Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Tamas]

China's foreign ministry has reacted angrily to reports of US government claims that Russia had asked China's government for military equipment, Helen Davidson writes.

The reports in multiple US outlets cited US officials saying Moscow had been seeking weapons from Beijing for some time.

At the regular press briefing in Beijing on Monday afternoon, China's foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said the US was spreading "malicious disinformation", with "sinister intentions", according to translations by journalists in the room.

Zhao said:

China's position on the Ukraine issue is consistent and clear, and China has been playing a constructive role in promoting peace talks.

It is imperative that all parties exercise restraint and cool down tensions, not add fuel to the fire.

The comments came just hours before a meeting in Rome began between US national security advisor Jake Sullivan and China's most senior foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, where Sullivan was expected to urge Yang not to supply arms to Moscow.

Zhao earlier said the meeting was to "implement the important consensus reached in the video meeting between the heads of state of China and the United States in November last year".

This will be a big diplomatic challenge for the US government I think. I don't think China is committed on the Russian side but they can definitely be pushed there. They shouldn't be kept from shackling themselves to a corpse at all cost, but it would be nice if they could be kept from keeping Putin's regime on life support.

[grumbler]

I think you might need to check your history (of course that would mean acknowledging you may have typed something incorrect, which I would wager I have a better chance of witnessing the heat death of the universe than witnessing that.) NATO made a non-binding statement that Ukraine and Georgia were going to join NATO, this did not constitute really an "invitation", and also specifically did not begin the real accession process (a major defect in how it was operated), and is thus highly questionable as a decision.

The NATO "Bucharest Summit Declaration
Issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest on 3 April 2008" included, in paragraph 23

NATO welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO.  We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.  Both nations have made valuable contributions to Alliance operations.  We welcome the democratic reforms in Ukraine and Georgia and look forward to free and fair parliamentary elections in Georgia in May.  MAP is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their direct way to membership.  Today we make clear that we support these countries' applications for MAP. 

Official Text

You can claim that "this did not constitute really an "invitation"" but I don't think that you can convince anyone.

[Berkut]

The Kremlin doesn't actually believe that a NATO Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia. That's just one of their standard lies.

It may be an existential threat to Putin's regime (which in their eyes is the same as an existential threat to Russia - "no Russia without Putin"), if Russians start seeing their Ukrainian brothers living way better as part of NATO and EU.

That may very well be true, but it is still not an existential threat to Russia, nor do the Russians actually believe it is an existential threat to Russia.

[The Minsky Moment]

There are lots of problems with Mearshimer's 2014 argument but the most serious problem is using moralistic language about fault and responsibility as the conclusion of an argument arising from a hard realist framework.  That exposes his argument as being highly manipulative at best,

[OttoVonBismarck]

My core point here is the Bucharest statement was meaningless drivel. If NATO was not interested in formalizing a MAP, it was likely needlessly stupid to make the statement as it was.

In hindsight this started the countdown to the Crimean annexation in 2014 and the current war.

What started the 2014 mess was the uprising getting rid of their pro-Russian proto-autocrat, NOT a meaningless 2008 declaration. I very much doubt this reckless zeal from Putin for restoring the Russian Empire, is based only, or even just primarily, on a single 2008 statement.

FWIW I have not seen anyone, myself or Mearsheimer, claim this all started solely because of the 2008 Bucharest declaration. However considering Putin literally responded to the declaration by intimating that if Ukraine wanted to join NATO it would be doing so without "Crimea and the eastern provinces", I think it was certainly part of the pathway to the troubles we've had.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think the nature of China's conflict with the West is actually quite a bit different from Putin's. I could be mistaken, but I don't really think Xi or Chinese nationalists more broadly have any grand territorial desires. There are some islands in the South China sea, there's Taiwan, and some disputed land along the border with India. Further to some degree other than Taiwan, which is special, I think the Chinese leadership first and foremost value these disputes as a way to rally nationalist fervor. I don't think they have any serious territorial ambitions beyond this [yes, I am aware China asserts territorial claims against 20 countries--including amusingly against Russia as China claims Vladivostok is part of China--but I do not believe the Chinese take these claims seriously]. Taiwan is a special case because I think there are such deeply emotional attachments to it and the history of the founding of the People's Republic, and the fact it was/is the last outpost of the preceding Republic of China that I think even China's leaders believe their messaging on Taiwan. It shouldn't be that important to them, but it is.

I think this actually means there could be overlapping areas of interest between China, its neighbors, and the United States. The West/Chinese relationship doesn't have to be intrinsically antagonistic. However it can be, and it appears the degree to which it can be is going to be dependent on what specific person/faction is controlling China. Xi favors a model where he dreams of somehow bullying the United States out of the region and then China can sort of throw its weight around against countries like Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. I don't believe it has any desire to invade or conquer those countries, but it would love to see those countries more or less be economically and politically subservient to China.

Prior to Xi, with Hu and Jiang, it seemed that the viewpoint of China was more that it didn't want those areas to be bases of an anti-Chinese military ring maintained by the United States, but that China was not looking for anything more than strong economic ties with those countries.

