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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35439 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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What exactly are the stakes? What exactly would happen to Russia that would be so intolerable if they did give up and just went home? Would it really be so bad?

Putin would lose credibility and probably his life.

Could you (or someone) expand on this? Why would a quasi-dictator be likely to lose his position/life over a failed war?

Putin is indeed a quasi-dictator whose control of Russia is based in substantial part on his control of the Russian security state. However, it's important to remember that these structures are made up of actual people, who in fact might choose not to cooperate given the right circumstances, causing that control structure to melt away entirely.

"A failed war" is one of the biggest potential causes for subordinates to question the competence of their superiors. A terror-infused security state is likely to hold together somewhat longer than other structures, as the penalties for being the first to step out of line are much higher, but it's also more brittle--once that preference cascade starts, it moves with blinding speed and totality.

Will that preference cascade be what brings down Putin? Maybe; it's up there with "randomly dies of non-window causes" and "resigns peacefully" as potential endgames. Will it happen any time soon? No idea.

Some real work has to be done to flesh out exactly why Putin ordering the use of nuclear weapons makes that preference cascade less likely, not more.

For the same reason that Putin is supposed to be simultaneously an irrational madman in madman theory, but also someone who can be placated by via rational concessions: internal incoherence between rationals gives way to allowing evaluators to express their personal bias on the pretext of objectivity.

It's outsourcing personal opinions to theory, without testing theory to practice or from other perspectives. How / why, specifically, should any other party believe that there's such a precise information awareness that Putin can know the consequences of use / not use, and will act accordingly, when the consequence of a coup is only possible as a result of lack of internal information needed to make the evaluation?

'You have to let me do this, or else I face a coup' is naturally going to be responded to with 'Well, if you know that, why don't you crush the coup plotters instead?'

In my view, "Putin orders the use of nuclear weapons" is more likely to lead to a preference cascade than "Putin ends the Russian invasion of Ukraine and withdraws." However, I think the second case is more likely to occur than the first. The two circumstances probably lead to fairly different preference cascades--in "Putin orders nukes" --> "internal coup," I'd expect the motive to be "Putin's gone crazy with the aggression; we need to not do that NOW," but in "Putin retreats from Ukraine" --> "internal coup," I'd expect the motive to be "Putin's weakness has betrayed Mother Russia; strike while he's vulnerable."

And of course NATO can change the personal risk assessments of a Russian missile silo operator by our public messaging about the consequences of nuclear escalation.

Putin's family might survive in a nuclear bunker. But the guy who actually pulls the trigger - he is looking at the picture of his wife and kids on the shelf and thinking "So, punk. Do you feel lucky?"

IIRC, literally no Soviet or Russian leader has ever been killed in modern times (e.g. post WWII). This despite Russia being involved in quite a few wars. Even just looking post-collapse, we see exactly one leader who lost a war: Boris Yeltsin ordered a ceasefire just a couple months before an election - he won. He survived 7 years after leaving office, and (afaik) didn't suffer at all for having lead Russia to its first military defeat.

You might be right that losing a war is theoretically a potential cause of a coup. But, from what I've gathered, Putin has significantly more power than Yeltsin, so why should he be worried about literally being killed for simply not winning a war?

For the purposes of my analysis, I'm bucketing together two outcomes that are different, but I think are sufficiently similar for our purposes--"dissatisfied elements within Putin's regime kill him" and "dissatisfied elements within Putin's regime force him into retirement." In both cases, Putin is no longer in power due to losing control of the Russian security state, and the loss of control came from within the Russian security state. (I'm also agnostic on whether the dissatisfied elements reject what they see as Putin's military overreach or Putin's insufficient resolve--those each lead to very different futures, but share the "Putin is no longer in charge" aspect.)

Ok, but, again - if literally nothing bad happened to Yeltsin, why would anyone expect something bad to happen to the much more secure Putin? Heck, a literal economic depression occurred under Yeltsin, and (afaict) this didn't see him forced into retirement or killed.

