Autocrats can hold power for a very long time with the asymmetric tools of oppression and control we have that are only getting more advanced with each passing version upgrade.
And the more we cut a country and its people off from the rest of the world, the easier it is for the autocrat to maintain control.
71% welcomes all sorts of isolation, sanctions. They don’t care if tomorrow all western companies shut down business in Russia. “Iran has coped, so do we”.
All currently imposed sanctions hurt neither Putin nor his “electoral base”.
Around 20% of the population in Russia are intelligent and educated people who don’t support that shit. Just because it is absolute bonkers to invade another country.
Those 20-25% are badly beaten by sanctions. And they are fleeing Russia, or trying to restructure their businesses and lives in the new distopian reality.
The majority of what is being imposed on Russia right now affects the vulnerable middle class in Russia. And they have two options: immigrate or (if immigration is not an option) shut their mouth and deal with the orwellian reality.
Yeah, this is strictly not true.
As for WW3, what kind of WW3 do you imagine? What kind of multi-system war would that be? One where China and Saudi Arabia is standing with Russia? If Russia flies nukes then they will lose what little support they have in the world.
I suppose really all of this stuff takes place behind closed doors anyway and what we're seeing on the news is total bollocks.
This can go on for a very long time.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria
Russia has made this clear since the collapse of the Soviet Union. They invaded Ukraine after the Ukrainian coup in 2014. In theory, this made it impossible for Ukraine to join NATO. And yet here they are pushing (or being pushed by the US) to join NATO, despite knowing this will 100% begin WWIII.
So yes, the answer is what it always was. Ukraine can't join NATO, if they want peace with Russia. This is not a mystery.
And keep in mind the Ukrainian constitution forbade this as well, until the coup/revolution in 2014, and the further laws passed recently bringing this closer to reality all but guaranteed a Russian response.
I do not think the US would invade Mexico as a result. How do you think the US would respond?
As someone who lived under Soviet occupation, we never had any doubt which one is the evil empire. Joining NATO is just good sense for countries unlucky enough to be geographically close to Russia. One does not just live next to Mordor.
The issue is for the good of the world, they can't be allowed to join NATO. If the price to pay to avoid WWIII is that Ukraine just doesn't join NATO, that's worth it. It worked for years. Clearly Russia views it as a direct threat, since NATO is really just an extension of the US military.
The price to stop Putin in 2014 would've been a local war with NATO losses. The price to stop him now is to risk walking the nuclear line. The price to stop him in another 10 years will be guaranteed nuclear war.
The price in 2014 was just to not overthrow the democratically elected government in Ukraine, and rewrite the Constitution to change their stance on joining NATO. What is the value in skipping past that part and pretending it doesn't matter?
No, Ukrainians knew why they took it down. Eastern European people are not so easily fooled, we see quite easily through Russian deception and propaganda.
We've had threats of nuclear annihilation and proxy wars literally for decades, the world didn't start in the 90s. Go watch some TV commercials from the 70s and 80s.(https://youtu.be/F0OPVi90-lg), this is how most of the latter half of the 20th century looked like.
There's no reason to instinctively flinch every time someone in the Kremlin or in Beijing throws a tantrum. Leadership in China and Russia responds to strength and making countries pay a price for moving borders violently is going to make the world more stable.
The US and Europe aren't going to get nuked, where do you think the children of all those leaders live right now? You think they're gonna glass their own kids in those fancy apartments in Rotterdam, London or New York? It's just bluster.
China is getting to the point where it doesn't need the West, but it definitely needs resources to feed growth.
The world doesn't care who's in power so much as we care about what they do.
>Is the idea that we just say "right, that's it, Russia is isolated forever now" and there we are?
The idea is negative reinforcement. You get the belt until you stop doing the bad thing. Whether it's Putin or some other person, as long as they continue bombing, we continue sanctions. When they stop, we will likely stop. In fact, us stopping and them stopping will likely be brokered in a single deal.
> e.g. "we" showed that trade doesn't work, so instead we go for a kind of indefinite containment strategy?
Trade works just fine. It works so well, that not having it is a punishment.
> It just feels like a really stupid path to go down in my view because once you eliminate interdependence via trade you've now removed another barrier to Russia just deciding to take another country.
