Nice piece Matt. I've been worried about Russia for a long time. I'm old enough that I grew up during the Cold War, but my larger concern has always been the psychological warfare that the KGB, then FSB, now IRA conducts on us and other Western countries. I'm not sure people really understand just how prevalent this is and how much damage it does. I've seen the NYTIMES report on this several times now (most recently here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/18/us/womens-march-russia-trump.html?searchResultPosition=1) - but it still seems to be low in the proverbial collective consciousness.
I'd love for Matt to put together something on this. The Russians have always seen the West as a threat and they work constantly to undermine us. The primary way they do this is that they stoke division in our increasingly multicultural societies. They also promote class dissension and focus on Western inequality. They use social media - I'm at least partially convinced that this is why so many young people are openly socialists today. Whenever someone brings this up, the response is always something to the effect that "the problems are real, not made up by Russia" - which is absolutely true. But if our enemy (and enemy is not too light a term for Russia) spends lots of resources promulgating propaganda that is designed to divide and highlight differences in America, shouldn't we at least consider the idea that countering this narrative is important? How? By telling an American story (also propaganda) that is positive, unifying, and that focuses on the merits of our systems/society - rather than always on their failings.
The Right tries to do this (America F Yeah!) - but somewhat ineffectively in that it always feels like they are talking about an America that doesn't include everyone. But it doesn't have to be this way. We could have a strong national culture that prizes and rewards the multitudes that make up our country but still does so from a position of strength and inclusivity - rather than something that continues to foster division.
China (our other rival/enemy) is getting more into this same game of stoking divisions in America and their somewhat state-ownership of Tik Tok is one of my bigger fears. They also have strong reasons to sew dissension and they own an apparatus that provides the opportunity to dictate the memes pumped directly into young American minds.
The threat in this area Matt has discussed is Tik Tok. It really is crazy that they #1 media platform for America's youth (the most impressionable consumers!) is Chinese owned
For what it’s worth, I think I’m probably one of the few SB readers who uses TikTok regularly, and at least right now, it seems like the problems with TikTok are basically the same as that of YouTube. The alt-right pipeline, people selling scammy pyramid schemes, and clickbaity content. And zero efforts to stop harassment .
But I’ve not seen nor heard of any pro-CCP propaganda, or even any content that seems like it’s influenced by Chinese censors. I’m sure they COULD absolutely tilt the content on TikTok in that direction if they chose, but so far TikTok essentially operates like any other social media. (Poorly, with very little way to stop coordinated harassment).
Guess what happens if you try to find some pro Taiwan independence content? A lot of CCP propaganda is incredibly crude, but so far they have been pretty smart with Tik Tok. I suspect it is because the pro-CCP content emphasis has been voluntary so far by ByteDance
A couple years ago I was visiting my brother and his family around the holidays. His son was playing some fun phone game that involved answering trivia questions about countries, and then stacking them up until they reached the top of the screen. I had seen him playing it a few months earlier, and it seemed cute, but this time he was just zooming through it all and had memorized everything about every country in the game. But then I asked him something about Taiwan, and I realized he had never heard of it.
I doubt that this game is specifically made by a Chinese company, but I would not be surprised if it's either trying to keep the option of localizations legal in China, or doing something ostensibly neutral like using only UN members that is in practice also controlled by China.
Yea, there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that CCP-related and China-related topics are... let us say "slanted" within the US and EU versions of the app. And there's no way in hell it's actually GDPR-compliant, but the EU seems afraid to sue to enforce the law.
The issue with Tik Tok, as I understand it from reading Klon Kitchen at the Dispatch, is that it is a means of collecting data, not distributing propaganda.
The "Russians are mind controlling our voters" is a classic cope from people who refuse to confront how unpopular their basket of political beliefs are.
In 2020, the Russian propaganda budget was at most a few million. The "super competant" Clinton campaign spent three orders of magnitude more - yet we're suppossed to believe that the Russians are so good at persuausive English media communication that they were in some way decisive with 1/1000 of the budget?
I hope this isn't too salty for the SB comments, but frankly sir, your view is bullshit.
The argument is not so much that that Russian propaganda is is great, but that they fanned the flames of existing divisive discourse to amplify it. There seems to be solid evidence this is the case.
Now is this genius? Did it actual work to persuade people? Did that translate into voter action? I'm skeptical about all of these. But also I'm pretty sure the Russians had some effect on the margin, and in very tight races that could make a difference. Very hard to prove.
I'm not trying convince someone like you but I do find it interesting that both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times have done pretty comprehensive stories about this. Which basket of ideas do they both represent that are so unpopular? My particular views poll as widely popular and yet I believe that our enemies are actively working to undermine our system of government and our cohesion as a nation. I think our enemies know they can't outspend us and are still technologically behind, so they use the same tools the KGB outlined back in the 60's to sew discord and dissension. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo&t=271s (from the New York Times) does a pretty thorough job explaining this.
The way the IRA works is that they create stories and memes and they let the news media/forums/reddit do the rest of the work. You don't need to outspend, especially when you are perfectly content making stuff up in order to do your work.
You used an important piece of phrasing here: "we're supposed to believe that..." - you aren't supposed to believe anything. You should doubt most things. Be skeptical of this claim too. But also be open to being wrong about this and open to the idea that you are actively spouting memes promulgated by the Russians.
I always thought it was pretty weird how little reflection there was about the ~specific thing~ the Russians did as "election interference." Trying to destabilize the country by making people fight about identity politics on the computer? Huh. There are maybe some lessons to be learned there!
Would Russian propaganda turn young people into socialists? I thought the pro-authoritarian and esp. anti LGBTQ sentiments are pushed hard by some Russian trolls and that that makes some (Tucker! some of Europe's hard right) friendly to Russia
A good anti-American propagandist would try to make sure there are lots of extreme views that can then fight each other, rather than pushing one particular set of views.
Agreed. I think we are pretty good at dividing ourselves. This Russian troll paranoia smacks of elitist progressives who can’t accept that 45% of the country just hates them. As a bot, I will now turn myself off.
Ask young people if they think the country is heading in the right direction. Ask young people if they are planning to have children. Ask young people about race relations. Ask young people about how LGTQA people are doing. Think about what is being amplified on Twitter/Tik Tok.
Even if our enemies are incompetent, is it strange that the promulgate/amplify/promote many of the same stories our main stream media does? One does it because rage builds engagement and clicks, the other does it because rage/distrust/disunity weaken our state.
>>Ask young people if they think the country is heading in the right direction.<<
You really think it requires CCP propaganda to convince young Americans (or any aged Americans) the country is going in the wrong direction? There's at least a 20% chance the country will no longer be a functional democracy by 2025. That's plain to see, with or without the assistance of Red China.
I worry more about excessive NIMBYism that prevents us from building housing and excessive regulation that prevents from building anything else. We hollowed out our manufacturing and blue collar base in the name of the spotted toad. That’s what makes people despondent. Agreed that media hypes many divisions but I think Vox is pretty good at it and doesn’t need Russian trolls to get it done.
I think you’re right that the impact of foreign propaganda is overblown by western liberals. Partly, I imagine, because it absolves them of responsibility when their core aims prove unpopular.
It also looks like Putin’s position is weakening, both with his international allies and at home in Russia.
China’s Xi raised issues with the Ukrainian conflict at the recent SCO summit and Putin publicly acknowledged these concerns. [1] It seems clear that China does not want to see any further escalation and will not be providing material support to aid in Putin’s war.
Further, Putin is getting significant criticism at home on multiple fronts, including opposition to the war and advocates that think more needs to be done. [2]
> On Sunday, Alla Pugacheva, a much-loved pop singer who has been a household name for Russians for decades, posted a message criticizing “illusory aims” in Ukraine that have made Russia “a pariah” that weighs “heavily on the lives of its citizens.” On the other side, nationalists are furious at inept military leadership, forcing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to warn that criticism would be fine — until it wasn’t: “The line is extremely thin. One should be very careful here.”
And Putin’s recent escalation with “partial mobilization” risks waking the apathetic masses.
> As Yuval Weber of Texas A&M's Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, DC put it to me, these masses in the middle are the real risk for the Kremlin, far more than the nationalist right. They are the ones on whom the regime has long relied, men and women who have been lulled into apathy but would now need to be whipped into a frenzy. More involved (and sending their own kin to war), they may well start asking awkward questions about Putin’s effectiveness.
1. The Chinese and Russian readouts of that meeting are completely inconsistent, but it seems clear that behind closed doors China is prepared to feed Russia rhetorical and limited material rope until it hangs itself. A northern satrap, cut off from the rest of the global market, with immense natural resources sold to China at below-market prices, is the best possible case from the CCP perspective. Have you ever looked at the details of the gas contracts Russia signed with China in, I think, 2014? They're below cost for actual extraction and delivery, a fraction of what Europe paid, given that the Russians had to purpose-build the pipeline.
China is not unhappy with the way things are unfolding and there is virtually no mainstream pro-Ukrainian sentiment that would put pressure on the CCP to change course. They are far more worried about legitimacy at home, as omicron starts to splinter Dynamic Zero COVID. More people have been subject to a hard lockdown in the last 3 months than in the 30 months leading up to that point, and their effectiveness is fading outside major cities. Lhasa and Tibet are a shitshow, as is Xinjiang.
