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There's a further issue, which I didn't see mentioned here, of being a long-term casus belli by Putin or similar russian nationalists.
Putin has repeatedly used ethnic russians as pretexts to intervene, or threaten intervention, around the region. Much of the pre-February rhetoric from Moscow on multiple fronts could be leveraged against Russia's more northern neighbors, which was one of the reasons Europe reacted as strongly as it did when Putin followed through with his threats with actual invasion. Just from this angle, significantly increasing the Russian national population in the border states- who are almost certainly going to locate themselves to the ethnic russian enclaves- strengthens an ethnic-based framing of a future pre-conflict narrative.
Further, there's also a point about what sort of Russians would be coming to reside in Finland/border states. Before this week, you could at least make an argument that these people were the minority of Russians who actively opposed the war, and were signalling their sincerity by leaving at cost to themselves. But these were the exceptions for a reason- among which being that most Russians, apolitical nationalist as they were, maintained high approval polling of Russian nationalist incursions in the region without issue, ie the potential threat against Finland or others... up unto the moment it potentially involved them.
If you work from the general assessment that Putin's approval numbers are genuinely high and representative of Russian people, and that these new would-be migrants are representative, they're drawing from the same overlapping ven diagram. These are not anti-imperialists who were committing to not associating with imperialism at personal cost, these are drawing from passively supportive imperialists who are only not associating with imperialism because it risks a personal cost... and who, if safe from that cost, have no history/credibility that they won't just go right back to vaguely supporting russian imperialism, only from inside the border territories where they could serve as a casus belli.
Is it a generalization? Sure. But it nests on real security threats (Putin using Russian ethnic ties as a basis for unprovoked war), and with a presumed- and at least not disproven- demographic overlap of the very target audience who have been passively supporting such revaunchism through political support so long as the nationalist element didn't harm them.
Now, one could make an argument that this compliant and low-pain tolerance is why they should be accepted- that they wouldn't be willing to tolerate social pressure opposing their nationalism- but this is where we go back to where they would likely go (existing or new Russian enclaves), what they could do wittingly or unwittingly (be sanctuary/support for Russian destabilization efforts), and whether they'd default back to Russian nationalism if social pressure from non-Russian social pressure targetted them.
I think this is a non-issue that gets propped up as a convenient justification for visa bans, and has no real significance whatsoever.
Wars are fought with soldiers, planes, tanks and missiles, not with flimsy excuses. Providing or withholding such excuses does nothing to help or harm the enemy. Suppose there were zero Russians or Russian-speaking people in Ukraine this February. Would it stop Putin from declaring the war? No. Would it make things harder for Russia on the international diplomacy angle? No. Would it stop Russian tanks from rolling into Ukraine? No. Would it make harder for Putin’s propaganda to boost support for the war among the Russian citizens? No; in fact it would make things easier because an important anti-war thesis is that the Russian army is essentially bombing Russian-speaking cities.
The pro-war thesis is that Russia is bombing Russian-speaking cities because they're held by anti-Russian oppressors, oh and that it's the anti-Russian nazis who are doing the worst bombing anyway.
The counterpoint to 'propaganda doesn't matters' is that the Russians expend significant amounts of time, resources, and center much of their international diplomatic strategy around it. They seem to think it matters, and the Russians will base their decisions on what they think is important, not what you think is a non-issue.
Propaganda can manufacture any other cause and work with it, they’d just say the Ukrainians planned to retake Crimea and roll with that.
Or remember the time they invented an insane conspiracy theory about NATO plotting to attack Russia with biological weapons developed in secret bio labs in Ukraine? That would work too
Putin doesn’t need a proper casus belli to start a war. He doesn’t need democratic approval; international legitimacy is a lost cause for him, so not a factor too (contrary to Hitler w.r.t. Sudetenland, for instance)
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This looks like another serving of your isolated rigor. Not so long ago you jeered about Russian incapability to respond to possible blockade of Kaliningrad due to exhaustion of troops and materiel, especially in the region; now you mention the threat of draft dodgers (drafted, to begin with, due to further exhaustion) becoming an «oppressed minority» pretext for invasion (of a soon to be NATO country). Which army will be doing that? And army of which state, seeing as Russia isn't likely to survive this?
