So Russia's production of *fighter jets* is still at roughly pre-war levels. I think it's safe to say that they can also build stuff like tanks, and indeed it has been reported that Russia's armored vehicle factory went to triple shifts and then to 24/7 production in 2022. https://www.yahoo.com/video/russian-prisoners-sent-factory-build-173205586.html
So I think it's safe to say that even if we pretend that the sanctions were only intended to cripple Russia's military production and not to also crash the economy, despite abundant statements from early in the year from officials about how the sanctions were going to crash Russia's economy, the sanctions also largely failed on those merits.
Regarding the article about Russia attempting to restart production of BMP-2s, BMP-2s had a lower unit cost for production than BMP-3s back when Russia had active production lines for both. The sanctions might have increased the discrepancy, but in any case they didn't actually restart production of BMP-2s after they looked into it and found that rebuilding production lines would cost more than just making more BMP-3s. Official Russian news sources say that, like with tanks, production has increased substantially. https://tass.com/defense/1560059
Yes, the war has been a complete catastrophe from Russia's perspective. The problem is that it's pretty difficult to see how Putin can back down now. Let's say that tomorrow he declared he'd withdraw to 24 Feb (or whenever) borders. Putting aside the domestic political difficulties he would likely face as a result of this decision, would this mean the dropping of Western sanctions and restrictions on the movement of Russians? No way. There is simply no chance that the US is going to let that happen until a US friendly regime has been installed. So, from Russia's perspective (putting aside moral concerns), what's the point?
PS. I thought it was interesting that you labelled UAE as one of a collection of liberal capitalist democracies. It's less free Russia according to Freedom House, and is involved its own illegal war in Yemen. But it's our friend, so we don't care. It's really striking how, for all this talk about democracy and good (us and our allies) and evil (random countries like Iran and Venezuela and Cuba) it's all just pragmatics.
The European strategy of integrating Russia, as a supplier of raw materials made perfect sense. Russia gets income that can be used to buy all the amazing number of things they don't make or don't make well. I doubt anyone counted on Putin being such a numbskull. In this Putin resembles Trump. He has an ego that must be stoked at increasingly long tables. It has been evident for some time that alternative supplies of energy would be a good idea.
I seriously doubt this was driven by American desires to create a functional market for surplus American natural gas. Fracking is expensive. LNG is a very expensive mode of transport. There are substantial supplies of LNG that come from much cheaper conventional sources in the Middle East. Building the terminals on the other hand is an expensive undertaking and these would have been failed investments right up until the moment the Russians halted their piped supplies. Building them would have signaled hostile intent to Russian economic interests. But maybe that is a signal that should have been sent.
I spent a fair percentage of my life reading on military history and military organization and military technology. I will die one day with a copy of Aviation Week close at hand. It was my considered opinon right up to the moment it happened that Russia would not invade. That was predicated on knowing their military capabilities and available combat capacity. I did assume, unlike the Russians, that they would would not be welcomed as brothers and I had years of conflict in the Donbas and elsewhere as evidence that this would be true. My argument was straightforward. They lacked the military capacity to take and occupy the Ukraine.
I also assumed that the Russian orbat was actually functional. This is not hard to obtain material. You can find it on Wikipedia. The Russian intention was to develop combined arms formations, larger than a brigade but smaller than a division. These were to have the capacity to act as independent formations. They would have armor, artillery, infantry, recon, close air support, and logistical ability. The works as it were. And they planned on having 45 or so such formations. They never got there. That is not their entire army to be sure but it was the pointy end of the spear. I think they got into the low thirties. But even then it was known that many of these formations were undermanned and lacked their full complement of weapons and support.
The Russians proceeded to prove that even that was all a sham. I will add one observation that I believe is not given sufficient consideration. (Any fans of Hoplology here?) For anyone below officer rank in the Russian military life sucks. They are poorly paid, housed and treated. In consequence they lack a large experienced corp of noncoms who are, in any army, your experts and trainers of soldiers. What they do have seem to be very bad at their jobs, and expert only at falsifying readiness reports and such and also selling off anything they can to supplement their incomes. This is not a good army.