2. The Russian "mushy middle" is not liberal, it's basically pro- "competent nationalist empire-building authoritarian". What the Russian people want, as far as everyone who seems to know what they're talking about believes, is a competent Putin, not a competent Yeltsin. The tail risk is that in toppling Putin we get someone who can put in place the reasonably clean structures of governance that would allow Russia's military to pick itself back up and become a functioning armed force again before going adventuring somewhere.
Chances are that somewhere would not be Ukraine, but instead Central Asia, which is starting, within the framework of the SCC, to tilt a bit more towards a balanced position between China and Russia. Kazakhstan in particular has great numbers of ethnic Russians who could offer lots of ready-made justifications...
Because Russia's entire culture of government is built around providing a security state. The sole reason for the existence of the Russian state that coalesced after the Mongols and Golden Horde fell was to fight its way back to the steppe and destroy the horse nomads at the source before they destroyed Russia again.
No sooner had they accomplished that than huge threats started materializing from the heretofore secure western border and killing Russians in joblots. Swedes, then Poles, then the French, who might have killed 10% of Russia's people. Then their British allies stab them in the back and deny them their rightful/essential control over the Straits and Constantinople. Then the Germans, not once, but twice.
All of Russian history is trauma and death on a horrific scale. So yes, the culture innately seems to desire a protector, not a leader in the western, liberal sense.
To be honest i have read so much daft crap in the last couple of weeks about British history that i read that and was not sure if you were being serious.
My point here is that Russian claims for expansion have always been fantastical and essentially unrealizable, and organizing your government and polity to pursue unrealizable goals is not a good idea. If the justification for a police state is relentless expansion and fighting, then it's a bad justification. Russia is already the largest country in the world with abundant nuclear weapons. There's no reason they need more territory at this point.
Yeah, I was wondering if maybe the CCP is thrilled with the way this is playing out, but wants to make it clear on the international stage that they don't approve of Russian war-making.
The CCP gets to sit back, buy Russian exports at below-market prices due to sanctions, and watch as its primary potential rivals spend blood and treasure duking it out while it gets to stay out of the whole thing. Strategically speaking, things almost couldn't be better for the CCP.
Well, except for, ya know, the whole domestic situation.
And I don't think that this is a net positive in terms of Chinese strategy regarding Europe and the US, which has historically been to be conciliatory enough to Europe to divide the two. The goal has always been to create a permission structure for the EU powers-that-be to knuckle under to German and French commercial interests and let the CCP do whatever the fuck it wants. They've done very, very well at that indeed, playing on Europe's innate irritation at the brash/rich/powerful Americans.
Suddenly that's rather less tenable. European public opinion has never been more strongly in favor of the trans-Atlantic ties, and never more strongly opposed to China. Of all the possible candidates, the German *Greens* are leading the charge to get the short-termist commercial interests to shut the fuck up and allow the government to treat China as a rival and long-term economic threat.
Is there an explanation for why European anti-Russia sentiment is spilling over into suspicion of the Chinese given their relatively demure stance on the war beyond general Transatlantic sympathies? I mean, the CCP is awful, but that isn't exactly hot off the presses.
That treaty of friendship was pretty damned hard to ignore, as is Chinese waffling and obfuscation on the war, but also the structural pressures have been building for some time now.
German and French commercial interests had managed to persuade the EU government to play gently for a decade or more past the point where it was clear that China's long-term goal was to reduce Germany and France to satraps after sucking them dry of IP and know-how.
Amusingly, now that China is finally proving that goal impossible, the Germans have decided to wake up and notice what the plan was all along. You'd have thought the crushing of their highly-automated, environmentally-friendly, world-beating PV industry by Chinese facilities developed with reams of stolen IP, powered by smoke-belching coal plants, dumping shitloads of pollutants into groundwater would have snapped them out of it by 2012, but no.
One of the structural issues is that the share of GDP going to workers in Germany is so damned small that it needs the captive export markets provided by the EU, but they're not enough. It has, throughout the 2010's, relied on a structural surplus with China as well, mostly consisting of high-value precursors and advanced capital plant.
The Green/SDP approach to that seems to boil down to "OK, so pay German workers enough for them to buy your shit in quantity and we'll tax the rest off you for infrastructure improvements and decarbonization!"
Which is a dramatic change in tenor from the Grand Coalition's "Everything is fine, oh great German industrialists, la La LALALALALALA!"
While there are upsides for the CCP, there are clearly knock-on effects for their intentions toward Taiwan. Granted that the two cases are very different, but China would be in a much stronger position vis a vis Taiwan had Russia rolled through Ukraine with a supine West not lifting a finger.
The correlation of forces, as they say, are different now for China than they were before Feb. 24.
It was difficult to understand German decision making in the last few years. It appears there was a lot of infiltration by Russian spies into the German government's decision making. I read somewhere that Angela Merkle seemed to devote herself to total mediocrity. Tying Germany to Russian gas in such a big way even after the 2014 issues in Ukraine was a disaster.
"The United States eventually left Vietnam and the USSR eventually left Afghanistan because in both cases, they reached the correct conclusion that it’s just not worth it."
Strong agree. NATO also got out of Afghanistan. The West has forgotten about Afghanistan, and Afghanistan has forgotten about the West as it slips into tribal warfare. Nature is healing.
You don't need a big conspiracy when it comes to Germany, it's actually a lot easier than that. Our two biggest parties, the SPD and CDU, both had their reasons to disregard the dangers of tying ourselves to Russian gas. The SPD (Social-Democrats) have always felt close to Russia for historical reasons and thought that a close trading relationship would bring about change. (This is also where the old Merkel saying "Wandel durch Handel" comes from, which means "change through trade" in English.)
The CDU (Christian-Democrats/Conservatives), on the other hand, has always been close (critics say subservient) to the German industry, which wanted as much Russian gas as possible, because it was cheaper than all the alternatives. So the CDU was happy to deliver that.
Though to be fair, basically the whole German society disregarded the danger of tying our economy to Russian deliveries. Germans have historically been rather Russia-friendly before the invasion. The only party that has consistently warned about our gas dependency were the Greens (supported by a bunch of experts), but noone took them really seriously in that regard.
"The same era also gave us near-stringless Chinese accession to the WTO; it was widely believed, on the backs of what was perceived as a successful reintegration of East Germany and the other Warsaw Pact nations, that bringing Russia and China into the global trading system and giving them a stake would cause domestic liberalization and force them to defend the global order now that they had their piece of the pie.
Obviously didn't work out, but we shouldn't be blaming Schröder or Clinton for that when it was a near-universal belief at the time.
No, Merkel and Obama were the ones who were in office at and long after the point where it should have been obvious that this was not occurring as hoped and the "West" needed to find a different mode of engagement and even limited disengagement.
Unfortunately, neither of them was particularly committed to dealing effectively with either Russia or China, though the US and parts of the EU have at least come to the necessity of dealing more firmly with China now that Russia has forced their hand."
Schröder is functionally a Russian agent, and he is an ex-Bundeskanzler. The SPD is and has been compromised, and we'll see if that changes. The SPD also has a strange Russia fixation that they transferred from the USSR, but have very little regard for the states that have gained independence from the USSR that aren't Russia.
The SPD definitely has a Russia problem, but again: So has almost all of German society. The CDU and its sister party, the CSU, have a long history of governors on the state level sucking up to Russia, as well as influential intra-party streams advocating for even stronger trade dependency. The centre-right FDP has a weird libertarian inter-party stream with authoritarian tendencies. And the far-left Linke and the far-right AfD are pro-Russia as well, obviously. In a survey taken three weeks before the invasion, 57 percent of Germans endorsed finishing and utilizing Nord Stream 2. Zooming in on party affiliation, supporters in every party in the German Bundestag except the Greens endorsed Nord Stream 2 by a clear margin. And even among the Greens, 41 percent of respondents were pro Nord Stream 2!
It's obviously correct to point out that there is a lot of weird Russia stuff going on in the SPD. (Just google Manuela Schwesig, if you have a minute - that story is a delight.) But solely focusing on the SPD makes you miss the whole picture.
Good summary of the situation, Matt, but I still remain skeptical that the Europeans will be able to hold it together through the winter. And, even with Ukraine's latest advances, I'm still expecting a Russian "win" in the sense that, when a ceasefire is eventually reached, the Russians will end up controlling more territory than they had at the start of the present war. The Kharkiv area victories are great, but I anticipate the Russians will pour everything they can into keeping the corridor to the Crimea open and, unless the Russian air force completely evaporates and its nuclear arsenal is verifiably taken offline, I can't see how the Ukrainians will be able to break that before Russia is able to sufficiently retool its armaments industry to at least be able to keep up with equipment losses and expenditures of "dumb" munitions. (Note: I would be very happy to be proven wrong on this, but I just keep thinking that Americans are way, WAY too used to wars ending in "unconditional victory," and Russian advantages in manpower and industrial production are too great to permit that.)
There's a long and storied history of people thinking citizens in democratic countries are incapable of enduring hardship.
I don't think Europe is going to be happy come spring, but a lot of that anger is going to be focused on Russia, if history is any guide. Maybe a good bit at their own idiotic central bank and the German banking interests which seem to own the damned thing. But even the far-right parties are now feeling betrayed by Russia rather than any sort of kinship to its government.
And even if not, the US and eastern flank of NATO are absolutely going to continue writing Ukraine a blank check for arms, and that's really all that matters.
