Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[KRonn]

I think that - as much as the Economist piece - gives a sense of his approach, I'm just not sure where nukes fit in because I think the world is very different from the run up to WW1.

I remember he's often stated that Ukraine should have kept a credible nuclear deterrence after becoming independent. Otherwise I mostly agree with him, a quibble here and there. Ukraine was and is a very corrupt country, run in many ways like Russia, with it's own oligarch class. Cynically used by the US and others to the point that the wastrel offspring of the US elite could be parked in random highly paid bullshit jobs.

Of course we should support them as we are doing now but I have to admit I'm very uneasy about funding, say, a massive insurgency on Ukrainian soil to bleed Russia after they've carved up the country. Smacks to me of us fighting down to the last Ukrainian.

Yeah, US politicians and family members ran rackets in Ukraine, getting wealthy for favors in return. I'm sure other nation's politicians did similar. It really angers me when I hear of the deals US elites/pols were doing, making things worse and now acting all high and mighty. Zelensky was elected to start reigning that in, easier said than done.

As for funding an insurgency, I hope it doesn't come to that and some kind of peace agreement can be made. A long term insurgency seems it would be a horror show of death and destruction for Ukraine and the people even if they emerge victorious. Like you said, "fighting down to the last Ukrainian". And I also don't hate the Russian people to want to see them lose many soldiers in the process.

It did seem Ukraine made a good offer about a week ago. They offered to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, promise no entry into NATO, and allow the eastern provinces autonomy. I think that was pretty much the deal, if so it seems reasonable.

[Grey Fox]

Their are twitter rumors that UA broke the siege of Marioupol.

[Admiral Yi]

Who judges whether something's an existential threat or not? What matters is whether they think it is or not - same for Greece and Turkey. An existential threat - like any other idea - doesn't matter because it's true or not but because it's believed.

Anyone with a brain can judge whether something is an existential threat or not.  And when something is transparently *not* an existential threat it undercuts their credibility in claiming that it is. 

Now Russia can make any number of threats and draw any number of red lines, but whether we respect these red lines or not is just the normal course of adversarial geopolitics.

Ukrainian membership in NATO should be debated in terms of normal costs and benefits, and we shouldn't grant Russia veto power over it just because they've claimed it would present an existential threat.

[Sheilbh]

Anyone with a brain can judge whether something is an existential threat or not.  And when something is transparently *not* an existential threat it undercuts their credibility in claiming that it is. 

Maybe - but it doesn't necessarily change the fact that they think it is and that will shape their behaviour. There's lots of things in normal politics as well as foreign policy that people treat as existential that I think is patently ridiculous, but it's still a driving force for them.

Now Russia can make any number of threats and draw any number of red lines, but whether we respect these red lines or not is just the normal course of adversarial geopolitics.

Yeah - I'm not sure what the whether we respect them point is. I don't think that's in issue. What I mean is similar to your credibility point - if you state your red lines/existential issues and your behaviour doesn't match then people will doubt the credibility of those red lines/existential issues.

So the position of Ukraine can become existential just by saying it so often that you have to do something about it or everyone knows you're bullshitting. Article 5 works in a similar-ish way - and why I'd back a very strong response to even the slightest hint of an attack on a NATO ally. Practically speaking - let's say there's a small little green men operation in Lithuania that they're actually dealing with pretty well. That's not an existential issue for anyone, but NATO would need to respond forcefully to back up its position that Article 5 is an absolute red line. Otherwise it becomes like Obama's red line in Syria adversaries start testing it and because it got a little blurry before you know it we're in Dr Strangelove by accident.

Ukrainian membership in NATO should be debated in terms of normal costs and benefits, and we shouldn't grant Russia veto power over it just because they've claimed it would present an existential threat.

Of course - that goes without saying.

[Razgovory]

I think that - as much as the Economist piece - gives a sense of his approach, I'm just not sure where nukes fit in because I think the world is very different from the run up to WW1.

I remember he's often stated that Ukraine should have kept a credible nuclear deterrence after becoming independent. Otherwise I mostly agree with him, a quibble here and there. Ukraine was and is a very corrupt country, run in many ways like Russia, with it's own oligarch class. Cynically used by the US and others to the point that the wastrel offspring of the US elite could be parked in random highly paid bullshit jobs.