It won't stop hurting the Russian economy. Trade isn't just a bilateral political tool, it has real benefits to both parties. No matter how long you go without it, you will miss it.
> Once you get to the point at which the Russian state sees loss of their own territory as being a declaration of war, I don't see anything other than full blown WW3 being on the table. If anyone tries to reclaim Crimea, the Donbass, or in a few weeks maybe other parts of Ukraine-now-Russia by force, SHTF.
That's not really an action the western world is taking, so not sure what the criticism here is. "Russia has nukes, so if they want something we have to let them take it"?
> I feel like all of this is getting lost in accusations of propaganda or being on the right side of history or whatever else. There seems to be no realistic climbdown being presented, if Russia fully pull out tomorrow, what do they get back and when?
There is a ton of propaganda, but there are two very obvious climbdowns. Either Russia backs down, and so does the western world, or they don't and they continue to pay a huge economic price for an indeterminant (but likely not indefinite) amount of time. I'd bet my money we wind up in one of those two scenarios.
> Are governments even in control of this any more or has Moloch taken it and gone for a run?
I don't get the reference, but I don't think things are in as much of a tailspin as you seem to think. I could definitely be wrong, but I don't see a good case for that at the moment.
My point is that I'm not sure this is even in the hands of governments any more. A state can withdraw jets, it can't deal with hundreds of companies pulling out entirely, a collapsed stock market, etc.
Basically you can't actually unwind the sanctions, just like you can't unbomb a Ukrainian village. If it gets bad enough then there's surely a point of no return somewhere.
The longer things go on, the higher the perceived risk will be for companies returning, but there will always be an incentive for companies to return to take advantage of arbitration opportunities, considering Russia's depressed state. Whether they back down sooner, later, or never, is just risk companies need to price in when doing business there. Changes in the risk will change the benefits to the Russian people, and the profiles of the companies that show up in their markets, but hell, even Indonesia gets trade.
There is never a point of no return, not so long as Russia has a resource to trade.
The devil is in the details. What does "us stopping and them stopping will likely be brokered in a single deal" mean? What about the scenario where Russia doesn't care about the West and continues to occupy Ukraine for months, maybe years, in the future? What happens if Ukraine capitulates? What are our answers for every scenario that could potentially happen? Right now I see a lot of "we apply pressure Until They Stop (TM)" but I don't see where "Until They Stop (TM)" ends unless we're planning to enter another Cold War where we sever communications with Russia forever.
It means a single agreement would outline both conditions. Not sure what isn't clear there.
> What about the scenario where Russia doesn't care about the West and continues to occupy Ukraine for months, maybe years, in the future?
I believe I commented on that exact scenario: "sanctions would continue for an indeterminant (but likely not indefinite) time."
> Right now I see a lot of "we apply pressure Until They Stop (TM)" but I don't see where "Until They Stop (TM)" ends unless we're planning to enter another Cold War where we sever communications with Russia forever.
Seeing as how we didn't sever communications with the USSR forever in the first Cold War, I doubt that'd be a thing we did in the second. Like with everything else, we'd keep punishing them until we stop feeling the need. Right now there is a need: maybe it pulls them off of Ukraine. If that winds up not happening, maybe we keep them going for a while as punishment. Its a pretty simple give and take.
Right, so here "indeterminant" is the "devil in the details". Is this the matter of days? Weeks? Months? Years? Decades? Sanctions are always a calculated risk. Their goal tends to be to destabilize regimes by making it difficult for members of the regime to move money or otherwise live their lives, placing hopefully direct pressure on the regime itself. But if the regime feels comfortable staying the course despite the sanctions, then what are we achieving here? I'm not against sanctions and I think sanctions are a necessity for modern diplomacy; but they need to have a clearly understood end goal in mind. Right now there seems to be a lot of moralizing and very little actual game theory in an escalating conflict with a nuclear power. Is the end game here to morally shame Russia or is it to end this conflict?
> Seeing as how we didn't sever communications with the USSR forever in the first Cold War
Communications between citizens of the West and the USSR was effectively severed for the duration of the Cold War. That's the question. Is the end game of these sanctions to start another Cold War or not?
End game as in intent, or end game as in result?
The intent is stopping the war in Ukraine. The result remains to be seen.
Simple, get Russia to stop killing Ukrainians and invading their country.
