Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[OttoVonBismarck]

Now now, I have always hated Russia.

[CountDeMoney]

Now now, I have always hated Russia.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

[Razgovory]

Why can't we form a PMC and send it over there like the Russians have done with the Wagner Group?  We can use the same lame excuses as the Russians did. 

"Oh, these soldiers are just working part time, moonlighting as private security.  And why yes, they did think to bring their tanks with them."

[OttoVonBismarck]

I mean we literally could. The issue is eventually one of those guys gets captured. If a Wagner Group member gets captured by a Western power, they have to apply the rule of law to him, can't torture him or use him for propaganda etc, he gets a lawyer and a lot of opportunities to deny deny deny. One of our guys gets captured and he's going to be talking on Russian State TV about the evil American imperialists just like Gary Powers was in the 60s after the Soviets shot his U2 down.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Economist article advancing the "NATO caused this by expanding too much" argument:

John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis

The political scientist believes the reckless expansion of NATO provoked Russia

Mar 11th 2022

The war in Ukraine is the most dangerous international conflict since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Understanding its root causes is essential if we are to prevent it from getting worse and, instead, to find a way to bring it to a close.

There is no question that Vladimir Putin started the war and is responsible for how it is being waged. But why he did so is another matter. The mainstream view in the West is that he is an irrational, out-of-touch aggressor bent on creating a greater Russia in the mould of the former Soviet Union. Thus, he alone bears full responsibility for the Ukraine crisis.

But that story is wrong. The West, and especially America, is principally responsible for the crisis which began in February 2014. It has now turned into a war that not only threatens to destroy Ukraine, but also has the potential to escalate into a nuclear war between Russia and nato.

The trouble over Ukraine actually started at nato's Bucharest summit in April 2008, when George W. Bush's administration pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members". Russian leaders responded immediately with outrage, characterising this decision as an existential threat to Russia and vowing to thwart it. According to a respected Russian journalist, Mr Putin "flew into a rage" and warned that "if Ukraine joins nato, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions. It will simply fall apart." America ignored Moscow's red line, however, and pushed forward to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia's border. That strategy included two other elements: bringing Ukraine closer to the eu and making it a pro-American democracy.

These efforts eventually sparked hostilities in February 2014, after an uprising (which was supported by America) caused Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. In response, Russia took Crimea from Ukraine and helped fuel a civil war that broke out in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

The next major confrontation came in December 2021 and led directly to the current war. The main cause was that Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of nato. The process started in December 2017, when the Trump administration decided to sell Kyiv "defensive weapons". What counts as "defensive" is hardly clear-cut, however, and these weapons certainly looked offensive to Moscow and its allies in the Donbas region. Other nato countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training its armed forces and allowing it to participate in joint air and naval exercises. In July 2021, Ukraine and America co-hosted a major naval exercise in the Black Sea region involving navies from 32 countries. Operation Sea Breeze almost provoked Russia to fire at a British naval destroyer that deliberately entered what Russia considers its territorial waters.

The links between Ukraine and America continued growing under the Biden administration. This commitment is reflected throughout an important document—the "us-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership"—that was signed in November by Antony Blinken, America's secretary of state, and Dmytro Kuleba, his Ukrainian counterpart. The aim was to "underscore ... a commitment to Ukraine's implementation of the deep and comprehensive reforms necessary for full integration into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions." The document explicitly builds on "the commitments made to strengthen the Ukraine-u.s. strategic partnership by Presidents Zelensky and Biden," and also emphasises that the two countries will be guided by the "2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration."

Unsurprisingly, Moscow found this evolving situation intolerable and began mobilising its army on Ukraine's border last spring to signal its resolve to Washington. But it had no effect, as the Biden administration continued to move closer to Ukraine. This led Russia to precipitate a full-blown diplomatic stand-off in December. As Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, put it: "We reached our boiling point." Russia demanded a written guarantee that Ukraine would never become a part of nato and that the alliance remove the military assets it had deployed in eastern Europe since 1997. The subsequent negotiations failed, as Mr Blinken made clear: "There is no change. There will be no change." A month later Mr Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine to eliminate the threat he saw from nato.

This interpretation of events is at odds with the prevailing mantra in the West, which portrays nato expansion as irrelevant to the Ukraine crisis, blaming instead Mr Putin's expansionist goals. According to a recent nato document sent to Russian leaders, "nato is a defensive Alliance and poses no threat to Russia." The available evidence contradicts these claims. For starters, the issue at hand is not what Western leaders say nato's purpose or intentions are; it is how Moscow sees nato's actions.

Mr Putin surely knows that the costs of conquering and occupying large amounts of territory in eastern Europe would be prohibitive for Russia. As he once put it, "Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain." His beliefs about the tight bonds between Russia and Ukraine notwithstanding, trying to take back all of Ukraine would be like trying to swallow a porcupine. Furthermore, Russian policymakers—including Mr Putin—have said hardly anything about conquering new territory to recreate the Soviet Union or build a greater Russia. Rather, since the 2008 Bucharest summit Russian leaders have repeatedly said that they view Ukraine joining nato as an existential threat that must be prevented. As Mr Lavrov noted in January, "the key to everything is the guarantee that nato will not expand eastward."

