pacific Treaty Organization?) tying Japan, AUS, NZ, SK etc. together?
You said “careless expansion of NATO,” but if a European country comes to us and says “we’re afraid of getting curb-stomped by Russia,” what are we supposed to say? “Sorry guys, realpolitik and spheres of influence dictate that we should let the Russians stomp you if they want to?”
Also, invoking Article 5 doesn’t mean launching a nuclear first strike. I hate it when people slippery slope their way into saying that war between NATO and Russia is automatically nuclear. Maybe it was in the 80s, but not now.
I don't have a good answer to that. But I think the way we've gone about it puts Russia in an impossible situation. If China started expanding a security umbrella into Central and South America, then Mexico and Canada, with the goal of containing the US, and they form something like the TPP without us (and we don't have NAFTA)...I could go on, but you get the idea.
I fear the ship has sailed on a window to do this, but I think the only way the situation could have worked out better is if security guarantees for ex-Soviet Republics were combined with some kind of alliance that included Russia and some kind of trading block, so that the Russians were in the tent pissing out, and not outside the tent pissing in.
The whole point of containment was to keep the East bloc from expanding out and consuming Western Europe, particularly while it was weak post WWII. It's not in the US's strategic interest* to isolate Russia and cut them off from the world, but it's worth almost any effort to Russia to avoid that case.
* I don't mean right now in terms of war sanctions, but as a baseline posture toward the country. E.g. if Putin got out of Ukraine tomorrow, would we go back to zero on sanctions, or find some other excuse to squeeze them.
The problem with this and every related argument is that it just seems to deny agency to everyone involved except the good ol' US-of-A.
"If China started expanding a security umbrella into Central and South America, then Mexico and Canada, with the goal of containing the US, and they form something like the TPP without us (and we don't have NAFTA)...I could go on, but you get the idea."
Mexico and Canada would have to *want* security partnerships with countries other than the US for this to ever be an issue. If the US were acting towards Mexico, Canada, and our Caribbean neighbors as Russia has towards Eastern Europe, they absolutely would cozy up to China or Russia, and one or both would do exactly as the US and Western Europe have done in Eastern Europe.
There is no doubt at all about this; it's only the fact that we are no longer threatening to filibuster the Yukon or the Yucatan that has prevented that exact outcome!
So I really don't give a flying fuck about Russia's feelings, or China's. I am completely fine with hemming them in and ensuring that they understand they will not be permitted to conquer the neighbors for shits and giggles.
If they wish to not be hemmed in, they need to deny the US and Europe the willing cooperation of literally every single one of their neighbors, which would require them to stop threatening them.
Traditionally, minor powers near major ones have preferred to find major power allies that are far away enough not to subjugate them, because nearby major powers just wanted to eat them. The United States since the last quarter of the 20th century is basically the only major power in history to have (mostly) bucked this trend, with the exceptions of Cuba and Venezuela.
China and Russia have not. I wonder why?
Is it possible that America's flawed-but-often-genuine commitment to consensual governance and willingness to cultivate trade partners and allow the growth of prosperity elsewhere is, despite a lot of foreign posturing, just more attractive to reasonably free peoples than Chinese or Russian autocracy, lopsided trade relations, and neo-imperialism?
Wait - to be clear, the hypothetical "if it was us" scenario is _not_ meant to be even remotely realistic. It's beyond hypothetical, it's just meant to illustrate how itchy we'd get if foreign powers had military bases anywhere near us. My goal here is not to deny agency to e.g. Canada - in practice, having a 3000 mile demilitarized border requires both countries to want to coexist peacefully - it's about the greatest security arrangement a country could hope to have.
With that in mind: "So I really don't give a flying fuck about Russia's feelings, or China's. I am completely fine with hemming them in and ensuring that they understand they will not be permitted to conquer the neighbors for shits and giggles."