Of course we should support them as we are doing now but I have to admit I'm very uneasy about funding, say, a massive insurgency on Ukrainian soil to bleed Russia after they've carved up the country. Smacks to me of us fighting down to the last Ukrainian.

Thanks Tucker.

[Admiral Yi]

Shelf, I get your point. 

I guess my main point doesn't have to do with the credibility of the threat, or the degree to which the Russians have internalized the idea of an existential threat, but rather the moral component. 

An existential threat is something we as moral humans are bound to respect.  If NATO membership did in fact pose a threat to the continued existence of the Russian people we should in fact hold back from doing so unless the gain was overwhelming. 

But since it doesn't pose that threat we shouldn't apply that brake.

[mongers]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60708350

Ukraine: What are chemical weapons and could Russia use them?

Russia called a special emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday to discuss its claims Ukraine plans to develop biological weapons. This has been dismissed by Ukraine and the US as a "false flag" - a claim intended to justify Russia's possible use itself of a chemical weapon against cities in Ukraine.

Ukraine does have laboratories, legitimately, where the government says scientists have worked on protecting the population from diseases like Covid. Given that Ukraine is now in a state of war, the World Health Organization (WHO) has asked Ukraine to destroy any dangerous pathogens in its laboratories.

So what exactly are chemical weapons and how do they differ from bio-weapons?
.....
Finally, in this grim roll call of non-conventional weapons, there is the "dirty bomb" - a normal explosive that is surrounded by radioactive elements. It is known as an RDD - a radiological dispersal device. It could be a conventional explosive carrying a radioactive isotope such as Cesium 60 or Strontium 90.

It wouldn't necessarily kill any more people than a normal bomb, initially at least. But it could render a huge area - potentially the size of an entire London borough - uninhabitable for weeks, until it had been fully decontaminated.

A dirty bomb is almost like a psychological weapon, designed to cause panic among a population and undermine the morale of a society. We haven't seen it used much in war. This is partly because it is both dangerous and difficult to handle, exposing the user to personal risk.

[Sheilbh]

I guess my main point doesn't have to do with the credibility of the threat, or the degree to which the Russians have internalized the idea of an existential threat, but rather the moral component. 

An existential threat is something we as moral humans are bound to respect.  If NATO membership did in fact pose a threat to the continued existence of the Russian people we should in fact hold back from doing so unless the gain was overwhelming. 

But since it doesn't pose that threat we shouldn't apply that brake.

Oh interesting - I don't think of it in moral terms. I think it's about credibility - whether their red lines are real and if not what are the real ones, and opportunity - what you can get away with. The brake for me relates to risk (and cost).

That's separate from morality to me and doesn't really come into it - I suppose I think it is morally right to provide support to Uraine and to sanction Russia up to the point that it risks escalating and either getting out of control or committing us to a conflict we don't actually want to be directly involved in. But I also think that's in our interests and I'm not sure how well I could disentangle the two.

[CountDeMoney]

What? You're not really buying into this bullshit are you?

[mongers]

What? You're not really buying into this bullshit are you?

Nope, I think even I would have heard of a dirty bomb attack.

What's the nearest the world gets to that, those instances were someone steal or takes home some scrapped radio therapy devices, like that medical cobalt source in Brazil a couple of decades ago?

[PDH]

Nope, I think even I would have heard of a dirty bomb attack.

What's the nearest the world gets to that, those instances were someone steal or takes home some scrapped radio therapy devices, like that medical cobalt source in Brazil a couple of decades ago?

Read up on the "Nuclear Boyscout" (or Radioactive Boyscout) for fun.

[grumbler]

Maybe - but it doesn't necessarily change the fact that they think it is and that will shape their behaviour. There's lots of things in normal politics as well as foreign policy that people treat as existential that I think is patently ridiculous, but it's still a driving force for them.

This is true, but meaningless.  One can account for the existence of delusions of existential threats (such as, for instance, Donald Trump's insistence that he won the 2020 election) but cannot allow oneself to be swayed by them.  Neither Georgia nor Ukraine, for instance, were, in fact, granted NATO or EU membership after the "Maiden Revolution" of 2014, because NATO and EU leaders thought that the costs of granting such membership (primarily the reaction of the Russians) was worth the benefits of such membership.

