>A bit of context often missing from the story is that from the Ukrainian perspective, there was an ongoing war in the Donbas region long before Russia formally invaded..... As president, he agreed to a controversial German-backed Donbas peace agreement
Yes. For the 'wHy DoN't ThEy TrY nEgOtIaTing' crowd- I'm amazed that more people don't know that Russia and Ukraine negotiated almost continuously from Russia's initial invasion in 2014, all the way up to 2022. Literally no one seems to know this! They were called the Minsk agreements, and they were brokered by France and Germany. *After* Russia seized 20% of Ukraine's territory, there were multiple rounds of talks, and multiple cease fires declared. Ultimately "on 22 February 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared that the Minsk agreements "no longer existed", and that Ukraine, not Russia, was to blame for their collapse. Russia then invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
After 8 years of it, I think one could reasonably say that Ukraine has, in fact, tried negotiating. There may ultimately end up being a negotiated settlement, but it'll come after Russia feels militarily pressed- not before
The other thing people miss is that Putin's word is worth absolutely zero. Right now, Putin desperately needs a temporary cease-fire to allow time to regroup his broken military and get control of his hot mess of a mobilization effort.
Of course he wants peace talks. Anything to stop the need for continued retreat. It's no coincidence that the renewed focus on negotiations is timed perfectly to allow Putin to catch his breath and realign his war efforts.
Whatever their motivations, people like Musk and Sacks are Putin's useful idiots.
Not snark, I promise...a question for you and Lost Future: So if Ukraine is victorious, what does that look like? If, as you say, Putin's word is worth zero, that seems to preclude any settlement with him. So, regime change? Ukraine marches into Russian territory, as the allied powers did in Germany?
I don't disagree that Putin is untrustworthy. Lots of bad people can't be trusted. But a deal will likely have to be made eventually, no? I don't think that time is now, but it will come at some point and it is good to think through what that looks like sooner rather than later.
I think it looks like, Ukraine pushes the Russian military out of the country and is able to set up defensible, fortified borders (perhaps giving up some small amount of territory if they judge the geography to favor particular positions). They hold these borders against Russian counterattacks which keep coming less and less frequently, trailing off as Putin's enthusiasm wanes. Finally a "temporary" ceasefire is signed.
Politically, what needs to happen is that Putin is seen to have lost in that he couldn't hold the country and pay whatever internal price he's going to pay for losing. After having already paid that cost, incentive to try again is much less.
My suspicion on this is all about the timing. Renewed focus on negotiations won't seem so suspicious in a month or two when a pause isn't exactly what Putin needs militarily.
But right now, all the military experts I listen to say the situation for Putin will be very difficult for the next several weeks or so, but after that he's likely to regain the advantage due to the manpower he can bring to the fight. Basically they say he needs a pause right now to regroup and retrain the new forces.
There's disagreement about how effective/decisive his mobilized forces can be, but I don't think there's disagreement that their huge numbers could make things much tougher for Ukraine in a couple of months.
This gives Putin a big incentive to do anything he can to slow down Ukraine's progress and stop the need to retreat and the killing of Russian troops while he regroups.
He’s basically describing a cannon fodder strategy, whereby they first form poorly trained, non-mechanized infantry units before trying to equip them for mechanized mobility and draw some in for specialized training as artillery or armor units.
He’s basically saying that they can only be made into an effective combat force in a prolonged conflict.
I’ve heard other SMEs say there’s a very real risk of these units breaking virtually on first contact with Ukrainian arms, if not preemptively dragging their officers and running or surrendering. The morale and training issues seem to be grave.
In a long war, I agree that Russia’s sheer size provides an advantage, but if the Ukrainians can effectively pin and defang the large professional force north of the Dnipro in Kherson and/or turn the flank of the main Donetsk positions from the north, this isn’t going to be a long war.
I’m unsure there is a realistic path for the Russians to effectively generate forces before Ukraine unhinges both main fronts, unless the US and EU pull support quite soon.
I mean, FFS, Zelensky was the peace candidate in the last election. The electorate was pissed at him for giving away too much until a year of stability started to yield some dividends in foreign investment and general happiness.
Then Putin, I guess, had a belated realization of what a peaceful Ukraine increasingly stitched into the European economy would look like and pressed the panic button?
Matt touches on this, but he's actually being a bit too kind to Musk and Sacks. Basically anyone aligned with Peter Thiel at this point, we should really have as our baseline that they are essentially pro-Putin and pro-Fascist. I honestly don't think this alarmist or over the top to frame this way. Because Sacks and Musk talk in the manner of Silicon Valley "bros" (and are Silicon Valley bros) we don't put in them in the same mental bucket as Tucker, or Tulsi or DJT. But reality is they should be seen as part of the same Fascist or at least "Fascist-curious" camp.
I should say that “PayPal Mafia” refers to at least 25 people, many of whom I would not classify as a Peter Thiel acolyte. Reid Hoffman for example seems to be a pretty progressive guy.
The Minsk Agreements called for the separatist-held parts of the Donbas to be given local autonomy. The government in Kyiv refused to do this for 7 years and continued to shell the Donbas, causing 80% of civilian casualties despite the Donbas rebels having the exact same weapons.
Sounds like we're in agreement that negotiations are pointless, and that the issue will be solved who's the militarily stronger power on the battlefield. Good luck with that!
"Pullout of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, and also mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision. Disarmament of all illegal groups."
Note "territory of Ukraine" includes the territory held by the Kyiv government. So if the Russians had to get out of Donbas and the Donbas rebels have to give up their Rusian rebels, then the NATO trainers have to go home too and the Ukrainian military has to give up all of the equipment that NATO sent them.
Even assuming you disregard all of the details R C has provided below to fill in the two-thirds of the story Michael Tracey didn’t tell you, do you not find it… odd… that Putin would launch his war only *after* a Ukrainian government came to power which was following through on Minsk and offering further promises, even at the expense of domestic popularity?
Zelansky’s government were elected as doves with predominantly Eastern votes, and acted on that mandate.
Putin saw that normalization would leave Russia with a pair of satellite republics which were disproportionately a drain on its resources and Ukraine peaceful and stable enough to attract foreign investment and build economic and social ties with the EU for real, and he panicked.
It’s not hard to see, if one is interested in opening one’s eyes.
Zelensky was elected as a dove, but then his attempts to act on that mandate were sabotaged by far-right militias who refused to stand down in the Donbas and threatened to lynch Zelensky if he tried to implement the Minsk Accords. https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/im-not-a-loser-zelensky-clashes-with-veterans-over-donbas-disengagement.html Then when 2021 rolled around Zelensky took a hardline anti-Russian line, talking about retaking Crimea, banning pro-Russian media, and using more advanced NATO weapons such as TB2 drones in the Donbas war, all with the public approval of the Biden administration.
And in 2021 Ukraine was still worse off economically than it had been in 2013 and really wasn't any closer to joining the EU. That whole line of argument makes no sense at all.
And none of my last post gets into the fact that the Minsk Accords were fundamentally illegitimate, signed by Ukraine at gunpoint after Russia used its own forces to prevent Ukraine from ending a domestic insurrection with minimal public support, which Russia fomented in the first place. Everything which followed, including the referenda, was a result of a massive exodus of pro-Ukrainian citizens from the region.
There’s not a scrap of legitimacy to be found in the entire Russian position and Michael Tracey is a fucking imbecile.
As far as I’m concerned, the fact that Russia won’t even have the material resources to maintain its damned nuclear deterrent by 2035 is a wonderful thing and we should all rejoice that we get to pick over its carcass.
Again, not really. Even your own link doesn’t really match the neatly packaged narrative you offer.
The media restrictions were a (half-assed, yes) stab at anti-monopoly regulation. The 2021 pivot seems to exist almost entirely in the minds of Americans like Tracey.
But, also, as I say elsewhere… if the Biden administration managed to convince Russia to shoot itself in both feet and then repeatedly in the face by making statements and providing mid-level officer training to a neighboring country… that’s rather impressive.
I wish the US could more consistently act like it is omniscient and all-powerful, lol.
But it says "territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision", so why would NATO trainers have to go home and Ukraine give up military equipment entirely? Isn't that the idea of the mutual clauses that give control of the border back to Ukraine in exchange for amending the constitution to decentralize power? Like, Ukraine would have to pull out of the region of supervision, but only as far back as buffer zone in Ukraine proper.
I don't know what I'm talking about, but the Wikipedia article makes it sound as though the Minsk agreement more or less creates a gradient between Russia and Ukraine that is semi-autonomous and then lets both countries go about their business as they see fit outside of that region.
It also says that Minsk I ended when the DPR and LPR violated it by attacking Ukrainian forces and capturing an airport, which means Minsk II was capitulating to the separatists, in the same vein as what the pro-Putin camp wants Ukraine to do now.
Also, I read plenty of reporting about Ukrainian shelling, but it was largely in the context of separatists running false-flag attacks, blowing up schools and generally acting like terrorists. Like, maybe they learned the wrong lesson and thought that continuing to violate the treaty would get them more of what they want.
It was my understanding that both Russian speaking/leaning and Ukrainian speaking/leaning lived in the Dunbar. Also in the history weren’t some Officials put in as Russian puppets?
Thank you for your excellent reply. When Kevin McCarthy’s name comes up, I immediately think of Quisling who sold out Norway in WWII. Of course the thought of nuclear Armageddon is frightening, but Russia has been threatening for decades. In the 1950’s people were building bomb shelters. School children hunkered down under coats in the halls when a siren sounded. Putin’s desperation to demonstrate strength/wins before his next election looks totally insane. His shenanigans in and around the Ukrainian nuclear ☢️ plant are flirting with enormous destruction. Since we have lived so many years with the Russian threat (excluding the years of Russia opening to the West), we believe the US has “skin in the game” with Ukraine. I also believe the Ports of Crimea, Odessa and others on Ukraines east coast are key to the health of its economy.
Please also remember that Russia is exceedingly close to Alaska. We are also in conflict of rights in the Arctic. All in all, though I cry for the death and destruction in Ukraine, I’m glad we’re not fighting this war in the US.
Is there the possibility for a peaceful resolution to the conflict?
A peace settlement can only occur when both sides makes credible commitments, but at this point it’s hard to imagine any commitment made by Russia being credible considering their repeated history of revanchism.
Just in the same way that after Hitler invaded Poland there could be no peace, even in Britains darkest moments, I fear the same is true for Ukraine. No matter how good the deal offered we know as soon as Russia is in a better position they’ll reopen the conflict.
A withdrawal by Russia from all of Ukraine other than Crimea would have value because borders represent a natural “Schelling Point” the violation of which results in a hot war, full stop, and NATO is clearly going to be backing Ukrainian efforts to fight such a war which has some genuine deterrent value. The trouble is that even before Putin’s absurd “annexation” decree it was clear the Russians weren’t going to go for that, and it seems an impossibility afterward short of a strategic defeat so profound that Putin says fuck it and is tempted to use nukes.
The most plausible course for a negotiated settlement at present would *seem to be* something like a return to formalized borders around the status quo ante circa 2020 (so Russia keeps the Donbas) which would doubtless be a bitter pill for the Ukrainians to swallow but at least has the virtue that they don’t give up anything that wasn’t already de facto under Russian control. Of course, the Russians would also want guarantees that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO while NATO itself and Ukraine (even if NATO would be very leery of Ukrainian accession due to nuclear war risks) would want to tell Russia to get fucked, but it seems more tractable than the territory issue in any event.
I have extremely low confidence in the above scenario playing out, however, both due to my own ignorance of the war and key actors’ thinking, and because to all appearances the Russians have already committed themselves to more extensive territorial conquests than the above and I have to imagine aren’t going to formalize backing off from them.
All the proposed outlines of a final settlement I've seen -- like the one offered here -- have the (barely) implied condition of "otherwise Russia uses nukes." Really, Russia has no other leverage in negotiations. They're losing on the battlefield. Europe is in the process of disengaging from them economically. Their putative allies are becoming increasingly neutral.
So we should press Ukraine to give up the Donbass (which they're on the way to conquering) otherwise Russia will use nukes? What if Putin says, give us Kyiv or otherwise we'll use nukes? I mean, once you assume Putin/Russia are suicidal, how do you limit negotiations?
Actually, I'm wrong. Russia does have one other piece of leverage. They can demand concessions of various sorts and offer as an inducement that they will return all the children they kidnapped. Isn't that just lovely.
If the Ukrainians can crush the Russians without starting a nuclear war I'm all for it, but in the meantime the Russians aren't totally beaten and are kamikaze-drone-striking Ukrainian energy facilities to apparently great effect, so between these and battlefield casualties it isn't costless for Ukraine to prosecute the war either.
As to the credibility of Russian nuke threats, no one obviously knows, but the best one can do is try to guess at Russian reaction.
Would Russia deploy nukes in defense of "annexed" Eastern Ukrainian territories? Seems unlikely but who knows, and also who knows how much of a headache occupying and defending those territories would be for Ukraine in any event -- there was certainly a sizable pro-Russian paramilitary contingent there at least before the war started. Given that Ukraine didn't actually control these territories *before* the war it seems like not the worst candidate for a paper "concession" that lets the Russians pretend they won and go home and hopefully abates the suffering of the Ukrainians without representing a substantive loss to Ukraine. That said, I don't pretend to know either the general view of the remaining civilian population of the occupied Donbass on Russian annexation nor how much the Ukrainians really care about it at this time.
Would Russia deploy nukes over Crimea? Seems significantly more likely than with respect to the Donbass based on bizarre Russian territorial revanchist psychology that I don't pretend to understand but that seems to view Crimea as Russian in a more "genuine" or at least less purely cynical way than the Donbass.
I don't claim to have special expertise here but the basic idea that "Russia would deploy nuclear weapons to maintain the territorial integrity of (what Putin considers) actual Russia even if not in support of territorial conquest" seems like an implicit consideration of both NATO and Russia -- for Russia because if you game-theory this out you see why the West can't accede to Russian territorial conquest based solely on the threats of nukes (because there's no limit to that kind of thinking and we're *not* giving Russia carte-blanche to conquer Eastern Europe), and for NATO because Russia has nothing to lose it it came to a conventional war on Russian territory -- their forces have been put to shame by a military nowhere near the size and strength of the United States, in a conventional war against NATO they just lose, so taking everyone with him is a credible commitment on Putin's part.
Of course it's not costless for Ukraine to pursue the war. But the Iranian drones are not militarily significant and will not destroy Ukrainian morale or support for the war -- no doubt, the opposite.
How Putin would employ the threat (or the use) of nukes no one really knows, probably including Putin. But again, it's his last card. I would tend to call his bluff, but admittedly it's a hell of a gamble.
"Of course it's not costless for Ukraine to pursue the war. But the Iranian drones are not militarily significant and will not destroy Ukrainian morale or support for the war -- no doubt, the opposite."
I mean, Zelenskyy has said that the Russians destroyed 30% of Ukraine's energy stations in a couple days, and the Shaheds are (relatively speaking) dirt cheap at 20,000 a pop. It seems like that's potentially *very* significant blow to Ukrainian production, logistics, and morale (albeit I don't actually know how swiftly the Ukrainians are likely to be able to restore the damage). I would have guessed that the drones were mostly a gimmick myself but the Russians do seem to be using them to surprising effect.
If the Russians can get half as much mileage out of Iranian drones as the Ukrainians seem to be getting out of the HIMARS it seems like a very real problem - or at minimum a genuine leverage point for the Russians.
