Ukraine's European Revolution?

[Sheilbh]

Lindsay Hilsum (wonderful Channel 4 hack that she is) tweeted this the night before the referendum:

Just bumped into Flemish separatist referendum observers. 'U ok?' I asked. 'No.' 'What's wrong?' 'Drunk,' he replied, swaying. #crimea

[DontSayBanana]

Polonskaya 

But yeah, she's maybe a 9.

I'd hit it harder than a Spetznaz beating a protester.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Angry that no one has consulted him, Mitt weighs in:

Romney: The Price of Failed Leadership
The President's failure to act when action was possible has diminished respect for the U.S. and made troubles worse.

By MITT ROMNEY
March 17, 2014 7:17 p.m. ET

Why are there no good choices? From Crimea to North Korea, from Syria to Egypt, and from Iraq to Afghanistan, America apparently has no good options. If possession is nine-tenths of the law, Russia owns Crimea and all we can do is sanction and disinvite—and wring our hands.

Iran is following North Korea's nuclear path, but it seems that we can only entreat Iran to sign the same kind of agreement North Korea once signed, undoubtedly with the same result.

Our tough talk about a red line in Syria prompted Vladimir Putin's sleight of hand, leaving the chemicals and killings much as they were. We say Bashar Assad must go, but aligning with his al Qaeda-backed opposition is an unacceptable option.

And how can it be that Iraq and Afghanistan each refused to sign the status-of-forces agreement with us—with the very nation that shed the blood of thousands of our bravest for them?

Why, across the world, are America's hands so tied?

A large part of the answer is our leader's terrible timing. In virtually every foreign-affairs crisis we have faced these past five years, there was a point when America had good choices and good options. There was a juncture when America had the potential to influence events. But we failed to act at the propitious point; that moment having passed, we were left without acceptable options. In foreign affairs as in life, there is, as Shakespeare had it, "a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries."

When protests in Ukraine grew and violence ensued, it was surely evident to people in the intelligence community—and to the White House—that President Putin might try to take advantage of the situation to capture Crimea, or more. That was the time to talk with our global allies about punishments and sanctions, to secure their solidarity, and to communicate these to the Russian president. These steps, plus assurances that we would not exclude Russia from its base in Sevastopol or threaten its influence in Kiev, might have dissuaded him from invasion.

Months before the rebellion began in Syria in 2011, a foreign leader I met with predicted that Assad would soon fall from power. Surely the White House saw what this observer saw. As the rebellion erupted, the time was ripe for us to bring together moderate leaders who would have been easy enough for us to identify, to assure the Alawites that they would have a future post-Assad, and to see that the rebels were well armed.

The advent of the Arab Spring may or may not have been foreseen by our intelligence community, but after Tunisia, it was predictable that Egypt might also become engulfed. At that point, pushing our friend Hosni Mubarak to take rapid and bold steps toward reform, as did Jordan's king, might well have saved lives and preserved the U.S.-Egypt alliance.

The time for securing the status-of-forces signatures from leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan was before we announced in 2011 our troop-withdrawal timeline, not after it. In negotiations, you get something when the person across the table wants something from you, not after you have already given it away.

Able leaders anticipate events, prepare for them, and act in time to shape them. My career in business and politics has exposed me to scores of people in leadership positions, only a few of whom actually have these qualities. Some simply cannot envision the future and are thus unpleasantly surprised when it arrives. Some simply hope for the best. Others succumb to analysis paralysis, weighing trends and forecasts and choices beyond the time of opportunity.

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton traveled the world in pursuit of their promise to reset relations and to build friendships across the globe. Their failure has been painfully evident: It is hard to name even a single country that has more respect and admiration for America today than when President Obama took office, and now Russia is in Ukraine. Part of their failure, I submit, is due to their failure to act when action was possible, and needed.

A chastened president and Secretary of State Kerry, a year into his job, can yet succeed, and for the country's sake, must succeed. Timing is of the essence.

Mr. Romney is the former governor of Massachusetts and the 2012 Republican nominee for president.

[Iormlund]

Actually, that's a pet peeve of mine.  The rhetoric about this has been absolutely asinine about it being "undemocratic."  A coherent body of people voting overwhelmingly to select their government?  Sounds about as democratic as it gets- it strikes me that we've fallen into this rhetorical trap that "democratic" equals "good," and "undemocratic" automatically equates to "bad."

