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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28353 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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So there is one thing about both sides' media coverage of Russian-Ukranian war that bugged me for the last two years - accusations of deliberate targeting of civilian buildings, specifically non-military hospitals, schools, malls and houses. Am I wrong in thinking that regardless of evidence in specific cases probability of this happening is so low that we should expect to see almost zero cases of it?

I specifically talking about deliberate strikes because there are many alternative explanations revolving around mistakes, negligence, and faulty weapons. Of course all blame for this still lays on the initiator of the war but I think claims of deliberate hits are generally explained by these reasons.

Specific targeting of civilians is not new to wars, it was done quite often for loot and plunder in the old times and with mass proliferation of planes and missiles it, and Douhet's doctrine were at its height in WW2. Strategic bombing(e.g. targeting general use infrastructure and in some case industry somewhat related to the war) never went out of fashion and was used in almost all wars where the participants had a large enough air fleet since. But terror bombing(e.g. striking civilian targets for the purpose of lowering the enemy morale) is generally not used because time and time again it was proved ineffective and even damaging to its goal. I can't recall any country that engaged in the open terror bombing campaigns from, again, WW2, and if you decide to go this route you should be open about it. Main effect is on morale, it should be supported by propaganda and fiery speeches of inevitable death in case of continued defiance. I was quite obviously wrong about this(Thanks @ymeskhout for the correction). There is a modern tendency of doing things almost in the open and then fervently denying that you did them, that Russia follows often(recently with Prigozhin's untimely demise). What I wanted to communicate is that terror bombing needs to be open, or almost open because this doctrine by necessity requires large parts or even majority of your air force to have a desired effect. . I'm interested in the process that happens before such strike as imagined by people who disagree with me. Does Russian/Ukrainian command has a secret policy of terror bombings but to keep it secret limits it to some fraction of its forces? What do they or some random rogue commander hope to gain from it? How do they justify wasting precious ammunition on targets that aren't relevant to the war effort?

I don't think that on any side of the barricades there exist some human-hating berserks that can answer "blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne!" to all of these questions and even if they did exist we would expect them to not have any power from the evidence we see.

I generally find the idea of rules in war to be completely disingenuous and actually kind of stupid. The point of having a war is to win the war quickly. And dragging it out on the pretense of following the “rules” (in quotes because really, the rules mostly exist for propaganda purposes and only matter in the context of things that countries we don’t like are doing and creating a causus belli for stopping them or arming enemies) doesn’t really benefit civilians as much as advertised. A war that drags on for years longer than it has to because the tactics that would win it are “illegal” doesn’t actually protect civilians. They live in a bombed out country with no infrastructure, a tanked economy, and completely disrupted lives (especially if they don’t live in heavily protected green zones). The fields of Ukraine haven’t produced much since the invasion and what they have produced cannot go anywhere because of the war. They have a deep recession that makes it hard for average people to live, most industries have pulled out and anyone with brains and a passport have left for better economic prospects elsewhere and won’t be returning. Schools have been shuttered for the most part, so kids are missing out on years of school. And so what’s left of Ukraine is a basket case even if infrastructures hadn’t been targeted.

If targeting infrastructure and so on could have decided the outcome of the war in a matter of weeks or months, all of that could have been rebuilt. People could return and rebuild the economy and schools and run businesses and invented things in Ukraine rather than Poland.

The Laws of War really aren’t that detrimental to the effectiveness of modern armies in waging a conventional war. Like, at all. The Laws of War don't stop armies from rolling over their enemies with ruthless efficiency. They don't stop you from launching a surprise attack on sleeping solders, blowing their food and water supplies to kingdom come and letting them die of exposure, nor gunning them down as they flee. They didn’t stop Schwarzkopf from massacring retreating Iraqi columns with impunity, nor Thatcher from sinking an Argentine cruiser outside of the 'exclusion zone', and then leaving the surviving sailors to fend for themselves, just because she thought it was looking a bit sus. The Americans basically wrote the Laws of War, you can be sure they didn’t write them in such a way that they would intentionally hamstring themselves.

On the counter side, Japanese war crimes against both civilian population and enemy soldiers did nothing to aid them in the war. The Japanese were unable to break the morale of their enemies, their vicious tactics won them no strategic advantage, the Americans simply returned inhumanity for inhumanity, and hundreds of thousands of Allied and Japanese and Chinese soldiers and civillians died hideously and unnecessarily and to no net benefit. Meanwhile the treatment that they inflicted upon the Chinese (among others) has created an enmity that is still going strong one hundred years later. Hardly a strategic win.

Terror bombing simply doesn’t work, and that includes bombing of civilian infrastructure that the military typically doesn't need anyway. We didn't really know that in 1940 but we do now. In WW2 neither the British, nor the Japanese, nor the Germans rose up against their masters as the proponents of such bombing hoped. When bombed, civilians become outraged at their enemies. When bombed terribly, they become deeply despondent. Attacks on factories, rail hubs etc are at least somewhat effective, but of course those are all legitimate targets anyway. The only exception I can think of is the atomic bomb, and that was less about the number of people killed and more about being a demonstration of an unbeatable weapon.