I was completely wrong about the Russians invading of course. But the results have so far proven why I should have been right. Sweden and Finland can take comfort in the fact that Russia will not be deploying more forward troops to their borders. The Russians ain't got 'em.
Additionally, many of the Russian generals and military leadership are former spies installed by Putin because they are loyal to him. They are not career military. It is like if a bunch of CIA operatives suddenly became generals. No wonder the battlefield tactics have been so poor and so many generals have been killed or captured.
"His thinking was that at the end of the day, Russia cares more about Ukraine than Europe does, and whatever the west does to back Ukraine, eventually Russia will do more."
As long as the Ukrainian army couldn't put up much of a fight, that was true. As long as the Ukrainians were divided about the issue, that was true.
"But there’s a nightmare lurking that only the Russians can avert."
Since the Russian propagandist types were arguing for attacking a lot of European countries, it seems they were/are determined to invade eastern Europe. Escalating to nuclear weapons is just a bigger weapon in the grand scheme of things. If they chose to do that, we have got a bad problem, but so far, they've not actually done any of that. Having chosen to make commitments to the defense of eastern Europe, we cannot go back on that, and we assumed the risk at that point in time (2008 and earlier).
So what are we trying to persuade the Russians *of*, at this point, given that they appear to have sold themselves a giant plate of insanity? 'You don't really want to die?' I do not think they want to die.
Unfortunately, we get to wait this one out, I think. Abandoning the Ukrainians at this point serves no purpose as we would be rewarding the insanity. That's pretty much how life went during the cold war.
Seems a good time to have an autumn picnic. (Or cookout, or whatever.)
(@SevaUT's hypothesis (also mine, derived independently, that this is the a slow-motion version of the Russian civil war, playing out very slowly seems solid. That this is a different version of 1991 seems also true: Putin is trying to reverse Gorbachev's decision not to fight. I don't see how this is going to work out with a Russian win. They have to accept it - so how do we talk them into it?)
This piece was very helpful. Prior to reading it, I was definitely confused about the purpose of the sanctions (buying gas from the Russians seemed like a failure to me) and confused about why Putin himself was cutting off gas supplies. This article explained both clearly.
This is a good write-up about what Russia should do if it was acting rationally in its own best material interests, but it's sort of beside the point: the guy running Russia clearly has some different goals in mind!
The hard question--and the more interesting one--is *given* the above, what should the West do? Stay on this path even if it increases the chances of escalation to nuclear warfare? For me, this is the debate that I'm interested in seeing, as there doesn't seem to be an obvious answers!
"...at the end of the day, Russia cares more about Ukraine than Europe does, and whatever the west does to back Ukraine, eventually Russia will do more."
This is probably true enough of Western Europe (and the US, tbh, but supporting Ukraine isn't nearly as painful for us) but I don't think it's true of the eastern flank of the NATO countries. They seem to care quite deeply about the fate of Ukraine and believe they're next on the chopping block if Ukraine falls. It history is a guide, they're not wrong to be concerned
I think this is a crucial distinction, and an additional thing that doesn't get airplay in the American media is the extent to witch the Eastern countries see this as a litmus test for NATO. The biggest concern for all these countries is that if Russia invaded, NATO wouldn't actually send troops, just words and excuses. The attitude in Poland and other countries therefore is 'they need to prove themselves – if they can't bring themselves to send weapons to Ukraine, then they definitely won't send soldiers when we're invaded.'
This makes Ukraine as much of a concern to NATO as it is to Russia. Whether that's a good thing is an open question.
I like how Matt continues to logically lay out how starting this war made no sense, and it always makes me think, when does starting a war *ever* make sense?
The short answer is yes, of course. In pre modern technology and economy especially, war could be hugely beneficial in terms of protecting or gaining vital resources. It served not only the interests of the people on top but often could be very much beneficial to the low ranking soldier who may have had not very high risk of mortality balances by significant chances of material gain/supplementary income(or simply making a living in case of mercenaries), possible social advancement and perhaps the very allure of adventure unparalleled by basically anything else life could offer him, in many cases.
