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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?
Are you suggesting that the existence of Ukraine is an abstract geopolitical goal of NATO? The fighting today may center around the east, but the Russian invasion was clearly aimed at decapitating the Ukrainian regime and either installing a puppet government or annexing it outright. If the Ukrainian army crumbles, is there any doubt that Russia would roll into Kyiv and Ukraine would functionally stop existing as an independent nation?
Since you seem concerned about the right to self-determination of Ukrainians, let me ask you which course of action better serves that goal - arming them so they can defend themselves, or paternalistically telling them 'Sorry, we've all decided your cause is hopeless, now you have to take peace on whatever terms you can get it. Good luck!' People below have argued that Boris Johnson (and presumably the US was on the same page at the time) sabotaged early peace talks - I'd agree with them that this was bad, and Ukraine should be able to choose for themselves - but others have linked polls showing strong support among the Ukrainian public for the war.
As for your language about Ukrainians just being our hapless puppets that we carelessly throw into the meatgrinder, I feel like you've fallen for Putin's narrative. The west has a propensity to believe that they are the only actors on the world stage with any kind of agency; see the oceans of ink spilled about how the west is solely responsible for every conflict and humanitarian crisis in the past 100 years whether they've been directly involved or not. The one actor responsible for this war is Putin, and all the kvetching about NATO expansion and Euromaidan elides the fact that Putin singlehandedly launched an expansionary war of aggression to conquer territory, massage his ego and restore the glory of the Russian empire. Putin was under no personal threat from the west, nor was Russia.
Lastly, for those complaining about the atrophied defense production capacity of the west and shipping money off to Ukraine: two thirds of the 60 billion is earmarked to be spent with American defense manufacturers. If your goal is increasing defense manufacturing capacity in the west, how would you do it if not spending money on domestic defense manufacturing?
The idea that Putin and Russia are not under threat from the US axis is I think, not on solid ground. That's been demonstrated several times over the past twenty five years. Iraq, Syria, and Libya were not under threat from the US, until suddenly they were. Fundamentally, the US believes it has the right to direct the affairs of all the world, simply waiting for crisis and opportunity to strike.
This is not to say that Russia's aggression is justified. But the notion that the West is just minding it's own business is ridiculous.
Are you seriously arguing that the US might occupy Russia in the future like they occupied Iraq?
I considered the Iraq war of Bush II a mistake when he started it and had no reason to revise my opinion. But even if Russian nukes stopped working tomorrow due to magic, invading Russia would be insane. It has been tried a few times, ask Napoleon or Hitler how it went for them. There is nothing in Russia which would justify the costs of conquering it even to the most mercenary of minds.
This is not about Putin being afraid of Stars and Stripes flying from the Kremlin.
Like most countries, the US meddles in the affair of other countries. Some of it seems net-positive, some of it seems ill-advised to me. Regional powers meddle in their sphere of interest, the US meddles globally, as did the USSR.
If the US sees a chance to fund a coup against Putin, they might take it. Likewise, if Putin saw a chance to fund a coup against Biden, I would not begrudge him for taking it. This is just how this game is played.
Since the end of the cold war, Russia has not done so well in the Great Game. While the US had its share of fuckups, a lot of countries of the former Warsaw pact decided that being allied with the US served their purposes better than being allied with Russia. This might be because the US was rather well-behaved and soft spoken during the cold war in Europe while the USSR was prone to sending tanks to Prague. Turns out that people have long memories and really don't like being invaded.
There is no birthright for a country to having a large sphere of influence. The threat NATO poses to Russia is to its sphere of influence. The moves the US made to align most of Eastern Europe against Russia seem mostly non-evil to me, as far as these things go. Even if one would assume that the Euromaidan was 100% an evil CIA coup to wrest control of Ukraine from a legitimate pro-Russian president, the total number of deaths was below 200 (most of them on the pro-Europe side). It would be rather bloodless as CIA sponsored coups go. Most of the alignment was simply people voting for parties which were pro-NATO or pro-Europe instead of pro-Russia in places like Poland.
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