“One of” is a key phrase here, because...
> all of the international relations theorism that has been dominant in the last 70 years says that for every inch they gain, we must lose an inch, and vice versa.
...this is not true in a situation where Russia is one of our geopolitical rivals, only where they are sole meaningful rival. That arguably was the model of the early Cold War (prior to the significant split between China and Russia), but bilateral relations with Russia are not zero-sum when we have other geopolitical rivalries.
> no major player is about to risk trying to grab a mile or inflicting any kind of serious blow that could be overtly attributed to them as an act warranting retribution.
That's manifestly false; Russia has fairly brazenly conducted several such acts recently against members of the Western Alliance. (Particularly Brittain of a new objective and 8.)
> implying russia could invade europe or something similar
In what continent does one find Ukraine?
> was ridiculous at the time, and has been proven false given the difficulty that russia has had in ukraine.
You mean, was correct at the time and has been proven true by Russia's invasion of the Ukraine and conquest of significant portions thereof.
Earlier you accused Russia of meddling everywhere, just to pull Ukraine out of the hat.
Completely omitting that Ukraine didn't start with Crimea, it started on Euromaidan [0], with heavy involvement of "Yat's our man" [1] and even that was only the ultimate result of decades, and millions of US$, in "regime change" efforts [2].
That's the actual context of Ukraine and not "Russia having ambitions to invade all of Europe". The annexation of Crimea wasn't an offensive play, it was a desperate defensive play trying to hold to as much ground and, and military industrial infrastructure [3], as possible.
The way all of this is constantly omitted, in favor of the "Russia just went into aggressive expansionist mode" narrative, is pretty good evidence for how one-sided this whole topic has become in the public discourse.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
[1] http://openukraine.org/en/about/partners (Originally he was the face of the org, they later replaced him with his wife)
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
[3] https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-military-equipment/25...
As Ukraine was a part of USSR, there are people sympathising with the West and people sympathising with Russia. And when one part comes to power, other feels disappointed.
Russia uses this distrust in its propaganda to divide the society, spreading ideas like the Ukranian government is going to ban Russian language at public schools and sadly the government doesn't take steps to reassure Russian people in Ukraine. Russian is not an official language in Ukraine or in any of its regions (except the annexed ones).
Your point about annexation of Crimea is similar to what Russian propaganda says: if we didn't take a part of Ukraine then there would be new NATO bases (another excuse: "Crimea has always been our land and people living there are mostly Russian"). But it is nothing more than an excuse - you can justify anything this way. USSR earlier did similar things - in 1939 they annexed a part of Finland [1] using an excuse that the Leningrad city was too close too the border so they needed to push the border further.
It is like US foreign policy - they always have a good excuse to bomb some country and pretend to be the good guy saving people from a dictator.
It was a bit more complicated and chaotic than that, but you can't just brush aside US involvement as "inconsequential" like that because Euromaidan saw literal US Senators (McCain), and many other foreign nationals, interfere in the elections.
In times where every random Russian doing something remotely shady in the US is instantly connected to the Russian government as some kind of "professional agitator" this whole reasoning seems quite a bit hypocrite.
> It is like US foreign policy - they always have a good excuse to bomb some country and pretend to be the good guy saving people from a dictator.
It indeed is, that's why many people think the US is in no position to be hysterical about "election interference".
The cold war might have officially been over, but spheres of influence, and the mostly covert fight over them, still exist and persists to this day.
In that context, it's a bit like the US playing the game all the time and mostly winning, but as soon as Russia manages to win a round, the US starts complaining how evil Russia is for playing the game in the first place.
killing a dissident abroad isn't a major blow in any real terms. it grabs headlines, but nobody is willing to disrupt world order over a small number of people, so it isn't even a big risk. russia was not trying to kill whoever because they thought it would be a massive geopolitical gain in any event.
ukraine is an example of how they cannot invade. ukraine's military had extremely low levels of readiness, yet they still hold most of their country. remember, russia views ukraine as its backyard. ukraine was its puppet state for most of the post-soviet era. the idea that ukraine pulled away -- toward the US -- warranted a full court press, but they couldn't hack it. they lost ukraine to the US orbit despite their best efforts.
imagine what luck they'd have against a western european military, backed by the rest of NATO. it isn't anything they'd even consider attempting because they are not suicidal.
one of their last military readiness estimates found that their black sea fleet couldn't hold out for more than eight hours against the US in a war, and that's right in their back yard, far from core NATO territory.
i just really want to drive the point home here: the russian military did not even supply all of their army units with socks (!) until the end of 2013 (!). they used the same footwraps they had used for hundreds of years up through that point. their military is strong, but their ability to project force is nowhere near what it was during the soviet era for a plethora of reasons.
moldova may be up next for annexing, but that doesn't imply european security is threatened, nevermind US security.
I'm almost certain that the above is false, but perhaps you can cite something? Trade, as an easy example, is believed to benefit all participants. A rules-based international order and sufficient international institutions to support it, is believed to benefit all, just as the rule of law is necessary domestically. Specific rules such as human rights, including liberty, the outlawing of war (with exceptions), sovereignty, and others also are believed to benefit all. Those things are not only theory, but they have produced outstanding results: An era of peace and prosperity that is orders of magnitude beyond anything in human history.