I'll also note that other Chinese initiatives are often exaggerated by the press. For example the infamous Belt and Road initiative is funny because Japan has a similar initiative that gets almost no press, that has actually spent/lent more money than the Belt & Road initiative has. Another thing about that initiative is like many infrastructure projects in developing countries, lots of them don't go as planned and don't convert to the sort of easy influence China and many China watchers assume it does--there's a lot of physical infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa that dates to the British Empire--how much influence did all those British made roads, ports, government buildings etc buy the British? Not none, but probably not the return on investment many people assume it will be. Some of the advantages China has been presumed to accrue through belt and road: greater international use of the yuan, political influence, etc has not materialized. Back in 2013 it was projected the yuan would overtake the yen as the third currency in the ranking of foreign currency reserves, which has not materialized--most recent data the Yen was still firmly third and the yuan fifth. The Asian Development Bank, the vehicle for U.S./Japanese financing in the region and the entity the Chinese dominated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, has fairly consistently actually loaned out more money for infrastructure development.

I think China's big challenge to the West is largely in various institutions--China wants to weaken U.S. dominated international institutions and supplant them with Chinese dominated ones, but even there most of their goal appears to be so they can operate in a relatively limited area of the globe in ways where they won't feel confined by U.S. checks on them. Probably the big difference between China and Russia is China is 1/6th of the world's population--China has typically been, and is probably naturally, one of the world's pre-eminent powers. China was coming off a real bad century of lack of development in the early 20th century, and was then riven by a few decades of external and internal wars, then went through a rough transition into a more modern economy. For those reasons China has been far behind the curve, but it is unrealistic to really expect they always remain there. China can attain much of its great power designs simply by shrewdly managing its economy and people, promoting the development of yet more educated Chinese, and native Chinese technological development.

Russia has basically abandoned any such internal improvement focus and is purely a petro/resource economy, ran by a petty dictator who thinks the way dictators of the 20th century did. Russia is probably a more directly aggressive threat for this reason, China I just see little evidence is stupid enough for example to think that it would ever benefit from something like say, an invasion of Vietnam or South Korea. It says a lot about how much Putin's thinking is divorced from the reality of what makes countries strong that he's chosen this strategically wasteful war in Ukraine.

[The Minsky Moment]

Realism as a theory of international relations has pretensions to hard scientific verity, of taking as its core basis a hard-headed description of the way the world actually is. Of course, in reality it is just an academic theory like any other using lots of words trying to capture aspects of a complex social reality of human interaction.  Every assumption of realism is debatable: e.g. states are not really highly coherent unitary actors; international relations are not really inherently and purely anarchic; state relationships are driven by more than power relationships. Present day Europe (west of the Dneiper) is full of proud states whose people still jealously guard the attributes of sovereignty and cultural distinction - states that are as coherent and unitary as any in the world - and yet it is glaringly obvious that the post-1945 history of Europe is not one of an anarchic system of hard competition based on power relationships.

Realist theory has usefulness in analyzing and describing Russian foreign policy in the Putin era not because it captures some inherent and necessary truth about the nature of Russia and the world, but because as an intellectual framework it is closely in accord with the way in which Russia's dictator thinks about the world.  Of course, other world actors should take account of this fact, and guide themselves accordingly - in this limited sense, Mearshimer and his acolytes have a point.  But it is obscene to suggest that a failure by the "West" to internalize Putin's own worldview absolves Putin for responsibility for his behavior and shifts the guilt for his crimes on others.

There is also a flip side to Mearshimer's argument.  Just as one can argue that Europe failed to fully consider matters from Putin's subjective perspective, Putin did the same to Europe.  It is clear that Putin seriously underestimated the way in which his action would transform European perspectives about him, about Russia, about their own attitudes towards collective military security. The fact is that present day Europeans don't view the international system as an anarchic competition between power seeking states. They view the international system as rule based - and while those rules may be softer than domestic statutory law, they are real enough that flagrant infractions require punishment and ostracism.

[Syt]

From the BBC:

Elon Musk challenges Putin to a duel

In a bizarre turn of events, US tech billionaire Elon Musk appears to have challenged Russian president Vladimir Putin to a one-on-one fight, suggesting that the winner decide the fate of Ukraine.

Ukrainian politicians so far have welcomed the offer, which may have been made tongue-in-cheek. Kyiv's mayor Vitali Klitschko, himself a former boxer, replied with three strong arm emojis.

The Russian president is yet to respond. Musk has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine throughout the invasion.

Earlier this month one of the companies owned by the California-based tech entrepreneur, Starlink, supplied Ukraine with a number of satellite dishes intended to protect internet access in the country.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1503327421839417344

[Josephus]

Seeing several reports of the past few days of the Russians hitting Ukraine's arms industry - which makes me think that Russia isn't planning to keep the country anymore, but probably planning to have a second round in a few years' time.