"loading Dean model"
So how exactly do they change incentives for another invasion? Will this framing be recognized as legitimate by any party of interest, after Ukraine? Certainly not, unless long COVID makes us all unable to form long-term memories.
Is an invasion likely to be assisted from within by those who noped out of the current round of imperialist adventurism? I don't think so.
Will this pretext be recognized as less far-fetched than one relying on already-present Russian minorities who are clear civilians and not draft-dodgers? That's 1/4th of Latvian population, by the way. It will not. (From what I can tell, many of those Latvian Russians are USSR nostalgists, despise their host country and their disenfranchisement/deportation would be prudent, and same for their ilk in other countries; but this is another issue, and their genesis is different too)
Anyway, I have one idea about precluding this scenario: don't give them citizenship or long-term permits. (Nobody intended to, of course.) And needless to say they could be kicked out once the war is over.
Adjudicating their morality and stance on the war can be done on a more or less effortful case-by-case basis. Few of them will be ideological peaceniks willing to emigrate at personal cost just to protest etc., but few people ever deviate from vague my-country-right-or-wrong and my-family-comes-first mentality. Hopefully Europeans can tell a gopnik who pissed his imperial pants once asked to walk the walk from an autistic guy who's been learning Portuguese and Leetcoding the last six months (such as a few of my pals left behind); a 15-minute pen and paper test could suffice.
More importantly, this isn't only about them and their would-be hosts. All of them are non-combatants for now. In case of Europeans proceeding to assist the mobilization, they are getting drafted and sent down South as reinforcements.
I don't buy your long-term explanation. What's being done is pure unstrategic pettiness and moral grandstanding.
And if this is grand strategy, it's one you tactfully decided not to bring up: safer for Finns and Balts to have them die killing Ukrainians.
They could do all these things. My impression is that most Latvians just have an instinctive reaction – Russians bad therefore we shouldn't let them in even if they are avoiding being sent to Ukraine to kill more Ukrainians. No one really wants to think deeper because that would require one to compare which is the lesser risk – allowing more Russians into the country or risking them to be sent to Ukraine. Covid experience have taught us that such nuanced thinking is too complicated for policy makers. They operate more on the level of Idiocracy – covid bad, make lockdowns (electrolytes good, give plants electrolytes).
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Could you give me an example of what "Russia doesn't survive this" as a scenario looks like, both in terms of how that phrase cashes out and how we get from here to there?
I can, but it deserves an effortpost. Basically, it's not so different from late stage Russian Empire and USSR, only more dystopian, and it'll be scripted on the basis of Kamil Galeev's wet dreams.
It starts with war exhaustion in the ethnic provinces and far periphery (Saha, Dagestan...), provoking sabotage and conspiring in draft avoidance, which then grows into collective scorn for Moscow loyalists who fight against it, and general insubordination to the federal center. This provokes relocating additional police and, soon after, interior troops there, which exposes economically precarious Russian provinces to organized crime, that has been symbiotically coexisting with local administration.
Economy keeps tumbling down; military expenses grow; infrastructure and social services decay, perhaps evoking petty crime and protests of feeble desperate pensioners that need to be put down; everyone with half a brain tries to flee, increasing the load on border patrols and such; Ukraine/NATO keep crossing «red lines» without nuclear response, eroding the credibility of threats; manpower wanes, and less prestigious interior troops too are getting consumed by the war effort – when they fail to provide a quota of conscripts from a province. At some point, state capacity is overextended so much that there's no effective control over a region with a particularly capable criminal or ethnic leadership, nor political will to subjugate it, and it gets ignored by propaganda, like the Ukrainian bombing of Belgorod is mostly ignored now. And those new local elites decide that they needn't be burdened by the toxic Muscovite brand, nor bear the cost of sanctions. They either declare independence outright, or stop paying taxes and begin to surreptitiously trade with international actors cutting out Moscow middlemen. When it becomes clear that Moscow cannot put this down, it sets off a chain reaction and economically, logistically, demographically handicaps Moscow even more.