As for the industrial side of things... I think you're being a bit cavalier. Every jot and tittle of Russia's armaments industry is reliant on Western inputs, whether that's GPS and inertial guidance systems in the rockets or CNC, lathe, and precision casting tools in foundries. Sure, with a decade and a bunch of money that they cannot currently spend and which the Chinese government is not going to help them liquidate, they can get everything rolled over to (generally not terrible) Chinese tooling instead. But in the meantime there are going to be immense maintenance and spare parts issues, because even in places like the mining sector they use German, Japanese, and British equipment for which no further support is available.
Moreover, unless the Russians can restore a steady supply of guided rocket artillery systems or is willing to venture its air force to try to degrade the HIMARS platforms, the Ukrainians will still be able to consistently run rings around them in counter-battery fire and precision strikes on logistics. A sufficient supply of shells is just not going to fix that problem, certainly not with the Russian logistics arm quite literally being run by drunks, drug addicts, and crazy people. (For some reason the rail arm of the army gets the worst people despite being responsible for, ya know, feeding the rest.)
Your analysis is also neglecting morale. Russian regulars are already in near-open revolt against their orders, the short-haul conscripts are even worse, and the impressed forces of both Russia and the puppet republics are apt to surrender on first contact with the enemy. Even if Russia can retool its industry in a reasonable timeline, which I don't believe is really possible, the people who have to use those weapons are at this point very nearly as likely to frag their own officers and run as they are to fight.
I'm not sure "unconditional victory" is the probable endgame, but I would be very surprised, watching the last two months, if Russia holds much beyond Crimea at the end of active hostilities.
*A brief note on nukes: In much the same way as the CCP has with Taiwan, Russia's internal information ecosystem is selling the citizenry on the notion that Ukrainians are Russians who are coerced by foreign powers and corrupt leaders into pretending they're something else. The main problem with this, from United Russia's perspective, is that it takes certain options off the table militarily. Russia can commit small-scale atrocities hourly and simply lie about them enough to muddy the waters at home, but using nuclear weapons on a population concentration of "wayward Russians" cannot be concealed and is very, very likely to culminate in Putin committing suicide by ordering the security services to shoot him in the back a dozen times.
I don’t disagree with anything in your comment, but,
“…unless the Russians can restore a steady supply of guided rocket artillery systems or is willing to venture its air force to try to degrade the HIMARS platforms…”
The Ukrainians have contracted with a few domestic firms to build impressively realistic HIMARS decoys at a cost of a few grand each. Russia has responded by killing several of these decoys, using $1.2M submarine-launched cruise missiles.
I think the Ukrainians can keep that up longer than the Russians can.
So... the Russians are exactly what casual observers generally accuse the US Armed Forces of being; folks who employ a $4 shotgun shell to try to kill a $0.001 mosquito.
Not surprising. The US *built* the doctrine for expensive-ass smart munitions, of course we know how to use them wisely. The Russians... don't, apparently.
Our issue is that we don't pay to maintain the capacity to build enough of them to sustain high-intensity combat operations, which is profoundly stupid, especially as relates to naval ordinance.
The saving grace is that a single GMLRS rocket is, in Ukrainian or American hands, good to destroy an ammunition dump with 20,000 155mm shells in it.
EDIT: Sorry, 152 mm shells, rather. Fucking Soviet calibers.
“$4 shotgun shell to try to kill a $0.001 mosquito”
A guy who fought in Iraq once related to me being part of a company-size patrol that came across an IED ambush site. Although they had various means on-hand to deal with the threat themselves (ropes and grappling hooks - far from ideal for a lot of reasons, and some attached engineers with gadgets), the commander decided instead to call in a couple F-16s to drop a pair of 500 lb. Paveways. Those are a lot cheaper than a cruise missile as long as it all goes to plan.
I've seen the technique for trying to remove or disable an IED from a distance with a hook, it's not fun, nor effective, and while you sit around waiting for it to be completed, who knows what's going on in the neighboring hills?
Agreed, $20k ain't much set against a soldier's life.
Using a $1.2M munition to destroy a piece of $10k decoy kit, less viable.
Of course, the Russians don't have the air supremacy needed to just loiter and wait for the thing to fire to confirm its identity before hitting it, that'd be tantamount to throwing a $5M Su-25 down the drain too, along with a pilot.
Interesting piece of history trivia -- in "The Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchmann, she makes the claim that the German Empire intentionally pushed many of its *best* minds into the rail and logistics arm in the decades leading up to WWI, since they expected that the war would be a short war that would be won or lost by the quality and speed of mobilization.
In the final days before the outbreak of hostilities, she reports that the Kaiser asked his General Staff if they could scrap the plan to invade France first, instead only invading Russia. The Generals were aghast and replied that no, the plan was already in motion to invade France and the logistics of turning the invasion around to point at only Russia would be impossible to pull off on such short notice. She then makes the claim that the Generals essentially lied -- so much brainpower had been lavished on the imperial logistics machine that it likely would have been able to pull off a stunning reversal like that, but the Generals were committed to The Plan and didn't want the Kaiser mucking it up.
I find it very amusing to be the one accused of being "cavalier" about the industrial side of things in this conflict. I believe you and many others are ***VASTLY*** underrating Russia's capacity to move toward autarky in production of basic artillery, ammunition, AFVs without computers, and plain old firearms, particularly when combined with a willingness to suffer ridiculous hardships and casualties and the ability to backstop everything with what would be an apocalyptic level of nuclear strikes even if only a tenth of the country's arsenal actually works.
Why should we think that Russia is willing to suffer ridiculous hardships and casualties for this war? If Putin thought that, why is he only mobilizing (and then only partially) now? Why has he been working hard to keep any costs of the war from touching Moscow?
And now that I think of it, even "basic artillery, ammunition, AFVs without computers, and plain old firearms" are going to be a very mixed bag.
Russian metals smelting plants and foundries run on German and Czech machine tools, the stamps, CNCs, and lathes used to manufacture artillery and firearms are made in Japan and Sweden, and they're completely insufficient in internal combustion engine production, all of which is computer-controlled anyway.
Also, how does one produce an AFV without computers? What comms systems is it running on, pray tell? Russia is, according to at least a few defense industry folks I've heard, unable to produce a counter-battery radar out of domestic components. The factories are vaporware and the companies producing the final product are assembling American, Korean, and Chinese components.
The United States would find it a near-impossible lift to produce armaments sufficient to feed an intense conventional conflict without access to European, Japanese, and Korean precursors and capital plant, and even going without Chinese inputs would be very challenging.
China would find it extraordinarily hard if not impossible to produce its current armaments without American or European inputs.
I feel comfortable, based on what I've read, making the claim that Russia simply cannot do it at all.
They can draw on (admittedly immense) stocks of mothballed vehicles and tube artillery, and produce unguided rocket systems and artillery shells domestically, and not much else.
You're correct that cavalier is the wrong word. "Overly conservative" would have been a better choice. Nonetheless, the point is that there are a great number of people with expertise on Russia's economy and political economy saying it won't be able to retool in timely fashion. And I, who have a fair amount of China expertise, am highly confident it is not in the CCP's best interests to help it do so during active hostilities. If anything, the mainstream media narrative tends more towards your assessment than not, and I believe you and them to be wrong.
Additionally, this doesn't address any of the other points I was trying to make: the "dumb" weapons you're pointing out aren't actually sufficient to win the war on their own unless employed brilliantly, Russia's armed forces are incapable of employing them brilliantly, or perhaps at all, and Russia's propaganda should effectively preclude a nuclear strike on Ukrainian population centers, or at least make the domestic fallout un-survivable for Putin and United Russia.
The thing is that even if the Europeans can't hold it together, the Ukrainians will keep fighting with or without them. And then it'll be spring.
The only additional territory the Russians will be able to control when the war is over is territory where the local population prefers Russian sovereignty - probably Crimea but not sure what else. Anything else will be too painful to occupy and eventually they'll give up.
I don't understand the mechanisms by which Russia cutting off gas to Europe causes the war to move in their favor. Sure, European publics get very angry at their governments and maybe even demand they stop supporting Ukraine so completely. So what? The US isn't going to back away from Ukraine. Neither will Poland, the Baltic states, the Nordic states, Czechia etc. It would be embarrassing for France/Germany/UK to make appeasement sounds toward the Russians, but that would have few material effects.
So what would the scenario be for some very unhappy western European states pressuring Ukraine to make large concessions to Russia be? I just don't see it.
The administration may not, but if the Republicans end up controlling the House after the next election they can certainly play games with funding.
"So what would the scenario be for some very unhappy western European states pressuring Ukraine to make large concessions to Russia be?"
If the heating/economic situation gets too dire, France, Germany, and/or the UK could stop providing assistance to Ukraine and cease participating in the sanctions regime. I'm highly skeptical that Poland, the Baltic states, the Nordic states, and the Czech Republic can keep Ukraine supplied and supported even with unrestricted US assistance, let alone the possibility of US aid being severely curtailed as mentioned above.
To claim that Biden had the same opposition to Nord Stream 2 as Trump and Obama is incorrect. Biden, in fact, dropped Trump's sanctions and effectively approved the project to go forward. See NYTimes article here: https://tinyurl.com/ep9bwysh
I also disagree with the assessment that "...but short of a drastic regime change, nobody is ever going to go as all-in on Russian gas as the Germans did in the Nord Stream era..." Once this is over, memories will be short and Europeans will return to their old habits: stopping all domestic energy activity that isn't wind or solar while becoming ever-more-dependent on other regions to supply oil and gas. The moral superiority of the environmentalist movement in Europe requires the "bad" energy to be produced out-of-sight and out-of-mind.
