This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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?
As others said, this is absurd version of the events at hand. If Ukraine loses this war, they are fucked in the same way Donetsk and Luhansk are fucked now, only worse. It may very well happen that they will end up according to the map that Medvedev shown with Ukraine being what Donetsk/Luhansk was in since 2014 - just a puppet state and source of expendable shock troops for the new Russian Empire. The next move? Putin attacks Moldova with forced conscripts from newly annexed Ukraine thus potentially solving two problems at once by expanding the territory and sending potential rebels into the meatgrinder. He already uses this tactics to some extent by conscripting mostly ethnic minorities and rural population. The same tactics Mao utilized when he sent surrendered Kuomintang soldiers to Korea: win-win scenario for him.
And we are not even talking about a scenario where Putin with his newfound strength may test the article 5 and actually conduct Baltic offensive on Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania. It is not as if NATO will fire nukes in face of conventional assault - so what will they do? Will Spaniards and French and Italians send enough troops to the meatgrinder to save some faraway countries? At worst Putin can always say "my bad, I just want part of Estonia and make peace" and play peacemaker or he can withdraw after testing the waters. It is not as if NATO countries will ever muster courage to actually wage full fledged war with the aim to physically oust Putin from Kremlin when he hides behind nuclear ICBMs and torpedoes. And in the meantime Putin will have enough Ukrainians to send ahead of his barrier troops.
Don't forget, things are never so bad that they cannot get worse.
Where does it come from? Belarus is often seen as a Russia puppet state yet contributed not a single soldier to Russia wars.
More options
Context Copy link
If NATO, with cca what, 900 million population, GDP (ppp adjusted) maybe 4x of Russia, cannot somehow manage to have conventional forces supremacy in Eastern Europe to prevent Russia from attacking, what use is NATO?
That's almost exactly the disparity in population, GDP between Russia and Ukraine. In any reasonable war, conventional war between Russia and NATO should go far, far better than between Russia and Ukraine alone. After all, the developed West has much better everything. It has rule of law, human rights, less corruption, much better R&D sector, better education. One could go on.
So why am I now hearing this defeatism ? Eastern European countries joined NATO because they were told it'd make them 'safe' against Russia ? Was that just a bluff ?
I'm pretty sure that's what Oppenheimer meant when he said "lot of boys not yet born will owe their life to the bomb". You know well from history how "waging full scale war to oust the despot in Moscow" usually goes. Especially when he has the support of world's biggest industrial power.
I doubt Putin would try to take Baltics unless there's a WW3 going on. There's nothing there, they barely have any forces worth speaking about, it's not defensible at all (or so was the usual expert talk) and all the forces there are just tripwire forces.
What use is NATO if it's unwilling to use nuclear weapons to defend the territory of its members? Was it all a big bluff or what ?
Exactly, and Putin may put this into a test, especially to test how will let's say countries like Portugal or Italy or even Hungary or Slovakia or Finland or Romania react to the situation when their soldiers will return in cardboxes by thousands in peer-to-peer warfare. And we already see the pathetic situation we are in right now - US cannot get a bill of $60 billion passed to support Ukraine, and even that has some Israel support as well as organizational support for European theater inside. And we are still talking about 7% of US military budget and 0.2% of US GDP. And let's not forget that USA and UK actually have some obligations towards Ukraine as part of Budapest memorandum where Ukrainians gave up their nuclear arsenal in exchange for guarantees of territorial integrity from US, UK and Russia. Of course Russian word is as usual not worth the paper it was put onto and US/UK try to weasel out of it by saying it was actually "assurance" and not "guarantee". Anyways even besides that, this is still seems crazy to me - you are supposedly willing to pour trillions of dollars to build up defense against hostile power threatening NATO but you are unable to spend comparatively infinitesimal fraction of money to actually fight it? To me it seems like an invitation for Putin to test the resolve.
Plus the reality check of actual efficacy of all that GDP put into military. Fucking North Korea who is economical dwarf was able to send 3 million shells to Russia. US production is around 30,000 a month so North Korea was able to send years of production to Russia. And we are not even talking about what Russia was able to do since the war started - triple the production of artillery shells to 300,000 a month.