Soon, the breakdown of order in the interior army begins as local regimens decide that they can be paid as well by breakaway provinces and risks do not justify benefits. At some point Putin's regime either collapses, or its domain is reduced to an impoverished, desperately coping rump state; maybe Zolotov/Kadyrov/Prigozhin/Dyomin/janitor uses the snuffbox at last and pleads for mercy at the condition of accepting American General Governor to sort things out, dismantling Russian nuclear arsenal and personal safety.
This is one relatively optimistic scenario of how Russia might end, with combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties in the low tens of millions over 15 years.
Nuclear use would make it worse but not very different.
Putin's success at maintaining order, coupled with proliferation of the attitude Dean ascribes to Baltics and Finns, could make it substantially worse.
Some of that is already happening.
Galeev in his Russian channel, with more of the mask off than on Twitter:
The positive scenario is to walk around like a fucked bitch of a douche bag, under sanctions and paying reparations for decades. We could say that our grandchildren will make it, but let's be realistic. Given the demographic dynamics – they won't be your grandchildren.
Negative – a candidate for nuclear bombing. After that, see point 1.
The common denominator in both scenarios is the «fucked bitch of a douche bag».
At the same time it is possible to cast off the seal of scum: if you change the brand. Look at the Austrians, for example – they made it work very cleverly after World War II.
If you value the future of your children and your region, start thinking about a new brand right now. Just like Austria isn't getting called out for Hitler (although it would seem...), neither will independent Siberia/Urals/Pomorye get [called out for Russia].
And everything associated with Russia will be banned for generations and to a greater extent than it was with Germany. Because no one will be able to explain why those fuckers couldn't sit at home.
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I don't think you meant to attach this screenshot. What's that fanfiction you're reading?
I did not mean to. Oops.
I wasn't reading any fanfic in that screencap. The [NSFW] tab might or might not have been a fanfic thread, but if so I wasn't reading it; a post I made talking to the fic author had shown up as a false-positive when I was searching my own posts for something.
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A future army, because this is a future-threat consideration.
Now, you might disagree with me on the prospect of Russian re-armament post-war, but this is a subject that explains your perceived inconsistency.
(Unless we really wish to get semantic on my isolated rigor, as the topics I discuss are isolated by nature.)
I also disagree on this, though with the caveat that if Russia were to fracture, I can easily sketch out scenarios that could manifest in our lifetime in which the US-European alliance fractures for a lack of Russia, the inter-European alliance fractures as a result of a lack of common position on how to deal with a broken Russia, and that a balkanized Russia with nukes could see interests in destabilizing neighboring European nations as fractured Europe and fractured Russia interact.
Which 'they'? The Russians, or the Finns?
'No change' is not an improvement for the Finns, because the Russian nationalist paradigm was willing to accept the Ukrainian invasion basis as legitimate. To this date, there's been no Russian cultural turn against the basis of the Ukraine war, only the lack of a successful execution.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Ilforte, but less than a year ago you didn't think there was any chance that Russians would wage war on Ukrainians, and lectured me that I would never understand Russians or the region.
I'm going to advance another difference in world views: I do not believe the Russians who are noping out of the current round of imperialist adventurism oppose Russian imperialism in principle, as much as a personal skin-in-the-game that only applies so long as they do have skin in the game and can't go back to being mostly apolitical passive supporters, and I do not believe that migrants renounce everything about their origins even when they flee, let alone views that are odious to their new neighbors of choice.
Intra-American state, inter-EU migration, and inter-continental migration trends of the last decades do not support the later. The fact that the most recent Russian nopers are leaving now, and not a week ago, supports the later.
It's not another issue, it's an extension and continuation of the same issue- a unloyal minority that approaches their host country from the perspective of cultural chauvenism and nostalgia for the external imperial oppressor. If this sounds at all familiar to the current Russian president who has had high support from the Russian public- from which these new migrants are coming- this is probably because Putin's support base is composed of, and has been cultivating, the same.
If one views the demographic issue as a problem, making the problem bigger does not make the problem better.
Except they wouldn't, because the modern Europeans don't have the same attitude towards ethnic cleansing from claimed sovereign territory as the modern Russians, even self-exiled ones.
Worse from the present-decision maker perception, even if they were inclined to do so (say that you are right and I am wrong), they might not be able to muster a political coalition to do so if more Russians are let in, as a new population inflow entails new economic interests that, once entrenched, are harder to expunge than to prevent forming in the first place.