Basically because Russia already stole it hook line and sinker in 2014, because it's a very discrete bit of geography, because Russia likely considers it more crucial to defend / more "core" territory to defend than the Donbass (which at most achieved the status of 'civil war stalemate' rather than 'Russian annexation fait accompli'), and because (as Matt notes) even if the "referendum" held there to accede to Russian annexation was a complete sham from the get-go, everyone seems to agree that an actual free and fair election would have returned the same result.
So somewhere between considerations of "something something self-determination" and "Crimea to all appearances actually *is* a viper's nest of Russian sympathizers and would-be Russians" it's not clear that it's particularly desirable for Ukraine to actually have the territory back under Ukrainian civilian administration. The chief value to Ukraine (beyond general but not incontestable principles of territorial integrity) seems to be the (considerable) logistical value of preventing Russia from having a ready beachhead into the Kherson region. That's not nothing by any means, and I have next to no insight into how Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians at large view the Crimean issue, but the Russians seem to genuinely care about it a *lot,* and if "status quo antebellum" is a natural point around which to coalesce redrawn borders, Crimea seems like a gimme compared to the Donbass.
"as soon as Russia is in a better position they’ll reopen the conflict".
This sounds far from certain. Just drawing on history we could have said something similar about North Korea and the Kim family back in the 50s, or Saddam after he invaded Kuwait.
But more than that I question whether they'll be in a better position anytime soon. Militarily it doesn't seem like they would be. And If they agreed to peace and attacked again a couple years later I'm guessing the regime would lose a significant amount of internal public support. Other people probably follow this more closely than I do, but last I saw public opinion in Russia was at 40% support for continuing to fight, 40% fight but negotiate, and <20% against the war. That doesn't sound like a public that will be excited to launch round 2.
“But more than that I question whether they'll be in a better position anytime soon. Militarily it doesn't seem like they would be.”
They’re currently throwing mobilized civilians into battle with approximately zero training. Given a 3 month ceasefire, they could give them 12 weeks of training, which is a big improvement! Russia’s largest disadvantage vs Ukraine at the moment is a lack of soldiers (it has more heavy equipment, aircraft, etc.), but Russia has over 3x the population as Ukraine. Time is how Russia can get more trained soldiers.
Heck, even a 1 week ceasefire would give them time to set up pontoon bridges across the Dnieper and properly resupply their troops on the other side. They can’t do that now because any bridge would be blown up. It would also give them more time to build fortifications.
I could go on. Any ceasefire would put them in a better military position. If they want a ceasefire, that is pretty strong evidence that they think it would benefit them.
In contrast a ceasefire does not benefit Ukraine militarily because nothing Russia is doing at the moment is significantly slowing down Ukraine’s military. Troops will be trained in the UK with or without a ceasefire. New supplies will be flown into Rzeszow with or without a ceasefire. Etc.
>> Heck, even a 1 week ceasefire would give them time to set up pontoon bridges across the Dnieper and properly resupply their troops on the other side. They can’t do that now because any bridge would be blown up. It would also give them more time to build fortifications.
It looks that Putin will solve this problem with 50-60k civilian "evacuees" from Kherson that he'll use as human shields to provide cover while he repositions Russian troops and supplies.
I'm curious what exactly these "evacuations" are going to entail.
They could certainly be used as cover for a Russian withdraw. I'm skeptical that they could be used as cover for a resupply effort ---- simply because the supplies and people would be moving in opposite directions and pontoon bridges are too narrow to allow traffic in both directions at once. (Ferries face a similar problem.)
My guess is that the evacuation is mostly going to be collaborators and civilians that the Russian brought in. I think they'd have trouble rounding up and transporting 50-60k unwilling civilians at the same time as a major militarily movement across the river. That said, I imagine that we'll find out soon.
I was thinking more about cover for a withdrawal than resupply. Military experts seem to think a withdrawal is in the cards and the conventional wisdom seemed to be that Russia would have to leave a lot of gear behind because of the river crossing.
I thought we were talking about medium to longer term prospects for maintaining an effective peace over longer periods of years, not short-term pauses in the fighting.
I wouldn’t put much confidence in public opinion polling of a country like Russia (or any other dictatorship where dissent can get you sent away for a long time). We can certainly guess that the Russian people are less enthused about the war based on things like outward immigration and Russian soldiers deserting, but we shouldn’t see Putin as constrained by lack of public support the way an American President or European leader would be.
Agreed that polling is to be taken with a big grain of salt, but then I'd imagine the true numbers are even less supportive.
It's also probably true that they are less directly constrained. But it still matters, in part for things like troop morale and emigration. And even in real dictatorships the possibility of coups or destabilizing protests are a danger that they have to be concerned with.
In Russia there's also the distinct possibility of flare-ups in regions like Chechnya that not so long ago had significant amounts of separatist / Islamist terrorist groups. Those regions supply a disproportionate amount of troops / conscripts, so I'm sure that's another dimension of public opinion that the regime has to keep an eye on.
It’s not ‘clear’ but for example the resolution of the costly iran / iraq war was not an end to Iraqi aggression. Hard to say what will happen exactly but that’s a bit closer to what’s envisioned here than the Kuwait which involved direct US intervention. To make this conflict mirror that we’d have to step in and destroy much of the rest of russias army before the negotiations.
It’s hard to say for sure but I would guess from the hints we have received about Russia’s negotiation posture that we could achieve a resolution which would leave Ukraine looking even harder to attack in a few years. So peace is possible. By the same token, Russia is not seeming favorable to such an outcome, which does suggest that for them the point of peace today would be to prepare for war later.
According to people like Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill, Russia is setting terms through proxies like Elon Musk. They pick apart the messaging and contemporaneous use of very specific phrases and references and make the case that they could only have come from direct contact with Kremlin operatives (including Putin himself). The idea is that the Kremlin throws out ideas like "give us Crimea or we'll nuke Ukraine" via public figures like Musk because they can't say that in a serious negotiation.
It goes something like: You're such a big, smart, important guy and everyone listens to you... you know what, I bet you're the only one big and important and smart enough to solve this seemingly intractable problem. Now let me explain how things got this way.
I really like Anne Applebaum. Her book on the History of the Gulags was really, really good. She's been a critic of Putin's over 20 years -- all justified.
However, it is good to remember her conflict of interest when it comes to Russian and Eastern European relations: her husband is a prominent politician in Poland, and was Minister of Foreign Affairs for Poland from 2007-2014. He currently serves in the European Parliament.
She has an important perspective. One that deserves serious consideration. But I think she is sometimes too close to the situation to see alternative outcomes.
Yah, I was skeptical when she was discussing it, but then I heard the same from Hill and others whose names I don't recall. (I think Taibbi also wrote about this practice of laundering/testing arguments through 'useful idiots'?) Perhaps they are all just recycling the same ideas, but it does seem plausible and it is odd how, for example, Musk gave a speech about securing water resources for Crimea that run through the regions Putin is trying to capture... well before Russia invaded. And there many examples of people mouthing Kremlin arguments that, in retrospect, predate the Kremlin making them (at least publicly).
Elon Musk has a big mouth. He's not a back channel for Russian foreign policy. Any analyst suggesting otherwise should be taken as a signal that they're unserious.
Remember that a lot of these well sourced old hands were also pushing the Havana syndrome nonsense.
I disagree, they have communicated a lot about theoretical post peace Ukrainian ‘neutrality’ and the ongoing threat Ukraine supposedly poses to them. This is a posture. They could talk a lot about their territorial ambitions, which would give us a much clearer path to resolving the conflict (even if it’s still undesirable or unacceptable to Ukraine). Obviously there is a pure PR propaganda element to this but if they are honestly looking for a way out this posture is what they need to change. Get Elon (or whichever useful idiot of the day) talking more about stuff they want to keep outside of crimea alongside the security partnerships for Ukraine that are going to persuade skeptical Europeans that the deal will resolve russias western border for the foreseeable future.
I guess the question then is what is an alternative to a “peaceful” resolution of the conflict. Are you imagining that Ukrainian forces actually reach the 2014 borders and just continue to hold the Russian forces out forcibly? Or that they enter Russia? It’s not clear that any of those leads to a “resolution” either, peaceful or not, for the same reason you mentioned.
Why couldn’t Ukraine use a peaceful interval as effectively or even more effectively than Russia? Any interval of peace could be used to supply more arms to Ukraine and to build defensive positions. The western economy is much bigger than Russias
A key difference between Taiwan and Ukraine is that Taiwan has and produces long range missiles. The US will not give Ukraine the ability to strike Moscow now because it would dramatically escalate the war, but in peace time Ukrainian cruise missiles could credibly maintain peace.
"The counterpoint to this might be that said European allies are paying a much heavier economic price for the sake of upholding the tit-for-tat sanctions on Russia."
That would probably be because Europe in general simultaneously underinvested in defense and built economic ties with Russia, heedless of the dependent position it put them in.
Some EU countries (especially in the east) had an perfectly reasonable justification for doing this, but many others did not.
Germany deserves special ire given their shirking of their NATO obligation, despite their economic clout.
All that being said, we should keep supplying Ukraine until they drive the Russians out.
We are helping Ukraine -- appropriately & correctly, in my view -- because it is in our national interest to do so. If that changes at some point in the future, we don't have to tell the Ukrainians to give up anything. We would just remove our sanctions and stop sending money and arms.
It isn't our place to counter aggression wherever it happens in the world. There are on-going territorial conflicts happening in Africa right now. It is sad. But not our place to intervene. Speaking only for myself, this conservative learned quite a few lessons from the 19-year wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of those lessons is to only enter a conflict to the extent clearly-defined national interests are at stake, and then leave once those interests have been met.
Yes we can. Law is fundamentally about power, clothed and encrusted in habit, norms, tradition, cultural acceptance, etc. Those who have power get to make the rules, and if they can make them stick for long enough and gain broad enough acceptance as basically fair, that becomes the new legal order; that applies to supra-national as well as sub-national law.
Currently the US is the only force with the power and, for the time being the will, to make a rules-based international order stick. China has abandoned any pretense of supporting that project, and sadly our NATO and other key Western allies are still too squishy to do this in their own neighborhood without us leading the charge. If we don't do it, nobody will, and hopes of a rules-based international order will be pushed further into the future.
Is that what you want? Of all people, I'd think someone who dislikes the Westphalian nation-state system and favors a globalist future would be strongly in favor of enforcing nonaggression principles against Russia, rather than sniping at it as "undemocratic".
I think you’ve over-egged the pudding here. Of course not every foreign conflict warrants a zillion-dollar arms package but many very much merit American investment in some way or other. Determining what that should be is another question.
I don't disagree with you. It is all about acting in our national interest...and assisting a stable democracy against an offensive action by an aggressor nation is part of that national interest. My lesson from Iraq is to focus on the national interest, rather than more esoteric 'goals' such as ending terrorism or establishing democracy.
100%. It’s infuriating, but it’s not just conservatives. There’s a bunch of leftists who hate the US national security establishment so much that it melts their brains. Everything must be America’s fault. Ukraine somehow provoked the conflict by existing and not wanting to be taken over (the nerve). Russia was just acting rationally given NATO expansion - how could it be expected to tolerate NATO on its borders? Never mind that NATO has been on Russia’s border for decades. And if NATO can tolerate Russia on ITS border, Russia can learn to deal with it too.
I had to break up with a lot of my left-wing media because I just couldn’t take this nonsense.
"Bunch of" seems to be an exaggeration. For sure, they exist but if both AOC and Bernie are fully supporting Biden's efforts for Ukraine, this is marginal
(and the same thing in Europe; I posted here a while ago a German poll showing that despite costs - budget, energy, Green voters, whose party is in government and well to the left of the social democrats, support the war overwhelmingly)
It's unfortunate that in Germany's case it is very hard to tell what Olaf Scholz's real game plan is and what he really wants to do vis a vis Ukraine. He seems to want to prevent a European war that has already broken out and ends up saying strange things and compromising vacuously. This matters since he is the Bundeskanzler and seems like he would like to go right back to Ostpolitik and listening to Putinversteher if allowed to. I don't dispute the German public polling, just how it is interpreted in the German government. (Edit: wrote Westpolitik, corrected to OstPolitik).
If there are any two political parties in a developed democracy that need to be broken and spend a few decades in the wilderness, other than the GOP, it’s the CDU and SDP.
Every German I know is annoyed at their obsession with Ostpolitik, but somehow when elections roll around that annoyance always plays second fiddle to some other issue and they keep capturing 55-65% of the vote.
It's true. Die Linke seems to be made up of socialists/communists who haven't noticed that Russia is run by a right-wing nationalist government, and the AfD are largely incoherent but seem to be a vehicle for East Germans annoyed about their position in West Germany who would like to leverage whatever social capital they have from knowing Russian.
The distributions are different, but it’s hard to say one is stronger than the other. Probably the median Republican has stronger support for the war than the median Democrat, but there are also Republican cable news hosts and members of congress who are publicly soft on the war in a way that there aren’t for Democrats.
That being said, I don't understand how the Gallup data can be valid. It shows only 50% support by self identified Republicans, but no single age, gender or education group has support under 59. How is that possible? Maybe incomplete answers from respondents?
I don’t see a problem with those results. This is likely an issue where partisanship operates directly, rather than in correlation with demographic variables. There’s no age, gender, or education group that is so Republican that it’s overall results need to be close to those of republicans.
My worst, but hardest to break, habit these days is hate-listening to Robert Wright on Ukraine. To his credit, he sure sticks with the bit in insisting that this whole thing was and continues to be our fault.
At the risk of confusing everyone looking at this exchange…
I tend to lead with “this is the whole reason we have the Second Amendment” when discussing this with that sort of conservative.
They immediately fallback on “well we shouldn’t be bankrolling it,” but at least they’ve been forced to think on the merits of telling a free people to go belly-up because gas is four bucks a gallon.
But ethically/positionally/whatever, there is a pretty big difference between saying "we actively encourage you to submit and seek peace at any cost" vs "we wish you the best but this isn't our fight".
And also, the NATO members of Europe are in a perfectly good position to support them (a non-NATO member) with materiel if we did not.
Many/most NATO members are in that boat, but not all.
UK, France, Turkey, and a few others have met their NATO defense spending targets, I think.
I thought France in particular maintained okay-but-not-great surpluses.
Just to reiterate...I'm fine with our current approach on supplying Ukraine. But the argument that it isn't our fight, because Ukraine isnt a member of NATO or an official ally, isn't unreasonable.
.. suggesting Ukraine give up Crimea and give up on NATO. (Maybe his thinks this is an idea that never crossed anyone's mind?)
That's just one example. Since the start of the war, my twitter feed has been full of right-wing people suggesting that we split their country in half for them to stop the fighting because.... being reasonable, I guess.
No, this is incorrect. If the US/west stopped supplying weapons, then Ukraine's ability to fight a CONVENTIONAL war would suffer tremendously. However, they could continue to fight a guerilla war which would likely be much, much more devastating and would likely involve NATO countries much more directly.
Yes, but then imagine something like Afghanistan for the Russians where Ukraine partisans are filtering into and out of Ukraine and Russia through Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, etc. like they did in Pakistan before. Do we think that is better for NATO than the current situation or worse?