I actually see it as the opposite. The ultimate defeatism is things I reacted to such as "too many Ukrainians are dying, let's give Putin what he wants" or "don't support Ukrainians by 0.2% of GDP when they are in hot war against an actor that threatens NATO, it is too much money that can be spent on social security". So if we care about non-NATO soldiers dying and spending on level of peanunts, then how is NATO going to absorb tens of thousands of their own citizens dying or spending hundreds of billions or even trillions on potential hot war? Will it not be too tempting to again give Putin what he wants and effectively dissolve NATO as a defensive alliance? These two things are related in my eyes and I bet that those new NATO members are watching it in disbelief, they may have been hoodwinked by mushy allies. Also it is not as if this happened for the first time, Czechoslovakia could talk about that a little bit
Now you're getting it. People have been talking about how a green service economy with little actual industry isn't actually useful when you need to like, blow stuff up or build it.
You know, it does takes years to build up big armies and industries. Germany was cheating in 1930s because their entire army was designed around re-expanding. They hired the best, they had WW1 veterans, everyone was trained on things a couple levels above him. And even then it took them like 6 years to build up. In a militaristic regime with relatively high approval rates, plenty of young people and so on.
Look at Biden or von der Leyen. Look at the green energy 20 year shamble.
Not gonna happen. It's late stage regime, the best it can do is suppress political opposition
Russia meanwhile doesn't have enough people to occupy Ukraine. It's not the world-conquering totalitarian state of scare propaganda. If they were, they'd not be hiring Nepalis, but everyone youngish but essential workers would be in the army and it'd be 4 million strong.
They could, if Putin was feeling insane enough try to take over Baltics and maybe (I give this low probability) Russian missile attack could wreck enough of NATO airbases (which I'm not even sure have solid air defenses against maneuvering, fast missile salvos) and then if NATO wasn't resolute enough to H-bomb Russian formations on the wrong side of the border in Baltics, then yeah, maybe they'll get taken over.
Which would be a net benefit to EU because 60-90% of working age non-Russians will just move away.
Would even a conventional war between NATO and Russia really be decided by artillery shell production rates?
It'd matter quite a bit.
Maybe 20-30%. Shells are very hard to intercept and potent, when aimed properly. Artillery caused like 50% of casualties when used with ground spotting with line of sight or plane directed. (was nowhere near universal, iirc only Americans did it)
Missile systems like HIMARS and Smerch and Tornado allow hitting targets up to 100 km in. Tactical missiles, for which Russia is characteristically making with huge warheads of up to 800 kg, [can accurately hit targets at 400 km.] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K720_Iskander#Iskander-M). Unless you can prevent enemy from sneaking drones all over your airspace, there's no such thing as a 'front line'. There's just a region of pain where the slightest mistake can result in getting the equivalent of a 3-4 ton bomb falling at you with a 1-2 minute warning. Fuel-air explosives are more potent than high explosives.
But what about the NATO air forces? Well, even if missiles strikes disabling airbases are avoided, the expectation is reducing air defense to allow combat missions that aren't suicidal would take weeks to months. Yeah, you could whittle that down fast if you had thousands of AI-guided small drones outranging big SAMs ready to go, but NATO doesn't have that. And i've seen no indication they want to procure such. What's going on is they're buying Israeli 'stand-off' munitions at outrageous cost (something like $500k per one drone). That's probably, not gonna cut it unless cost goes down by a factor of 10-50x.
Modern war is just a whole different beast than what it used to be.
Let's remember that western military doesn't have a stealthy drone with ~100 km range and hours of loiter capacity per each howitzer. Even though it very well could. At some point, we're going to get a whole ecosystem of autonomous drones patrolling the airspace to prevent enemy recon, laser dazzlers to prevent satellite recon. But we're not there. Even if SV won over the MIC and started making these air-defense drones in bulk, it'd take 5 years to build up enough to matter for NATO. And they won't win. Billions in stock valuations are at stake here!
More important stuff:
-anti-aircraft missile production (US Patriot production is expected to go up to 600 a year. A year!). I've never seen figures on Russia but they seem well aware of the utility so it was likely a lot higher.
