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A defense of... what, exactly? Haiti, Ukraine, and the Calculus of Sovereignty
Imagine that tomorrow, by some insane folly, Brazil decides to invade and annex Haiti. Brazil in general is... not great. Lots of poverty, questionable rule of law, wild swings in politics in recent years. But compared to Haiti, whose government is a strong contender for worst in the world? Living in a society merely as flawed as Brazil would be an incredible improvement. So okay, in our imagination, Brazil definitely annexed Haitian territory through unprovoked aggression. But would we encourage Haitians to resist? Put Haitian flags in our Twitter bios? Would we support a government that is failing its people? Or would we ask whether Brazilian rule, however illegitimate, might offer Haitians marginally better prospects? So there's the question: Under what conditions does a state's right to sovereignty outweigh its failure to secure the welfare of its people?
This is the question I keep trying to answer for myself on Ukraine. In 2022, I didn't know much about Ukraine but my stance aligned with the general consensus: Russia's invasion was a brazen violation of international law, and Ukraine's territorial integrity demanded defense. But after three years of stalemate, over 500,000 casualties reported, a failed counteroffensive, and no plausible path to Ukrainian victory, I'm asking "What's it all for?" The conflict will ultimately end in negotiated concessions. Crimea retained by Russia, Donbas partitioned, security guarantees exchanged. Why prolong a war of attrition that sacrifices a generation to marginally adjust the terms? Why fight for Ukraine at all?
Poland vs. Ukraine: Reform and Stagnation
For contrast, consider Poland, a nation that, like Ukraine, emerged from Soviet domination in 1991. Both inherited corrupt, centrally planned economies and oligarchic rot. Yet Poland since then has been growing like crazy and today boasts a GDP per capita around $21,000. Ukraine, by contrast, basically didn't advance at all, and was at $4,500 per capita pre-war. As I said, I was ignorant about the details before, and I am only slightly less ignorant now of the specifics of these two countries' trajectories, but as a big believer in Adam Smith's economics, I am convinced that a GDP of $4,500 indicates something really, really wrong with Ukrainian governance.
So if Poland were being invaded by Russia, I would see their post-Soviet trajectory as something worth dying for. I would feel like they were fighting to stay on the one true path, all that is good and right about liberal democracy. But Ukraine? "Fighting for all that's good and right" is definitely the vibe on Twitter, but where is the evidence that Ukraine is on the path to becoming Poland? Okay, they elected Zelenskyy in 2019, but what has he done? What have been the fruits of Ukrainian reforms?
Conclusion
Shouldn't the hypothetical Brazilians invading Haiti be greeted as liberators? It truly would be hard for Brazilian colonial rule to be any worse than the current government of Haiti. Ukraine isn't the basket case that Haiti is, but its pre-war stagnation, evidenced by a $4,500 GDP per capita, casts doubt on its claim to be a bastion of liberal democracy, an ideal actually worth dying for. I see no virtue in increasing this war's death toll merely to tweak an inevitable settlement's borders. Russia's aggression is unjust, but if Ukraine's fight preserves only a corrupt stasis rather than a transformative future, why are we supporting it? It used to be that more cynical people said the US supported Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, and it's good for us that their soldiers die. But now we just hear the idealistic case. Is the idealistic case strong?
They were by the Novorussians.
I think this largely depends if you view this conflict as an unprovoked war of Russian aggression or a Russian intervention in a Ukrainian civil war on behalf of ethnic Russians experiencing persecution by Ukrainian nationalists.
Eh, that might explain intervention in Donbas but it wouldn't have justified attempting to march on Kiev well away from that civil war.
Perhaps. Alternatively Russia may have believed it was necessary to kill the head of the snake to Citrix the Donbas.
Ultimately, I think Russia was motivated by a few things (protecting the Russian people in Eastern Ukraine, land greed, slowing nato expansion, and strategic goals relating to Crimea). Some of these things could be described as Ukrainian complicity and some of them not. The whole war is somewhat more complex than the standard description but even accounting for the nuance doesn’t make Russia an angel; the nuance merely reveals that Ukraine isn’t an angel either.
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If you're hunting nazis you have to go where the nazis and their leadership are.
That would no longer be, as you claim, intervening in the civil war.
You can claim Russia started the war to hunt nazis, just don’t dissemble about it.
If they're persecuting the Novorussians in the civil war it's part of the intervention, especially so after Novorussian became part of the federation.
The attempt to take Kyiv was on the 3rd day of the war! At that point none of the eastern provinces were part of the federation.
3rd day of the Russian intervention, this was not the start.
The eastern provinces had already been fighting by the time Russia finally intervened. They were already Russian they made it official later.
So they were not actually part of the federation till later. Which is what I wrote.
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