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Notes -
I have had an evolving set of view on the conflict in Ukraine that seems to annoy just about everyone. With the news today about Trump and Zelenskyy it's even more relevant.
I’m going to start with the present state of the conflict. This is, for this exercise, going to be called…
Option A - Stalemate and Attrition
Where we are now is an attritional battle with relatively static front lines. What I’ve observed is that there are many “red lines” that the supporters of Ukraine have. This leads to aid being sent simply to preserve the status quo. Ukraine, as much as it would want to win, is prohibited from actually winning because that might give Russia a sad and lead to world war 3.
This is a similar position we were in while in Vietnam. We were fighting for the same hills over and over again. There was no effort to actually win. Unlike Vietnam, where the U.S. faced a guerrilla insurgency, Ukraine’s conflict involves a nuclear-armed Russia, raising the stakes and complicating any path to outright victory.
In my mind, this is the worst option. Unless you get Russia to capitulate, Ukraine will not get enough concessions to maintain her previous borders. This war can go on as long as both sides have men to throw into the meat grinder. Simply because providing enough support for Ukraine to win is off the table.
Clearly both sides will continue to fight on mostly static lines indefinitely.
This isn’t just from a US perspective, all of the arms donations that were given to Ukraine up to this point by basically everyone includes clauses to not attack Russia. We, as a world, are telling the Ukrainian people to fight with one arm behind their proverbial backs. It’s a scenario that they can’t win with.
This option might eventually weaken Putin internally if Russia’s economy or morale crumbles, but banking on that is a gamble with long odds. They seem to have a deep bench of people who share the same values and motivations as Putin himself. Based on surveys and polls I’ve seen, this conflict still has much popular support from the people of Russia.
One has to ask, who is the winner in this scenario? The only plausible answer I have is only the military-industrial complex. Ukraine isn’t winning. Russia isn’t winning. Arms manufacturers are winning. With static front lines fueling endless demand for weapons, defense contractors profit while neither Ukraine nor Russia gains ground.
A prolonged stalemate, which is what this leads to, could erode NATO’s credibility, leave Ukraine a fractured state, and embolden other aggressors watching the West’s indecision.
This leads to…
Option B - Full Commitment
Here’s where we would treat Ukraine as the ally that they should be. This is where you own up to the Budapest Memorandum that was signed by Yeltsin and Clinton to provide security guarantees for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. (The 1994 Budapest Memorandum saw Ukraine give up nukes for security guarantees from Russia, the U.S., and others—guarantees now in tatters.)
To be clear, this has been my position since basically day 1 of the conflict. Day 1, for me, is Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, not just the 2022 escalation, per the Budapest Memorandum’s promises. A direct conflict between nuclear powers is historically unprecedented. Sometimes, the correct moral choice entails risks.
Russia’s 2022 invasion, unlike 2014, exposed Putin’s broader ambitions, forcing the West to rethink its hesitation.
This option would entail actual support from allied nations, not just good wishes and materiel, but boots on the ground. Short of that, Option B could include bolder support, like unrestricted use of Western weapons, though even this risks Russian retaliation.
Here’s the thing, you have two options, either Russia is an existential threat or it’s not. If they are a real threat, then the answer should always be to support the morally right answer. If that leads to a broader conflict, then so be it — it’s a just war based on the reality. If they are not an actual threat… and Ukraine isn’t really an ally, why are we even talking?
Winding back a bit to option A, to put things into perspective, what we’re presently doing is pretty much what led to WW2. Chamberlain and the rest of the west were in a stance of appeasement. By not actually fighting evil, we let it grow. Just as appeasement emboldened Hitler to push further, letting Russia keep gains now might signal to Putin—and others—that aggression pays.
The broad statement here is that you can’t simply spend your way to victory. No amount of donations of money or supplies will get Ukraine back without Russia losing the conflict they started.
This option is, for all intents and purposes, completely off the table.
So…
Option C - Negotiated Settlement
Here’s the unpopular one. Negotiated peace to end the conflict. Neither Ukraine nor Russia is happy with this. With this Ukraine will lose territory and some level of autonomy.
Given that we, as a world, can’t seem to stomach the concept of Russia losing, which takes Option B out as a solution, you’re left with Option A or C.
Since Option A does nothing but throw more men into the meat-grinder for no gains by either side, I think it’s the worst outcome. I don’t like Option C in any way, but it seems fare less bad than having the same outcome, but more death.
That said, a negotiated peace ceding territory might end the fighting but could set a precedent that territorial conquest pays off, weakening the global order.
Option C feels like a bitter pill; it’s pragmatic but forces Ukraine to sacrifice land and pride, a tough ask for a nation fighting for its survival. Some might say a negotiated peace stabilizes the region short-term, but history—like Munich in 1938—warns that rewarding conquest invites more.
…but wait, a surprise…
Option B’ - Two-Front War Risk
Ok, let’s pretend that we actually have the balls to go fight Russia and curb-stomp them out of Ukraine (including, of course, Crimea). Does the US and her allies really have the ability to fight a two-theater war? I would question this.
If the U.S. commits fully to fighting Russia in Ukraine, it might leave Taiwan exposed to China. This would be the ideal time for China to do what they’ve been threatening to do for decades — invade and annex Taiwan.
We have to be really careful with how we’re throwing around our might.
A decisive victory could reshape Europe’s security landscape, but a two-theater war might strain U.S. and allied resources, leaving vulnerabilities elsewhere. If the U.S. goes all-in on Ukraine, China might see a green light to hit Taiwan, stretching allied forces thin across two continents.