To present it as wonderful, noble and glorious is BS but the mirror image of 20th century reaction presenting as pure suffering for all that no one ever enjoys or benefits from in any way is equally bs (colored to some extent by the particularly idiosyncratic experience of ww1 trench warfare)
Rarely. (My very firm antiwar position is based on my reading of history which is that, if you went back in time and showed combatants of various wars on the eve of hostilities what the real-life ultimate outcome of the impending war was, even the vast majority of historical *victors* would almost certainly say, "You know what, never mind, we can live with the status quo.")
>>And the only real way out of the nightmare is for Russians to come to see that and act accordingly.<<
By "act accordingly" one assumes Matt means take Putin out. He's not going to see that the war doesn't make sense because from his perspective, it probably does make sense, even at this late juncture. That's the problem with megalomaniacs like Putin and Xi. Their motivation isn't rational furthering of national interest; their motivation, rather, is their respective visions of grandeur, and how they want history to remember them.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. In my view Russia isn’t much of a threat beyond it falling apart. Weakening Russia probably helps China and Turkey more than anyone else. Overall it’s a distraction from China where out real interests lie. I couldn’t understand McCain and Romney calling Russia our biggest rival and now I don’t understand why the left has taken up their neo-con mantel. My guess it’s because they want to blame trumps election on bots rather than their own and the republican elite’s failures. Either way I think we are living in 1980 and not 2022.
Matthew left out one all-important factor, which was why Russians thought it was now or never. Right or wrong, the climate change alarmists have set the stopwatch ticking. If Russia does not act now its oil and gas leverage will eventually be lost. Excellent article, though!
What's very interesting about this analysis is that there is nothing in here about the government of Ukraine. It's all about energy flows, the EU, US, Russia, and China. While correct about the massively self-defeating nature of the Russian government actions, it doesn't have anything to say about what Ukraine should do or what the US should really do going forward. It's a background piece looking at the past, not really about the future. That's partially because the future is contingent, and we don't know how successful the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives will be.
Great piece as usual. I hope at some point you will do a deep dive on the sanctions regime itself, which has some worrying aspects. Would love to see your take.
The more I read MY, the more I realize that despite being knowledgeable and incisive in many ways, his analysis limited by apparently having a very narrow-materialistic worldview, and being seemingly unable to truly understand that others actually genuinely have other, deeply held, values. His last paragraph about Russia’s interests are exemplary of that. The Ukraine story is about nationalism and imperialism, and a certain view of History (as reflected in Putin’s speeches), and the trauma of the fall of the Soviet Union. It’s also most probably about Putin’s personal ambitions and legacy and megalomania. A comparison to Canada seriously falls flat.
In a way it's a very Marxist take - material conditions drive ideology rather than the other way around. But it's also a standard economic line for non-Marxists too. Whoever you are, whatever you care about, material concerns will likely be at least instrumentally valuable to you. We can't necessarily predict the rest of your motivations if we can't get inside your head, but we can guess that material concerns will likely be involved even if you don't care about them directly.
If I had deeply held values about something, I would try to formulate a sound plan to build them to fruition. Putin and company did not do that with their invasion of Ukraine, which has been one blunder after another.
I interpret him to be saying A) the war is not in Russia's rational interest (Matt's right) and, B) Russians should turn on Putin (who is, you're quite right to point out, a megalomaniac).
Sorry, but what is “rational interest?” Certainly the war isn’t going as planned so I suppose it’s turned out as bad call. But to be fair, EVERYONE expected Russia to conquer all of Ukraine pretty easily. Putin wasn’t less rational about the outcome than the consensus in the west. The question is, is it so clearly irrational had the gamble worked and Putin won? If he mobilizes seriously now, sacrifices not tens of thousands but hundreds of thousands and conquers Ukraine after all? What is “irrational” about sacrificing a generation of young men for a piece of land? Evil? Sure, I’d agree. But I argue that this not at all about rationality but about values.
