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Not sure if this belongs here or in SQS, but it could either be a small question I don't understand or a discussion depending on whether or not people disagree about the answer.
Why did support for Ukraine split along the left/right the way it did (at least in the U.S.), when typically one would expect it to go the other way. That is, the right is usually more pro-military, pro-military intervention, and patriotic defending of one's homeland. Even though the right tends to be more focused on domestic issues and oppose foreign aid, military support tends to be the exeption. Although there was bipartisan support of the Iraq war (at least in the aftermath of 9/11) the Republicans were more strongly in favor of it and stayed in favor of it for longer. If Russia had threatened to invade the U.S. the Republicans would have been not only gung-ho about repelling them but also about retaliating and obliterating them in revenge so that none would dare try ever again. So you would think they would sympathize with Ukrainians as similarly patriotic defenders of their home turf, while the left would be all peace and let's try to get along and diplomatically convince the invaders to stop without violence, or something like that.
But that's not what happened. Why?
Is it just because the left has been harping on about Putin for years so hopped on the anti-Russia train too quickly and the right felt compelled to instinctively oppose them? If China had invaded Ukraine (for some mysterious reason) would the right be pro-Ukraine and the left opposing intervention because they don't want to piss off China (and accusing Ukraine of being nazis as an excuse)? That is, is there something specific to Ukraine/Russia that caused this divide here specifically, or am I misunderstanding the position of each side regarding military intervention in general (or has it changed in the past few decades and my beliefs used to be accurate but no longer are)?
Did it? How does what we see now differ from bog-standard American political polarization?
I'd be the first to note that the Republicans have a more vocal wing that's openly Ukraine-skeptic, but that wing notably isn't even charge of the Republican party, let alone 'the right' as a whole. It's also incredibly typical of American political party tradition of the party out of power flirting with more radical peace movements right up to the point they come back into power. Cindy Sheehan was a darling of the Democratic party up to the point the Democrats were in charge of Iraq and Cindy kept protesting the war. Republicans are an isolation party until they're in charge of foreign policy.
From my perspective, the American right is much more skeptical about how the US goes about supporting Ukraine, than about whether to. When things get tied to, say, anti-corruption measures, people who aren't just using corruption as an argument-soldier tend to be more accepting. When actually challenged to explain how, say, conventional arms delivery meaningfully risk nuclear war despite an entire cold war to the contrary, that doesn't seem to be a particular close-held belief when put into context by even casual inquiry. The closest thing is a consistent concern is cost... which is both a framing narrative but also one that the government can easily undercut at will by simply explaining how it chooses to frame costs.
These are far more indicative of 'I don't trust how the other party handles things' skepticism than actual opposition. If a Republican had been at the helm at the start, we'd have Republicans being the pro-support party and the Democrats warning how Trump was recklessly going towards nuclear war, etc. etc. etc.
Factions of the American right far more organized, far more coherent, and far larger lack the ability to meaningfully dominate the American right's perspective on policies far closer to the party base, let alone Trump's likely coalition. I hear far more from the opponents of the American right about how the right is against Ukraine than I hear any sort of chorus from the right against it.
The Cold War isn’t even close to analogous. Now because of advanced weapons, the US can give Ukraine weapons that easily and frequently do hit Russia’s territory (including Moscow). That never happened during the Cold War as far as I know.
In so much that the Cold War is an aggregate rather than singular thing, this would be true. In so much that the Cold War was filled with examples that serve as analogies for what does / does not trigger nuclear war, including direct conventional combat between nuclear states or conventional military support resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, this is false.
I also not that you fail to identify how conventional arms deliveries meaningful risk nuclear war, which was the subject of the risk comparison.
If you mean that the US or Russia never gave advanced weapons to allies or proxies against their superpower adversaries, this is false. Notable examples included the Soviets giving the Koreans entire armored divisions of equipment and then giving the Vietnamese state-of-the-art surface-to-air systems and various forms of rockets, and the Americans giving stinger missiles and other weapons to the Afghans, and major military packages to the Europeans and even the Iranians for use against the Russians.