Tellingly, Western leaders rarely described Russia as a military threat to Europe before 2014. As America's former ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul notes, Mr Putin's seizure of Crimea was not planned for long; it was an impulsive move in response to the coup that overthrew Ukraine's pro-Russian leader. In fact, until then, nato expansion was aimed at turning all of Europe into a giant zone of peace, not containing a dangerous Russia. Once the crisis started, however, American and European policymakers could not admit they had provoked it by trying to integrate Ukraine into the West. They declared the real source of the problem was Russia's revanchism and its desire to dominate if not conquer Ukraine.

My story about the conflict's causes should not be controversial, given that many prominent American foreign-policy experts have warned against nato expansion since the late 1990s. America's secretary of defence at the time of the Bucharest summit, Robert Gates, recognised that "trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into nato was truly overreaching". Indeed, at that summit, both the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, were opposed to moving forward on nato membership for Ukraine because they feared it would infuriate Russia.

The upshot of my interpretation is that we are in an extremely dangerous situation, and Western policy is exacerbating these risks. For Russia's leaders, what happens in Ukraine has little to do with their imperial ambitions being thwarted; it is about dealing with what they regard as a direct threat to Russia's future. Mr Putin may have misjudged Russia's military capabilities, the effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance and the scope and speed of the Western response, but one should never underestimate how ruthless great powers can be when they believe they are in dire straits. America and its allies, however, are doubling down, hoping to inflict a humiliating defeat on Mr Putin and to maybe even trigger his removal. They are increasing aid to Ukraine while using economic sanctions to inflict massive punishment on Russia, a step that Putin now sees as "akin to a declaration of war".

America and its allies may be able to prevent a Russian victory in Ukraine, but the country will be gravely damaged, if not dismembered. Moreover, there is a serious threat of escalation beyond Ukraine, not to mention the danger of nuclear war. If the West not only thwarts Moscow on Ukraine's battlefields, but also does serious, lasting damage to Russia's economy, it is in effect pushing a great power to the brink. Mr Putin might then turn to nuclear weapons.

At this point it is impossible to know the terms on which this conflict will be settled. But, if we do not understand its deep cause, we will be unable to end it before Ukraine is wrecked and nato ends up in a war with Russia.

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

I actually think this is a reasonable argument although incomplete in part and a little wrong in other parts.

It is incomplete in that it fails to point out that accepting the premise of the argument is to accept the concept of "spheres of influence", and that free, democratic countries ought be required to limit which other free countries they associate with, and how, based on the desires of a hegemon at the center of a "influence sphere." There is not actually a lot of virtue in the West allowing or agreeing to the subjugation of other democratic States into hegemonic spheres of influence. I do still think there are lessons to learn from this analysis--the West and democratic societies in general probably will never really just accept old Great Power spheres of influence precisely because they are incompatible with core Western ideals of liberal democracy.

You can have no true democracy if supposedly free countries are required to live in vassalage to a nearby powerful autocracy. That being said, I actually agree that NATO behaved recklessly with things like the 2008 Bucharest Statement--the reality is we were never particularly close on an alliance-wide agreement to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. In fact we very likely never would have been--so to publicly state that as a goal is needlessly antagonistic toward Russia. We may reject the validity of Russia's sphere of influence, but in our foreign relations we shouldn't ignore the fact that the Russians believe in it and put a lot of importance in it, and since we weren't actually willing to bring those two countries into NATO anyway--and probably never were, it was arguably incredibly stupid to have a big public announcement that that was our "goal."

I think there were other ways to Westernize and build relationships with countries like Georgia and Ukraine short of NATO or EU membership. The EU could have built out closer trade relationships but without full membership, and the United States could have taken the lead in offering a bilateral promise that we did not at present have any designs on adding those two countries to NATO.

The other thing Mearsheimer's argument misses is that Putin actually does have "Greater Russia" ambitions, and it is simply inaccurate that he is only doing things as a reaction to NATO expansion. The reality is even had we followed my plan laid out above, we likely still would have had Russia meddling in Ukraine and Georgia, and would eventually have been pushed to a point where we felt we had to offer some form of defensive assistance like we eventually did--which Russia would then be able to use as evidence we were "arraying arms against them." While the U.S. and the West made missteps, the real driver of the crisis is and always has been Putin's revisionary views.

[Tamas]

Wtf who is this John Mearsheimer, his name keeps popping up about this crisis I remember some lecture of his reached me from someone in the early days of the war where he was explaining the same thing, how it is the West's fault because Russia does deserve to be given Eastern Europe because of reasons.

It's impressive that his handlers not only pay him but manage to make him appear influential, when clearly he is a moron.