Great piece. Where the realists have a point I think is in the warning against getting too ideological over this. When a workable deal is there we should be open to it, and not go all 'Munich 1938!' But it seems to me the best way to get to that point is to equip Ukraine to keep inflicting conventional defeats on Russia.
There’s one anti-peace argument that must be refuted: the canard that any type of territorial concession would unacceptably “reward” Putin’s aggression. This argument has two flaws. First, Russia has undermined its strategic position by exposing its military weakness and inspiring Europe to find other energy sources even if it gets to keep Crimea and Donbas. Second, no war has ever ended short of exhaustion without some concessions. I doubt Crimea is enough to pacify Putin, but Crimea and the ethnically Russian parts of Donbas might be enough if and when Ukraine recaptures more territory. That’s better for everyone than a 10 or 20% chance if nuclear war.
If you reward Russia for engineering ethnic Russiadom in territory it captures, it sets a very bad precedent. Lithuania and Latvia will tell you to go pound sand if you think that's an acceptable compromise with Russia.
This. There are _multiple_ countries including existing NATO members with whom we have mutual defense commitments who have substantial ethnic Russian minorities. “Russia has a moral right to annex any nearby territory with at least 40% Russian speakers” is not a box any sane person wants to open.
Did France, Prussia and Austria Hungary set a bad precedent by tolerating the ethnic cleaning of native Americans? Did Britain set a similar precedent by capitulating to American traitors and abandoning its native American subjects to their tender mercies? Perhaps, but this hardly hurt any of said European powers, who had much more to fear from one another than “precedents.”
Furthermore, the Baltics need us much more than we need them. We can call the shots or else they can choose between appeasement and martyrdom.
I'd like to remind you how we got into WW2. One large expansionist, imperialist power (Japan) attacked us, and its ally, also an expansionist imperialist power (Germany) declared war on us. This idea that we have total freedom of maneuver and can just sit back while the world burns is fantasy.
Russia's territorial expansionism isn't anything new and is a hell of a lot closer for the Europeans than North American expansionism was in the 19th century. European history is also littered with national projects of various ethnic groups and their suppression.
As the guarantor of the post war European order there is no way the US is hanging the Baltics, Poland and Romania out to dry to appease sone incompetent Russian aggression.
Your accusation of continental autarky is absurd. South America is a different continent. Australia and New Zealand aren’t part of North America. India and Indonesia are in different continents. Russia has never been much of a threat to the UK, which has nukes and a navy. France had the good sense to develop an independent nuclear deterrent with a robust second strike capability.
At most, I’m saying that continuing trade with eastern Europe is hardly a compelling American material interest. That the US didn’t need to trade with Germany and France in 1946 is obvious. We didn’t trade with them from 1942-44 and, during those years, we hit it out of the park in terms of industrial production.
"At most, I’m saying that continuing trade with eastern Europe is hardly a compelling American material interest. That the US didn’t need to trade with Germany and France in 1946 is obvious. We didn’t trade with them from 1942-44 and, during those years, we hit it out of the park in terms of industrial production."
This is nonsensical - we hit peak production because we deficit financed production at a scale that we've never gotten close to since. Post war - trading with Germany and France led to enormous wealth for the US.
The admission of the Baltic States to NATO is at the top of Putin’s list of grievances, and made his fear of Ukraine joining NATO far from groundless. The breakup of a great empire always leaves wounds, we were silly to think Russia would take humiliation lying down.
it’s not a question of should it’s a question of power. how much risk of violent death should american voters tolerate to contain putin? that question is hard to answer, but it’s pretty clear very few want to pay $3.20 a gallon for gas to contain putin, so i very much doubt many voters want to die over the political status of former SSRs
For someone who decries imperialism, he seems awfully cavalier about the fact that this is the first era in which naked imperialism and brutality face systemic moral constraint.
He’s successfully outsourced state violence and coercion at so many removes from himself that he can safely delude himself that they’re unnecessary.
I’m not even sure that’s it; it seems he just thinks the present era of relative restraint exists independent of any prior causes and will continue to do so with no effort?
Hate to break it to him, but well over 100 million people died in the first half of the twentieth century in the conflicts which finally birthed a firm conception of just war and international law, and the work is far from done.
A lot more people will pick up a rifle and fight for some conception of “home, freedom, and country” before there’s no longer a need.
The "canard" you bring up is no such thing. The modern norm against annexation via conquest is incredibly important to uphold. European borders been fought over and changed for thousands of years, such that every European country has substantial ethnic minorities that might correctly "belong" to a different country. If every county invaded it's neighbor to incorporate any region with a substantial ethnic minority, endless war would result. To recognize Russia's conquests would undermine that norm, and also undermine nuclear non proliferation (both because countries want nukes as deterrence from foreign invasion and because Russia has been perceived to get off easy because it has nukes)
The actual solution to messy borders and mixed populations was solved by Europe decades ago, it's the European Union. If both Ukraine and Russia were part of the EU, then it wouldn't matter if the Donbas were Russian or Ukrainian, residents could live and work in either country as they see fit. The rest of continental Europe understands this, if only Putin could be so wise...
"The modern norm against annexation via conquest is incredibly important to uphold." It is codified in the unknown but really important Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 - a visionary step towards a better world, IMO.
I remember learning about that pact in history class, but it was presented as a joke in light of World War II. I’ve only recently understood how much of the modern order is due to that pact.
Europe’s “solution” to messy borders didn’t keep Russia from invading the Ukraine, nor are Europeans willing to admit Russia into the EU.
The categorical imperative is hardly a desirable basis for foreign policy. Territorial concessions to a nuclear power that was willing to wreck its economy to bloody Ukraine hardly compel France to return Alsace to Germany or that Finland should must disgorge ethnically Swedish areas.
Why would Europe not accept Russia in the EU? They certainly won’t under Putin, but the range of other countries that have been accepted suggests that Russia would be as well, if it credibly made the same commitments.
Since 1993, the policy of the EU has been that you can join if you are a democracy (incl respect of human rights), a functioning market economy and accept the obligations and intents of the European Union (i.e. of the Treaties) - the Copenhagen criteria.
Joining is in practice a difficult procedure because accepting the obligations means having tons of legislation consistent with EU law notably bringing about the free movement of workers, goods, services, capital and much, much more
(in the "much more" area, think of this: if your environmental legislation in some field would be somewhat more favourable than your neighbours, that would give your companies a competitive edge (and risk a race to the bottom between jurisdictions given the free movement of goods). Therefore, EU legislation (if not directly applicable) could prescribe a minimum standard in that field that national legislation needs to respect, so as not to distort competition and/or avoid the race to the bottom)
Most countries in Eastern Europe showed their interest in joining in the first half of the 1990s and eventually joined in 2004 (2007 in the case of Bulgaria and Romania).
(Norway has twice negotiated all the way and then decided not to join! (1974, 1995)
I am not sure the last empire would ever be looked favorably upon by the EU, no matter whether it gets "the good czar" in a guy like Navalny. It remains an extractive and exploitative empire from whence all that is good flows to Moscow (and to St. Pete, to a lesser extent).
We just kinda forgot because it has the rare-in-modern-times quirk of geographical continuity.
We did our best in many ways, notably by bailing out Russia and by NATO/Russia partnership for peace deal.
One thing that is or was impossible for the Russian state to swallow is that Russia is no longer the co-number one in the world with the US but rather a country with the population of Germany plus France and the nominal GDP of the Netherlands plus Belgium (if oil/gas prices aren't too low).
We tried, I'm sure there are books written about why we failed. We essentially offered them the same terms as all the other former Eastern Bloc states (liberalize your economy, democratize your politics and EU and even NATO accession is on the table). They would have essentially been a jumbo Poland, and I guess that offer offended their pride.
The world had never seen a nuclear superpower dissolve before; our sample size is one. I think you can make a fair case that we ended up on the better end (or least-bad end) of plausible outcomes.
I'm not a scholar of the era, but I'm given to understand that the oligarch/kleptocrat dice were already cast by Perestroika, although it wasn't obvious at the time that this was the inevitable outcome.
Anyway, no matter what happens *tomorrow*, there hasn't been another nuke used in anger *yet*! That's not nothing.
To some degree this is all about one man. If Putin doesn't decide to stay in politics after his two terms, it really is unclear what direction someone like the 2008-era Medvedev would have taken the country. (Admittedly, of course, the current version of Medvedev is jockeying to stay relevant by being uber-hawkish--he reminds me of an anti-Trump Republican who suddenly needs to be slavish to Trump in order to get back in good graces... like Lindsey Graham 2017-version).
Leora wrote "He’s ethnically Jewish. Nobody would claim he’s an ethnic Russian." Well, in the Soviet Union times, people carried a passport with one's nationality indicated which could be Armenian or Russian or Jewish or ... But in more normal countries, you won't make that exclusion. If you tell a compatriot of mine that he is Jewish and therefore not Dutch, you are in very bad company
I can see 100% of Alaska. I think though that we should insist that Canada keep at least Vancouver. They have great skiing and I don't want to have to get a Russian visa every time I go.
"There’s one anti-peace argument that must be refuted: the canard that any type of territorial concession would unacceptably “reward” Putin’s aggression."
I agree, we just need to figure out how much of Alaska and Canada will satisfy Putin, but that we can live with giving away.
I don’t advocate ending the war tomorrow. From the US standpoint, Europeans need to shiver for at least a couple months, and if a few Europeans freeze that’s far more useful than Ukrainian civilians dying in missile strikes. However, there may come a time when the belligerents are exhausted enough to give peace a chance. When that time comes, categorical rejections of territorial concessions will be positively dangerous.
Just once, it would be nice for Matthew Yglesias to mention that there are three large ethnic communities on the Crimean peninsula: Crimean Tatars, Ukranians, and Russians. And that the reason that the Russian community is the largest now is due to historical and ongoing ethnic cleansing by Moscow. Also, that the referendum for Crimean accession to Russia was blatantly falsified, just like the ones for the Ukranian oblasts recently.
It makes it clear that Putin's claims on Crimea are bogus. It also makes it clear that Crimea has not really been integral to Ukraine either, for that matter. So let Ukraine conquer it and then have a valid and credible referendum on its future.
If the Russian front collapses in the south I see no reason not to let Ukraine try and take it (not sure we could stop them anyway). That may be what finally gets Russia open to some kind of settlement.
There is, from the open-source analysis I can find, *damn-all* between the north bank of the Dnipro and Crimea. If the Ukrainians are as close to shattering the 20-30k troops north of the river and capturing at least their equipment if not most of the personnel too… that might be a move that becomes possible by the winter freeze.
At the end of the day Russia broke the cardinal rules of the game established in 1945. Namely that war must not be “diplomacy by other means”, and that you cannot simply initiate an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country to better your situation.
Any outcome other than “Russia must fail and be seen to fail” in this war would be catastrophic, as it will show that this behavior is legitimate. More wars in Europe will be sure to follow, as will the invasion of Taiwan. The odds of nuclear conflict will *increase* exponentially.
We don’t need a Versailles-level punitive-humiliating agreement for Russia , but we do need one that shows clealry and *beyond question* that the war wasn’t worth it, and not just from the humanistic perspective that “alll wars are bad” but from a nationalist perspective too, i.e. Russia must lose all it took since 2014. The principle of sovereignty must be reaffirmed on the ground. I repeat and stress that the interest of Justice and security for all (preventing nuclear war) are aligned here. To appease putin out of fear of nuclear war would just make that outcome more likely.
Another great, well thought out piece that I found very thought provoking.
I do differ a little on the section of "Russia wrecking their army in Ukraine is good for NATO." If Ukraine wins a quick victory, I agree. But if the war goes on for a long time, the Russians will be forced to adapt and learn (just like Europe is forced to adapt economically). They have to figure out how to deal with HIMARS, for instance. So, in the long term we may also be training Russians to fight against us.
It's kind of like antibiotics, if you take the full course and wipe out the bacteria, they are great. But if you stop early and allow a resistant strain to flourish, they can be counterproductive.
Great piece. It is worth stressing that we are in this dangerous position in no small part because we’ve tolerated Russian aggression before. Putin had real reason to think he could get away with this. Crimea. South Ossetia. Russian bounties on American soldiers. Obama’ red line against Russian ally Assad. All without a serious response from the West.
The time to draw lines and demonstrate resolve is while the stakes are relatively low, not after the aggressor is emboldened to launch a major conflict. Otherwise, Putin will force the West into concession after concession till he finally demands something we won’t trade, and we end up in a real war. Ukraine is a scary situation, and Biden is right to tread carefully, but the world will get even scarier if we don’t make Russia hurt in a big way.
I agree with the thrust of your argument and most of your examples. I would caution you against citing the Russian bounty program in Afghanistan though, there's no conclusive proof it existed. The USCENTCOM Commander said on the reports of the program that, "It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me."
Biden's biggest mistake was not sufficiently convincing Russia pre-invasion that he'd be able to pull off a diplomatic miracle and unify the world against this aggression. Russia was already looking at a bleak energy export future due to long term gas and oil demand trends and Putin's foolishness will accelerate Russian's inevitable slide into poverty by at least a decade.
Europe's realignment away from dependence on Russian energy is permanent. There are over 25 LNG import facilities under construction around Europe and they are being financed with hard off-take agreements that last for years and years. On top of that, European countries are redoubling efforts to add renewables to their grids and switch to heat pumps instead of gas for home and business heating. In 10 years, Europe's demand for natural gas will be half or less of what it is now and that demand will be satisfied from places other than Russia.
In fairness, this unity has largely been contingent on the Ukrainians fighting and being a much better match for Russia than anyone expected. The international tone shifted within just a cluple of days.
The most striking example for me was an interview that Adam Tooze did on the Ezra Klein show. It was a two parter, one on Friday, two days after the invasion, and one on Monday. On Friday, Tooze was glumly talking about how Putin had weaponized globalization and wistfully talking about cutting Russia off from Swift. By Monday, when it was apparent that Russia's thunder runs had failed, he was talking about how Russia's central bank had half their reserves frozen and comparing Zelensky to Churchill. I remember the tone of the news changing as well. It was remarkably sudden.
Europe's natural gs needs may be a lot less than half in a decade time. Investments in renewables were already enormous pre 24 February and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has accelerated that process enormously.
There's a difference between a "mistake" and a "failure." The former implies that there were things should have done or not done. I think Biden's policy in the leadup to Ukraine was fine. Its failure was that Putin is an idiot.
If I'm reading my retired general Twitter correctly, Ukraine didn't really have the military capacity to effectively resist Crimea and D/L in 2014, and it's not obvious what a coherent military Western response would have looked like. They've completely rethought their force structure (albeit not replaced a ton of their hardware) since then.
While this expresses the present correctly, the history is flawed.
"You can also have conflicts in the form of free-riding. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, America’s European allies objectively needed help defending themselves against the Soviet Union. Thus the logic of NATO. Today, though, Europe clearly has the financial resources to defend itself which would let the United States focus on helping Asian allies who actually don’t have the scale to stand alone against China."
The reason for low European spending in 1949 was only partly their inability to afford more. It was also because of a perception that European powers could not be trusted with large military budgets - and had caused all the devastation two world wars by that very spending. The USA, whose large isolationist political faction meant that it could be trusted not to start aggressive wars with that large military, was therefore deputed to run the defence of Europe against the USSR.