Alternatively, they could not make new case-by-case beuracratic systems for unknown thousands of potential applicants whose approval would make their domestic ethno-demographic instability functions worse for the sake of people who until last week were supportive of Russian imperialist revaunchism.
No, not more importantly. The Russian emmigrees are the less important part of this balance of concerns.
The most important consideration of Russian migration to other nations isn't the Russian status as non-combatants, it's whether the other states give sovereign permission. Russians do not have an inherent right to freely migrate to neighboring countries and set up new lives amongst the Finns and the Balts or the Ukrainians or anywhere else at will. Ethnic russian migration interests do not pre-empt the interests, or sovereignty, of their non-Russian neighbors.
Well, yes, the Finns and the Balts governments are making decisions to prioritize their own safety. Why shouldn't they?
The responsibility of a nation is to its people, a state to its citizens, and a democracy to its voters. Ukrainians are none of these in the Baltize area. Neither are Russians.
You treat this as some betrayal of some broader solidarity, but there is none to be betrayed. The Russian nation demonstrated that, with the general approval of many who are now seeking to flee.
This is barely responsive to my post. Which I suppose happens when one's argument is shown to be without merit and there's no incentive to admit as much.
I dismiss this, because a) in no realistic event can those Russians hope to get long-term residence in Finland or Latvia and b) nobody there is even arguing that this is a risk, instead complaining about being a transit country or that Russians have to take responsibility or some such.
Why Finns, how could that fit the context? Those little miscommunications are a repeating pattern with you, and they are very telling.
Russians of course. Your starting thesis was: Putin has repeatedly used ethnic russians as pretexts to intervene, or threaten intervention, around the region... significantly increasing the Russian national population in the border states- who are almost certainly going to locate themselves to the ethnic russian enclaves- strengthens an ethnic-based framing of a future pre-conflict narrative
How, exactly, does this work? Surely you understand that wars of conquest waged by non-democratic states are not contingent on objective reality behind claimed moral justification, so this framing is as strong or as weak as the propaganda makes it. (Even absence of Russians can be spun into an ethnic cleansing story, if one tries). Your response on the same point to @hustlegrinder is similarly lacking in your usual causal clarity.
Are you really one to talk so smugly of this, given that your specific explanations for the Russian military buildup (forcing the NS2 issue or something) didn't differ much from mine and also implied no war? Also, «any chance» sounds very strong. But okay, I never quantified it, and indeed it seemed implausible, which in retrospect was stupid of me.
And before:
Assuming this is true: this is but a spin on the casus belli thesis (technically, was a spin on that thesis, now it's just a speculation on morality). The casus belli issue has already been addressed. Without it, what exactly does this add? If they consistently oppose being drafted for base egoistic reasons, they are even less likely to help out with the invasion of the host country (which would be even more personally dangerous). Is this about strategic security, helping Ukraine, or about punishing people who supposedly don't oppose Russian Imperialism in principle?
Wut? This if literary fluff in the shape of a coherent argument. I believe you can do better in distinguishing issues.
This gave me a pause. Perhaps we have differences in worldview regarding what constitutes ethnic cleansing, too? Wiki sounds about right: «Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous». I don't know man, this doesn't sound like, um, issuing short-term residence permits or erecting refugee camps for draft dodgers from a multinational neighboring state.
I imagine in a more equanimous state you'd have remembered that, and managed not to make this into another cause for a lame attempt at deadpan comedy.
This is some heavy stuff.
In any case, if Europeans do not believe in ethnic cleansing, like you assert, they might not believe in collective ethnic responsibility like you do, either.
Right, thanks. Admittedly I suspected this will be how you'll read it, which is why I wrote it ambiguously like this, and I know this isn't my broken English but your blinding, zoological ethnic prejudice that predictably determined this queer reading. Pease spare me more snark; few things could be funnier than what you're doing here on reflex, condescendingly explaining sovereignty to an imagined petulant Imperialist who asserts such a right to freely immigrate and colonize. (I don't believe in the usefulness of the doctrine of rights at all, in any case – at the bedrock, there are only interests and capabilities).