> if Russia fully pull out tomorrow, what do they get back and when
Anyway judging by their performance in Ukraine, I'm not convinced they have enough shit left in them to reach a fan. Who's to say their nukes work any better than their air force?
I think Ukraine should demand more than returning to the pre-invasion state. I don't know exactly what, but it seems like they should shoot for some verifiable changes in Russia's government, laws, military, or the like, and tie them to milestones for sanction reduction. If nothing else, that might help anchor negotiations in Ukraine's direction.
What if the west is certain they can take down their land based launch sites? What if they only need to concern themselves with the submarines? What if the west knows where those are? (Sonar has had huge developments 1990-$NOW) What if sonar technology has developed to a point the west have a fix on 50% of Russian subs? What then?
MAD only works if MAD means MAD, not if MAD means 50% assured destruction... The loss of life, wealth and security if one side of this insane pact ever lets down their part of the deal...
Russia has to be severely penalized so that they or others don’t repeat the same actions in the future.
For example Chechnya is in Russia only as long as Russia transfers huge money there. Many other regions are somewhat similar.
>The idea that the populace will rise
The populace doesn't matter. The Russian elite got used to a comfortable life of mini-Gods, and they might finally decide that they don't want to go down with Putin, and instead they may want to just give up Putin and let the populace work to pay the damage to Ukraine while they are back into their London mansions.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/08/sancti...
Everyone keeps talking WW3 but the more I think about it the less worried I become. I think the only real risk to that is if Putin literally is an irrational mad man. As in he is hell bent on destroying the west even if the price is his own country and maybe the world. This is possible but not that likely. When you follow that logic he also isn't likely to go after a NATO country and expand the war because he can't win and rational people want to win. It's entirely possible that the yes men he has built into the Kremlin told him this whole thing was going to be a cake walk because they were afraid to tell him otherwise and had no idea. He may want this to end as much as the next guy but now needs to save face and show something for the massive problems that he created.
I think the theory goes like this: Putin going down is a way out, and there are younger, hungrier deadly men in the military, and really scary oligarchs and gangsters with the resources to give Putin a good fight. He can't unilaterally initiate nuclear conflict, because Russia put competent people and rules in place to avoid self-destruct failure modes. The idea is that the world makes it clear that the choices are massive conflict, up to and including nuclear, or taking Putin down. This puts Putin in the place between Russian rock and the nato hard place, giving him the option of backing down.
If Putin just doesn't give a fuck anymore, if he is ill or just feeling like it's time to go out in a blaze of glory, we'll see what other actions the geniuses in power decide on.
I do too. This is being played tactically rather than strategically. The knife of thermonuclear war will still be there in 5 years and in 50 years. If we cave to it, we lose in the long term:
- Russia will do whatever it wants, until it crosses a line where we're drawn into WWIII; or - Other countries develop nuclear programs, if it gives a carte blanche to do anything they want
Belarus is going nuclear, thanks to our (lack of) reaction. That's just a start of what's coming.
Whether Putin launches nukes is up to Putin. It might be a bluff. It might not be. If it's not a bluff, we'll get to that point soon enough....
I honestly don’t see the strategic value in launching a 1st strike for an altercation outside your own territory. If Putin wants territory or a legacy, launching nukes is a failure because:
1) no one is around to care, or those that survived will always hate you
2) you end up destroying the very territory you wanted
But then again, you’re only wrong once.
1) Putin is crazy enough to launch nukes; and 2) that Russian nukes work in the first place
Which decision is more likely to trigger Putin to launch nukes is still an open question.
My tactical analysis says appeasement is most likely to avoid nukes tomorrow. My strategic analysis says that containment is the right strategy to avoid nukes in my lifetime. Aggression can't be rewarded.
The rest is just virtue signaling. People feel that they need to do something, so they do something. Not entirely logical. Not centrally coordinated. Mostly, acting upon emotions. Same mechanism as cancel culture, just against an external enemy now.
What baffles me more is the Russia's endgame here. Unlike Crimea and Donbass, the rest of Ukraine has always been much more anti-authoritarian than Russia. So annexing it would yield millions of highly pissed off disloyal population, that has nothing to lose, and blends fairly well Russians in a crowd. Recipe for decades of pretty bloody tensions if you ask me.