The most obvious case here is West Germany in 1949, when the sense was that a large Bundeswehr would be too similar to a restoration of the Wehrmacht of the Nazi era and of the Kaisers and therefore restricting their military and supplying the defence of Germany through the large US deployment and the smaller UK, Belgian and Dutch deployments, but Italy was also seen as similarly problematic, and lots of countries hadn't gotten over the threat that a powerful France would represent if all of its adversaries were rendered incapable of defending themselves. The idea of de Gaulle going on a conquest spree like a third Napoleon might seem laughable now, but it did not seem so in the 1940s.
The modern political situation - and, indeed, the entire post-Cold War era - is completely changed, but there are plenty of Europeans who still prefer the idea of American soldiers protecting them to soldiers of their own nation whom they do not trust.
>>One way that people try to address this psychologically discomfiting reality is to act as if there is some unilateral course of action that Joe Biden could take that would guarantee a non-catastrophic outcome.<<
This seems overstated if by "not-catastrophic" Matt's referring to avoiding nuclear war. Sure, "guarantee" is a pretty strong word, and yes, if the Putin regime were sufficiently suicidal, I guess we couldn't prevent them from launching a first strike on US cities. But there are things Joe Biden could do that would nudge the probability toward zero that the US becomes involved in a nuclear war with Russia over this conflict (namely, disengage).
The Biden administration could, if it wanted to, announce tomorrow morning: that it it will provide no further military aid to Ukraine; that it will not intervene militarily in the region under any circumstances; that it is lifting sanctions on Russia; that it intends to adhere to strict neutrality in this conflict starting immediately; and that it urges the two sides to reach a ceasefire.
There are a number of reasons the above is not going to happen. There may also be reasons why the above *should* not happen. But America's choice to be heavily involved in a conflict between two third party states is just that, a choice. Let's be crystal clear about that.
Yes, that might reduce tensions, or it might induce Russia to invade Lithuania to gain a land bridge to Kaliningrad. We don't actually know, and neither do you. If Putin thinks NATO and US power credibility is low, that could raise the risk of nuclear war.
Why exactly did we allow Lithuania and Estonia into NATO? Places in the world which mattered hugely to US interests? US 'credibility' has become a creeping canard for ever-expanding military commitments for tiny free-rider states, and it's good to see the Ukraine war waking up the woke. Not surprising NATO creep has led to a hugely deadly war with Russians and Ukrainians being the cannon fodder.
NATO does not creep. Independent nations apply to NATO willingly and and are rejected or accepted.
The fact that Ukraine in NATO is good for NATO is irrelevant. Ukraine chose to ask for membership, not other way around. (And in 2013 Ukraine polling was not in favor of NATO actually)
The NATO creep take relies on the idea any independent nation somehow can’t exist and decide it’s own fate. Neutrality and independent decision making worked just fine for Sweden and Finland for years despite ‘NATO apparently trying to creep all over them’
I was responding to the comment immediately above from James L, and while I have no idea if 'credibility' was ever used in admitting Lithuania and Estonia to NATO, it's used all the time for the US doing dumb things, and will be used for why we have to start WWIII to protect Lithuania and Estonia, now that they're in NATO.
Seems pretty clear we’re getting the iron curtain back again, thanks to 30 years of condescension to Russia from foreign policy geniuses like Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton and Anne Applebaum.
Kinda surprised to see this take from you. I should think it extraordinarily obvious to folks with our backgrounds that the short-term safety this course offers is vastly outweighed by the long-term instability and opacity it will provoke.
Sure, giving Russia a free hand might guarantee momentary freedom from any nuclear threat, though even there we would need to coerce Europe into doing so as well lest the Russians blame us for their actions too.
But in the medium-term we’ve all but assured an environment in which any but our most fundamental core defense relationships, and literally any of our principles, are open to being abandoned under the right amount of pressure.
I don’t think that lack of credibility plays out well over the coming decades. Even if one doesn’t give a flying fuck about principles, our standard of living will not survive a major retrenchment in the international and trading order, and our democracy will not survive a major retrenchment in our standard of living.
Principles are, at heart, a statement of core interests which have been true for so long that they’ve grown into systems of morals and ethics. Toss them by the wayside lightly.
Agree with this broadly - Joe Biden is certainly not the impediment to peace - but I think there is definitely reason to think that a significant divergence of interests between the U.S. and Ukraine could emerge, and quickly. Arguably the divergence doesn't appear right now because neither Ukraine or NATO is willing to make concessions in the face of vague nuclear blackmail, but if Putin starts to take actual steps to make the risk of nuclear war seem more likely then it is quite possible that Ukraine and NATO's risk calculus will diverge. That could be because of either different perceptions about whether Putin is serious or because they have different stakes and goals in the situation (Ukraine's goal is to emerge battered but sovereign; America's is to preserve the nuclear taboo).
This is a tricky but vital fact to acknowledge. We don't know which red lines need to be crossed for Putin to escalate, but it seems quite likely that they include the protection of Crimea and the naval facility at Tartus. Ukraine's stated goal is to reconquer all of the territory taken by Russia, including Crimea. So if current trends continue then there is at least a chance that we are heading for the point where U.S. and Ukrainian interests might diverge significantly. That's why NATO policymakers are talking about it already, because it will be extremely difficult to think clearly and act safely once the red line is crossed.
Acknowledging this doesn't mean we have to buy into any of the rubbish from anti-anti-Russia types who want to blame Biden or excuse Putin. Rather it means seeing that we're already in a situation where just as only Putin has it in his gift to bring peace, Putin also has it in his gift to divide Ukraine from its allies and dramatically increase the stakes in the conflict - and that he might do so at some unpredictable but increasingly-likely point in the future. It understandably makes policymakers and publics in NATO feel helpless to be reduced to standing back and hoping that their ally's gains don't push a guy with a tenuous grip on reality into starting World War III, especially when they have few options for escaping that dynamic.
Well, all I can say here is that it would have been helpful for those NATO policymakers and public to not become dependent on Russian raw materials and pursue Ostpolitik into a dead end. It might have been good for them to have increased their defense spending and not spent significant effort excusing or wishing away Russian territorial encroachments because it was inconvenient for them. (Edit: replaced Westpolitik with Ostpolitik.)
I was thinking this morning about just how nucking futs it was to dip toes in the Soviet natural gas market only like twenty years after the Berlin Airlift kept Berliners from freezing to death on Soviet terms.
Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.
Even more so than our own pacifist left, the European center and left have outsourced the job of state violence so far from themselves that they think it unnecessary and war unimaginable.
For *some,* that “think” has finally become “thought,” but not for all.
Eh, I don't think it's that odd -- the Soviet blockade of West Berlin could be written off to being an eccentricity of Stalin; by the mid-1960s, a very large part of the west, including many conservatives, viewed the Soviet leadership as being a lot more pragmatic. People who continued to talk about the "Soviet threat" were treated as jokes at best by the mainstream media, reckless warmongers at worst (see the treatment of Reagan and Thatcher even post-Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).
Whenever I fondly look back on China in the 2000-10 period, I have then to recall the USSR 1955-65. It was bound to end without some kind of matching political liberalization.
And when we consider China’s future from 2020 to 2040, it’s useful to consider the USSR’s history in the period 1975-95.
We’re running out of countries with enough demographic heft to become serious illiberal competitors, and most of the ones which have it are slowly and haltingly moving in the correct direction (India, Indonesia).
Once we see off the threat posed by the CCP (or more accurately it sees itself off while we stick our thumbs up our asses, thanks Pooh Bear!)… who’s left?
Small correction - of the nuclear blackmail works, or be perceived to have worked, it won’t matter when Putin dies. Once the playbook is shown to be effective, *every* autocrat will use it: North Korea , Xi and Oran if we’re foolish enough to allow it to go nuclear. And of course there is every chance that whoever replaces Putin in Russia will too.
I short, if we give in to nuclear threats now we live in terror—and vastly *increased* risk of nuclear conflict—for the rest of our lifetimes.
I think you make some good points but I've always had a problem with this "if he wins the conflict in any sense that means his threats will have worked" line of argumentation. Sometimes people making this argument sound like they're suggesting that it's some new thing in world politics to use nuclear weapons for coercion or deterrence. But the fact is that they have been used that way all of the time and will continue to do so regardless of how this goes.
A more fruitful way of looking at the issue to me is to recognize that actually nuclear weapons do have a real impact on world politics insofar as they force a measure of restraint on anyone dealing with a nuclear power. That's why we set up and expanded NATO in order to restrain Russia from messing around with NATO countries. We didn't bring Ukraine into NATO because in turn we were restrained by Russia's nuclear weapons, just like how in the Cold War we were restrained from trying to export democracy to Eastern Europe for the same reason.
It seems kind of dangerous to me to just suddenly decide that actually we don't need to be restrained by Russia's nuclear weapons at all, and that to do so would set some horrible precedent, even though we've been doing it for decades already anyway. But I think you're also agreeing that this is dangerous/risky even though you want to still do it, so maybe we're not too far apart, even if we frame the issue a bit differently. But I was just trying to say that as things evolve, a situation might develop when the U.S. and Ukraine disagree about whether it's worthwhile to do this anymore.
There's a very real chance Japan and South Korea will have nukes about three minutes after any outcome that can be described as a Russian victory. Not sure what Taiwan's atomic energy dalliances look like, but maybe them too.
Not hot, commonsensical. Just like Saudi Arabia and Egypt will follow this path of Iran is allowed to get nukes. Appeasement vastly increases the chances of nuclear war.
Anyone who claims to really give much of a damn about hypothetical future mass deaths on anything except a purely intellectual level is full of shit. That’s not how the typical human psyche works, and those people who do work like that are profoundly, debilitatingly crippled by sorrow and anxiety all the time.
Imagine how much misery you’d need to preemptively feel at the several percent chance that South Asia’s monsoon patterns will change under the influence of climate change and hundreds of millions will starve? Is a normal human being supposed to exist in a state of existential dread over it?
So I’m not going to pretend to be overly concerned by the prospect you laid out for internet points like many folks do.
It would suck, and the reality of it would provoke me to feel horror at the time, but feigned “compassion” about the hypothetical does nothing useful in the meanwhile.
The goal for US energy policy over the next twenty years should be (and basically is) to liberate you and I from any practical *need* to care. Then we can indulge our pathos to whatever extent we see fit.
Other than that, we can only hope the Iranians turn out to be rational people once they have nuclear weapons, because Christ knows that whatever post-oil government succeeds the Saudis will not be.
Putin is not only constrained by the western reaction to possible use of nukes.
Obviously, fall-out (the literal one, I mean) will be painful in Russia but who is sure of Russia's nuclear capabilities? We have seen missiles crashing just after launch, missiles returning to the ship it was launched from, etc etc. Many nuclear weapons may not explode when they are supposed to. Playing with nukes is very scary, especially with Russians maintenance and of SU vintage.
“But ever since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States has been physically present in this region halfway around the world”
I’m pretty sure the US presence in the Middle East long predates 2003. There was a US military presence in Saudi Arabia since WWII and a number of military bases in the smaller gulf states since the 1991 Gulf War.
There have also been US infantry battalions rotated into the Multinational Force & Observers, for decades, acting as guarantors of the peace on the Sinai Peninsula.
I mentioned before that Putin has clearly been incompetent in this war.
The attempt to take Kiev was a farce brought about by foolish underestimation of the Ukrainian military. The failure to launch mobilisation in March or April has now resulted in a lack of manpower, and there are too few men to properly train the guys getting called up now. When the Kerch Bridge was blown up, he fired lots of rare cruise missiles at relatively unimportant targets as revenge.
The problem here is that it is easy to see Putin finally carrying out a geopolitical mass shooting (i.e. nukes) if he sees he is going to get beat. The whole thing is incredibly scary.
> while Russian material is killing Ukrainian soldiers. That’s a deal in our favor.
I understand the point you’re making, and I know its not what you meant, but you might want to rephrase any sentence that refers to the deaths of Ukrainians as a great deal for the US.
This is literally the argument Ukraine has made. That they are offering the West a great deal when it comes to security "spend some money and we will do the heavy lifting of your security." So whatever discomfort you're expressing is literally just embarrassment at how good of a deal they have offered. And to that I say, you're right. We should ameliorate that imbalance by giving them F-16s, MBTs, and most importantly air defense and IFVs.
>A bit of context often missing from the story is that from the Ukrainian perspective, there was an ongoing war in the Donbas region long before Russia formally invaded..... As president, he agreed to a controversial German-backed Donbas peace agreement
Yes. For the 'wHy DoN't ThEy TrY nEgOtIaTing' crowd- I'm amazed that more people don't know that Russia and Ukraine negotiated almost continuously from Russia's initial invasion in 2014, all the way up to 2022. Literally no one seems to know this! They were called the Minsk agreements, and they were brokered by France and Germany. *After* Russia seized 20% of Ukraine's territory, there were multiple rounds of talks, and multiple cease fires declared. Ultimately "on 22 February 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared that the Minsk agreements "no longer existed", and that Ukraine, not Russia, was to blame for their collapse. Russia then invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
After 8 years of it, I think one could reasonably say that Ukraine has, in fact, tried negotiating. There may ultimately end up being a negotiated settlement, but it'll come after Russia feels militarily pressed- not before
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/05/minsk-conundrum-western-policy-and-russias-war-eastern-ukraine-0/minsk-2-agreement (written in 2020)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_Format (another Wiki piece on the 'negotiations')
The other thing people miss is that Putin's word is worth absolutely zero. Right now, Putin desperately needs a temporary cease-fire to allow time to regroup his broken military and get control of his hot mess of a mobilization effort.
Of course he wants peace talks. Anything to stop the need for continued retreat. It's no coincidence that the renewed focus on negotiations is timed perfectly to allow Putin to catch his breath and realign his war efforts.
Whatever their motivations, people like Musk and Sacks are Putin's useful idiots.
Not snark, I promise...a question for you and Lost Future: So if Ukraine is victorious, what does that look like? If, as you say, Putin's word is worth zero, that seems to preclude any settlement with him. So, regime change? Ukraine marches into Russian territory, as the allied powers did in Germany?
I don't disagree that Putin is untrustworthy. Lots of bad people can't be trusted. But a deal will likely have to be made eventually, no? I don't think that time is now, but it will come at some point and it is good to think through what that looks like sooner rather than later.
I think it looks like, Ukraine pushes the Russian military out of the country and is able to set up defensible, fortified borders (perhaps giving up some small amount of territory if they judge the geography to favor particular positions). They hold these borders against Russian counterattacks which keep coming less and less frequently, trailing off as Putin's enthusiasm wanes. Finally a "temporary" ceasefire is signed.
Politically, what needs to happen is that Putin is seen to have lost in that he couldn't hold the country and pay whatever internal price he's going to pay for losing. After having already paid that cost, incentive to try again is much less.
My suspicion on this is all about the timing. Renewed focus on negotiations won't seem so suspicious in a month or two when a pause isn't exactly what Putin needs militarily.
But right now, all the military experts I listen to say the situation for Putin will be very difficult for the next several weeks or so, but after that he's likely to regain the advantage due to the manpower he can bring to the fight. Basically they say he needs a pause right now to regroup and retrain the new forces.
There's disagreement about how effective/decisive his mobilized forces can be, but I don't think there's disagreement that their huge numbers could make things much tougher for Ukraine in a couple of months.
This gives Putin a big incentive to do anything he can to slow down Ukraine's progress and stop the need to retreat and the killing of Russian troops while he regroups.
I’m not reading anything that suggests the warm bodies will be very useful at all unless they can be trained and equipped, but they can’t.