My claim here was that the subset of Russian males attempting escape and not posing current military threat will, in the case of being turned back, be mobilized for war (primarily in Ukraine), reinforcing Russian forces that are currently attempting annexation of parts of Ukraine. Which is, indeed, from the official European point of view, somewhat bad and more important than welfare of those males, and (I argue) more important than special pleading about ethnic blocs of the far future, weird definitions of ethnic cleansing, low moral qualities of all ruskies who leave home when staying becomes immediately life-threatening, and other 300 IQ bullshit.
Sure, they take care of their own. Can't say anything against it! I don't believe in the doctrine of rights, after all.
And of course they're under no obligation to spell it out. Because there is a pretension of broader solidarity, and it's convenient in many ways.
Since my point began with that you misremembered my position, which de-merited your argument, I suppose this is a nice admission on your part without having to admit it.
Your dismissal is irrelevant, because you are not a Finn or Baltic country citizen whose perspective and endorsement is the source of legitimacy for border policy.
Hopefully they tell you what I've repeatedly raised, which is that you occasionally use ambiguous conjugation and references that can be interpreted in different ways. This is a common translation issue of non-native speakers, and in your case regularly comes in the direction of intent when discussing multiple subjects that you treat with similar tone.
When I face confusion with your language, I raise that there is a question, go from the context I believe fit in the broader theme (objection to the Finns/Baltics), and work with that. I've no particular objection to dropping anything based on a mis-translation.
Yes, since that [or something] carries quite a lot of ground, ground which has stood well enough since to not but at the time earned me a lecture from you about how I would never understand Slaavic brotherhood and how much it mattered.
Now, I may not share your sense of collective ethnic responsibility, but I think that my lack of sense of collective ethnic responsibility was not only vindicated since late February, but continues to be validated now, given how the other Slaavic brotherhood regions reject such premise ethnic collective solidarity. You wrote one of your best works as a self-analysis of how your world view was undermined and fundamentally shifted by the start of the war. By contrast, I've felt generally vindicated in my understanding of how other people in the region view Russia.
So yes, I believe I am possibly the best person to talk so smugly of this to you, since this has continuity with how I talked about it before. I do not defer to your interpretation of the reasonableness or rationality of Russia's neighbors and their views of Russia.
This would be indeed a difference in attitude, because the European/North American norm is that in practice there is no such thing in practice as a short-term refugee permit and that ejecting refugees by force is verboten. Categorically, once an ethnic, racial, or religious group (Russians) are located in a given area (the state), especially one where the minority already exists (local ethnic russians), ejecting them out would make the region (the state) more ethnically homogenous (less Russian). This would, by European standards, be easily legally suspect for anyone willing to finance a lawsuite (such as interested Russians), even without considering the other fact of European law on the right to asylum, the request almost any given Russian arrival would make once on the states.
European humanitarian law basically follows that to expel someone who has tried to claim asylum, there must be someone willing to accept them who won't put them back in danger, or ship them back to the home country. In this case, you have not answered 'who' or 'where' the Europeans would expel the Russian draft dodgers back to.
I realize you've raised in the past the idea of Russian coders being a high value to European countries, but the question of the rest would remain the problem under the first-point-of-arrival policy that Europe implemented to deal with African migrants, and thus the border state's problems.
Them not believing in collective ethnic responsiblity is rather the point. They do not believe they are collectively responsible for, or to, ethnic russians collectively.
I reject your characterization of zoological or ethnic prejudice in this matter of describing other people's security perspectives. I may find the modern Russian state morally bankrupt, and the modern Russian culture generally uninteresting in it's acceptance of it, but I never deny the Russian humanity or that the Russians are the second biggest losers of Ukraine.
Since you find it amusing, and I'm sure you didn't accidentally reverse your adjectives again, I'll increase your levity. I believe you're a cultural chauvenist, not an imperialist, and have pointed others to your writings with that distinction.
This I don't generally disagree with.
And this I note other states reject, as past examples of future ethnic blocks (Russification policy effects and migration waves), weird definitions of ethnic cleansing (ones that currently serve as war justification), and low moral qualities of ruskies (such as those who supported Putin when it was cost-free) leaving home (trying to enter other countries without permission) is exactly how they- and we- have reached this current position.