Some historical context for a moment. When Russia attacked and annexed Crimea in 2014, the world’s reaction was an annoyed “tut tut.” Nothing happened. Russia shot down a commercial airliners and the sentiment was echoed again.
Nothing happened. Russia’s takeover was internationally condemned — tut tut — but met with limited Western response at the time.
Why is that?
Well, Obama was coming off a victory two years prior against Mitt Romney. All of the rhetoric was that Russia was not a threat.
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back” in response to Romney saying that Russia is the biggest existent threat to the US and the world.
It would come off as almost comical to have the Obama administration immediately walk that back.
In Europe, Russia was also the supplier of natural gas to power the industrial nations there. Germany was committed to the absurd tactic of closing down their nuclear generation facilities so they were also against any action against Russia.
Tut tut.
Beyond these options, could intensified sanctions, diplomatic isolation, or mediation by neutral parties shift the dynamic? These might pressure Russia without the risks of Option B. Personally, I doubt it. Putin is in too deep to risk pulling out without something that can be claimed as a victory — and any victory would invariably put the scenario into Option C.
There are no good answers.
A continuation of the status quo, Option A, is, in my mind the worst outcome of all. It maximizes human suffering while having the same outcome as Option C.
Option B, my simple-minded “best” option, isn’t on the table because Russia has nukes. By the way, this shows that simply having nuclear weapons makes you unable to lose in the eyes of the world. It’s a non-ideal precedent in my mind.
Option B could also easily lead to B’ as well. That would also be a very not good outcome.
The one that disgusts me the least is Option C.
There are no good answers. Option A drags out the suffering with no end, Option B courts global chaos, and Option C trades Ukraine’s dreams for peace. I lean toward C as the least awful. It sucks. Royally.
Honestly, I would still lean towards B as the correct and moral choice, but I'm very much not in control of any of this.
I don't understand why people think this is a bad thing (for the united states of America). "Defending Ukraine" is just a useful fig leaf for what's actually important: degrading the ability of the Russian state to interfere with America's interests. Sure, a decisive victory for Ukraine would be good... but an indefinite war is even better. The war in Ukraine is essentially a pinning action for Russian state capacity. The longer we fix their attention on Ukraine, the better. Paying a few hundred billion dollars for the privilege is cheap. American lives are worth millions of dollars apiece-- getting to spend Ukrainian lives instead is an amazing deal. In the absolute best case, we turn ukraine into Russia's Vietnam-- a forever war that permanently saps their will to fight completely out of proportion with the actual military consequences of defeat. (And yes, Vietnam did that for America. Sure, we fought wars after, but with the major caveat of no longer having the draft.)
Morally, of course, I'm repulsed by the idea of intentionally extending the war... But that's my honest assessment when I take my "moralism" hat off and put my "realism" hat on.
When looking at the statement "I support Ukraine" while simultaneously pursuing a strategy that ensures this is an unwinnable conflict -- I think those statements/ideas very much oppose each other.
From a purely strategic standpoint, yes, it makes perfect sense to treat another country as cannon fodder to occupy your enemy. Why would you have your men die when you can force other men to die instead? But one has to be aware that you're treating that country as cannon fodder. How is that support? With friends like that, who needs enemies?
If you come at this from a purely anti-Russia angle, then yes, endless war is a great use of funds. The ROI is incredible!
While I'm anti-Russian, I find it a repugnant option. Because I support the Ukrainian people.
I'm not coming at this from an anti-russian angle, I'm coming at this from a pro-american angle. I'd like ukraine to be free-- but the most important thing is for america to be prosperous and safe. To that end, it's in our interest to contain our enemies with the least expenditure of american lives possible.
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It seems like you and the rest of the world are coming around to Mearsheimer's point of view, 11 years late and with everyone in a much worse off position.
This dynamic could have been predicted! It was predicted! He predicted it! Mearsheimer predicted that if there was no sustained and sincere effort to keep Ukraine neutral post-2014 Russia would attack and wreck the country. He said that if we kept on with the 'Ukraine is totally going to be in NATO one day, let's arm and fund and encourage them' approach it was going to end very badly for Ukraine. He said that Russia would wreck Ukraine if NATO integration continued. He said they probably couldn't conquer the whole country but had the power to wreck it such that Ukraine was totally dysfunctional and bereft of the industrial centres in the East. He said that Russia wouldn't tolerate NATO expanding into Ukraine for geographical reasons, plus the large Russian minority that Ukrainian nationalists would feel emboldened to harass.
And based on his analysis of the situation, he proposed building Ukraine up economically as a neutral country without NATO or anything. Now it seems like that's what we're coming around to, after Ukraine has been wrecked, after the Russians have gotten very angry with the West, after trillions in economic damage to Europe, after hundreds of thousands of deaths, after arms stockpiles being depleted, after a message being sent 'if your invasion fails double down and try harder, fight on to victory'. This was predictable in advance!
Imagine if people just listened to the expert as opposed to the 'experts'!
Mearsheimer was right about Ukraine in 2014. He was right in 2023 when he said 'the counteroffensive is not going to work, Ukraine is still doomed'. He was right about not invading Iraq back in 2003. He was right about China becoming a major power with opposing ambitions to the US back in the 2000s.
In the past I had some very snooty, arrogant responses about how Mearsheimer was senile or retarded or some unsophisticated undergraduate-tier theorist. I would like to see how the predictive track record of these people compares with Mearsheimer.