I think my case is: you should not feel that way because we (the US) aren't sitting on a large enough level of military superiority to create that situation, and we're not rich enough to be able to afford it. And pursuing a policy of hemming them in without the resources to back it will result in bad outcomes for the US. We'd be better off picking a more limited but practical set of foreign policy goals.
And I disagree with that case in its entirety.
So long as Europe is paying a reasonable proportion of the costs of maintaining a credible deterrent for the eastern reaches of NATO, which it now will, the ongoing costs to the United States are vastly lower than the cost of the economic dislocation if general war were to break out between the EU and Russia.
As for East Asia, the costs of the PRC becoming global hegemon in our stead are so utterly *terrifying* that we should be willing to spend *any* amount of money and make virtually any sacrifice to prevent that from happening.
The writ of the MSS must be made to stop exactly at the water's edge, thank you. The edge on the *far* side of the Pacific.
I think you have misunderstood what I'm proposing/claiming here.
I am _not_ claiming that we should capitulate to the point of e.g. allowing the PRC to become a global hegemon, or abandoning our existing security commitments in Europe. I am not making an isolationist case.
I am saying we should not pursue foreign policy goals as if _we_ are a global hegemon, because we are not.
The United States, EU, Japan, and UK + Offshoots are, collectively, absolutely the global hegemon on literally every issue for which they can reach agreement.
Yes, the US should not pursue unilateral foreign policy as if it alone is a hegemon, but when the consensus among all democratic powers is unified, act on it.
And in the cases of both China and Russia, it is increasingly so.
So long as the "burdens of empire" are spread reasonably effectively across them, and the actual "empire" is our fundamentally benign and increasingly multi-lateral world order, preventing anyone from kicking it over in a fit of pique is a good thing.
It'd be different if we lived in a world of Princely States and Native Protectorates and were using chemical weapons to enforce "order" in Sub-Saharan Africa on the cheap, but we don't.
It's only an "impossible situation" in the sense that they are no longer free to invade those countries without risking nuclear war... the NATO forces actually stationed there are largely symbolic, and pose no offensive threat.
Isn't Russian doctrine fairly clear that they would use tactical nukes ("small battlefield nukes") if they were losing to NATO in a conventional war?
That's not a nuclear war in the sense of MAD, but it's getting closer to one, and it's scary and devastating enough on its own.
Surprised Matt didn't add the most obvious takeaway from this war, that from a self interested security perspective Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Germany should all be fast tracking their own independent nuclear weapons program.
Obviously, that likely doesn't make the world safer, but having aggressive revanchist dictatorships around doesn't leave good options.
German and France taking lead against Russia isn't going to happen. They had several decades to step up... they didn't. You would probably have a better chance of getting Poland and Hungry to step up.
There is no off-ramp. The end is almost inevitable. Cold War 2. A free western Ukraine that likely becomes part of NATO. An occupied Russian occupied and controlled Eastern Ukraine.
As someone who spent 12-years stationed in Europe with the USAF, and watched as we "downsized" multiple bases to save money... all that money saved was wasted in the Middle East for no discernable purpose. Hind sight is 20/20, but Russia was always going to be a bigger geopolitical foe than Iraq. (Yeah I am channeling Romney).
It's highly likely we will set up new overseas bases in Eastern European NATO Nation... fuck what good assignments. Hopefully though we go back to setting up permanent bases that have assigned personnel instead of rotating in a different unit every 6-months.
As someone who has deployed and been stationed overseas, permanent assignments provide more stability and allow host nation and American personnel to form personal relationships.
My example is Okinawa. The USAF has people assigned there. The marines rotate in and out. Okinawans hate Marines. Aren't too bothered by USAF.
My observation. Putin didn't anticipate the war going viral... overwhelming support for Ukraine on Social Media. He assumed the west and the world public would be apathetic. This has given countries cover and incentive to provide way more logistical, economic and material support than he anticipated. Between all the weapons and the economic sanctions, Putin's win is going to end up worse than the Status Quo, but he can't back down now... so he is screwed.
