I find worrying that Russia is being cornered into a position they did not consider when engaging in this military action and the consequences of what that might bring.
I think the west is not really trying to de-escalate the conflict and that feels a bit baffling. Also, I feel like a lot of the sanctions are targeting the Russian people as a whole, and because I do know some Russians I can see how tough the situation is turning on them... even though they are as innocent as any other civilian in this war. It is really sad to see so many people celebrate sanctions and so on.
It's a horrible situation! Where is our humanity?
We are now living in truly post-truth world.
We can condemn the Russia invasion without resorting to what is a complete inversion of the facts.
The US, for unexplained reasons, against the opposition of Germany and France has been stoking this fire since the age of the great neocons: Clinton and Bush Júnior and even after then it never really tried to de-escalate the situation or not try to isolate Russia from Europe. This is widely agreed between scholars and diplomats both from the right and from the left. It is not everyday when Chomsky and Kissinger agreed about something like this.
It wasn't the first nor the last attempt at a reset on relations with Russia. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/bush-putin-the-end-of-the...
But why should Russia start a war with Europe then? Please explain.
EU and Russia could be a very strong power, to offset the other powers in the world. But now Russia decided to fuck both EU and Russia. Nice play idiot(s).
But what is the end-game if de-escalation is no longer the goal? Is the West ready to commit to that end-game?
I don't see sanctions, insulation, and supporting Ukraine as military offense. It makes the Russian offensive much more costly though.
Lack of de-escalation is likely to mean further escalation. You can step into defense as you escalate a conflict, but you can't remain in defense forever as a conflict with a nuclear power heats up.
The elephant in the room is not escalation in itself, it's what comes at the end of the road.
If there are currently no attempts at de-escalation, and no one in the West wants to acknowledge that this leads to a nuclear conflict, what is the West actually hoping for?
I won't posture as an international policy expert, but I cannot believe there were no "stronger" responses to the initial seizures that would have prevented Russia from launching the Ukrainian invasion.
Sanctions are a least-politically-risky option for a democracy, from a popular perspective. Putin's takeaway was that he could invade sovereign territory with only an economic response from the west.
If you're going to pursue a course of action that Russia sees as endangering its strategic interests (promoting democracy and NATO membership in states that border Russia), then you need an equally strong threat (from Russia's perspective) to restrain their response.
Putin was too proud to enter NATO the bureaucratic way, he was asked to fill out the form. A big mistake hurting everyone.
Edit: I see a lot of you really struggling with this idea. The good news is you don't have to take my word for it! Please read analysis from both of the mentioned authors and more. They're much better sources than me and other hackernews posters
Do these historians have an answer that what should those countries in east Europe do? Just accept the fate that you will always be a vassal of Russia because you are at the wrong geographical place?
- Option 1: NATO
- Option 2: Vassal of Russia
- Option 3: "buffer state" which means you are free to be destroyed by both the NATO and Russia, see Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia
There is a reason people wants to have a life like "the west" and not like Russia.
Can you elaborate on former Yugoslavia ? Who has destroyed it ?
Edit: I think most of you aren't really engaging with the substance of my comment. The idea being that all this bloodthirst that Russia currently has is due to conditions that we knew about and could have avoided.
Also, Russian government of 1991 =/= Stalin
I mean after 45 years of Soviet occupation of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia etc. didn't know what people expect from those countries. Of course they don't want to see any russians ever again.
Or once again: is it their fate that they always have to be the vassal of Russia just because of their location?
Most of these countries were historically and culturally always closer to Germany, "the west", than Russia.
Since the start 1920s countries in central Europe are in constant fear of Soviet/Russian attack.
That is because it doesn’t have any.
The idea that NATO expansion caused Putin to be have in this manner is simply not a credible argument. The countries of Eastern Europe have the same right to self determination as those of Western Europe, the US or Russia itself. Being an apologist does not make you a substantive debater, it makes you a patsy.
? Yes, Putin has been trying that for 20 years.
Putin + Kremlin believe that Ukraine is 'not a country' and is a 'vassal of Russia'.
Straight up.
They have been actively doing things to support this for a very long time.
See: Yanukovich, the laughably clown dirtbag who is the Belarus/Lukashenko analogue.
Here is a good articulation of the Geostrategic and Historical Russian Nationalism:
(Article was put up by accident in Russia but taken down)
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...
here is the English translation:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z7zQiS-99mhqmJqJ-r-a2MJc...
This is not about 'defence and NATO'.
You are assuming that Russia will stop conquering it's neighbours. Or that it would be a good neighbour if "it was left alone by the west" - what ever that means?
Someone posted the following leaked cable here a while back from 2008
> Comment > 12. (C) Russia's opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is both emotional and based on perceived strategic concerns about the impact on Russia's interests in the region. It is also politically popular to paint the U.S. and NATO as Russia's adversaries and to use NATO's outreach to Ukraine and Georgia as a means of generating support from Russian nationalists. While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990's was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests.
Yes, NATO expansion has been used as an excuse by hawks/imperialists. But given recent experience there is absolutely no base for assuming that they would have had any trouble making up others.
That's not accurate at all - the arrow of cause and effect cannot point backwards in time. The current powers in Russia are largely a result of privitization in Russia in the 90s. This privitization was deeply unfair to the average Russian, and was largely driven by the West's desire to turn Russia away from Communism. The result was the oligarchs and Putin (in charge since 2000). There's still blame for the West here, but NATO expansion came after Russia turned against the West; it wasn't the cause of it.