International relations is like economics in that there are many schools of thought. Some are better than others, some actually work and others are popular and sound great but don't work. Realism works. Realists like Mearsheimer actually predict things correctly. There are distinctions within realism, different models of thought that can be applied in different circumstances but realism as a whole is generally superior. This liberal/constructivist 'we have to do the right thing' interventionist camp doesn't work and it's not even moral, it gets lots of people killed at great expense and usually makes the situation worse. If you want to read more about this, check out The Great Delusion by Mearsheimer.
We need to embrace realism just like how a chess player needs to think several moves ahead if he wants to win. You highlight how Option B, the 'most moral' option is unacceptable due to the potential for global catastrophe. It's the least moral option. Once you see that you start to understand why we need realism to achieve realistic goals in the most efficient and least costly way.
I have suffered wounds in online debates defending realism (and Mearsheimer's offensive realism) by liberal idealists seemingly oblivious to the failures of GWOT, confident that the Ukrainian proxies would succeed where the Iraqi ones failed. The world would have been much better off letting Russia quietly rot away in private, keeping its neighbors in post-Soviet dysfunction until it was too enervated to do anything. But the evil gremlins of the US State Department had their way, and the rest is history.
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I just can't take the 1938 analogies.
In Russia and Ukraine, you have two countries that are reproducing well below replacement. The men that are dying will not be replaced. Hitler's plan was to depopulate Eastern Europe through mass starvation and then fill it with Germans. Russia's TFR is 1.8. The comparison is incredibly silly.
Nothing in the last three years makes me think that Putin has the resources, manpower, or desire to roll over Europe.
Russia has a clear causus belli with America extending our military footprint into Ukraine. And they have given us decades of warning that they would treat it as such. Kiev was the site of the founding of the Russian people, and it was a part of the modern state of Russia from 1686 to 1991, longer than the USA has been a country. Crimea was its only warm water naval base, and had been so for centuries.
Russia is not Nazi Germany, or even the USSR for that matter. It's not some intransigent ideological foe. It's a self-interested country going out of its way to act as predictably as possible and we can negotiate with it to our mutual interest. The United States is entirely in the driver's seat in how our relationship unfolds.
I read an analysis once arguing that part of Russia's reason for this war actually is the declining birth rate. They're very concerned about their shrinking population, especially from people born in the 90s when the birth rate cratered. By taking the eastern part of Ukraine, they effectively gain a big chunk of new population, even when you account for all the dead bodies.
But yes, I agree with your larger point that people should stop comparing everything to WW2. The world has changed since then.
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I tend to agree, with the added observation that Ukraine is of limited strategic significance. It has no vital resources (Taiwan at least has chip manufacturing), it doesn’t really grant NATO greater access to the Black Sea (Turkey is already in NATO). The government has significant corruption. And while Donbas has minerals, Ukraine has nothing much in that department. It’s rural farmland that’s rapidly depopulating, right next to Russia (which means even if we “win” Ukraine, you might end up exactly here ten years from now). I just don’t see much juice here worth the squeeze, and certainly nothing worth deploying troops and thus increasing the risk of nuclear war.
I think as such negotiations are probably the best we can do for Ukraine.
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I always find it strange that appeasement is compared to the lead-up to WW2, and never to the repeated appeasement given to Communists throughout the Cold War. First in letting Stalin conquer Eastern Europe including betraying Poland, whose independence was the supposed purpose of WW2 in the first place! Then in the Berlin Blockade, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in China, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Angola, and in Finland. In fact, between the Greek Civil War of 1946-49 and the invasion of Grenada in 1983, at no point did the US dare to deploy a decisive amount of force against any Communist opponent, even though from a sheer balance of military force perspective the west could have steamrolled North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba etc in a total war situation.
The result of all this appeasement... Is that the USSR lost.
First of all, I think appeasement is a decent framing because Putin has long been suspected of wanting to take over some of the Baltic states, also former USSR, also long-time actual NATO members. A lot of people seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking that if it wasn't Ukraine wanting to join NATO, there's no issue. I think that was false then, and still false now. If Ukraine gets rolled, those Baltic countries are still on the table, though the longer the war goes on and the more Russia bleeds it does become less likely.
Second of all, the Korean war... exists? I know, the US didn't like re-mobilize the whole country for total war, but it still had an absolutely massive military with tons of WW2 surplus stuff. The US put quite a bit of effort into winning the war and ended up in a stalemate. That's an absolutely massive counterexample such that we don't even need to talk Vietnam (where we dropped an absolute fuckton of bombs and literally drafted people... I fail to see how much more decisive we could have been!)
I think there's still an argument to be made lost in there about appeasement and Communism, but most historians seem to think that Containment wasn't super effective. But replacing it with a more aggressive military policy doesn't make a lot of sense either since the whole MAD thing was already a major factor as early as 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. That means in the short 15-year window of time before that, during which we did fight a major war which we failed to win, is the only possible time period. What would you have done differently in the, what, 1955-1960 window?
The Korean War had about 1/10th the manpower deployment, 1/10th the expense, no rationing, extremely limited factory conversion, no conversion of civilian vehicle production to military, no massive naval buildup, and two fewer uses of nuclear weapons. Sure, when the US fought in Korea it was a no holds barred fight relative to what would come later, but they were still throwing punches pinky finger first rather than putting the entire industrial weight of the US behind it.
Vietnam has an obvious appeasement moment in the Paris Peace Accords followed by the accord-violating 1975 offensive, where the US pretty much deliberately allowed South Vietnam to fall to invasion. You don't even need to get into the rest of the war effort and whether the US didn't commit enough resources, the 1975 offensive is too obviously appeasement in the face of an ally being invaded.