This whole thing is a result of idealist foreign policy. It's the one thing that I remain most conservative about. Other nations and people aren't like us... just because we "know" we would never invade Russia... Putin doesn't view it like that. We can't just assume that consumerism and McDonalds is going to usher in an era of non-border globalism. Borders matter, and they always will.
Romney took so much flak for saying he felt Russia was our biggest geopolitical rival. Look at how that comment had aged!
Obama's dismissive comments aged poorly, but Romney's haven't exactly aged like fine wine. Watching the performance of the Russian military in this war simply highlights how ludicrous answers like Russia, terrorism, etc. are to this question. The only peer power in the world is China.
Go read his entire interview with all the Nuance. His taken out of context soundbites might come across to you like this.... but the actually whole interview actually was quite astute.
China has been very big on projecting soft power—not just their effective building programs in Africa but their success in becoming the world’s manufacturing center give them enormous power over our economy. For decades now, manufactured goods have become more plentiful and less expensive, and if you check the label nearly all are made in China (except clothing, which is now coming from places with even lower labor costs). A good deal of pandemic-related inflation is due to manufacturing slowdowns in China (and associated shipping disruptions). No way could we afford to shut down trade with China the way we’re doing with Russia.
We can and are already moving to ensure that China remains trinket-maker-in-chief to the developed world rather than leveraging its large, state-sponsored IP theft capabilities towards climbing the value chain to become a peer competitor.
As for influence-buying abroad, I really want to go back and kick whatever journalist created that narrative to explain the BRI projects. It’s wrong, full stop.
China is our biggest geopolitical rival.
Even more so now than in 2012.
Romney was more like the broken clock that is right twice a day. His explanation for Russia being our primary concern was not about the current scenario. The problem today has much more to do with the absence of effective policy under Trump. If Hillary had won, she would have picked up on Obama’s warnings and we would be in a different place today.
> My observation. Putin didn't anticipate the war going viral
Yes!
And, he didn’t do anything to prepare his people for the economic impact of sanctions or the conscripts coming home in body bags. He’s going to have some serious domestic problems before too long.
Well maybe. Hopefully. But betting exchanges still have him at 75% chance of retaining power in the medium term. And it's also not a given that significant domestic pressures work out well (for you and me and the West). They could trigger even riskier moves from Putin
The problem is that your first several paragraphs are basically describing an exercise in charity.
Our only reason to be involved in Europe, aside from sentiment, is that the potential costs to us of a general war there dwarf the few dozen billion we pitch into the cesspit of “European security” each year.
Europe simply must figure out its own security policy and fund it, because as long as it’s acting like a charity case there’s always going to be a risk, following every election, that the US just walks away.
If I were a European policymaker, I’d be working on the assumption that the US could throw up its hands and storm off any four year cycle from January 2029.
Unfortunately Merkel was an idiot on this topic, we’ll see if Scholz can do better.
We can pretend all we want. But culture matters. And the United States is culturally part of the west. A free Western Europe is critical to our National interests. I am simply observing the world how it is… not how we wish it to be.
Even if Germany were to decide to get serious about its military it would take two decades to get up to speed. The military is way more than buying tanks. You have to develop the officer and enlisted corps to operate and maintain them. A force that is culturally willing to win wars.
People underestimate how professional our military is. A professionalism that was developed over multiple decades.
I don’t claim otherwise regarding how hard it is to build a military tradition.
Christ knows “we are part of the west” doesn’t seem to be convincing Europe that our Pacific security concerns matter at all. As such, the only thing tethering us to this is your and my shared belief that European security is important to us, albeit differently worded. That means there is a very real risk to Europe that we simply leave at some point, because most Americans aren’t committed to that belief.
Their existing policy choice is to pretend that possibility does not exist, but it does, and if they’ve not prepared at all it will go badly.