Got anything good that proposes how they’ll be used?
Not exactly. I thought Michael Kofman said something to that effect on this recent war on the rocks podcast:
https://mobile.twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1579570024515506177
Here's Kofman tweeting about a ceasefire being used to rearm.
https://mobile.twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1579572600967417857
He’s basically describing a cannon fodder strategy, whereby they first form poorly trained, non-mechanized infantry units before trying to equip them for mechanized mobility and draw some in for specialized training as artillery or armor units.
He’s basically saying that they can only be made into an effective combat force in a prolonged conflict.
I’ve heard other SMEs say there’s a very real risk of these units breaking virtually on first contact with Ukrainian arms, if not preemptively dragging their officers and running or surrendering. The morale and training issues seem to be grave.
In a long war, I agree that Russia’s sheer size provides an advantage, but if the Ukrainians can effectively pin and defang the large professional force north of the Dnipro in Kherson and/or turn the flank of the main Donetsk positions from the north, this isn’t going to be a long war.
I’m unsure there is a realistic path for the Russians to effectively generate forces before Ukraine unhinges both main fronts, unless the US and EU pull support quite soon.
I mean, FFS, Zelensky was the peace candidate in the last election. The electorate was pissed at him for giving away too much until a year of stability started to yield some dividends in foreign investment and general happiness.
Then Putin, I guess, had a belated realization of what a peaceful Ukraine increasingly stitched into the European economy would look like and pressed the panic button?
Matt touches on this, but he's actually being a bit too kind to Musk and Sacks. Basically anyone aligned with Peter Thiel at this point, we should really have as our baseline that they are essentially pro-Putin and pro-Fascist. I honestly don't think this alarmist or over the top to frame this way. Because Sacks and Musk talk in the manner of Silicon Valley "bros" (and are Silicon Valley bros) we don't put in them in the same mental bucket as Tucker, or Tulsi or DJT. But reality is they should be seen as part of the same Fascist or at least "Fascist-curious" camp.
I should say that “PayPal Mafia” refers to at least 25 people, many of whom I would not classify as a Peter Thiel acolyte. Reid Hoffman for example seems to be a pretty progressive guy.
The Minsk Agreements called for the separatist-held parts of the Donbas to be given local autonomy. The government in Kyiv refused to do this for 7 years and continued to shell the Donbas, causing 80% of civilian casualties despite the Donbas rebels having the exact same weapons.
Sounds like we're in agreement that negotiations are pointless, and that the issue will be solved who's the militarily stronger power on the battlefield. Good luck with that!
I believe they also required Russia to stay out, correct? Did Russia stay out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements#Minsk_II,_February_2015
"Pullout of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, and also mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision. Disarmament of all illegal groups."
Note "territory of Ukraine" includes the territory held by the Kyiv government. So if the Russians had to get out of Donbas and the Donbas rebels have to give up their Rusian rebels, then the NATO trainers have to go home too and the Ukrainian military has to give up all of the equipment that NATO sent them.
Even assuming you disregard all of the details R C has provided below to fill in the two-thirds of the story Michael Tracey didn’t tell you, do you not find it… odd… that Putin would launch his war only *after* a Ukrainian government came to power which was following through on Minsk and offering further promises, even at the expense of domestic popularity?
Zelansky’s government were elected as doves with predominantly Eastern votes, and acted on that mandate.
Putin saw that normalization would leave Russia with a pair of satellite republics which were disproportionately a drain on its resources and Ukraine peaceful and stable enough to attract foreign investment and build economic and social ties with the EU for real, and he panicked.
It’s not hard to see, if one is interested in opening one’s eyes.
Zelensky was elected as a dove, but then his attempts to act on that mandate were sabotaged by far-right militias who refused to stand down in the Donbas and threatened to lynch Zelensky if he tried to implement the Minsk Accords. https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/im-not-a-loser-zelensky-clashes-with-veterans-over-donbas-disengagement.html Then when 2021 rolled around Zelensky took a hardline anti-Russian line, talking about retaking Crimea, banning pro-Russian media, and using more advanced NATO weapons such as TB2 drones in the Donbas war, all with the public approval of the Biden administration.
And in 2021 Ukraine was still worse off economically than it had been in 2013 and really wasn't any closer to joining the EU. That whole line of argument makes no sense at all.
And none of my last post gets into the fact that the Minsk Accords were fundamentally illegitimate, signed by Ukraine at gunpoint after Russia used its own forces to prevent Ukraine from ending a domestic insurrection with minimal public support, which Russia fomented in the first place. Everything which followed, including the referenda, was a result of a massive exodus of pro-Ukrainian citizens from the region.
There’s not a scrap of legitimacy to be found in the entire Russian position and Michael Tracey is a fucking imbecile.
As far as I’m concerned, the fact that Russia won’t even have the material resources to maintain its damned nuclear deterrent by 2035 is a wonderful thing and we should all rejoice that we get to pick over its carcass.
Again, not really. Even your own link doesn’t really match the neatly packaged narrative you offer.
The media restrictions were a (half-assed, yes) stab at anti-monopoly regulation. The 2021 pivot seems to exist almost entirely in the minds of Americans like Tracey.
But, also, as I say elsewhere… if the Biden administration managed to convince Russia to shoot itself in both feet and then repeatedly in the face by making statements and providing mid-level officer training to a neighboring country… that’s rather impressive.
I wish the US could more consistently act like it is omniscient and all-powerful, lol.
But it says "territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision", so why would NATO trainers have to go home and Ukraine give up military equipment entirely? Isn't that the idea of the mutual clauses that give control of the border back to Ukraine in exchange for amending the constitution to decentralize power? Like, Ukraine would have to pull out of the region of supervision, but only as far back as buffer zone in Ukraine proper.
I don't know what I'm talking about, but the Wikipedia article makes it sound as though the Minsk agreement more or less creates a gradient between Russia and Ukraine that is semi-autonomous and then lets both countries go about their business as they see fit outside of that region.
It also says that Minsk I ended when the DPR and LPR violated it by attacking Ukrainian forces and capturing an airport, which means Minsk II was capitulating to the separatists, in the same vein as what the pro-Putin camp wants Ukraine to do now.
Also, I read plenty of reporting about Ukrainian shelling, but it was largely in the context of separatists running false-flag attacks, blowing up schools and generally acting like terrorists. Like, maybe they learned the wrong lesson and thought that continuing to violate the treaty would get them more of what they want.
It was my understanding that both Russian speaking/leaning and Ukrainian speaking/leaning lived in the Dunbar. Also in the history weren’t some Officials put in as Russian puppets?
Thank you for your excellent reply. When Kevin McCarthy’s name comes up, I immediately think of Quisling who sold out Norway in WWII. Of course the thought of nuclear Armageddon is frightening, but Russia has been threatening for decades. In the 1950’s people were building bomb shelters. School children hunkered down under coats in the halls when a siren sounded. Putin’s desperation to demonstrate strength/wins before his next election looks totally insane. His shenanigans in and around the Ukrainian nuclear ☢️ plant are flirting with enormous destruction. Since we have lived so many years with the Russian threat (excluding the years of Russia opening to the West), we believe the US has “skin in the game” with Ukraine. I also believe the Ports of Crimea, Odessa and others on Ukraines east coast are key to the health of its economy.
Please also remember that Russia is exceedingly close to Alaska. We are also in conflict of rights in the Arctic. All in all, though I cry for the death and destruction in Ukraine, I’m glad we’re not fighting this war in the US.
SallyJones
Russia only seized about 8% if Ukraine’s territory pre 2022. It only got to 20% at the apogee of its summer offensive
Is there the possibility for a peaceful resolution to the conflict?
A peace settlement can only occur when both sides makes credible commitments, but at this point it’s hard to imagine any commitment made by Russia being credible considering their repeated history of revanchism.
Just in the same way that after Hitler invaded Poland there could be no peace, even in Britains darkest moments, I fear the same is true for Ukraine. No matter how good the deal offered we know as soon as Russia is in a better position they’ll reopen the conflict.
A withdrawal by Russia from all of Ukraine other than Crimea would have value because borders represent a natural “Schelling Point” the violation of which results in a hot war, full stop, and NATO is clearly going to be backing Ukrainian efforts to fight such a war which has some genuine deterrent value. The trouble is that even before Putin’s absurd “annexation” decree it was clear the Russians weren’t going to go for that, and it seems an impossibility afterward short of a strategic defeat so profound that Putin says fuck it and is tempted to use nukes.
The most plausible course for a negotiated settlement at present would *seem to be* something like a return to formalized borders around the status quo ante circa 2020 (so Russia keeps the Donbas) which would doubtless be a bitter pill for the Ukrainians to swallow but at least has the virtue that they don’t give up anything that wasn’t already de facto under Russian control. Of course, the Russians would also want guarantees that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO while NATO itself and Ukraine (even if NATO would be very leery of Ukrainian accession due to nuclear war risks) would want to tell Russia to get fucked, but it seems more tractable than the territory issue in any event.
I have extremely low confidence in the above scenario playing out, however, both due to my own ignorance of the war and key actors’ thinking, and because to all appearances the Russians have already committed themselves to more extensive territorial conquests than the above and I have to imagine aren’t going to formalize backing off from them.
All the proposed outlines of a final settlement I've seen -- like the one offered here -- have the (barely) implied condition of "otherwise Russia uses nukes." Really, Russia has no other leverage in negotiations. They're losing on the battlefield. Europe is in the process of disengaging from them economically. Their putative allies are becoming increasingly neutral.
So we should press Ukraine to give up the Donbass (which they're on the way to conquering) otherwise Russia will use nukes? What if Putin says, give us Kyiv or otherwise we'll use nukes? I mean, once you assume Putin/Russia are suicidal, how do you limit negotiations?
Actually, I'm wrong. Russia does have one other piece of leverage. They can demand concessions of various sorts and offer as an inducement that they will return all the children they kidnapped. Isn't that just lovely.
If the Ukrainians can crush the Russians without starting a nuclear war I'm all for it, but in the meantime the Russians aren't totally beaten and are kamikaze-drone-striking Ukrainian energy facilities to apparently great effect, so between these and battlefield casualties it isn't costless for Ukraine to prosecute the war either.
As to the credibility of Russian nuke threats, no one obviously knows, but the best one can do is try to guess at Russian reaction.
Would Russia deploy nukes in defense of "annexed" Eastern Ukrainian territories? Seems unlikely but who knows, and also who knows how much of a headache occupying and defending those territories would be for Ukraine in any event -- there was certainly a sizable pro-Russian paramilitary contingent there at least before the war started. Given that Ukraine didn't actually control these territories *before* the war it seems like not the worst candidate for a paper "concession" that lets the Russians pretend they won and go home and hopefully abates the suffering of the Ukrainians without representing a substantive loss to Ukraine. That said, I don't pretend to know either the general view of the remaining civilian population of the occupied Donbass on Russian annexation nor how much the Ukrainians really care about it at this time.
Would Russia deploy nukes over Crimea? Seems significantly more likely than with respect to the Donbass based on bizarre Russian territorial revanchist psychology that I don't pretend to understand but that seems to view Crimea as Russian in a more "genuine" or at least less purely cynical way than the Donbass.
I don't claim to have special expertise here but the basic idea that "Russia would deploy nuclear weapons to maintain the territorial integrity of (what Putin considers) actual Russia even if not in support of territorial conquest" seems like an implicit consideration of both NATO and Russia -- for Russia because if you game-theory this out you see why the West can't accede to Russian territorial conquest based solely on the threats of nukes (because there's no limit to that kind of thinking and we're *not* giving Russia carte-blanche to conquer Eastern Europe), and for NATO because Russia has nothing to lose it it came to a conventional war on Russian territory -- their forces have been put to shame by a military nowhere near the size and strength of the United States, in a conventional war against NATO they just lose, so taking everyone with him is a credible commitment on Putin's part.
Of course it's not costless for Ukraine to pursue the war. But the Iranian drones are not militarily significant and will not destroy Ukrainian morale or support for the war -- no doubt, the opposite.
How Putin would employ the threat (or the use) of nukes no one really knows, probably including Putin. But again, it's his last card. I would tend to call his bluff, but admittedly it's a hell of a gamble.
"Of course it's not costless for Ukraine to pursue the war. But the Iranian drones are not militarily significant and will not destroy Ukrainian morale or support for the war -- no doubt, the opposite."
I mean, Zelenskyy has said that the Russians destroyed 30% of Ukraine's energy stations in a couple days, and the Shaheds are (relatively speaking) dirt cheap at 20,000 a pop. It seems like that's potentially *very* significant blow to Ukrainian production, logistics, and morale (albeit I don't actually know how swiftly the Ukrainians are likely to be able to restore the damage). I would have guessed that the drones were mostly a gimmick myself but the Russians do seem to be using them to surprising effect.
If the Russians can get half as much mileage out of Iranian drones as the Ukrainians seem to be getting out of the HIMARS it seems like a very real problem - or at minimum a genuine leverage point for the Russians.
My prediction (80% probability) is that the Shahed efficacy will swiftly decline as Ukraine gets the tools and experience in confronting them.
Apparently, a lot of the grid has quickly come back on line, though not all of it.
"Their putative allies are becoming increasingly neutral."
Would using nukes turn them more neutral or even passively hostile towards Russia?
If borders are a bright line, why the carve out for Crimea?
Basically because Russia already stole it hook line and sinker in 2014, because it's a very discrete bit of geography, because Russia likely considers it more crucial to defend / more "core" territory to defend than the Donbass (which at most achieved the status of 'civil war stalemate' rather than 'Russian annexation fait accompli'), and because (as Matt notes) even if the "referendum" held there to accede to Russian annexation was a complete sham from the get-go, everyone seems to agree that an actual free and fair election would have returned the same result.
So somewhere between considerations of "something something self-determination" and "Crimea to all appearances actually *is* a viper's nest of Russian sympathizers and would-be Russians" it's not clear that it's particularly desirable for Ukraine to actually have the territory back under Ukrainian civilian administration. The chief value to Ukraine (beyond general but not incontestable principles of territorial integrity) seems to be the (considerable) logistical value of preventing Russia from having a ready beachhead into the Kherson region. That's not nothing by any means, and I have next to no insight into how Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians at large view the Crimean issue, but the Russians seem to genuinely care about it a *lot,* and if "status quo antebellum" is a natural point around which to coalesce redrawn borders, Crimea seems like a gimme compared to the Donbass.
"as soon as Russia is in a better position they’ll reopen the conflict".
This sounds far from certain. Just drawing on history we could have said something similar about North Korea and the Kim family back in the 50s, or Saddam after he invaded Kuwait.
But more than that I question whether they'll be in a better position anytime soon. Militarily it doesn't seem like they would be. And If they agreed to peace and attacked again a couple years later I'm guessing the regime would lose a significant amount of internal public support. Other people probably follow this more closely than I do, but last I saw public opinion in Russia was at 40% support for continuing to fight, 40% fight but negotiate, and <20% against the war. That doesn't sound like a public that will be excited to launch round 2.
One could also argue that North Korea is an example of why one shouldn't allow conflicts to freeze in place.
“But more than that I question whether they'll be in a better position anytime soon. Militarily it doesn't seem like they would be.”