I think the West's analysis that Russia would conquer Ukraine easily—I'll stipulate that that was a widely-held view, though I don't know—may have been based on the assumption that Putin wouldn't invade unless he had good reason to think he would win. Turns out, he didn't. In other words, it's more forgivable for the West to get this wrong than for Russia to get it wrong, partly because the West doesn't have as much skin in the game and partly because we're not in as good a position to know Russia's capabilities as Russia itself is.
"What is “irrational” about sacrificing a generation of young men for a piece of land?" You mean this question rhetorically, but I think it has a pretty straightforward answer: if the country is materially worse off making that trade, then it's an irrational trade. You're not the only commenter who seems to think that Matt assumes Putin is trying to be rational; I just read him as saying Putin is *not* being rational and that it would be better for everyone if he would. You can say "well duh, of course," but of course back in February we had people like Richard Hanania talking about how savvy Putin was being.
no, no, you misunderstand me. I wrote it with a bitter taste in my mouth, that clarifies my own position, that thinks this war is horrifying and unjustified, and its escalation would be worse still. BUT, I still contend that my own values are not more or less rational than anyone else's. For example, there is nothing *inherently* rational in wanting your country to be materially well off (= higher GDP?). That's a subjective value judgement. I believe Putin's main court "philosopher" hearkens to a simple time when Russia was *poorer* (though i may be wrong, this is what I recall form a second or third hand account). In any case, prioritizing material wealth of the nation above all else is not some objectively correct or rational goal. Rationality is about how to achieve your goals, but has nothing to say regarding what those goals might be. In short, escalating the war right now *could* be a rational move by Putin. It depends in the first place on his actual aims, and only then we can assess if he seems to be rational in pursuing them. we cannot simply substituting his aims and values for our own and then conclude he is being irrational.
It reminds me of football. Going for it on 4th-and-2 is only a rational decision if you pick up the first down. If you don't pick up the first down, it was *obviously* an irrational decision.
Update a couple months later: Back in 2021, Russia planned to produce "eight to fourteen" Su-34Ms per year from 2022-2027. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-upgrading-its-supersonic-su-34-%E2%80%98hellduck%E2%80%99-bombers-185252
In 2022 Russia's MIC built and delivered 10 Su-34Ms. https://twitter.com/GuyPlopsky/status/1609937224002605056
So Russia's production of *fighter jets* is still at roughly pre-war levels. I think it's safe to say that they can also build stuff like tanks, and indeed it has been reported that Russia's armored vehicle factory went to triple shifts and then to 24/7 production in 2022. https://www.yahoo.com/video/russian-prisoners-sent-factory-build-173205586.html
So I think it's safe to say that even if we pretend that the sanctions were only intended to cripple Russia's military production and not to also crash the economy, despite abundant statements from early in the year from officials about how the sanctions were going to crash Russia's economy, the sanctions also largely failed on those merits.
Regarding the article about Russia attempting to restart production of BMP-2s, BMP-2s had a lower unit cost for production than BMP-3s back when Russia had active production lines for both. The sanctions might have increased the discrepancy, but in any case they didn't actually restart production of BMP-2s after they looked into it and found that rebuilding production lines would cost more than just making more BMP-3s. Official Russian news sources say that, like with tanks, production has increased substantially. https://tass.com/defense/1560059
Yes, the war has been a complete catastrophe from Russia's perspective. The problem is that it's pretty difficult to see how Putin can back down now. Let's say that tomorrow he declared he'd withdraw to 24 Feb (or whenever) borders. Putting aside the domestic political difficulties he would likely face as a result of this decision, would this mean the dropping of Western sanctions and restrictions on the movement of Russians? No way. There is simply no chance that the US is going to let that happen until a US friendly regime has been installed. So, from Russia's perspective (putting aside moral concerns), what's the point?
PS. I thought it was interesting that you labelled UAE as one of a collection of liberal capitalist democracies. It's less free Russia according to Freedom House, and is involved its own illegal war in Yemen. But it's our friend, so we don't care. It's really striking how, for all this talk about democracy and good (us and our allies) and evil (random countries like Iran and Venezuela and Cuba) it's all just pragmatics.
