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How do you know a hero when you see one? Can we predict heroism or cowardice?
Typically I’m more in the “Great Forces of History” camp than the “Great Men of History” camp, more Hobsbawm than Carlysle. Current events might be changing my mind.
The conventional wisdom from Kofman to Ilforte to my Polish cousins seems to be that Putin made a tremendous blunder in invading Ukraine and attempting to implement regime change. That the balance of forces was always against Russia, and that invading only made that apparent. But I’m not sure that follows the available evidence available before the invasion. Putin’s strategy meetings might have amounted to “Lads, it’s Tottenham”; but they were wearing Tottenham jerseys after all.
It seems to me more likely that Putin took a gamble, a good gamble, which had positive expected value, and came up absolutely snake eyes on the heroism of a relative handful of Ukrainians. It’s wildly unfair to blame Putin for not expecting this guy would start acting like a Slavic Churchhill, when one could have expected a performance more akin to Ghani or at best like Tsikhanouskaya. If you really drew an org chart with leadership roles and dates of events, there were maybe 100 Ukrainians, from TDF and police commanders who chose to fight in Kyiv at key moments to key governmental figures without whom the whole Ukrainian resistance project would have collapsed, to a handful of nationalist psychopaths who chose what seemed like certain death over letting down the side.
But let’s focus on the guy at the top: Zelensky. His early life contains few signs of heroism, or even of particular nationalism or patriotism, very little of obvious self-sacrifice and duty. He’s been in the media industry for his entire adult life. Nor in media was he some Mishima-esque hyper-patriot, he voiced Paddington Bear in the dubs and some of his movies were banned in Ukraine under nationalist laws he opposed, not a bloodthirsty nationalist. Obviously I lack the language skills to really delve into his oeuvre or personality, but there’s little there that would predict that when the chips were down he would stay in Kyiv..
I’m having trouble tracking down citations, but I recall pre-war and in the early war the theory that NATO would immediately evacuate Zelensky and enough of his government to form a reasonable government-in-exile for Ukraine, while funding/arming terrorist groups inside Ukraine, gleefully described as “making Ukraine into Russia’s Afghanistan.” Had Zelensky chosen to go along with that plan, I think Kyiv falls by the end of March, even with a higher assessment of Ukrainian skill today than I had then. [It’s in the nature of asymmetric wars
that demonstrative symbolic victories
are critical to maintaining popular support. Fleeing was a choice he very much could have made, that many leaders have made, that some would call not the cowardly choice but the humanitarian choice to spare his people the suffering of war. But he didn’t.
And I’m left asking, can we predict that? How can we predict how leaders will react under pressure? How can we predict how wars and matters of state will conclude if they hinge on these personal decisions of individual, fallible, men?
Maybe we can blame that on systems. Maybe hyper nationalist Ukrainian networks were ready to kill him if he jumped, and the guy was stuck between picking how to die. But that strikes me as a little too pat an explanation, eliminating the individual by inventing a system that we can put our faith in.
Or maybe there’s some psychological profile? Surely the armies of the world have looked into this, studied this? What conclusions have been reached, and how can we apply them?
I'm unsure why Zelensky fleecing the west, consolidating power, and eliminating domestic opposition is heroic. Sure, he could have fled the country, but why? It was perhaps brave in the war's beginning, but once it became clear Russia had drastically less competence than expected the calculus changes. Zelensky is setting himself up to be President for life and a heroic icon. Fleeing would be worse for him.
Not fleeing when his country was invaded by a superior military power, which very clearly intended to at least imprison and probably kill him, is almost definitionally heroic. I speak not of righteousness or wickedness, it doesn't really matter whether the cause underlying the conflict favors one side or the other or neither, there were heroic actions on both sides of WWI and in WWII and the Crimean war and Waterloo. I've no doubt that there are thousands of Russians who have behaved heroically in this war; I'm impressed that Russia's equivalents to neocons at least occasionally put their money where their mouth was.
But his country was invaded by Russia.
Are you claiming that Ukraine was militarily superior to Russia, as of 2022-02-24?
I am claiming that the Ukraine military with western support is on par with the Russian military. Were Ukraine on its own, totally fucked, but they aren't on their own.
As of 2022-02-24 Ukraine had no certain western support, and even now it is inferior to Russian military.
Russian government delivered more ready-to-use heavy machinery such as tanks than any other country.
There was never a serious chance the west wasn't going to support Ukraine. We gleefully egged this entire war on.