Like, it seems like we have one comparable historical event and one far worse historical event - both under someone with a far weaker grip on power. An no "dissatisfied elements" did anything as far as we can tell...

I mean, I guess there's a chance Putin gets removed from power because of this, but it seems like a pretty remote one.

Yeltsin wasn’t a dictator and he had a clear line of succession. Neither are true of Putin. Also, obviously the First Chechen War was of vastly lower stakes for Russia than the war in Ukraine, and Russia didn’t decisively lose it (they even went back and won later). All of these are clear reasons why Putin would be more likely to be killed.

Those are good points. I still think him living is much more likely; but you've given me significant pause.

Thanks, glad I could be of some use.

because Putin isn't Yeltsin, and Russia now isn't Russia then.

I acknowledge the main difference I saw: Putin has a more secure grip on power. This is evidence that my examples are too charitable.

If you think something else is different that points the other direction, could you share it instead of gesturing vaguely?

Russia under Yeltsin was slumping down from a position as one of the two global superpowers. It seems to me that Putin has been trying to pull Russia out of that slump, but has had only limited success in doing so, and has incurred serious social and political costs in doing so. Russia seems stronger than it was under Yeltsin, but also more brittle. Conflict with the West seems much more serious and much more open than it was in Yeltsin's day, and played for much higher stakes.

Putin seems to be committing a lot more to this war, both in terms of men and material, and in terms of political capital. He seems to be acting as though he believes this conflict is existential, and based on what I'm seeing from Americans and the West generally, I think he's probably right to think so, certainly for himself, and probably for his country. Saddam was hung. Qaddafi was sodomized to death with a bayonet on live TV. There's ample precedent for what happens to failed leaders America doesn't particularly like. Why would Putin presume he'll fare any better?

If Russia retreats, there is zero possability that things return to the way they were before the war. The sanctions stay up. The encirclement accelerates. If Russia capitulates, it's going to get the 1919 Germany treatment, not the 1945 Germany treatment. Nothing like that was on the table during the Chechen war, so why should we expect a loss to look like the Chechen loss?

In case it wasn't clear, I'm not saying "Putin is removed in a coup" is the obvious outcome at a variable point in the future. I do think it's one of several plausible outcomes, however.

If you take as given that Putin will lose power eventually, what do you think are the most likely ways in which that happens?

The most likely way is similar to what he did last time he "stepped down": he anoints a successor. Life goes on.

I agree that this is also one likely possibility, and mentioned it above as "resigns peacefully," though I was agnostic on whether he'd retain enough control of the process to choose a successor (and whether or not that successor would be effectively a puppet).

If you take as given that Putin will lose power eventually, what do you think are the most likely ways in which that happens?

He has a stroke or heart attack.

I agree that this is one likely possibility, and mentioned it above as "randomly dies of non-window causes."

Why would he lose his life? Is not endlessly escalating a war against the US also a good way to lose his life?

That is just what happens when America really doesn't like you and you lose.

If you're a deposed ruler that America never really cared much about either way you can escape to Sweden Switzerland with a plane full of cash and live out your days. Or, maybe America does dislike you but you escape to Russia, like Yanukovych did not too long ago.

If you're a deposed ruler that America doesn't like you may find yourself impaled ass-first on the end of a knife, like Qaddafi. And if you're the ruler of Russia, you can't escape to Russia. If we don't assist your domestic enemies in an extrajudicial killing, we'll still find you, try you in a court for whatever we want, and most likely execute you. Maybe you'll get lucky like Slobodan Milosevic and get a Hague trial so that you die in a Dutch prison instead of being executed in your home country.

Now now, give other people at least some agency. One imagines the opinion of the Libyans had something to do with the fate of the Libyan dictator who just weeks prior had been trying to kill the Libyans who were engaged in an uprising.

And now they're all wishing they never started with the civil war business, just like in Syria.

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