US has nothing like the Pantsir system, which is designed to be economical, with cheap, high performance missiles. No expensive seeker, basically a fast missile guided by impossible to jam commands from the radar and a proximity fuze).
-whether stealth actually works (unclear. You can detect stealth aircraft using bounces to places other than the radar, so called 'multilateration. With satellite comms, you don't even need to set up microwave relays between these sites.)
-degree of dysfunction in western militaries. Oppressing sand people doesn't translate well to contending with an enemy who can't wait but put a small, tiny drone above your unit and blow your entire headquarters section up with a 300mm missile. (Himars, Tornado-U?, beats me what Chinese call theirs). You need completely different tactics, weapons to kill and detect small drones etc. Winning at such a conflict would be hard even if you had an infinite budget and enough competent, serious people.
-whether China gets involved (imo a certainty, China allowing Russia to fall due to a lost conventional war would put more enemy bases on their borders. And allow yanks to embargo them almost totally on gas and oil).
I am certain no one here has ever actually used a fucking FCR or even a operated a boat with a commercial nav radar. All this 'stealth doesn't work' smugposting to portend the sheer stupidity of NATO in developing a white elephant fails to consider the corpus of historical evidence for low observable UCAVs in penetrating contested environments, not to mention literally every Red Flag exercise seeing F35s curbstomp 4.5G unless things are stacked specifically against the F35. Stealth aircraft are incredibly difficult to detect much less differentiate from atmospheric pickup, and not even 2010s tech is able to do variable gain adjustment and track reacquisition. Every nation is either looking to buy or indigenously develop 5G+ stealth planes because right off the bat stealth strangles your opponents aerial inventory and capability. No CAP, CAS or ISR if you can never confirm if even your own airspace is clear and if you lose automatically lose any contest. Ground Based Air Defense spam is cope when GBAD all requires a first track to be established by a radar station and thus is itself subject to the 'contested' matrix outlined above.
This doesnt change (much) the points raised about drones and artillery spam, but that might require a seperate effortpost. Suffice to say, artillery now has to include a wider variety of counter battery threat vectors and drones... well let me just say I am really excited for sci fi lasers to finally manifest in reality.
Carriers are also obsolete against peer forces who are just going to launch a hundred supersonic missiles at them a salvo of strategic air above to give planes something to dodge & overwhelm point defense and simply sink them.
That doesn't prevent them being useful against people who don't have hundreds of good ASMs on hand. That's why Chinese are building two.
If you can make a plane stealthy at a reasonable cost, it's still worth it, because it's going to make it a harder target against simple radar systems.
Multilateration aside which is kinda not talked about much but probably works...
You ever heard of IR sensors ? Yeah, sure, you say you can hide a MW level heat source against the cold sky. No, you can't. Even Yuropoor systems like the Eurofighter have IRST that detects planes up to 50 km from the front.. You think China's unable to manufacture similar sensors and stick one on a high pole in every square 100 kms and connect them by fibre? You think unless there's total overcast, a stealth plane with a 3 MW engine on cruise can just waltz through ?
Detecting IR is 1980s technology. Most air defence now comes with it. America is refitting such on its older warplanes.
Stealth works against countries with bad equipment. That doesn't mean it's going to work against a sophisticated enemy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Russia demonstrably can’t even make convoys happen efficiently.
The US military would wipe the floor with Russia, even before they burned up the bulk of their forces against a far weaker opponent than the US.
The Russian military underperformed expectations quite badly.
In contrast, the US military wiped the floor with the Iraqis twice. People forget that Saddam had, on paper, one of the best militaries in the world.
It’s easy to focus on the challenges of COIN and forget the massively successful campaigns in IQ and AF that proceeded the occupation phase.
By CNN metrics.
No, export models of Soviet and Western equipment armed with obsolete ammunition operated by Arabs whose average IQ is estimated to be 89. US army cutoff for recruitment back when there was a draft was 85. Anyone under that was just not worth having even in the rear echelon.
By CNN / newspaper chart metrics yes. By any actual metrics, no. It's a laughable claim.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Kind of a rosy assessment of Russian military power given they are bogged down in the poorest European country right now. This whole war can be seen as nothing but a failure by any objective observer. It is pathetic. They thought they could take Ukraine in a week and now we're watching years go by. It is just sad and I was much more worried about Russia before they revealed exactly how weak they are.