Putin has been playing this game since day one, he belongs to the group that wants Russia to be imperial again, ie. Right before the bolcheviques. The only “innovation” is he doesn’t see full on invasions alone as a viable option to accomplish that.
I guess I would like some source arguments as to how it was the pushing east, i.e. allowing Nato membership in former eastern bloc countries, that allowed hawks/imperialists to rise to power.
Don't agree.
1) The 'NATO' expansion issue is actually a distraction. This is absolutely not about 'NATO on Russias Borders'. While there is a kernel of truth there, it's used as propaganda.
2) Russia, specifically Putin, has been trying to grab Ukraine back for 20 years. There is 100% legitimacy in the fact UKR/RUS have a special cultural relationship - but - that's skewed through Russian Imperial Chauvinism in that they view Ukraine basically as a vassal. That Chauvinism is probably a couple centuries old.
More recently, we have the Soviet Dystopian Unreality machine, in which the Truth can be manufactured. Putin is using this to great effect, literally making his bid for Conquest into an issue of 'victimhood'. It's all a bit 'Mein Kampfy'.
Putin has been 'very directly intervening' in Ukraine with his laughable stooge Yanukovich for a very long time - rigging elections, killing journalists and protesters, supporting corruption.
The West has definitely been intervening and more or less on 'one side' but it has been a lighter touch - and most importantly - the West will ultimately accept the choice of Ukranians.
Here's the Paradox:
Putin is ex-KGB/Soviet counter intelligence - cynical, repulsive, fearful, skittish + nationalist + authoritarian.
But imagine of Putin was a charismatic man. A great speaker. Someone who talked about 'hope' and 'people'.
Putin has a giant advantage vis-a-vis the West in Ukraine! Ukranians see Russians as 'bretheren'.
If Putin were to have created a 'Positive Russia', messages of hope, clamping down on corruption ... then in 2014 he may literally have been able to give a speech to protesters instead of shooting them.
I have peers in Belarus that can flee to Canada - but they don't want to. They are going to 'Georgia or Latvia' - because it's closer to home. This speaks to their natural cultural ties and choices.
The 2014 'Revolution' was bloody and a lot of young people were just killed.
Police can sometimes get really, really out of hand and that indiscriminate shooting of protesters is something Ukranians will not forget.
When the Russians invade, that's what they know is in the future.
I honestly think that if Dimitri Medvedev came to power, Ukraine would have joined a 'Eurasian Economic Union', Belarus would have dumped Lukashenko.
Literally Putin could have had the Eurasian Union and a more united 'Rus People' by just retiring and shutting his fat mouth.
In reality, every month of Zelenskyj's rule, the country moved further and further away from democracy and closer to autocracy. This is an annoying feature of western geopolitics - despite all the talk about democracy, we always prefer a western-aligned autocrat to any anti-western democratic outcome
Just an excerpt of Zelenskyj's rule:
* banned opposition's TV channels
* urged Apple and Google to remove apps related to those TV channels from app stores, as well as fairly innocuous Russian apps like Yandex (search engine) and vkontaktu (facebook-alike)
* an already atrocious state of minority rights turned even worse in many aspects
* refused Russian COVID vaccines despite having no alternative (this plummeted his approval ratings)
* after seeing Russia-aligned parties leading in the polls, he bypassed the judicial system and froze assets of his main political opponent by a presidential decree, and put him under house arrest
* casually throwing people to jail with accusations of treason, including previous president of Ukraine (democratically elected ethnic Ukrainian), opposition politicians, as well as diplomatic negotiators
and there's much more. As a citizen of a Western country, it's really difficult to get a good picture of the situation. Putin is lying lunatic directly responsible for this war. Zelenskyi is a lying lunatic indirectly responsible for this war. Why are we acting like one of them is a saint?
But we have the present and must deal with the immediate consequences with our best foot forward. The Ukrainian people are blameless and deserve our help - more so because we are partly to blame for not exhausting every option of diplomacy available to us. Please don't try to throw them under the bus.
Let's confront this tragedy while acknowledging context so that we don't make the same mistakes again
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11...
Adding
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russi...
Selective memory, eh. Iraq and Afghanistan like to have word with you about you going outside daily protesting against your country.
Edit: To add, consider the brutal history of British empire and how they invaded, occupied, and looted a large part of the world.
Let's not get into whataboutery. We all know governments are shit. We shouldn't stop arguing for higher standards just because we've been inadequate in the past.
Afghanis hosted a terrorist group that did 9/11.
So the situations are quite different.
That doesn't necessarily justify invasion of either (but it possibly could) - point being those are not Ukraine analogues.
US invading Canada would probably be a better analogy.
And go look what happens when military was withdrawn from Afghanistan. And see how that country looked in 1960s before the Taliban.
Having a blind eye doesnt solve problems.
supplying arms and willing civilians to fight a war = bad Russia 2014
supplying arms and willing civilians to fight a war = good Liz Truss (UK Foreign Secretary) 2022 but before 2022 it was bad
*disclaimer -- both bad
We have been told my entire life that boycotting economies is bad (which is what is going on, this isn't just sanctions) and in some situations discrimination (on grounds of race) but now it's ok.
My brain hurts trying to reconcile these positions.
We just need to end this conflict ASAP and it doesn't help promising to speed run UKR into EU and NATO (even if that's the ultimate goal)
- In 2022 it was good because it was to defend a country from invasion that did not want it
In both cases the underlying reason is the same, defend the will of the people.
