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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
This line of thinking makes any government action as antagonistic. And I don’t believe fits with either international law or criminal law.
It completely undermines any part of national self-determination.
Now you can say this is a far weaker example and I would agree. But I find Trudeaus government as antagonistic after his treatment and comments on the truckers. I don’t want that culture expanding to America. I don’t think that gives a Desantis government casus belli for war. The idea that Ukraine signing trade deals with other countries may technically hurt Russia and I guess you can call that antagonistic but it’s not antagonistic in a military sense. Every country would have a military justification if the country next door changes governments with different economic policies.
One could also say the EU has been antagonistic to Great Britain by threatening them with a large number of refugees etc. They had an option of Brexxit.
I believe there is a clear line between economic moves and military moves. Ukraine had only done economic moves. I feel like by using the word antagonism there’s an attempt to make it mean military antagonism when it’s cultural/economic antagonism. The latter every country consistently deals with.
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If they were openly concerned about nato putting nuclear missiles in france or alaska, or criticizing russia, would those things count as antagonistic?
If accepting a sovereign country into your alliance counts as antagonistic, the word has been hollowed of meaning. The US and EU are not responsible for maintaining russia's unofficial sphere of interest to their own detriment and that of the people in that sphere. Out of what, the goodness of their heart, sportsmanlike respect for a worthy adversary who's fallen on hard times? The way this would work out in the past a la monroe doctrine is, russia or some other european power would threaten to 'turn' mexico , canada or brasil in a tit for tat move and get the US to back off from their sphere that way. But obviously this is beyond russia's power at present.
That is so wild to me. If you and I were playing a war game, and I, your stated opponent, started forming military alliances with a bunch of entities that are in a good position to fuck you up, of course you are going to find that concerning. That's antagonistic! What is your definition of antagonistic?
Of course not! I absolutely do not expect the united states to avoid antagonizing its weaker opponents. I expect any world power to play their cards for all they're worth. I assume that they will use their leverage to fuck over their opponents. But when we look at the actions taken by a specific entity in world politics, "antagonistic" refers to an action taken by a an entity that is likely to appear knowingly threatening to another entity. It's not a moral judgement. Its just a question of, when party A does this, is that something that will make party B uncomfortable, and is it also something that party A knows will make party B uncomfortable. If so, then it is antagonistic. I'm not saying party A shouldn't do antagonistic things. It just seems clear cut to me that doing things that make russia uncomfortable is antagonistic - and I don't see how that means that "the word has been hollowed of meaning".
I don't expect the USG to avoid antagonizing russia. I expect them to act predatorily whenever possible, but I don't agree that avoiding conflict with russia actually would be to their own detriment or to the detriment of the people of that sphere. Again, I know that america will act aggressively, but as far as I can tell it would be to everyones benefit is they did allow russia to shore up its position. You act like my position is totally unheard of but the concept of "balance of powers" is not alien. I don't expect america to pursue a balance, but I would prefer a balance exist, as an unbalance seems to increase the chance of a real war breaking out. I think a balance would be to everyones benefit.
You'd have to be more hostile than an expected baseline. What the west is doing is normal. Competing powers do not turn down free real estate for nothing.
You didn't answer my question, what if they decide that the press criticizing russia is antagonizing, does that fly? It's not up to them to define what is antagonizing. A schizo may find it antagonizing that you breathe in his presence, it doesn't make it so.
We're getting bogged down: I think antagonizing can be morally condemned, and the west isn't doing it. But if you want to call the west's behaviour antagonizing, yet do not recognize any moral value to antagonizing, then antagonizing is fine, so we've both agreed on not condemning the west's behaviour and all that remains are semantics. Or do you wish to attach some other form of condemnation to the term?
Btw, 'to fuck over' has moral value, no?
What does it mean morally to 'avoid conflict'? If France said they will declare war unless the US hands over Martha's vineyard, you can avoid conflict. Russia's little demands have to be justified by more than their strong feelings and their threats.
To have a balance of power, you need the rival powers to be balanced, and they are not. Russia is very weak compared to the EU, and completely outclassed by the US. Russia is about as strong as their former colonies put together, and you can't pretend to rule a sphere that is as strong as you and hates you. That would really be unstable.
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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.
I mean I disagree with your view of the alliance.
Russia Can offer the US a lot. It flanks China. We offer them economic development or atleast the elite get rich selling us commodities.
Toxic internal dynamics are either Russia interfering in US foreign relations or US exporting you need to say you love gays. Both can be handled.
And three I already said Russia offers the west the ability to surround China.
And I maintain I have a better position on this topic than you.