[Tamas]

I think there were other ways to Westernize and build relationships with countries like Georgia and Ukraine short of NATO or EU membership

I disagree. I don't think a country like Georgia can expect to be let to remain neutral. Either it gravitates toward a power block or it gets drawn toward one. If you say to them no youbwont be nato/eu, the only logical option left for their leaders is to align with Russia because there is no protection from the consequences of not playing ba with Russia.

[grumbler]

Short Wesley Clark interview on DW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFXArMvzRjg&t=2s

Despite the anchor's unrelenting efforts to keep discussion on the level of basic platitudes we have been hearing for two weeks, Clark shares his opinion clearly but very professionally.

Clark is correct that NATO could conduct a Special Operation in the Ukraine without going to war with Russia (which is, after all, not going to war themselves, just conducting an illegal Special Operation).  It's against the law (max 15 years in prison) in Russia to call a Special Operation a war.

[grumbler]

Wtf who is this John Mearsheimer, his name keeps popping up about this crisis I remember some lecture of his reached me from someone in the early days of the war where he was explaining the same thing, how it is the West's fault because Russia does deserve to be given Eastern Europe because of reasons.

It's impressive that his handlers not only pay him but manage to make him appear influential, when clearly he is a moron.

Yes, and I dislike the Amero-centric view that this is all between the US and Russia, as though Europe were just a bunch of US satellites waiting to be told what to do.  John Mearsheimer needs to actually go outside the US and see that other nations are acting in their own interests, and that the relationship between Russia and the EU is just as important as the relationship between Russia and the US.

[Razgovory]

I mean we literally could. The issue is eventually one of those guys gets captured. If a Wagner Group member gets captured by a Western power, they have to apply the rule of law to him, can't torture him or use him for propaganda etc, he gets a lawyer and a lot of opportunities to deny deny deny. One of our guys gets captured and he's going to be talking on Russian State TV about the evil American imperialists just like Gary Powers was in the 60s after the Soviets shot his U2 down.

This wouldn't be secret.  Everyone will know these are American soldiers who volunteered for a special "Private military company" loaned to Ukrainian government.  There is a risk of POWs but that isn't any different than the risk soldiers take in any combat deployment.

This is our Spanish Civil War moment.  We should act like it.

[DGuller]

I'm curious, how did Germany justify sending their Panzer 1 divisions to Spain?  Did a bunch of tankers just volunteer, and Germany lend-leased a bunch of Panzer 1 tanks, and Spain decide to pair up the tankers with the tanks?

[grumbler]

I'm curious, how did Germany justify sending their Panzer 1 divisions to Spain?  Did a bunch of tankers just volunteer, and Germany lend-leased a bunch of Panzer 1 tanks, and Spain decide to pair up the tankers with the tanks?

The Germans never sent any tanks (or any men, or equipment, or military aid) to Spain.  They said so repeatedly. "We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lie." Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[Sophie Scholl]

Tucker Carlson really maxing out talking out of both sides of his mouth. I wonder what stage of agreement with Russian concepts for US importation/useful idiot/paid parrot he's on to now. I sometimes hope there is a Hell so that people like him can end up there. 

Tucker: "Good for them for fighting back and shame on Russia for invading them"
Seconds later: "Is Ukraine really a sovereign country? That's not an attack on Ukraine, it's an attack on the Democratic Party."
Also: "Is Ukraine a sovereign country or a corrupt client state of the US ruling class?"

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1502461588242313216

[celedhring]

I'm curious, how did Germany justify sending their Panzer 1 divisions to Spain?  Did a bunch of tankers just volunteer, and Germany lend-leased a bunch of Panzer 1 tanks, and Spain decide to pair up the tankers with the tanks?

Well, the tanks were mostly piloted by Spaniards, Germany actually put relatively few boots on the ground, it was mostly a lot of supplies/materiel, advisors, logistics support (they airlifted Franco's army over from Morocco, which was a decisive action in the early stages of the war), and a few crack units as part of the Condor Legion.

Italy, on the other hand, just didn't give a fuck about deniability. Bombing runs flown from Milano, four divisions of "volunteers"...

In general, everybody knew that Germany and Italy were blatantly breaking the non-intervention agreement (so were the Soviets, but their support was way smaller), but UK/France didn't want for this to spill over into a new World War.

The most hilarious part of the agreement is that every power was given a part of the Spanish coast to patrol, so arms couldn't be delivered - and this included Germany and Italy. So you'd have the thief also being the policeman.

Incidentally it's particularly rich to see Podemos - who always have exploited the Republican Spain mythology - to oppose sending arms to Ukraine.

[Zanza]

The EU could have built out closer trade relationships but without full membership,

The 2014 events with "Euromaidan" and the fall of the Russia-friendly government followed by the first Russian invasion was triggered by the EU-Ukraine association agreement. This clearly set Ukraine on a course for integration into the EU economic sphere, moving it away from the Russian economic sphere. So what you propose was tried. And caused the first invasion.