You could argue that modern legal norms have made occupations more difficult, and while that is a far more defensible position (though one I would still argue), it really has nothing to do with the Laws of War. Occupations are not wars. But anyway, the enmity that the rapes of Nanking and Belgium created were not at all worth whatever trifling military advantage they bestowed, even before taking into account the propaganda wins they gave their enemies, and inevitable reactions they invoked from other nations.

Even in war, the golden rule still applies. If you employ tactics that are against the rules of war, so will your opponents, and leaving you with no net benefit. So you end up in an even more destructive war, worse for both sides, for no gain.

Indeed, consider the use of gas in the First World War: the idea was "if we try this new hideous weapon once, we will break through the enemy, the war will be over immediately, and many fewer lives will be lost in the end". What actually happened is that the new weapon turned out less infallible than expected, the other side immediately started using it as well, and the bloodbath went on as before, with one more hideous weapon thrown in the mix. Worth noting that even Nazi Germany, not exactly well-regarded for their humaneness or reasonableness, refrained from using gases in WW2 because they were afraid of this happening again (while of course having no scruples in using them against captive civilians who could not fight back -- restraint from self-interest, not from compassion).

(Arguably, nuclear weapons might have been an exception, but in my understanding Japan was already burning and starving by that point, so they couldn't have mounted much more of a fight with or without nukes.)

Chemical weapons actually have problems of not being worth so much. Except against civilians.

Very often, maybe almost always, bringing regular artillery shells will be better use of anyones resources.

I have a Soviet book for children about artillery, published in the 30s, and back then chemical weapons were still considered useful. An example they give, let's imagine there's an enemy mortar team hiding in a grove. The grove is too big to just level with explosive shells, but we can drop some gas shells upwind from the grove to force them out.

generally find the idea of rules in war to be completely disingenuous and actually kind of stupid. The point of having a war is to win the war quickly.

I was re-watching Apocalypse Now recently, one of the best movies of all time, and not least because it deals with this exact issue.

The central conflict of the movie is the opposition between the two ways of dealing with war.

One, which you and Colonel Kurtz advocate, is to face to the horror and embrace savagery in order to stop it. Kurtz has done unspeakable things, but he surmised that he had to become a monster with terrible resolve to make conflict end instead of prolonging it.

The second, is the one shown to various degrees on the way to Kurtz, of which Lt. Col. Bill Killgore is one of the iconic representatives: war must be tamed and turned into a simulacra of "back home" to preserve sanity and civilization.

While the whole journey is littered with examples of the absurdity of the latter view, where war is no longer about winning but finding a good surfing spot, where GIs aren't fighting for anything but R&R and where they are told off for writing obscenities on their machines of death; I think it would be a mistake not to notice that Kurtz's simple wisdom has rendered him entirely insane.

It does seem absurd that we could turn war into a wholly civilized affair, and attempts at doing so are inevitably crushed by ruthless Napoleons, but down the path of ruthlessness lies total war and the worst horrors humanity inflicts upon itself. If anything can be done in the name of a swift victory, anything can be done.

Hmm.

People fight wars, and sometimes they approach the war in a civilized fashion. When they do this, sometimes tame war gets them the result they're looking for: the enemy caves, they win. For a fictional example, see this speech from King Henry V:

Therefore, you men of Harfleur,

Take pity of your town and of your people,

Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;

Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace

O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds

Of heady murder, spoil and villany.

If not, why, in a moment look to see

The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand

Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;

Your fathers taken by the silver beards,

And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,

Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,

Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused

Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry

At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.

What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,

Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

The offer of quarter, of peaceful surrender, is an attempt to civilize war, no? And the threat of wanton rape and destruction is the recognition that the savagery is still waiting in the wings. In the play, Harfluer surrenders, and its people are spared. If they'd resisted, they would not have been so lucky.

And then sometimes, the people trying civilized war don't get what they want, and they decide it's not worth going further, and they eat the loss. I was recently listening to some analysis of the Rhodesian Bush War; the Rhodesians fought with unparalleled ferocity on a tactical level, racking up one of the highest kill ratios ever recorded, but eventually the strategic and political situations grew untenable, and they capitulated to their enemies more or less completely.

But what happens when you try civilized war, you don't get the win, and you can't accept the loss? You can try again, but what if you still don't have an acceptable resolution? ...Well, evidence suggests that you escalate. The civilization starts slipping. In the Civil War, we saw Sherman's march to the sea, which was a pretty serious escalation in savagery from what came before, in that it deliberately targeted the wealth and property of the general southern population. In WWII, we saw strategic bombing, firebombing, then nuclear bombing. Civilization is costly, and when the cost gets too high, we cut corners.

All of the above is probably obvious, but it's to point this out: are the civilized wars actually civilized, or were the combatants just lucky to get a resolution before the civilization slipped too far? I agree that Kurtz is insane. He's insane because he can't quit. Killgore and the others are trying to quit; they've personally folded out of the game, they aren't actually trying to win any more. They're fortunate to have that option.

Under this theory wouldn’t they be ruled by Putin which is basically the same thing as not having a future?

