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Notes -
A Tone-Shift in the Ukraine War
Lately, I've noticed that the tone of the discussion regarding Ukraine both on the Motte and on X has changed considerably. Notably, it seems that people are taking a much more pessimistic view of Ukraine's chances. The default assumption now is that Ukraine will lose the war.
I think a stalemate is still quite possible, but the more optimistic assumptions that Ukraine would regain lost territory (or comically, Crimea) are now a dead letter. So what, exactly, are our leaders thinking? Recently, Macron went off-narrative a bit, suggesting that France could send troops into Ukraine. More ominously, Secretary of State Blinken said that Ukraine will join NATO.
Perhaps Western leaders view this sabre-rattling as good for their electoral chances. And, until recently, the war was seen as a relatively cost-effective way to weaken Russia. (Sadly, this seems to have failed as Russia has freely exported oil to India and China and is making armaments in great numbers).
But what of Ukrainians themselves? Will they tire of being NATO's cat's paw? It's impossible to find good numbers on how many Ukrainian men have been killed so far in this war. It's likely in the hundreds of thousands. Towns and villages throughout the country are devoid of men, as the men (hunted by conscription) either flee, hide, or are sent to the fronts.
User @Sloot shared this nuclear-grade propoganda. While Ukrainian men fight and die in some trench, an increasing number of Ukrainian women are finding new homes (and Tinder dates) in Germany. Concern about female fidelity has always been a prominent feature of wartime propaganda. But, this takes it to a new level, since the women are in a different country, making new, better lives for themselves. How many will ever even return to Ukraine?
Ukrainian men are getting a raw deal in an effort to reconquer lost territory, whose residents probably want to be part of Russia anyway. Why should Ukrainians fight and die for some abstract geopolitical goal of NATO?
I don't think this is surprising. A lot of Ukraine's ability to resist was predicated on US assistance, which has become increasingly rare due to resistance from House Republican leadership.
This is so bizarre to me. Ukrainian women are... people? They are not the property of Ukrainian men. They are not obliged to restrain from forming relationships or otherwise trying to live their lives because they happen to be refugees.
I do not think "maintaining the territorial integrity of Ukraine" is an "abstract geopolitical goal of NATO."
Maybe don't promise things you can't deliver? I never supported Ukraine, I have no interest in supporting Ukraine, and I'm not interested in voting for people who support Ukraine. If more people thought like me, it's entirely possible that this war would not have happened. Given that this war has happened, I'm not going to change my mind because "you broke it, you bought it". I didn't buy shit, and I think anyone who's still on-board with writing blank checks to the American foreign policy apparatus is too stupid to be allowed to vote. If the last twenty-four years of disasters wasn't enough to drive the lesson home, they're simply incapable of learning.
This would be a better argument if those Ukrainian men weren't faced with forced conscription into indefinite service in a meatgrinder war of attrition. They are also people, no? But naturally, when it's the men, it's honor and duty, and when it's the women, it's human rights and individualism. Women have, after all, always been the greatest victims of war.
Then I submit that you are not very good at assessing what is and is not an abstract geopolitical goal of NATO.
How do you mean? I expect Russia would have more incentive to invade, not less, if they foresaw no Western opposition.
If we were talking about Patriot Acts and boots on the ground, maybe. But spending money on munitions is like…our comparative advantage. It’s making a slightly larger fraction of GDP go towards geopolitical goals. I think we’re still getting a decent return on investment.
Yes, more people are dying than would if we washed our hands of it, and I wish they weren’t. But how much of the culpability falls on us rather than on the conscriptors, let alone the invaders?
I would take your “Mistakes were Made” bet, because I don’t expect this to escalate in the ways you’re thinking. Russia is probably going to win out as Ukraine collapses. I will admit that I was wrong—and lobby my Congressman against it, etc.—if America considers more direct intervention.
What is that return, exactly? I will grant you that in terms of direct costs to America, this scenario allows us to purchase dead Russians and destroyed Russian value at an astonishingly cheap price. Why are dead Russians and destroyed Russian value something you want? What is the end-result you believe we are investing in?
Is it regime change? And then what? Do you think a Russian liberal democracy is a likely outcome if only Putin would go away? If so, I think you should explain why this particular democracy-export project is going to end different than the last several. And if not liberal democracy, then what? A different strong-man? A friendlier strongman? When has that worked before? If you were fine with a strongman, why not just accept Putin?