What is the underlying argument you are trying to pursue? We should not sanction ordinary Russian people because all governments invade/meddle in other countries not just Russia?
get around a table and talk it out rather than put Ukrainians and Russians in the firing line in an irreversible way -- while we pontificate from relative comfort in the Europe/US -- no one wins from this fighting
FYI: It was criminal as a Brit to fight against IS (the goal of UK) as a civilian
NATO is not only America+GB. It is also, for example, Estonia, Latvia and Poland. All countries that have border common with Russia. It is also Slovakia and Romania - counties that will have border with them if Russia win. These countries don't want to become part of Russia or fall under Russia control again.
And in fact, Germany and France dont want that either, because the would mean having to deal with USSR right there again.
Just visualize what would American response would be if Mexico or Canada considered joining a non-American Security Alliance. We already know how America will respond, when Venezuela brought up joining Russian security alliance, few years ago.
NATO is a relic of Cold War and should have been disbanded when Cold War ended, instead it became a tool for American imperialism expansion, 19 members to 30 members. And, now we are seeing the poisoned fruits of how it is threatening world peace. Ukraine has become an American pawn in geo-political chess.
The problem with those hypothetical situations is that currently they have no reason to do that. If they had reasons, they could outweigh what the US thinks about it - because the US is already the danger.
Or to change that variable on the other side: if Russia want hostile in the first place, there would be no pressure for the expansion. "I increased bullying due to you joining the anti-bullying group" just shouldn't make sense when grown-ups are involved, and yet...
Yep, this is Putin's demand but it's a demand in bad faith as we'll get into in a minute.
> Just visualize what would American response would be if Mexico or Canada considered joining a non-American Security Alliance. We already know how America will respond, when Venezuela brought up joining Russian security alliance, few years ago.
This is just whataboutism. I don't know the details of Venezuela, but it's totally possible the US was in the wrong. Whatever the case, it has no bearing on whether Russia is in the right.
> And, now we are seeing the poisoned fruits of how it is threatening world peace.
This is the meat of my objection, since arguing NATO's a threat to world peace is empirically Russian nationalist nonsense. Between Russia and NATO, one has been militarily invading its neighbors for years now and the other is a purely defensive pact. Which is not to say that NATO is not an arm of American imperialism, but supposing a NATO member state wanted to start an aggressive war against Russia or its allies, NATO would not apply. When the US invaded Iraq, for instance (another popular whataboutism topic from Russian nationalists, but one with more merit than Venezuela IMO), they had to drum up support from allies without being able to invoke NATO. Those allies could have refused to support the invasion.
> Ukraine has become an American pawn in geo-political chess.
On this, however, we can agree.
Shouldn't we at least consider what's their view on this instead of painting everything as big power rivalry? Didn't they democratically choose to apply for EU membership? Considering neighbouring Poland has joined the ranks of high income countries and Ukraine has been stagnating under Russian protection can you blame them? Also, considering the blood ties between Russia and Ukraine before this war why would Ukraine consider joining NATO if it was not afraid of Russia (and still isn't apparently)? I think this line of reasoning of Ukraine pursuing NATO membership before all this started is a bit absurd.
https://freepolicybriefs.org/2018/03/12/polands-road-high-in...
Sure, but these aren't mutually exclusive topics. A terrible blunder on Russia's part may have been the sole catalyst, but that doesn't mean it's not a prime geopolitical opportunity for the US.
NATO is just an excuse, Putin is not interested in an independent Ukraine with western values.
And if you don't think that Ukraine has a say it this whole mess then you are the imperialist.
I shudder to imagine what would the world look like if Russia loses and Ukraine joins NATO. North Korea will be proven right, only way to prevent US and NATO to bully, invade and destroy your country is to have a nuclear warhead on an ICBM pointed at a close US/NATO ally.
About what? No one is trying to invade neither Russia nor north Korea.
If there is anything that was proven is that even if Ukraine would become a strong western ally, as is South Korea, still no one would attack Russia, just like no one is attacking North Korea.
If anything Russia should be extremely wary about following the exact same path as North Korea, turning into a secluded prison state. It's all just extremely sad, and a lose for us all.
Napoleon wasn't cornered when he was losing too.
There is no sane reason to let a bully just take what he wants, since that's exactly what Putin is trying with his threats.
Our humanity is and must be placed squarely on the task of stopping the aggressor.
Authoritarians, dictators and despots do not stop by themselves. They stop only when they are stopped by external forces. They will ALWAYS try the next available outrage and takeover.
Appeasement and de-escalation has been tried, and the only result was yet another nation laid to rubble by Putin. He did not stop after Chechnya. He did not stop after Georgia. He did not stop after Syria. He did not stop after Crimea. He will not stop after Ukraine.
When would you have us stop him? When he is bombing Warsaw? Or should we wait for Paris? How about London? Or should we wait until the rockets are falling in Washington DC? When?
Nuclear blackmail is still blackmail, and it is a fools game to pay the blackmailer.
Moreover, all other authoritarians are watching. If Putin is allowed to succeed in Ukraine, we can be very sure that Xi will go after Taiwan next.
This is literally the fight for the free world. If we do not oppose it and stop it cold, it will continue.
It is better to die standing than live on your knees (but if you want to live on your knees, I'm sure you'll be welcomed).
