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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35417 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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What is the appropriate level for diplomatic discussion on twitter?

Recently Elon Musk has been heavily criticised for an admittedly naïve proposal for a negotiated peace in the Russian-Ukrainian war. His proposal:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1576969255031296000

Now this isn't how politics actually works, twitter polls are not actually binding instruments of diplomacy. Nor is a UN administered vote terribly helpful given how it'd just turn into a vote-rigging contest between the pro and anti-Russian forces within the UN and the Ukrainian state obviously wouldn't let the territories leave given the amount of blood that's been shed. They've threatened 15 year jail sentences for those who did vote in the most recent Russian referenda. It's also very hard to see why the Ukrainian govt would bind itself to allowing a Russian Crimea water since they dammed it off even before this war.

You can see from the replies that the objections aren't really on the object level, they're more on the 'go fuck yourself', 'educate yourself', 'you're using Putin talking points', 'Crimea is Ukraine'. All of this is essentially the official line of the Ukrainian state, as summarized by their ambassador to Germany: "Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply"

This seems rather ungrateful to me, as well as undiplomatic. As Elon reasonably argues, he has made a significant effort to assist the Ukrainian armed forces with communications via his satellites, paid from out of his own pocket:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1577081450263769089

The fundamental power balance in this war is that Russia could obliterate the entirety of Ukraine in under an hour and still have plenty of nukes left to raze Europe and North America if they intervene. There are some people on this site who think that Russian nuclear forces probably don't work and so we can safely discount Russia's 2000 tactical nuclear weapons and 4000 strategic weapons. How they've come to that conclusion is beyond me, given that the technologies involved are fairly simple and old. The same people have been critiquing Russia for fighting a war with 1970s level technology - miniaturized thermonuclear weapons are 1970s technology! Yes, the tritium has a low half-life and needs to be replaced often. Yes, Russia doesn't have the best maintenance standards. But isn't it reasonable for them to prioritize their nuclear forces in terms of maintenance and development? Are we seriously prepared to risk tens if not hundreds of millions of our citizens dying in a full nuclear exchange if we are wrong about their nuclear preparedness? Their conventional tactical ballistic missiles work fine - doesn't it follow that their nuclear missiles work. This is the logic Musk is getting at. The penalty for emboldening dictators is not worse than the penalty for encouraging nuclear war, let alone losing a nuclear war by joining it.

I think this kind of hysterical diplomacy is dangerous and stupid, even from a Ukrainian-focused perspective. Why would you speak so rudely to a notoriously thin-skinned individual (remember when he called that diver 'pedo-guy') who has volunteered their services for your defence? One imagines Musk is seething with rage at his critics. The impression I get from Ukrainian media is that they are bent on getting back every scrap of territory and reparations to boot, won't suffer for anything less. This is the approach that is most likely to end with them getting nuked into submission.

Also, twitter should be for fun, not serious diplomacy.

There's a ton of inappropriate glib simplification on all sides of this debate, and it makes me appreciate the indecisiveness of large bureaucracies.

Ukrainians are of course correct in accusing Musk of getting his takes from Russian propaganda he absorbed passively on Twitter and 5 mins (realistically 20 secs) skimming Wiki page about Crimea. History aside, there are many good reasons not to legitimize annexations. Worse than that, he apparently shares the popular contrarian American (and mainstream Russian) delusion that Ukrainians have no agency, being instead mere pawns of the West. Yet they have their own politics, and it is not politically possible for them to roll over. If Western aid is cut, they won't just fold and go «home» (for some of those currently engaged in combat – where exactly would that be, in Ukraine or in neo-Russia?) – they will fight bitterly. Considering the current state of the frontline, it is not even certain they will lose if abandoned; but they surely won't forgive the betrayal. Not a big deal, the Hegemon's citizen could reason – except Ukrainians are a media Power on their own merits, too.

I'm very disappointed with this event. Where's that tweet-checking lawyer when you need him? After Tesla AI day Musk just had to sit tight and not burn the remains of his clout. At the zenith of his reality distortion powers he got dragged through pig shit over calling a scuba diver a pedo. Now imagine what he'll get for advocating an outcome that's considered a prerequisite to a genocide, after making millions of enemies among those who would be its victims. I am serious: he should worry more about this than about Putin's nukes. (Ukrainians take this stuff very personally – after all, they've killed their own negotiator who argued for peace; occasionally, in Ukraine annoying people just happen to get killed and it's not investigated it in depth; Ukrainians in the interwebs reason collectively and very simply that one less cunt is, in principle, a net improvement. Weird murders in Ukraine tend to evoke «huh» and shrugs). Seeing as this move was personally costly and politically unrealistic, why did he post? Stupidity. Probably leftists are correct too: you don't need to be all-around brilliant to be savvy at business.

On the other hand: all those takes about «if Putin gets what he wants Venezuela/Chad/Poland goes nuclear» are shallow. I don't believe this should be views through the lens of game theory 101 and precedent logic. Americans may be living by precedent, but almost everyone else is consequentialist and decides on a case by case basis, wondering who's the 800 pound gorilla in the room and whether you've got an anti-gorilla rifle at the ready. Russia is a special case in that it can do irreversible damage to any other country including the US, and then some; for a little while longer at least, given that American defenses and capabilities for disarming strike improve with every Starship iteration and ABM test. (Now, can it? Are Vlad's nuclear cajones that he's pushing in our faces less shriveled up than his conventional army and state capacity? There's no guarantee of this, and the prior isn't great after all that we've seen; but all I've heard from people suggests that strategic nuclear forces have been maintained at the expense of all other military branches even through the leanest years...) China is barely getting there, and will get there regardless (if it doesn't implode from zero-covid nonsense or bank runs or some locusts or an unusually strong wind first).

Others... can be brought to heel by conventional means. Most «hostile» nations, should they begin a nuclear program, can be toppled in a week with sanctions, cyber-attacks (note how they aren't used on Russia despite its pathetic tech stack and fragile logistics; thanks guys), bunker busters and one-two CSGs and after this war I suppose they'll expect much greater NATO readiness to do that. Allied nations, especially NATO members, can be trivially placated by nuclear sharing (which is also cheaper and Taiwan/SK/Japan will soon request it anyway). Non-proliferation for small guys is already a strong principle, and the example of DPRK, pathetic yet sovereign, in contrast with Libya and Iraq and Serbia, says enough to any wannabe czar about the utility of nukes. This is at most a change in degree, not in kind.

And now let's get back to the bureaucracy. The real question is not whether to abandon Ukraine but rather whether to ramp up support. Americans have been playing this well, in my opinion – probably CIA psychological profiles have proved useful for a change. Military aid to Ukraine has been growing gradually, in line with erosion of Russian capabilities, and maintaining some token respect for Russian self-defense posture; the archetypal example is hesitation with providing ATACMS. But we've moved from defensive stuff like MANPADs to tanks and (Soviet) aviation, meeting no serious response; Russian border regions are already attacked too. It seems that the idea is to boil Putin by degrees, desensitizing him to lesser and lesser control, to «new normal»; he's presumed to be a practitioner of the Madman Doctrine who has a non-zero but decreasing commitment to the bit. Suppose the US does not fold completely in response to the «Kherson is Russia actually» take, but also does not escalate, and even makes some non-committal noise about the need for negotiations and non-intervention; on the other hand, it's communicated that territories not controlled by Russia are solidly Ukrainian and will be defended at all costs. Ukrainians indignantly dismiss this appeasement. Russian army proceeds to get mauled by weapons of the sort that get provided currently, and retreats. Maybe a tactical nuclear strike or two is delivered for intimidation; it doesn't work, sanctions increase and the game goes on. At some later point Putin is boiled enough that he accepts the loss of control of those territories, his propagandists peddle some cope; Russia turns into an Oprichnina hermit kingdom that's bleeding people and suffocating under sanctions; Ukrainians quietly get their ATACMS and maybe modern NATO aviation (if needed) and make the continued military presence in Crimea unsustainable; assassinations of Crimean officials begin, like in the newborn «People's Republics»; the peninsula is dropped from the programming, most civilians evacuating inland. In a few months/years an older and feebler Putin dies/drops out the window and the state unravels like that guy in The Nightmare Before Christmas, only with blood.

