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It has been a while since we have had a Ukraine thread, and I thought this time it might be worth crossing the aisle from what is happening (our typical topic) to what we would prefer to see as an outcome – our oughts.
As Hume argued we can’t get from a stack of “is” statements to an ought, and that often leaves our ought assumptions being left implicit rather than discussed when we focus on what is happening day to day. I think one of the really interesting things about this conflict is that it reveals a lot of different ground level preferences and assumptions, and while the war itself is largely limited to Russia fighting in Europe’s eastern fringes it has serious worldwide geopolitical implications.
Imagine it is mid 2026 and you wake up to a final victory by one side or the other, say in the top 90% percentile plus of favourability, however you wish to define it.
For example, on one hand perhaps something like Russia breaks through the Ukrainian lines, takes all four oblasts that it claims (or even up to Lviv, if that’s your expectation), sanctions are rolled back and Russia has arguably gained from the war. NATO is shown to be divided, America is unwilling or unable to intervene in such conflicts and Russia has a clear sphere of influence where it has veto that is starting to put pressure on eastern members of NATO, if it wishes. Meanwhile for Ukraine, it might be Russia being forced back to prewar borders, maybe even Crimea is on the path to being returned conditional on lifting sanctions, on the road to the EU and with clear NATO security guarantees, whatever you want to add or take out for either as their ideal goals.
How would you feel in each of these scenarios: which one would you prefer and thinks leads to a better world on balance?
I’m certainly not saying either of these extremes are equally likely – or even likely at all. If you feel like I’m being unfair or trying to trap you just talk about one or the other for sure, but I think the exercise might show something interesting.
For me, I personally sympathize with the Ukrainians and think that their quality of life will be better should they win, but that’s only a small part of the picture for why I think the Ukrainian victory scenario is pretty much all upside, and the Russian one a serious blow to global flourishing. I worry about a world where wars of aggression are seen to be net positive, and if small countries look upon this and see that the past promises of allies aren’t worth nearly as much as they were expecting they may well scramble for nuclear weapons or launch arms races. Taiwan, South Korea and even Japan might be in this category, and South East Asia may well follow. Should China wish to act on Taiwan, it might both be emboldened by the US pulling back support/western sanctions being weak + transitory and see its window before nuclear weapons are in the picture closing, leading to further conflicts that could go very wrong.
However, many people outside of Russia hope for a Russian victory, and not only bots for sure. Some may simply be pro Russia in the sense of wanting Russia to do well as a terminal end in itself, but that is far from the central reason: a lot of the MAGA/Vance position seems to be something like hoping to get America out of forever wars by showing countries that they can’t use the US as backstop of treasure to unpin their security. A world where America won’t back them up or push them to do so leads to less money spent and be positive for America, either preserving its power for the key fights or stopping the need for it to get entangled abroad altogether, Russia clearly winning can be positive for those advocating this vision. Meanwhile, those who dislike the west itself or its efforts to project its liberal views worldwide might see NATO/the US being shown as unable to win proxy wars or being weaker/more divided than the alliance hopes is a good in itself. I also know some commenters here think that Ukraine was basically pushed into conflict and then left to die by the US establishment/deep state. Maybe a clear Russian victory would make others in future not fall for this and avoid all the pain of further invasions, those in the sphere of Russia and China will have to accept their sovereignty has more asterisks than others and this is clearly better as an equilibrium.
I’m really interested in what others have to say on this though, have I got the “pro” Russia position roughly right for example? Or have I missed something else fairly fundamental that someone wants to add to the ought framing?
I am pro Russia for several reasons.
The fundamental debate regarding what the west is. The globalists want to see a gobalist, universalist empire. I want the west to focus on itself. We shouldn't be fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine or Venezuela. Even if these wars went well I don't want a global empire. They are inherently multicultural, require a police state and tie our fate to people we have nothing in common with. I support all groups fighting the globalists. The refugee and heroin flows from Afghanistan stopped when the globalists were physically kicked out of the country by the Afghan people. The Iraqis kicked the globalists out of most of their country as well. Hopefully people fighting for Keir Starmer and Macron get kicked out of Ukraine as well. These wars end up with us footing the bill while we get swamped with migrants. Then we need more government control to stop whatever evil cartoon character the media is trying to scare us with this time.
Being sucked into the west would wreck Ukraine. Their culture would get replaced by America ghetto culture, their cities would fill with migrants and they would get all the same cultural bagage that saddles the rest of Europe. I have visited Kiev and it was a beautiful city with minimal third world migration, few tattooed fat women with nose rings. The last thing they need is an EU/Soros cultural program.
It is bad enough that we northern Europeans have to be in the EU with Greeks and Romanians. Now we are going to add Ukraine into this mess? We are going to end up paying to be in a brutally corrupt and inefficient EU.
The Eurocrats aren't even trying to hide that they are trying to bring down Russia. What they want to replace it with is woke vassal states. I see it is positive that Russia is Europe's largest country and is free and independent.
All empires need Limes. The idea that the woke globalist order is going to stretch to Eastern Ukraine and to the Chinese border will put us in a constant state of semi war. It is much easier to have large buffer zones between us and other civilizations. Pushing right up against them creates conflict that we don't need. I don't want to get nuked for transgender story hour in Taiwan, Tehran or Kharkiv.
We have two competing world orders. The BRICS world order is based around civilizational states that make deals with each other. The other competing globalist world order is based upon forcing a world view on the entire planet and defining all decent as evil that has no legitimacy. This world view is fundamentally opposed to states being sovereign as the global order is supposed to stand above the nation state.
The idea that Europe is about to be steamrolled by Russia stands in contrast to the other narrative that Russia is a collapsing gas station. Which one is it? Is Russia about to collapse or are they about to conquer Europe? If Germany is going to be steamrolled by Russia it says more about their current civilizational incompetence than anything else. The German diplomat who cried at the Munich security council meeting after JD Vance said that European countries have to protect themselves reveals a lot about the incompetence of our current ruling class.
I can understand both these positions, but I don't understand how you can hold them simultaneously. Either Ukraine's local culture is good and deserves better than to be subsumed by the standard Westernized global culture, or Ukraine is a shithole and adding it to the EU will further dilute European greatness in the same way as adding Turkey would have done; but I don't see how both can be true at the same time.
Though speaking of questionable dichotomies,
while I've had this thought before, I think a reasonable steelman is "Russia is collapsing but hasn't collapsed yet; we're still in the danger zone; that's why it's important to keep it quarantined long enough for it to completely fall apart". A wounded bear that hasn't stopped fighting yet is a dangerous thing.
You can think there are good aspects of Ukrainian culture that need not be tainted while also thinking you don't want the bad aspects of Ukrainian culture like the corruption.
Say you value a jar of Northern Europe at 100, Ukraine at 50 and migrants at 10. Mixing Europe and Ukraine worsens Europe. Mixing migrants and Ukraine worsens Ukraine. I bet he'd prefer to replace all third world migrants with Ukrainians if that was somehow possible.
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