Overall, though, great summary of the situation. Good luck to the Ukrainians.
I mean, when you've already secured other suppliers for oil and gas, and when the plan is to get away from oil and gas entirely (by ramping up renewables and infrastructure for hydrogen)... why would you go back to Russia? Maaaaaaaybe if the Putin regime gets replaced by a pro-Western democratic regime in the next few years, but how realistic is that?
>>Maaaaaaaybe if the Putin regime gets replaced by a pro-Western democratic regime in the next few years, but how realistic is that?<<
I'm no expert on Russian domestic politics, and I read all these folks who say that Putin has the place so wired that he can't be overthrown and anyway he'd be replaced by people even more hawkish, but I wonder.
I'm sure all the decision makers in Russia admit to themselves that this was a bad decision poorly executed (maybe even Putin!) but the question is what they do now. They see the correlation of forces moving away from Russia and it is unclear how even the most aggressive moves (tactical nukes on or near Ukraine) would lead to a positive outcome for Russia.
They may decide that somehow or other Putin has to go and that Russia has to wipe the slate clean and attempt to make amends with the West in order to prevent the total impoverishment of Russia.
And that makes me wonder about the Mandela option: Navalny. Bring him out, turn some of Putin's loyal guards and arrest him, then negotiate a deal with Navalny (we'll make you President, you do what you want with Putin, but don't go after the oligarchs' stolen wealth) and then present this new, more agreeable face to the world and seek some kind of honorable peace.
The Economist's unending squeeing fanboyism about the man is one of the things that led to me giving up my subscription a few years ago. If they're that fundamentally wrong about him, what else are their blinkers hiding from them?
I think you're misunderstanding the frame of reference here. I'm saying "imagine you represent Russian oligarchs and military leaders and you want Russia to cut its losses and get the best deal possible." They may be wrong in thinking a Navalny-led Russia would get a better deal from the West than whatever you are recommending here, but they may not think so.
But then, none of us knows what they're thinking. My scenario is the definition of speculative.
Environmentalists in the US are less influential than in Europe. But in the US they have shut down the XL pipeline, are mobilizing to stop the pipeline from WV and have stopped almost all drilling and transport of oil & gas in the Northeast states.
The result of these wins is to shift oil & gas production to places where the extraction processes are dirtier, less safe and geopolitically worse. The European environmentalist movement is much more influential and will, once the immediate crisis is over, make the same mistakes again.
"right now". My prediction is once the immediate crisis is past, they will revert to the same policy positions that led to the dependence on Russian gas in the first place.
You may be right, but Europe is building a ton of LNG import infrastructure right now and those facilities will remain online long after the crisis passes. I think something like 25 new facilities are under construction or about to be across Europe.
I'd guess that within a year or two, most of what's left of European gas import demand that's not supplied through non-Russian pipelines will be locked up in long-term supply contracts with non-Russian LNG exporters.
So even if suddenly everyone loves Russia (not likely), there won't be very much gas demand for them to pick up that isn't already contracted.
Correct. You can't just disregard lock-in effects. Also, "environmentalism" and "centre-left Green liberalism" are two very distinct movements. The latter has a lot of political power in Germany and Europe; the former does not. The comparisons with the US are really misleading here, for a plethora of reasons.
The only way the WV pipeline gets stopped is if leftist environmentalists and Republicans combine forces to make it happen. And the chance of that ever happening is . . . well, about 95%, I'd say.
You're discounting the German hysteria about nuclear power and their wish to go back to gas at low cost for German industry. There are still a lot of Putinversteher in Germany.
I am not so sure this is the case. Schröder is the most prominent Putinversteher and he is a total pariah. Living in Germany I see even the right wing types who used to be pro Russia now careful to not sound like they like Putin.
Sorry, but why won't Scholz transfer Leopard tanks to Ukraine or even allow other governments to do so? He isn't fully bought in to supporting Ukraine. You can blame the right wingers, and they deserve it, but the SPD and Die Linke are not solid on this.
Sure, but the political costs would be A LOT higher this time around. At least as long as Putin remains in power. Especially if the return is only really needed for a few years,
90%+ of Nordstream 2 was built during Trump's presidency, and was basically finished by Biden's. By 2020 there was nothing more to say. If he opposed it as part of Obama administration, I think it's safe to claim that Biden opposed it.
And yes Trump put sanctions on it in what, late 2019? Little late...
Let's revisit this next spring after Europe has gone through a Russia-imposed gas blockade. Indeed, memories may be short, but some memories may be more intense than others. I suspect that Europeans will want to wash their hands of Putin, Russia and all their stupid antics for quite some time.
You are probably right about nuclear, fracking and coal, but I would still expect more LNG terminals to be built and I'm not sure Nord II gets finished for a long time. The perception of Russia will have shifted for a generation, even if the Europeans adopt their typical bad habits on energy policy.
Completely agree re Biden and Nordstream. But I note from here in Germany.. wind and solar are well entrenched and popular. People have learned their lesson about relying on Russia. This winter will be very bad and I expect serious political unrest. But embracing Russia is not a likely outcome. All that pain is reminding people who caused it.
Reminder: imperialism is invading countries to forcibly subjugate them, e.g. what Putin is doing. It’s silly to use the hyperbole when the real thing is in front of our eyes. Also, I’d say it’s ironic to complain about Americans wishing to have a say when Germany is 100% dependent on America for its security (to put it nicely).
You're ignoring that Nord Stream 2 was specifically designed to cut out Eastern Europe from the flow of gas. It can be more accurately described as a way for Germany to deal directly with Russia and cut out its NATO allies and neighbors. Eastern Europe noticed what Germany was doing there and didn't like it, and that's driving problems for German foreign policy today. There's also the point that in this case the Americans (and Eastern Europeans) were right and the Germans were wrong.
The US is definitely heavy handed at times, but it's pretty ridiculous to set policy because 'we don't want the US to tell us what to do'. It was probably politically unpalatable, especially if we're talking about acquiescing to Trump I guess.
If the sentiment is that the US is being a bully and just trying to angle to sell it's own gas...
...so?
Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, hasn't the US historically been a better ally to Germany? Wouldn't Germans want to buy gas from USA over Russia any day of the week?
Genuinely curious to hear German perspective if there are any here.
LNG shipped across the ocean will never be as cheap as natural gas delivered by pipeline. Germany actually practices supply side progressivism and Russia is the low cost vendor
Yeah, that was part of the reason why German sentiment was very pro-Nord Stream 2 before the invasion. There's a substantial stream of anti-Americanism in German society, and the US pressure campaign played right into that. ("They can't tell us what to do! They just want to sell their own gas!")
Do they just completely ignore the fact that they have been living under the US protective umbrella for decades now and have spent almost nothing on barely functional armed forces and instead have been able to divert that money to social spending and the like? I find it shocking that they seem to think they don't have an equal benefit out of the US-Germany relationship.
"...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 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.
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!
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.")
When your prediction about what will happen is wrong. In a way, that's what modern war is: the two sides forecast the consequences sufficiently wrong to fight. If they didn't, at least one side would back down.
- Putin didn't think there'd be a war over Ukraine. He thought it'd be a drive to Kiev and it'd all be over - like Crimea
- Hitler said about the USSR that 'We have only to kick in the door “and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down - like France
- "Home by Christmas" was a real sentiment during WW1. Not universal, but it did happen. The prior most similar conflict, the Franco-Prussian war, was decided within about six weeks, even tho it last about 6m.
It's not usually a good way of predicting what politicians will do, is it?
I still want to know who in Moscow subscribes to Slow Boring and is important enough for Matt to write that piece in February asking the Russians not to invade.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Nice piece Matt. I've been worried about Russia for a long time. I'm old enough that I grew up during the Cold War, but my larger concern has always been the psychological warfare that the KGB, then FSB, now IRA conducts on us and other Western countries. I'm not sure people really understand just how prevalent this is and how much damage it does. I've seen the NYTIMES report on this several times now (most recently here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/18/us/womens-march-russia-trump.html?searchResultPosition=1) - but it still seems to be low in the proverbial collective consciousness.
I'd love for Matt to put together something on this. The Russians have always seen the West as a threat and they work constantly to undermine us. The primary way they do this is that they stoke division in our increasingly multicultural societies. They also promote class dissension and focus on Western inequality. They use social media - I'm at least partially convinced that this is why so many young people are openly socialists today. Whenever someone brings this up, the response is always something to the effect that "the problems are real, not made up by Russia" - which is absolutely true. But if our enemy (and enemy is not too light a term for Russia) spends lots of resources promulgating propaganda that is designed to divide and highlight differences in America, shouldn't we at least consider the idea that countering this narrative is important? How? By telling an American story (also propaganda) that is positive, unifying, and that focuses on the merits of our systems/society - rather than always on their failings.
The Right tries to do this (America F Yeah!) - but somewhat ineffectively in that it always feels like they are talking about an America that doesn't include everyone. But it doesn't have to be this way. We could have a strong national culture that prizes and rewards the multitudes that make up our country but still does so from a position of strength and inclusivity - rather than something that continues to foster division.