Sounds plausible to me, and I guess that's what the plan is.

In conclusion, I'd have voted «no» in Musk's poll, mostly because it's so stupid.

Also, I have bet money on Russia delivering a nuclear strike on Ukrainian soil within 6 months (admittedly got baited into it, but still, I give it 40% probability). Like they say, чему быть, тому не миновать.

(Sorry if that was disorganized.)

Others... can be brought to heel by conventional means.... Allied nations, especially NATO members, can be trivially placated by nuclear sharing

If the taboo is broken, I don’t think most non-nuclear western nations will be satisfied with an american standing between them and the button anymore. As the nuclear doctrines tell us, when the survival of the state is at stake, you don’t want to rely on the goodwill of a foreigner, you’re not borrowing a toothbrush here. It was quite generous and trusting of them to abstain so far. They’ll all nuclearize together, like a big happy family, along with large neutrals, and the americans can’t sanction them all.

Who knows, it may even be less dangerous than the alliance configuration, MAD works, right? We'll have even more mad peace! And if not, that way we’ll only lose chunks of humanity two nations at the time instead of two continents.

The fundamental problem is Russia has never offered Ukraine an acceptable peace deal with security guarantees they will not reinvade at a later date. I wouldn’t have a problem with Luhansk, Donestk and Crimea going to the Russians with necessary security guarantees that Russia can’t try to conquoer the rest of Ukraine later. That offer has not been made.

More broadly as others have mentioned peace in Ukraine has to fit inside broader global security guarantees. US security umbrella globally needs to be binding. If the US gives into nuclear blackmail today then tomorrow we have 5x the number of nuclear armed countries. Taiwan, S Korea, Japan within 2 years. Saudis not long after. If the Saudis are nuclear then Iran becomes nuclear. Potentially Finland and perhaps some of the Baltic states jointly develop. Poland definitely goes nuclear.

Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and play the nuclear threat game because the alternative risks is higher.

You would basically be looking at any country feeling pressure from China/Russia considering their nuclear options if they no longer trust American guarantees.

Well of course the offer hasn't been made - because Russian needs Donetsk and Luhansk like they need a hole in the head. These regions never been that great, but now they're thoroughly ruined and would require billions to bring to even semblance of normal life. And there's not much anything useful to Russia there. The whole point of holding them has been to gain a beachhead for the ultimate move - subjugating and "reuniting" Ukraine with Russia. That was always a part of the plan. Crimea may be different as there's certain mythical status in the culture to owning Crimea, but nobody really wants the NRs that bad. It's just part of the ongoing conquest. There's no point of offering security guarantees for keeping the NRs because neither Russia ever intended to stop at them nor Ukraine ever will believe they intended so. If Ukrainians were desperate and on their last leg, they could accept a temporary piece to gain a respite - but that's what we had since 2014 essentially. There's no reason for Ukraine to end up in that situation again, especially now that they have the initiative and are liberating their territories, and there's no reason to assume Russia is capable of giving any "security guarantees" or is willing to do so. And how such guarantees would be enforced anyway - if Russia reneges, then what?

Security guarantee = unofficial NATO. F-18’s, HiMars, etc. $100 billion in a Ukraine owned NATO equipment.

Ukraine is getting it now, why do they need to give anything to Russia for that?

Is it in the west interest that they take it by force? Leads to some potential outcomes.

  1. Putin goes nuclear in desperation. Doubtful but who knows.

  2. Russia is defeated on the battlefield.

What happens the day after in these events? Does Putin get hanged by his own people? Does Russia just limp along after with less energy revenue as a client state of China until their population implodes. Does Russia disintegrate into 20 countries? Or turn into a repeat of the 1990’s but much weaker now.

I have no clue. It’s Littlefingers chaos is a ladder analogy. Maybe it’s a better world or maybe it’s a worse world.

Russia as a slowly imploding country that exports a lot commodities is a world we know.

There’s an ideal world where Putin is replaced by a new west friendly guy but do we get that world?

Does Russia just limp along after with less energy revenue as a client state of China until their population implodes

Most likely. Or until Putin dies and they get lucky to have somebody more sane next to the throne, which will give them another couple of decades of partial recovery, after which we're likely back to sq. 1

Does Russia disintegrate into 20 countries

Not very likely, for now - the only areas with strong nationalist movements are in Caucasus, and I get distinct impression they are getting enough money and freedom from Moscow to not really want to do it on their own, on the condition that those who do think of doing it on their own are promptly murdered. As long as Moscow has any money, it'd work. And the priority of this deal is pretty high - from what I heard, on prisoners' exchanges any members of Kadyrov's forces get the highest priority, for example. The other regions just don't have any basis to separate. Maybe they'd grow it eventually, but that takes decades.

Or turn into a repeat of the 1990’s but much weaker now.

That's essentially the "lucky" branch of the first option.

There’s an ideal world where Putin is replaced by a new west friendly guy but do we get that world?

I don't think there are any "west friendly" guys left anywhere near power in Russia, Putin made sure of it. And even if this guy existed, he's somehow has to take power and deal with the opposition. Even if they somehow magically had the means and the forces to do it (from where?) it'd be basically a civil war, but I don't think there are any movement to pull it off at all. Pro-western liberals in Russia are largely either in jail or in exile now, and their support on the ground is minuscule. Nobody likes to be drafted and sent to die in Ukraine, but from that to a strong capable movement is a huge distance, and pro-western forces were quite impotent at their best times, now they are virtually non-existent as a political movement outside twitter.

Assuming there was anyone in the State Department who wanted it to happen, could the Americans prompt Russia, off the record, to offer such a guarantee to the Ukrainians and split up Ukraine, without appearing to have given in to nuclear blackmail?

If Ukrainians would believe any "offer" from Russia of that nature, they'd be idiots. I don't think they are.

Maybe recognizing 2014 lines early in the war with hard security guarantees.

"The fundamental power balance in this war is that Russia could obliterate the entirety of Ukraine in under an hour and still have plenty of nukes left to raze Europe and North America if they intervene." True, but Ukraine could likely kill much of the Russian population. Ukrainian scientists worked alongside Russian scientists in Soviet biological and nuclear weapons programs. Good chance that Ukraine has working nuclear weapons, and it either has or could easier get working biological weapons.

Good chance that Ukraine has working nuclear weapons

Do you have any source for this incredibly far-fetched claim?

Revealing the source would reveal my identity. Ukraine was a fully trusted member of the Soviet Union and had lots of smart scientists. Ukraine has currently working nuclear power plants. Ukraine was preparing for a Russian attack. Don't you think it likely that Ukraine has a few nuclear weapons? If nothing else, the Soviets were bad at keeping track of stuff and so probably didn't manage to remove all the nuclear weapons from Ukraine when the Soviet Union broke up.