2 - limit cyber security risks worldwide
3 - limit propaganda/disinformation
4 - limit troop capacity, since Russia wants to use internal state propaganda for mobilizing troops/reservist
The main take is that there won't be a world war, if Russia can't fund a world war.
2 - state-funded actors will still have access to the internet
3 - state agencies will still have access to the internet
4 - pedestrians will still have access to the intranet
5 - it doesn't do anything about the nukes, and as for the threat of Russian tanks rolling their way into Germany, which has been on everyone's minds for the past 8 years, well, don't you feel silly now
It's not just limiting current war capacity, but also limiting future war capacity and funds.
From my POV, that seems to be working. You say it isn't, based on what?
> the measures that would work are not being considered seriously
And what are successfull measures according to you?
Additionally, you are severely underestimating what Russia requires to occupy Ukraine vs. Invading. They need an additional willing 500 k. Troops for that. They don't have the numbers and even their FSB report mentions that.
Ps. His children live in Europe, i doubt he'll drop bombs here.
China. they're doing fine without the internet
>And what are successfull measures according to you?
military intervention from the US
>Ps. His children live in Europe, i doubt he'll drop bombs here.
I wish I had your certainty. I've given up trying to predict the future. I hope you're right
Military US intervention is dumb at the current time. US is near China to protect Taiwan, intervening for Russia would be an overreaction at this point.
Europe can handle this if it escalates, Russia isn't that powerful in their army as their propaganda claims.
In practice, they sold most of their modern equipment to have money. Europe didn't need that.
Just look at the numbers, eg. GDP. Russia is way overreaching it's hand.
It isn't the Soviet era no more when it was somewhat equal to the US.
I don't like this situation either and it's cruel. But crunching the numbers, knowing that their equipment is mostly of the Soviet era and not maintained + ignoring propaganda makes it more 'comfortable' to not 'overreact'. Eg. Who will even maintain their tech systems? The people that know English ( and can use it to learn) are fleeing the country. I see thousands of Russian tech people trying to get out of the country mostly to Europe/Canada.
There is no one to immediately replace them. solely learning English takes long enough and that's just a single bottleneck they are experiencing now.
The measures that would work such as direct sanctions and seizing the assets of a bunch of oligarchs, Putin and his ministers? Which were step 1? Or freezing the Russian central bank's foreign currency reserves?
Furthermore, 2 weeks in, Ukraine is holding out, Russia is bleeding men and equipment, and their advance is pretty much stalled on almost all fronts. They're mobilising museum pieces from the Far East and random civilians vehicles to send to Ukraine, so it doesn't seem like the equipment situation is great. I doubt a mass mobilisation will be gladly accepted by the Russian population, so to what extent they can deal with those loses is yet to see.
Even if Russia manages to conquer all of Ukraine, they couldn't occupy it for lack of troops.
measures that would get Russia to withdraw
>Even if Russia manages to conquer all of Ukraine, they couldn't occupy it for lack of troops.
the only if in this war is whether Ukraine surrenders before or after its cities get Second Chechen War treatment
The best measure for forcing Russia to withdraw is lack of funds.
At least give a decent alternative that would work... I tried to think of "any" other and there is no viable one.
Except if China would remove the lifeline, which they won't. Since they can buy Russian energy/food companies for pennies on the dollar.
https://wap.business-standard.com/article-amp/international/... ( + other sources are easily found)
Looks like modern colonization to me.
That is not how these things work.
I think you're getting a bit of flak for your first paragraph here because it sounds scary, but then it's obviously unverifiable conjecture, I'm not sure why others can't see that.
The rest of it I think could well be spot on.
That's my take, you read it, I clearly labelled it as speculation and I have no idea what half of the replies even mean. I'll take my 'irresponsible' opinions away if people can't play nicely with them and act like adults.
First, destroy confidence in property rights by seizing central bank reserves (US debt). Why should anyone invest in US Govt debt after this, without a hefty political risk premium?
Then, try to disconnect Russia from the internet. Why should anyone trust American tech after this?
All this does in the end, is just hurting the regular people, who don't even have any input on the situation whatsoever. So, apparently Putin is a dictator, therefore we must punish people who didn't even elect him....? Is this sound logic?
Meanwhile let's make sure with all sorts of carve outs that oligarchs still have their billions, but also make sure the Russian hoi polloi don't even have access to Western media.