Besides I feel like Russia tried those tactics and it only United Ukraine to fight more.

A country that is a Russian satélite hasn’t had a future of its peoples for centuries unless you some how got be a handful of oligarchs.

Losing was never an option especially since they’ve seen Poland get rich and in 20 years could be the wealthiest country in Europe. While being Ukranian under Putin means for a girl hoping to find a 50 year old American to marry on a website and for a man being a janitor in London.

Well, I’m thinking from Putin’s POV in which his side gets all of Ukraine with very little fuss, and thus has a quick win and a relatively intact territory. Or you can consider Iraq and Shock and Awe which did bring about a relatively quick end to the war itself (the occupation was different) and the deposition of Saddam Hussein as nobody wanted to fight for him.

the point is to win the war quickly

No, the point is to get something that you couldn’t have otherwise. The continuation of politics by other means, as it were. And just as politics isn’t limited to short-term gambits, neither is warfare.

The expected value of raping your way through the countryside is probably not worth the attention from other powers. This is by design.

The value of “raping your way through” is that 1) the population is demoralized into no longer wishing to fight, 2) the war ends quickly before the value of th3 land sinks too far, and 3). It warns off any other parties to not get involved. If Kyiv had been reduced to near rubble by the end of March, there would not be a protracted war with the resulting damage to the rest of the country. There would not be the political will to continue arming Ukraine (plus they’d have surrendered already) or to continue to poke at Russia and expand nato and so on because we’d be on notice that fucking with Russia means you no longer have a Capitol. Of course you could think about it in reverse — had nato bombed Moscow in March, we’d be done with the war and most of Ukraine would be intact and ready to join the EU.

If this strategy is so effective, why do you think Russia didn't do it?

My viewpoint is that they tried (see Mariupol, Bucha, power substation bombing, targeting railway stations with fleeing civilians, regular rape and looting being considered as acceptable) but it has not worked.

The point of war isn’t to win quickly. The point of war is to achieve a political objective, and speed is just one factor to consider.

Would bombing civilian infrastructure, looting and raping the populace, and obliterating their people speed up a war? Possibly.

Would this also alienate your allies, impact your own people’s perception of your armed forces, leave you with psychologically damaged soldiers, and ultimately risk other countries deciding that if you’re willing to do that, you’re willing to do that to them and they should get involved more actively? Possibly.

There’s also that most people generally don’t like to think of themselves as monsters, even towards their enemies. It would be a lot faster to put death-row inmates in a pit and shoot them - the end result is the same - but we don’t do that because of how it makes us as the killers feel.

I generally find the idea of rules in war to be completely disingenuous and actually kind of stupid.

Not really? Lets ignore any ethical benefits here.

Having a rule "our soldiers are supposed to not loot, rape and murder", with an actual enforcement is a very useful tool. It makes more likely that population will not hate you. Partisans are inconvenient at best.

If you treat PoW decently, then it makes more likely that enemy soldiers will surrender.

"target military targets, not civilian ones" is useful coordination method for winning war and not wasting ammo. Can be also useful as propaganda tool.

"no chemical warfare" is useful rule, because chemical weaponry is not so useful. Unless you target civilians.

Preferring to use mines with lower ratio of problems after war is also quite good idea.

Terror bombings are extremely ineffective strategy anyway.

(though total bans on mines, cluster munitions and so on are stupid)

Not really? Lets ignore any ethical benefits here.

If you're going to reason this way, then if someone comes up with circumstances where it's effective, you should then favor it. In fact, you should admit this ahead of time. "I normally oppose loot, rape, and murder, and targeting civilians, because it isn't effective. But if it was effective, I would then approve of it." For instance, dropping atom bombs on Japan is often criticized as targeting civilians, but I'd argue that it was very effective.

The claim was that "I generally find the idea of rules in war to be completely disingenuous and actually kind of stupid."

My claim is that having rules is for many cases is outright effective coordination mechanism.

And overall having actually enforced rules in war, even if other side is not doing this, an effective tool.

dropping atom bombs on Japan is often criticized as targeting civilians, but I'd argue that it was very effective.

not really sure about this one I admit, but I was not claiming that all rules ever proposed were a good idea (and explicitly mentioned cluster munition and mines bans as silly)

But note how occupation was handled by USA and USSR. Outcome is that when opportunity appeared nearly all countries which were occupied by USSR in Eastern/Central Europe started to help Ukraine to keep Russia as far as possible. While Germany grumbles a bit about USA but has no deep revulsion (and in fact, hosts USA bases).

If you're going to reason this way, then if someone comes up with circumstances where it's effective, you should then favor it.

Note that I would take ethical issues into consideration. But wanted to start from establishing that noticeable part of such rules is even improving war efficiency, not degrading it.

terror bombing(e.g. striking civilian targets for the purpose of lowering the enemy morale) is generally not used because time and time again it was proved ineffective and even damaging to its goal

Yes, it is stupid. Yes, Russia did: in Chechenya, in Syria, in Ukraine. For example in Syria they used list of hospitals supplied to UN as target list. Also in Syria: they denied targeting hospitals, then during some spat about accuracy of Russian cruise missiles they released video of attack of hospital as proof that they are accurate.