The point of a nuke is that mainly the others know you have it and can use it so they shy away from aggression. Ukraine said nothing to the effect, Russia attacked clearly not expecting them to have nukes and Ukraine hasn't used any.

Ukraine was a fully trusted member of the Soviet Union

This is not how the Soviet Union worked at all.

Trust

Soviet Union

Yeah, what?

Let's presume Russia has functioning nukes and is willing to use them. So, Russian fronline has collapsed and Ukrainian forces are advancing. Putin gives an ultimatum: leave my claimed territory or I will start nuking your cities, one every three days.

  • A This works, Zelenskij says he cannot sacrifice millions of lives and orders the army to retreat

    • Why will Putin stop at that? If this works, why not add, "and why don't you demilitarize, too? And beg NATO to pull back to the 1997 borders or I will nuke your people?"

    • What about the future? Will Putin cosplay a nuclear Commodore Perry and threaten countries into abandoning sanctions lest they get a free shipment of isotopes?

  • B This doesn't work, and Putin has to make a choice

    • he doesn't follow through, and Trisolarians conquer Earth is outed as a lying coward

    • he follows through and nukes one of the cities

Now the world faces another choice:

  • this works, see option A

  • this again doesn't work, and there are two ways the event can unfold:

    • no one steps forward, and Ukraine loses another city, repeat until Ukraine surrenders (option A), the world runs out of Ukraine (option A), or someone steps forward

    • someone (the US) steps forward and retaliates. Again, two options:

      • C non-nuclear retaliation, like, US carrier strike groups destroying the Black Sea and the Pacific fleets. While everyone's favourite Tatar thinks Putin wants option C because it's a honourable loss, there's always a risk of him escalating further, which brings us to

      • D nuclear retaliation. If there's a possibility Putin will launch all his nukes if you damage his toys, it's better to take out the nukes and the command centres first.

I doubt the Pentagon and the State Department are absolutely ecstatic about navigating between the Scylla of A and the Charibdis of D, with C a very unlikely and weird victory. But forcing Ukraine to negotiate a ceasefire before the situation reaches the tipping point would be counterproductive, that's just option A junior. Sending messages to Putin showing that the American first strike will cripple Russian nuclear arsenal to the point where American ABM can handle the remains is probably a more credible deterrent: there will be no A, and D means you lose, and lose hard.

Sending messages to Putin showing that the American first strike will cripple Russian nuclear arsenal to the point where American ABM can handle the remains is probably a more credible deterrent

If you send messages saying that you are now in a position to launch a disarming strike, that INCREASES the danger since at any point in a crisis, Putin has more incentive to use his weapons before he loses them. This is the use it or lose it dynamic, why North Korea is very antsy about the security of their arsenal.

"They're saying they'll launch a pre-emptive strike to destroy my weapons! Better fire now and pre-empt their pre-emptive strike!"

It's very unlikely that the US is in a position to launch a disarming strike successfully, since its ABM systems aren't really at the number required. GMD only has a couple hundred interceptors, with multiple interceptors being required per warhead. There isn't too much AEGIS in the Arctic seas we'd be thinking about. Furthermore, the Russians have been working on a huge array of weapons to circumvent US missile defence, in addition to the large quantity that they've inherited from the Soviets.

Why will Putin stop at that? If this works, why not add, "and why don't you demilitarize, too? And beg NATO to pull back to the 1997 borders or I will nuke your people?"

Because NATO has already said that they will strike back if a member of the block is attacked, and Ukraine is not a member of the block but the other potential targets are. Past commitments seem to matter in this whole international threats game; otherwise you could ask the same question about conventional intervention. Of course as far as NATO is concerned the problem in Ukraine is currently "solving itself", but consider the case of Georgia in 2008 - should the logic of "if NATO doesn't mount a conventional response now, why would Putin stop at that and not invade Estonia" have applied there too? NATO could have deployed a conventional force and successfully defended Georgia, just as it could have deployed a conventional force and successfully rolled the Russians back to their border all the way back in February, or crushed the People's Republics in 2014. They didn't, because it's understood to be advantageous to act consistently with your past announcements rather than being seen as opportunistically taking whatever measure is most locally advantageous to you. In this regime, talk would be worthless: a US that may opportunisticaly decide that Ukraine is under its collective-defense umbrella may just as well opportunistically decide that Poland isn't.

As Elon reasonably argues, he has made a significant effort to assist the Ukrainian armed forces with communications via his satellites, paid from out of his own pocket:

This sounds like a demand for a participation trophy.

Spending effort may prove sincerity. It doesn't prove correctness.

Anything in that twitter thread is well in the weeds of bad arguments against bad arguments, but he is being accused of being insincere as much as being incorrect. But having good responses to bad arguments while being wrong isn't worth that much

This sounds like a demand for a participation trophy.

It's also fairly well-sourced that USAID funded some of the hardware despite company claims to the contrary. Although that article is from April, even at the time the company claimed the US was not giving them money and gave the impression it was a donation.

despite company claims to the contrary.

Could you link some? The SpaceX/Musk posts I've seen didn't make any claims of exclusivity; at worst they danced around the precise sourcing of the funding.

From the article I linked:

“I’m proud that we were able to provide the terminals to folks in Ukraine,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said at a public event last month, later telling CNBC, “I don’t think the U.S. has given us any money to give terminals to the Ukraine.”

But according to documents obtained by The Technology 202, the U.S. federal government is in fact paying millions of dollars for a significant portion of the equipment and for the transportation costs to get it to Ukraine.

I would also observe the difference between the original press release of April 5, which stated that SpaceX donated about 2/3 of the terminals, while the current press release doesn't mention donations (the change is not mentioned or explained that I see). There are also sources suggesting that additional terminals have been donated by Poland, for example.

After previous shenanigans with cave rescues and ventilators, I don't have much faith in Musk's claimed "donations" these days.

From the CNBC article linked in your quote:

Shotwell, who spoke to CNBC after the panel, did not have a more specific total on the number of dishes the company has shipped to Ukraine. She added that most of the funding for the Starlink kits has come from private sources, but added that “France helped” and “I think Poland is helping.”

“I don’t think the U.S. has given us any money to give terminals to the Ukraine,” Shotwell said.

and from your original WaPo link:

In a letter to SpaceX last month outlining the deal, the USAID mission director to Ukraine said the terminals would be “procured” and sent on behalf of USAID by a third-party contractor,

Given the (lack of) rigor in her statements there and the fact that the USAID terminals were purchased by a third party, I'm not seeing any significant stolen credit there.

There are also sources suggesting that additional terminals have been donated by Poland, for example.

Again, I'm not seeing any stolen credit. I want to see the other half of your claim: I know that private and government groups have donated Starlink terminals to Ukraine. I haven't seen SpaceX/Musk claiming exclusive credit for a partnership (or anything similar) other than that one wishy-washy statement about the general situation.

Why would you speak so rudely to a notoriously thin-skinned individual (remember when he called that diver 'pedo-guy') who has volunteered their services for your defence

The cynical, and in this case I think actually right reason, reasoning is probably something like "If the Ukraine conflict falls out of the interest of Americans we are truly lost" and going at Musk is a fantastic way to remain in the news cycle.

I like that idea but I think it assumes too much competence, even granted that we're talking about one of the richest guys on Earth (Oligarchs etc. are probably richer).

Exactly. Additionally, you need to demonstrate anger at the idea of a compromise to signal to Russia that you will Never Surrender™, so that, when a compromise does happen, you'll be in a stronger negotiating position.

Hand nukes to any country that's under sanction from the west.