Repeating steps that brought them to the present widens the chance of it reoccuring in the future. They do not view it as them having an obligation to Ukraine to host Russian refugee camps under international laws and agreements tailored for Africans. They will reject it, and send the Ukrainians more aid to make up the difference of the Russian manpower.
I don't believe they've made any pretension about being a good place for a Russian refugee column. Quite the opposite.
Was your speculation on future settlements and such meant to merely communicate the personal opinion of a Latvian or a Finn, or did you present it as an argument about security open to rational discussion on a neutral platform? You did the latter, of course, and now you're defending it with the sovereign right to endorse a policy that belongs to citizens of those states, not missing the chance to insinuate disrespect for that right on my part. Pretty lame, IMO.
...Speaking of collective responsibility. This reminds me of that one time @HlynkaCG accused me of having predicted quick surrender of «globo homo Ukraine», then apologized for having confabulated it due to clustering me together with advocates of that view.
You seem to be playing a game of equivocation and derailment, using a very clear term «collective ethnic responsibility» (such as your belief in collectively punishing Russians) interchangeably with a term «ethnic collective solidarity» that's less clear in context and has something to do with my past or present belief in «Slavic Brotherhood». I'd like to ask you to either be less creative with accusations in the future, or kindly use https://camas.unddit.com to quote the specific position that you refer to, not pull a Kulak or Hlynka (although, whatever I think about Pan-Slavism can't have much to do with the topic of collective responsibility, so this is an unproductive tangent).
Russia is not deemed to be a zone of humanitarian emergency (nor is dodging draft in Russia a «right») so the issue of shipping them back to Russia shouldn't be at conflict with humanitarian law, and indeed people are getting deported just fine now; it'll only detract from the purpose of sabotaging mobilization. Anyway. I recommend an approach that is expedient in this situation of mobilization, not legal asylum, precisely because rights or welfare of Russians cannot be expected to matter to Europeans now. Besides there already exist procedures for asylum seekers and they are used, but it'd be unrealistic to extend those to fleeing Russians in general – although Germany seems to flirt with the idea.
There are very many ways for Europeans to allow limited-term residence at risk of deportation, starting with frameworks of Schengen and worker visas. More naively, I don't believe a war is a proper time for EU bureaucracy; a good-enough (i.e. no concentration camps) legal grounds for temporary hosting of would-be Russian soldier refugees that's devoid of your speculative risks (and also precludes submitting an asylum request) can be drafted in a weekend, just like another sanctions package.
I don't believe this is the sort of belief that's amenable to refutation, as it amounts to not liking people of a particular group who display the universal and normal trait of ingroup cultural preference (which is inherently zero-sum).
And how is that an increase. In my impression, patting oneself on the back for old poetry or "sovl" and sneering at provinciality of hohols (or cowardice of the frog-eaters, or barbarity of... whoever) is a lesser transgression than attempts at imperial irredentism, unless one cares more about status signals than material insults.
If anything, the big issue with Russian chauvinism is that it is sadly inseparable from Imperialism, since for some reason – probably lack of non-imperial symbols of success – it consistently leads to Imperial fetishism and absurd delusions on the topic of Russia's capabilities and entitlements (demonstrated by our president and his support base). I clearly do not share this attitude (proven by consistent hatred of our president's support base and the reputation of a doomer), thus I reject this accusation as well.
This is an extraordinary show of bad faith and low-quality reasoning (you still haven't addressed the vacuity of your argument on «justifications» too). But since you opt to hide behind ventriloquism, it's not meaningful to continue.
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This sounds like an example the more-general problem of determining whether people fleeing a place wrecked by bad policies are more likely to oppose them (because their last home was wrecked by them) or support them (because those policies had support in their old home and they may not have made the connection.) I admit the example that comes to mind is "Californians fleeing to redder states" but whether one approves of that example or not, I think it at least suggests that often it's not so easy to distinguish which is which as it may be in this mobilization case.
Pretty much, only instead of needing a majority dynamic (the issue of California idea exports wouldn't matter much if most Californians fleeing didn't share them), the nature of security threats is that they're disproportionate in impact to their population number. Even just a 5% over Russian sympathizer rate would be a major pool for Russian influence operations to be run from, and through.
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