Am I wrong in thinking that regardless of evidence in specific cases probability of this happening is so low that we should expect to see almost zero cases of it?

Have you seen photos of Bakhmut, Mariupol? Especially famous case of targeting clearly marked theatre in Mariupol?

How do they justify wasting precious ammunition on targets that aren't relevant to the war effort?

beat me, no idea what idea was behind wasting precious cruise missiles on substations - "fuck hohols" or "Putin will like it and it will increase my chances of survival" or "Ukraine will run out of substations before we will run out of cruise missiles"?

The bombing of power substations last year was classical terror bombing: the military had its own supply of fuel and generators, but the civilians were supposed to get cold and angry and the government that failed to protect them.

The rest of the attacks on civilian infrastructure were similar to what Israel practices, with one distinction:

  • Israel goes: if we see Hamas launching rockets from your rooftop, we will destroy your house. Your choices are running away when you hear the warning impact or not letting Hamas near your house, we don't care how you do the latter
  • Russia goes: if we hear about ZSU or other Ukrainian combatants near a building, we will destroy the building. Your choices are running away when you see Ukrainian combatants or not letting them get close to your house/school/theater, we don't care how you do the latter

It's the same recipe that was used in Chechnya: if there are reports about separatists hiding in your village, you either round them up yourselves or you share a thermobaric explosion with them and are posthumously convicted of aiding and abetting the terrorists.

Also, the USA in Vietnam, with the establishment of free fire zones in villages suspected of helping the Viet Cong.

My understanding of this was that some of it was just "this shit happens in war" (just go look at Fallujah), and some of it was due to a Ukrainian habit of using schools and hospitals etc as military bases. I've seen photos of Ukrainian troops in school gyms and the like, and I find it perfectly believable that Russian commanders would say "fuck them kids, fire the missile" when they notice a school being used to host troops.

Mentioning just this two cases is disingenuous at best.

It is worth mentioning at least some deliberate terror attacks (see Bucha) and incredible incompetence (like shooting that civilian airliner).

You can’t compare Fallujah to Russian wars. The American wars led to only a very brief population loss and small. And for lack of a better word people were back to fucking and making babies a month later. Which isn’t Syria, Chechny, or Ukraine that faced years or permement population. People making kids aren’t people suffering war.

Actually I'd say that the Americans are even worse in some aspects. It might not show up that strongly in the statistics, but are you familiar with the aftereffects of heavy usage of depleted uranium in residential areas? The US explicitly used them in residential areas despite this violating pre-established rules regarding their usage. I don't think the Russian military is full of sensitive humanitarians, but to quote one former commander in chief - "You think our country’s so innocent?"

Actually I'd say that the Americans are even worse in some aspects.

In some? Yes. For example they are more powerful and have more functional military so they droned more civilians.

Overall Russia is still worse, and in cases where they end better it is because they run out of materiel to commit war crimes.

And as far as I know, depleted uranium is some scaremongering by types who claim that climate change is an existential risk and still effectively want to replace nuclear by coal.

It might not show up that strongly in the statistics, but are you familiar with the aftereffects of heavy usage of depleted uranium in residential areas?

Yes, actually, and my understanding is that there's not much to be concerned about.

I think the US is better at war and then rich enough to spend money after is a plausibly correct position I would still disagree with. Countries Russia wars have significant population losses so what’s going on there?

Could you please reword your comment and fix the grammar mistakes? I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

The razing of Mosul alone seems to have a median estimate of around 10k civilian deaths, with the entire Iraq war estimated at around 300k in 10 years - and let's not get started on Vietnam. Wikipedia stats on Afghanistan seem to amount to 3k in three months of American bombing, up to some guessing 20k in a year, which is a very close rate to the 18k in 1.5 years being bandied around for Ukraine.

You are talking direct deaths which I haven’t seen data on but won’t disagree with. I’m talking indirect deaths (either starvation dying or births that didn’t happen).

If you look at population charts for Iraq you get this.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066952/population-iraq-historical/

You can’t look at a population chart and ever known a war happened. That’s not true for Russian invasion. This very clearly indicates Russian wars harm civilians in ways that US wars have close to zero effect. There is an ethnic cleansing that happens in Russian wars.

Surely the only things that you could detect from such a chart are births that didn't happen and generations that had an unusually high death rate (presumably military deaths, which you'd expect to be concentrated in draftable males). Neither is an indicator of ethnic cleansing, and in the case of Ukraine it is not even clear how Russia would be in a position to do that or how you would detect it (since they didn't manage to actually capture any predominantly Ukrainian part of Ukraine).

What would you consider sufficient evidence that US wars are no less harmful to civilians than Russian wars?

You would damage civilian infrastructure, run more brutal bombing campaigns and basically do things that turn people into refugees and depopulate the area. You would do things that make people not have the resources to raise a family.

You are basically just arguing that Russia isn’t running death camps. But they would make the Jews all leave the area and depopulate the area of Jews. Which America hasn’t done in their recent wars. It’s ethnic cleansing because the hypothetical Jews no longer exists in the region.