Dunno if this was a joke that went over my head, but Russia loses significant leverage if nukes are under control of more third-parties.

Handing a nuke to the Iranians isn't for leverage, it's for Retaliation.

I understand the logic of "using a nuke is so bad that we need a huge red line and so using a single nuke must invite a complete nuclear response" since I had the same beliefs just a month or two ago.

But I was plainly ignorant of nuclear doctrine and simply had not thought or read that much about it.

Russia/Ukraine using a single nuke will not trigger a complete nuclear response against everyone. But there are lots more rungs on the ladder of escalation.

The response to a single nuke depends on how the single nuke is used. I could see either side simply detonating one in the middle of nowhere to show a willingness to escalate. Or hitting an enemy military base 24 hours after announcing that it will be hit. These are are all very serious steps but letting all the nukes fly is a long way off and all sides know it.

Throw enough nukes at Ukraine that any future nukes the West gives to Ukraine would have to be launched by slingshot?

Give a nuke (or more) to Iran?

Well, they are already doing dealings with Iran now in the context of the war. I don't know about the significance of the Zionist friends (surely they couldn't be happy about a new Iron Curtain descending, with Israel on the other side from Russia, either?), but surely any friendship with the Saudis is mostly relevant in the context of oil deliveries to Europe (which are a thing of the past now) and Middle Eastern Great Game reenactment (which I doubt they'll have the leisure to engage in going forward).

I'd very tentatively predict: Counter-retaliate proportionately as a demonstration of both power and restraint.

But it's an unprecedented situation, so my confidence is low.

They've threatened 15 year jail sentences for those who did vote in the most recent Russian referenda.

It is just untrue. Only organizing said referenda (as well as participation in any "counting commissions" etc.) falls under "treason" charges. One can participate in them, because no one would be able to prove that it was willingly, and not under duress. The same goes for "receiving humanitarian aid" from Russians — Russians spread this rumor to enforce compliance: "aha, you got some canned fish from us, now when Ukrainian authorities will learn of that, you'll get imprisoned, now you better obey us".

I am a Ukrainian, and usually just lurk, but I see so. Much. Bullshit. Spread. Around. From both sympathetic to Ukrainians people admittedly, but much more so from all those American internet contrarians. Starting with silly ("Zelensky prohibited letter Z! What a moron! Doesn't he know he has Z in his surname" — on /pcm it had probably 5k updoods, and many people uncritically assumed it's true); but also the standard tropes like "Maidan was a CIA plot!", "Zelensky prohibited all socialist parties!" and so on. Of course, all those people have never been to Ukraine, have no idea how Ukrainian politics is organized, don't read Ukrainian media, and don't know how people on the ground really feel.

But they watched maybe a couple videos on the subject including "Ukraine on Fire", read Karlin, and some others just as uninformed people as themselves on reddit and here, and now they think they are qualified to comment on the subject. Maybe those internet commentators should learn some humility? I don't comment on e.g. Finnish politics, and me knowing that people like "Sanna Marin", or "True Finns" exist, doesn't make me an expert, I just read Stefferi, and quietly updood.

Sorry for the rant.

"Maidan was a CIA plot."

I'm sure much of it was organic. But it's naive to think that the CIA wasn't involved early and at the ground level as it was obviously in their interest.

I could always be wrong but I would be genuinely shocked if the CIA wasn't involved at all. If you concede thay they were involved, then we are just debating how involved they were and how much and how well the organic movent would have gotten without them.

This sub got a little bit too invested in the Ukraine war. It is shocking to me that the claim "CIA was involved in (a very favorable) regime change in country where American foreign policy has serious interests" now brings up several heavily upvoted "rebuffs".

Yes Ukraine was very corrupt and mismanaged by pro-Russian politicians. It was also very corrupt and mismanaged by pro-Western politicians. Majority of the countries around the world are very corrupt and mismanaged. Virtually no CIA takeover ever comes out of nowhere. Grievances on their own rarely bring down regimes. The Soviet Union used to be well-known for leveraging the political problems in foreign countries to force regime changes favorable to themselves, and they would use basically the same arguments to justify their behavior. Interestingly, the Americans would use the opposite arguments to justify military invasions of said countries to restore the aligned regimes.

Just change CIA to KGB and Ukraine to Vietnam or Cuba and somehow you can write this entire discussion in reverse with the same arguments.

But it's naive to think that the CIA wasn't involved early

If they were involved (I cannot disprove it of course, just as I cannot prove or disprove that Kennedy was assassinated by CIA), it was for certain not at the earliest stages. Even on Wikipedia you can read that it started with some protests by students and activists, organized by a journalist Mustafa Nayem. It evolved into mass protests only after Yanukovich made an unforced error on Nov 30 and brutally suppressed by that time low number of protesters — Russia-style:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6HtbdFfaYUc

Did CIA forced Berkut (riot police) to hit people's heads with police batons?

After seeing that, people got berserk and rioted. Maybe only after that State Department (that we know for sure) and intelligence services (possibly) got involved, but even without them hundreds of thousands people went protesting.

By 2013 situation in Ukraine was already explosive — even Russians, who supposedly know more about Ukraine than some Americans who listen to Oliver Stone, probably don't know the extension of government corruption at the time, Azarov's (PM of Yanukovich) mismanagement of the economy, or e.g. Vradiivka riots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Iryna_Krashkova — abuse by police was not something new, and people already demanded police reform; but Yanokuvich led Ukraine to Belarus-style autocracy). You have to live there to understand what happens there. Maybe that's why they thought they'll be met with flowers.

Involvement on its own doesn’t mean anything. Ironically this is somewhat analogous to claims of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 elections

Is there much difference in the CIA originating the plot to overthrow Yanukovych, or instead aiding an existing plot? Every country has its dissidents. Using an existing movement to accomplish your goals is a matter of practicality, it's going to be harder to organize a separate movement from the ground up.

I don't think the West would be ambivalent if the Catalonians won their independence and then we obtained a tape wherein high-level Kremlin officials were discussing who should be the new President of Catalan and that they needed to run it by Putin.

This is a fair response, but in that hypothetical scenario Catalan independence still isn't a Kremlin plot; people have been trying at this for decades. Much the same was true in Ukraine.

The key difference is that claiming Russian interference in the 2016 elections was high status.

Criticizing CIA involvement in a former soviet is low status.

These threads tend to be risk assessments, with some people thinking there is a serious risk of nuclear exchange, and some people seeming to discount that risk.

I'm curious about what kind of risk assessment people typically engage in.

Part of my job is identifying and defending against risks to the web service my company operates. It's impractical to defend against all possible risk, especially given our size, so we have to prioritize. This is somewhat done by gut feeling, but it's not merely defending against the most likely adverse events. Very unlikely events, but that if they happen would destroy everything, get more attention than the very-likely-but-not-existential-threat possibilities.

I guess that background informs my thoughts on this issue. Nuclear war is still a remote possibility, but it's Armageddon if it happens. Even if you survive, the world as we know it is over. I can't understand how anything can be worth increasing the chances of nuclear war. This is a giant existential risk. The web service equivalent of not backing up your database, or having an open backdoor hidden somewhere in leaked source code. It's not on fire right now, but if you wait until is, you're completely hosed. The only reason you shouldn't be working on those things immediately is if the site has already gone down.

In my opinion, one country suffering a terrible war is nowhere close to justifying the risk to the entire world that comes with prolonging that war and antagonizing the invader.

I can't understand how anything can be worth increasing the chances of nuclear war.

This is Pascal's Mugging.

I can't understand how anything can be worth increasing the chances of nuclear war. This is a giant existential risk.