They’re currently throwing mobilized civilians into battle with approximately zero training. Given a 3 month ceasefire, they could give them 12 weeks of training, which is a big improvement! Russia’s largest disadvantage vs Ukraine at the moment is a lack of soldiers (it has more heavy equipment, aircraft, etc.), but Russia has over 3x the population as Ukraine. Time is how Russia can get more trained soldiers.
Heck, even a 1 week ceasefire would give them time to set up pontoon bridges across the Dnieper and properly resupply their troops on the other side. They can’t do that now because any bridge would be blown up. It would also give them more time to build fortifications.
I could go on. Any ceasefire would put them in a better military position. If they want a ceasefire, that is pretty strong evidence that they think it would benefit them.
In contrast a ceasefire does not benefit Ukraine militarily because nothing Russia is doing at the moment is significantly slowing down Ukraine’s military. Troops will be trained in the UK with or without a ceasefire. New supplies will be flown into Rzeszow with or without a ceasefire. Etc.
>> Heck, even a 1 week ceasefire would give them time to set up pontoon bridges across the Dnieper and properly resupply their troops on the other side. They can’t do that now because any bridge would be blown up. It would also give them more time to build fortifications.
It looks that Putin will solve this problem with 50-60k civilian "evacuees" from Kherson that he'll use as human shields to provide cover while he repositions Russian troops and supplies.
I'm curious what exactly these "evacuations" are going to entail.
They could certainly be used as cover for a Russian withdraw. I'm skeptical that they could be used as cover for a resupply effort ---- simply because the supplies and people would be moving in opposite directions and pontoon bridges are too narrow to allow traffic in both directions at once. (Ferries face a similar problem.)
My guess is that the evacuation is mostly going to be collaborators and civilians that the Russian brought in. I think they'd have trouble rounding up and transporting 50-60k unwilling civilians at the same time as a major militarily movement across the river. That said, I imagine that we'll find out soon.
I was thinking more about cover for a withdrawal than resupply. Military experts seem to think a withdrawal is in the cards and the conventional wisdom seemed to be that Russia would have to leave a lot of gear behind because of the river crossing.
I thought we were talking about medium to longer term prospects for maintaining an effective peace over longer periods of years, not short-term pauses in the fighting.
What's to stop Russia from turning *any* ceasefire into a short-term one? (EDIT: I'll add that you used the word "soon" in the text I quoted.)
I wouldn’t put much confidence in public opinion polling of a country like Russia (or any other dictatorship where dissent can get you sent away for a long time). We can certainly guess that the Russian people are less enthused about the war based on things like outward immigration and Russian soldiers deserting, but we shouldn’t see Putin as constrained by lack of public support the way an American President or European leader would be.
Agreed that polling is to be taken with a big grain of salt, but then I'd imagine the true numbers are even less supportive.
It's also probably true that they are less directly constrained. But it still matters, in part for things like troop morale and emigration. And even in real dictatorships the possibility of coups or destabilizing protests are a danger that they have to be concerned with.
In Russia there's also the distinct possibility of flare-ups in regions like Chechnya that not so long ago had significant amounts of separatist / Islamist terrorist groups. Those regions supply a disproportionate amount of troops / conscripts, so I'm sure that's another dimension of public opinion that the regime has to keep an eye on.
It’s not ‘clear’ but for example the resolution of the costly iran / iraq war was not an end to Iraqi aggression. Hard to say what will happen exactly but that’s a bit closer to what’s envisioned here than the Kuwait which involved direct US intervention. To make this conflict mirror that we’d have to step in and destroy much of the rest of russias army before the negotiations.
It’s hard to say for sure but I would guess from the hints we have received about Russia’s negotiation posture that we could achieve a resolution which would leave Ukraine looking even harder to attack in a few years. So peace is possible. By the same token, Russia is not seeming favorable to such an outcome, which does suggest that for them the point of peace today would be to prepare for war later.
There is no Russian negotiation posture.
According to people like Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill, Russia is setting terms through proxies like Elon Musk. They pick apart the messaging and contemporaneous use of very specific phrases and references and make the case that they could only have come from direct contact with Kremlin operatives (including Putin himself). The idea is that the Kremlin throws out ideas like "give us Crimea or we'll nuke Ukraine" via public figures like Musk because they can't say that in a serious negotiation.
It goes something like: You're such a big, smart, important guy and everyone listens to you... you know what, I bet you're the only one big and important and smart enough to solve this seemingly intractable problem. Now let me explain how things got this way.
I really like Anne Applebaum. Her book on the History of the Gulags was really, really good. She's been a critic of Putin's over 20 years -- all justified.
However, it is good to remember her conflict of interest when it comes to Russian and Eastern European relations: her husband is a prominent politician in Poland, and was Minister of Foreign Affairs for Poland from 2007-2014. He currently serves in the European Parliament.
She has an important perspective. One that deserves serious consideration. But I think she is sometimes too close to the situation to see alternative outcomes.
Yah, I was skeptical when she was discussing it, but then I heard the same from Hill and others whose names I don't recall. (I think Taibbi also wrote about this practice of laundering/testing arguments through 'useful idiots'?) Perhaps they are all just recycling the same ideas, but it does seem plausible and it is odd how, for example, Musk gave a speech about securing water resources for Crimea that run through the regions Putin is trying to capture... well before Russia invaded. And there many examples of people mouthing Kremlin arguments that, in retrospect, predate the Kremlin making them (at least publicly).
There are so many easier ways to do this.
Elon Musk has a big mouth. He's not a back channel for Russian foreign policy. Any analyst suggesting otherwise should be taken as a signal that they're unserious.
Remember that a lot of these well sourced old hands were also pushing the Havana syndrome nonsense.
https://www.rferl.org/a/31517780.html
I disagree, they have communicated a lot about theoretical post peace Ukrainian ‘neutrality’ and the ongoing threat Ukraine supposedly poses to them. This is a posture. They could talk a lot about their territorial ambitions, which would give us a much clearer path to resolving the conflict (even if it’s still undesirable or unacceptable to Ukraine). Obviously there is a pure PR propaganda element to this but if they are honestly looking for a way out this posture is what they need to change. Get Elon (or whichever useful idiot of the day) talking more about stuff they want to keep outside of crimea alongside the security partnerships for Ukraine that are going to persuade skeptical Europeans that the deal will resolve russias western border for the foreseeable future.
I guess the question then is what is an alternative to a “peaceful” resolution of the conflict. Are you imagining that Ukrainian forces actually reach the 2014 borders and just continue to hold the Russian forces out forcibly? Or that they enter Russia? It’s not clear that any of those leads to a “resolution” either, peaceful or not, for the same reason you mentioned.
Why couldn’t Ukraine use a peaceful interval as effectively or even more effectively than Russia? Any interval of peace could be used to supply more arms to Ukraine and to build defensive positions. The western economy is much bigger than Russias
A key difference between Taiwan and Ukraine is that Taiwan has and produces long range missiles. The US will not give Ukraine the ability to strike Moscow now because it would dramatically escalate the war, but in peace time Ukrainian cruise missiles could credibly maintain peace.
"The counterpoint to this might be that said European allies are paying a much heavier economic price for the sake of upholding the tit-for-tat sanctions on Russia."
That would probably be because Europe in general simultaneously underinvested in defense and built economic ties with Russia, heedless of the dependent position it put them in.
Some EU countries (especially in the east) had an perfectly reasonable justification for doing this, but many others did not.
Germany deserves special ire given their shirking of their NATO obligation, despite their economic clout.
All that being said, we should keep supplying Ukraine until they drive the Russians out.
Where do these conservative find the balls to tell the Ukranians they should give up part of their country to make life better for us in the US?
If someone invaded their home and claimed it as theirs, could I tell them "Can't you give them half just to keep the peace?"
It's their land, their people getting, their soldiers doing the fighting. It's their decision to make.
We are helping Ukraine -- appropriately & correctly, in my view -- because it is in our national interest to do so. If that changes at some point in the future, we don't have to tell the Ukrainians to give up anything. We would just remove our sanctions and stop sending money and arms.
It isn't our place to counter aggression wherever it happens in the world. There are on-going territorial conflicts happening in Africa right now. It is sad. But not our place to intervene. Speaking only for myself, this conservative learned quite a few lessons from the 19-year wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of those lessons is to only enter a conflict to the extent clearly-defined national interests are at stake, and then leave once those interests have been met.
>>It isn't our place to counter aggression wherever it happens in the world<<
Yes, but that would mean they take away our world policeman badge.
Yes we can. Law is fundamentally about power, clothed and encrusted in habit, norms, tradition, cultural acceptance, etc. Those who have power get to make the rules, and if they can make them stick for long enough and gain broad enough acceptance as basically fair, that becomes the new legal order; that applies to supra-national as well as sub-national law.
Currently the US is the only force with the power and, for the time being the will, to make a rules-based international order stick. China has abandoned any pretense of supporting that project, and sadly our NATO and other key Western allies are still too squishy to do this in their own neighborhood without us leading the charge. If we don't do it, nobody will, and hopes of a rules-based international order will be pushed further into the future.
Is that what you want? Of all people, I'd think someone who dislikes the Westphalian nation-state system and favors a globalist future would be strongly in favor of enforcing nonaggression principles against Russia, rather than sniping at it as "undemocratic".
But… armies bad!@7!!
I think you’ve over-egged the pudding here. Of course not every foreign conflict warrants a zillion-dollar arms package but many very much merit American investment in some way or other. Determining what that should be is another question.
I don't disagree with you. It is all about acting in our national interest...and assisting a stable democracy against an offensive action by an aggressor nation is part of that national interest. My lesson from Iraq is to focus on the national interest, rather than more esoteric 'goals' such as ending terrorism or establishing democracy.
100%. It’s infuriating, but it’s not just conservatives. There’s a bunch of leftists who hate the US national security establishment so much that it melts their brains. Everything must be America’s fault. Ukraine somehow provoked the conflict by existing and not wanting to be taken over (the nerve). Russia was just acting rationally given NATO expansion - how could it be expected to tolerate NATO on its borders? Never mind that NATO has been on Russia’s border for decades. And if NATO can tolerate Russia on ITS border, Russia can learn to deal with it too.
I had to break up with a lot of my left-wing media because I just couldn’t take this nonsense.
"Bunch of" seems to be an exaggeration. For sure, they exist but if both AOC and Bernie are fully supporting Biden's efforts for Ukraine, this is marginal
(and the same thing in Europe; I posted here a while ago a German poll showing that despite costs - budget, energy, Green voters, whose party is in government and well to the left of the social democrats, support the war overwhelmingly)
It's unfortunate that in Germany's case it is very hard to tell what Olaf Scholz's real game plan is and what he really wants to do vis a vis Ukraine. He seems to want to prevent a European war that has already broken out and ends up saying strange things and compromising vacuously. This matters since he is the Bundeskanzler and seems like he would like to go right back to Ostpolitik and listening to Putinversteher if allowed to. I don't dispute the German public polling, just how it is interpreted in the German government. (Edit: wrote Westpolitik, corrected to OstPolitik).
If there are any two political parties in a developed democracy that need to be broken and spend a few decades in the wilderness, other than the GOP, it’s the CDU and SDP.
Every German I know is annoyed at their obsession with Ostpolitik, but somehow when elections roll around that annoyance always plays second fiddle to some other issue and they keep capturing 55-65% of the vote.
It's true. Die Linke seems to be made up of socialists/communists who haven't noticed that Russia is run by a right-wing nationalist government, and the AfD are largely incoherent but seem to be a vehicle for East Germans annoyed about their position in West Germany who would like to leverage whatever social capital they have from knowing Russian.
The distributions are different, but it’s hard to say one is stronger than the other. Probably the median Republican has stronger support for the war than the median Democrat, but there are also Republican cable news hosts and members of congress who are publicly soft on the war in a way that there aren’t for Democrats.
Hasn't McCarthy just stated that the GOP will cut off military aid to Ukraine if they win a majority?
Which polls have you seen? Pew and Gallup appear to be saying the opposite:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/09/22/as-war-in-ukraine-continues-americans-concerns-about-it-have-lessened/
https://news.gallup.com/poll/401168/americans-back-ukrainian-goal-reclaiming-territory.aspx
That being said, I don't understand how the Gallup data can be valid. It shows only 50% support by self identified Republicans, but no single age, gender or education group has support under 59. How is that possible? Maybe incomplete answers from respondents?
I don’t see a problem with those results. This is likely an issue where partisanship operates directly, rather than in correlation with demographic variables. There’s no age, gender, or education group that is so Republican that it’s overall results need to be close to those of republicans.
Well, isn't that special.
Maybe they should tell Kevin McCarthy: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/us/politics/mccarthy-ukraine-republicans.html
My worst, but hardest to break, habit these days is hate-listening to Robert Wright on Ukraine. To his credit, he sure sticks with the bit in insisting that this whole thing was and continues to be our fault.
I haven't figured him out, exactly. I see his arguments, but I have trouble understanding them in toto.
At the risk of confusing everyone looking at this exchange…
I tend to lead with “this is the whole reason we have the Second Amendment” when discussing this with that sort of conservative.
They immediately fallback on “well we shouldn’t be bankrolling it,” but at least they’ve been forced to think on the merits of telling a free people to go belly-up because gas is four bucks a gallon.
The "we shouldn't give them weapons" position is much more defensible than the "it's our job to tell them when/what to surrender"
Precisely my point. Shifting people off the latter belief is a good thing and that argument works on the righties who hold it.
There’s no saving the Tankies, though…
One of you two need to change your screen name. There can only be one David R on here!
I put up a “headshot” specifically to differentiate.
But, in age old tradition, “I was here first.”
I choose not to intervene unless it is in my national interest to do so. I will let you two fight it out on your own.
"Why should I change my name? He's the one who sucks."
One has a period. Punctuation Matters!
Is there a broadly supported conservative push to tell Ukraine to surrender?
It is mostly about "we shouldn't be supplying them with weapons", which I disagree with but is a reasonable position.
As a practical matter, however, that seems like a distinction without a difference.
In its practical effects, maybe.
But ethically/positionally/whatever, there is a pretty big difference between saying "we actively encourage you to submit and seek peace at any cost" vs "we wish you the best but this isn't our fight".
And also, the NATO members of Europe are in a perfectly good position to support them (a non-NATO member) with materiel if we did not.
Unfortunately, they aren't, since they have reduced their own defense spending and have limited stocks of materiel.
Many/most NATO members are in that boat, but not all.
UK, France, Turkey, and a few others have met their NATO defense spending targets, I think.
I thought France in particular maintained okay-but-not-great surpluses.
Just to reiterate...I'm fine with our current approach on supplying Ukraine. But the argument that it isn't our fight, because Ukraine isnt a member of NATO or an official ally, isn't unreasonable.
Here's David Sacks, who was mentioned in the article:
https://mobile.twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1581737838650920960
.. suggesting Ukraine give up Crimea and give up on NATO. (Maybe his thinks this is an idea that never crossed anyone's mind?)
That's just one example. Since the start of the war, my twitter feed has been full of right-wing people suggesting that we split their country in half for them to stop the fighting because.... being reasonable, I guess.
No, this is incorrect. If the US/west stopped supplying weapons, then Ukraine's ability to fight a CONVENTIONAL war would suffer tremendously. However, they could continue to fight a guerilla war which would likely be much, much more devastating and would likely involve NATO countries much more directly.
Yes, but then imagine something like Afghanistan for the Russians where Ukraine partisans are filtering into and out of Ukraine and Russia through Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, etc. like they did in Pakistan before. Do we think that is better for NATO than the current situation or worse?
