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Notes -
To anyone who has discussed the issue with pro-Ukraine people.
Why do people support Ukraine fighting against Russia, with a strange militaristic fervor, instead of supporting surrendering / negotiating peace?
Anglin makes the points that:
-the war is severely impoverishing Europe due to high energy costs
-the war is destroying Ukraine ( population + territory / infrastructures / institutions)
-continuing the war increases the chances of a world war
Is it cheering for the possible destruction of Russia?
Something to do with the current leadership of Russia, anti-LGBTQ, pro-family policies?
Is it about the 1991 borders of Ukraine, issues with post-Soviet Union border disputes?
Notion that 'if we don't stop Putin now he will never stop no matter what'? Is it something about broadly standing up against aggression of one state vs another, supporting the 'underdog'?
The issue with that one which seems to be central to Alexander's March 22 post is that there isn't much that seems capable of stopping Russia.
Sending another 100k Ukrainians to the meatgrinder for that end seems a little bit harsh coming from people with very little skin in the game.
Just signaling what they are told is the correct opinion?
Is it about saving face, sunk cost at this point?
What would be the best case scenario for a Ukraine/State Department victory?
To my understanding, Putin is not the most radical or dangerous politician in Russia, and an implosion into ethnicity-based sub-regions would cause similar problems to the 'Arab Spring'. Chechens for example would not appear very West-friendly once 'liberated' from Russia.
Not only that, but economic crisis in Europe could generate additional security risks.
There’s no peace deal on the table. It feels like your just building a strawman. You don’t end a war just to leave military positions that can turn into a hot war whenever Russia decides to.
If Russia put together a peace deal that is viable and would end hostilities for a generation then Ukraine should consider it. They haven’t. The only offer Ukraine has received is a ceasefire until Russia is ready to start the war again. From Ukraines perspective it’s better to win or lose now. Not have purgatory and new war in a year.
I think Russia made an ultimatum based on the Minsk agreement right before the war, telling Ukraine to stop their little game of seeking favors with the West or else.
Ukraine also had the option of not bombing civilians for years in Eastern Ukraine and they chose not to. From the perspective of civilians in the Eastern Ukraine, Russia has only joined a war that Ukraine was waging against them for years.
There is no realistic path for an independent Ukraine victory in my opinion, it's a matter of Americans and Europeans deciding that tanking their own economy is not worth preserving the borders of some random post-soviet state.
From the Ukrainian man's perspective, it's better to see their leadership surrender than to get sent to the die in a war that they have nothing to gain from.
Do you think they "bombed civilians for years in Eastern Ukraine" just for the evulz?
Ukraine fought back in a war initiated by separatists and instigated, indirectly or directly, by Russia. If Ukraine hadn't fought back, the separatists would have kept pushing and pushing, beyond the January 2022 frontline already in 2014 or 2015
Kind of the opposite of pushing, really. The Donetsk and Luhansk separists, who started their uprising in April 2014, were only spared a quick defeat in 2014 due to the direct intervention of conventional Russian forces in August, about five months later. Before they did so, the separatists were basically being blockaded in the cities they controlled, as the broader pro-Russian/anti-maidan uprising the Russians were expecting fell flat.
Eastern Ukraine since 2014 is absolutely one of those contexts where the war only lasted as a long as it did due to external life-support and regular intervention. Donetsk and Luhansk had more in common with Kabul than Ukraine vis-a-vis Russia, right down to the tepid-at-best local support making local fighters dependent on external military forces.
If the goal was to protect ethnic Russians, the best course of action would have been to let the separatist states fall. Not only would there have been no war around the two cities, but they would have been quickly re-integrated into the post-Maidan political system, which actually would have allowed pro-Russian interest groups a chance to affect internal Ukrainian politics, rather than Russia's attempt to force the Minsk II constitution order change as peace terms. That method had the effect of taking all the pro-Russian influence groups out of Ukraine's politics, a mistake that was noted at the time as a gamble.
Well, yes, that's exactly because Ukraine - or perhaps, one might say, Ukrainian nationalists - fought back. What I meant was that the separatists certainly intended to expand to a vastly larger area than what they controlled in Jan 2022, as indicated by the early attempts to establish DPR/LPR like entities in Herson, Kharkiv etc.
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To summarize - you think Ukraine is a non playable character. No ability to create their own destiny.
Second Poland has very real strategic issues here. Their not letting Russia militiarize Ukraine on their border. If the US and most of Western Europe left Ukraine right now Poland would have to make a serious decision of going 100% all-in on Ukraine. Poland cares about these borders. And a bunch of other smaller post Soviet countries in NATO all of which would have to decide on going to full hot war with Russia. Whether the US joins or not half of nato would likely end up in a hot war with Russia.
Minsk’s agreement guaranteed Ukraine sovereignty. They were guaranteed by Russia independence in their economic concerns.
Economic issues for Europe have been muted. Oil/natty prices back down.
Russia rapidly becoming a non-country.
Ukranian men can make their own decisions. They prefer freedom and dead Russians. Victory at this point is basically guaranteed and it’s Russia that’s going to be worried about their borders not Ukraine.