Of course, this is not an argument for escalating the Korean or Vietnam War. There are plenty of good reasons not to, do not think of this as me saying the US should have turned the Chinese border into a belt of cobalt. But every argument against escalating the Vietnam or Korean war has a
38thparallel in not escalating the Ukraine War, but when you do it there, it's suddenly the Munich Conference.As for nuclear weapons, Russia still has them. If appeasing a nuclear power is Munich in 2025 then it's also Munich in 1965.
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It continually baffles me that historians say this because... where is the soviet union now? I think the domino theory was probably bullshit, but forcing your enemies to expend resources at an unfavorable rate forever just works™. The mistakes america made was with picking the wrong enemies-- we could have easily had that one vietnamese dude as an ally, and later Iraq proved to be a lesser evil than hardcore islamists like ISIS.
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The counterfactual to consider is what if the Nazis had nuclear weapons?
I don't really like this counterfactual because it was never even remotely plausible, so you have to make at least one other massive counterfactual and then we're just too far from reality for the exercise to be intellectually useful.
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Ugly, starts with the nuking of Moscow and probably ends with the nuking of Berlin and other European cities by the United States. (I'm not sure if London gets nuked, but the UK becomes untenable for staging of operations even if they don't surrender)
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A few things:
-Regarding your point about the Vietnam War, escalation with China was a serious concern and explains a lot of the half-hearted prosecution of the war that you see from the United States. The Korean War was only about 15 years before Vietnam and there was a lot of fear that if North Vietnam was invaded you might see two million Chinese “volunteers” flood across the border like the last time. It was also one of the main things that prevented the United States from “pulling a Watchmen” and using nuclear weapons to end the conflict. It was assumed that if the United States used nuclear weapons the Chinese would retaliate by giving North Vietnam or the NLF nuclear weapons and short range delivery platforms to attack US bases in the region.
-Regarding “Option C” this is only a bitter pill to swallow if you assume that Ukraine would win an attritional conflict, or at least keep their heads above water. They won’t. Ukraine is taking enough casualties that it’s affecting their force structure. They can’t furlough anyone who isn’t seriously injured, and it’s increasingly getting to the point that they can’t even rotate out brigades on the front line. They have to keep them their until they are completely destroyed. We are rapidly progressing towards a Germany 1918 complete operational collapse of the Ukrainian army.
-Also regarding “Option C”, the front line is increasingly not static. 80 percent of Russian territorial gains made in the last two years have been made in the last three months. In another six months the Russians will likely have closed the Kursk salient, and taken both Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar. After that they are past urban fortresses and bunker complexes and its cattle-country all the way to Kyiv.
I agree -- my point was it's bitter compared to actually equipping them actually fight to win -- with the permission to win.
I know it's a lot of assumptions based solely on conjecture, but I would bet that in a timeline where Harris won the election that the amount of aid and weapons would be proportional to the likelihood of Ukraine losing. Other than the thunder runs around Kharkiv and Kherson, there have been no really large-scale changes in land holdings. Even the incursion into Kursk isn't that significant land-wise -- basically one small town. The reason I make this argument is that every increase in the lethality of aid from the West was made seemingly perfectly proportional to ensure nothing changes.
The core of my argument is that continuing on this path of "just enough for stalemate" is the worst option for Ukraine, despite the fact that everyone seems to be for it based on their actions. Even if Russia doesn't take additional major cities, nothing is gained by not going for peace at this point. Worst still if Russia gains the initiative as you suggested and starts making real gains -- then you just have a smaller Ukraine and still more fighting and death. I don't see how that is a better option for them.
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"Option D: Apologise profusely to Russia and provide them with any support necessary to completely subjugate and annex Ukraine, in return for a promise that they will cooperate in containing China"
I think the choice of options you consider, and the ones you choose to ignore, is tendentious, and the arguments you present for them are based on a several load-bearing assumptions that you never justify. To begin with, you keep coming back to 1938 Germany comparisons, but in what way is Russia similar to it? Nazi Germany did not get bogged down in a stalemate in the Czechoslovakian trenches; Putin's Russia does not have the ideological basis for expansion or even risk-taking (except when they are deluded by bad intel), no shortage of land, resources or sea access, nor the demographics to support a mass war based on general mobilisation; nuclear MAD ensures that no actual existential interest of any major power can be violated; either way we are arguably in a setting where there is an increasingly realistic probability that either the US or China will go FOOM within a few years, which ought to completely reshape the risk-reward calculus if we were not so hardwired to follow established patterns.
How do you imagine that precedent would not exist otherwise? Azerbaijan just conquered territory with minimal effort from Armenia while everyone was looking at Ukraine, Israel somehow keeps growing, the US was having great successes bombing its way through Yugoslavia in the '90s, and BP, Exxon and Shell are currently yielding $billions in revenue per year in Iraq. Just because the median CNN consumer is successfully kept placid and morally assured by non-reporting (in the first case) or "we have received reports of whataboutist antisemitic misinformation, but rest assured these are totally different" (in the latter), that doesn't mean the entities that actually have agency over whether to engage in territorial conquest haven't been watching.
Most of territory they taken was already widely recognized as theirs, same as borders of Azerbaijan SSR.
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Why on earth does anyone think that a Russia hopped-up on revanchism is going to do a 180 and go "okay, bro, no problem, let's do this together" instead of being like "ha, fat chance, as if, Western imbeciles" if this were to come to pass? I don't care how synchronized the people are to the will of Putin or for whatever theory of Kremlinology you subscribe to, this sounds plain retarded spoken aloud, even putting aside how outside the Overton Window it is.