It seems to me, it's far simpler mentally to directly blame the vendors pulling out, rather than "Putin did something the West does all time, but it's only OK when they do it, not us. Then the West pressured their vendors into pulling out and reneging on contracts, which is only for our own good, therefore we must rise up and re-make Russia's political setup to Western preferences, so that we can use Apple Pay again".
The conclusion of all this isn't going to be "We must rise up against Putin", but it will be simply "IKEA bad".
Whatever narrative tugs at the heartstrings the most and gets the most clicks and shares becomes the only permitted reality that the mainstream public and government functions off of.
The public is wholly ignorant of that region’s history and energy politics and everything involved yet yet they think they’re experts. You have people who are literally crying about this conflict and trying to get involved solely because the media told them that they had to care: most of these people never even noticed Russian invasions of Georgia and Ukraine before because they were never told to care.
I really despise this line of thinking. Are you saying you can't care about objectively innocent peoples homes, cities, lives being destroyed unless you have in depth knowledge of the regions history and energy politics?
And honestly your assumption that most of these people don't remember Georgia or 2014 is ridiculous.
It's the rush to only parrot the list of acceptable ideas that the media tells you that people are allowed to think, emotionally overreact and go out of your way to try and not try and understand the conflict, trying to shut Russia out of the world that's going to really escalate this. It's important to understand this region better: Russia has been talking about NATO/EU encroaching on them for about 20 years. There's bad stuff going on all around the region and most people are ignorant about everything other than the current news cycle.
And yes, I stand firm on people not having a clue about recent history . Most people don't remember that they were in a state of mass panic about Omicron and Covid less than a month ago and have seamlessly transitioned to caring about the latest bad thing (TM) that they're told to consume.
I'm simply an individual trying to learn and reason through some of these issues because I think it's very important both to me and the world.
1) Given the existence of cancel culture, as somebody who holds unorthodox views, I think others' bad ideas represent a large threat to my well-being so it's reasonable for me to care deeply about how people arrive at their conclusions based on what information they take in and process.
2) There are indeed serious and important issues in the world: and solving one of them the wrong way would lead to really bad outcomes. The situation we have right now where one of least self-aware groups of people on the planet (journalists) are able to use emotional manipulation to influence the world into taking the complicated risk-management decision that they feel is best is very concerning to me.
I’m sorry you feel threatened by other people’s ideas.
> There are indeed serious and important issues in the world: and solving one of them the wrong way would lead to really bad outcomes
That sounds right to me about any important decision, at the individual or the global level.
> one of least self-aware groups of people on the planet (journalists)
That doesn’t sound like a fair or even knowable criticism to me, just bashing an entire profession.
At a fundamental level, the collection and distribution of information is important for decision making, so there’s probably an advantage for groups that can share information effectively. I personally would love access to quality, well sourced information. But everyone is biased. If you started writing articles, I don’t think it would be as easy to remove your personal bias as you might think. It’s easier than ever to be an independent journalist with a substack account, or a self-hosted WordPress blog, so you’re of course free to try and improve upon what we currently have.
Are there ways to objectively measure narrative penetration, and how far back did the previous approved narrative slid on some objective measures: "eyeballs time spent" or something?
The idea that the populace will rise up seems like a super high risk maneuver - it's like going all in. Like let's say it's X% Putin isn't in power next year. What happens in the other 100-X% case now they have nothing left to lose?
Is the idea that we just say "right, that's it, Russia is isolated forever now" and there we are? e.g. "we" showed that trade doesn't work, so instead we go for a kind of indefinite containment strategy?
It just feels like a really stupid path to go down in my view because once you eliminate interdependence via trade you've now removed another barrier to Russia just deciding to take another country.
Sure, NATO, MAD and all of that - but all of that was already there anyway.
Once you get to the point at which the Russian state sees loss of their own territory as being a declaration of war, I don't see anything other than full blown WW3 being on the table. If anyone tries to reclaim Crimea, the Donbass, or in a few weeks maybe other parts of Ukraine-now-Russia by force, SHTF.
I feel like all of this is getting lost in accusations of propaganda or being on the right side of history or whatever else. There seems to be no realistic climbdown being presented, if Russia fully pull out tomorrow, what do they get back and when?
Are governments even in control of this any more or has Moloch taken it and gone for a run?