Honestly don’t get why westerners object to US in Ukraine. It’s pocket change. I get it that Russia isn’t globo homo. But I’m also not globohomo. And Russia isn’t the ally I want against globohomo.
World War 3 will last half an hour.
US soldiers are on the ground demonstrating weapons systems to Ukrainians. The first American serviceman to lose his life will be a cause celebre and a causus belli.
Come on this isn’t serious. US isn’t launching nukes because a military contractor lost a life. You using an assumption that we are dumb and lack self control.
America could lose 50k soldiers and still refuse escalation to nuclear war.
Would that this were a convincing counter-argument...
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And if you always surrender to nukes then a shithole country and culture like Russia would rule the world.
Scott dealt with this in a long think piece before.
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Russian pilots flew missions in the Korean War, no? That didn't escalate, despite that falling under the same conditions in this frame.
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In my opinion Ukraine is not a character. Proof of it is that the main leader of that 'nationalist' country is Jewish, thus not sharing the same ethnicity as most people in Ukraine and Russia (slavic), and was even sued a couple years ago for not using the official language (Ukrainian, a regional dialect of Russian that he learned as an adult) in official settings, Most people in that country speak Russian but the government has been playing a game of forcing Ukrainian as the official 'language', similarly to French in Quebec.
Aside from that, they cannot possibly win against Russia on their own, and they've been struggling with intelligence, spec ops and billions dollars in support from the richest country in the world.
Ukraine also had the ability to create their own destiny when they had pro-Russia leaders until that color revolution that brought in actors like Zelensky in charge.
I guess that was not the right type of democracy back then.
I don't think that's in question at this point.
One can also question why Poland would decide to strengthen ties to EU/NATO when they already put themselves on the bad side of the EU before for their treatment of LGBTQ+ minorities.
They may have ultimately more in common with the Russian block than the Western block, but that's up to them to figure out.
Which one is it then? Let's have globohomo fully destroy Western Europe because Russia bad?
Globohomo will sterilize itself into extinction in fairly short order, don't worry.
Globohomo might actually be demographically stable as long as it manages to recruit from outsider populations faster than it kills or sterilizes its members.
And demographically-stable outsider populations are developing immune responses rapidly.
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Insofar as "globohomo" exists, surely Russians are as "globo" as the West, considering that they have no compunction about there being, generally, global organizations, global treaties, global frameworks etc. that nations are supposed to obey - they simply want the whole constellation and governance of the system to happen on a different basis than now (ie. one that would favor Russia more).
Thus, it all would boil down to "homo", which I'm choosing to interpret as meaning, obviously, homosexuality (I'm aware there's an explanation of the term where it means "global homogeneity" or whatever - this has always sounded, to me, as credible as "No, officer, don't ya know that ACAB means All Cats Are Beautiful?")m, and that would then boil down to it being OK for Russia to bomb Ukraine's infrastructure to smithereens, occupy vast stretches of land, kill untold numbers of Ukrainians etc... just to prevent there being a Pride parades in Donetsk and Sevastopol. Forgive me for not considering that enough of a reason for, well, anything resembling Russia's current actions, really.
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We’ll disagree with most of that.
But no I don’t let globohomo win because Russia bad. I just don’t partner with Russia. I fight globohomo in other avenues (which does include allying with Ukraine after the war as a non globo homo country).
I speak truth to power against globohomo.
Ukraine as a non globo homo country?
They’ve always been non globo homo.
You think the globo homo types would ever man trenches in 0 degree weather?
This the President
Them the ones getting eliminated by the President
Let's see what the 'New Ukrainians' look like once Zelensky is done with Ukraine.
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Poland is on pace to have higher per capita income than England.
But your opinion is quickly given - you don’t believe Ukranians exists. It’s like stepping on a cockroach.
This is horrible logic - “Ukraine had the chance to create their own identified when they had Russian leaders” - like wtf - that’s akin to Henry Ford saying you can buy a car any color you want as long as it’s black. You saying Ukraine could have any destiny they wanted as long as their a Russian colony.
I wonder if this has to do with the quality of people that reside respectively in Poland and England.
I wonder if building stronger ties to NATO and EU is going to lead Poland toward increasing or decreasing the quality of the people that live there.
Let's not forget the assumption that higher per capita income should be used as an important metrics.
What do you care if Ukrainians exist? If the proportion of Ukrainian in Ukraine decreased by 10% but the per capita income increased by 10%, wouldn't that be positive for you?
Ukraine had an identity for the hundreds of years that it was practically a part of Russia.
You do not seem to like that identity and you seem to believe that the 1991 to 2022 or 2014 to 2022 period is the 'real' Ukrainian identity. Arbitrary.
Oh now they are finally free from the Russian empire! They only have to come grovel to the American congress and take orders from American politicians. Surely this will improve their lot.
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Wild stuff.
No nation with a jewish president can be a sovereign country? Jewish people can't be nationalistic? This is "proof" that Ukraine is not sovereign, or has no agency in its own affairs?
Jewish nationalism is called zionism.