If you mean that 'the US couldn't give weapons that could easily and frequently hit Russia's territory', this is also false. The entire point of many of the ballistic missile treaties in the cold war was precisely because the US could give weapons that could easily and frequently hit Russian territory, and US military aircraft and missile technology only stopped being unique in so much that it proliferated to the point that many nations had the ability. This doesn't even address dynamics of Russian/Soviet (and, most relevantly, allegedly Putin's) perspective of the power dynamic between the US and NATO countries, which diminished perceived relevant differences between the US military launching a missile from German territory and German forces launching a missile from German territory.
If you mean that weapons provided by the superpowers were never used to do so, this was because the superpowers never invaded their adjacent neighbors who were in range of their territory, not for a lack of willingness to do so. The willingness to do so was a rather significant part of NATO's architecture.
There are interpretations and angles you could have meant that would make your intended statement true, but none of them particularly validate the contested claim of how conventional weapons meaningfully risk nuclear war. Casual mechanisms are consistently lacking, or downright silly.
Would we really nuke Russia over some smallish number of mushroom clouds in Ukraine though?
I'd like to think not, as it seems fantastically self-defeating -- but guess I could imagine the pitch.
Maybe the democrats are playing a variant of the 'madman' strategy here -- if your opponent is so dumb that you can't predict whether he will blow off his head to spite his face, you need to be very cautious?
You are as equally unlikely to nuke Russia over Ukraine as Russia is unlikely to nuke Ukraine over Ukraine, or the Afghans over Afghanistan, or the Chechans over Chechnya. The Cold War, and the post cold war, has a number of examples of both powers accepting losses in wars of choice- even when internationally humiliating- rather than invoking nuclear weapons.
Common misconception of what Madman Strategy counter-play is. When someone is suspected of invoking madman theory, the equilibrium is to be less, not more, cautious.
Ultimately, there's only two general conditions when dealing with a nuclear madman: either they are faking it, in which case they are actually rational, or they are not faking it, in which they are not rational. This is binary, not spectrum- you can't be both simultaneously rational and irrational from a nuclear deterrence perspective, because deterrence itself is a binary. You are either deterred from an action, or your are not.
If they are rational, you don't make concessions in the name of caution, because doing so is unnecessary (they aren't actually mad), it incentivizes the rational-madman to continue to continue to fake madness (as a rational means to get further concessions), and it also obfuscates the ability to identify actual madmen. You continue to operate below assessed nuclear thresholds, you just do so based on your own analysis of what the actual thresholds are, not what the fake-madman claims (because he is a liar), based on common lines of assessment.
If they are not rational, you don't make concessions because if they responded rationally to concessions, they wouldn't be irrational, but faking irrationality. When dealing with truly irrational actors, the counterplay isn't rationality-based deterrence, but capability degradation that limits their ability to inflict harm, which cannot be assumed to be traditionally deterred. This means a lot of things, many of which harmful, but critically targeting the irrational-madman's rational support network whether that is domestic or abroad.
The common mistake people have with Putin and nukes in Ukraine is being bound up in a general narrative where Putin is simultaneously a rational actor and an irrational actor, and that nuclear actions will be done for simulateneously rational and irrational reasons.
Interesting points as always -- to be clear, I'm saying that if Biden is dumb enough that his response to Putin nuking some stuff in Ukraine might be 'full exchange' -- Rational Putin needs to be pretty cautious about what he nukes in Ukraine. "Nuclear Moron Strategy" if you will.
Not sure how this works if Biden is only pretending to be retarded; isn't the point of it that it's hard for Putin to be sure?
Of course if Biden is a moron and Putin is a madman none of it works all that well.
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Not a nuke, but an overwhelming NATO-backed (and probably OK'd on the down low by China) attack on basically of Russia's military capabilities? Probably.
Yeah I think so too -- although conventional WWIII doesn't necessarily seem like a great outcome either.
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