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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?
At this point, I don't even think that there is a geopolitical goal in supporting Ukraine, but a reflexive conservatism regarding the liberal project. Putin violated the post-Cold War consensus, eroded the Liberal International Order, and he Must Be Punished (even if it would be against the national interest.) The Europeans had 25 years to keep peace on the continent and failed. They failed in the Yugoslav wars and they're failing in Ukraine now.
Even if you accept the claim that respecting the sovereignity and territorial integrity of states is an end in of itself, the time to do that was in 2008, with Georgia, and 2014, with Crimea. Or heck, 1998, with Kosovo. The Russians have never forgiven NATO for supporting a seperatist state within their sphereling, and is happy to pay them the wages of hypocrisy.
But even with all this, I am still pro-West, because Putin is not a realist actor, but a map-painter, who justifies atrocities with dusty history books. He's not pushing back against NATO's expansion in his sphere, but reclaiming historical clays. Motivations are important in geopolitics, and irrational actors shouldn't be tolerated.
I'm also pro-West. Putin and Russia don't provide a convincing alternative to a better future. But just because Putin is evil and wrong doesn't mean we can't make peace for pragmatic reasons.
This is not Munich in 1938. Russia is a wounded animal, encircled by NATO. People saying "if we don't stop him now, he'll take Poland" are fabulists. This is not a realistic scenario.
On the other hand, I think the lives of Ukrainian conscripts (and yes, even Russian conscripts) have non-zero value.
Why you think that it is not plausible at all? If Russia invades Baltics and NATO effectively does nothing - why you think that Russia invading Poland is not a viable scenario?
I think that it is not very likely (fortunately) but it seems likely enough for me to justify supporting Ukraine.
NATO wouldn't do nothing in that scenario - given that the Baltics are members, an abrogation by the US of their mutual defense obligation to fellow members pretty catastrophically undermines their credibility with allies and vassals the world over. This doesn't even take into account that the rest of the EU would absolutely respond to an attack on a fellow member. At the very least Sweden, Finland, Denmark would become directly involved. Once you've got a hot war involving wealthy member states on their own territory I don't see France, Germany, the UK etc. just sitting that one out either.
Okay, but this doesn't actually say it's not plausible. There is a non-trivial number of Americans who don't want the US to have mutual defense obligations or vassals the world over, and their preferred candidate is one precisely lothed, and reciprocates the feeling, with the Europeans. That candidate- arguably the leading candidate- took a position that he would 'encourage' Russia to attack countries not meeting defense spending cutlines- a line that applied to a majority of NATO countries.
While I would be the first to note that Trump's criteria specifically would not ignore an attack on the Baltic states, and I doubt reading his characteristic hyperbole is worth that much, this is not a man who would particularly care about the credibility he has with allies he has characterized as parasites.
This is without noting that multiple NATO governments are variously politically aligned with Russia as-is (Hungary), or are a very plausible election scenario from coming into governments significantly less interested in EU or NATO as a strategic policy.
The issue isn't whether they'd sit out, the issue is that most of them are militarily irrelevant to a war in continental Europe, because decades of mismanagement and capability cuts have rendered them unable to mobilize units at scale or supply them with ammunition to sustain fires at the scale Russia has and is.
Further, one of the significant factors of the Balkan scenarios is that the wealthy member states would not be fighting a war on their own territory: rather, they would be presented a fait accompli in a rapid Russian occupation of the much smaller (and poorer) Balkan fringe, and then faced with the question of whether they really want to pay the high cost in blood and treasure to try and fight their way through the Russian forces there.
This returns to the question of credibility, where while the Americans face the doubt if they would show up, most of the Europeans face doubts of if they can show up in enough scale to matter.
If an actual war would break out and Finland conducted a full mobilizatio, we would mobilize 280 000 troops, and at least an implicit common understanding is that a large portion of these would fight in the Baltics. With one of the largest artilleries in Europe and supported by Sweden's considerable air force and naval capabilities, these wouldn't be able to win by themselves, but are nothing to sneeze at.
Finland and Sweden are both two of the biggest exceptions in Europe, and is part of why their decision to join NATO was such a strategic disaster for Russia's NATO-rationalizations for the war.
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