Bogged down in the poorest European country
1 ) Ukraine isn't the poorest. Moldova is, iirc.
From less high tech weapons, it got ~1000 tanks, 1000s of IFVs, most of its artillery shells and so on.
Poorest country except it got military equipment on par with the French army, at least artillery wise.
Without that help and those supplies, it'd have been over for Ukraine by fall of '22 probably.
you're also eliding that it gets specialist foreign troops operating air defense and elint equipment. (no, they didn't train Ukes to operate it. It takes years of training just to get basic familiarity. )
but a failure by any objective observer. Yeah, the initial plan A (watch the bribed government scram) was a failure.
Plan B, grind down Ukrainian army to the point they can't go on is ongoing. Even Americans are now admitting it's unwinnable.
But it is also showing how faithless Americans are. Despite all their big words, they're unable to even provide Ukraine with something as basic as air defenses. Richest country in the world can't or won't give out thousands of radar guided missiles. Could it? (honestly don't know, but I suspect it has thousands of Aim-120 which should be adaptable for ground launch)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The terms of the agreement are right there in your link, can you please point to the one you think obligates the US to guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine? As far as I can tell this claim is pure /r/worldnews tier cope crossing the line into blatant lying.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How hard do you think it would be to decapitate or disfigure the regime without nukes? Like a heart attack gun, but for a country. Drones, lasers, hacking, etcetera. There are many ways to escalate, NATO only has to convince itself that just one of them doesn't require that much courage to pursue. The plans probably already exist, just as a framework, created as practice in the art of developing tactical plans rather than out of expectation that they would ever be used, but they do exist. I'm not saying this will happen, but if Russia does push NATO too far then these options will be seriously considered.
The problem is that logic goes both ways. A state actor could simultaneously collapse the US power grid and destroy the entire US petroleum industry with one submarine and 50 special forces troops.
I don't want to get you on a no-fly list, but purely hypothetically how would one accomplish that with a submarine and Twenty Good Men?
The vast majority of America’s petroleum refining facilities are right on the coast in Louisiana and Texas. That’s why gas prices shot up to 7 dollars a gallon nationwide after hurricane Katrina. Most standard non-nuclear attack submarines can launch ground strike cruise missiles out the torpedo tubes. I won’t get into the other stuff because I don’t want to end up on a watch list either.
I would argue you almost certainly don't need the submarine, and probably don't need 45 of the men.
People do not appreciate how delicate the modern world is, which is why they also do not appreciate how dangerous the culture war is.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So if they lose they end up being in exactly the same place they are now but for the Russian Empire instead of the Atlanticist Empire?
Even taking your assumptions as true: Russian Empire is worse than Atlanticist Empire anyway.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There is no deliberate forceful conscription for ethnic minorities in Russia, generally mobilization impacted everybody proportionally to the size of young male population strata(of course on average poorer ones, because of bribing for protection). Large part of Russian forces now consist of people who decided to sign up their life for money and as you can expect more of them would be poor, and like in many other countries Russian minorities are relatively poor(not all of them, Armenians are having it pretty good). There is almost no military tradition among Russians in modern day to counteract this.
More options
Context Copy link
But why would Putin attack the Baltics? The only situation in which I can imagine it making sense for him is if they escalate their own hostility to the point that he has no choice with the alternative being a path that leads to him losing control internally - say, by them engaging in a boots-on-the-ground intervention to aid Ukraine, or a full blockade of Kaliningrad. Such actions would almost certainly be justified by rhetoric like yours, arguing that they must strike the Russians while they are weak because surely Putin will come for them afterwards otherwise, leading to the usual crybully escalation cycle that should be familiar from the CW setting ("They're dangerous! We must punch them! They punched back? See, I told you how dangerous they were! You were an idiot for arguing against punching them! In fact this situation is your fault, because we should have punched harder!").
The man has gone full shitposter in his political afterlife; quotes from him should be treated like the "former British intelligence specialists" Russian channels like parading around claiming that UA collapse is imminent every week.