You haven't answered the question about what you would consider sufficient evidence. If you can't conceive of any evidence that would change your mind, what you have is an article of faith rather than rational belief.

But they would make the Jews all leave the area and depopulate the area of Jews.

Meanwhile, RIA Novosti is reporting that about 46% of students in the annexed part of Zaporozhiya region (Melitopol etc.) have indicated that they want to be taught in Ukrainian rather than Russian in the coming school year (apparently they were given a choice). Commenters and Russian milbloggers seem to be absolutely up in arms about this, and I don't see any reasonable grounds to assume it's made up (it doesn't even seem to be reported for a global audience in English?). Does that sound like a successful depopulation campaign to you?

(For reference, 2004 polls indicated that the entire region, including the unannexed parts further north that light up as less russophone on Wikipedia's map, had about 52% Ukrainian speakers. On the balance the map makes it seem like their numbers might have actually increased.)

Sufficient evidence would be to see a Ukranian population chart that looks the same as pre-war.

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And if someone disputes this and has no preference in getting invaded by Russia and USA: I am curious are they also claiming that during WW II they would have no preference in choice:

  • (a) be invaded by USA
  • (b) be invaded by USSR

(I definitely would prefer to be invaded by USA in both cases)

Notably in 1945 there were a bunch of documented cases of Germans fleeing west with the deliberate goal of surrendering to non-Soviet Allied forces.

Including some rocket scientists to take an example.

And there were cases of some military units fighting to be able to surrender to USA (or protecting fleeing civilians). Rare case of Third Reich military doing something praiseworthy.

The data just wins. I can get bogged down looking at a picture of Fallujah versus Grozny and questioning whether they look the same. Or some missile attack was same as some Russian missile attack. And probably write some thousand page book comparing all incidents to try and get to a conclusion, but I’m fairly sure the demographic data in one chart is strong evidence for my belief.

I find it perfectly believable that Russian commanders would say "fuck them kids, fire the missile" when they notice a school being used to host troops.

More to the point, the front lines have been relatively static for a long time. There won't be kids in those schools, so it's just another building that if anything is less likely to be occupied by civilians.

Does Russian/Ukrainian command has a secret policy of terror bombings

The policy is very public. Recall Ukrainian drones hitting random office buildings in Russia?

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1693790601634893974#m

Non-military hospitals and schools? Well they can say 'oh they were helping soldiers or training troops there' or 'oh their air defence missiles fell back down on them' or 'there's military equipment right next door'. Sometimes it's even true. From the Russian point of view, they want to Ukrainian population to turn against Zelensky (or leave the country where they can't be drafted) and bombing civilians would help achieve that. The Ukrainians likewise want the Russian population to turn against Putin or show to the people at home that they can strike back against Russia, who has been bombing a lot more of Ukraine than Ukraine can bomb back. Plus a lot of people just want the enemy to suffer on both sides. Say you're an officer in the war. Some of your friends are dead because of the enemy. You hate the enemy. You want to make them suffer. Fire away!

https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1687910790685237248#m

Here you can see the sort of thing that goes on. "Oh that's a Russian false flag attack". It's like there's a public/secret terror campaign. Officially, we're not bombing civilians - false flags, doctored footage, air defence falling back down. But also... no rest for the wicked, they're reaping the whirlwind, time to surrender, chop chop!

To offer a contrary opinion. We have seen what a Russian war of annihilation looks like in Chechnya. They leveled cities. It looked apocalyptic. Russia's most heavy-handed tactics in Ukraine hardly resemble this. I would assume, then, that they want the country and its people largely intact.

Of course all blame for this still lays on the initiator of the war

This is true, in sort of a cosmic sense, but leaving it at that would mean Ukraine would not be beholden to any standard of conduct, which belies the entire point of having rules of war. Everyone thinks they're unquestionably in the right, or they wouldn't be going so far as to kill each other, so putting unilateral blame on those we deem responsible defeats the purpose. Jus ad bellum and jus in bello are distinct concepts for a reason.

People point to the destruction of apartments and such as atrocities. I see it as evidence of heavy-handedness, but it is not as straightforward an atrocity as the narrative holds. Many people are shocked and appalled that Russia would "attack residential areas." But battlefields don't really discriminate, and residential areas are not sacrosanct, they are incidental. Now, Ukraine sits in a disadvantaged but motivated position. Attacks on their own people are not going to be an unacceptable outcome to be avoided at all costs. The worst case scenario still puts Russia in an unambiguously bad light, so they have plenty incentive to fight from such positions and not to evacuate people- as you say, terror-bombing is often counter-productive. Which is because when you start killing innocent people in their backyards, your action galvanizes resistance. It isn't exactly a losing PR move for Ukraine.