This is an important observation, the point of the wider sanctions is to pressure the Russian people to push back at their own leaders rather than the West/Europe.
It’s a very tight and difficult line to follow, the ideal outcome is to apply just enough pressure on the citizens of Russia to effect regime change. Starting at the top with applying that pressure to a small number of influential people and moving down to effect more of the population without the push back in the wrong direction.
I hope it works and they don’t go too far.
I feel for all ordinary citizen everywhere effected by this. It’s not their fight they have been drawn into.
The west was ready to talk but Putin's demands to return NATO to what was before 1997 were insane and impossible. It's the same when I say "I want your wife, 50% of your monthly salary and your house. See - I'm ready to negotiate, but these are my demands, if you do don't agree I will take your house by force anyway"
How do you suggest to de-escalate? Putin has attacked another country, what else should we do? Ignore what they are doing and wait until he attacks another one of his neighbours?
You just sound like one of the 'concerned' people who are Putin's trolls or apologists.
Unfortunately there are many of you here in the comments.
On the bright side, Trump did a lot of damage in 4 years but he didn't totally kill us, or the State Department. He demonstrated to our allies that America is not reliable as a principled partner in protecting liberal values, which has the positive effect of spreading the load, and getting others (notably Germany) more involved in common defense.
Russia only needs to stop the war and withdraw their troops, and sanctions will go away in no time.
There is no way Ukraine will become pro-Russian any time in the future, though, but that's obviously on Putin. It's hard to win the hearts and minds of people by bombing them and occupying their country. Maybe Putin should have asked the US about their experiences with that before ordering the invasion of Ukraine.
And Moldova is next. We also do nothing when Russians do the same to Moldova?
At some point, you will have to draw the line: here and no further.
And now me made a very clear statement: if you invade another country, you lose all benefits that we provide, and we lose all benefits you provide. It's just that the benefits that we provide seem bigger than the other way around.
He has no interest in deescalation, except maybe having all of Eastern Europe bow to his rule. Should the west kick the baltic states out of NATO too to appease Russia?
NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg press conference a few days ago:
From correct time: https://youtu.be/JvxqTGrZxwQ?t=64
Partial quote as of time above:
"...The Kremlin objectives are not limited to Ukraine. Russia has demanded legal binding agreements to renounce further NATO enlargement. And remove troops and infrastructure from allies that joined after 1997..."
He said something similar about Crimea being part of the "historical Russia" and now Ukraine too.
It doesn't take much research to know how the russians feel about the Soviet Union..just ask them!
About Trust: >> The Kremlin has said Russia has no plans to launch a fresh attack on Ukraine and that the West appears to have convinced itself of Moscow's aggressive intentions based on what it calls false Western media stories.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-colla...
(And that other Soviet leaders betrayed Russia by allowing the Soviet Union to fall.)
Putin’s propaganda justifications for his wars of aggression aren't particularly coherent, but I don't think they are intended to form a logical theory of history so much as a powerful emotional appeal that neither invites nor rewards intellectual analysis.
I think we are in danger of applying the wrong lesson from history.
People today say you cannot be a "Putin apologizer", or that looking for reasons for Putin's behavior was a form of "appeasement".
People who say these things believe they have learned from history. They look back at Hitler in 1938. Czechoslovakia. Austria. And, finally, Poland.
They look back at England and France, who, not wanting to risk war, sought ways to "appease" Hitler. And by doing that, they lost valuable time and allowed Hitler to grow stronger, making the situation much worse for the world.
Now, people are drawing the conclusion: "You should never try to appease a dictator!"
But I'd argue that this is the wrong conclusion.
What backfired back then is not that England and France tried to appease Hitler. What backfired was that the leaders of England and France grotesquely misread Hitler and his goals.
Their mistake was not that they tried to understand Hitler's motives. Rather, their mistake was precisely that they failed to accurately understand his motives. They did not do too much understanding. They did too little.
This is why the English public finally turned to Churchill. Because Churchill actually "grokked" Hitler:
He had formed an accurate mental model of Hitler's motives.
Did that make Churchill into a "Hitler apologist"? Not at all. Instead, it allowed him to accurately predict Hitler's next moves. It allowed him to predict that making territorial concessions to this man would never help to guarantee peace long-term.
Churchill was actually one of the few European leaders who had troubled to read "Mein Kampf". He also read the books written by Sebastian Haffner, a German who had chronicled his life under Hitler from inside Germany.
Whereas the others sought to resolve the situation by ignoring and disengaging, Churchill engaged with Hitler's thoughts. And he did so intimately and with a grave sense of personal responsibility for the outcome of this conflict (even though he did not start it).
When I see people today saying they cannot stand Putin, and therefore they don't want to hear what he says, because it's all lies and propaganda anyway, that worries me.
Even if Putin was a Hitler 2.0 (which is very doubtful, since History rarely repeats itself and reasoning by analogy often leads to spectacular failures), then that would mean that we should pay even more careful attention to his motives, and not less. We should pay even more careful attention on the outside contingencies and the mental frameworks that drive Putin's actions, and not less.
Nietzsche has said, "If you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into you." And it almost seems that people are afraid of precisely that. They almost think that by not acknowledging a thing they don't like, it will go away.
Those who have been warning about a war in Ukraine have correctly pointed out that this strategy will not only not work. But that it will backfire.
So the true lesson from 1938 is not that one should "never negotiate with dictators".