I would also say that Trump for better _and_ worse possibly changed this talk. His talk of pulling out of NATO probably made NATO a bit weaker, but that might also encourage the EU to start on its own defense.
And yeah it might take two decades, but we're not (hopefully) _about_ to abandon them, but the fact that the possibility that we might has been increased might make them start working on it.
I don't know though - there are some serious tail risks in different course of action.
I think you overestimate the Europeans. With few exceptions their militaries are all underfunded and undertrained. UK is different. French aren't quite as bad as some others.
Why can't they change course? Seems like they suddenly have a very good reason, too.
I think Germany, France and the UK care deeply about the Baltic States and Poland. That's why they're in NATO. They would certainly lead against any Russian aggression towards those countries.
The problem here is that, fundamentally, Ukraine is not in that important strategically to the major NATO countries.
Poland disagrees... but as of yet, they aren't a major country.
GHW was not only a fine citizen, but an excellent president, in his own way.
Yeah I always think of him and get patriotic warm and fuzzies while having a summer beer up in Maine. And The science isn’t totally settled on it yet. But I think everyone else does too.
On George HW Bush being a fine citizen: https://www.businessinsider.com/who-accused-george-h-w-bush-sexual-harassment-2017-11?op=1
He was 90+ years old in all of the incidents. Anyone going to the media claiming “sexual harassment” from wheelchair-bound senile old man is looking for attention and little else.
Matt seriously discounts the concrete benefits that expanding NATO eastward has provided. There's a reason Russia has attacked its own wayward republics in the Caucuses, Georgia, and now Ukraine, and not the tiny Baltic states. Consequently, the Baltics are both a) economically thriving compared to the non-NATO former USSR states, and b) fervent defenders and believers in both the Liberal Order and American Hegemony.
Not to mention, for the countries formerly under the boot of the Soviets, and the Romanovs before that, freedom has been scarce and repression common. They deserve a right to the freedoms we enjoy, and if NATO security provides that with little material benefit to the US or Western Europe, then so be it.
What if part of the reason Russia attacked was the eastward expansion of NATO?
Am I supposed to feel bad for Russia that, since we deprived them the meat and potatoes of Poland and the Baltics, they had to settle for snacking on Moldova and Georgia? “We literally cannot stop ourselves from slowly eating our neighbors, but please, keep inviting us to dinner.”
No, don't feel bad for them. But feel bad that a war has broken out, a war that could escalate into an even more serious war.
There's seldom a set of only 1 morally righteous set of actions, and no country only factors in morality, which is subjective anyway. If different actions by NATO could have prevented that war, maybe those actions should have been taken?
Well, ok, but remember that you are suggesting that these other countries should have experienced what Ukraine or Belarus experienced, which wasn't cost-free either. Poland, for example, doesn't want to suffer another Katyn massacre.
What I'm suggesting is no outcome was or is predetermined. But war is one of the worst outcomes, and worse in my view than living as Belorussians now live. The worst part is even after suffering through this painful war, it's likely that Ukrainians end up where they would have been anyway if NATO had made different decisions.
I'd like to expand on this. So it sounds like your position is that if threatened militarily by a powerful foe, it is better to submit to conquest and occupation than resistance, because war is worse than conquest and domination (including repression of your culture/language) by a foreign power. Sounds like pacifism, which is a coherent philosophy but not popular anywhere, particularly in Eastern Europe.
You're assuming that the war in Ukraine wouldn't have just happened in Poland instead, with the Baltics and Ukrainians suffering under Russian domination. I'd like to see you justify that, since all these areas were dominated historically by the Russian empire and USSR. Russia has been an expansionist power since the 17th century and has never yet come up with a way to raise living standards on its periphery or offer them a better life.
To expand on my other comments:
My question is trying to highlight the fact that Jim_ed is basically saying "NATO expansion is good because look how Russia is attacking these other countries" without engaging with the fact that it's plausible that Russia attacked those other countries (partly) *because* of NATO expansion.