Given that the decision to have a war was entirely Russia's, this doesn't make sense. Nobody in the West was gleefully encouraging Russia to invade Ukraine - not even in a semi-ironic "Bring. It. On." type of a way.
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Did you predict this outcome before it became apparent? I sure didn't.
I predicted that Russia would win but it would be slow, bloody, and unpleasant affair lasting a few years. I'm less confident in that prediction with how pathetic Russia's been, but I can't say for sure I was wrong until late 23 or so. I will say Russia's incompetence was surprising; I knew they'd declined, but the degree of that decline was above and beyond.
What do you mean declined? They are still stronger than they have ever been post Soviet collapse. A late 90s Russia was a Potemkin force pretending to be a world power.
Russia now is a Potemkin force pretending to be a world power.
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If you predicted Russia would win, then how do you think Zelensky should have known ex ante that they weren't being invaded by a superior military power?
I predicted Russia would win after a multi-year slog that does not result in Zelensky's exile, death, or imprisonment, and also does not end in the dissolution of the Ukrainian state. That has been my stance since all of this began: that Russia will win, that it is not worth it for them to win, and that we really just should have stuck with the pre-Maidan status quo rather than meddling and fucking everything up. This entire affair was a masterstroke of the very American hegemony I loathe as an American and I hate every side involved.
I apologize for boiling that down to low-light "lul Russia" quips. I will respond more seriously to you:
My explicit position is that this entire war is a senseless tragedy provoked by western interests. Putin is a terrible man and he is ultimately responsible for his actions, but provocation is real and we have been poking the bear for a long time for no reason other than a deep-seated hatred of Russians swimming in the very DNA of our ruling class. Russia has been a boogieman since the fall of the Soviet Union used to drum up support and justification for the ever-expanding grasp of the American leviathan. Our interference in Ukraine years ago is what set the stage for this inevitable conflict -- a conflict which at best will be a Pyrrhic victory for Russia, for even if they seized Ukraine their reward is merely having Ukraine, in no way worth the grotesque costs piling up.
The only winners are America and their chosen ones. In the Ukraine, this is Zelensky. He's a pretty face whose primary skill is performance art. He has become a culture hero for doing what would be expected of any man in his position; "run away from your country at the start of a grueling war" is not an expected default action for leaders. He's used the war to implement strongman leadership, purge political rivals, and secure his personal legacy for the rest of his life.
He is not a good leader. He has not risen above his station or demonstrated strength of character. He is a symbol of the inevitable triumph of American imperialism, and his reward will be either a long-term dictatorial political career or a cushy post-politics speaking tour on the first world's elite media circuits.
All of this is nakedly transparent. Ukraine is grossly corrupt. Zelensky is grossly corrupt. It's not even hidden, you don't have to trawl conspiracy websites, it's all in the open. People handwave it away with "oh but Putin is so super duper evil", and then worship Zelensky like he's a superhero, and it's so fucking pathetic that it arouses in me an immense fury. The shallow principles of the world -- Zelensky violates the same core liberties we allegedly damn Putin over, yet because Zelensky's the chosen one (much like Fauci for COVID), his blatant maleficence is gaslit away.
Russia sucks. They're big and have lots of production capabilities. They could probably blow up the world. But this abundance of arms and potential for the ultimate escalation doesn't make Russia an elite modern military force that can reasonably expect to steamroll the west; Ukraine's loss will be after a horrific meat grinder of a war that lasts years, costs tons of lives, and doesn't hurt Zelensky at all.
Yet Zelensky's the hero. The corrupt strongman demanding we give him more money so more of his people can die, and regardless of the country's fate or how many bodies his pride puts into the ground, a self-centered actor with no respect for the principles we've collectively enshrined in him will go down as their defender.
He's garbage, Russia's garbage, Ukraine's garbage, Putin's garbage. The only people involved who aren't trash are the ones dying so that American leadership can be satisfied they slew the Great Beast of their forefathers.
Eh, I actually agree with many of your premises and conclusions (US provoked Russia although Russia is responsible for its act, it's a masterstroke for US interests, Ukraine is kind of a shitty corrupt country, both sides will suffer horribly in this meat grinder of a war, etc.), but I do think there's something innately heroic about defending your homeland from invaders even at great cost, and I think you understate the difficulty of what Ukraine and Zelensky have achieved, and the personal risk that he and his family took by remaining. Yes, Zelensky is a pretty face with a background in TV comedy, but playing well on TV is exactly what helped him rally the West behind his cause. I think it's incredible how well suited he was for his moment, and how well he has done with it.
