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There's been a fair amount of discussion of America's military aid to Ukraine, and no few condemnations of those of us who have opposed that aid. I am informed, in fact, that this forum is overrun with Russian Propaganda, such that some no longer wish to participate. This is lamentable if true, so I thought it might help to prompt some elaboration of the pro-Ukraine case.
People who support aid to Ukraine, in whatever form, suppose that you personally are given complete control over the US government, and can set policy however you wish. What would your answers be to the following questions?
How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?
What is the end-state your policy is aiming for? A ceasefire? Deter subsequent Russian invasion? Restoration of Ukraine's original borders? The Russian army destroyed? Putin deposed? Russia broken up? Something else?
Is there an end-state or a potential event in the war that you think would falsify your understanding of the war, and convince you that providing aid was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?
...Reading comments from those arguing for Ukraine, I've noted from the start that many of the arguments presented in favor of aid appear to be mutually-exclusive. In this most recent discussion, I've seen some people arguing that we should be sending in US or NATO troops, and other people arguing that of course no US or NATO troops are needed and that sending them would be obviously crazy. This is a natural consequence of many people arguing many points of view in one forum, but it seems helpful for people to lay out their own views when possible; often, these positions are just stated as though they should be obviously true.
A lot of the pro-Trump/pro-deal faction on here like to describe themselves as realists and pat themselves on the back for understanding Realpolitik and not being squishy idealists. It seems to me, though, that the Realpolitik goes in the other direction. Russia is our biggest foreign military threat, and is the biggest threat to our allies as well. While I'd prefer a world in which they didn't invade Ukraine, they've proven both that they are too incompetent to score a quick victory and too bullheaded to call off their dogs. For their part, the Ukrainians don't seem to have any interest in capitulating.
What we have here, boys and girls, is a proxy war. Whether or not Ukraine has a shot at "winning" or regaining significant territory is irrelevant. Every day that the war continues is another day that the Russian military continues to deteriorate without any loss of American life? But what about the Ukrainians? As long as they're want to keep fighting, we should support them. They're morally in the right here, so I don't see what forcing a settlement on them accomplishes. If the war becomes unpopular enough that the situation changes, then I'm all for changing along with it, but other than a few anecdotal accounts of people fleeing conscription, I'm not seeing it. If there were mass anti-Zelensky protests in the street, we'd know about it. And the idea that Ukraine can't sustain these kinds of losses for much longer is hogwash. In World War I, Germany, with about the same population, lost close to 2 million war dead. Ukraine's population was similar at the beginning of World War II and they lost 1.6 million war dead, in addition to over 5 million civilians. In 3 years of fighting, Ukraine has lost about 100,000 soldiers and a few thousand more civilians. This war can continue for a very long time.
The thing that pisses me off the most about this, though, is that Trump makes it sound like a deal is ready to go and all that's missing is Zelensky's signature, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. All we have is Trump's word that Putin is willing to deal, but for all we know that could mean anything. There seems to be some suggestion that the front lines will be frozen, but I just don't see that happening. I don't see Putin letting the forces in Kursk who he's been unable to dislodge in 6 months being allowed to stay indefinitely. It wouldn't surprise me if, in addition to this, Putin were to start demanding additional concessions, like Ukrainian withdrawal from the entirety of the regions he wants to annex.
And at this point there's no reason for Puitin not to make such demands. If he gets them he gets them, and if he doesn't, then he's in the same position he was a few months ago. And what does Trump do in that situation? He certainly hasn't indicated that if Putin is the one that isn't willing to deal, that he'd send US troops or drastically increase aid or anything like that. In other words, I really just don't see how making this deal furthers American interests in the region. I can see how it furthers Donald Trump's personal interest, in that he wants credit for ending the war regardless of how bad a deal it is or whether the peace lasts longer than the end of his administration. I honestly don't see the point in all this.
And one final point: A bunch of people have said that it's better for Ukrainians that the killing stops and that they still have a country, period. First, if you're going to make that argument, at least acknowledge that Putin is more to blame for all of this than Zelensky. He could end this war right now if he cared to, but he's more concerned about pursuing his revanchist vision of Mother Russia. Second, if you want to do this, don't talk about realism, and don't talk about how you personally don't give a fuck about whether Ukraine survives because you only care about America. These views simply aren't compatible.
