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Notes -
Dreher apparently wrote an article that too specifically quoted Orbans thoughts. Supposedly it’s a bigger deal in Hungary but I believe there’s a few money quotes to discuss.
On Ukraine:
“To be clear, Viktor Orban doesn’t want the West to be in a war with Russia. But he says that far too many Westerners are deluding themselves about what’s really happening—and what could happen. . . .
Orban said that the West needs to understand that Putin cannot afford to lose, and will not lose, because he’s up for re-election next year, and he cannot run as the president who lost a war. What’s more, he said, Russia cannot allow NATO to establish a presence in Ukraine. The time has long passed when Russia might have been able to conquer Ukraine, or install a friendly regime. Had Russia won a quick victory, that might have been possible, but it’s hopeless now. Therefore, said Orban, Russia’s goal is to make Ukraine an ungovernable wreck, so the West cannot claim it as a prize. At this, they have already succeeded.”
On Ukraine I 100% the west, specifically NATO and the US, is at war with Russia. I often see the criticism from critics of the war that we do not understand this point. We do. It’s just in the modern world country’s don’t officially declare war. Russia did not. Nato did not. Perhaps it gives you cover for peace or something to not say it directly, but for whatever reason war is not called war. I agree Putin probably can’t lose the war or he’s out of office and perhaps a sacrificial lamb for the next dude. Disagree Russia had any strategic fear of NATO. 100% agree a fear of EU in Russia was justified as the western cultural umbrella would spread easier which he didn’t mention but culture war I’ve always believed was far stronger than any military war. Think Putin could have won the war earlier with better planning by crushing the military in the east first. But they had bad intel. Now the west is invested so theirs no way for Putin to win so his only play I guess is to make Ukraine in the east depopulated. Perhaps that’s not losing at a high costs.
On EU:
“Someone asked the prime minister if he wanted Hungary to stay in the EU. “Definitely not!” he said, adding that Hungary has no choice, because 85 percent of its exports are within the EU.”
This is true everywhere. Our wealth is thru trade. The old meme - the right can just invent their own twitter, their own internet, their own payment system…….Everything is interconnected and dependent on others. Centralized services have better economies of scale. Hungary due to geography can only be wealthy by becoming interconnected in the EU. Some businesses more constant costs businesses do not have these factors - farming, light manufacturing, etc (mostly right dominated industries). The lefts conquered all the industries that scale or have strong network effects. And that’s where the culture war fight has come from of trying to not be dominated.
https://www.thebulwark.com/how-rod-dreher-caused-an-international-scandal-in-eastern-europe/
What Orban says keeps me up at night simply because he’s right. And what’s really scary is that I don’t think either side can back down. We’re giving Ukraine everything, and talking about even fighter jets. If we give Ukraine everything and they lose, that’s a serious blow to the credibility of NATO as a protector of the current international order. I think this is why China is supportive. If we can’t defend Ukraine, why would we be able to protect our Asian Allies in Korea or Japan? If we can’t actually protect Ukraine despite billions in sanctions and giving the most powerful weapons we have, what sane country is going to trust us to be their defense or to protect their trade or solve their disputes? And without that perception, we lose a lot of power. If you’re not looking to NATO as much for defense and trade protection, why do you care what they say?
And given that neither side can afford to lose, I fear an out of control escalation. NATO leaders know that their power will be diminished by a loss, that’s why Ukraine keeps getting more and more weapons, more advanced weapons, etc. they can’t afford to lose, especially after investing heavily in Ukrainian victory. Putin likewise can’t lose (though I think there’s a fig leaf in that if he gets Donbas in a peace deal, it’s more than he had to start with, while for NATO anything short of the 1990s border is a loss). It’s just not a situation that either side can back away from.
Sadly, I strongly suspect this will end up as an extremely extended case of sunken cost fallacy. It will drag on and on with both sides refusing to make any concessions towards peace until it's years later, countless lives lost, billions of dollars spent, destruction everywhere. Only then will both sides be so exhausted that they will be forced into negotiating a peace that makes no one happy, when they could have negotiated a similiar diplomatic postion prior to the invasion with far less cost to everyone.
I don’t think the US can be exhausted. We are not a poor nation. Exhaustion perhaps if Ukraine runs out of troops. But then you still have an option of Polish boots on the ground who have no interest in Russia on there border and plenty of past grievances.
Personally I think the west losing would be a huge negative. It puts a lot of national security guarantees under threat. Even our enemies like Iran benefit from international standards. Russia losing isn’t necessarily bad for the average guy but bad for Putin.