I put it in quotation marks for a reason. It's stupid, but not particularly more stupid than expecting Putin to pull a reverse Hitler (and Blitzkrieg his way within a few tens of kilometres of Berlin?) if we don't do whatever it takes to make him return Crimea to the Ukrainians now.
People have been wishfully thinking the idea that China could seize a part of the Russian Far East if Russia is sufficiently weakened for a long time. If you believe in this, you should be able to persuade the Russians that a resurgent China is more of a threat to them. Besides, if you actually believe that Putin pines for a great Gathering of Russian Lands, Port Arthur/Dalian seems like a much more valuable prize to offer him that is in the running (being the site of a great historical Russian battle - the smart Kremlinologist, looking to Serbia as a Mini-Me version of Russia, takes note of how and why they are so determined to retake the Kosovo).
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Russian World. A quote from here:
Idk, that sounds to me like ideological basis for expansion.
Apart from Ukraine, that maybe covers part of Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania at most, and they have only been talking about those populations less and less over the past several years (unlike, again, 1938s Germany, which only doubled and tripled down on its ideology). It seems like they have resigned themselves to writing them off.
This is also what that article talks about. From how the article is written, the "tragedy" expression seems to come from a longer sentence about Soviet Russian internal migrants who found themselves stuck abroad as a consequence of the SU collapse: "It was impossible for them to return, to reunite with their relatives. They didn't have a place of work, nor of residency. This is a great humanitarian tragedy, without exaggeration."
The thousand year quote does sound a little more ominous, but "we want to be powerful" is hardly an ideological basis for expansion in itself.
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On the other hand, forming a complicated web of alliances, security guarantees, and geopolitical networks is somewhat the thing that escalated into WWI. It's worth considering that making security guarantees allows the opponent to decide when to trigger a large scale conflict.
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I know I bang on and on about this, but this is just entirely wrong:
I mean, the Budapest Memorandum could have been made a real paper (just as 'protector of Orthodox Christians' was a thin excuse to meddle in the Ottoman Empire) but Obama chose to not pick it up, and Biden after him. The Monroe doctrine doesn't exist on any formal treaty or legislation but if any European decided to invade a South American country Uncle Sam would magically appear regardless of the lack of justification to do so.
'Law' in this case was just the pretense of legality: if the Americans really wanted to go down to the mat for Ukraine, they'd have manufactured a reason to do so. They didn't, so they fell on the 'do nothing' side of strategic ambiguity.
Nowhere does the Budapest Memorandum suggest that the United States would intervene on Ukraine's behalf outside of complaining to the UN about it (which, I suppose, could in theory lead to US involvement – but of course guess who has veto power on the security council?)
Now, as you say, the US could manufacture a reason. They could invoke the Russian violation of the memorandum as a cause for war (although by that logic US violations of the memorandum would also be a valid casus belli for Russia to declare war on the United States). But I think Americans really do not want to go down to the mat for Ukraine because we would prefer not to see Rammstein nuked and thousands of Americans dead, even as a merely "plausible" outcome.
And, on that note, do you know who else would prefer not to see Rammstein nuked? Germany! Supposing the US went to the mat for Ukraine – we might not be able to get all of NATO onboard and could even see a situation where places like Germany deny the US overflight rights like France has in the past. Do you know how difficult it would be to support Ukraine if continental NATO balked? Without Turkey's participation our ships would be barred from the Black Sea, our land access would be cut off if Eastern European states decided not to play ball (to be fair, Poland seems one of the states most likely to cooperate in this scenario) and Denmark could probably also shut off US access to the Baltics.
I'm not sure what's exactly the most likely outcome here, but while Europe now is talking a big game about helping Zelensky, I remember when Germany had to be browbeaten to send Leopards. I'm not sure what the other NATO states would do if the US had decided to go to war in 2022, but I doubt they would all have lined up to join.
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Does that mean they were missing critical technology needed to use the weapons? Or something like on paper the people authorized to use them were all in Russia?
In the absence of the Budapest Memorandum, could Ukraine have become a nuclear state in its own right?
Basically, the troops manning the nuclear weapons were not loyal to Ukraine, and the permissive action links needed to authorize use were not in Ukrainian hands. So "Ukraine" did not have the launch codes, and they also didn't have the guys who would launch the missiles.
Technically, it's not very hard to build a nuclear weapon. If they had wanted, I think they probably could have become a nuclear state relatively easily (even after giving up the nuclear weapons), barring intervention from the US or Russia.
Worryingly, they could pretty easily become a nuclear weapons state now by cannibalizing their nuclear reactors. Zelensky has threatened to do that. And that’s assuming none of the fifty or so Soviet nuclear warheads that went missing aren’t in Ukraine’a possession. Which puts their constant demand for delivery systems that can hit Moscow in a rather ominous light.
You cannot use commercial reactor fuel for weapons (except some kind of dirty bomb). It would be easier to make weapons material from scratch.
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Yes, and in fact Zelensky suggested that "all the package decision of 1994 are in doubt" less than a week before Putin declared the "Special Military Operation," and the Russians claimed that Ukraine was looking to acquire them, one of their justifications for the 2022 invasion. Now, maybe Zelensky wasn't thinking of nuclear weapons when he gave that speech (although he hardly could be ignorant of the provisions of the Budapest Memorandum!), but he certainly is now.
ETA – I'm just going to post the full Zelensky quote from 2022 for a bit of extra context:
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I am rather curious to whom the troops of the crumbling nominally-Soviet empire were, or were expected, to be loyal to. It may well be that the nuclear folks were distinctly Russian, but more broadly I can't see everyone swearing fealty to Moscow when their families now live in independent nations.