Well, they did that for America's middle eastern meatgrinders. Besides, Ukraine has shown how much the effectivity of any army is magnified when backed by operational depth and modern C&C (satellites, patrol planes, analysis) that for political reasons can't be touched by their adversary. I imagine the effect would be increased manifold if there were no sanitary barrier of the kind that requires manually preprocessing intel that is passed to Ukraine lest the crown jewels of alliance capabilities leak to an adversary. In a battle of Estonia plus NATO minus non-Estonian NATO meat vs. Russia on Estonian territory I would not bet on the Russians, and I don't think the Russians would either.
I thought we are beyond this already, the same was said before invasion of Ukraine. If anything - why should he not invade? He is already considered a pariah, Russia is sanctioned, NATO already sent a lot of available weapons from their military storage and with other conflicts in Middle East and potential issues with Taiwan he may just try it. Rhetorically Russia already claims that they are effectively at war with NATO so it is also nothing that the Russians themselves would be shocked about.
But this was not even the point of my post, which was focused more on Ukraine and Ukrainians who would be at the mercy of what whatever Putin sees as his pet project and his legacy. They would be the buffer zone, they would be Putin's shocktroops and their role would be to do whatever is needed in order for the Russian core to be as shielded from any negative impacts of regimes decisions as possible. I can imagine imposing some sort of reparations in the same way Soviets did it to East Germany. We can see more pressure for russification and myriads of other things that could ruin the nation culturally, economically and morally. So the point is that just saying "Ukrainians are dying" is not some ultimate argument it seems to be, one always has to also add "compared to what" - as they may continue dying while achieving nothing after "peace" with Russia. Again it would be good to ask people in Luhansk and Donetsk or even people now living in other occupied territories in Ukraine about how happy are they not being "pawns of NATO" but being part of Russian Mir nine years after "peace" negotiated in Minsk. What an upgrade.
People in the know (Mearsheimer had a talk on this in '14, Bill Burns-the ambassador said as much in his leaked 2008 memo etc) have been saying Ukraine is liable to get invaded if US tries to integrate it into NATO.
US:
So who exactly was saying Ukraine won't get attacked?
Russia, repeatedly, for months before the attack (while marshalling troops to the order and conducting exercises). See this or this or this. Similar indications were repeated by Very Respectable Western commentators ("Russia won't invade Ukraine, what would it gain from it?") for the same duration.
Look, unless you're a 13 year old girl, you should probably understand by now that almost anything any government says that's not in an ultimatum is either lies or bullshit. And even the ultimatums can be bullshit, e.g. bluffing. Historical record is full of lies of this kind.
"I don't believe anything until it has been officially denied" is a 19th century saying.
So why this insistence that what is officially being said by people who are unlikely to be privy to the real plans matters ?
What is said in ultimatums (government to government communications) or in secret cables matters far, far more. Anything for public consumption is typically fake.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
For the same reasons as Russia invaded Ukraine? Both actual reasons and claimed reasons would be recycled.
Because... they were client states where a pro-Russian government was removed by a Western-backed revolution with subsequent repression of the remaining pro-Russian elements? Because they were hosting strategically important Russian military bases and threatening to seize/expel them? Because they were about to ramp up their integration with US military structures and an intervention may yet preempt that? None of these justifications are applicable.
The only relevant ones could be blockade of already Russian-held territories (water supply to Crimea was a factor in the 2022 escalation, and a blockade of Kaliningrad would be more stark since there are fewer alternative routes to supply it), disenfrachisement of Russian speakers (arguably that ship has already sailed, they haven't been particularly enfranchised in the Baltics in a long time) and interference with transit of goods/resources as with the Ukrainian gas siphoning story (which is less relevant because the Western Europeans are probably not going to resume buying gas for a long time, and unlike Ukraine the Baltics are not so lawless that widespread stealing is likely). The Kaliningrad case would probably be a sufficient motivation, but there the ball is entirely in the Baltic court. The Russian coethnics story was always a pretext for public consumption that didn't actually figure much into the decision whether to go to war (they're getting squeezed plenty in Central Asia too, and yet Kazakhstan remains uninvaded), and as I mentioned the transit story seems to be largely moot now.