China (our other rival/enemy) is getting more into this same game of stoking divisions in America and their somewhat state-ownership of Tik Tok is one of my bigger fears. They also have strong reasons to sew dissension and they own an apparatus that provides the opportunity to dictate the memes pumped directly into young American minds.
The threat in this area Matt has discussed is Tik Tok. It really is crazy that they #1 media platform for America's youth (the most impressionable consumers!) is Chinese owned
For what it’s worth, I think I’m probably one of the few SB readers who uses TikTok regularly, and at least right now, it seems like the problems with TikTok are basically the same as that of YouTube. The alt-right pipeline, people selling scammy pyramid schemes, and clickbaity content. And zero efforts to stop harassment .
But I’ve not seen nor heard of any pro-CCP propaganda, or even any content that seems like it’s influenced by Chinese censors. I’m sure they COULD absolutely tilt the content on TikTok in that direction if they chose, but so far TikTok essentially operates like any other social media. (Poorly, with very little way to stop coordinated harassment).
Guess what happens if you try to find some pro Taiwan independence content? A lot of CCP propaganda is incredibly crude, but so far they have been pretty smart with Tik Tok. I suspect it is because the pro-CCP content emphasis has been voluntary so far by ByteDance
A couple years ago I was visiting my brother and his family around the holidays. His son was playing some fun phone game that involved answering trivia questions about countries, and then stacking them up until they reached the top of the screen. I had seen him playing it a few months earlier, and it seemed cute, but this time he was just zooming through it all and had memorized everything about every country in the game. But then I asked him something about Taiwan, and I realized he had never heard of it.
I doubt that this game is specifically made by a Chinese company, but I would not be surprised if it's either trying to keep the option of localizations legal in China, or doing something ostensibly neutral like using only UN members that is in practice also controlled by China.
Yea, there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that CCP-related and China-related topics are... let us say "slanted" within the US and EU versions of the app. And there's no way in hell it's actually GDPR-compliant, but the EU seems afraid to sue to enforce the law.
The issue with Tik Tok, as I understand it from reading Klon Kitchen at the Dispatch, is that it is a means of collecting data, not distributing propaganda.
+1
The "Russians are mind controlling our voters" is a classic cope from people who refuse to confront how unpopular their basket of political beliefs are.
In 2020, the Russian propaganda budget was at most a few million. The "super competant" Clinton campaign spent three orders of magnitude more - yet we're suppossed to believe that the Russians are so good at persuausive English media communication that they were in some way decisive with 1/1000 of the budget?
I hope this isn't too salty for the SB comments, but frankly sir, your view is bullshit.
The argument is not so much that that Russian propaganda is is great, but that they fanned the flames of existing divisive discourse to amplify it. There seems to be solid evidence this is the case.
Now is this genius? Did it actual work to persuade people? Did that translate into voter action? I'm skeptical about all of these. But also I'm pretty sure the Russians had some effect on the margin, and in very tight races that could make a difference. Very hard to prove.
I'm not trying convince someone like you but I do find it interesting that both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times have done pretty comprehensive stories about this. Which basket of ideas do they both represent that are so unpopular? My particular views poll as widely popular and yet I believe that our enemies are actively working to undermine our system of government and our cohesion as a nation. I think our enemies know they can't outspend us and are still technologically behind, so they use the same tools the KGB outlined back in the 60's to sew discord and dissension. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo&t=271s (from the New York Times) does a pretty thorough job explaining this.
The way the IRA works is that they create stories and memes and they let the news media/forums/reddit do the rest of the work. You don't need to outspend, especially when you are perfectly content making stuff up in order to do your work.
You used an important piece of phrasing here: "we're supposed to believe that..." - you aren't supposed to believe anything. You should doubt most things. Be skeptical of this claim too. But also be open to being wrong about this and open to the idea that you are actively spouting memes promulgated by the Russians.
I always thought it was pretty weird how little reflection there was about the ~specific thing~ the Russians did as "election interference." Trying to destabilize the country by making people fight about identity politics on the computer? Huh. There are maybe some lessons to be learned there!
Would Russian propaganda turn young people into socialists? I thought the pro-authoritarian and esp. anti LGBTQ sentiments are pushed hard by some Russian trolls and that that makes some (Tucker! some of Europe's hard right) friendly to Russia
They push both. Extremes are divisive.
A good anti-American propagandist would try to make sure there are lots of extreme views that can then fight each other, rather than pushing one particular set of views.
So you are failing at empathy here because you disagree with the assessment that "Russian trolls" are important?
Agreed. I think we are pretty good at dividing ourselves. This Russian troll paranoia smacks of elitist progressives who can’t accept that 45% of the country just hates them. As a bot, I will now turn myself off.
Ask young people if they think the country is heading in the right direction. Ask young people if they are planning to have children. Ask young people about race relations. Ask young people about how LGTQA people are doing. Think about what is being amplified on Twitter/Tik Tok.
Even if our enemies are incompetent, is it strange that the promulgate/amplify/promote many of the same stories our main stream media does? One does it because rage builds engagement and clicks, the other does it because rage/distrust/disunity weaken our state.
>>Ask young people if they think the country is heading in the right direction.<<
You really think it requires CCP propaganda to convince young Americans (or any aged Americans) the country is going in the wrong direction? There's at least a 20% chance the country will no longer be a functional democracy by 2025. That's plain to see, with or without the assistance of Red China.
I worry more about excessive NIMBYism that prevents us from building housing and excessive regulation that prevents from building anything else. We hollowed out our manufacturing and blue collar base in the name of the spotted toad. That’s what makes people despondent. Agreed that media hypes many divisions but I think Vox is pretty good at it and doesn’t need Russian trolls to get it done.
Agreed.
I think you’re right that the impact of foreign propaganda is overblown by western liberals. Partly, I imagine, because it absolves them of responsibility when their core aims prove unpopular.
It also looks like Putin’s position is weakening, both with his international allies and at home in Russia.
China’s Xi raised issues with the Ukrainian conflict at the recent SCO summit and Putin publicly acknowledged these concerns. [1] It seems clear that China does not want to see any further escalation and will not be providing material support to aid in Putin’s war.
Further, Putin is getting significant criticism at home on multiple fronts, including opposition to the war and advocates that think more needs to be done. [2]
> On Sunday, Alla Pugacheva, a much-loved pop singer who has been a household name for Russians for decades, posted a message criticizing “illusory aims” in Ukraine that have made Russia “a pariah” that weighs “heavily on the lives of its citizens.” On the other side, nationalists are furious at inept military leadership, forcing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to warn that criticism would be fine — until it wasn’t: “The line is extremely thin. One should be very careful here.”
And Putin’s recent escalation with “partial mobilization” risks waking the apathetic masses.
> As Yuval Weber of Texas A&M's Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, DC put it to me, these masses in the middle are the real risk for the Kremlin, far more than the nationalist right. They are the ones on whom the regime has long relied, men and women who have been lulled into apathy but would now need to be whipped into a frenzy. More involved (and sending their own kin to war), they may well start asking awkward questions about Putin’s effectiveness.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-15/china-s-xi-poised-for-first-putin-meeting-since-ukraine-invasion
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-19/frustrated-and-snubbed-putin-is-running-out-of-options-at-home-and-in-ukraine
Two points:
1. The Chinese and Russian readouts of that meeting are completely inconsistent, but it seems clear that behind closed doors China is prepared to feed Russia rhetorical and limited material rope until it hangs itself. A northern satrap, cut off from the rest of the global market, with immense natural resources sold to China at below-market prices, is the best possible case from the CCP perspective. Have you ever looked at the details of the gas contracts Russia signed with China in, I think, 2014? They're below cost for actual extraction and delivery, a fraction of what Europe paid, given that the Russians had to purpose-build the pipeline.
China is not unhappy with the way things are unfolding and there is virtually no mainstream pro-Ukrainian sentiment that would put pressure on the CCP to change course. They are far more worried about legitimacy at home, as omicron starts to splinter Dynamic Zero COVID. More people have been subject to a hard lockdown in the last 3 months than in the 30 months leading up to that point, and their effectiveness is fading outside major cities. Lhasa and Tibet are a shitshow, as is Xinjiang.
2. The Russian "mushy middle" is not liberal, it's basically pro- "competent nationalist empire-building authoritarian". What the Russian people want, as far as everyone who seems to know what they're talking about believes, is a competent Putin, not a competent Yeltsin. The tail risk is that in toppling Putin we get someone who can put in place the reasonably clean structures of governance that would allow Russia's military to pick itself back up and become a functioning armed force again before going adventuring somewhere.
Chances are that somewhere would not be Ukraine, but instead Central Asia, which is starting, within the framework of the SCC, to tilt a bit more towards a balanced position between China and Russia. Kazakhstan in particular has great numbers of ethnic Russians who could offer lots of ready-made justifications...
I always want to ask “the average Russia” why do they think they always end up backing the wrong horse?
Because Russia's entire culture of government is built around providing a security state. The sole reason for the existence of the Russian state that coalesced after the Mongols and Golden Horde fell was to fight its way back to the steppe and destroy the horse nomads at the source before they destroyed Russia again.
No sooner had they accomplished that than huge threats started materializing from the heretofore secure western border and killing Russians in joblots. Swedes, then Poles, then the French, who might have killed 10% of Russia's people. Then their British allies stab them in the back and deny them their rightful/essential control over the Straits and Constantinople. Then the Germans, not once, but twice.