This isn't really to say that Ukraine is responsible for Russia killing people. But there is an ugly side to all war, even the underdog fighting for their homeland, which usually entails using underhanded tactics like that, as seen in Palestine and Iraq as well. Russia is put in an impossible situation when fighting in areas full of civilians, even if they were angels. And they're not; they have far fewer reservations against civilian casualties than the US, despite cries of genocide being aimed at the latter for the last couple decades. But Russia, callous as they may be, is still doing things for a pragmatic reason, not because they are evil bloodthirsty orcs or what have you. The calculus is more like, "if there is an apartment that looks like a good fighting position overlooking your approach, why not blow it up?" And thus, an area containing becomes directly targeted. I have no doubt that these are the kinds of decisions that are so often characterized as deliberate attacks on civilians. And you'll find these sorts of judgment calls are not harshly condemned in any rules of war Russia has ever agreed to, because no soldiers have a responsibility to preserve what they deem to be credible potential threat to their lives.

I'm open to messages to the contrary, since I really do not sympathize much with Russia despite what I've said, but in my experience, any serious analysis of this issue tends to get drowned out by nationalistic rhetoric.

To offer a contrary opinion. We have seen what a Russian war of annihilation looks like in Chechnya. They leveled cities. It looked apocalyptic. Russia's most heavy-handed tactics in Ukraine hardly resemble this. I would assume, then, that they want the country and its people largely intact.

This point is flatly wrong. Bakhmut absolutely ended up looking like Grozny when all was said and done. Same with Mariupol. I'm sure it's happened in several other smaller towns as well.

Bakhmut is similar to Grozny, Mariupol, Fallujah, Raqqa and Mosul for the simple reason that there is no way to storm a city that is actively defended without total destruction of the infrastructure of this city.Trying to draw any conclusions about the motives of the storming on the basis of the destruction in the stormed city is just a pointless waste of time.

They aren’t leveling cities, and if they are, you deserved it?

I’m not saying it wasn’t strategically justified, because it really is hard to do that. But it is definitely a counter example against people claiming the combatants don’t really mean it.

But terror bombing(e.g. striking civilian targets for the purpose of lowering the enemy morale) is generally not used because time and time again it was proved ineffective and even damaging to its goal. I can't recall any country that engaged in the open terror bombing campaigns from, again, WW2, and if you decide to go this route you should be open about it. Main effect is on morale, it should be supported by propaganda and fiery speeches of inevitable death in case of continued defiance.

I'm interested in the process that happens before such strike as imagined by people who disagree with me. Does Russian/Ukrainian command has a secret policy of terror bombings but to keep it secret limits it to some fraction of its forces? What do they or some random rogue commander hope to gain from it? How do they justify wasting precious ammunition on targets that aren't relevant to the war effort?

I see two, no, three possible thought process that are not too alien to me.

Maybe I don't believe terror bombings are ineffective. It is difficult to judge whether extreme measures are truly ineffective, especially if you view some forms of violence positively and/or iare distrustful of progressive-liberal-coded research findings. I can imagine that a military commander, especially from a less Westernized military culture thinks that tough, aggressive, brutal measures are the effective measures, thinking the findings suggesting otherwise are mistaken or just outright liberal propaganda to serve the liberal sentiments.

Second explanation draws from banal realities of bureaucracy and greater number of civilian targets. The boss demands that important targets are hit. Successfully hitting hardened military targets may be difficult, especially after you have already sent missiles to all permanent military targets you knew of before the war, several times over: either are already destroyed, difficult to destroy, and-or the enemy found new locations. Hitting mobile or relocated targets requires current and correct intelligence of their whereabouts, which is slow and expensive. So maybe shoot some missiles to a school building (high chance of success) and dress it up as a critical infrastructure or troop location or important demoralizing terror attack in a report to the superior. This will be good for you as long as the superior will not reprimand you for terror attacks (or reprimands are not worse than reprimands for inaction or for failed attempts to hit the enemy HQ bunker hardened against nuclear attack).

Third: pure vindictiveness and vengeance (not necessary proportional) in retaliation for strikes and crimes by the opponent (real or perceived, recent or past).

Believe you are wrong. Yes Russia has done pure terror campaigns where better uses of weapons for military targets were possible.

It seems like a while since I’ve heard of Russia doing this for specific examples but it does appear they targeted civilian infrastructure I guess to break the will to fight versus military targets to break military capabilities. The dam that flooded a while ago does not appear to have been military target and some say actually benefits Ukraine that way.

Russian war looks nothing like US war. Some could say this is because it’s less capable. But they level cities and civilians suffer. If you look at country population growth Iraq and Afghanistan went off trend for like a month than back to normal. Chechnya or anyone Russia has targeted has not done that.

Russia hates the fact Ukraine even exists. It was never a military threat to them. The entire war has always been about eliminating a culture. If Ukraine won’t bend the knee to Russia then in there view they shouldn’t exists.

I don’t know what part of Russian military history even fits this narrative you want. We are talking about hundreds of years of military history. Life means nothing to them.

The very best case for Russia is some sort of extreme indifference. Something like Henry Ruggs driving blacked out at 170 mps and killing civilians. But I think they’ve gone farther into outright choice of civilian casualties thinking people will surrender if you kill the civilians enough.

Am I wrong in thinking that regardless of evidence in specific cases probability of this happening is so low that we should expect to see almost zero cases of it?

You will generally be wrong if you ignore evidence, yes.