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For the third time, I've said Zelensky's choice to remain in the beginning is brave. I have no dispute with that.
"perhaps"
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Heroism applies to perceived threat.
If greatness is born, achieved or occurs through happenstance, Zelensky may be among that last category, seemingly the most luck-oriented and difficult to predict.
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comments that don't praise Zelensky get downvoted it seems. War has always been popular. Even ww2, in which there was trepidation initially, had the full backing of the public (obv. Pearl Harbor). Then when it fails (like Iraq or Vietnam) we can say in hindsight it was a bad idea after it's no longer popular to support it .
I actually would be interested in something about Zelensky that is not hero-worship.
But completely missing point is not interesting. At least this take is not babbling about green screens.
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I downvoted because it seems like a gross denial of reality.
"I can't see why a political leader who had every chance to flee his country while his city was being attacked and live in comfort at the head of a government-in-exile as opposed to staying and risking very real death might be heroic" seems like someone deliberately failing to understand something very obvious.
Imagine if I came in and said "I'm unsure why abortions are considered evil by some people.". The answer is very obvious, oft-repeated and you have to work very hard to avoid hearing it. The same is true for Zelensky not fleeing Ukraine.
Why flee to be a leader in exile when you can stick around, outlaw your political rivals, and establish a cult of personality? The idea Zelensky is standing against an oncoming tide, a bereft underdog, utterly fails to recognize the absolute deluge of nonstop western support propping the country up, and has to acknowledge Russia's own humiliating underperformance significantly reducing any serious risk to Zelensky's health.
The only risk Zelensky's taking is that he might end up sore from the entire fucking world jerking him off.
But even the West's CIA predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine and that it would topple the country quickly. That doesn't sound like something the overdog anticipates, if it's comfortably over.
I trust nothing said by US intelligence by default, sorry. I did not predict a quick toppling and I don't think anyone serious did, either. Ukraine isn't some goat-herding bunch of terrorists shaking AKs... and even the goat herders didn't go down quickly.
Russia predicted a quick toppling with sufficiently high probability that soldiers packed dress uniforms for the victory parade. Scott Alexander reported that the big US-facing prediction markets all briefly traded at >50% probability of Kyiv falling by April 2022.
If prediction markets thought a war was going to be quick that bodes poorly for prediction markets.
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CIA had better intel from inner circles of Kremlin that enabled them to predict that Putin will start a war. It is not that hard to predict if you have inside info. But apparently even CIA underestimated Ukrainians and their resolve to fight and their preparedness. Anyone who had talked to Ukrainians for the last 8 years would have known how serious they were to fight and resist. It is strange that CIA miscalculated so much.
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Yes, in hindsight decisions always look low-risk because the the other outcome didn't happen. I'm not a Zelensky stan (and in all honesty I don't care that much about the war in Ukraine despite being very surprised by the sheer Russian inability to win), but I'm not claiming he's considered heroic because of what he did today.
Staying in your country when the West is offering peaceful and safe asylum at the point where your enemies are bombarding the city you're living in and nobody (and if you personally called the course of this war back in February I apologise, but you'd be just about the only one) thinks you have any real chance of victory is brave. By the standards of modern politicians I'd say heroic. Perhaps Zelensky somehow knew they'd push the Russians back, but considering he apparently didn't even believe they were going to invade I find that unlikely. Staying and fighting in what everyone - including likely Zelensky - thought was a doomed effort to repel the Russians and save his country is genuinely admirable, and even if you disagree I don't see how you don't get that other people consider him heroic.
The fact that Ukraine went from 'doomed' to 'holding out exceptionally well and pushing the Russians back in a major counter-offensive' is true, but how could he have known that?
Zelensky maybe didn't believe that Russians will attack exactly at this moment but as Ukraine was already in war with Russia, he already had a strategy to fight regardless when and how Russia attacked. Most likely he minimised the risk of potential attack in order to reduce panic. Had the EU accepted Ukrainian refugees before 24 February? It would have been very messy at the border.
I predicted that Russians might take over larger part of Ukraine but they won't be able to obtain compliance by locals. It will lead to terrible atrocities committed by Russians. Luckily Russians were able to only take over less Ukrainian territory but the point about atrocities remain. Eastern part has more Russian loyalists and potentially less need for Russians to terrorize the population and yet they are doing it anyway, like shooting the conductor at his home for refusing to take part in their concert. But if Russians had taken Kyiv, it would be the same as in Bucha except 100 times greater in scale.