All of Russian history is trauma and death on a horrific scale. So yes, the culture innately seems to desire a protector, not a leader in the western, liberal sense.
"rightful/essential control" is doing a lot of work there. The claim on Constantinople is pure imperialism and always has been.
You couldn't near the quotes slapping into place around "stab them in the back" and "rightful control"?
Really?
To be honest i have read so much daft crap in the last couple of weeks about British history that i read that and was not sure if you were being serious.
My point here is that Russian claims for expansion have always been fantastical and essentially unrealizable, and organizing your government and polity to pursue unrealizable goals is not a good idea. If the justification for a police state is relentless expansion and fighting, then it's a bad justification. Russia is already the largest country in the world with abundant nuclear weapons. There's no reason they need more territory at this point.
Yeah, I was wondering if maybe the CCP is thrilled with the way this is playing out, but wants to make it clear on the international stage that they don't approve of Russian war-making.
The CCP gets to sit back, buy Russian exports at below-market prices due to sanctions, and watch as its primary potential rivals spend blood and treasure duking it out while it gets to stay out of the whole thing. Strategically speaking, things almost couldn't be better for the CCP.
Well, except for, ya know, the whole domestic situation.
And I don't think that this is a net positive in terms of Chinese strategy regarding Europe and the US, which has historically been to be conciliatory enough to Europe to divide the two. The goal has always been to create a permission structure for the EU powers-that-be to knuckle under to German and French commercial interests and let the CCP do whatever the fuck it wants. They've done very, very well at that indeed, playing on Europe's innate irritation at the brash/rich/powerful Americans.
Suddenly that's rather less tenable. European public opinion has never been more strongly in favor of the trans-Atlantic ties, and never more strongly opposed to China. Of all the possible candidates, the German *Greens* are leading the charge to get the short-termist commercial interests to shut the fuck up and allow the government to treat China as a rival and long-term economic threat.
Shit be *weird* out there for us China-watchers.
Is there an explanation for why European anti-Russia sentiment is spilling over into suspicion of the Chinese given their relatively demure stance on the war beyond general Transatlantic sympathies? I mean, the CCP is awful, but that isn't exactly hot off the presses.
That treaty of friendship was pretty damned hard to ignore, as is Chinese waffling and obfuscation on the war, but also the structural pressures have been building for some time now.
German and French commercial interests had managed to persuade the EU government to play gently for a decade or more past the point where it was clear that China's long-term goal was to reduce Germany and France to satraps after sucking them dry of IP and know-how.
Amusingly, now that China is finally proving that goal impossible, the Germans have decided to wake up and notice what the plan was all along. You'd have thought the crushing of their highly-automated, environmentally-friendly, world-beating PV industry by Chinese facilities developed with reams of stolen IP, powered by smoke-belching coal plants, dumping shitloads of pollutants into groundwater would have snapped them out of it by 2012, but no.
One of the structural issues is that the share of GDP going to workers in Germany is so damned small that it needs the captive export markets provided by the EU, but they're not enough. It has, throughout the 2010's, relied on a structural surplus with China as well, mostly consisting of high-value precursors and advanced capital plant.
The Green/SDP approach to that seems to boil down to "OK, so pay German workers enough for them to buy your shit in quantity and we'll tax the rest off you for infrastructure improvements and decarbonization!"
Which is a dramatic change in tenor from the Grand Coalition's "Everything is fine, oh great German industrialists, la La LALALALALALA!"
While there are upsides for the CCP, there are clearly knock-on effects for their intentions toward Taiwan. Granted that the two cases are very different, but China would be in a much stronger position vis a vis Taiwan had Russia rolled through Ukraine with a supine West not lifting a finger.
The correlation of forces, as they say, are different now for China than they were before Feb. 24.
Xi was basically telling Putin, “Your shit is Putin MY job at risk. That’s not a wise move.”
It was difficult to understand German decision making in the last few years. It appears there was a lot of infiltration by Russian spies into the German government's decision making. I read somewhere that Angela Merkle seemed to devote herself to total mediocrity. Tying Germany to Russian gas in such a big way even after the 2014 issues in Ukraine was a disaster.
"The United States eventually left Vietnam and the USSR eventually left Afghanistan because in both cases, they reached the correct conclusion that it’s just not worth it."
Strong agree. NATO also got out of Afghanistan. The West has forgotten about Afghanistan, and Afghanistan has forgotten about the West as it slips into tribal warfare. Nature is healing.
You don't need a big conspiracy when it comes to Germany, it's actually a lot easier than that. Our two biggest parties, the SPD and CDU, both had their reasons to disregard the dangers of tying ourselves to Russian gas. The SPD (Social-Democrats) have always felt close to Russia for historical reasons and thought that a close trading relationship would bring about change. (This is also where the old Merkel saying "Wandel durch Handel" comes from, which means "change through trade" in English.)
The CDU (Christian-Democrats/Conservatives), on the other hand, has always been close (critics say subservient) to the German industry, which wanted as much Russian gas as possible, because it was cheaper than all the alternatives. So the CDU was happy to deliver that.
Though to be fair, basically the whole German society disregarded the danger of tying our economy to Russian deliveries. Germans have historically been rather Russia-friendly before the invasion. The only party that has consistently warned about our gas dependency were the Greens (supported by a bunch of experts), but noone took them really seriously in that regard.
Quoting myself from elsewhere:
"The same era also gave us near-stringless Chinese accession to the WTO; it was widely believed, on the backs of what was perceived as a successful reintegration of East Germany and the other Warsaw Pact nations, that bringing Russia and China into the global trading system and giving them a stake would cause domestic liberalization and force them to defend the global order now that they had their piece of the pie.
Obviously didn't work out, but we shouldn't be blaming Schröder or Clinton for that when it was a near-universal belief at the time.
No, Merkel and Obama were the ones who were in office at and long after the point where it should have been obvious that this was not occurring as hoped and the "West" needed to find a different mode of engagement and even limited disengagement.
Unfortunately, neither of them was particularly committed to dealing effectively with either Russia or China, though the US and parts of the EU have at least come to the necessity of dealing more firmly with China now that Russia has forced their hand."
Schröder is functionally a Russian agent, and he is an ex-Bundeskanzler. The SPD is and has been compromised, and we'll see if that changes. The SPD also has a strange Russia fixation that they transferred from the USSR, but have very little regard for the states that have gained independence from the USSR that aren't Russia.
The SPD definitely has a Russia problem, but again: So has almost all of German society. The CDU and its sister party, the CSU, have a long history of governors on the state level sucking up to Russia, as well as influential intra-party streams advocating for even stronger trade dependency. The centre-right FDP has a weird libertarian inter-party stream with authoritarian tendencies. And the far-left Linke and the far-right AfD are pro-Russia as well, obviously. In a survey taken three weeks before the invasion, 57 percent of Germans endorsed finishing and utilizing Nord Stream 2. Zooming in on party affiliation, supporters in every party in the German Bundestag except the Greens endorsed Nord Stream 2 by a clear margin. And even among the Greens, 41 percent of respondents were pro Nord Stream 2!
It's obviously correct to point out that there is a lot of weird Russia stuff going on in the SPD. (Just google Manuela Schwesig, if you have a minute - that story is a delight.) But solely focusing on the SPD makes you miss the whole picture.
I presume you mean "Russian agent," here?
Yes, I do, sorry. Will edit.
Who is slipping into tribal warfare, Afghanistan, the West, or both?
Good summary of the situation, Matt, but I still remain skeptical that the Europeans will be able to hold it together through the winter. And, even with Ukraine's latest advances, I'm still expecting a Russian "win" in the sense that, when a ceasefire is eventually reached, the Russians will end up controlling more territory than they had at the start of the present war. The Kharkiv area victories are great, but I anticipate the Russians will pour everything they can into keeping the corridor to the Crimea open and, unless the Russian air force completely evaporates and its nuclear arsenal is verifiably taken offline, I can't see how the Ukrainians will be able to break that before Russia is able to sufficiently retool its armaments industry to at least be able to keep up with equipment losses and expenditures of "dumb" munitions. (Note: I would be very happy to be proven wrong on this, but I just keep thinking that Americans are way, WAY too used to wars ending in "unconditional victory," and Russian advantages in manpower and industrial production are too great to permit that.)
There's a long and storied history of people thinking citizens in democratic countries are incapable of enduring hardship.
I don't think Europe is going to be happy come spring, but a lot of that anger is going to be focused on Russia, if history is any guide. Maybe a good bit at their own idiotic central bank and the German banking interests which seem to own the damned thing. But even the far-right parties are now feeling betrayed by Russia rather than any sort of kinship to its government.
And even if not, the US and eastern flank of NATO are absolutely going to continue writing Ukraine a blank check for arms, and that's really all that matters.
As for the industrial side of things... I think you're being a bit cavalier. Every jot and tittle of Russia's armaments industry is reliant on Western inputs, whether that's GPS and inertial guidance systems in the rockets or CNC, lathe, and precision casting tools in foundries. Sure, with a decade and a bunch of money that they cannot currently spend and which the Chinese government is not going to help them liquidate, they can get everything rolled over to (generally not terrible) Chinese tooling instead. But in the meantime there are going to be immense maintenance and spare parts issues, because even in places like the mining sector they use German, Japanese, and British equipment for which no further support is available.