Well, I dunno, if Puerto Rico declared independence I would not expect the US troops stationed there to suddenly have fealty to Puerto Rico.
However, as it happens, we know the answer to your question – they specifically avoided swearing fealty to Ukraine and swore fealty to the Commonwealth of Independent States instead.
See page 25 of this DTRA report.
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Moscow. The Ukrainian and Russian militaries didn't disentangle for over a decade after the 1994 memorandum. There really wasn't even a question about this who the soldiers had loyalty towards.
And even if that wasn't true; if Ukraine had moved to capture and possess those weapons, the Soviet tanks would have rolled across the border right there, maybe even with American support.
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There is absolutely nothing in the Budapest Memorandum that obligates the United States or anyone else to come to the aid of Ukraine militarily. It's a pinky-promise to refrain from attacking them, not a vow to declare war on their enemies. I expect to see this kind of lying on /r/worldnews, not The Motte.
I'll assume that as true at face value. I admittedly have some biases from times the US has let down other countries in the past and would much rather she make it right.
But still, nothing in my argument changes.
The only moral options pertaining to Ukraine from the ones I listed are B (full support) and C (negotiated peace). From moral grounds, I feel B is the correct action from the start of this conflict. Russia militarily attacked one of her neighbors, in a region where we have many allies. Russia destabilizing the region isn't good for our interests. Seeing that B has been off the table since the very beginning, C it is. A (status quo) is untenable for Ukraine in the long term, and one can easily argue for the short term as well.
The thesis here is simply maintaining the meat grinder status quo is amoral.
I agree that the status quo is pointless, but I'm glad that people who want to start WW3 on "moral grounds" are far from the levers of power.
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I'll take this opportunity to point out the outlines, as of yesterday, of a real 3d chess solution from Trump and his people. I don't know where, if anywhere, this sits after the breakdown in talks in the white house today.
Reading between the lines of the proposed Minerals Deal, this is the first legitimate proposal for peace that I have seen that matches in quality my tongue in cheek proposal to put Harry and Meghan on the throne in Kiev.
Trump wants a "minerals" deal in which US companies would receive concessions to mine rare earths in Ukraine. Articles covering the deal have pointed out that many of the mineral reserves considered in that deal are in parts of Ukraine that are currently occupied by Russia. Mean spirited turbolib snickering about Trump being unable to read a map aside, I don't think that is what is going on.
European armies are mooting the idea of placing a tripwire force as "peacekeepers in Ukraine" to keep the conflict from flaring back up. The European troops, somewhere between 30,000-100,000 soldiers on the ground, would not be expected to fight the Russians so much as to provide an easy target for the Russians to force a broader WWIII scenario. Similar to the US forces on the DMZ in South Korea, or the troops in Berlin during the cold war. Prevent a Russian invasion without an unacceptable risk of triggering WWIII. In classic game theory Chicken, this is the equivalent of putting a bar in your steering wheel that prevents you from turning away, forcing your opponent to take the last clear chance to get away from the accident, pre-committing.
Trump, when asked about this proposal, replied that the minerals deal was the guarantee.
This is more intelligent and bigger than anyone realizes. To quote from my own prior comment:
Trump's minerals deal eloquently cuts the Gordian Knot here. Russia doesn't have to agree to Western troops on their border, and it doesn't have to agree to NATO status, and it doesn't even have to allow for Security Guarantees. Instead, a big American mining concession in the Donbass, right on the border, acts as the tripwire. It doesn't look like enemy troops, but it serves a similar function. Russia isn't embarrassed, and Ukraine is protected, and Trump wets his beak. Brilliant.
Obviously the screaming match today seems to point in the opposite direction. But, we can pray. I hope that the conflict today was stage managed, keep in mind that both Zelensky and Trump are television stars by trade, with a mutual goal of ending the conflict on a just and lasting peace built around using American economic concessions in Ukraine to tie the US to Ukraine's security from Russia.
As someone who prays for peace each night, I hope we're seeing some deep, strategic diplomacy from the Trump administration to secure peace all without ruffling Russia's feathers, and allowing Putin to have peace with honor so as not to induce chaos. If Trump pulls it off, whatever else he does will be worth it. A very stable genius.
How I wish it were true, or at least plausible.
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Weirdly though, isn't this exact same logic one that would advocate in favor of increasing economic coupling with China and/or Taiwan, in order to prevent China-US conflict? And you don't see Trump saying anything of the sort there.
I read the kerfuffle today (which I watched in its entirety) at the press conference as one started by Vance, that got Trump into an old-man rant. I think it's plausible Trump was being deal-making and intentional about the thing, but Vance doesn't have the same instincts at all. Makes me question whether this was a legitimate and durable deal that would last beyond the next four years. Even without Vance-like interference, would Trump really provide a de facto security guarantee based on abstract promises of mineral wealth alone, especially given that actual mining income certainly wouldn't roll in by the time he left office, because mining takes longer than that to get going?
China has been busily pulling away from said coupling in ways the US cannot unilaterally repair.
True, and honestly I view China as a bad and extremely self interested actor whose bad behavior led directly to these decoupling efforts. There’s still an inconsistency in claiming that more coupling prevents war while doing the exact opposite on the other end of the globe
I thought I covered that:
The US is not doing the exact opposite here.
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As someone pointed out below, rare earths aren't valuable. Furthermore, the largest mining company in the US that does them operates a single mine in California; a concession in a war zone probably doesn't appeal to them too much. But even if all of the above didn't matter, so what? I don't see how a mining concession is different than any other business interest or how the presence of a mining operation is supposed to be some kind of deterrent. If Russia wants to attack Ukraine, the miners aren't going to start shooting at them. The US isn't going to start a war against Russia over potential disruption of an unprofitable mining operation that's probably mostly Ukrainian workers anyway. If this is what counts as 3D chess, consider me unimpressed.