The true lesson is that you have to make an effort to face the other party's viewpoint. To make an effort to understand the true motives, without any fear of what you might find.
That includes the fear of finding out that your own behavior might have contributed to the status quo. You need to let go of your comforting beliefs -- that things will "sort themselves out", that it's "just the other party's fault", that there's "nothing to learn or understand" because you already know exactly what the other party is really after, etc..
What made Churchill great, in my view, is that he was able to overcome all of those comforting beliefs. People respected him because he would tell them not what they would have liked to hear, but what they needed to know, and needed to face.
I think this is very, very different from what we're seeing today from our own leaders.
Our leaders are posturing. They claim that the inconvenient truth is that "Putin is worse than we thought", and that the necessary sanctions will require "sacrifices from all of us".
They try to sound like a Churchill. But they make no effort to be one. They imitate the outside posture, but they totally miss the inner essence.
Scholz said something very revealing. He said to Putin during that recent press conference (and I'm paraphrasing), "What do you care about Ukraine and NATO? It's not going to happen anytime during our terms of office anyway".
That isn't Churchill. That's Chamberlain.
Still I'm very sceptical about sanctions that affects mostly innocent and poorest people and destabilise overal economy that is already very fragile. Just look at the history, what happened after Spanish influenza and escalated in 1928. Today, with technology all this could happen again but much more quickly.
Even more I'm worried about censorship. What make our values differnet if we implement exactly same politic that we fight against?
It is one thing if you have to be afraid that a Goebbels or Putin manipulates public opinion. But if it should turn out that it's people's craving for easy answers itself that leads to the emergence of mass delusions, then that would be much, much scarier.
In my country, one week ago private DNS provider CZ.NIC blocked 12 "disinformation" websites - it is probably more now. There was no law, no definition. Just private decision about few sites that was propagandistic from Russia. My question is... If we do not have definition of disinformation (who has patent on truth anyway?), then should we allow commercial TV's stream for example Putin's speeches?
Tech has increased our ability to spread messages. But what it has not increased is our ability to validate those messages.
In a sense, we have perverted the original idea of the computer. The computing pioneers of the 1950s and 60s saw the computer as a tool to help us deal with the complexity of the world's problems [1]. What we have focused on instead is to use computers to make our information landscape even more complex than it already was.
It is very telling to look at our advances in A.I.. GPT-3, for instance, can produce massive amounts of pausible sounding content. But what it cannot do is verify a piece of information.
That, right there, is our problem in a nutshell. We've already seen it play out in Trump, and in Covid. And we're going to see it play out in many, many more ways in the years to come.
[1] Doug Engelbart, I believe, had this system in the 1960s. He had the idea that organizations would input all their knowledge into that system. And the system would then help them draw connections, show them gaps in their knowledge, make predictions, give them suggestions on what questions to ask or experiments to run, etc.. He believed that, eventually, such a system could be used at a global scale. So that, ideally, no human would ever again waste his time trying to solve a problem that has already been solved by someone else, no matter where or when. And that we as a species would, instead, be able to focus all of our intelligence on those questions and problems that are yet unsolved.
Putin is not some new piece on the table and this is not his first move, he done many moves so far and somewhere a line must be drawn.
I understand though that some people far away from this region would be happy to sacrifice Ukraine,Moldova maybe some Nordic countries just to keep Putin happy a few more years, but when do we say: enough, we don't want to do business with war criminals, we don't want to kiss killers asses anymore. Sure the innocent Russian citizens will suffer but that is preferable.
What is your solution though? And what countries would you sacrifice? How many people would be enough for you to say "I won't send our kids to fight but maybe I could be OK not to do business with this criminals" ?
First of all, I think we're on the same page in terms of what we want here. We want to end or, even better, avoid war. And we also do not want to encourage dictators, or let them get away with "salami tactics", i.e. taking one piece by force after another, each one small enough that nobody will bother to make them pay for it.
And I can tell you: When I first heard about this invasion, I also immediately thought of Hitler and Czechoslovakia in 1938. Hitler, back then, had sensed that Britain and France like to talk of peace and of the souvereignity of nations etc.. But that, deep inside, they are really way too comfortable to get involved in yet another war. And Hitler guessed correctly.
And I, too, thought that Putin might be thinking the same thing. That we are way too busy with Bitcoin and gender issues than to get our hands dirty for some slavic country that most of us couldn't find on a map.
So I can actually relate to the thought that such action needs to have immediate consequences. Not just to put Putin back into line, but to also send a signal to any other dictator now or in the future.
So if Putin was a Hitler 2.0, I'd agree with your prescription here.
I just think two things are different:
First, nukes. Even Churchill would have acted very differently if Hitler would have had nuclear weapons. That changes the entire equation. Outright conflict just isn't an option anymore in this situation. You have to find a compromise. Or, if the other party truly is a monster, like Hitler, and a compromise is completely out of the question (that is to say, not because of your own ego, or because it would mean sacrifices, but because it would mean an unbearable humanitarian disaster like the Holocaust), then you need to get this person removed, as fast as possible, AND ensure that nobody even worse is going to take his place.
Secondly, I don't think Putin is a Hitler. Yes, he is a dictator. Yes, he has invaded a souvereign country. And yes, he puts political enemies in prison. But that is what dictators do. And to claim that any dictator is equal to Hitler is to belittle Hitler's crimes.