As a Motte-goer, I assume you shake your head over pronouncements of the form "Trump will enact a coup and become dictator", which are generally based on a sort of understanding that it's disloyal to the in-group to have any sort of nuanced understanding of why or how the outgroup does things. (Though maybe not, given how much air analysis of similar depth gets when it is red-against-blue?) Do you not see that "Putin will invade the Baltics" is the same sort of "of course the outgroup will do the maximally evil thing, they are motivated by evil after all" reasoning?
this is applicable, and happened in Baltics, just a bit earlier
And none of this were real reason for invasion of Ukraine (in my opinion, I may be wrong - or you may simply disagree about interpretation of situation).
Though here I agree.
This is not maximally evil thing Putin could do, I can imagine far more evil ones.
And "Russia will invade the Ukraine, then Baltics, then maybe Poland" is prediction dating back to Georgia-Russia war. And still, I would not treat it as likeliest or obvious - but as one of worse scenarios. But as being possible if things will go horribly wrong. I would note that this opinion is relatively well shared in Poland, even postcommunist and anti-Ukraine parties were supporting military builtup and fixing our military. Left one had relatively antimilitary opinion, in they program they suggested spending 3% of GDP on military without increase to 4% as some suggested.
Expecting Russian empire to try invading neighbours when possible is so far fairly well working bet, over last centuries - and there is no indicator that they plan to change it any time soon. Note my prediction is "there is a real risk of Russia invading NATO country", this is not specific to Putin. I have no great illusion that Putin disappearing would make things much better.
Also in response to @georgioz's parallel answer, if you predict that a bear will shit in the woods, then put on a jetpack and fly to the moon, the first prediction coming true does not make the second and third any more likely - even if you parade around any number of people who were absolutely insistent that the bear will never do any of the three things. There were many good reasons for them to go for Ukraine, and few reasons against (with the main ones, their revealed ineptitude and everything downstream from it, being one that they presumably were genuinely unaware of).
The military base reason loses weight if the base is already gone, and likewise none of those states have had Russian client governments since around 1990. Indeed, I think that in '91 it was eminently reasonable to expect a Russian invasion in the Baltics, but not in 2024. Conversely, if 30 years had elapsed after Maidan with nothing happening, the Russian bases in Ukraine were long gone, the ethnically Russian population thoroughly sidelined and Ukraine had joined NATO, I would also confidently predict Russia would not invade anymore.
What do you think was the reason, then?
Sure, Trump was also generally not predicted to construct the Torment Nexus. It seems like the maximally evil thing that is still somewhat plausible and more importantly demands concrete action from Western governments and citizens.
I don't think "the whole country believes this" is a particularly strong argument. There are some pretty out-there things generally believed in particular countries, and in the case of Poland there are entrenched interests quite interested in nurturing that particular belief. Don't most Poles also still actually believe that the Smolensk plane crash was orchestrated by Putin?
Well, I kept hearing from people that Georgia-Russia war is not going to happen, that supposed Russian invasion is fake and they are solely local rebels (in 2014), that Russia surely will not launch full scale invasion and any predictions about it is NATO hoax and vile russophobia and so on.
I am pretty sure that if Russia would invade Estonia people will keep telling me that idea of Russia invading Poland is absurd.
Revanchism for fall of USSR, attempt by Putin to secure his place in history and genuine belief that it will be a cakewalk.
Not claiming that, and I am aware of that. (anyone who thinks it is a strong argument should familiarise themself with what entire country believes in Russia, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Canada - this should be enough for any person to bring several blatantly idiotic widely shared beliefs).
But I mentioned it that it is not some personal witchy insanity. At the very least it is a widespread paranoid reaction to our history.
Would need to recheck but AFAIK "most" was never true (not checked this one, prefer to not get irritated - Smoleńsk was so absurd humiliating fractal fuckup that it is hard to find something comparably embarrassing in Polish history).
Well, if PO, PIS, Lewica, Tusk, Kaczyński, Miller and basically all politicians and parties (and other groups) actually agree on something it is quite strong hint that either something is widely agreed to be actually a good idea or South Korean arms manufacturers deployed mind control beams.