They've basically halved the size of the Ukrainian territory held in Kursk and it's beginning to look rather more like a salient than an offensive (queue the calendar stretching back to 1943 meme): https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/83a2f24901c941d581c0c523ecd2619b
People on this forum are very confused about what realism means in terms of international relations which is fair since very few actually studied IR. Realism is about modelling world affairs through a framework of rational, power-maximizing states competing for power. Realism has no moral stance, no more than a wildlife photographer has a moral stance about the territorial struggle of two wolf packs.
You can use realism to advance moral ends or immoral ends. It's like a physics model, morally neutral.
The alternative to realism is liberalism and constructivism, which do have a moral stance. The liberals and constructivists believe in crusading for democracy, they won't rest until the whole world shares their ideology, the constructivists think that the struggle for power is just a social construct that can be undone with nagging, sanctions and judicious use of force. They didn't really believe that Russia was using a realist model since they didn't really believe in realism, they don't believe in an anarchic world, they believe in a world policeman suppressing all the baddy countries and enforcing the law.
There are serious downsides to this lack of realism. We now live in a world where Russia and China are closely aligned, undoing the US's most underappreciated masterstroke of the Cold War, splitting China away from Russia. Considerable quantities of munitions have been expended. Air defences that could be useful in Asia have been diverted to Europe. China is getting even stronger in relative terms.
This is what Trump and his people (Colby in particular) are worried about. While the liberals have been starting and losing stupid wars in the Middle East, China has been building industry. While the liberals were bitching about Russian spying or taking towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass, China has been building ships, missiles and planes. They produce more manufactured goods than the next ten countries combined. Now they're getting ready to go in on places that matter (chip producers, high-tech economies, sea lanes that dominate world trade) and the liberals want to prioritize helping Ukraine keep the maximum number of towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass? Over the fate of the entire world, the decisive final battle for dominance?
Who cares this much about Eastern Europe besides the Eastern Europeans themselves? Why did anyone ever think that this was a hill worth spending extraordinary efforts on, let alone dying on? And yes, NATO instructors are dying in Ukraine in small numbers, dying nonetheless. What was the point of it all, saying Ukraine will one day be in NATO when a realist could tell you 'never going to happen'? The realists are right as usual, like they were about Iraq and Vietnam.
Of course this is how realists would like to see reality, but critics might counter that it’s very suspicious that all their harsh, amoral, apolitical, non-ideological analysis happens to support a relatively standard ideological position (a combination of gunboat diplomacy and soft isolationism, except when it comes to the western hemisphere).
There's nothing wrong with preferring easy wars to hard wars ceteris paribus. The costs have to be proportionate to the gains.
There's nothing wrong with focusing on primary threats, as opposed to secondary ones.
There's nothing wrong with seeing a conflict overseas and doing nothing about it since it's not relevant to your interests. Plus it usually causes all kinds of flow-on problems if you do intervene.
Colby is no isolationist, if you read his book 'strategy of denial' he says that the US goal should be to back up frontline allies in Asia to prevent Chinese hegemony over this very valuable and important region. He judges that Russia is not powerful enough to threaten hegemony over Europe, the Chinese are the primary threat to US power and so there needs to be a substantial US presence in Asia, he wants to maintain alliances. It's a judicious, strategically justified rationale.
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Reminded me of this Skyrim gem.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231110051836/https://www.escapistmagazine.com/skyrim-tales/
Though of course non-combat skills actually out scale combat skills in Skyrim quite significantly. With alchemy and smithing alone (even setting aside the infinite loop trick) you can loop to create weapons that will kill even a max levelled Draugr in 1 or 2 hits even on Legendary difficulty, and boost your combat skills with alchemy if you wanted to. Not to mention you'll be rolling in gold to pay for training in combat skills if you want.
The equivalent to AI in the real world perhaps? The self-improving loop leaving behind the basics of ships and planes.
The question is whether you're training a Smithing (exceedingly powerful applications to combat) or a Lockpicking (slight improvements to things you could already do just fine).