Moreover, unless the Russians can restore a steady supply of guided rocket artillery systems or is willing to venture its air force to try to degrade the HIMARS platforms, the Ukrainians will still be able to consistently run rings around them in counter-battery fire and precision strikes on logistics. A sufficient supply of shells is just not going to fix that problem, certainly not with the Russian logistics arm quite literally being run by drunks, drug addicts, and crazy people. (For some reason the rail arm of the army gets the worst people despite being responsible for, ya know, feeding the rest.)
Your analysis is also neglecting morale. Russian regulars are already in near-open revolt against their orders, the short-haul conscripts are even worse, and the impressed forces of both Russia and the puppet republics are apt to surrender on first contact with the enemy. Even if Russia can retool its industry in a reasonable timeline, which I don't believe is really possible, the people who have to use those weapons are at this point very nearly as likely to frag their own officers and run as they are to fight.
I'm not sure "unconditional victory" is the probable endgame, but I would be very surprised, watching the last two months, if Russia holds much beyond Crimea at the end of active hostilities.
*A brief note on nukes: In much the same way as the CCP has with Taiwan, Russia's internal information ecosystem is selling the citizenry on the notion that Ukrainians are Russians who are coerced by foreign powers and corrupt leaders into pretending they're something else. The main problem with this, from United Russia's perspective, is that it takes certain options off the table militarily. Russia can commit small-scale atrocities hourly and simply lie about them enough to muddy the waters at home, but using nuclear weapons on a population concentration of "wayward Russians" cannot be concealed and is very, very likely to culminate in Putin committing suicide by ordering the security services to shoot him in the back a dozen times.
He knows this, at least for now.
I don’t disagree with anything in your comment, but,
“…unless the Russians can restore a steady supply of guided rocket artillery systems or is willing to venture its air force to try to degrade the HIMARS platforms…”
The Ukrainians have contracted with a few domestic firms to build impressively realistic HIMARS decoys at a cost of a few grand each. Russia has responded by killing several of these decoys, using $1.2M submarine-launched cruise missiles.
I think the Ukrainians can keep that up longer than the Russians can.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a41043604/ukraine-himars-decoys/
Lol.
So... the Russians are exactly what casual observers generally accuse the US Armed Forces of being; folks who employ a $4 shotgun shell to try to kill a $0.001 mosquito.
Not surprising. The US *built* the doctrine for expensive-ass smart munitions, of course we know how to use them wisely. The Russians... don't, apparently.
Our issue is that we don't pay to maintain the capacity to build enough of them to sustain high-intensity combat operations, which is profoundly stupid, especially as relates to naval ordinance.
The saving grace is that a single GMLRS rocket is, in Ukrainian or American hands, good to destroy an ammunition dump with 20,000 155mm shells in it.
EDIT: Sorry, 152 mm shells, rather. Fucking Soviet calibers.
“$4 shotgun shell to try to kill a $0.001 mosquito”
A guy who fought in Iraq once related to me being part of a company-size patrol that came across an IED ambush site. Although they had various means on-hand to deal with the threat themselves (ropes and grappling hooks - far from ideal for a lot of reasons, and some attached engineers with gadgets), the commander decided instead to call in a couple F-16s to drop a pair of 500 lb. Paveways. Those are a lot cheaper than a cruise missile as long as it all goes to plan.
I've seen the technique for trying to remove or disable an IED from a distance with a hook, it's not fun, nor effective, and while you sit around waiting for it to be completed, who knows what's going on in the neighboring hills?
Agreed, $20k ain't much set against a soldier's life.
Using a $1.2M munition to destroy a piece of $10k decoy kit, less viable.
Of course, the Russians don't have the air supremacy needed to just loiter and wait for the thing to fire to confirm its identity before hitting it, that'd be tantamount to throwing a $5M Su-25 down the drain too, along with a pilot.
Strong agreement with all of this.
Interesting piece of history trivia -- in "The Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchmann, she makes the claim that the German Empire intentionally pushed many of its *best* minds into the rail and logistics arm in the decades leading up to WWI, since they expected that the war would be a short war that would be won or lost by the quality and speed of mobilization.
In the final days before the outbreak of hostilities, she reports that the Kaiser asked his General Staff if they could scrap the plan to invade France first, instead only invading Russia. The Generals were aghast and replied that no, the plan was already in motion to invade France and the logistics of turning the invasion around to point at only Russia would be impossible to pull off on such short notice. She then makes the claim that the Generals essentially lied -- so much brainpower had been lavished on the imperial logistics machine that it likely would have been able to pull off a stunning reversal like that, but the Generals were committed to The Plan and didn't want the Kaiser mucking it up.
I find it very amusing to be the one accused of being "cavalier" about the industrial side of things in this conflict. I believe you and many others are ***VASTLY*** underrating Russia's capacity to move toward autarky in production of basic artillery, ammunition, AFVs without computers, and plain old firearms, particularly when combined with a willingness to suffer ridiculous hardships and casualties and the ability to backstop everything with what would be an apocalyptic level of nuclear strikes even if only a tenth of the country's arsenal actually works.
Why should we think that Russia is willing to suffer ridiculous hardships and casualties for this war? If Putin thought that, why is he only mobilizing (and then only partially) now? Why has he been working hard to keep any costs of the war from touching Moscow?
Well, there's also that.
And now that I think of it, even "basic artillery, ammunition, AFVs without computers, and plain old firearms" are going to be a very mixed bag.
Russian metals smelting plants and foundries run on German and Czech machine tools, the stamps, CNCs, and lathes used to manufacture artillery and firearms are made in Japan and Sweden, and they're completely insufficient in internal combustion engine production, all of which is computer-controlled anyway.
Also, how does one produce an AFV without computers? What comms systems is it running on, pray tell? Russia is, according to at least a few defense industry folks I've heard, unable to produce a counter-battery radar out of domestic components. The factories are vaporware and the companies producing the final product are assembling American, Korean, and Chinese components.
The United States would find it a near-impossible lift to produce armaments sufficient to feed an intense conventional conflict without access to European, Japanese, and Korean precursors and capital plant, and even going without Chinese inputs would be very challenging.
China would find it extraordinarily hard if not impossible to produce its current armaments without American or European inputs.
I feel comfortable, based on what I've read, making the claim that Russia simply cannot do it at all.
They can draw on (admittedly immense) stocks of mothballed vehicles and tube artillery, and produce unguided rocket systems and artillery shells domestically, and not much else.
You're correct that cavalier is the wrong word. "Overly conservative" would have been a better choice. Nonetheless, the point is that there are a great number of people with expertise on Russia's economy and political economy saying it won't be able to retool in timely fashion. And I, who have a fair amount of China expertise, am highly confident it is not in the CCP's best interests to help it do so during active hostilities. If anything, the mainstream media narrative tends more towards your assessment than not, and I believe you and them to be wrong.
Additionally, this doesn't address any of the other points I was trying to make: the "dumb" weapons you're pointing out aren't actually sufficient to win the war on their own unless employed brilliantly, Russia's armed forces are incapable of employing them brilliantly, or perhaps at all, and Russia's propaganda should effectively preclude a nuclear strike on Ukrainian population centers, or at least make the domestic fallout un-survivable for Putin and United Russia.
Thoughts on any of that?
The thing is that even if the Europeans can't hold it together, the Ukrainians will keep fighting with or without them. And then it'll be spring.
The only additional territory the Russians will be able to control when the war is over is territory where the local population prefers Russian sovereignty - probably Crimea but not sure what else. Anything else will be too painful to occupy and eventually they'll give up.
I don't understand the mechanisms by which Russia cutting off gas to Europe causes the war to move in their favor. Sure, European publics get very angry at their governments and maybe even demand they stop supporting Ukraine so completely. So what? The US isn't going to back away from Ukraine. Neither will Poland, the Baltic states, the Nordic states, Czechia etc. It would be embarrassing for France/Germany/UK to make appeasement sounds toward the Russians, but that would have few material effects.
So what would the scenario be for some very unhappy western European states pressuring Ukraine to make large concessions to Russia be? I just don't see it.
"The US isn't going to back away from Ukraine."
The administration may not, but if the Republicans end up controlling the House after the next election they can certainly play games with funding.
"So what would the scenario be for some very unhappy western European states pressuring Ukraine to make large concessions to Russia be?"
If the heating/economic situation gets too dire, France, Germany, and/or the UK could stop providing assistance to Ukraine and cease participating in the sanctions regime. I'm highly skeptical that Poland, the Baltic states, the Nordic states, and the Czech Republic can keep Ukraine supplied and supported even with unrestricted US assistance, let alone the possibility of US aid being severely curtailed as mentioned above.
True, but not because of gas cutoffs
A couple of quibbles:
To claim that Biden had the same opposition to Nord Stream 2 as Trump and Obama is incorrect. Biden, in fact, dropped Trump's sanctions and effectively approved the project to go forward. See NYTimes article here: https://tinyurl.com/ep9bwysh
I also disagree with the assessment that "...but short of a drastic regime change, nobody is ever going to go as all-in on Russian gas as the Germans did in the Nord Stream era..." Once this is over, memories will be short and Europeans will return to their old habits: stopping all domestic energy activity that isn't wind or solar while becoming ever-more-dependent on other regions to supply oil and gas. The moral superiority of the environmentalist movement in Europe requires the "bad" energy to be produced out-of-sight and out-of-mind.
Overall, though, great summary of the situation. Good luck to the Ukrainians.