You ask what I suggest as a way out of the current conflict. I have to say, I haven't paid any attention to Russia until a week ago. Until that time, all I knew about Ukraine was that there apparently are lots of beautiful women and that it's a popular place for digital nomads (a correlation that I'm sure is just coincidental). So I really do not have any "solution".
But the most reasonable thing I have heard, so far, is the suggestion by Mearsheimer, that NATO and Russia agree that Ukraine will be a neutral state. Kinda like Switzerland. So no NATO membership. But also no Russian influence.
Now I get that you could say, "But what if the Ukrainians want to join NATO? Isn't that their right?". But I mean, that's what a compromise is about. Everybody has to make some concessions. And, as far as I know, the main reason for Ukraine wanting to join NATO is as an endurance against a Russian invasion. Which such an arrangement would ensure just as well.
If I would see that "our guys" are making such offers to Putin, but Putin turns them down -- either for no reason at all, or for reasons that are obvious excuses -- then I'd be a lot more convinced that de-escalation of the conflict actually wasn't possible.
But I'm not hearing anything about such offers being made. I would assume that, if they were made, and Putin rejected them, it would be all over the news.
What do you mean learning from history? The historic parallels to another leader are so overwhelming that I'm not even going to point them out to you.
Their "viewpoint" is that other, free, people should be forced with violence to bow to his will.
History is famed for repeating itself and analogies are a powerful tool, some (Lakoff) even asserting that they are the core of cognition. That's the entire premise behind "learning from history". When a dictator starts invading his European neighbors while ranting about building an empire and restoring former glory, it is difficult to come to a different conclusion than Churchill did about Hitler.
I also think it is crucial to see the whole picture, and to take counter positions into account e.g. this [1] interesting talk by John Mearsheimer.
It is not only Russia that lost its position in the world, the West has been playing contradictionary set of games in the last two decades as well: The events in Iraq and Afghanistan, the approach that outsourcing of production and technology for short term capital gains that was sold as an act that will bring the world together and not carry any risk in the form of a shift of industrial and military dominance.
How did you come up with your position? Are you a pol.sci., or history aficionado?
While I don't have any deep insight what actually drove Churchill what you described to the be an almost inquisitive research on Hitler's motives, I do think that he was able to see beyond the first level array of interests of his political class and understood the second order and long term implications for the British Empire and the European society as a whole when it came to let fascist take power on the continent. I always thought it was not morals that drove him, but a strong sense of Realpolitik and political opportunity. He had the same reasons to be wary of the terror in Russia - an antagonistic system to the British order and tradition... it was just that they were the enemy of his enemy and thus a very useful ally that turned out to be critical for the war effort.
[1] #UChicago Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
> While I don't have any deep insight what actually drove Churchill what you described to the be an almost inquisitive research on Hitler's motives, I do think that he was able to see beyond the first level array of interests of his political class and understood the second order and long term implications for the British Empire and the European society as a whole when it came to let fascist take power on the continent.
I agree. And it seems to me that precisely this "seeing beyond" the immediate future, and paying attention to second order effects is suspiciously missing from public discourse, at least on the Western side.
You ask why viewpoints like this get downvoted. I don't know either. If I had to guess, I think it might have to do with the fact that most of us are overloaded with information and with decisions. We cope by employing a "swipe left" strategy, where we feel relieved if we can find a reason to dismiss a piece of input quickly without exerting too much energy on it. So we can get on to the next thing that needs to be dealt with.
Also, it's not very satisfying to most people if new questions are being raised without a clear-cut answer being provided. In a sense, it's almost as if that's inflicting a form of psychological pain -- creating an open loop with no resolution.
A few years back I had the opportunity to have a chat with the grandson of C.G. Jung, the psychologist. I asked him what he remembered as the most striking trait of his grandfather. And he said that it was C.G. Jung's ability to "stay with the tension" of two competing narratives. His ability to stay with a question without succumbing to the urge of arriving at a conclusion.
The same I have heard being said about Peter Thiel. And when I read biographies of Churchill, or JFK, I see that same trait as well.
And it's a trait that we, as the internet generation, seem to be losing. Because it's just so easy to swipe left and say, "Next!" That's why it sometimes feels as if you were talking to GPT-3. Use a few wrong keywords, and the reaction is pre-determined.
That being said, I also understand that, while we are philosophizing, people are losing their homes, or even their lives. So if someone has these pictures in mind, and they come across a post like this one, it can easily make them angry.
Even my own wife gave me the "stare of death" when I began voicing my concerns. She's not a random stranger on the internet. She loves me, and she knows me for more than a decade. And still, when I started speaking my mind about this topic, she initially resisted heavily, because it sounded to her as if I was somehow "on Putin's side". That's just how the human brain works, I guess. But the thing is: We only ended up having a conversation because she stayed with me on this, and actually heard me out. Random people on the internet are not going to do this. And for the same reason, if you are a newspaper, or a blogger, or a YouTuber, you would need to be very, very careful. Because if you say something that triggers that "stare of death" in your listeners, they will not hear you out. They will "swipe left" - or worse.
Actually, this dynamic of our internet-driven media is beginning to give me the chills. There is this part in Sebastian Haffner's account about living inside Hitler's Germany where he describes how intellectually isolated he became. All of his friends from university became Nazis. All stimulating books were banned. And so, if you had any doubts, any questions, or any dissenting views, you became a prisoner in your own head.