There was an idea (and still suggested by some) that the west should not help Ukraine because that will only prolong the inevitable defeat of Ukraine. I counteracted that actually by letting Russia win, it can cause a second Holodomor. We need to provide all help to Ukraine to defend themselves. I am ambivalent about the Crimea and Donbass. Ultimately it is not that important about whether some territory is lost or gained (although it may cause a bad international precedent). Ukraine still needs more defence capabilities so that at least civilians in the rest of Ukraine don't get blown up regularly.
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I predicted a war that would take three to five years to resolve. I also predicted this would go in Russia's favor, but the important thing is that it was never going to be fast. Anyone who thought it was was engaging in ridiculous wishful thinking -- nothing like this is fast. Savages in the hills last for decades, why would a modern state with a roughly modern if not amazing military not, especially with such significant backing?
Even now, I think Russia's eventual victory is more likely than not (though this changes bit by bit daily), but it will never be a quick victory. There will always be plenty of time for Zelensky to get out of Dodge if he really needs to, though I don't think he will -- even if Ukraine loses, I don't think the loss will be so total as to endanger him.
Savages in the hills last for decades, but the important thing is that Zelensky isn't one of the savages! He's one of the important people Russia would very much like to get their hands on. The obvious parallel is Saddam Hussein. America wanted Saddam dead and got it, even though the insurgency went in a completely different direction. That insurgencies last for decades doesn't mean the state does. Iraq took less than a month to be knocked out, Saddam went into hiding and was captured a couple of months later.
Again, right now all the things you're saying seem obvious because they're being said with the benefit of hindsight. Of course the Ukrainians would hold the line (no matter that virtually nobody believed this six months ago), and of course the Russians wouldn't be able to land a knockout blow, but given that the entire world seemed blindsided by this, why should have it been obvious to Zelensky that it was true? It's one thing to assume someone will notice the very obvious, but if everyone misses it, perhaps it wasn't as obvious as all that?
Saddam didn't have a friendly border to slowly fall back to and ultimately cross. Ukraine is much muddier than Iraq, and obviously the Russian military is not the US military. Even assuming exemplary performance by the Russians, a walking person would have stayed ahead of their advances, on average.
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These things were obvious to me before this all played out, so I reject your claim it's hindsight. Russia has been an over-inflated boogieman for a long time.
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Russia was on paper far superior to the Ukrainian forces early in the war. They were shelling Kiev and there was a very real fear it could fall, before Russian logistical and morale problems forced a retreat. No one, not even the Russians themselves, expected such a pathetic showing by the Russian armed forces.
Had the contest ever been "Russia, at max powerlevel, against Ukraine", sure. But Russia has been obviously not as powerful as its loudest detractors say for a long time, and the western world united to support Ukraine in every way. I agree, on paper, the first one suggests Russia will steamroll.
I don't think that first one was ever on the table, though, and people who said so were off base. The war was always going to be Ukrainians supported by the US and its friends against a larger but more sclerotic foe. While Russia's since embarrassed itself, anyone predicting a steamroll was engaging in wishful thinking -- the more reasonable expectation was always a long, drawn-out grind that Russia's got an advantage in, but not an uncontestable one.
We didn't send troops.
Bodies are a necessary component of a war effort, but not the primary one these days. The weapons and the intelligence dominate.
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Hindsight is 20/20. You act as if all of these facts were established before the war started.
Yes, I conceded that one could call it bravery to not flee immediately when invaded -- but it became quickly apparent that the Russian machine is dysfunctional, and anyone paying attention has recognized Russia's threat has been exaggerated for decades in service to the interests of western spooks.
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Indeed. It's not like he's on the front line, eating bullets and killing Russians. Zelensky is bravely encouraging Ukranians to die for him and the west to fund him. And the first is fine, let a man choose what cause he dies for, the latter irritates me. His reward, should he survive -- which by all appearances he's going to -- is a lifetime of hero worship from the global masses. There won't be a sorority house in the world lacking a woman willing to drop to her knees and salute the Ukranian flag.
I'm not even saying Zelensky's a uniquely bad man. He seems unremarkable to me, other than being photogenic and knowing how to play to a crowd with his performance background. He's just Justin Trudeau by way of pop culture Che.
Kiev was the front line for a good portion of the early war.
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