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While I agree with you overall and liked the mineral deal:
It was less concrete than that. It's unclear whether economically viable rare earth reserves even exist there. The true genius would have been signing a 300 or 500 billion or whatever deal for something that doesn't exist, making everyone happy. Remember, rare earths aren't rare nor found in veins like gold, they're just spread in trace amounts everywhere and unprofitable to extract from already-mined-ore in most circumstances. No American company would waste money building such infrastructure, but could an empty concession be a tripwire (with part of it already occupied)?
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Of all the reasons why this is grade A copium, the simplest is this: Trump is not a good actor. Go watch Wrestlemania 23. He has no range. In fact, one of the big things people say they like about him is exactly that: he's an honest liar. His motives are clear as day, even as he lies to your face, because he has no capacity to hide them.
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No. Trump and his administration are not capable of deep strategic diplomacy and I can't possibly comprehend how you guys haven't realised that. " Peace without ruffling Russia's feathers" , what are you even talking about? Is this irony?
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I propose a dreams for peace trade.
What is better for Ukraine, justice or peace?
We need to put aside our pride and end the war, saving the lives of real men, not lines on a map. I've been saying this for more than a year now and every day it becomes more true. Why should we even continue to listen to discredited warhawks?
Well, "peace" would result in the murder, rape, imprisonment and displacement of ~all Ukrainian citizens. So effectively genocide. Russia has already done this to many of its more "problematic" cultural groups in the past. What would justice look like? Presumably extreme reparations, maybe imprisonment of some war criminals. But I can't imagine who would force Russia into this position.
So the Ukrainians will continue fighting and dying. They don't really have any choice.
"All"
you can look that most of Ukrainian citizens in Crimea just changed citizenship and live there. Why on Earth Russia would displace them?
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You are simply listening to (Russian) warhawks, while calling incompetent bureaucrats, scared of escalation, warhawks for trickling material. If not for Bucha, I might not object to your argument...
From your other comments, I don't think you understand much about this war in any sense, what combat is like, why there's a stalemate, what goals the parties have etc. The real threat is ensuring deescalation happens in both Russia and Ukraine at the same time, otherwise peace only means disarming Ukraine so Russia can continue later, tripwire or not. (I'm not convinced recent US and EU governments would have reacted to the red line of their tripwire forces being overrun, were they hypothetically there in 2022 already.)
The forces involved are a magnitude lower. Russia is not a peer and even some cartoon scenario without air power, NATO would not need to mobilize or increase its industrial base (just actually sign multiyear munitions contracts with its existing factories).
The NATO war against Russia will be over by Christmas except for some minor mopping up operations.
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As much as I think this statement is true (continued meat grinder is bad), the last century has plenty of examples of it not working out this way. A bunch of territorial concessions to Nazi Germany (Austria, Czechoslovakia) for "Peace in our Time" only saw the men and materiel of those nations conscripted into the larger war. See the Czech conscripts depicted in Saving Private Ryan and similar.
I don't think a negotiated settlement for territory works without a much stronger "but never again" guarantee. Something like EU or NATO tripwire peacekeeping forces would be a very strong form of this, but there are foreseeably other alternatives.
We need to put things in perspective. We're expected to believe at the same time that Russia is so weak that we can easily topple it, yet so strong that they are a threat to invade and conquer NATO countries.
The 1938 parallel just does not work. Germany at the time was weakened but growing stronger every day. That's the exact opposite of today – where Russia is strong (due to nukes, leftover Cold War firepower) but growing weaker every day.
The lesson of 1938 is not that you must always go to maximum escalation. In fact escalation has historically caused more deaths than it has prevented.
Interesting that the warmongers always want to look at 1938 and not 1914 when talking about appeasement -- it's pretty easy to make the argument that absolutely everyone would have been better off if Serbia were just given over to Austria.
It would even solve the question of whether to appease Hitler in 1938, since all he'd be after is a few pfennigs for his latest artwork.
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tl;dr: Yes, it would not degrade readiness against China, at all nor require out of theater assets. NATO air forces would quickly defeat Russia, NATO land power would help but not change things without air support.
Ukraine is conventionally equal to Russia. (Ignoring making Russia sad and nukes), a small increase in power would result in local overmatch cascading to relatively cheap victory. Even just the EU's F-35s (though they're probably lacking in munitions) are more than enough to shape the front (like 2022 with HIMARS in Kharkov) or even win the war (there's debate how effective Russia's air defense would be, but failures in Syria (of Russian operated systems) against Israel suggest not very.)
NATO minus the US and Turkey doesn't have especially more ground power than Ukraine (e.g. in brigade numbers, due to lack of mobilization and equipment). ( /r/credibledefense there are some comments giving detail) but even some 10 brigades would be enough to break the current stalemate (if not for drones and the recon fires complex. That is, the stalemate is of a different kind.) But if F-35s' EW capabilities are able to saturate the spectrum, degrading Russian C2-5 or degrade air defense enough for other assets, existing Ukrainian forces could very well suffice (but more would help.)
I agree. The thing I've been seeing is a drip-feed of aid that's perfectly calibrated to maintain the stalemate. My observation is that the collective West doesn't want to put Russia in a position of losing. Personally, I would be more than OK with them losing.
Edit responding to edit...
Yep, still agree. The West has been terrified of even the perception of escalating the conflict. They've gotten a little bit better at it, but still it's a piss-poor performance. We know what the US Military can do when allowed off the leash. The "amusing" battle we had with the Wagner Group in Syria is a testament to that.
