site banner

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 19, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

On its face, and from my comfy armchair, consuming my western news, the invasion of Ukraine seems like such a colossal waste of human lives and military power.

When I think about other recent conflicts, the ones that come to mind were also incredibly wasteful, but they make sense to me in a way that the Ukraine war does not (maybe because I'm not russian?). The recent examples that come to mind are the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the American defense of South Vietnam. These were arguably also very wasteful but maybe not on the scale of the Ukraine war. Are these good analogies for the war in Ukraine?

My initial ideas relate to the idea that Russia had a lot of military power that was sitting around unused and a bunch of petro income that made any sanctions less meaningful. Maybe the invasion/war hasn't actually been costly? Perhaps Russian leaders (and the hawks among them) saw nationalist fracturing of the tech supply chain coming anyways and this just accelerates it?

What does Russia get for the tremendous expenditure of resources in the invasion and following conflict? Is there some piece of context that helps the invasion make sense to a westerner?

The invasion makes more sense if you consider the underlying assumptions at the start of the conflict. Everyone expected the Russian army to roll up the entire country in a matter of weeks if not days. Furthermore, America hadn't sanctioned Russia in any meaningful way after the 2008 invasion of Georgia or the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and it was unclear whether Europe, let alone the world, would go along with anything more sweeping in the event the US tried to do something. It was assumed that Germany's dependence on Russian gas, not just for energy but for the feedstock of its chemical industry would leat to a split in NATO that could potentially be exploited later. All of these assumptions turned out to be wrong, and Putin didn't seem to have had a contingency for the possibility that he wouldn't be able to take Kiev.

Interesting, @netstack expressed a similar sentiment below.

That makes sense to me (that the invasion was a miscalculation), but why continue the conflict now? If that were truly the case why wouldn’t Russia seek to de-escalate and extricate itself to rejoin the global economy?

Also, my recollection is that after 2014 Russia began saving up a rainy day fund of a few hundred billion dollars in foreign currency, which when combined with ongoing income from exporting natural resources meant they could withstand sanctions for a few years. Wouldn’t that indicate that they believed a prolonged sanctions regime was possible before they invaded?

That makes sense to me (that the invasion was a miscalculation), but why continue the conflict now?

Because the Great Emperor Putin can't just tuck his tail between his legs and admit he'd been beaten. And not just by some mighty American Jedi, but by stupid Ukrainians who are routinely laughed at and despised by Russians as stupid country yokes talking in stupid broken Russian and aren't capable of anything but serving as entertainment for the real great nations. They can not lose, because the whole world model that they have been building for years says they can not lose. And also, losers do not stay in power for long in Russia. If you kill 150 thousands Russians, and win - you are a military genius. If you kill 150 thousands Russians and lose - well, then you'd have to have some answers. So, they can not stop now.

Wouldn’t that indicate that they believed a prolonged sanctions regime was possible before they invaded?

They probably predicted some sanctions, but not as coordinated and deep as it is going to be now, because they expected Ukraine to collapse and the West to accept it with some token protests. Same as happened in 2014 and with Georgia and many times before. They certainly didn't expect the wide boycott, but what they're going to do now - admit it? They'd pretend it's all planned and go begging to China.

They'd pretend it's all planned and go begging to China.

Which is particularly interesting, because I saw some commentators talking about how the war in Ukraine was causing big problems for many of the (relatively) poor debtors in china’s belt-and-road initiative, making china unhappy about the war and less likely to aid Russia.

I saw this idea (that belt-and-road debtors would be hard-hit by economic fallout from the war) floating around before the grain deal was struck, so maybe the state of the global economy is different now. There was that big showy meeting between Putin and Xi recently.

Also, isn’t it in China’s interest to have a weaker northern neighbor?

It's absolutely in China's interest to make Russia weaker - Russia has juicy resource-rich Siberia which is much closer to China than to any major Russian centers, and also getting some cheap oil and selling some low-quality phones and weaponry with inflated price tag wouldn't hurt either. China is ecstatic to see the West and Russia fight. But they don't want to lose the Western markets - so they'd help Russia as much as they can (and extract as much cash as they can from it) without pissing off the West enough to cause them to agree to suffer all the economic hardships that detachment from China would cause. Which leaves them not infinite, but pretty substantial space for maneuver. China is clearly the beneficiary there, and is interested in prolonging the conflict as much as possible, but not much in Russia winning (it's probably better for them if Russia loses, but after a very long war).