Though actually "surely as fuck we do not want to be invaded by Russia again, and event faint chance of that is enough to go into alarm mode" counts as "entrenched interests" in Poland.
I think you are applying inappropriate Dunbarian intuitions to the output of an algorithm that feeds on billions of people here. "Someone said X" is really not a statement that is surprising or has any information content, and consequently "I kept hearing X" is not surprising either as long as some entity stands to benefit (clicks, engagement, whatever) from funnelling that opinion to you.
The third one seems plausible enough, but do you have any concrete evidence for the former two? Is there something you consider sufficient proof that the former were not reasons or at least not primary reasons, or is this an irrefutable belief?
That's fair, but where for one people paranoid overreaction to their own history might still be arguably adaptive as a meta-reasoning, it seems like insanity for others to go along with it.
I checked and apparently it's only about ~35% believing in it to ca. 45% not, though the last polls are from before the war and the tendency has been slightly rising. Mea culpa for assuming it is more.
It seems to me that playing up the Russian threat has been unambiguously good for Poland's position in European politics, since as long as they position themselves as an steadfast, and morally unassailable due to personal trauma, bulwark against Russia within the EU, this assures them American backing that is qualitatively almost comparable to that given to Israel, even it's quantatively far from the latter. During the PiS years there was tremendous appetite in the rest of Europe to punish Poland somehow, for ideological nonalignment, non-cooperation within EU structures such as refusal to participate in refugee redistribution, trade scuffles with Germany, environmentalist misdeeds etc.; somehow these never went anywhere, and more than once I heard sentiments like "cracking down on Poland would just give Putin what he wants" fielded to defend that. Now there is talk that Poland is or might become the strongest land army in Europe, and their overall prestige and weight has risen in particular at the expense of their other historic enemy to the West. Surely this is tremendously appealing to politicians, who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of prestige and power.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah. I mean, it would seem to be an obvious from even a cursory reading of Russian history that the one tendency that has stayed from Muscovy times to imperial times to Soviet times to current times has been the continuous tendency for expansion, either through direct annexation or the acquisition of extremely closely held client states. The only expections have been leaders who have been willing to permit territorial contraction for revolutionary purposes or to acquire personal power, and these leaders have then later been greatly denigrated due to this. The finishing of one annexation has generally just tended to be the beginning of the planning of the next acquisition. Much of the "aw, why be so scared of Russia? They clearly have very good reasons for whatever heist they're pulling now" discourse just comes off as an attempt to obfuscate this very obvious pattern.
You can basically say this about almost any state that existed for several centuries. International anarchy wasn't any different elsewhere. Moscow state was just one of the most successful at this up to the 20th century.
There are plenty of the oldest states with centuries (heck, millenia) of continuity that have not done anything interesting for a century or two. (Switzerland. Sweden. Denmark.)
But let's grant it true for great powers and aspirants. The realist argument of international anarchy doesn't really favor any side: as long as any country has sought keep or obtain greater status by periodical war, the neighbors of the same country have been wary of such attempts, or they have been its willing dominions, or its already conquered unwilling puppets. In international anarchy, it is natural for Russia's neighbors to seek to preempt Russian actions (unless Russia can win them with soft power).
More options
Context Copy link
The difference is that Russia is still doing it. And to a lesser extent so is China.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The Baltic offensive theory isn’t watertight. For example, CIA and MI6 intelligence is clearly good enough inside Russia to have been able to predict the Ukraine invasion several months in advance. We can only assume investment (both in covert sources and hacking/signals intelligence) has been strengthened since then.
At very short notice NATO could send an expeditionary force to the Baltics of at least 150,000 men. Even the European Union + UK, if America decided not to participate, could field at very short notice perhaps 75-80,000 men (UK 10-15k, France 20-25k etc). Given how much elite Russian military experience was killed in the first few months of Ukraine that’s a relatively tough foe for Russia.
The ‘Baltic Blitzkrieg’ scenario therefore only works if either Russia is able to plan, stage and execute the operation without any signs being intercepted by the West, or if NATO countries don’t even care to send forces to the Baltics to scare Putin off, which seems unlikely given it’s already happening.
