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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.
Part of this is that I feel very strongly that NATO is and would still have remained (and still WILL remain) a fundamentally defensive alliance. I guess loosely related to your question #3 is that I have mixed feelings about the NATO expansion. Clearly, a demand is there for smaller states worried about invasion from Russia - something that even in post-Soviet times they are literally and explicitly guilty of (Georgia 2008 absolutely must be mentioned). I don't know if NATO was really the best tool, but the need was there. So I guess I could say that concrete signs that NATO would consider an offensive, counter-Russia action would be notable, but they do not in reality exist. For example, strong evidence in favor of this is how NATO has promised and still does not station nuclear weapons in any former Warsaw Pact nations. This idea that Russia was somehow 'goaded' into attacking I view as almost explicit Russian propaganda - at least, explicitly spread, I don't think it's intrinsically faulty, though of course it is I believe factually false.
For example, large military exercises near Russia's borders are seen as provocative, and of course they might send a political/diplomatic message, but in no conceivable scenario are they actually threats. The idea behind military exercises being threats is that they can sometimes mask real invasions. Russia, obviously, just used this excuse for its own attack. But the structure of NATO, and the nature of the alliance and its countries (democracies) almost literally prevents NATO from ever declaring a surprise invasion or offensive action. Similarly, missile defense systems being deployed in Poland, etc. are I think a little more understandable, but again, NATO is almost never going to initiate shit, much less a nuclear initiation, so again this isn't a legitimate reason to be afraid of NATO. The only actual NATO offensive action was Yugoslavia, and even that was telegraphed far in advance, was explicitly humanitarian in an already-war situation, so I fail to see how it would ever serve as a template for Russia to be worried.
I'm pretty sympathetic to your position here, but there's some things I think need to be parsed out.
Can't all of this be said of the invasion of Ukraine? Russia surrounded Ukraine and sent ultimatums demanding that Ukraine be banned from NATO, and then when they were rebuffed it launched a military operation, claiming it was staging a humanitarian intervention in an already war-torn land...and I think it's pretty reasonable for Russia's neighbors to be worried, honestly! But by the same token I don't think handwaving Yugoslavia really assuages Russia's concerns about the potential for NATO to be turned against them and their allies, especially since intervening there was arguably a violation of the NATO charter and NATO did it regardless.
Let's talk about this a bit. AEGIS Ashore (which was deployed in Romania) uses the SM-3 in a land-based VLS cell.
Guess what also uses VLS cells? The Tomahawk surface-to-surface cruise missile. That should have made AEGIS Ashore illegal under the INF treaty in my reading, but as I understand it, the US brushed off the concerns with "well we've made it so that it won't accept the Tomahawk" - I'm not really sure how the Russians are supposed to be able to verify this. At any rate, the US pulled out of the INF (which was the right thing to do) so it's a moot point now, but at the time I think the Russians were technically correct to find it fishy (of course they likely violated the INF themselves, so, even if it was "in response," they arguably lose the right to persuasively complain about it.)
Anyway, let's set aside the Tomahawk, guess what has a secondary surface attack mode? Any missile, in theory (the Russians engaged a number of surface targets with S-300 surface-to-air missiles during the ongoing war). So the Russians were possibly, based on what I've read, not just worried about the destabilizing nature of a missile shield in their backyard, they were also concerned that the Americans were putting a launcher under their nose to conduct a decapitation first strike. The Russians are touchy about that sort of thing (there allegedly was a touch-and-go Nuclear Suitcase moment under Yeltsin because the Scandinavians sent up a single civilian rocket that the Russians were unaware of, and the Russians thought it might be a first strike, since a single launch first strike was one of their scenarios.)
PERSONALLY I think that the Russians are overly neurotic about this stuff because we can probably put SSGNs just about wherever we want and fire Tomahawks anyway, but it's probably worth understanding that to the Russians "putting BMD in Romania" and "putting ballistic missiles in Romania" may trigger an "it's the same picture" response and I don't think the US going "nah trust me brah" is very persuasive.