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Those things are not mutually exclusive. Aid to Ukraine has been a drop in the bucket as far as US military spending and budget is concerned. There is nothing in that spending that has stopped US from preparing for your so called vision of a decisive final battle for dominance with China. The reason why you have a big hole in the budget is not because of military spending, it is because of Social Security and Medicare. However, to be frank, if US was actually interested in mobilizing the will for standing up to China, you would actually fix all of that by raising taxes.
Dislodging Russian and Chinese co-operation on current terms is frankly delusional. As a Russian or Chinese leader, you would have to be frankly stupid to allow US to create a wedge between the two only because seemingly US has now warmed up to Russia.
What current situation has created is that for Europeans it is indeed better to be much more autonomous (and I have always agreed with that as an European), but furthermore, it is now better to build pragmatic ties with China rather than just follow whatever US dictates. Don't see how that benefits US if US is actually interested in taking on China.
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Actually existing constructivists are batshit, which is too bad, because the first-principles logic of realism really is fake, and in the MAD world it was created to explain its more fake than ever. Theres no reason why something like e.g. current front lines should matter to a settlement between nuclear powers, beyond historical ones. And yet it does matter, and you cant unilaterally do away with it either.
Front lines are surely relevant in terms of bluffing and prestige. It would be rather obnoxious for the US to suddenly demand that Russia give up its gains in Eastern Ukraine under threat of nuclear exchange, those were hard-won gains. Putin would be a massive cuck if he didn't call that bluff. He who is not willing to send out his tanks for victory is surely not willing to burn his cities for victory.
That's hilarious.
I agreed that theyre relevant, the question is why theyre relevant, and I think the reason for that is in large part "thems the rules".
Thats true, in the world where actually sending out tanks gains you things. If it didnt, youd just be smart not to send them. So this explains why the rule of respecting conventional gains persists - thats different from explaining why its there in the first place, which is because thats how it worked historically.
Of course, because that would be against the rules. As I said, you cant just change those "because I said so". The "constructed" reasons Im talking about are not something that adds on top of or conflicts with game theory - they show up directly in your judgements of whats reasonable and credible. These judgements cant be derived purely from military capability.
But sending out tanks does gain you things? The Russians have secured a swathe of territory in Donbass, they took Mariupol.
We're agreed that the rules can't be unilaterally changed but I think there must be some concrete reason why all the powers invest so much into conventional forces. Nukes are very powerful but not appropriate for all conditions.
Even in the Cold War everyone was stacking up huge columns of troops in Europe, along with masses of nukes. Nukes held the line for the Western bloc up till about 1978 when they started to gain a conventional advantage. But people were still interested in conventional weapons.
Yes, but in the hypothetical different nuclear equilibrium, they wouldnt get to keep it.
The purely nuclear equilibria have very sharp rules. If theres a situation where neither party is allowed to nuke, its a free win for whoever invested in conventional forces. It cant actually, realistically happen outside a toy example world set up with it. In the cold war, I think neither party would have been willing to nuke over losing individual european satellites that somehow happen without a general attack.
I think youre just not confident enough because this mechanism is new to you. Start out small in using it. My example was chosen for illustrating what sort of thing I mean, not for being convincing. Something more realistic might be e.g. the discussions early in this war whether Russia could get away with a "tactical" nuke - they propably cant, but there may well have been a world where they could.
They could get away with a tactical nuke, it's just that doing so would incur various costs. It's just a matter of calculation about risk and reward. If somehow the whole Russian army got encircled in Mariupol, they might well start nuking intensively rather than lose the war. The US considered nukes in Korea and Vietnam but concluded the costs weren't worth the gains.
These weapons aren't unthinkable, that's just a social construct that the US likes to propagate.
Russia has been confident of conventional victory the whole time and doesn't want to irradiate land it wants to conquer, a country they want to vassalize or annex.
In the Cold War the Soviets demonstrated what they'd do if they lost a European satellite - send in the tanks!
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Which liberals? George W Bush? Dick Cheney?
Neoconservatism is an ideology of liberal imperialism. This is uncontroversial.
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Yes, they are, in fact, liberals. Aside from Cheney's daughter, or Bill Kristol, now being besties with the Dems, the Overton Window in all Western democracies is about as wide as that joint's from the Blue's Brother's.
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