I can't recall any country that engaged in the open terror bombing campaigns from, again, WW2,

To be fair to you, you're probably not old enough, or had any particular reason to have been paying attention, especially since 'terror bombing campaign' in the WW2 model implied air fleets, while most civilian-targetting bombardment campaigns are by artillery.

and if you decide to go this route you should be open about it.

There's no need to. A terror campaign doesn't work on the basis of the perpetrator boasting about it. Fear campaigns are also often incendental to other goals- a secondary or even tertiary purpose.

I'm interested in the process that happens before such strike as imagined by people who disagree with me. Does Russian/Ukrainian command has a secret policy of terror bombings but to keep it secret limits it to some fraction of its forces?

I'm not sure what your actual position is, so I can't say whether I disagree with it or not. It seems you're denying documented things because it doesn't make sense to you and so you're projecting 'sensible' substitute explanations.

The Russians didn't have a secret policy of terror bombing. They just denied it was a policy of terror bombing. That's not a secret campaign, but it is completely consistent with how the Russians approach information warfare, which really does amount to outrageously lie and deny the outrageous things done in order to muddle the information space.

What do they or some random rogue commander hope to gain from it?

Optimistically, a destruction of the will of the opposition to continue fighting, which not only includes the Ukrainians themselves but the will of the Europeans to continue supporting Ukraine's resistance in the face of massive humanitarian suffering, thus compelling a capitulation.

Pessimistically, to destroy the long-term viability of the Ukrainian state in the contested territories regardless of the outcome of the war, thus rendering Eastern Ukraine unable to be a productive part of an 'independent' but 'non-aligned' Ukraine that Russia was trying to compel.

Pragmatically, not getting punished for disobeying orders to continue firing.

Practically, because they burned through their better stocks early and got progressively worse as they used less accurate ammo.

How do they justify wasting precious ammunition on targets that aren't relevant to the war effort?

By believing it's not a waste, and that the Ukrainian nation is the target of the war.

Russia intended to launch a war of national destruction. It didn't expect to have to fight to hard to do it, but the target lists for anyone thought to be pro-Western/anti-Russian were always part of the plan.

Russia intended to launch a war of national destruction. It didn't expect to have to fight to hard to do it, but the target lists for anyone thought to be pro-Western/anti-Russian were always part of the plan.

Ok, then where is there any evidence of some genocide that happened in Kherson that was controlled by Russian forces for almost a year and was generally pro-ukranian city with absolute majority of Ukranians? If you expect Russia to want kill any pro-Western person in Ukraine and see average as pro-western(so strike on soviet bloc is strike against the enemy) we should see tens of thousands of deaths in Kherson as it happened in history where one side of the war had national eradication as the goal.

Instead we see hundreds of cases and not of killings but detainment and torture - general brutality of the Russian state that it dishes out to it's citizens. In somewhat larger proportion because of vastly larger amount of potential violent dissidents but in the same category nonetheless. This piece for example tries to frame 320 victims in 9 months of occupation of a large as an evidence of genocide but it's quite poor if you can count. “The pattern that we are observing is consistent with a cynical and calculated plan to humiliate and terrorise millions of Ukrainian citizens in order to subjugate them to the diktat of the Kremlin.” says Wayne Jordash, managing partner and co-founder of Global Rights Compliance. On average Russia humiliated/terrorized 1.185 Kherson denizen a day, deciding to adopt this as baseline(as does the article) and correcting for the population, if on 24 February somehow Russians occupied all of Ukraine we would see 160.8 Ukrainians brutalized every day on average. If we accept that millions means at least two millions, to reach this number with rate Russia would need approximately 34 years. Not even mentioning the difference between war and peace time or that you expect to see the rate lowering with time because number of dangerous dissidents is quite limited, this is not looking like a genocide to me, more old and boring authoritarian state thing.

In this I agree with Macron - words do have meaning.

If you expect Russia to want kill any pro-Western person in Ukraine

I am not expecting this. I expect them to murder some random subset of such people, or credibly threaten to do this (or torture them or threaten to do this). Continue to do this until they are at least not pretending to not be one.

Refuse to rescue people without Russian passports (there were reports of that, especially after dam destruction).

Loot especially such people, kidnap their children etc.

if on 24 February somehow Russians occupied all of Ukraine we would see 160.8 Ukrainians brutalized every day on average

if Russia state would not be busy primarily with fighting against Ukrainian forces this would likely get much worse

  • This piece for example tries to frame 320 victims in 9 months of occupation of a large as an evidence of genocide but it's quite poor if you can count.

It mentions that just one specific organisation examined 320 cases. Not that 320 cases were found.

Note

The Mobile Justice Team, which was established by the human rights law firm Global Rights Compliance, said on Wednesday that of 320 cases examined in the southern Ukrainian province

add to that number of people that prefer to shut up rather than risk anything, were not processed by them, were raped and prefer to not report it, were murdered/kindapped and cases are not yet discovered...

Ok, then where is there any evidence of some genocide

Sigh.

This is where I note that I did not use the word genocide, but national destruction, precisely to avoid this semantic debate.