Great piece. Where the realists have a point I think is in the warning against getting too ideological over this. When a workable deal is there we should be open to it, and not go all 'Munich 1938!' But it seems to me the best way to get to that point is to equip Ukraine to keep inflicting conventional defeats on Russia.
Realism or "Realism"? Because everything I've been hearing from "Realist" John Mearsheimer has been real dumb.
There’s one anti-peace argument that must be refuted: the canard that any type of territorial concession would unacceptably “reward” Putin’s aggression. This argument has two flaws. First, Russia has undermined its strategic position by exposing its military weakness and inspiring Europe to find other energy sources even if it gets to keep Crimea and Donbas. Second, no war has ever ended short of exhaustion without some concessions. I doubt Crimea is enough to pacify Putin, but Crimea and the ethnically Russian parts of Donbas might be enough if and when Ukraine recaptures more territory. That’s better for everyone than a 10 or 20% chance if nuclear war.
If you reward Russia for engineering ethnic Russiadom in territory it captures, it sets a very bad precedent. Lithuania and Latvia will tell you to go pound sand if you think that's an acceptable compromise with Russia.
This. There are _multiple_ countries including existing NATO members with whom we have mutual defense commitments who have substantial ethnic Russian minorities. “Russia has a moral right to annex any nearby territory with at least 40% Russian speakers” is not a box any sane person wants to open.
They kind of already "had" the Donbas though, right? I mean, it's not great, but it would mean that _this_ invasion got them nothing.
I agree it wouldn't discourage a Crimea situation again, but we were kind of already at that point before the invasion.
And Estonia
Did France, Prussia and Austria Hungary set a bad precedent by tolerating the ethnic cleaning of native Americans? Did Britain set a similar precedent by capitulating to American traitors and abandoning its native American subjects to their tender mercies? Perhaps, but this hardly hurt any of said European powers, who had much more to fear from one another than “precedents.”
Furthermore, the Baltics need us much more than we need them. We can call the shots or else they can choose between appeasement and martyrdom.
I'd like to remind you how we got into WW2. One large expansionist, imperialist power (Japan) attacked us, and its ally, also an expansionist imperialist power (Germany) declared war on us. This idea that we have total freedom of maneuver and can just sit back while the world burns is fantasy.
Russia's territorial expansionism isn't anything new and is a hell of a lot closer for the Europeans than North American expansionism was in the 19th century. European history is also littered with national projects of various ethnic groups and their suppression.
As the guarantor of the post war European order there is no way the US is hanging the Baltics, Poland and Romania out to dry to appease sone incompetent Russian aggression.
Everyone’s daily reminder that David believes an American continental autarky would still be a good place to live, lol.
There’s no point.
Don’t. Feed. The. Troll.
Your accusation of continental autarky is absurd. South America is a different continent. Australia and New Zealand aren’t part of North America. India and Indonesia are in different continents. Russia has never been much of a threat to the UK, which has nukes and a navy. France had the good sense to develop an independent nuclear deterrent with a robust second strike capability.
At most, I’m saying that continuing trade with eastern Europe is hardly a compelling American material interest. That the US didn’t need to trade with Germany and France in 1946 is obvious. We didn’t trade with them from 1942-44 and, during those years, we hit it out of the park in terms of industrial production.
"At most, I’m saying that continuing trade with eastern Europe is hardly a compelling American material interest. That the US didn’t need to trade with Germany and France in 1946 is obvious. We didn’t trade with them from 1942-44 and, during those years, we hit it out of the park in terms of industrial production."
This is nonsensical - we hit peak production because we deficit financed production at a scale that we've never gotten close to since. Post war - trading with Germany and France led to enormous wealth for the US.
Lithuania and Latvia don't get a vote.
The admission of the Baltic States to NATO is at the top of Putin’s list of grievances, and made his fear of Ukraine joining NATO far from groundless. The breakup of a great empire always leaves wounds, we were silly to think Russia would take humiliation lying down.
Why should Russia get to territorially expand into the old SSRs again?
it’s not a question of should it’s a question of power. how much risk of violent death should american voters tolerate to contain putin? that question is hard to answer, but it’s pretty clear very few want to pay $3.20 a gallon for gas to contain putin, so i very much doubt many voters want to die over the political status of former SSRs
Which is why the 19th century "Rescuing Russians" excuse for Russian imperial expansion can't be allowed to re-emerge in modern Europe.
For someone who decries imperialism, he seems awfully cavalier about the fact that this is the first era in which naked imperialism and brutality face systemic moral constraint.
He’s successfully outsourced state violence and coercion at so many removes from himself that he can safely delude himself that they’re unnecessary.
I’m not even sure that’s it; it seems he just thinks the present era of relative restraint exists independent of any prior causes and will continue to do so with no effort?
Hate to break it to him, but well over 100 million people died in the first half of the twentieth century in the conflicts which finally birthed a firm conception of just war and international law, and the work is far from done.
A lot more people will pick up a rifle and fight for some conception of “home, freedom, and country” before there’s no longer a need.
The "canard" you bring up is no such thing. The modern norm against annexation via conquest is incredibly important to uphold. European borders been fought over and changed for thousands of years, such that every European country has substantial ethnic minorities that might correctly "belong" to a different country. If every county invaded it's neighbor to incorporate any region with a substantial ethnic minority, endless war would result. To recognize Russia's conquests would undermine that norm, and also undermine nuclear non proliferation (both because countries want nukes as deterrence from foreign invasion and because Russia has been perceived to get off easy because it has nukes)
The actual solution to messy borders and mixed populations was solved by Europe decades ago, it's the European Union. If both Ukraine and Russia were part of the EU, then it wouldn't matter if the Donbas were Russian or Ukrainian, residents could live and work in either country as they see fit. The rest of continental Europe understands this, if only Putin could be so wise...
"The modern norm against annexation via conquest is incredibly important to uphold." It is codified in the unknown but really important Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 - a visionary step towards a better world, IMO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg%E2%80%93Briand_Pact#:~:text=The%20Kellogg%E2%80%93Briand%20Pact%20or,whatever%20origin%20they%20may%20be%2C
(unknown? maybe my secondary school education is full of holes!)
I remember learning about that pact in history class, but it was presented as a joke in light of World War II. I’ve only recently understood how much of the modern order is due to that pact.
Europe’s “solution” to messy borders didn’t keep Russia from invading the Ukraine, nor are Europeans willing to admit Russia into the EU.
The categorical imperative is hardly a desirable basis for foreign policy. Territorial concessions to a nuclear power that was willing to wreck its economy to bloody Ukraine hardly compel France to return Alsace to Germany or that Finland should must disgorge ethnically Swedish areas.
Why would Europe not accept Russia in the EU? They certainly won’t under Putin, but the range of other countries that have been accepted suggests that Russia would be as well, if it credibly made the same commitments.
Since 1993, the policy of the EU has been that you can join if you are a democracy (incl respect of human rights), a functioning market economy and accept the obligations and intents of the European Union (i.e. of the Treaties) - the Copenhagen criteria.
Joining is in practice a difficult procedure because accepting the obligations means having tons of legislation consistent with EU law notably bringing about the free movement of workers, goods, services, capital and much, much more
(in the "much more" area, think of this: if your environmental legislation in some field would be somewhat more favourable than your neighbours, that would give your companies a competitive edge (and risk a race to the bottom between jurisdictions given the free movement of goods). Therefore, EU legislation (if not directly applicable) could prescribe a minimum standard in that field that national legislation needs to respect, so as not to distort competition and/or avoid the race to the bottom)
Most countries in Eastern Europe showed their interest in joining in the first half of the 1990s and eventually joined in 2004 (2007 in the case of Bulgaria and Romania).
(Norway has twice negotiated all the way and then decided not to join! (1974, 1995)
I am not sure the last empire would ever be looked favorably upon by the EU, no matter whether it gets "the good czar" in a guy like Navalny. It remains an extractive and exploitative empire from whence all that is good flows to Moscow (and to St. Pete, to a lesser extent).
We just kinda forgot because it has the rare-in-modern-times quirk of geographical continuity.
We did our best in many ways, notably by bailing out Russia and by NATO/Russia partnership for peace deal.
One thing that is or was impossible for the Russian state to swallow is that Russia is no longer the co-number one in the world with the US but rather a country with the population of Germany plus France and the nominal GDP of the Netherlands plus Belgium (if oil/gas prices aren't too low).
We tried, I'm sure there are books written about why we failed. We essentially offered them the same terms as all the other former Eastern Bloc states (liberalize your economy, democratize your politics and EU and even NATO accession is on the table). They would have essentially been a jumbo Poland, and I guess that offer offended their pride.
The world had never seen a nuclear superpower dissolve before; our sample size is one. I think you can make a fair case that we ended up on the better end (or least-bad end) of plausible outcomes.
I'm not a scholar of the era, but I'm given to understand that the oligarch/kleptocrat dice were already cast by Perestroika, although it wasn't obvious at the time that this was the inevitable outcome.
Anyway, no matter what happens *tomorrow*, there hasn't been another nuke used in anger *yet*! That's not nothing.
To some degree this is all about one man. If Putin doesn't decide to stay in politics after his two terms, it really is unclear what direction someone like the 2008-era Medvedev would have taken the country. (Admittedly, of course, the current version of Medvedev is jockeying to stay relevant by being uber-hawkish--he reminds me of an anti-Trump Republican who suddenly needs to be slavish to Trump in order to get back in good graces... like Lindsey Graham 2017-version).
"Ethnically Russian" is a very fishy concept. Just to cook up trouble - president Zelensky's mother tongue, TV-career language etc was Russian.
He’s ethnically Jewish. Nobody would claim he’s an ethnic Russian.
Is his entire maternal line jewish? soviet history was a melting pot
Leora wrote "He’s ethnically Jewish. Nobody would claim he’s an ethnic Russian." Well, in the Soviet Union times, people carried a passport with one's nationality indicated which could be Armenian or Russian or Jewish or ... But in more normal countries, you won't make that exclusion. If you tell a compatriot of mine that he is Jewish and therefore not Dutch, you are in very bad company
(same for my Muslim, Buddhist, etc compatriots)
This 100%.
I can see 100% of Alaska. I think though that we should insist that Canada keep at least Vancouver. They have great skiing and I don't want to have to get a Russian visa every time I go.
"There’s one anti-peace argument that must be refuted: the canard that any type of territorial concession would unacceptably “reward” Putin’s aggression."
I agree, we just need to figure out how much of Alaska and Canada will satisfy Putin, but that we can live with giving away.
I don’t advocate ending the war tomorrow. From the US standpoint, Europeans need to shiver for at least a couple months, and if a few Europeans freeze that’s far more useful than Ukrainian civilians dying in missile strikes. However, there may come a time when the belligerents are exhausted enough to give peace a chance. When that time comes, categorical rejections of territorial concessions will be positively dangerous.
Just once, it would be nice for Matthew Yglesias to mention that there are three large ethnic communities on the Crimean peninsula: Crimean Tatars, Ukranians, and Russians. And that the reason that the Russian community is the largest now is due to historical and ongoing ethnic cleansing by Moscow. Also, that the referendum for Crimean accession to Russia was blatantly falsified, just like the ones for the Ukranian oblasts recently.
Tim Snyder's Substack post on the history of Crimea is truly excellent (https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-crimea-disconnect?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=310897&post_id=77483174&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email)
It makes it clear that Putin's claims on Crimea are bogus. It also makes it clear that Crimea has not really been integral to Ukraine either, for that matter. So let Ukraine conquer it and then have a valid and credible referendum on its future.
If the Russian front collapses in the south I see no reason not to let Ukraine try and take it (not sure we could stop them anyway). That may be what finally gets Russia open to some kind of settlement.
There is, from the open-source analysis I can find, *damn-all* between the north bank of the Dnipro and Crimea. If the Ukrainians are as close to shattering the 20-30k troops north of the river and capturing at least their equipment if not most of the personnel too… that might be a move that becomes possible by the winter freeze.
At the end of the day Russia broke the cardinal rules of the game established in 1945. Namely that war must not be “diplomacy by other means”, and that you cannot simply initiate an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country to better your situation.
Any outcome other than “Russia must fail and be seen to fail” in this war would be catastrophic, as it will show that this behavior is legitimate. More wars in Europe will be sure to follow, as will the invasion of Taiwan. The odds of nuclear conflict will *increase* exponentially.
We don’t need a Versailles-level punitive-humiliating agreement for Russia , but we do need one that shows clealry and *beyond question* that the war wasn’t worth it, and not just from the humanistic perspective that “alll wars are bad” but from a nationalist perspective too, i.e. Russia must lose all it took since 2014. The principle of sovereignty must be reaffirmed on the ground. I repeat and stress that the interest of Justice and security for all (preventing nuclear war) are aligned here. To appease putin out of fear of nuclear war would just make that outcome more likely.
Another great, well thought out piece that I found very thought provoking.
I do differ a little on the section of "Russia wrecking their army in Ukraine is good for NATO." If Ukraine wins a quick victory, I agree. But if the war goes on for a long time, the Russians will be forced to adapt and learn (just like Europe is forced to adapt economically). They have to figure out how to deal with HIMARS, for instance. So, in the long term we may also be training Russians to fight against us.
It's kind of like antibiotics, if you take the full course and wipe out the bacteria, they are great. But if you stop early and allow a resistant strain to flourish, they can be counterproductive.
Great piece. It is worth stressing that we are in this dangerous position in no small part because we’ve tolerated Russian aggression before. Putin had real reason to think he could get away with this. Crimea. South Ossetia. Russian bounties on American soldiers. Obama’ red line against Russian ally Assad. All without a serious response from the West.
The time to draw lines and demonstrate resolve is while the stakes are relatively low, not after the aggressor is emboldened to launch a major conflict. Otherwise, Putin will force the West into concession after concession till he finally demands something we won’t trade, and we end up in a real war. Ukraine is a scary situation, and Biden is right to tread carefully, but the world will get even scarier if we don’t make Russia hurt in a big way.
I agree with the thrust of your argument and most of your examples. I would caution you against citing the Russian bounty program in Afghanistan though, there's no conclusive proof it existed. The USCENTCOM Commander said on the reports of the program that, "It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me."
Oh interesting. That’s good to know - thanks.
Biden's biggest mistake was not sufficiently convincing Russia pre-invasion that he'd be able to pull off a diplomatic miracle and unify the world against this aggression. Russia was already looking at a bleak energy export future due to long term gas and oil demand trends and Putin's foolishness will accelerate Russian's inevitable slide into poverty by at least a decade.
Europe's realignment away from dependence on Russian energy is permanent. There are over 25 LNG import facilities under construction around Europe and they are being financed with hard off-take agreements that last for years and years. On top of that, European countries are redoubling efforts to add renewables to their grids and switch to heat pumps instead of gas for home and business heating. In 10 years, Europe's demand for natural gas will be half or less of what it is now and that demand will be satisfied from places other than Russia.
In fairness, this unity has largely been contingent on the Ukrainians fighting and being a much better match for Russia than anyone expected. The international tone shifted within just a cluple of days.
The most striking example for me was an interview that Adam Tooze did on the Ezra Klein show. It was a two parter, one on Friday, two days after the invasion, and one on Monday. On Friday, Tooze was glumly talking about how Putin had weaponized globalization and wistfully talking about cutting Russia off from Swift. By Monday, when it was apparent that Russia's thunder runs had failed, he was talking about how Russia's central bank had half their reserves frozen and comparing Zelensky to Churchill. I remember the tone of the news changing as well. It was remarkably sudden.