The whole idea that the West (or the US alone, in the case of myopic US analysts) is to blame for a Russian temper tantrum isn't even worth consideration.  Neither the US nor the EU has any control whatsoever over the baby in the Kremlin (or wherever his Big Table Bunker is).

[jimmy olsen]

I think some chemical weapon usage is likely

https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1502704150307647496

So why would Russia use WMDs (probably chemical, in this case)?

In a way, Putin resorting to chemical weapons would be an admission that the Russian Armed Forces is no longer capable of doing 'modern system' warfare...as we've all seen over the past 2 weeks.

We've actually discussed this at some length on the blog back in 2020: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/

The upshot is that 'modern system' (term via S. Biddle, Military Power (2004)) armies want to move quickly, disorient the enemy, maintain high tempo.  2/

Chemical weapons offer basically nothing to that.  Other expensive modern-system armies can defend against them fairly easily and against less sophisticated armies, they gum up the battlefield and slow things down which isn't what your modern system army wants.  3/

Consequently, modern-system armies abandoned chemical weapons not because they were morally bad or horrible but because they were less effective than high explosives (delivered with ever increasing precision).  4/

But of course the Russian Armed Forces have spent the last two weeks demonstrating to the whole world that they aren't actually capable of *doing* the modern system.  Combined arms failures, targeting failures with PGMs, logistics failures, all of it.  5/

Russia's military is increasingly showing itself - whatever its expensive systems - to be what I call a 'static system' military.  And in the static system - which tries to win through attrition because it can't do maneuver - unfortunately, chemical weapons can make sense.  6/

In particular, while  it is fairly easy and cheap for wealthy countries to protect their soldiers against chemical weapons, civilians (and the soldiers of poorer countries) often remain very vulnerable  to them, lacking proper protective (NBC) equipment.  7/

Thus, as Russia settles down to a series of urban sieges (several that seem to me to be unlikely to succeed without substantial changes in battlefield conditions), incapable of taking cities 'by storm' the likelihood of WMD use rises.  8/

And that's bad!

The USA/NATO are already signalling that the use of chemical weapons would be an unacceptable escalation. I think it is one scenario where you might actually get some direct NATO intervention (e.g. NFZ/air campaign, which = war). https://cnn.com/2022/03/11/politics/joe-biden-warning-chemical-weapons/index.html  9/

What I'd hope is Putin realizes the last time NATO said he'd pay "a severe price" and he tried to call bluff, NATO responded by cratering his entire economy and providing Ukraine with a free-flowing river of arms with which they are mauling his army.

They aren't kidding!  10/

I'd *hope* that would establish credibility.

I *fear* that Putin will reason from the experience in Syria: a lot of tough talk about chemical weapons, but in the end no one did anything meaningful.  11/

The problem with that logic is pretty obvious: people with power care a lot more about Ukraine than about Syria.  I know it's not fair, it's not just, but it is true.

Consequently, the response to chemical use in Ukraine would be much stronger, I suspect.  12/

All of that said, Putin has backed himself into a corner, having staked all on a foolish war, conducted foolishly, for evil and foolish purposes.

Desperate leaders often seek bigger and bigger gambles to try to win back the pot.  13/

Consequently, while two weeks ago I'd say the chance of seeing WMDs used in this conflict was extremely low, now I am not so sure - Putin's foolishness has created the use-case for chemical weapons.

His next foolish step may create the conditions for a wider European war. end/

[Syt]

Apparently the Russians hit a training area near Lviv, about 15km from the Polish border. This a day after the Russian foreign mninistry said they would consider Western weapons shipments legitimate targets once inside Ukraine, so maybe a message? "We can hit you as soon as you cross the border."

[Tamas]

Apparently the Russians hit a training area near Lviv, about 15km from the Polish border. This a day after the Russian foreign mninistry said they would consider Western weapons shipments legitimate targets once inside Ukraine, so maybe a message? "We can hit you as soon as you cross the border."

Yeah I think it continues to be clear -or at least it continues to be bluffed as clear- that Russia would rather have WW3 than not to subjugate Ukraine. I guess the big question if this is despite of, or rather because of, NATO making it crystal clear they would rather let Ukraine fall than start WW3.