My evidence for Zelensky not being a Ukrainian nationalist is that :
-he is an actor. Not exactly where you expect to find nationalists, but it is a career where duplicity is an important skill
-he learned the Ukrainian dialect as an adult and was sued for not using it in official setting while it was a requirement of his job
It seems that Ukrainian nationalists are very concerned about usage of Ukrainian, why would an authentic nationalist not know that?
That's like being an American progressive who doesn't care to learn the pronouns.
Usually nationalists of a given country follow people that actually represent the majority of the nation.
For example American nationalists usually elect white people because that's who they think the nation should be represented by.
All I'm saying is that it's pretty odd for nationalists to elect a minority actor who does not even follow the basic codes (even law) of being an elected official for that country.
The fact that the guy immediately throws the country into a war that pretty much guarantees that Ukraine will not exist as a nation in any meaningful way in the future kind of support this further.
Sending all your womenfolk overseas for the next generation pretty much guarantees that you will not have fresh blood in the future, unless imported EU-style, but by my definition of nationalism, that is not really the same nation.
If an IRA member grows ups using English and learns Gaelic only as an adult and cannot use it very well, does that ipso facto mean they're not an Irish nationalist?
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I think you have the Ukrainian man's perspective wrong. The Ukrainian man doesn't necessarily love Zelenskyy to the point of laying down his own life for his leader, but he does value telling the Russians to fuck off enough.
This sort of argument has been brought up many a time this year, and it's pointless for many of the same reasons that utilitarian or "realist"/"rationalist" arguments tend to fall flat: for many people, there are things that matter more than GDP or trade agreements. You may think it irrational for Ukraine to not lay down and take their annexation, or for the West to refuse the Rusgeld, but you simply don't see this from the perspective of others.
You mention Ukrainian aggression towards their seccessionists and trying to make friends with the West, and I will simply note that that is just Cold War-era tensions mixed with a good old fashioned culture war. Russia launched this invasion in the first place because they (or, rather, the idea/memeplex of Russia) have lost the culture war in Ukraine.
The realist/rationalist should support the Ukraine war. I take those labels and support the war.
Poland right now is on pace to have higher per capita income than england in 10 years. That could be Ukraines future in NATO. You get rich. Now their some shithole peasant people useful to the west as 23 year old wives for 50 year olds.
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I probably do.
Maybe they did, but that should not translate into bombing civilians with strong ties to your much bigger and stronger next door neighbor.
Wars still need to be fought. It's very impressive that the comedy actor Zelensky was able to parlay billions of dollars from the EU and US, but all it takes is for the general sentiment to turn in either or both for 'his' country to go down the drain.
Furthermore, if the average Ukrainian man is a strong nationalist willing to die for Ukraine (whatever that is), that he considered very very different than the next door Russian neighbor his ancestors shared hundreds of years of destiny with, he's in for a big surprise when he finds out what kind of people the EU and NATO have been importing on their side.
Nationalism is not really a strong value for the NATO camp, and aside from the Reddit brigade, there aren't that many people that care enough about the personal, individual fate of any Ukrainian to put their life on the line for them.
Any other year, they would have assumed the man to be some kind of patriarchal racist/xenophobe, and to an extent probably correctly.
Russia is much bigger, but not much stronger, as demonstrated by their offensive culmination in the first three months, before major land combat systems began being shipped to Ukraine in earnest.
The Soviet Union was much stronger- hence the access to Soviet economic stockpiles fueling the contemporary Russian military- but this outside-actor advantage has been countered by the Western economic stockpiles fueling the contemporary Ukrainian military. Given that the Soviet stockpiles are increasingly finite, while the western economic production is forecasted to remain overwhelming even with the economic difficulties forecasted,
Fortunately for Ukraine, the Russians have been very effective at fortifying general sentiment of the western alliance network to maintain support, which has in turn allowed western supporters to develop the internal political-interest coalitions to continue support for reasons beyond sentiment.
It turns out, when the patrons of influential interest groups becomes a pariah, domestic political actors will take the opportunity to tear said groups down and apart as part of the churn of internal politics.
Citation needed for existence of 'years of destiny', but also irrelevant- if he's in a position to be surprised, he will have already beat the Russians decisively enough to have the time and space to turn attention to western europe and care about something like that.
That's the neat point- there don't need to be. The Ukrainians don't need foreign manpower on the front line.
Fortunately, Russia has a way of helping other people come together in a more inclusive way.
If democracy is still a thing, I expect some (limited) turnover in Western Europe to the tune of 'why should we keep paying for Ukraine', and in the US, 'what happened to BLM, it's all about Ukraine'.
Most people don't really care about preventing far away countries from encroaching into other far away countries' borders.
It's hard to simultaneously say that Russia is weak and cannot sustain the war and that we need to give billions to defend against Russia, or else Russia will keep fighting these wars that they are too weak to fight.
The Italians had an election pretty recently, and haven't blinked. The US midterms weren't a hotbed of anti-establishment or anti-Ukraine sentiment either. None of these things are big secrets. I think it's pretty safe to say you're still wrong.
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