That and going on about the illegal referendum, while it's questionably legal, at best, the way Yakunovych was ousted.

Doesn't mean I'm pro-referendum, BTW, just that they're hitting all the wrong talking points about this.  It opens our government up to accusations of double standards that should never have been plausible in the first case.

It's not the referendum per se that's undemocratic. It's having it under foreign military occupation, no secret voting, no observers allowed ...

[Sheilbh]

Angry that no one has consulted him, Mitt weighs in:

The pain of forever being 'former Presidential candidate'

[alfred russel]

DSB, change your successful troll count to III. Or add to your sig that you are a total dumbass, because one of the two is true. At a minimum. 

[LaCroix]

The Onion article.  I'm getting kind of sick of hearing Obama and the Temp PM put their feet in their mouths about how Russia's undermining democracy in Ukraine.  A plebiscite is about as democratic as it gets, whether you like the results or not.

russia is most certainly undermining democracy. they're holding a gun to ukraine's head and forcing a plebiscite. that a portion of crimea wants to join russia means nothing, because that focuses on a portion of a country rather than the whole. that a portion wishes to secede means nothing if the rest of the nation doesn't want it. the provinces of a nation today are more interconnected than ever before.

no one can say that crimea is entirely separate from the rest of ukraine. for example, crimea helps provide wealth to the rest of the nation through its industries. that wealth is enjoyed by the whole nation, not just crimea. therefore, someone in kiev has just as much of a say in whether crimea stays or exits as the crimeans do. furthermore, there is no evidence of widespread discrimination or exploitation of crimea by the rest of ukraine, so it cannot be argued that the crimeans remained in ukraine only due to threat of force

not to mention the results thus far are bullshit. 58% of crimea's population is russian, 95% so far have voted to join russia? i don't think so. nothing is that close, even if crimea was 100% russian

[sbr]

DSB, change your successful troll count to III. Or add to your sig that you are a total dumbass, because one of the two is true. At a minimum. 

[Ed Anger]

Let's get back to more important issues. Like that young lady in uniform.

[Viking]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/03/12/who-predicted-russias-military-intervention-2/

Who predicted Russia's military intervention?
BY ERIK VOETEN
March 12 at 12:00 pm
Other than Sarah Palin and certain Russian astrologers, few people foresaw that Russia would intervene militarily in the Ukraine. The Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project at the College of William & Mary held a snap poll among international relations scholars, which asked: "Will Russian military forces intervene in response to the political crisis in Ukraine?" The results, reported in Foreign Policy, were disheartening: only 14 percent of the 905 interviewed scholars answered affirmatively on the eve of the intervention. (The poll was conducted from 9 p.m., Feb. 24 to 11:59 p.m., Feb. 27. Russian forces controlled the Sevastopol airport on Feb. 28).
These results might reaffirm the beliefs of some that academics have lost touch with reality. Yet, there is little evidence that others did any better. The intelligence community picked up some signs but these were not translated into an actual warning that made it to the top levels of the U.S. or Ukrainian political decision-making structures (although we may find out more about that later). Pundits were writing confidently that Russia would not intervene even as Russian troops were slipping into the country.
So, what went wrong? The good folks at the TRIP project shared their data with me (stripped from identifying information) such that I could take a closer look.



The graph above displays the percentage of scholars within a subgroup who correctly claimed that Russia would intervene militarily (green dots) and the percentage who proclaimed that it would not (red crosses). The remainder chose "don't know" (not displayed). The graph is ordered by the subgroup least likely to correctly predict that Russia would use military force. The number of scholars in each subgroup is in brackets.
First, some comforting news: scholars who study international security or Russia (or Eastern Europe) as a primary or secondary specialty were more likely to foresee the intervention. It pays (a little bit) to listen to those who know what they are talking about.
Second, scholars who work at a Top-25 institution (as identified by TRIP) were least likely to be correct. This is consistent with Philip Tetlock's finding that the more famous and successful the pundit, the less accurate the predictions. Perhaps in academia, as in punditry, forcefulness, confidence and decisiveness pay even as these qualities do not translate into predictive accuracy.
Some further prying (not in the graph) shows that this is not because professors at liberal arts colleges were more likely to be accurate: it is professors at research universities somewhat lower down the food chain who were most likely to get it right. Tenured scholars were also no more likely to foresee the intervention than their untenured counterparts.