Exhaustion as in "according to polls stopping funding Ukraine gives us 2 extra percentage points"
Public opinion has to have a direct effect
on voting to sway politicians. The American public will never vote for one guy over another because he wants to send 1/1000th less of the yearly budget to Ukraine.
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I want to stop funding Ukraine. Think it’s absurd when facing these massive deficits we are borrowing about 100b to fund Ukraine. Yes it isn’t causing the deficit but it sure ain’t helping.
What is your source on the US borrowing $100 billion to fund Ukraine? The total aid according to this article is worth only $50 billion, and most of that is in-kind (old weapons stockpiles etc.) and not financial.
Here says 66b was approved by congress prior to the Omni bill at end of 2022 which promised another 48b.
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/12/u-s-aid-to-ukraine-explained/
Granted, maybe some of it is in kind. But still we’ve committed to use over 100b of assets.
Note that it is much, much different from "we are borrowing about 100b to fund Ukraine". To the point that "we are borrowing about 100b to fund Ukraine" claim is untrue.
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I mean, personally, as a left-winger, I'm glad some of our bloated defense department budget is finally get put to use for a good reason for once. If we have to "spend" (ie. send basically our leftover equipment in the back of the garage to Ukraine) a stupidly small amount of GDP to turn Russia into a wreck, win-win.
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I really doubt it. Maybe if there were Americans dying on the ground for nothing like Iraq.
But Biden's party hates Putin and the MIC is very good at finding enough slack in the democratic process to continue working, except when there really is an overwhelming, bipartisan counter-reaction (like Iraq).
Rest of the time they seem to get away with throwing arms and funding at the conflicts they want.
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I would just say Iraq and Afghanistan.
We won Iraq. It’s a Democracy. Afghanistan still 20 years. So possible but long.
So the people of Iraq, that hate America and wish for nothing more than to see it destroyed, can now vote and this is a win for the US because? Not that this is an actual worry since Iraq, by some think tank standards, has not been less democratic since they starting measuring the country in 2006. And is categorized as "authoritarian", ranking 124th out of 167.
I'm reminded of the color revolution in Egypt and the democratic upheaval in the country that resulted in the most backward Islamic rule in recent times to win control over the country because, contrary to the words of liberal-progressive English speaking university students that could give interviews to CNN on the ground, the voting majority was anything but. This then lead to a hastily organized military coup to correct the record of the peoples will. Democracy indeed.
I guess I am asking what on earth 'you' won.
These are always boring semantic debates. If I set out to beat you until you love me, and after an hour of beating I give up because you still hate me, leaving you a bloody unconscious mess on the ground while I’ve scraped my knuckles who has lost? Who won? I failed to achieve my goal, it’s true. But I was hardly scratched while you are near death. Even harder to say I lost and you won. Perhaps my goal and plan to achieve it was foolish and impossible, but at the same time I demonstrated my ability to beat the shit out of you without even breaking a sweat. Win and lose in situations like this are just silly labels like we are keeping score.
Bar the other person not being near death, and you being hardly scratched.
I mean, if we're taking this example as Russia, then 'you' have a very visibly broken nose, an eye and a half swollen shut, a hand already with mangled fingers, and are still banging 'your' head into the other guy's fist, even as the bystanders pass him another shiv while steadying him on his feet.
No one takes Russian claims about not being affected by the war seriously- Russia is going to be in recovery for over a decade, and it's not exactly standing over someone else kicking down anymore either. The war has destroyed Russia as a strategic competitor, let alone regional hegemon, for a generation, and the question is whether the Western support gets bored and goes away in the next few years.
Considering the Americans have made anaconda strategies something of a strategic art, press X to doubt.*
*Or, mea culpa, I missed the proper target of the metaphor.
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You have. I'm tempted to say "obviously" but it's clearly not obvious. Chalk it up as another one of those cultural disconnects.
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These are not semantic debates when the people who instigate them insist that the bleeding unconscious mess on the floor loves them.
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And that still took 20 years.
Yes, that's what scares me.
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That the war is an idiotic idea was obvious from start. Sadly, not to Putin.
And when one side is ready to wage war of conquest, than the other can choose war or surrender and occupation - but not peace.
I mean, I agree with your point about Putin but I'm not sure why people are insistent or implying that the US has been actively seeking peace in contrast. The foreign policy of the US for the last thirty or so years (at the very least in this region) has be pursing unreleting, antagonistic hegemony.