We are still very far from such a reality. Russia is a lot closer to that. But still, I would guess that there are probably many people who have views that are different from what is being -- reflected? No -- fed to us in the media. But they are going to keep quiet. Because they see that you cannot take any chances. They are afraid not of being wrong. That would be easy. That might actually be a relief. No, what they are afraid of is that people are going to "swipe left" on them, not because of anything they really meant, but because one other person did not hear them out and drew some grotesque conclusion.
I normally try to stay as far away from politics as I can. I also never paid any attention to Russia. It is not a country I am interested in. And when the news about the invasion hit, my own thoughts also immediately went to Hitler, and to Czechoslowakia.
The thing is: I just couldn't find an answer on what the hell Putin actually wants in Ukraine. It just didn't make any sense to me. As far as I know, the man practically owns Russia. Nobody knows his precise net-worth, but it doesn't seem like there is anything he could not buy if he wanted to. So self-enrichment hardly can be a motive.
Also, starting a war is a very dangerous move. He is putting his own power on the line. Not only is he giving the western world more reasons and more urgency to depose of him. But he's also risking a revolution from inside his own country.
And whereas the other statesmen just care about the term they are elected for, Putin practically "is" Russia (or at least he sees it that way). He is not merely putting other people's blood and money on the line. He has got to have a really strong motive for this.
Now, Hitler had such a motive. His motive was that he thought himself to be the chosen one to "free" Europe from an imagined "oppression by the Jews", and to build an Arian empire that should last for a thousand years. That was a lunantic motive, of course. But it was there, plain to see and hear for anybody who would pay attention.
(We can forgive those who read it and dismissed it as "not to be taken literally". Just imagine somebody predicting the Holocaust before the Holocaust actually happened. People would have laughed at you. But for us, who come after Hitler, that excuse is no longer valid.)
So for me, that thing about NATO and the U.S. missile defense system really does make a lot of sense. I've read a lot about JFK. And one of the big insights that JFK had was that in a world where nuclear weapons exist, world peace depends on an equilibrium of both powers having them.
If Putin is afraid that his country's nuclear deterrent is being "castrated" by an expanding NATO, that can hardly be counted as "just a pretext".
And there's also the human element. Posner talks about this in his talk at Yale [1]. The Russians want to be taken seriously. Let's not forget: They were the ones who paid the highest price in WW2. And they eventually lost out in the Cold War. We know from Germany what this can do to a country's psyche.
And Putin has, as I hear, voiced his concerns about NATO at Russia's borders frequently. He has pointed out that the West had broken promises that were made when Russia pulled out of Germany in 1990.
And now here we have this crisis. People are being killed. Homes are being destroyed. Families are being ripped apart. And we have our leaders fly to the Kremlin and hold six hour talks with Putin. But what I'm not hearing is that the concerns Putin has voiced and which look to be quite likely a major motive for his current actions are being addressed.
Instead, it is being said that Putin's fears about NATO expansion are unfounded, because Ukraine isn't going to join anytime soon, anyway. In other words, his concerns are being dismissed.
That's basically like when your wife has been complaining for years that you spend too little time with her. And now she's about to divorce you, which you claim you absolutely want to avoid. And what do you do? You tell her that her concerns are unreasonable. That she has no reason to complain.
I can tell you exactly how this story is going to end. If John Gottman had written a guide on How to Seed Distrust, Break A Relationship and Make Life Miserable for Everybody, this would be it.
In fact, Gottman has a term for what the West is doing with Russia: Stonewalling. "It's all your fault, I've got nothing to do with it, and I'm not even going to listen to you any longer. Or I'll just pretend to be listening, but then turn around and tell everything you just said to me to my friends to prove just how crazy and unreasonable you are."
Thas is not de-escalation. I don't want to call it "provocation", because I don't want to take agency away from Russia (that would be ridiculous). But somewhere, somebody must have been able to predict that this kind of behavior is going to increase the likelihood of Putin doing something stupid and dangerous.
I'm grateful for places like HN where thoughts like these can be discussed. Because, frankly, the possibility of this thing escalating into WWIII concerns all of us. And once that happens, the question "Who started it?" or "Who is to blame?" will have become totally meaningless.
I mean, whose fault was WWI? I think not even the historians can tell at this point. And with WWII, it surely is a lot easier to say who started it. But at the same time, with hindsight, it is also obvious how Hitler could have been stopped early on. Perhaps as early as Versailles.
I understand that that kind of reasoning doesn't make for as good as a Disney movie where it's just that one bad person out there that needs to be overcome. But then again, hasn't C.G. Jung shown that even such stories are just symbols? That the evil we see personified "out there" might very well be something inside of us? Some fear, some desire to be right, to exert power, to blame, to fit in, to be comfortable -- or even just to have all the answers.
very interesting and thoughful post touching a full spectrum of topics. Please let me come back to you this week - my schedule is full, and I need time to digest what you wrote.
Cheers!
Have a good week!
There is an interview from today from Durão Barroso that was President of the European Commission for two terms. He says in 2014 Putin told him: "I could take Kiev in 2 weeks if I wanted to"
https://www.portugalresident.com/durao-barroso-warns-we-cant...
https://expresso.pt/internacional/entrevista-durao-barroso-l...
Q:"What has changed? has Putin changed?"
A:"...Some say that the man himself has changed: has Putin changed or the situation? Both things changed. President Putin, whom I knew until 2014, was the leader outside the EU I met the most. My office counted 25 times. But what has changed is, above all, his perception of the circumstances. The Putin I knew was a person with a deep resentment against Russian decadence. He himself said publicly that the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the collapse of the USSR, not because of the collapse of communism, but because many Russians were left outside their homeland, and their Russian citizenship was not recognized. He's a man deeply scarred by resentment, but he's also someone who made rational calculations in terms of weighing the costs and benefits of each decision, and tactically seeing how far he could go..."