Third, scholars who use qualitative methods in their research, a dying breed if you believe some commentary (but not the data), were slightly less successful in their predictions than those who use quantitative methods (some scholars use both). The differences are too small to be meaningfully interpreted.
Fourth, and most interesting to me, are the differences related to the "paradigm wars." International relations scholars have long classified themselves as belonging to different schools of thought, often referred to as "the isms” (see here for a primer). A growing group of scholars, myself included, worry that becoming a card-carrying member of a paradigmatic club can lead to blinders that, among others, interferes with predictive accuracy.
Consistent with this, those who do not identify with a paradigm were somewhat more likely to be accurate, closely followed by Realists. Self-identified Liberals and Constructivists did poorly, with Liberals both very unlikely to predict intervention and very likely to offer a definitive "no" rather than the "don't know" answer that was very popular among Constructivists (who sometimes look dimly on the predictive ambitions of social science).
Perhaps a misplaced faith in the power of international law and institutions was at the root of this. After all, the Russian intervention violates a system of laws and norms that these paradigms hold dearly. Yet, non-realist scholars who study international law or international organizations as their primary or secondary field were more likely to foresee the military action (see graph).
Delving deeper into the data, I found that only 7 percent of the 150 self-identified Liberals and Constructivists who do not study international organizations and law foresaw the Russian military intervention. By contrast 15 percent of the 87 Liberals and Constructivists who study international law and organization got it right. This is admittedly speculative but it may be that paradigms impose blinders especially outside of ones field of study. Only 5 percent (4) of the 87 Liberals and Constructivists who do not study international security, Russia or international organizations and law correctly predicted a military intervention.
All of these findings ought to be taken with a hefty grain of salt. The sample is pretty small once you start breaking it down into subgroups. Moreover, if there were a subgroup called "conspiracy theorists," who see military intervention lurking behind any crisis, we would have declared them clairvoyant based on this one prediction exercise. This is why continuation of these snap polls is so important: it helps expose our biases in a systematic way. Finally, none of this should distract us from the most important conclusion: that most scholars (including me) got it wrong.
[Edited to remove an inaccurate description in the third paragraph of the past use of snap polls]
Postscript: On request: in a multiple regression analysis (whether by OLS or (ordinal) logit) the two covariates that have robust sizable and significant (p<.01) negative effects on predicting a military intervention are being at a Top 25 institution and self-identifying with the Liberal school of international relations. I did not find an interactive effect between these two covariates. The significance of the other covariates depends on model specification.

my confirmation bias alarm ticks with the failure of realism, but still, historical experiments are usually not this specific

[Neil]

Poor Russia.  All their women are prostitutes.

[Iormlund]

The reason why everybody but Palin failed to predict Putin's response is that Putin's response was not Russia's self-interest. That's not a problem for Palin because logic plays no part in her thought processes.

[alfred russel]

I don't see the graph as revealing any sort of problem. If you ask someone to predict if an unlikely action will occur, everyone will answer "no". Showing a chart detailing how everyone was wrong if the unlikely event comes to pass doesn't make them stupid or prone to group think. Sometimes unexpected things happen.

[alfred russel]

The reason why everybody but Palin failed to predict Putin's response is that Putin's response was not Russia's self-interest. That's not a problem for Palin because logic plays no part in her thought processes.

I doubt Palin came up with the hypothetical anyway, because if half of what we know is true, I seriously doubt she could find the Ukraine on a map or tell you a thing about the country.

[Sheilbh]

Showing a chart detailing how everyone was wrong if the unlikely event comes to pass doesn't make them stupid or prone to group think. Sometimes unexpected things happen.

Yeah. I mean 'only 5 percent (4) of the 87 Liberals and Constructivists who do not study international security, Russia or international organizations and law correctly predicted a military intervention.' So you mean people who don't study anything relevant got this wrong? How did the literary critics do?

I blame social 'scientists' who should accept they study humanities and stop being such knobs