So sure, maybe the US was not actively seeking war, but at best they weren't really taking efforts to ensure peaceble relations either.
Antagonistic is too strong.
We offered anyone who wanted to join the west the option to join the west. Many chose that because well the west is better.
When an imperial power offers the option of joining its hegemony to a smaller state that directly borders an opposing empire that is egregiously antagonistic. Offering the option to join the American hegemony to anyone who wants to regardless of the effects that will have on the balance of power is obviously antagonistic.
That seems so clearly antagonistic to me that i'm not sure your statement is in good faith. Can you explain how you think that isn't antagonistic?
First Russia is not a great power. Second there is no military threat of an invasion of Russia.
The US hasn’t invaded Venezuela despite their installation of a government that opposes us in the American sphere of influence.
Russia is openly concerned about western hegemony expanding near its borders. Therefore western hegemony threatening to expand near its borders is antagonistic.
Offering entry into its hegemony to anyone who wants it regardless of context is universally antagonistic.
You can argue that it’s morally justified but it’s clearly antagonistic
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Russia wanted to join NATO, but was rebuffed. So, that's not really true.
According to people into geopolitics, US cannot stand the idea of EU and Russia being on friendly terms, because the combined industrial and resource bases would be a threat to America.
Not sure why they're worrying seeing as there's China, but hey, maybe they live in the past.
Bulk of population of Russia is in its west, not east, exports pipelines
Plus, Russians used to dislike Chinese strongly (I saw opinion polls where Chinese were treated only above Chechens and gypsies), this is only changed due to neccessity.
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Do you really think if Russia bent the knee especially with bigger Chinese threats we would turn them down? Like Russia is the crown jewel of having China surrounded.
Hardly. Militarily indefensible, economically more interested in entangling than curtailing, and politically more interested in getting the Americans out of Europe than in being on the American side of a US-China fight. Russia would be a bigger France than France in trying to subvert the European pillar of the Atlanticist alliance in the name of 'strategic autonomy' of Europe from the US, except with even less interest in, well, the things the US and France actually agree and care about.
There are bad alliances where the ally costs more than they could possibly offer, there are bad alliances that have toxic internal dynamics, and there are bad alliances where one has nothing to offer the other. A post-Soviet US-Russia alliance would have been all three.
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That's the thing. I can imagine Russia wanting to be part of a defensive alliance against a resurgent China. Except at the time, China wasn't seen as much of a threat.
I can't imagine Russia 'bending the knee' and subordinating itself to US interests. Which is probably why the whole thing was sort of doomed from the start.
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Hell, we're even fine w/ Russia not being part of the West. If it wants to be an authoritarian state treating it's people like crap, we honestly don't care that much. Just stop invading other nations, and Putin's kids will have billions to play with in Swiss accounts for generation after he kicks the bucket, but Putin is honestly, too dumb to do that.
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The only true pathway to peace for Ukraine is NATO accession, which requires defeating the Russians.
From this perspective, the US is absolutely seeking peace.
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And my claim is that USA was not antagonistic enough and that Russians for example fooled Obama into Russian reset (or that Americans fooled themselves into it on their own).
What they were supposed to do? One option would be helping Russia to keep occupied areas after USSR has fallen but I am not convinced that it would end better in any aspect.
USA can be blamed for many wars, but here Russia jumped into it on their own due to believing own propaganda and trying to rebuild its empire. Russia is not entitled to USSR-sized sphere of influence.
Simply not meddle with regions directly bordering other empires.
Ideally try to maintain polite diplomatic relationships and worldwide power balance between the big dogs.
Russia is not an empire with a real strength, should not be an empire and is not entitled to be an empire.
And even that war would result in less misery than Russia managing to recreate its empire and subjugate central and eastern Europe again.
Why is America/the west entitled to be an empire and behave like an empire but Russia is not.
And I don’t want Russia to try to expand its hegemony either, but America attempting to expand its hegemony near Russia is antagonistic.
Even if you are arguing that Russia is bad and the west is good, therefore an expansion of western hegemony is not immoral - that’s irrelevant to the argument.
I didn’t say is was immoral for the west to expand its hegemony into Ukraine - all I said was that it is antagonistic. Something can be both morally justified, or even morally obligated, but still antagonistic.
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It's doubtful that's what they were going for. Eastern Ukraine? Probably. Getting to USSR levels?
This "as Ukraine goes, so does Europe" is a talking point by hawks to try to leverage the domino theory instincts from the Cold War* so Americans can pay the price (at least in ammo, not blood this time) for a nation that most of them previously couldn't find on the map.