The question of whether Russia was *right* to attack those countries (no, they weren't) is irrelevant to this point.
Maybe I'm uncreative but I can only think of two reasons NATO expansion would motivate Russia to attack other countries: either they thought NATO was gearing up to invade Russia so they'd better deprive NATO of potential territory; or they thought "we'd better conquer Abkhazia etc. before they join NATO and we can't do that anymore." I think the second one is more likely, don't you? In which case it's hard to blame NATO for expanding.
I think a plausible model looks something like this:
1. Putin does not like and is afraid of NATO. Whether this feeling of his is reasonable or not is irrelevant.
2. Putin's/Russia's will-do-something-about-it meter is at 7 out of 10 because at least he has some buffer before the Baltics.
3. NATO expands towards Russia some.
4. The will-do-something-about-it meter is at 9 out of 10.
5. To Putin, Ukraine really starts to look like it wants in NATO.
6. The will-do-something-about-it meter is at 10 out of 10.
7. Ukraine invasion.
A key part of this model comes down to what Putin believes about NATO and it's intentions. Whatever their actual intentions is irrelevant.
I do not think any of it is more or less plausible than the scenarios you describe. My whole point is not that the root comment is wrong, but that it was overconfident and did not consider any alternate models.
No, but that doesn't follow from the premise of my question.
Wigan gives basically the sort of response I would make here.
I think having a plan for Russia in a post-Putin world would also be wise. Much like your proposed Good Neighbor Policy for Mexico, Central America, etc., it would be good to have a plan to bring Russia back to being a liberal democracy and to be embraced by the west.
I think we need to acknowledge that liberal democracy is not easy or automatic—we’re having a hard enough time maintaining it here, it’s been quite a struggle to build it in Ukraine. Russia had only a few years in the 90s (and short-lived attempt between the Tsarist and Soviet periods) of trying to be a liberal democracy, and given that those weren’t the happiest of times makes it all the more challenging to persuade the people of Russia to give it a go again. Meanwhile the UK parliament appears poised to pass a law cracking down on freedom of speech (prohibiting public protest), turning away from the tradition of liberal democracy that they were once a leading example of.
I think this undersells American culpability for the disaster of Russia in the 1990s. We embraced a reckless privatization that went poorly, we backed Yeltsin when he bombed parliament for not extending his emergency near-dictatorship authority, we helped dig the 1996 election for him when he was polling at 1%. Everyone's savings got wiped out, the economy shrank rapidly, there was a huge rise in crime... it was an enormous catastrophe. Endorsed and nurtured by Americans every step of the way.
This x100. I've been hating on Clinton's neoliberal advisers since 2008, so I'd say: it was a tragedy that they got our "help" when we were at peak neoliberal free market stupidity.
I think the combination of the disastrous post-Soviet privatization combined with NATO moving East set up a lot of the problems we see now. Imagine Russia without Putin. Who is there instead? A liberal reformer? No way - how would a western-friendly liberal Politician _compete_ in Russia in the early 2000s? Privatization and NATO expansion would be a headwind insurmountable to anyone we'd like to see as a leader.
I look forward to utilitarian philosophers ranking the great failed American rebuilding projects - Reconstruction, the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Which killed the most people? What if you rank it by qalys?
So how come neoliberalism worked in the rest of the warsaw pact nations? Perhaps the factors that caused Russia to fail were Russian specific - say, the manner in which the policies were implemented (selling off the assets for pennies a few oligarchs, and then having state olicy protect them from competition?)
When it comes to economic reform, it could be Russia specific factors. It could be the curse of natural resources (e.g. on average having oil tends not to be great for having a functioning non-corrupt elected government).
But in terms of any sense of grievance about being a former great power whose adversaries are taking over your sphere of influence, I think that's almost definitionally Russia-specific.