I mean, when you've already secured other suppliers for oil and gas, and when the plan is to get away from oil and gas entirely (by ramping up renewables and infrastructure for hydrogen)... why would you go back to Russia? Maaaaaaaybe if the Putin regime gets replaced by a pro-Western democratic regime in the next few years, but how realistic is that?
>>Maaaaaaaybe if the Putin regime gets replaced by a pro-Western democratic regime in the next few years, but how realistic is that?<<
I'm no expert on Russian domestic politics, and I read all these folks who say that Putin has the place so wired that he can't be overthrown and anyway he'd be replaced by people even more hawkish, but I wonder.
I'm sure all the decision makers in Russia admit to themselves that this was a bad decision poorly executed (maybe even Putin!) but the question is what they do now. They see the correlation of forces moving away from Russia and it is unclear how even the most aggressive moves (tactical nukes on or near Ukraine) would lead to a positive outcome for Russia.
They may decide that somehow or other Putin has to go and that Russia has to wipe the slate clean and attempt to make amends with the West in order to prevent the total impoverishment of Russia.
And that makes me wonder about the Mandela option: Navalny. Bring him out, turn some of Putin's loyal guards and arrest him, then negotiate a deal with Navalny (we'll make you President, you do what you want with Putin, but don't go after the oligarchs' stolen wealth) and then present this new, more agreeable face to the world and seek some kind of honorable peace.
Navalny is not far off from being a neo-fascist.
The Economist's unending squeeing fanboyism about the man is one of the things that led to me giving up my subscription a few years ago. If they're that fundamentally wrong about him, what else are their blinkers hiding from them?
So in terms of possible Russian leaders that makes him the equivalent of, what, Barack Obama?
No. Better to leave the oligarchs to squabble until someone knocks heads enough to reach the top.
A dysfunctional rentier state is *far* less dangerous to everyone both inside and out than a semi-functional imperialist one.
I think you're misunderstanding the frame of reference here. I'm saying "imagine you represent Russian oligarchs and military leaders and you want Russia to cut its losses and get the best deal possible." They may be wrong in thinking a Navalny-led Russia would get a better deal from the West than whatever you are recommending here, but they may not think so.
But then, none of us knows what they're thinking. My scenario is the definition of speculative.
Environmentalists in the US are less influential than in Europe. But in the US they have shut down the XL pipeline, are mobilizing to stop the pipeline from WV and have stopped almost all drilling and transport of oil & gas in the Northeast states.
The result of these wins is to shift oil & gas production to places where the extraction processes are dirtier, less safe and geopolitically worse. The European environmentalist movement is much more influential and will, once the immediate crisis is over, make the same mistakes again.
Germany's Green secretary of economy is literally building LNG terminals right now.
"right now". My prediction is once the immediate crisis is past, they will revert to the same policy positions that led to the dependence on Russian gas in the first place.
You may be right, but Europe is building a ton of LNG import infrastructure right now and those facilities will remain online long after the crisis passes. I think something like 25 new facilities are under construction or about to be across Europe.
I'd guess that within a year or two, most of what's left of European gas import demand that's not supplied through non-Russian pipelines will be locked up in long-term supply contracts with non-Russian LNG exporters.
So even if suddenly everyone loves Russia (not likely), there won't be very much gas demand for them to pick up that isn't already contracted.
Correct. You can't just disregard lock-in effects. Also, "environmentalism" and "centre-left Green liberalism" are two very distinct movements. The latter has a lot of political power in Germany and Europe; the former does not. The comparisons with the US are really misleading here, for a plethora of reasons.
Pennsylvania is the second-largest extractor of natural gas in the country, so "almost all" is pretty wide of the mark.
To be fair, I only consider Philadelphia to be part of "the Northeast". Everything west of Lancaster is the Midwest. 😀
I’ve long held that Pittsburgh is a midwestern city - in attitude if not topology.
Harrisburg is as eastern as Albany. The Midwest begins at the crest of the Alleghenies, so PA is really hybrid
Eh.
Well, at least we managed to colonize the shit out of Florida before being subject to your artificial divisions.
The only way the WV pipeline gets stopped is if leftist environmentalists and Republicans combine forces to make it happen. And the chance of that ever happening is . . . well, about 95%, I'd say.
You're discounting the German hysteria about nuclear power and their wish to go back to gas at low cost for German industry. There are still a lot of Putinversteher in Germany.
I am not so sure this is the case. Schröder is the most prominent Putinversteher and he is a total pariah. Living in Germany I see even the right wing types who used to be pro Russia now careful to not sound like they like Putin.
Sorry, but why won't Scholz transfer Leopard tanks to Ukraine or even allow other governments to do so? He isn't fully bought in to supporting Ukraine. You can blame the right wingers, and they deserve it, but the SPD and Die Linke are not solid on this.
Because it'll be cheaper to return to Russia is my guess. Unless turning back on Russian pipelines incurs a huge cost.
Sure, but the political costs would be A LOT higher this time around. At least as long as Putin remains in power. Especially if the return is only really needed for a few years,
I mean I suppose so but I think that political costs will evaporate in the face of serious domestic shortages and challenges.
90%+ of Nordstream 2 was built during Trump's presidency, and was basically finished by Biden's. By 2020 there was nothing more to say. If he opposed it as part of Obama administration, I think it's safe to claim that Biden opposed it.
And yes Trump put sanctions on it in what, late 2019? Little late...
Let's revisit this next spring after Europe has gone through a Russia-imposed gas blockade. Indeed, memories may be short, but some memories may be more intense than others. I suspect that Europeans will want to wash their hands of Putin, Russia and all their stupid antics for quite some time.
What are the chances this winter discredits the greens?
You are probably right about nuclear, fracking and coal, but I would still expect more LNG terminals to be built and I'm not sure Nord II gets finished for a long time. The perception of Russia will have shifted for a generation, even if the Europeans adopt their typical bad habits on energy policy.
Completely agree re Biden and Nordstream. But I note from here in Germany.. wind and solar are well entrenched and popular. People have learned their lesson about relying on Russia. This winter will be very bad and I expect serious political unrest. But embracing Russia is not a likely outcome. All that pain is reminding people who caused it.
Reminder: imperialism is invading countries to forcibly subjugate them, e.g. what Putin is doing. It’s silly to use the hyperbole when the real thing is in front of our eyes. Also, I’d say it’s ironic to complain about Americans wishing to have a say when Germany is 100% dependent on America for its security (to put it nicely).
You're ignoring that Nord Stream 2 was specifically designed to cut out Eastern Europe from the flow of gas. It can be more accurately described as a way for Germany to deal directly with Russia and cut out its NATO allies and neighbors. Eastern Europe noticed what Germany was doing there and didn't like it, and that's driving problems for German foreign policy today. There's also the point that in this case the Americans (and Eastern Europeans) were right and the Germans were wrong.
The US is definitely heavy handed at times, but it's pretty ridiculous to set policy because 'we don't want the US to tell us what to do'. It was probably politically unpalatable, especially if we're talking about acquiescing to Trump I guess.
If the sentiment is that the US is being a bully and just trying to angle to sell it's own gas...
...so?
Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, hasn't the US historically been a better ally to Germany? Wouldn't Germans want to buy gas from USA over Russia any day of the week?
Genuinely curious to hear German perspective if there are any here.
LNG shipped across the ocean will never be as cheap as natural gas delivered by pipeline. Germany actually practices supply side progressivism and Russia is the low cost vendor
Yeah, that was part of the reason why German sentiment was very pro-Nord Stream 2 before the invasion. There's a substantial stream of anti-Americanism in German society, and the US pressure campaign played right into that. ("They can't tell us what to do! They just want to sell their own gas!")
Do they just completely ignore the fact that they have been living under the US protective umbrella for decades now and have spent almost nothing on barely functional armed forces and instead have been able to divert that money to social spending and the like? I find it shocking that they seem to think they don't have an equal benefit out of the US-Germany relationship.
Impressive timing of this article considering Putin's call for partial mobilization.
Well he gave me the heads up
You buried the lede.
"...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 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.
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!
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.")
When your prediction about what will happen is wrong. In a way, that's what modern war is: the two sides forecast the consequences sufficiently wrong to fight. If they didn't, at least one side would back down.
- Putin didn't think there'd be a war over Ukraine. He thought it'd be a drive to Kiev and it'd all be over - like Crimea
- Hitler said about the USSR that 'We have only to kick in the door “and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down - like France
- "Home by Christmas" was a real sentiment during WW1. Not universal, but it did happen. The prior most similar conflict, the Franco-Prussian war, was decided within about six weeks, even tho it last about 6m.
“The problem is that he is permanently squandering Russia’s opportunity to be a major natural gas supplier to Europe.”
Ah, the fallacy of rationality. You are thinking about what you would do if you were Putin. Sadly, you are not.
It's not usually a good way of predicting what politicians will do, is it?
I still want to know who in Moscow subscribes to Slow Boring and is important enough for Matt to write that piece in February asking the Russians not to invade.
Discounts are available for government employees, maybe Putin took advantage. https://www.slowboring.com/about
I don't think he's committing this fallacy? He's just accurately saying that Putin is not acting in Russia's best interest.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Matt, Is your read that the Doomberg folks are just overstating how catastrophic this winter is going to be for Europe?
Great piece. Worth the price of subscription, for me. Love this economic lens on world events. Thank you!