The European strategy of integrating Russia, as a supplier of raw materials made perfect sense. Russia gets income that can be used to buy all the amazing number of things they don't make or don't make well. I doubt anyone counted on Putin being such a numbskull. In this Putin resembles Trump. He has an ego that must be stoked at increasingly long tables. It has been evident for some time that alternative supplies of energy would be a good idea.
I seriously doubt this was driven by American desires to create a functional market for surplus American natural gas. Fracking is expensive. LNG is a very expensive mode of transport. There are substantial supplies of LNG that come from much cheaper conventional sources in the Middle East. Building the terminals on the other hand is an expensive undertaking and these would have been failed investments right up until the moment the Russians halted their piped supplies. Building them would have signaled hostile intent to Russian economic interests. But maybe that is a signal that should have been sent.
I spent a fair percentage of my life reading on military history and military organization and military technology. I will die one day with a copy of Aviation Week close at hand. It was my considered opinon right up to the moment it happened that Russia would not invade. That was predicated on knowing their military capabilities and available combat capacity. I did assume, unlike the Russians, that they would would not be welcomed as brothers and I had years of conflict in the Donbas and elsewhere as evidence that this would be true. My argument was straightforward. They lacked the military capacity to take and occupy the Ukraine.
I also assumed that the Russian orbat was actually functional. This is not hard to obtain material. You can find it on Wikipedia. The Russian intention was to develop combined arms formations, larger than a brigade but smaller than a division. These were to have the capacity to act as independent formations. They would have armor, artillery, infantry, recon, close air support, and logistical ability. The works as it were. And they planned on having 45 or so such formations. They never got there. That is not their entire army to be sure but it was the pointy end of the spear. I think they got into the low thirties. But even then it was known that many of these formations were undermanned and lacked their full complement of weapons and support.
The Russians proceeded to prove that even that was all a sham. I will add one observation that I believe is not given sufficient consideration. (Any fans of Hoplology here?) For anyone below officer rank in the Russian military life sucks. They are poorly paid, housed and treated. In consequence they lack a large experienced corp of noncoms who are, in any army, your experts and trainers of soldiers. What they do have seem to be very bad at their jobs, and expert only at falsifying readiness reports and such and also selling off anything they can to supplement their incomes. This is not a good army.
I was completely wrong about the Russians invading of course. But the results have so far proven why I should have been right. Sweden and Finland can take comfort in the fact that Russia will not be deploying more forward troops to their borders. The Russians ain't got 'em.
Additionally, many of the Russian generals and military leadership are former spies installed by Putin because they are loyal to him. They are not career military. It is like if a bunch of CIA operatives suddenly became generals. No wonder the battlefield tactics have been so poor and so many generals have been killed or captured.
"His thinking was that at the end of the day, Russia cares more about Ukraine than Europe does, and whatever the west does to back Ukraine, eventually Russia will do more."
As long as the Ukrainian army couldn't put up much of a fight, that was true. As long as the Ukrainians were divided about the issue, that was true.
"But there’s a nightmare lurking that only the Russians can avert."
Since the Russian propagandist types were arguing for attacking a lot of European countries, it seems they were/are determined to invade eastern Europe. Escalating to nuclear weapons is just a bigger weapon in the grand scheme of things. If they chose to do that, we have got a bad problem, but so far, they've not actually done any of that. Having chosen to make commitments to the defense of eastern Europe, we cannot go back on that, and we assumed the risk at that point in time (2008 and earlier).
So what are we trying to persuade the Russians *of*, at this point, given that they appear to have sold themselves a giant plate of insanity? 'You don't really want to die?' I do not think they want to die.
Unfortunately, we get to wait this one out, I think. Abandoning the Ukrainians at this point serves no purpose as we would be rewarding the insanity. That's pretty much how life went during the cold war.
Seems a good time to have an autumn picnic. (Or cookout, or whatever.)