Which is a shame, since it was as a courtesy and non-insinuation towards you, because the Russian war crimes both in execution and occupation do amount to criteria of genocide by the standards of international law, as codified by Article II of the Genocide Convention, which was established precisely to set such a criteria.

that happened in Kherson that was controlled by Russian forces for almost a year and was generally pro-ukranian city with absolute majority of Ukranians?

The current definition of Genocide is set out in Article II of the Genocide Convention: Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

This is, indeed, arguably broad, which is why genocide charges will generally follow after statements denying the existence, humanity, or legitimacy of a group being targeted by the targetter. Which Putin helpfully provided with the Russian pre-war narrative buildup denying the existence of a Ukrainian nation, pre-emptive victory articles asserting common Russian identity, and the subsequent execution of the war.

Which has included, among other things- A- Easy check, bombardment of civilian population centers with indiscriminate fires when more precise measures exist as an alternative munition, and massacres of detained civilians B- Also easy check, given not only bombardment of refugee evacuation corridors but establishment of torture centers and target lists to go after Ukrainian nationalists C- Another easy check, as there was an entire winter campaign about targeting civilian power infrastructure to the neglect of military targetting with the only appreciable target of mass denial of power required for civilian services such as winter heating E- A matter of record at this point, as the forced evacuation and subsequent processing of Ukrainian children for adoption in Russia is precisely what this category covers

If you expect Russia to want kill any pro-Western person in Ukraine and see average as pro-western(so strike on soviet bloc is strike against the enemy) we should see tens of thousands of deaths in Kherson as it happened in history where one side of the war had national eradication as the goal.

We... have seen tens of thousands of Ukrainian casualties in the war so far.

That the Russians did not establish Nazi-style concentration camps for industrialized slaughter during the midst of their first campaign season does not change that, nor is it a standard or prerequisite for genocide to categorically meet the definition of genocide.

Moreover, this would go back to you not understanding the logistics involved again. The Nazi concentration camps were so horrendous in large part because of how much industrial capacity and investment they took for that one purpose, which was outside the norm for genocidal campaigns. It was a massive function of logistics... which have been a noted weakness of the Russians over last year, even if it were their intended style, which is not the allegation or the requirement.

What's more important, however, is that you are rather unsubtly shifting the frame of debate to try and joust with strawman. The point was not that they were prepared to kill any pro-Western person in Ukraine. The point was that the plan- as in, the thing they had before they went in based on what they thought they knew- was built on what they thought the allocation of sentiment was like. Which goes to the critical mistake of Putin believing his own propaganda and believing that there was a pro-Russian majority eager to side with a Russian intervention against a despised Ukrainian government, and thus that pro-westerners were a minority to be suppressed and filtrated.

In other words- the Russians vastly underestimated the number of anti-Russian/pro-Westerners they'd be dealing with, because they were incompetent, and didn't prepare the logistics of scale needed despite the intent for what they were planning.

In this I agree with Macron - words do have meaning.

In this, you and Macron would be wrong, precisely because words do have meaning. The legal definition of genocide has been quite a bit broader than just 'Nazi-style concentration camps' for longer than you've been alive.

Macron, of course, has the excuse for motivated disinterest in the truth because he is a national leader who in late April 22 was still hoping to salvage some sort of cease fire and return to status quo ante rather than face the economic and political setbacks that would be more likely if he called Putin and Russia particularly unflattering but true things.

The Bucha massacre and then-ongoing bombardment of residential zones with occasional refugee columns kind of undermined his position, and that of the European 'peace' movement that was sharing in the pro-Russian denial mode of the early months precisely because acknowledging Russian crimes against humanity undermined appeals for immediate cease fires and peace talks.

the Russians did not establish Nazi-style concentration camps for industrialized slaughter

I think it's worth noting that while the camps are the most well-publicized part of the Holocaust, a decent fraction of the deaths, especially early in the war were attributable to death squads with guns rounding up "undesirables."

There have definitely been recorded mass graves in places like Bucha that at least seem to resemble this sort of policy of wanton death.

But terror bombing(e.g. striking civilian targets for the purpose of lowering the enemy morale) is generally not used because time and time again it was proved ineffective and even damaging to its goal. I can't recall any country that engaged in the open terror bombing campaigns from, again, WW2, and if you decide to go this route you should be open about it. Main effect is on morale, it should be supported by propaganda and fiery speeches of inevitable death in case of continued defiance.

I don't know enough about this subject to give an informed answer but it seems like any country bragging about its terror bombing campaign would become a diplomatic pariah. Meanwhile, it could just continue intentionally targeting civilian buildings while hiding behind the "it's unfortunate how much collateral damage this war is causing" facade. It's not like the people being bombed will buy the lie, so shouldn't the deleterious impact on morale be the same between the two scenarios? Bragging about it doesn't seem to have any added benefits and comes with huge risks.

informed answer but it seems like any country bragging about its terror bombing campaign would become a diplomatic pariah

Didn't the US brag about how hard they were hammering Hanoi at the time. They didn't seem to become pariah.

Thanks for the correction. Don't know what came over me when I wrote this, in my head I was mainly talking about amount of resources that you need to relocate to engage in this doctrine. Edited.

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