* In this case justified by the psychologization of the Russian imperatives as a product of Putin's particular feeling of humiliation at the end of the USSR rather than justified via the evangelical nature of communism.
Their initial move was to try to take ALL of Ukraine in a coup de main. Their second strategy after that failed was still to try to take all of Ukraine. This certainly points to them going for more than Eastern Ukraine. USSR levels? Maybe not today, but I see no reason they would stop before that (or at that) if they didn't have to.
Take,yes. Annex...I don't know. Holding the entire country would be very difficult. Trying to force a puppet leader to allow the annexation of the East and creating a land bridge to Crimea? More viable.
This is in line with what Naryshkin let slip too early in that amazingly cinematic National Security meeting: they were definitely going to annex Donetsk and Luhansk. He didn't say they would take the whole thing.
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Not fuck up Russia in the first place with the Clinton administration's disasterious attempt to 'reform' a post-Soviet Russia and seek partnership instead of hegemony? Agree to a healthy buffer zone in Eastern Europe? Not create and amplify the various revolutions in Eastern Europe, including the various 'Color Revolutions', and more recently and relevantly the heavy American involvement in Euromaidan and Ukrainian politics generally? Not deliberately antagonize Russia by constantly demanding Ukraine and Georgia should be admitted into NATO (despite their questionable strategic value) the same way the US would never tolerate a country in their immediate sphere (Monroe Doctrine) to ally with a hostile power (e.g. China or Russia) let alone one on their border?
Nope. If you let Russia reconquer this area again then it may be many things but it will not be healthy.
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Neoliberal policies and selloffs of Soviet industry were an absolute disaster and this should have been predictable but we have to recall that this wasn't a Japan situation where MacArthur and America could totally get their way (though I wonder if they'd have followed the same policies if occupation had happened in the 90s...)
Even at its weakest Russia was never occupied and was a nuclear-armed state. A lot more of their destiny was in their hands.
Yeltsin and co. could have had a less corrupt process for privatizing resources but their country has no long history of democracy and transparency so it isn't surprising it went the way it did. But that's still a failure of Russians and Russian institutions.
This line on Russia also seems a bit paradoxical: the demand seems to be that the US treat Russia as an equal (it wasn't; they lost) but also that the US is responsible for Russia's economic and political malaise , as if it was a vassal or occupied state like Japan or South Korea (which, btw, didn't just uncritically bow to neoliberal policy- if a small Asian country could forge a smarter path...)
It's not paradoxical because I never used the word equal. As with all the other times, I commented on this issue on the Motte, I will say that Russia is and can only ever be a regional power in its current state. I used the word 'partnership' which does not require equal status. This is contrast to 'hegemony' which this absolutely the approach the US has taken in this region and many others. As to the issue of America's responsibility to the current political and economic status of Russia, I strongly recommend reading "Russia's Road to Corruption" a US Congressional report on the issue from the year 2000. At best, you can say this was the result of gross incompetence by the Clinton administration and their economic advisors. At worst, it wouldn't be remiss to believe that that Clinton administration's policies were actively malicious. At some level, it's hard to distinguish between the two.
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The US allows Cuba and Venezuela to maintain alliances with hostile foreign powers. It is actually backing the pro-Russian and Chinese faction in Brazilian politics.
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The US tried that in the 1990s, when they gave billions in aid to a country that had recently been an enemy, even as Yeltsin was shelling his parliament, supporting Serbia against NATO (as best Russia could at that point), and using the Russian army to occupy parts of sovereign countries next to Russia.
How much more should the West have given Russia in aid? And what fewer conditions should they have given on internal reform?
This might have been an option in 1945. By the 1990s, it was too late for Russia to say "We'll be good, honest."
If the U.S. was not acting as a hegemon against Russia, NATO would not have been helping Albania annex part of Serbia in the first place. (Ironically, in pretty much the same way Russia is now trying to annex parts of Ukraine but with less historical justification.)
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There is no evidence of heavy American involvement in Euromaiden. The evidence shown is Americans discussing what is going on which is quite normal.
In retrospect America should have looked for hegemony in Russia after the USSR failed and written big checks like a Marshall Plan. As things have played out that was a better game.
It would have looked pretty silly if the US aided Russia just as anti-US generals took over in a coup, as nearly happened in August 1991. Or Yeltsin created a dictatorship, which looked quite plausible given what was happening in 1993.
There was never a golden dawn of democracy and pro-Western elite sentiment in Russia.
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