It might be worth mentioning that the EU's independent report determined Georgia started said war.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. That's some interesting somewhat new information about the missile shield stuff. To be clear, I'm framing all of this exactly on that last premise, where Russia's whole argument against NATO is that it's somehow an existential threat against the Russian state. This is absolutely ridiculous. In absolutely no world would the US much less NATO actually launch a nuclear decapitation first strike against Russia, and yes I'm willing to bet the world on that. The only scenario in which nukes get exchanged is the result of massive miscommunications in the face of existing tensions or fog of war, and in that scenario the actual tactical considerations like "is the launcher in Romania/Poland/Estonia/etc or is it in Germany" are not relevant anyways. And even then it's not NATO pushing the button, it's the United States directly, so even more a moot point. NATO again requires a ton of buy-in from many actors, which means pulling the trigger on offensive actions isn't some secret. Whereas there was legitimate doubt whether Russia would actually invade Ukraine up until they actually did it. NATO would never. It's a committee, for crying out loud.
Anyways. Yes, in theory, the various nuclear agreements were supposed to give decision-makers more time to make such decisions, thus increasing the chance of a good decision, by limiting the (relatively) shorter range types of missile, but IIRC (welcome corrections) the Russians literally were the first ones to purposefully develop such a missile in violation of the treaty, and thus deserve the bulk of the practical blame. I think that's still in keeping with your information, as again, even IF the conversion of Aegis systems to Tomahawks was possible, my understanding is that it's not an overnight fix kind of thing. (Also, didn't the nuclear-variant Tomahawk in question get retired in 2010-2013, says Google?) Thus, even if Russians might be upset that the US isn't keeping the spirit of the INF treaty, developing their own non-compliant missile creates the exact risk the INF agreement was supposed to prevent, and their concerns, while justified maybe more broadly, still shouldn't have extended to this particular issue. Which brings me right back to the original point. I get that the Russians are historically touchy, but there's a difference between paranoia and common sense.
Russia is a single entity and NATO is not. Russia was and will never be genuinely militarily threatened by anyone - even in Georgia it was secessionists who were shelled, not Russian territory - but the same is patently not true for individual European states. Russia wanting the Donbas separatists to win wasn't out of some patriotic desire to help Russian speakers but naked political greed and expansionism. We can tell exactly because of the Ukraine stuff that went down can genuinely cause us to re-examine the 2014 grab and conclude (even if we hadn't been sure already) that this was starting shit, not 'taking advantage' of an existing crisis. The additional fact that Russia has been deliberately and freely embracing "grey zone" tactics to achieve their goals (little green men, online astroturfing, etc.) should work against their credit, not in their favor.
Yugoslavia on the other hand is not Russia. If smaller former Warsaw Pact countries want or wanted to form a defensive military alliance to protect against similar NATO "aggression" (it kind of takes genocide to get them going which is a somewhat high bar?) they are free to, and NATO might be unhappy but it won't like, freak out.
I strongly believe the US would act in exactly the same way as Russia if put in the same circumstances. Imagine if there were a
couprevolution in Mexico tomorrow, throwing out the elected pro American government for one that is decidedly pro China. So much so that Mexico wants to join an alliance with China, stop trade with the US, possibly disallow the US military and civilian ships access to the Gulf of Mexico, provide accommodations for military bases for China in Mexico on the border, and possibly station Chinese nuclear weapons pointing north. While the US has never been to war directly with China, and they aren’t threatening to invade, we would invade Mexico and not think twice. We would field tactical nukes in the case we were losing ground with Mexican troops approaching San Diego and not think twice.Believe me, things like the Cuban Missile Crisis are almost perpetually part of my thinking that I like to challenge myself with. But I try to avoid too-crazy what-ifs because nothing in foreign policy is ever divorced entirely from history or circumstance. Lack of realism proportionally decreases the usefulness of thought exercises. A better thought exercise is, for example, if the US gets in a shooting war with China and loses a major fleet, does it use a tactical nuke? What if instead China air-nukes a fleet, do we air-nuke a city in response? What do we do if China preemptively shoots down a ton of our GPS or other satellites, but takes no other action, how would we respond? All of those are much more relevant and important questions to ask and plan for rather than... whatever weird fiction that is. Or, talk about for example the actual real-world case of US putting pressure on Panama to kick out the nearby Chinese ports near the canal (and whatever other crock Trump is spouting). Maybe engage in some reasoning about what if those ports were militarized or something. Would the US be justified in invading Panama to stop Chinese influence in this case? Well, treaty-wise I think we'd have some latitude, but practically speaking I think that that would be bad and the world would be wise to try and stop it from happening.
To the extent that moral reasoning matters (which is, not much, mostly when convenient and/or don't infringe too much on the more core responsibilities) I similarly think it's enough to put yourself in their shoes and better understand context rather than conjure up some kind of convoluted alter-history just to reason through a low-relevance moral point.
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