If the Russians are sieging the city you and all of your loved ones are in then the distance between nuclear armageddon and losing conventionally is quite small.

These threads tend to be risk assessments, with some people thinking there is a serious risk of nuclear exchange, and some people seeming to discount that risk.

I'm curious about what kind of risk assessment people typically engage in.

I am also a professional risk manager, and trying to model what people are thinking, I think the big difference is not in our assessment of the existential risk from Russia going nuclear. It is in our assessment of the potential risk from conceding to Russian nuclear blackmail.

Given that Russia has chosen to wage a war of unprovoked aggression under the umbrella of nuclear blackmail, the civilised world has two fundamental options (I am deliberately oversimplifying here):

  1. Call Russia's bluff by credibly threatening serious consequences if Russia tries to use nuclear weapons to win the war in Ukraine. This creates the existential risk that Russia is not in fact bluffing, that Russia treats the serious consequences as nuclear escalation leading to armageddon.

  2. Fold, and tell Russia (and China and any other future barbarian nuclear powers) that they can use nuclear blackmail to get whatever they want (up to and including NATO's blessing to reinvade other countries they have just been driven out of after launching an unprovoked war of aggression and losing conventionally). As well as the immediate cost to Ukraine and Ukrainians, this aggravates two existential risks:

a) Loss of credibility Neville Chamberlain style leading to an increased risk of nuclear armageddon due to a future miscalculation.

b) Massive nuclear proliferation in a world where the ground rules no longer include "nuclear states do not invade their non-nuclear neighbours under the umbrella of nuclear blackmail" the way they did in the Cold War (remember that Truman sacked MacArthur for threatening nuclear escalation against North Korea). If Russia gets enough of Ukraine (and the four provinces they have just purported to annex counts) then acquiring nukes yesterday is a matter of basic survival for countries like Poland and Vietnam (and arguably Iran and Saudi Arabia). And if every medium sized country has nukes then the armageddon risks of both a Cuban Missile Crisis and a Stanislav Petrov event increase by orders of magnitude.

As far as I can see, we all agree that risk 1 is a low-probability high-impact risk we would prefer not to take. Some of us thing risk 2 is low-probability low-impact because Russia should make only reasonable demands on Ukraine and then go home. Others (including me) think that risk 2 is a high-probability high-impact risk because massive nuclear proliferation is a racing certainty if nuclear blackmail works. And some people seem to think that there is a low-probability high-impact risk that Russia is going to drive straight to the Rhine once we tell them that we won't resist if they say nuclear boo.

It's only a war of unprovoked aggression if you subscribe the current year narrative.

If you subscribe to the narrative that is current in ~2008 it looks more inevitable, given western politics, than unprovoked.

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html

If I say I will bomb your house if you post on the motte one more time, then you post and I follow through by bombing your house, wouldn’t it be fair to call my action “unprovoked aggression”? But hey, I warned you your motte posting was a red line and you did it! You brought this on yourself! As I see it, whether or not this is “unprovoked” hinges entirely on whether the demands/desires/red lines are reasonable or not, and I’m not passing judgment on that, just pointing out that it doesn’t matter what Russia said in 2008 unless it was reasonable

The house metaphor doesn't really work well for the situation because neither Ukraine nor Russia are atomic entities; if you really wanted to explain the situation through it, you would also have to add convoluted details such as that you have locked a cousin of mine into a long-term rental contract in your house and be harassing/threatening him all the time, and also have dug up the electric cable that goes to my house and was buried under your yard and be siphoning electricity from it at my expense (Ukraine's persistent stealing of gas from the westward pipelines that were passing through its territory). If in that case you then said that you are going to invite your ex-con gun nut dealer friend (the US) who has previously threatened to murder me to stay with you so I stop bothering you about the cousin and electricity, and I said I'll blow up your house if you do that, and then you did that and I followed through, would that still be quite "unprovoked"?

I mean, your metaphor is more than fair to the Kremlin perspective, but it still has Russia in the wrong. Even if I have your cousin in a long-term rental contract, and I harass him, and I siphon your electricity, and I'm about to invite my ex-con gun nut friend, you are still not justified in blowing up my house. Especially not if you are going to do it with me still inside it. If you decided to do so, it wouldn't be unprovoked in the strict sense, but you would still be acting wildly out of proportion to the actual offense.

While scary, the metaphorical neighborhood spat is not a situation that justifies violent self-defense. On the other hand, if I see you entering my property with the bomb on you back, I'm quite justified to shoot you in defense (at least according to Rittenhouse morals). And if I shoot you from inside the house as you bring your bomb with intent to blow both house and me to smithereens, it's a clear-cut case of self defense.

Instead, you could maybe spend a small percentage of the money you would spend on the bomb and use it to get your cousin out of the situation. You can also negotiate with all your other friendly neighbors for your electric cable, they all liked you and would be happy to host it (before you did the bomb plan, now they don't trust you for obvious reasons). The ex-con gun nut you can't stop, but he's already hanging out at all your other neighbors anyway. And he might actually be quite friendly once you get to know him. (Also maybe you guys could re-negotiate the deal you used to have* about not having the worst kinds of intermediate-range guns laying around?)

*until you broke it.

But it's all just metaphors.

I don't think the entire "house" class of metaphors really lends itself well to describing the situation at hand in a natural way, because the "cousin" was really subjected to rather more than mere harassment. What would you model this as? Torture? A "pizzagate" scenario? Having some fingers chopped off because "your house, your rules"?

That aside, I don't think it's particularly under dispute that the decision to invade was out of proportion to what Ukraine did before it. It's just that the back-and-forth preceding it was not exactly proportional either. How do you determine which party is in the right (if you have to, as the Western public does, side with one of them at all) in an escalatory spiral? Do you look at higher derivatives of response intensity?

Reasonableness seems hard to come by presently.

It seems reasonable to me as intra-Ukraine conflict / civil war is anticipated with Russian intervention as a consequence of NATO expansion in 2008.

Another poster down thread makes a better analogy of Texas secession and alliance with China.

What if Texas kicks your butt? Spheres of influence are backed by power. Russia is not a peer to the US like China is, not even a peer to the EU. If the US claim to a sphere of influence that far from home doesn't resonate with you, europe has that claim by proximity and power.

As to predictable consequences, maidan started when yanukovich turned away from a EU treaty. Russia shouldn't have messed with the EU's interests in the region if they can’t back it with a functioning military, diplomatic influence and economic resilience. With the weaknesses now laid bare, they never should have pretended to a sphere of influence in the first place.

Yes the totally organic Maidan coup. Since then there's been no corruption and only democracy®.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/four-years-of-ukraine-and-the-myths-of-maidan/

Where did you get that idea? Not organic, it's all us, ukrainians have no agency, democracy is a charade, and sovereign states are not bound by morals. Didn't want a coup, shouldn't have torpedoed our trade agreement, action-reaction. Great game stuff. We out-coup'd them, out-fought them, so it's our colony, end of story.

NATO did not expand and respected the rules of the game. Civilian Ukraine willingly wanted economic ties with the west. For the simple reason that we see now that Russia is not an economic development asset.

Except when the democratically elected leader of Ukraine wanted more time, a totally organic revolution not a western influenced coup, deposed the elected leader and formed a new government.

Agree an organic coup occurred in Ukraine so what’s your point. Ukranians have a right to self determination it’s not Natos fault the Russian backed leader was so incompetent it got couped. Maybe back better governments if you wanted Ukraine to be your ally.