BTW. Moscow was part of Ukrainian (Kievan Rus'), should they go and start a "special miltary operation" to "free Moscow"?
NATO exists to deal with the problems Russia is creating.
We in Estonia wouldn't need NATO if Russia wasn't such a pain in the ass all the time, attacking it's neighbours, bullying with random stuff.
For example - they randomly start "repairs" of a railway line on their border that.. maybe haven't finished after a decade, to mess with our logistics sector.
They suddenly want to "inspect" (and stop imports from) all meat producers here that exported to Russia after our government made some decision they didn't like.
If Russia was a nice and friendly neighbour, then we could be friends and have good trade relationships etc. Instead they have been bullying it's neighbours for decades and complained that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a disaster that needs to be fixed and so on.
And now you tell us that we should not be in NATO?
Sorry about that. I didn't know about it. I see similar behaviour from China. If they see a political decision that they do not like, they suddenly increase import inspections or deny imports for arbitrary reasons. It feels like they are cheating WTO rules.
Again a comment that subtly blames the West.
This is not a proxy war. The only war right now is an unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Where in my comment am I blaming anyone? Tone down the paranoia.
Russia invaded, the West can't help Ukraine without causing WW3, so they're by sending all they can to the Ukrainian people, praying they win and Putin kills himself or someone does it for him. This is called a proxy war. I can understand it might be a bit hard to categorize as such, but there is no blame anywhere.
But Putin's appetite is not satisfied and once he has 'won' Ukraine (or whatever remains standing there) for sure he will push on. Moldavia was apparently already on the menu, I can easily see another sortie from Belarus into any one of the Baltics (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia in that order). This is far from over.
This was always true, even when Western leaders said otherwise. Some people in Ukraine learned from the examples of Georgia (and Hungary). Others did not.
I remember one Nuclear Weapons specialist commenting once in a interview, that he worried about the fact that the new generation of Politicians had never seen a Nuclear explosion. And that might make it easier to even contemplate the possibility of using it. The previous generation was still alive before the Nuclear Arms Tests ban and seen the tests. They knew the horrifying scenarios they imply.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO ( yet?). But it's a neighbour+trade partner.
"A proxy war is an armed conflict between two states or non-state actors which act on the instigation or on behalf of other parties that are not directly involved in the hostilities. In order for a conflict to be considered a proxy war, there must be a direct, long-term relationship between external actors and the belligerents involved. The aforementioned relationship usually takes the form of funding, military training, arms, or other forms of material assistance which assist a belligerent party in sustaining its war effort." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war
I see much more cooperation now to say: "it's enough." Merkel led Germany always preferred trade before blaming. Increase trade with a malicious actor and it will work out in the end.
There's a huge shift currently happening and if you didn't realize it yet. The position of Putin was one of weakness, not of strength and the west knows this.
And it's not a proxy war, Russia is literally invading a country.
Ukraine doesn't prefer the Russian model to keep people poor and stupid, so they wouldn't protest.
Are you saying Europe and US and NATO aren't scared shitless of what's going on in Ukraine? I am. Still, what's happening is the definition of proxy war, and I don't see the point of discussing semantics.
The recent western model is one of the most debilitating model mankind has ever known.
Putin is the richest in Russia. I think that says more than what you are claiming ( without proof).
And the politicians in the west are in the hands of the richest.
I’m not saying Russia is better. Only that the west is dumber and dumber. Less and less educated.
We should not be arrogant.
Which metrics are you even using? It's not universities for sure.
50% of Russia is under propaganda and can't even talk English. The ones that can speak English and have engineering degrees, a large part of them are currently fleeing Russia. The other halve doesn't even know what is going to hit them ( jobs, economy, ... ).
Favorite destination seems to be Europe, Canada, US, ... According to what I see in preferences of resumees. And I'm seeing a lot of resumees coming in.
Turkeye and Georgia is pretty popular too, but I'd think it's easier to get there too ( flights), could be wrong about this though.
Edit: removed links to 3 GitHub resumees of Russian engineers uploaded within the last 2 hours ( in English). From engineers that worked at zg. Google/Yandex and want to get out of the country.
I’m talking about huge IQ drops. About the language skills in all the western world. Just listen to cnn, fox news, to the charts’ lyrics and so forth. It’s staggering.
Also, speaking English is in no way a prerequisite for a good education.
Fyi. I speak dutch, french, English.
I'm able to communicate in German and I understand Spanish a bit (pero no habla ).
Most people here speak at 2-3 languages by default.
So I would say it counts as education level :)
And while we are discussing the sex of the angels as byzantines, to an incredible toxic degree, even in our top universities, we might lose some clout.
Also: I know some elders who read Cicero in Latin but do not speak English.
Classical teachings matter.
[0] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/14/yelt-j14.html
I remember all the breathless headlines when Trump and Kim Jong-un were trading barbs that nuclear war could happen any time.
Now its Putin whose the unpredictable madman or whatever.
So far Russia has shown they don't care. They will take this war as far as they can, to make the casualties they have already sustained "worth it". A deconfliction hotline is only as good as the parties on either end and Putin isn't exactly arguing or negotiating in good faith.