(@SevaUT's hypothesis (also mine, derived independently, that this is the a slow-motion version of the Russian civil war, playing out very slowly seems solid. That this is a different version of 1991 seems also true: Putin is trying to reverse Gorbachev's decision not to fight. I don't see how this is going to work out with a Russian win. They have to accept it - so how do we talk them into it?)
elm
nothing for it
This piece was very helpful. Prior to reading it, I was definitely confused about the purpose of the sanctions (buying gas from the Russians seemed like a failure to me) and confused about why Putin himself was cutting off gas supplies. This article explained both clearly.
type your query into google translate, then use the german translation as the input into google search
This is a good write-up about what Russia should do if it was acting rationally in its own best material interests, but it's sort of beside the point: the guy running Russia clearly has some different goals in mind!
The hard question--and the more interesting one--is *given* the above, what should the West do? Stay on this path even if it increases the chances of escalation to nuclear warfare? For me, this is the debate that I'm interested in seeing, as there doesn't seem to be an obvious answers!
"...at the end of the day, Russia cares more about Ukraine than Europe does, and whatever the west does to back Ukraine, eventually Russia will do more."
This is probably true enough of Western Europe (and the US, tbh, but supporting Ukraine isn't nearly as painful for us) but I don't think it's true of the eastern flank of the NATO countries. They seem to care quite deeply about the fate of Ukraine and believe they're next on the chopping block if Ukraine falls. It history is a guide, they're not wrong to be concerned
I think this is a crucial distinction, and an additional thing that doesn't get airplay in the American media is the extent to witch the Eastern countries see this as a litmus test for NATO. The biggest concern for all these countries is that if Russia invaded, NATO wouldn't actually send troops, just words and excuses. The attitude in Poland and other countries therefore is 'they need to prove themselves – if they can't bring themselves to send weapons to Ukraine, then they definitely won't send soldiers when we're invaded.'
This makes Ukraine as much of a concern to NATO as it is to Russia. Whether that's a good thing is an open question.
I like how Matt continues to logically lay out how starting this war made no sense, and it always makes me think, when does starting a war *ever* make sense?
The short answer is yes, of course. In pre modern technology and economy especially, war could be hugely beneficial in terms of protecting or gaining vital resources. It served not only the interests of the people on top but often could be very much beneficial to the low ranking soldier who may have had not very high risk of mortality balances by significant chances of material gain/supplementary income(or simply making a living in case of mercenaries), possible social advancement and perhaps the very allure of adventure unparalleled by basically anything else life could offer him, in many cases.
To present it as wonderful, noble and glorious is BS but the mirror image of 20th century reaction presenting as pure suffering for all that no one ever enjoys or benefits from in any way is equally bs (colored to some extent by the particularly idiosyncratic experience of ww1 trench warfare)
Rarely. (My very firm antiwar position is based on my reading of history which is that, if you went back in time and showed combatants of various wars on the eve of hostilities what the real-life ultimate outcome of the impending war was, even the vast majority of historical *victors* would almost certainly say, "You know what, never mind, we can live with the status quo.")
>>And the only real way out of the nightmare is for Russians to come to see that and act accordingly.<<
By "act accordingly" one assumes Matt means take Putin out. He's not going to see that the war doesn't make sense because from his perspective, it probably does make sense, even at this late juncture. That's the problem with megalomaniacs like Putin and Xi. Their motivation isn't rational furthering of national interest; their motivation, rather, is their respective visions of grandeur, and how they want history to remember them.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. In my view Russia isn’t much of a threat beyond it falling apart. Weakening Russia probably helps China and Turkey more than anyone else. Overall it’s a distraction from China where out real interests lie. I couldn’t understand McCain and Romney calling Russia our biggest rival and now I don’t understand why the left has taken up their neo-con mantel. My guess it’s because they want to blame trumps election on bots rather than their own and the republican elite’s failures. Either way I think we are living in 1980 and not 2022.
Matthew left out one all-important factor, which was why Russians thought it was now or never. Right or wrong, the climate change alarmists have set the stopwatch ticking. If Russia does not act now its oil and gas leverage will eventually be lost. Excellent article, though!
What's very interesting about this analysis is that there is nothing in here about the government of Ukraine. It's all about energy flows, the EU, US, Russia, and China. While correct about the massively self-defeating nature of the Russian government actions, it doesn't have anything to say about what Ukraine should do or what the US should really do going forward. It's a background piece looking at the past, not really about the future. That's partially because the future is contingent, and we don't know how successful the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives will be.