They'll never get another chance, I think. This is it. After this, the West is going to arm Ukraine to the teeth.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Here is Francis Fukuyama's take on the war (he is the author of the famous "End of History" book):

https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/preparing-for-defeat/

I'm writing this from Skopje, North Macedonia, where I've been for the last week teaching one of our Leadership Academy for Development courses. Following the Ukraine war is no different here in terms of available information, except that I'm in an adjacent time zone, and the fact that there is more support for Putin in the Balkans than in other parts of Europe. A lot of the latter is due to Serbia, and Serbia's hosting of Sputnik.

I'll stick my neck out and make several prognostications:

• Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine. Russian planning was incompetent, based on a flawed assumption that Ukrainians were favorable to Russia and that their military would collapse immediately following an invasion. Russian soldiers were evidently carrying dress uniforms for their victory parade in Kyiv rather than extra ammo and rations. Putin at this point has committed the bulk of his entire military to this operation—there are no vast reserves of forces he can call up to add to the battle. Russian troops are stuck outside various Ukrainian cities where they face huge supply problems and constant Ukrainian attacks.
• The collapse of their position could be sudden and catastrophic, rather than happening slowly through a war of attrition. The army in the field will reach a point where it can neither be supplied nor withdrawn, and morale will vaporize. This is at least true in the north; the Russians are doing better in the south, but those positions would be hard to maintain if the north collapses.
• There is no diplomatic solution to the war possible prior to this happening. There is no conceivable compromise that would be acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine given the losses they have taken at this point.
• The United Nations Security Council has proven once again to be useless. The only helpful thing was the General Assembly vote, which helps to identify the world's bad or prevaricating actors.
  
• The Biden administration's decisions not to declare a no-fly zone or help transfer Polish MiGs were both good ones; they've kept their heads during a very emotional time. It is much better to have the Ukrainians defeat the Russians on their own, depriving Moscow of the excuse that NATO attacked them, as well as avoiding all the obvious escalatory possibilities. The Polish MiGs in particular would not add much to Ukrainian capabilities. Much more important is a continuing supply of Javelins, Stingers, TB2s, medical supplies, comms equipment, and intel sharing. I assume that Ukrainian forces are already being vectored by NATO intelligence operating from outside Ukraine.
• The cost that Ukraine is paying is enormous, of course. But the greatest damage is being done by rockets and artillery, which neither MiGs nor a no-fly zone can do much about. The only thing that will stop the slaughter is defeat of the Russian army on the ground.
• Putin will not survive the defeat of his army. He gets support because he is perceived to be a strongman; what does he have to offer once he demonstrates incompetence and is stripped of his coercive power?
• The invasion has already done huge damage to populists all over the world, who prior to the attack uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin. That includes Matteo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, and of course Donald Trump. The politics of the war has exposed their openly authoritarian leanings.
  The war to this point has been a good lesson for China. Like Russia, China has built up seemingly high-tech military forces in the past decade, but they have no combat experience. The miserable performance of the Russian air force would likely be replicated by the People's Liberation Army Air Force, which similarly has no experience managing complex air operations. We may hope that the Chinese leadership will not delude itself as to its own capabilities the way the Russians did when contemplating a future move against Taiwan.
• Hopefully Taiwan itself will wake up as to the need to prepare to fight as the Ukrainians have done, and restore conscription. Let's not be prematurely defeatist.
• Turkish drones will become bestsellers.
• A Russian defeat will make possible a "new birth of freedom," and get us out of our funk about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians.

Interestingly I do not quite share his views--he's a good bit more optimistic than me on a number of fronts--which shouldn't be surprising from the author of "The End of History" (although I will note, most people haven't actually read that book, and his views in the book are not nearly as blindly optimistic as they are typically portrayed by his critics.)

I will say nothing in his list are things I think cannot happen, but I'm skeptical on a few fronts. My main reason for assuming there won't be a Russian collapse is just that Russia is conscript fueled and still (I think, at least that is what we were told) has a lot of material to churn through and can keep making new equipment as well. They have a lot of manpower to replenish with conscripts on new forced contracts--remember their population of people who have undergone basic military training is fairly high since every Russian male is required to go through it prior to age 27. I also am skeptical of the claim that Ukraine wouldn't agree to anything short of a Russian capitulation, I think Zelensky is willing to give up territory (particularly the regions that have basically been ungoverned by Ukraine for 7+ years now anyway) to get peace and independent--Zelensky obviously won't compromise on letting a Russian puppet regime be installed.

Frankly while I think the most likely end state is "quagmire", I think that Ukraine has probably as much chance of a sudden collapse as Russia--which is why I think Zelensky will negotiate. Ukraine has fought bravely but we know very little of their real losses and how bad their logistics have gotten etc, it's not inconceivable their ability to resist collapse suddenly and dramatically.

[The Larch]

Oleg Deripaska's London mansion in Belgravia has been squatted.



"You occupy Ukraine, we occupy you" seems to be the protesters' motto. 

[grumbler]

[crazy canuck]

 

Brilliant!

[Admiral Yi]

I'm pleased that Trump appears to have done no permanent damage to the US's credibility.  Serious people do not seem to be questioning what the US has been saying.

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mBo1CUxoBk

Ukraine says they shot down 22 of 30 missiles launched at that base 12 miles from the Polish border.  That means Ukraine has some THAAD like system.