Is it a failed Russian state? And then what? Who gets the nukes? Who gets the arms? Who cleans up the mess? How confident are you that such a mess can be cleaned up?
Is it a Russian state that remains barely functional, but with minimal capacity for power projection? Why would this be a more desirable end-state than a functional Russia that we left alone to dominate Ukraine? Is it the better outcome for Ukraine? Why is gutting a large country preferable to allowing a small country to be stunted?
What is the actual logic? What is the long-term benefit to treating Russia as an enemy, rather than simply leaving them alone?
This war was the predicted outcome of our explicit foreign policy choices. The standard rejoinder is that this assessment assumes that only America has agency, but that appears to me to be a thought-terminating cliche. "Provocation" is a coherent concept within international politics, and it doesn't magically lose its coherence when it becomes inconvenient for supporters of American foreign policy. It was predictable, and was in fact predicted, that meddling on Russia's borders would lead to this war in particular. That meddling had no upside that I've ever been able to see. What was the point, and why was it worth it when this was the predictable outcome?
My expectation is that Ukraine loses at some point in the next couple years, leaving Russia with a pyrrhic victory, a poorer and less-stable country, and cemented as an explicit enemy of the US for the next few decades at least. Why is this a desirable outcome? What value was secured by doing things this way?
Russia emboldened to invade Baltics seems to be worse outcome than that.
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Russia chose this, thinking that Ukrainians would pay most of the human and financial cost. By supporting Ukraine, we are moving more of that cost onto Russia, the aggressor. I believe this is more moral than caving to threats.
This is mainly true insofar as Ukraine is willing to resist. If, as increased conscription suggests, they are losing their willingness to fight and die, we should defer. But for now, we have no moral duty to make the Ukrainian people surrender.
What explicit U.S. policy choices are you thinking about? Do any of them outweigh Russia’s explicit choice to invade? From where I’m standing, their right to respond to provocation is strictly weaker than Ukraine’s right to self-determination.
I think this is the most likely outcome, and it is a tragic one. I also don’t think it will be remembered as an Iraq-style Mistake. We’re not committing ourselves to nation-building or occupation; the check isn’t blank.
More importantly, I find this tragedy preferable to the one where Russia rolls in and shoots a few thousand Ukrainian troops before declaring “mission accomplished!” All the better options were taken off the table, and not by us.
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My impression, from living in Russia, was that Russia cemented the US and "the West" as a 99% explicit enemy a decade, if not more, ago. A pole of power that has opposite interests and values, and will never be trusted.
Not merely objecting to the US's role of the world police and reserving the right to police itself, however, Russia decided that it wants a slice of the world police pie. I wouldn't expect the US to like it any more than Russia likes what the US has been doing.
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I don't see in the thread the result I have found most convincing, so here goes: the end-result is a world where military force is not used to change state borders, and is not sent across state borders in any way that could be ambiguous. Countries can go to hell in their own handbaskets, and descend into civil war and massacre civilians and bleed out endless streams of refugees, but as long as the chaos stays within the lines on the map, the rest of the world can get on with their lives.
Yes, this is hypocritical coming from America (I'm American), but I don't think anyone serious thought that we were going to annex Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else. If Russia sent troops to (say) Mali as "peacekeepers" or to put down "insurrections" that were causing "human rights violations", whatever. No one serious thinks that the Wagner Group is going to annex the Central African Republic. But if Russia does the same to Ukraine or Georgia or any other neighboring country, that's much more dangerous.
What Russia did in Ukraine - sending tanks and infantry across border in what is objectively an invasion - that seems like the bad old days starting up again. By doing that, Russia made themselves into an enemy, and I am happy to see them bleed. Especially if it has a side-effect of causing NATO to improve its military-industrial capacity. The more damage we can do to Russia, the less likely any other country will be to try something like this in the future. Like China.
Probably the Russians felt the same way about America during Vietnam, and, you know, I'm fine with that. Ditto for anyone who was funding resistance in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yeah, America's messed with a lot of other countries, including Ukraine, in ways that I with my limited knowledge think of as a stupid waste of power. I still think this is different from all of those cases.
And maybe America is too dysfunctional to pull this off. Maybe we can't stop Russia from peeling off its Sudetenland. It's still worth trying. I'm glad we're not going gently into that night.
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