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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've already written elsewhere that a lot of people are talking about the war the way
theysome people were talking about Trump's 2016 victory. "Of course Trump was going to win, the writing was on the wall." "Of course Ukraine was not going to fall, the writing was on the wall."None of this was obvious. Both Putin and Clinton squandered their advantage, but both almost won. A few more corrupt Ukrainian officials, or a luckier Gostomel airport opertion, or a narrower front, or Zelenskiy dying or fleeing - a lot of things could've turned the tide.
The bigger fault of Putin's plan is betting everything on a single outcome: the special military operation will trigger an overwhelming and quick regime change. Zero contingency plans. And I'm not talking about foreseeing the whole fiasco.
what if your army gets bogged down sieging the cities?
what if the Ukrainian army doesn't surrender?
what if Ukraine abandons the left bank and leaves actually competent insurgents behind your lines?
what if anything happens that turns your quick SMO into a slog? The response from the US to your posturing has been "bring it on" so far, are you sure you can weather their response?
Who even claimed that?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clinton-election-president-loss
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/09/20/why-hillary-clinton-lost/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-hillary-clinton-lost-bad-campaign-perspec-20161114-story.html
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-kamala-harris-hillary-clinton-20190126-story.html
All deride Hillary's supposedly obvious and massive flaws as a candidate, while ignoring that she was inches from winning. Massively flawed candidates don't end up there. Massively flawed soccer teams don't lose on penalties in the world cup final, they fail to qualify for the tournament at all. Hillary was a hugely talented presidential candidate who ran a very effective campaign (especially behind the scenes and within the establishment) who lost to another hugely talented political/media savant.
2nd place finishers are always underrated in today's culture.
I am not much of a Hillary Clinton fan, and I think you might be overstating her qualities: I do think that she seems to have a certain negative charisma, and unlike soccer teams competing for a spot in the World Cup final, she actually never went through the lengthy vetting at lower political levels that most Presidential candidates do Her only elective office was US Senator from NY, where she ran effectively unopposed in the Democratic primary in a state in which the Dem nominee is a virtual lock in the general election.
That being said, another data point in favor of your argument is that she did exactly as well as predicted by models based only on underlying fundamentals of the election (i.e., that ignore candidates, polls, etc).
I agree on all your negative points, I really disliked her and most every policy she stood for. And, fwiw, when I say "Hillary" I think it's best to just include "the Clinton machine" or "Hillary's advisers" and "Bill working for Hillary" within the shorthand "Hillary." Because it's not really possible to separate them in any meaningful way. It's like using "Taylor Swift" as the shorthand for "Taylor Swift's musical production team" when talking about who tops the charts.
But I still think you're underrating the value of the behind the scenes wrangling she was able to engage in to achieve those stations of power without getting elected in an open competition. Tons of people would love to get parachuted into a safe Senate seat, she got it. She finished second in 2008 to a generational talent in Obama. She cleared the decks of primary challengers before running in 2016, her only opponents were joke candidates. Having the political skill and wherewithal to avoid having to fight a real primary is an underrated ability in America. It's like being such a dominant light-heavyweight that all your would-be challengers go up to heavy or down to middle because they already know they won't beat you. That's a singular achievement! Compare to Biden, who had to slog through a dozen idiots and a few good candidates; or Mitt Romney, who probably has a much better shot in 2012 if he doesn't get dragged for months by Santorum over his weak conservative Bona Fides.
In a similar vein, Mitch McConnell is the most talented politician of our generation, and he gets consistently underrated because it is almost all behind the scenes stuff, off camera stuff, that makes him great.
But is is really healthy to have such a lock on your national party that no meaningful opposition can run against you, you own them due to lending them money and having a firm grip on the pursestrings of campaign money so that you can funnel it where you want it (if the allegations are to be believed ), and your campaign is run basically on the idea that "it's my turn now, given that Obama stole my chance in 2008"?
I mean, it is great political machine manoeuvring to plan for years to run your campaign to get elected to the highest office in the land as your right, and to be able to get parachuted into a safe seat so you have the minimum necessary experience in office as yourself (rather than on the coat tails of your spouse) to run, and to have bribed/persuaded/terrorised other rivals off, but is it really good for the body politic no matter which party does it, in any country?
I doubt it's good for the long term health of the body politic, and you shouldn't throw hard sliders if you want to keep your original elbow ligaments, but we're not here for the long term we're here to win elections/baseball games. Saying someone who was a couple of lucky breaks from winning the presidency of the United States of America was a bad politician is a rabbit hole of constantly claiming that everyone is shit that leads nowhere useful. Somebody is good at winning elections because somebody keeps winning them.
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