Great piece as usual. I hope at some point you will do a deep dive on the sanctions regime itself, which has some worrying aspects. Would love to see your take.
The more I read MY, the more I realize that despite being knowledgeable and incisive in many ways, his analysis limited by apparently having a very narrow-materialistic worldview, and being seemingly unable to truly understand that others actually genuinely have other, deeply held, values. His last paragraph about Russia’s interests are exemplary of that. The Ukraine story is about nationalism and imperialism, and a certain view of History (as reflected in Putin’s speeches), and the trauma of the fall of the Soviet Union. It’s also most probably about Putin’s personal ambitions and legacy and megalomania. A comparison to Canada seriously falls flat.
In a way it's a very Marxist take - material conditions drive ideology rather than the other way around. But it's also a standard economic line for non-Marxists too. Whoever you are, whatever you care about, material concerns will likely be at least instrumentally valuable to you. We can't necessarily predict the rest of your motivations if we can't get inside your head, but we can guess that material concerns will likely be involved even if you don't care about them directly.
If I had deeply held values about something, I would try to formulate a sound plan to build them to fruition. Putin and company did not do that with their invasion of Ukraine, which has been one blunder after another.
Yes, there is incompetence there, and also corruption and a bunch of other things but conviction and competence don’t necessarily go hand in hand.
I interpret him to be saying A) the war is not in Russia's rational interest (Matt's right) and, B) Russians should turn on Putin (who is, you're quite right to point out, a megalomaniac).
Sorry, but what is “rational interest?” Certainly the war isn’t going as planned so I suppose it’s turned out as bad call. But to be fair, EVERYONE expected Russia to conquer all of Ukraine pretty easily. Putin wasn’t less rational about the outcome than the consensus in the west. The question is, is it so clearly irrational had the gamble worked and Putin won? If he mobilizes seriously now, sacrifices not tens of thousands but hundreds of thousands and conquers Ukraine after all? What is “irrational” about sacrificing a generation of young men for a piece of land? Evil? Sure, I’d agree. But I argue that this not at all about rationality but about values.
I think the West's analysis that Russia would conquer Ukraine easily—I'll stipulate that that was a widely-held view, though I don't know—may have been based on the assumption that Putin wouldn't invade unless he had good reason to think he would win. Turns out, he didn't. In other words, it's more forgivable for the West to get this wrong than for Russia to get it wrong, partly because the West doesn't have as much skin in the game and partly because we're not in as good a position to know Russia's capabilities as Russia itself is.
"What is “irrational” about sacrificing a generation of young men for a piece of land?" You mean this question rhetorically, but I think it has a pretty straightforward answer: if the country is materially worse off making that trade, then it's an irrational trade. You're not the only commenter who seems to think that Matt assumes Putin is trying to be rational; I just read him as saying Putin is *not* being rational and that it would be better for everyone if he would. You can say "well duh, of course," but of course back in February we had people like Richard Hanania talking about how savvy Putin was being.
no, no, you misunderstand me. I wrote it with a bitter taste in my mouth, that clarifies my own position, that thinks this war is horrifying and unjustified, and its escalation would be worse still. BUT, I still contend that my own values are not more or less rational than anyone else's. For example, there is nothing *inherently* rational in wanting your country to be materially well off (= higher GDP?). That's a subjective value judgement. I believe Putin's main court "philosopher" hearkens to a simple time when Russia was *poorer* (though i may be wrong, this is what I recall form a second or third hand account). In any case, prioritizing material wealth of the nation above all else is not some objectively correct or rational goal. Rationality is about how to achieve your goals, but has nothing to say regarding what those goals might be. In short, escalating the war right now *could* be a rational move by Putin. It depends in the first place on his actual aims, and only then we can assess if he seems to be rational in pursuing them. we cannot simply substituting his aims and values for our own and then conclude he is being irrational.
It reminds me of football. Going for it on 4th-and-2 is only a rational decision if you pick up the first down. If you don't pick up the first down, it was *obviously* an irrational decision.