And why do you think that benefits the US? What, exactly, do you think it enables the US to do beyond the privilege of placing US forces in more advantageous range of the chinese military? Is the US military supposed to invade nuclear Beijing from the north, across a logistics train through Siberia and the Mongolian steppe? Have a pitched defense of Vladivostok, a position that must only be defended because Russia is a party on the American side?
This does not require an alliance. This happened despite being geopolitical adversaries. This still happens despite the Ukrainian conflict, where russian commodities are among the categories of NOT sanctioned items.
In fact, this is the primary reason for a divergence of interests. The russian commodities are functionally fungible in the global market. The biggest consumer of Russian commodities in a US-Russia alliance would be China, because that's how the American world order trade system works. The Russian interest wouldn't be in selling to the Americans, but to whoever would pay most, and global commodity prices are driven by China, giving Russia an incentive to keep selling- and keep the US from coming into conflict with China. This would decrease the credibility of the alliance as a Chinese deterrent, because Russia would have economic AND security reasons not to let the US come into conflict with China, upto and including political, informationally, economically, and diplomatically sabotaging the US in any buildup and coalition-building for a China containment.
This is a case of 'don't buy a cow when you get the milk for free,' except in this case the cow is selling the milk to everyone regardless of whether you buy or not, and has an incentive to unionize against you if you cut off the biggest milk market.
If Russia interferes with the US foreign relations with other US allies, it is a zero-sum alliance dynamic with other US alliance opportunities and interests. This can only be handled by losing value in other alliances... many of which are higher in value, economic and depth of cooperation, than what Russia is being described as offering in this scenario, even as an alliance with Russia undermines the interest in other parties to maintain an alliance with the US. All parties that were using the US to hedge against Russia will continue to have Russian concerns, and be in search of other parties to assist them...
...such as China, the nominal target of this alliance, introducing new influence vectors not present when the alliance members are already against any Russian alliance group.
You already said this, but repeatedly failed to actually identify what advantage this is supposed to provide that's not outweighed the cost of having to provide security guarantees to all the territory surrounding china.
A major American alliance advantage against China is that it does not have a land-border to be steamrolled across by weight of numbers and internal lines of communication. This forces China to militarily compete in the sea, a major American advantage, and via the global commons, where US-European (sans Russia) have extensive advantages in established markets and alliances, which would be undermined by a major US-European rebalance of alliances due to triangulation in response to a US-Russia alliance. Meanwhile, in purely campaign terms, allying with Russia gives China an obvious target, and gives the US an obligation to defend an unfavorable position, in exchange for... for...
The opportunity to try and fail to convince the Europeans to conscript citizens and send them across the Siberian railroad to fight on the far-eastern front? An even stronger European coalition that would prefer the US take a loss to China on Taiwan or other topics to preserve even stronger European trade relations with China? Market-access to Russian commodities that we know would be sold on the global market even if the US and Russia were at all-but-war? Triangulation of European security politics against the US-Russia axis?
Geopolitics is not a tactical RPG where flanking gives +20% to damage or accuracy. Unless you intend to fight a land war in asia, there's no particular advantage in adjacent territory to your foe, and quite a few risks.
Russia could shutdown exports to China during say a Taiwan conflict. That seems like a big deal. So any china war machine would have no way of supplying itself with Russia not exporting and the US controlling the seas. That’s a big deal.
Obviously part of an alliance would be Russia no longer interfering with US foreign policy. That’s what allies do.
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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.
I don't think that's true. *You* might not care that much, the people running various arms of official and unofficial foreign policy absolutely want to stick their nose in every country they don't control yet.
I mean, sure people would've done the various policy stuff, but what I mean is deep down, every major US official from the left to the right, outside of a few weirdos, was fine long-term with how Russia was behaving prior to the past few years - sure, we'd rattle our sabres, complain about Putin, but we weren't doing anything major about it. Now, we're dropping off tons of unused equipment and allowing the they/them army to give logistical support so the Ukrainians have plenty of targets.
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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.
I'm not sure if there's a big difference between "Annex and make a semi-autonomous part of Russia" (as with Crimea) and "invade, occupy, and install a puppet government".
It matters because gobbling all of Ukraine fits the theory of people (e.g. Julia Ioffe) who want to see this as Russia pressing on and on until someone stops them, taking Eastern Ukraine and forcing Minsky/other concessions could be seen as Russia trying to militarily recreate the political situation like before the revolution when the Ukrainian government had to lean in Russia's direction (obviously achieving this militarily removes the democratic veneer)
Revisionist power aimed at NATO vs declining power trying (and failing) to shore up a core interest (as it sees it).
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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.
Fair enough, I was riffing off Brzezinski's take that Russia wanted a level of deference to its considerations that was simply out of whack with its power at the time (which may still be true), but I shouldn't have applied that language of "equality" since you didn't say it. My apologies.