"NATO enlargement,

particularly to Ukraine, remains "an emotional and neuralgic"

issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also

underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and

Georgia."

Sheesh. 2008.

In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. Additionally, the GOR and experts continue to claim that Ukrainian NATO membership would have a major impact on Russia's defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally.

Thank you; I also think the risk of bowing to nuclear blackmail is severe and underemphasized.

I don't believe that the use of nuclear arms means the world is over. It can cause a lot of damage but the impact on it is overestimated. Even if one believes argameddon, we don't really know what increases the risk. People are just unnecessary panicking. We just witnessed the same happened with covid pandemic. It just led to a lot of unnecessary lockdowns, travel restrictions, useless but dehumanising vaccine mandates etc.

That said, I totally understand Elon Musk's arguments. His first poll was unreasonable because it included the condition of Ukraine remaining neutral naively believing that it was a real reason why Russia attacked. The second poll is more reasonable. Despite all the blood and everything ultimately if most people in those areas prefer to stay with Russia, then it is wrong to force them eternally. The question is only how this transition should happen? I cannot imagine that the referendum during the war is appropriate. But if given a reasonable time, like in five years when the cities are rebuilt and the scars of war are more or less healed, then people can make a choice. The poll doesn't say anything about these conditions but many people are reading it in the context of the first poll and in the context of current politics instead taking it at the face value.

But there has, at no point, been any particular reason to believe that most of the annexed areas would want to be separate from Ukraine. I could believe that there's a majority for remaining separate from Ukraine (ie. part of Russia or (quasi-)independent) in Crimea and the pre-February 2022 occupied zones in Donetsk and Luhansk; these areas generally had majorities identifying as Russian (as opposed to being Russophone Ukrainians), and I could also imagine that the 8 years of tit-for-tat shelling and general evaporative cooling through population exchanges would create a firmly pro-Russia majority in the areas occupied by DPR/LPR groups.

However, when it comes to Kherson, Zaporizhizhia and the previously unoccupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, there's no real pre-war (or during-the-war, for that matter) indication of separating from Ukraine at any point; not in elections, not in polling, not in having successful autonomy or separation movements (whatever anti-Maidan occupations there were were damp squibs), and it strains me to imagine the current wartime conditions would create any special love regarding Russia, either.

This is not really a situation where there's much room to give the claims underlying Russian annexation any credence, and even this supposedly neutral referendum proposal does that.

I agree with you about this. My point was more about the negative attitude towards Elon Musk where he proposes "solutions" to end the war in Ukraine. I don't believe that calling names etc. is productive. I hear many people now saying that they no longer like Musk and his cars etc. as if he had joined the dark side now. I simply see a person who is a little bit too trustful to the narrative that the Ukraine merely needed to stay away from NATO and Russia wouldn't have attacked. I see in him someone who is obstinate but open to the truth and maybe an idealist who thinks that he has found a solution. We just need to explain why this view is wrong. It is difficult because the idea of Russian supremacy is harder to understand, it doesn't have that logical dimension that ”Ukraine neutrality” proposers have. But by becoming antagonistic we only make this task much harder.

This twitter sneering culture seems so wrong. I prefer dispassionate evaluations, something like this: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1577120229942910978

Something similar happened with covid. Interesting fact that most vaccine mandates were introduced after it was definitely proven that current covid vaccines do not stop the spread of infection. I thought that it was slowness and failure of institutions to percolate this information to policy makers. But maybe it was more about unwillingness to recognise the defeat. It was the refusal to believe that covid was never going to disappear and desperately trying to maintain the illusion of control.

Most of the vaccine mandates were actually framed (and, I believe, sincerely intended by most) to be a tool for returning to normalcy. Ie. allow access to previously denied services to the most and boost vaccine compliance in hopes that there would be less hospitalizations. Of course, it then became a culture war and thus also quickly led to a discourse where it became essentially a means to punish wrongdoers - antivaxxers - and implicitly also lead to "Covid hawks" assigning individual blame to antivaxxers for the disease still spreading instead of governments, a popular target for many hardline zero-covidists.

Vaccines were hoped to be a tool for normalcy, not vaccine mandates. And vaccines had quite an effect, they were the best, I would even say, the only real intervention that worked and were cheap and least restricting. Before the introduction of the mandates, most elderly people were already vaccinated, mortality from covid among vaccinated elderly people were about 8 times less than for unvaccinated and that was the maximum what we could achieve. Omicron reduced the risks even further but it was unrelated to the measures we took.

The problem was that the vaccines didn't stop the spread and as the most common metric was case counts which still remained quite high, and some residual covid mortality remained many people were not satisfied and considered it to be a failure. Chasing the illusion of achieving nearly zero covid, different governments started vaccine mandates, reintroduced masking, in some cases even light lockdowns. In the UK Christmas 2021 events were really discouraged but other countries had even more restrictions. It was all in vain.

Interesting that the voices demanding surrender and neutrality of Ukraine are only becoming louder when Ukraine is starting to show some serious gains on battlefield. It is still not an ideal situation because fighting leaves many people dead and injured, the final resolution is no-where in sight and probably will happen only when Putin is gone which is hard to predict when it will happen. Instead of accepting the potential Ukrainian victory over Russia with NATO weapons and giving due lesson to the aggressor, they want perfect solution where people don't get killed anymore and where Putin is appeased. They don't want to accept that such a solution is impossible in real life.

The current course of Western (and Eastern) democracies sponsoring Ukraine in absolutely humiliating Russia is the safe, nuclear-war-minimizing strategy:

  • If NATO directly (tanks-on-the-ground) intervenes on behalf of Ukraine, then it risks initiating a direct Russia-NATO conflict. This is much more fraught with nuclear risk than the current status quo.

  • If NATO does nothing (because of nuclear threats), then Ukraine loses the war. Russia is validated in its belief that forceful territorial expansion works, and is empowered to attempt further expansion. (Future Russian wars of expansion have the same risks of nuclear escalation as the Ukraine war). If, as Peter Zeihan argues, the geopolitical goal of Russia is to secure its borders in the face of declining population, then we can predict that Russia will keep pursuing wars of expansion until it can secure the Polish and the Bessoarabian Gaps. Thus the result of letting Ukraine lose the war is likely a direct Russia-NATO conflict, just delayed a few years. Again, the nuclear risk is higher than in a Russia-Ukraine war.

  • If Russia uses nuclear weapons, NATO does not have the option of non-retaliation. To do nothing would legitimize other nuclear powers in the use of their nuclear arsenals to secure territory: North Korea against South Korea, China against Taiwan, Israel against Iran, ...

  • However, if Russia, facing defeat, resorts to (tactical) nuclear weapons, there are non-nuclear retaliation options on the table. In particular, UN sanctions and trade embargoes become almost guaranteed. (I hear Putin and the Russian oligarchs envy the life of the Kims and their generals in Pyeongyang.) Russian shipping is very vulnerable to NATO submarines, etc...

The current status quo, with NATO selling arms to Ukraine, avoids all these risks, so long as Ukraine doesn't push toward Moscow. There is a long history of Russia and the US arming partisans in (proxy) war, and arms sales are nothing new. To skip over the relevant historical examples of the Korean, Vietnam, and Russia-Afghani conflicts, just a few years ago there was a Russian mercenary battalion which was decimated when attempting to assault a US outpost in Syria, and despite the conflict being much more direct, the situation didn't escalate.

Future Russian wars of expansion - where?

Into NATO countries like Romania or Estonia? Well they actually are under a nuclear umbrella and have Article 5. There's a key difference between NATO countries and non-NATO countries. That's the entire point of NATO. Furthermore, NATO countries have not been fighting a low-intensity war with a large Russian minority for several years now!