True enough, if it happened today, or next year. But who knows about 2030, or 2035?
Russo-Georgian war happened in 2008. The war in Donetsk started in 2014. The current war started in 2022. As far as the political climate is concerned, a great many things may change in 6 years.
More options
Context Copy link
I agree that if NATO takes proper steps then invasion will not be a clear success for Russia.
It does not mean at all that Russia will not invade.
More options
Context Copy link
It might depend on what level of salami slicing is attempted. Estonia is a very soft target; there doesn't need to be some massive build-up of force to seize most or all of it. So let's say you have a normal force distribution at standard readiness in the Leningrad Military District. All of a sudden the wire comes in - ethnic Russians have been killed by the government of Estonia, and the rest need immediate protection to prevent the same! It's only a 200 km drive to Tallinn from the border. There are negligible forces in your way. How much preparation is actually needed at this point?
I would like to highlight that one reason the Ukrainians thought the Russians were not actually going to invade was that reports of the Russian "forward" buildup especially in Belarus indicated extremely poor readiness and logistical buildup, past the point of sustainment for a narrow-deep or wide-shallow push, much less the wide-deep required for the Kyiv assault. Any presumption that the LMD has a high force readiness is... well I think the 4 GTD and 2 MRD around Moscow are the only ones actually cited as a fully kitted and prepared units, with everyone else basically being your conscript cadre fillout. I really don't see the balloon rising in your specific scenario without it being telegraphed. Wagners thunder run to Moscow (Prigozhin my beloved) was not telegraphed at all and thats what caught Rostov totally unaware.
edited to rephrase a term
More options
Context Copy link
But then there would be a huge retaliation from NATO that would make NATO's support for Ukraine look rather restrained by comparison (and maybe it kinda was).
Would there be? Does NATO risk nuclear war for the sake of Estonia?
What if it's just a border incursion? The Russians penetrate some 20 or 30 km and then stop. What if it's just shelling or a few bombs dropped on military bases?
I don't think this is something particularly likely, but the Russians might think it valuable to test the waters on how united NATO really is, especially if Trump is elected again.
I think it's probably not a coincidence that Russia waited until after Trump left office to invade Ukraine. I realize that sounds crazy to most MSNBC watchers. At the very least, it seems like they were unaffected by who the US president is.
Russia waited until after the pandemic, then waited a bit longer because the Chinese wouldn't support an invasion that could disrupt the Beijing Winter Olympics. I don't think we can draw any conclusions about their preferred timing via-a-viz US domestic politics. Pre-pandemic conventional wisdom among the "Trump will let the Ruzzians invade NATO because Putin owns him" crowd was that the best time for Putin to start shit was after the 2020 election.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If NATO turn out to be such pussies that they're afraid of shitkicking a platoon of vatniks salami slicing into an ally then honestly kudos to Russia, they deserve the win. NATO doesn't get to pretend they're the biggest boys on the block if Putin can just say 'I DECLARE NUKE' and the NATO cowards roll over to sacrifice their smaller members.
Of course, this brings us full circle to whether it was a good idea to add a country like Estonia to NATO when they offer almost nothing in return. The reason to add Estonia isn't to improve the alliance, it's to put a thumb in Russia's eye and attempt to create a definitive anti-Russian border rather than keeping the buffer-state model in place. Is that a good idea? I don't know, that's above my pay grade, but it's definitely a stupid idea if you're not actually willing to bleed for Estonians. Any time you lack the resolve to keep a commitment, you should not make that commitment.
Charitably, the acceptance of Estonias request to join NATO is itself a signal that NATO would resolve to make the commitment to defend Estonia or any other invoker of Article 5. Estonia asked to join NATO because Russia has attacked the Baltics and subjugated them, not because the Baltics really just want to stick it to the poor innocent Russians.
Others here have pointed out that if not NATO we would likely see the Baltics aggressively attempt to form a different form of defensive alliance, like a new Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth with Karelia DLC. Again, it really must be pointed out that most of these states were aggressively TRYING to join NATO, not coerced into it by shady DGSE agents. The amount of charity extended to Russian intentions strains the boundaries of good faith presumptions, much less credibility.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link