The best time to have done that was three years ago. The second best time is now. But no one is doing that, and the option is off the table in reality.
You should either fight to win or devise a way to end fighting.
Is there any way I can opt out of this bloodbath? Or, better yet, have the US opt out?
I'm not sure if you're American or European, but it seems to be mostly Europeans who fantasize about killing millions of Russians, and yet have spectacularly little capability to actually do it without American help.
Full NATO mobilization would have a mean estimated death toll in the millions, especially if we factor in a 1% chance of a nuclear exchange.
I'm American, born here to Hungarian parents. I've was raised learning what the USSR, now Russia, has done for the past century from very personal stories. To state my biases, I'm really rather anti-Russian.
I come at this from a position of morality -- well, my own personal morality, which is about the best I can do. We've given a commitment to Ukraine in 1994 to provide security assurances, and we've reneged on this several times over. The just and moral thing to have done is step up in 2014 to protect her like we said we would, ideally diplomatically, but militarily if pressed. We didn't do that, so it's water under the bridge at this point.
It's pretty clear to me that we're not going to force Russia to capitulate. The next most moral thing (according to me), is to find peace somehow. Continuing to fight this stalemate is not moral.
I'm not a huge fan of Trump's way of conducting business, but this could well be the US opting out. It's certainly going to be a forcing function if the US stops sending over money and materiel. The best-case scenario is probably the EU doing the negotiating. I doubt that Zelenskyy is going to be on board with that though.
As much as I don't want Russia to get a win on this, losing a generation of men (on both sides of the conflict) is worse.
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Easily. You have no chance of being drafted into Ukraine, so all you have to do is stop following Ukraine related news and ignore every Ukraine thread here.
It won't be in Ukraine, but I'm going to die in one of those drone stuff videos
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Might want to tune into something or other in case of Emergency Broadcast System messages tho...
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I am paying taxes for weapons
America has spent
$150B on Ukraine in three years, representing0.7% of total federal outlays over that period. Sounds pretty ignorable to me.The law of large numbers I guess. If we spend trillions on SS, Medicare, and debt, it makes a mere $350B (to take Trump's number uncritically) seem like nothing.
That's still $350 billion. It's a lot of money. I don't want my tax dollars funding a war machine, and yes, I am allowed to be upset about it even though it's "only" a few hundred billion dollars.
Edit: Roko says I have spent $16,000 on this conflict so far.
If Trump managed to get himself paid $1 billion from the federal government somehow, I'm reasonably confident people wouldn't just ignore it, despite that being less than 1% of any of the numbers we're talking about.
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My first response to Russia escalating into a full fledged invasion in 2022 is that the US shouldn’t nuked Moscow - an option that is now too late.
It would have saved some X amount of important lives (Ukrainians) and shown the other powers like China that the US stands up for its own - which it considers most of the free world.
I don’t actually believe Russia has an overly functional nuclear arsenal, and I don’t think China responds to Russias defense outside of Strong Words of Something.
Now? Yea it’s probably an agreement where no one is happy - not that I care about the happiness factor of Russia.
Why do so many people say this about Russia, but not China, India, or Pakistan? Say what you want about Russian military performance in Ukraine, their equipment does conspicuously seem to work. The armored vehicles run, drive, and shoot things (Even the Ukrainian T-64s, which had a reputation for being garage queens during the Cold War, don't seem to elicit complaints about being unreliable.). Their planes fly and drop bombs. Even their navy, ridiculously expensive method of storing and launching cruise missiles that it's been in this war, has to be blown up by Ukrainians to sink, and the missiles do launch and hit things if not shot down first. My Twitter feed is bereft of Russian missiles blowing up during launch N-1 style.
Their rockets were recently considered good enough to send American astronauts on. Ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads aren't exactly new technology. "Lol their nukes don't work." strikes me as the same caliber of cope as 2022 predictions that Russian military logistics would collapse for lack of tires.
Russia's nuclear arsenal is somewhat split in two.
There's a bunch of older systems which went through the fall of the USSR. Older systems can be fine when well-maintained; the likelihood of things remaining well-maintained through the fall of the USSR...?
Post-USSR there have been 0 (zero) nuclear weapons tests by Russia. (Yekaterinburg fireball notwithstanding). If you still have expertise and documentation, it's certainly plausible to build new warheads and simulations building on older test info; the likelihood of such expertise and documentation being maintained through the fall of the USSR...?
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I think you accidently reversed your statement. They'd nuke us right back. They have second strike capability. My understanding is they have so much excess second stike ability that they would nuke the hell out of us.
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"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not 1 o'clock?"
Of course, when Von Neumann supposedly said this, the US could have launched a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Moscow without retalition.
Your revenge fantasy would lead to hundreds of millions of deaths, with most major cities in the northern Hemisphere being obliterated. But sure, it would teach the Russians and China a lesson.
Sure would be convenient for China if America murder-suicided Russia in a nuclear exchange.
Let's just say American force protection would take a hit.
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Option C can't happen with Trump on the negotiation table. He is not objective and he dislikes European leaders and drools over Putin. No serious and fair negotiation can happen unless he either changes direction or fucks off and let's Europe negotiate.
I've seen this sort of sentiment quite a bit but I'm not sure I entirely understand it. Surely the Europeans can open their own collective negotiations with Putin they want to?
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Considering Trump's statement, "I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved [...] I want PEACE," it sounds like that might be the direction he's heading.
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Do you mean we should have nuked them? In 2022 or beforehand?
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