There still are zero-sum situations, but that is what the rule of law is for, both domestically and internationally.
your point regarding trade is interesting, but it still falls within the zero-sum selfishness paradigm. trade implies a need which one party helps another to address, so it implies a reduction of autonomy, however small.
i agree that the formation of international institutions and a semblance of world order has allowed states to ease up on pushing every interaction to the limit as a result of the interactions being zero-sum. i also agree that human rights etc benefit the people of the world. i think we should have more systems like these, and we should force states to buy into them even more.
but these things are theoretically inconveniences for governments because they restrict their range of actions. their ability to preserve the power of the state may be threatened in some cases. like i said, thankfully, governments are starting to recognize that these tiny concessions of power can smooth over a lot of relationships with other states without causing any larger problems. yet they are still making concessions of their power.
to be clear, i do not enjoy the idea that international relations are zero sum or that realism is the only way for interstate relationships to be regulated.
it's just the model that most states run on when push comes to shove and their power is deeply threatened. but when conditions are very favorable, they can cover up the unsightly edges of the zero sum game.
Realism is just one school of international relations; based on my limited understanding, it's not the most prominent; constructivism may be (and there are others too).
> your point regarding trade is interesting, but it still falls within the zero-sum selfishness paradigm. trade implies a need which one party helps another to address, so it implies a reduction of autonomy, however small.
Trade implies that the parties each have a comparative advantage in a different area, which is always true.
> these things are theoretically inconveniences for governments because they restrict their range of actions
The logical inference from the quoted comment is that anarchy provides the most freedom of action, but clearly it does not; it greatly restricts action.
International institutions restrict countries' ranges of actions in some cases, and greatly expand them in more. Even the most powerful country, the United States, cannot make and enforce an international rule/law by itself; the United Nations can (though it doesn't always do it).
The weakness of international institutions greatly restricts action on many issues, from health to climate change to resolving Russia's invasion of parts of Ukraine, Syria's civil war, and human rights violations in China (to pick just a few examples of very many).
The Russian invasion of Ukraine should be counted as a success for Russia, rather than a failure; they wanted a buffer zone and have got it. They're operating under the logic that every inch they destroy is an inch the "West" has lost, the same logic that led to Napoleon's defeat.
Same goes for Syria. The goal is to keep the fire burning and refugees fleeing, to prevent the Middle East from stablising in a West-friendly state. Keeping Assad in power is beneficial but not critical to the overall pro-chaos project.
Some articles about refugees returning to Syria and who is even interested in that or rebuilding Syria.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-russia-syr...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-seeks-u-s-help-in-return...
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/return-of-...
The article [1] estimates the number of members of anti-governments on order of tens or hundreds thousands people. You cannot just hire 100 000 people out of nowhere and send then to Syria. Most of them are local people.
the russian invasion of ukraine was an attempt to salvage a geopolitical rout in which the US politically captured ukraine, an area under russia's dominion for roughly a hundred years.
the attempted salvaging has mostly failed; an overtly anti-kremlin government sits in ukraine.
importantly, they have retained the strategically critical hinge point of crimea (militarily one of the doors to control of eurasia), which was the most valuable piece of ground at risk in the entire debacle, independent of the political aspect. note that their access to crimea is now much weaker than it was before because of how close it is to a US-orbit government.
you will notice the difference in importance of the objective by seeing how they did not leave the invasion of crimea up to their proxy/"rebel" forces, which are currently in eastern ukraine. indeed, as soon as it was at risk of being out of their hands, the russian marines were in crimea in force, with only a minimal denial of the effort. the justification for it was invented later.
they were scrambling, and the rough edges of their plan were heavily showing.
the russians are not wantonly destructive. the refugees are indeed helpful for their global position, and they do want to prevent the middle east from entering the western orbit -- you will recall that the US has been cozying up to russia's major client state in the area, iran.
but they don't want chaos. they would prefer it if there were no chaos, at this point. chaos costs them money, increases the chances of them not being able to react to another crisis, and damages the stability of their client states. furthermore, trouble in the middle east ends up coming home to russia fairly frequently thanks to their longstanding conflict with the sunni muslims.
Surely all those countries were just one step from becoming best uncle Sam's friends before Russia came. Right.
You're assuming that "human prosperity" is the game being played, as opposed to "national power", which very much is zero-sum.
Nationalism is a choice, one embraced by the current U.S. administration (and others), but it's not the norm: Since WWII the U.S. has been the leading supporter of internationalism.
put differently: all of the international relations theorism that has been dominant in the last 70 years says that for every inch they gain, we must lose an inch, and vice versa. you could substitute in several other parties like china and say the same thing. this is a good situation for everyone to be in.
the thing to remember is that there are many of these inches trading hands at all times. no major player is about to risk trying to grab a mile or inflicting any kind of serious blow that could be overtly attributed to them as an act warranting retribution. remember, for every effort the players make, it opens them up to opportunism by the others who aren't affected by that effort.
so, russia is, almost by definition, a threat. but that's business as usual, not cause for alarm. the threat is not an existential one, at present.
i'm also of the mind that romney's interpretation of russia being a threat was primarily military in nature rather than political. that interpretation -- implying russia could invade europe or something similar -- was ridiculous at the time, and has been proven false given the difficulty that russia has had in ukraine.