Europe's natural gs needs may be a lot less than half in a decade time. Investments in renewables were already enormous pre 24 February and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has accelerated that process enormously.
"Biden's biggest mistake. . . "
There's a difference between a "mistake" and a "failure." The former implies that there were things should have done or not done. I think Biden's policy in the leadup to Ukraine was fine. Its failure was that Putin is an idiot.
If I'm reading my retired general Twitter correctly, Ukraine didn't really have the military capacity to effectively resist Crimea and D/L in 2014, and it's not obvious what a coherent military Western response would have looked like. They've completely rethought their force structure (albeit not replaced a ton of their hardware) since then.
>>Otherwise, Putin will force the West into concession after concession till he finally demands something we won’t trade<<
So you're claiming Ukrainian territory is something we WILL trade?
We are clearly contemplating some kind of negotiated settlement involving Crimea, Donbas, etc. We would not consider that for a NATO country.
We are? Who is the "we"?
NATO countries which are arming and funding the Ukrainian side and will have a influence over any deal. What did you think I meant?
I haven't seen anything from NATO country senior officials about the outlines for a negotiated settlement. Links would be useful.
At least partly because nato countries aren’t allowed to have this kind of simmering border conflict.
While this expresses the present correctly, the history is flawed.
"You can also have conflicts in the form of free-riding. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, America’s European allies objectively needed help defending themselves against the Soviet Union. Thus the logic of NATO. Today, though, Europe clearly has the financial resources to defend itself which would let the United States focus on helping Asian allies who actually don’t have the scale to stand alone against China."
The reason for low European spending in 1949 was only partly their inability to afford more. It was also because of a perception that European powers could not be trusted with large military budgets - and had caused all the devastation two world wars by that very spending. The USA, whose large isolationist political faction meant that it could be trusted not to start aggressive wars with that large military, was therefore deputed to run the defence of Europe against the USSR.
The most obvious case here is West Germany in 1949, when the sense was that a large Bundeswehr would be too similar to a restoration of the Wehrmacht of the Nazi era and of the Kaisers and therefore restricting their military and supplying the defence of Germany through the large US deployment and the smaller UK, Belgian and Dutch deployments, but Italy was also seen as similarly problematic, and lots of countries hadn't gotten over the threat that a powerful France would represent if all of its adversaries were rendered incapable of defending themselves. The idea of de Gaulle going on a conquest spree like a third Napoleon might seem laughable now, but it did not seem so in the 1940s.
The modern political situation - and, indeed, the entire post-Cold War era - is completely changed, but there are plenty of Europeans who still prefer the idea of American soldiers protecting them to soldiers of their own nation whom they do not trust.
As someone (Churchill?) said, the purpose of NATO was to keep America in, the Soviet Union out, and Germany down.
>>One way that people try to address this psychologically discomfiting reality is to act as if there is some unilateral course of action that Joe Biden could take that would guarantee a non-catastrophic outcome.<<
This seems overstated if by "not-catastrophic" Matt's referring to avoiding nuclear war. Sure, "guarantee" is a pretty strong word, and yes, if the Putin regime were sufficiently suicidal, I guess we couldn't prevent them from launching a first strike on US cities. But there are things Joe Biden could do that would nudge the probability toward zero that the US becomes involved in a nuclear war with Russia over this conflict (namely, disengage).
The Biden administration could, if it wanted to, announce tomorrow morning: that it it will provide no further military aid to Ukraine; that it will not intervene militarily in the region under any circumstances; that it is lifting sanctions on Russia; that it intends to adhere to strict neutrality in this conflict starting immediately; and that it urges the two sides to reach a ceasefire.
There are a number of reasons the above is not going to happen. There may also be reasons why the above *should* not happen. But America's choice to be heavily involved in a conflict between two third party states is just that, a choice. Let's be crystal clear about that.
Yes, that might reduce tensions, or it might induce Russia to invade Lithuania to gain a land bridge to Kaliningrad. We don't actually know, and neither do you. If Putin thinks NATO and US power credibility is low, that could raise the risk of nuclear war.
Why exactly did we allow Lithuania and Estonia into NATO? Places in the world which mattered hugely to US interests? US 'credibility' has become a creeping canard for ever-expanding military commitments for tiny free-rider states, and it's good to see the Ukraine war waking up the woke. Not surprising NATO creep has led to a hugely deadly war with Russians and Ukrainians being the cannon fodder.
This is such bad reasoning that just won’t die.
NATO does not creep. Independent nations apply to NATO willingly and and are rejected or accepted.
The fact that Ukraine in NATO is good for NATO is irrelevant. Ukraine chose to ask for membership, not other way around. (And in 2013 Ukraine polling was not in favor of NATO actually)
The NATO creep take relies on the idea any independent nation somehow can’t exist and decide it’s own fate. Neutrality and independent decision making worked just fine for Sweden and Finland for years despite ‘NATO apparently trying to creep all over them’
I was responding to the comment immediately above from James L, and while I have no idea if 'credibility' was ever used in admitting Lithuania and Estonia to NATO, it's used all the time for the US doing dumb things, and will be used for why we have to start WWIII to protect Lithuania and Estonia, now that they're in NATO.
Seems pretty clear we’re getting the iron curtain back again, thanks to 30 years of condescension to Russia from foreign policy geniuses like Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton and Anne Applebaum.
That would reduce the risk of nuclear war in the next six months for sure. Would it reduce the risk of nuclear war in the next two decades?
Kinda surprised to see this take from you. I should think it extraordinarily obvious to folks with our backgrounds that the short-term safety this course offers is vastly outweighed by the long-term instability and opacity it will provoke.
Sure, giving Russia a free hand might guarantee momentary freedom from any nuclear threat, though even there we would need to coerce Europe into doing so as well lest the Russians blame us for their actions too.
But in the medium-term we’ve all but assured an environment in which any but our most fundamental core defense relationships, and literally any of our principles, are open to being abandoned under the right amount of pressure.
I don’t think that lack of credibility plays out well over the coming decades. Even if one doesn’t give a flying fuck about principles, our standard of living will not survive a major retrenchment in the international and trading order, and our democracy will not survive a major retrenchment in our standard of living.
Principles are, at heart, a statement of core interests which have been true for so long that they’ve grown into systems of morals and ethics. Toss them by the wayside lightly.
Agree with this broadly - Joe Biden is certainly not the impediment to peace - but I think there is definitely reason to think that a significant divergence of interests between the U.S. and Ukraine could emerge, and quickly. Arguably the divergence doesn't appear right now because neither Ukraine or NATO is willing to make concessions in the face of vague nuclear blackmail, but if Putin starts to take actual steps to make the risk of nuclear war seem more likely then it is quite possible that Ukraine and NATO's risk calculus will diverge. That could be because of either different perceptions about whether Putin is serious or because they have different stakes and goals in the situation (Ukraine's goal is to emerge battered but sovereign; America's is to preserve the nuclear taboo).
This is a tricky but vital fact to acknowledge. We don't know which red lines need to be crossed for Putin to escalate, but it seems quite likely that they include the protection of Crimea and the naval facility at Tartus. Ukraine's stated goal is to reconquer all of the territory taken by Russia, including Crimea. So if current trends continue then there is at least a chance that we are heading for the point where U.S. and Ukrainian interests might diverge significantly. That's why NATO policymakers are talking about it already, because it will be extremely difficult to think clearly and act safely once the red line is crossed.
Acknowledging this doesn't mean we have to buy into any of the rubbish from anti-anti-Russia types who want to blame Biden or excuse Putin. Rather it means seeing that we're already in a situation where just as only Putin has it in his gift to bring peace, Putin also has it in his gift to divide Ukraine from its allies and dramatically increase the stakes in the conflict - and that he might do so at some unpredictable but increasingly-likely point in the future. It understandably makes policymakers and publics in NATO feel helpless to be reduced to standing back and hoping that their ally's gains don't push a guy with a tenuous grip on reality into starting World War III, especially when they have few options for escaping that dynamic.
Well, all I can say here is that it would have been helpful for those NATO policymakers and public to not become dependent on Russian raw materials and pursue Ostpolitik into a dead end. It might have been good for them to have increased their defense spending and not spent significant effort excusing or wishing away Russian territorial encroachments because it was inconvenient for them. (Edit: replaced Westpolitik with Ostpolitik.)
I was thinking this morning about just how nucking futs it was to dip toes in the Soviet natural gas market only like twenty years after the Berlin Airlift kept Berliners from freezing to death on Soviet terms.
Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.
Even more so than our own pacifist left, the European center and left have outsourced the job of state violence so far from themselves that they think it unnecessary and war unimaginable.
For *some,* that “think” has finally become “thought,” but not for all.
Eh, I don't think it's that odd -- the Soviet blockade of West Berlin could be written off to being an eccentricity of Stalin; by the mid-1960s, a very large part of the west, including many conservatives, viewed the Soviet leadership as being a lot more pragmatic. People who continued to talk about the "Soviet threat" were treated as jokes at best by the mainstream media, reckless warmongers at worst (see the treatment of Reagan and Thatcher even post-Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).
Whenever I fondly look back on China in the 2000-10 period, I have then to recall the USSR 1955-65. It was bound to end without some kind of matching political liberalization.
And when we consider China’s future from 2020 to 2040, it’s useful to consider the USSR’s history in the period 1975-95.
Sigh.
I'm sure we won't make identical mistakes during Round 3! Wherever that eventually is.
We’re running out of countries with enough demographic heft to become serious illiberal competitors, and most of the ones which have it are slowly and haltingly moving in the correct direction (India, Indonesia).
Once we see off the threat posed by the CCP (or more accurately it sees itself off while we stick our thumbs up our asses, thanks Pooh Bear!)… who’s left?
Ethiopia? Nigeria?
Small correction - of the nuclear blackmail works, or be perceived to have worked, it won’t matter when Putin dies. Once the playbook is shown to be effective, *every* autocrat will use it: North Korea , Xi and Oran if we’re foolish enough to allow it to go nuclear. And of course there is every chance that whoever replaces Putin in Russia will too.
I short, if we give in to nuclear threats now we live in terror—and vastly *increased* risk of nuclear conflict—for the rest of our lifetimes.
I think you make some good points but I've always had a problem with this "if he wins the conflict in any sense that means his threats will have worked" line of argumentation. Sometimes people making this argument sound like they're suggesting that it's some new thing in world politics to use nuclear weapons for coercion or deterrence. But the fact is that they have been used that way all of the time and will continue to do so regardless of how this goes.
A more fruitful way of looking at the issue to me is to recognize that actually nuclear weapons do have a real impact on world politics insofar as they force a measure of restraint on anyone dealing with a nuclear power. That's why we set up and expanded NATO in order to restrain Russia from messing around with NATO countries. We didn't bring Ukraine into NATO because in turn we were restrained by Russia's nuclear weapons, just like how in the Cold War we were restrained from trying to export democracy to Eastern Europe for the same reason.
It seems kind of dangerous to me to just suddenly decide that actually we don't need to be restrained by Russia's nuclear weapons at all, and that to do so would set some horrible precedent, even though we've been doing it for decades already anyway. But I think you're also agreeing that this is dangerous/risky even though you want to still do it, so maybe we're not too far apart, even if we frame the issue a bit differently. But I was just trying to say that as things evolve, a situation might develop when the U.S. and Ukraine disagree about whether it's worthwhile to do this anymore.
There's a very real chance Japan and South Korea will have nukes about three minutes after any outcome that can be described as a Russian victory. Not sure what Taiwan's atomic energy dalliances look like, but maybe them too.
That would seem, to me, to be bad. Hot take.
Not hot, commonsensical. Just like Saudi Arabia and Egypt will follow this path of Iran is allowed to get nukes. Appeasement vastly increases the chances of nuclear war.
I’m fairly cavalier about Iran and Saudi Arabia glassing one another to bare earth. In twenty years they’ll all be unimportant.
Less so as regards East Asia, obviously.
The fact that you can be “cavalier” about millions of people dying is rather sickening.
The fact that you think nuclear proliferation in Mideast would mean the damage would be limited to Mideast is rather …shortsighted
Not sure what David R. intends but we be cavalier about Iran and Saudi Arabia being unimportant in 20 years because of the irrelevance of oil?
Anyone who claims to really give much of a damn about hypothetical future mass deaths on anything except a purely intellectual level is full of shit. That’s not how the typical human psyche works, and those people who do work like that are profoundly, debilitatingly crippled by sorrow and anxiety all the time.
Imagine how much misery you’d need to preemptively feel at the several percent chance that South Asia’s monsoon patterns will change under the influence of climate change and hundreds of millions will starve? Is a normal human being supposed to exist in a state of existential dread over it?
So I’m not going to pretend to be overly concerned by the prospect you laid out for internet points like many folks do.
It would suck, and the reality of it would provoke me to feel horror at the time, but feigned “compassion” about the hypothetical does nothing useful in the meanwhile.
The goal for US energy policy over the next twenty years should be (and basically is) to liberate you and I from any practical *need* to care. Then we can indulge our pathos to whatever extent we see fit.
Other than that, we can only hope the Iranians turn out to be rational people once they have nuclear weapons, because Christ knows that whatever post-oil government succeeds the Saudis will not be.
Putin is not only constrained by the western reaction to possible use of nukes.
Obviously, fall-out (the literal one, I mean) will be painful in Russia but who is sure of Russia's nuclear capabilities? We have seen missiles crashing just after launch, missiles returning to the ship it was launched from, etc etc. Many nuclear weapons may not explode when they are supposed to. Playing with nukes is very scary, especially with Russians maintenance and of SU vintage.
I assume the rest of the world's reactions also matter, too, in terms of public opinion.
“But ever since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States has been physically present in this region halfway around the world”
I’m pretty sure the US presence in the Middle East long predates 2003. There was a US military presence in Saudi Arabia since WWII and a number of military bases in the smaller gulf states since the 1991 Gulf War.
There have also been US infantry battalions rotated into the Multinational Force & Observers, for decades, acting as guarantors of the peace on the Sinai Peninsula.
I mentioned before that Putin has clearly been incompetent in this war.
The attempt to take Kiev was a farce brought about by foolish underestimation of the Ukrainian military. The failure to launch mobilisation in March or April has now resulted in a lack of manpower, and there are too few men to properly train the guys getting called up now. When the Kerch Bridge was blown up, he fired lots of rare cruise missiles at relatively unimportant targets as revenge.
The problem here is that it is easy to see Putin finally carrying out a geopolitical mass shooting (i.e. nukes) if he sees he is going to get beat. The whole thing is incredibly scary.
> while Russian material is killing Ukrainian soldiers. That’s a deal in our favor.
I understand the point you’re making, and I know its not what you meant, but you might want to rephrase any sentence that refers to the deaths of Ukrainians as a great deal for the US.
This is literally the argument Ukraine has made. That they are offering the West a great deal when it comes to security "spend some money and we will do the heavy lifting of your security." So whatever discomfort you're expressing is literally just embarrassment at how good of a deal they have offered. And to that I say, you're right. We should ameliorate that imbalance by giving them F-16s, MBTs, and most importantly air defense and IFVs.
Yes. I completely agree. This is a tragedy writ large. There are no "great deals."