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I actually went through this. Well, skimming parts, but reading at least most of it.
This is not really a neutral appraisal of "Russia's road to corruption", it's a partisan Republican attack on the Clinton administration. This is its obvious function from the name on – and the fact that all the Reps indicated as writers are Republicans. It just takes negative developments in Russia in the 90s and then blames everything it can on Clinton admin on very loose grounds, utilizing an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach. The things that happened before Clinton admin took power, ie. before January 1993, can be blamed on the Russians, since doing otherwise would of course be putting a blame on a blameless Republican president. Everything after that, though? It's Clinton and Gore.
One chapter of the assessment consists of Clinton assigning the Russia portfolio to Gore (it’s not really explained why this would be so bad, since Gore, through his congressional career, would be expected to genuinely have more natsec experience, and of course it might be noted since Clinton powerful vice presidencies with serious duties have been pretty normative anyway). Gore is then blamed for dealing with Russian Prime Ministers – who would probably be pretty much who you’d expect him to deal with.
There’s little substantive criticism and a lot of reaching – one chapter seemingly blames the entirety of the rise of Russian organized crime in the 90s on the fact of Gore-Chernomyrdin commission existing! - and it’s obvious the point here is that it’s 2000, the election year, Gore was the Dem candidate, and moreover the GOP candidate was the son of George Bush sr., who of course is only praised here.
Probably the most substantial criticism is that IMF kept extending loans to Russia despite its problems, but even here far too much conjuncture is made on first straightforwardly blaming Clinton for this, then blaming basically all of Russia’s economic woes on IMF credit being too easy (at most one could say that this bolstered somewhat decisions that the Russians would have most likely made anyway), and then the claim is that this so discredited Americans in Russian eyes (the same Russians who made these decisions) that Russia just had no choice but to sell weapons to countries it would have probably sold weapons to anyway. Again, the main point is bashing Clinton moreso than be some sort of a real analysis of America-Russia relations in the 90s.
Since the criticism is so loose and unfocused I don’t generally really get what the Republicans even think the Clinton administration should have done. The Republicans claim that Clinton admin basically pushed the Russians towards “state interference” and “centralization” instead of “building a free market economy”, expect the Russian privatizations were bad, because they were done before the Russians had built a market economy. But to do what they want would have almost certainly required a more centralized and structured effort, requiring state interference. Disastrous crash privatizations are what happens when one doesn’t have that.
On the other hand Clinton-Gore gets blamed for ruining US relationship with Russia (wasn’t this one of Bush campaign themes?), on the other hand the report constantly indicates that Clinton-Gore should have meddled much more in the Russian policies, condemned Russian weapons trade with Iran and the Chechnya War, enlarged NATO even faster than it did, dealt with figures other than official Russian state figures like Gaidar and Chernomyrdin (apparently Yavlinsky – that eternal Western hope of a sensible Russian liberal, with 30 years of failure running currently to make a mark in the Russian society) etc. – ie. done stuff that would have ruined the US-Russia relations far more and would have probably led to a good chance of a figure more radically anti-Western than Putin getting in power, possibly sooner than Putin’s anti-Western turn really happened.
Of course, there are actual points here, I am ready to accept that US should have been more forceful about condemning Russian policy in Chechnya, or critical of the way the 1993 Duma standoff was handled, or about Russian corruption, or a host of other things, but even there it’s not really about US interfering too much, is it? The most substantial charges are basically not that Americans interfered with Russia to bring it disaster but that they didn’t interfere enough. It’s an opposite point to what you are arguing!
Once one removes all the Clinton-bashing, what remains is mostly evidence that the fundamental power was Russian post-Soviet corruption. Reading all this actually increases my confidence that 90s were just another case of Russia getting ruined by Russians, and the latter-day assessments that it was the Yanks wut done it are a powerful form of cope.
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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.)
Last I checked Kosovo wasn't part of Albania, it was a corrupt semi-independent disputed territory, and it's not semi-independent because of an Albanian invasion, but because the country it had been part of (yugoslavia)dissolved in a brutal civil war.
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That's the problem with partnership when you have different interests.
The 1990s window of opportunity for a US-Russia partnership is a myth. Yeltsin only stepped back from Russia's imperial role insofar as he had to do so to keep the lights on, the bread in stores, and the army from overthrowing him. Insofar as he could, he kept Russia powerful. Clinton and Bush were the same: they mostly supported Yeltsin insofar as either (a) it benefited the US's interests directly or (b) it indirectly helped the US by encouraging Russia to move towards a peaceful capitalist democracy.
That (b) failed was outside of anybody's hands by the 1990s, I think. Russia has ended up without democracy or peace, though there is certainly enough capitalism for Putin and the elite to get very rich.
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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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