In the Caucasus, Georgia? Unlike nearly everyone else Georgia does have a vaguely Russian minority that they've been embroiled in a struggle with, in South Ossetia. But we've also established that the West does not care about Georgia enough to fight a proxy war there.

Into Central Asia? Well they already share Central Asia with China anyway.

I hear Putin and the Russian oligarchs envy the life of the Kims and their generals in Pyeongyang.

Where/how did you hear this, and why would they be envious? Haven't they, prior to the invasion, maintained more trade with the west than NK?

The web service equivalent of not backing up your database, or having an open backdoor hidden somewhere in leaked source code.

To twist the analogy slightly, imagine getting an email from someone saying they have such a backdoor and want to be paid. Do you pay them? What if they just ask for more and more? Where's the SOAR playbook for that?

In practice, companies tend to pay these ransoms, and then afterwards work to try to prevent such a situation from happening again.

Refusing to pay the ransom is to invite the destruction of the company. It's humiliating, and there are externalities in rewarding the bad behavior, but it's better than the alternative.

Are you talking about the normal bug bounty market? It is a bit hyperbolic to call it "ransom" and I am having trouble thinking of times where it was an existential risk.

EDIT The point about ransomware is very good and what I should have thought of when given the word ransom.

I'm talking about extortion, typically via ransomware that will encrypt critical data and require payment to get the encryption key.

So we set the precedent that threatening nuclear annihilation gets you any concessions you ask for? Sounds like a way to guarantee we get more frequent threats of nuclear annihilation. If it worked once why shouldn’t he keep doing it? Isn’t this where the “don’t negotiate with terrorists” adage comes from? I don’t see how this averts any threat, it just kicks the can down the road by virtually guaranteeing such threats become more common. Now maybe that makes sense if you have some reason to believe you’ll be better positioned to resist them in the future and you just need to buy time, but that isn’t obvious to me

I think this precedent has already been set, at least since the Cuban missile crisis. Nuclear powers avoid direct military confrontation with one another, though they do engage in proxy wars in distant lands. We have been completely unwilling to strike directly at any nuclear power. North Korea is the only member of the "axis of evil" declared by George W. Bush that hasn't been on the receiving end of a conventional strike.

Arming a country that is on a nuclear power's border and that is at war with the nuclear power is getting very close to direct confrontation. AFAIK the closest precedent is our arming of anti-Soviet guerilla fighters in Afghanistan, but there were a couple of big differences between that conflict and the current war.

For one, we sent small arms and man-portable anti-aircraft weapons. Those are unlikely to be of much use had the mujaheddin decided they wanted to hold land inside of Soviet territory. In Ukraine America itself is sending rocket batteries and artillery. Other NATO countries have sent man-portable anti-tank weapons, drones, and tanks. So far we've been careful about sending weapons capable of striking deep into Russia, which is a very good thing. At least someone is pushing for some restraint.

Second, Afghanistan is very far from Russia's population centers. You'd have needed to march 1000 miles through at least two Soviet republics before you'd even get to Russia proper. Ukraine borders a populous region of Russia, and it's only about 280 miles to Moscow from the closest part of the border. It's about the same as the distance between Boston and Philadelphia.

Despite being the perfect candidate for corrupt neglect, I don't think I've seen anyone pin their nuclear strategy arguments on the potential state of Russia's nukes. This seems like a massive strawman in that regard.

The argument for why they won't use nukes is based on an inability to construct any kind of payoff diagram for the Russian chain of command in which the nukes square looks preferable to the alternative (given mutually acknowledged tail risks).

The penalty for emboldening dictators is not worse than the penalty for encouraging nuclear war

Permitting nuclear weapons to be used coercively (i.e. folding to nuclear threats) does both in this instance. This is an iterated game.

I don't think I've seen anyone pin their nuclear strategy arguments on the potential state of Russia's nukes.

Well I have. Perhaps that's not 'pinning' but it's very close to.

https://www.themotte.org/post/75/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/8941?context=8#context

The payoffs would be something like:

Fight conventionally, lose the war, get sent to the Hague/imprisoned or executed

Use nuclear weapons to impose favourable peace settlement with Ukraine by threatening their use to defend annexed territories (and if that fails by destroying military targets such as airfields and breaking up counterattacks). People pointed out that they're not so great at killing NBC equipped tanks but they are very good at killing infantry and soft vehicles.

The US bombed North Korea so intensively that they destroyed 80% of all buildings there. People were sleeping in holes in the ground. Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, the list goes on. I really don't see how the sole country that has used nukes coercively against civilian targets and has done similar damage with conventional weapons has any kind of credibility here.

Russian nuclear forces probably don't work and so we can safely discount Russia's 2000 tactical nuclear weapons and 4000 strategic weapons. How they've come to that conclusion is beyond me, given that the technologies involved are fairly simple and old.

The US spent over $10 trillion inflation adjusted dollars as of 1996 on its nuclear program. Our current maintenance costs on our tiny arsenal are around $40 billion per year. Nuclear weapons are old tech, to be sure. But damn does it cost a lot to maintain them.

And looking at Russian equipment, they appear to have embezzled the maintenance funds.

But on the other hand, if even a few percent of 6,300 nuclear weapons work, that's still a lot of nuclear strikes. So let's not be too brave about denouncing their arsenal.

I think "the nukes do not really work" is a dangerous thing for the West to gamble on -- but that does not mean Putin can ignore it. If he sends a nuke and it does not go off, that is really big problem for both Russia as a country and for Putin's continued existence within the country.

But on the other hand, if even a few percent of 6,300 nuclear weapons work, that's still a lot of nuclear strikes. So let's not be too brave about denouncing their arsenal.

I mean that's really the core point, especially since there's a difference in failure between 'Their nukes are good to a 100KM radius not a 10KM radius' or other stuff that's gonna not really change the core calculus

The fundamental power balance in this war is that Russia could obliterate the entirety of Ukraine in under an hour and still have plenty of nukes left to raze Europe and North America if they intervene.

The fundamental power balance in this world is not "we've got nukes, everyone without must bow before us or we'll nuke them". Because there's more than one nuclear power, and one or more of the others may well decide to respond rather than let that particular situation stand. If Russia nukes Kiev (no one will give a damn how its spelled when it's a crater) and Odessa, they have to seriously consider the possibility that the response will be nukes on Moscow and St. Petersburg. Or maybe just Moscow plus a counterforce strike. Yeah, you can argue until the cows come home about how this is irrational, but if you're Putin, you can't be sure the West won't risk trying to put the mad dog down.

I am once again asking why any Russian leader would believe the Americans might sacrifice Washington and New York for Kiev. If you read the literature the French seriously doubted whether the US would sacrifice New York for Paris during the Cold War, let alone Kiev. That's why they have a nuclear arsenal. Paris >>>>>> Kiev.

Why do you think the US would decide to commit national suicide over Ukraine? It is irrational to make such a bluff. It wouldn't be believed. That's why the US didn't even make it.

If they did, why wouldn't the US say this to the world? If you genuinely think that the US would do this, why wouldn't they say 'if you nuke Kiev we will nuke you'? What kind of madman would decide to sacrifice his country to defend another and not even make a single clear, public warning that he'd do such a thing?

I'll tell you what's actually happening. The US makes vague threats of 'catastrophic consequences' if Russia uses nuclear weapons and says 'oh we told them privately'. That means they're not willing to use nuclear weapons, as is immediately obvious - Ukraine is not under the US nuclear umbrella. You don't put someone under a nuclear umbrella and then not tell anyone about it. That defeats the whole point.

The general consensus seems to be Russia would use tactical nukes on the battlefield which provides the US with non nuclear options like a no fly zone or sinking Russian ships.

Kamil think this scenerio would provide Putin an off-ramp to peace. Putin can not save face and make peace with weak Ukraine but he can back down from American military power.

Why do you think the US would decide to commit national suicide over Ukraine?

Not over Ukraine. Over the idea that nuclear wars are a viable means of obtaining territory. The US absolutely does not want "become part of our empire or we'll nuke you" to become a viable thing, not even if the targets are not US allies.

If they did, why wouldn't the US say this to the world?

Because putting the threat out there baldly like that makes it more likely to happen. Why has Russia not directly threatened to nuke Ukraine if they don't surrender? They, too, have not made clear and public warnings.

Ukraine is not under the US nuclear umbrella.

The "nuclear umbrella" is a threat to use nukes in case of invasion. Use of nukes is an entirely separate proposition.

I am once again asking why any Russian leader would believe the Americans might sacrifice Washington and New York for Kiev. If you read the literature the French seriously doubted whether the US would sacrifice New York for Paris during the Cold War, let alone Kiev. That's why they have a nuclear arsenal. Paris >>>>>> Kiev.

Why would any Russian leader base their evaluation of the Americans based on French literature, except to pursue confirmation bias?

Why do you think the US would decide to commit national suicide over Ukraine? It is irrational to make such a bluff. It wouldn't be believed. That's why the US didn't even make it.

Nor has Russia made a claim it would nuke Ukraine.

Working that parallel backwards, because Russia hasn't made the claim, it isn't being believed, and taking a bluff-that-wasn't-made seriously is being dismissed as irrational.

If they did, why wouldn't the US say this to the world? If you genuinely think that the US would do this, why wouldn't they say 'if you nuke Kiev we will nuke you'? What kind of madman would decide to sacrifice his country to defend another and not even make a single clear, public warning that he'd do such a thing?

I believe the American opposition party likes to accuse Biden of being senile in his old age. This certainly wasn't helped recently by the probably-not-staged asking why dead former politicians weren't speaking up on a topic, or the various statements on Taiwan, or challenging much younger constituents to push up contests, though whether these are real lapses of the mind or 4D chess usage of strategic ambiguity is for Putin to decide.

So, there's your answer. Old, grandfatherly, possibly senile Biden is Putin's potentially genuine madman in the game of nuclear posturing.

(By contrast, Putin's own history works against him as a madman actor.)

I'll tell you what's actually happening. The US makes vague threats of 'catastrophic consequences' if Russia uses nuclear weapons and says 'oh we told them privately'. That means they're not willing to use nuclear weapons, as is immediately obvious - Ukraine is not under the US nuclear umbrella. You don't put someone under a nuclear umbrella and then not tell anyone about it. That defeats the whole point.

This would be a competent argument if we also applied it to the Russians, who have also not made an explicit nuclear threat, or extended the nuclear umbrella to ward against conventional attacks or Russian defeats on claimed-annexed territory. Which, of course, is consistent with their doctrine, in which nuclear use is for matters of the survival of the state, of which defeat in the annexed territories isn't in a way that nuclear deterrence models works for.

Now, there are reasons for that- reasons equivalent to why the US wouldn't want to make a falsifiable nuclear guarantee that could be tested- but this is an argument of why Russian nuclear ambiguity shouldn't be taken seriously, as opposed to why it should. After all, strategic ambiguity defeats the whole point, and given that the Russians are currently facing multiple front failures in claimed territories but still aren't using- or even explicitly threatening to use- nukes, their nuclear criteria for eastern Ukraine is certainly ambiguous.

If we don't extend the argument to all strategically ambiguous actors, then it becomes an incompetent argument of isolated rigor.

The fundamental power balance in this world is not "we've got nukes, everyone without must bow before us or we'll nuke them".

I mean, that's something of strawman. To say "I have nukes, you don't" is absolutely an example of a fundamental power imbalance and to quibble otherwise is naive at best.

If Russia nukes Kiev (no one will give a damn how its spelled when it's a crater) and Odessa, they have to seriously consider the possibility that the response will be nukes on Moscow and St. Petersburg.

No one would nuke Russia over Kiev. It's incredibly irrational that so many politicos are grand standing and stating otherwise. This isn't some kind of turn based strategy game where Russia nukes Kiev on turn 1, then the US nukes Moscow on turn 2 before Russia can respond on turn 3.

if you're Putin, you can't be sure the West won't risk trying to put the mad dog down.

I have very little faith in our leaders, but I don't think they're suicidal and willing to self-immolate to own the Russians.

I mean, that's something of strawman. To say "I have nukes, you don't" is absolutely an example of a fundamental power imbalance and to quibble otherwise is naive at best.

'If you do not agree with my foundational premise, you're dumb' is a pretty dumb argument, especially when the history of the cold war doesn't support that nuclear power- as opposed to a host of other conventional great power capacities including economic and conventional military capacity- provided fundamental power imbalances in negotiations.

A power imbalance that doesn't affect someone's decision making or render them unable to resist isn't a power imbalance- it's an irrelevant expenditure of resources that could have been invested into capabilities that would have give you power over someone. It doesn't matter if this is because the power is so asymmetric it can't be applied (a world-beating land army unable to cross a natural barrier) or if it won't be out of consideration of second and third order effects.

No one would nuke Russia over Kiev.

Why wouldn't Kiev use totally-not-NATO cyber weapons with nuclear-level economic costs to Russia, including destruction of Russian energy infrastructure required for economic viability, in retaliation for a nuke over Kiev?

Or, alternatively, why wouldn't Kiev use a totally-lost-Soviet-Nuke-totally-not-from-NATO to counter-nuke?

No one would nuke Russia over Kiev for the same reason no one would nuke Russia outright- direct retaliation. But precedent is already established that indirect harm to Russia is not going to result in direct retaliation if it comes via the country Russia is fighting, at least so long as the capacity is equivalent to capabilities Russia has already brought to bare in the conflict.

It's incredibly irrational that so many politicos are grand standing and stating otherwise. This isn't some kind of turn based strategy game where Russia nukes Kiev on turn 1, then the US nukes Moscow on turn 2 before Russia can respond on turn 3.

It's likewise irrational for Russia to nuke Kiev over taking the loss in Ukraine, precisely because the game is not 'over' on the turn Russia deploys nukes.

Nuclear deterrence modeling will, of course, inevitably break down if you give license to one side to be an irrational nuclear actor, but then insist on 'rational' response modeling that is unsustainable in the face of irrational escalations.

I have very little faith in our leaders, but I don't think they're suicidal and willing to self-immolate to own the Russians.

Why would they have to do so? They could just hand a nuke over to Kiev for retaliation, with the nuclear deterrence model of MAD applying if Russia nuke them. If nuclear MAD logic is to apply, it still applies to the Russians to 'only' take 1 counter-nuking from Ukraine. If nuclear MAD logic does not apply, they are not being suicidal or self-immolating, but faced with an irrational actor.

You can't have Russia be both rational and irrational in the same paradigm. This is just a substitution for rational to personal bias, not logical consideration.

Or, alternatively, why wouldn't Kiev use a totally-lost-Soviet-Nuke-totally-not-from-NATO to counter-nuke?

They can trace back nuclear weapons to the facility that generated the nuclear material. The mix of contaminants in unique to each.

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