Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[alfred russel]

The problem with this analogy, and a lot of analogies, is Al Qaeda is a non-state actor.  They aren't even a kid in the playground at all.

To try and strain your analogy, AQ is like a kid standing outside the playground who wants to throw a rock at the biggest kid to cause the biggest kid to start fighting the other kids - all while hoping to cause enough chaos and confusion the outside kid can sneak into the playground.

The AQ kid succeeded in the first part of his plan - the kids in the playground did start fighting.  That the second part of their plan did not I don't think takes away from the success of the first part.

If the criteria of 9/11 as a successful outcome is limited to starting a fight, then it did succeed. However, I find that relatively meaningless because it is effectively defining success of a punch as getting someone to punch back.

It also set the terms of the fight on overwhelmingly negative terms for Al Qaeda. As many events have shown, the west was not unified, but after 9/11 the west did rally together, and indeed the muslim world also generally reacted with shock, outrage, and even some embarrassment about 9/11.

I understand that they were a non state actor, but they also were allowed to operate by the taliban. The lines blur in Afghanistan.

[Berkut]

ACtualy, using that analogy, I think the context is that the loser kids are also thinking "Hey, if we do nothing, then there is no chance we get to play, so even if starting the fight is not sure to succeed, at least trying is better then doing nothing."

Then in fact the sucker punch was a success. It started the process that you considered to give you the best chance of achieving your goal, and was superior to what you saw as the alternative (doing nothing).

However, you are missing something important - the ability of the cool kids to choose a response.

If there is a step 1A - Cool kids decide to fight back, or 1B - Cool kids decide to ignore the punch or laugh it off, then step 2 becomes much more of a risk, and if the cool kids choose 1B, then in fact Step 1 will have failed to achieve its goal.

But in our case, the cool kids decided to fight, which means the loser kids did in fact achieve what they set out to do. Not the final goal for sure, but the initial goal.

You are ascribing a defeatist mindset to Al Qaeda that is projecting onto them your knowledge that they are dumb and have no prospect of success. However, in their mindset, if they trust in Allah and dedicate themselves to jihad, I think they would tell you that ultimate success is assured. Or they would if they weren't already dead.

Of course, they thought it would work. And it did - it just didn't work out in their particular favor, because war is chaotic, and someone else ended up controlling the loser kids (and then eventually lost themseves, or at least, appear to be losing).

I am not at all ascribing to them a defeatist mindset, I am saying they determined that doing nothing (or continuing to do what they were doing) was a poorer choice then attacking the US. The goal of attacking the US was simply step 1 in a long plan that would presumably end in some long term goal. Hell, they probably did not even know what steps 8-46 were, only that step 1 was necessary for steps 2-7.

It all failed, but the failures were later. Step 1 worked very well.

[Berkut]

Al Qaeda was trying to foment a confrontation between the US and Saudi Arabia with 9/11, with the avowed purpose of getting US troops out of Saudi Arabia.  The short-term goal was having the US invade a Muslim country, sparking a widespread revolt by Muslims against the US (and the West).  Longer-term the hope was that the instability caused by such a conflict would crash the world economy which would allow AQ to lead the Muslims to total victory and a global Islamic Caliphate.

9/11 succeeded in its immediate goals but the longer-term consequences were not what AQ hoped.

That is my own analysis. From their perspective, they were hoping for two things that didn't happen:

1. The Islamic radicals would coalesce around AQ leadership, and 
2. Those jihadists would then be able to do well enough to secure a caliphate (for AQ, this was to be in Saudi Arabia).

#1 sort of worked for a while, but eventually fell apart, and ISIS became the much more successful incarnation of jihadism.

#2 kind of worked for a while as well, and ISIS actually managed to kind of form a "state", but eventually was mostly destroyed.

What frustrates me is that even the immediate goal relied on the West responding in a way that the West did not have to respond, but we did anyway.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Grumbler largely has the right of it. Al-Qaeda has broad goals for its movement going back to 1988 that have not succeeded, 9/11 represents a short term limited success towards those goals, but it did not hold up for a number of reasons. One of the main failings for AQ post-9/11 is in many instances it led to closer security cooperation between the West and many of the Muslim countries of the Middle East. This is because most of the regimes in the Middle East view Islamists as one of, if not the major, potential threat to their rule.

AQ's hope was the Muslim body public would rise up against the Western collaborator regimes, but in most countries AQ and its spin-off ISIS were seen very negatively by the Muslim public since they were the ones paying the price for their behaviors.

[grumbler]

The playground analogy from OBL's standpoint would be that all the kids from the poor neighborhoods are unhappy because the rich kids won't let them play on the nice basketball court and instead force them to play on the old dirt one.  The poor kids are squabbling amongst themselves, so that, even if they outnumber the rich kids, the rich kids are still strong enough to hog the good court.  Young Osama decides that he is not going to accept the status quo, and so he throws a rock and hits the richest and most obnoxious of the big kids in the back of the head.  He hopes that this will cause a fight between the rich and poor kids, which he thinks the poor kids will win and so get to use the nice court.

Obnoxious Rich Kid comes over to the poor kids and demands "who threw that?"  The poor kids won't say, and so the ORK starts punching the one he most suspects.  A few of the poor kids fight back, but most of them just want to play soccer.

Young Osama got the fight started, but the ORK didn't incite the others enough.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Arab Spring was likely a bigger opportunity for AQ, but it was not well positioned to take advantage of it due to being worn down by 10 years of Western military and intelligence attacks--which is why ISIS was able to step in to that void. But even the Arab Spring did not go in the direction OBL would have wanted, the largely secular autocrats proved more resilient than OBL probably thought they would be, and the popular movements where they had limited success, didn't really embrace the type of fundamentalist Salafist extremism OBL hoped for.

[alfred russel]

Someone upthread compared the attack to the "success" of the Japanese taking Singapore: but the Japanese taking Singapore provided them access to resources and territory, deprived them from the enemy, and neutralized a bunch of enemy combatants. It also didn't really spark a unified reaction, the way say 9/11 or Pearl Harbor did. 9/11 didn't in any meaningful way gain anything for Al Qaeda, and didn't in any meaningful way wound the west. They didn't even get the benefit of sinking or damaging a bunch of old useless battleships like the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor.

To OvB's point above, had they persisted as a more effective force they may have had better opportunities down the road. Even Iraq hasn't gone their way.

[Berkut]

I used Singappore instead of Pearl Harbor simply because there is a legitimate argument to be made that even as a tactical event, PH was a failure. I wanted to avoid that argument, and instead chose one where there is no real debate as to whether or not the operation was successful. If you agree that PH was a clear success, then my argument works just as well with that as an example.

Pointing out that 9/11 did not have the same kind of tangible accomplishments as a military operation misses the point. It is a terrorist attack, not a military operation. It was not designed to sink any ships, seize and territory, or kill enemy combatants. If that is the measure for its success, then again, you are just defining success away. You cannot "meaningfully wound" the West if you define wounding as those things only.

I think they most definitely wounded the West. The forced the West to act in a manner it did not wish to, and damaged our sense of security, and our willingness to tolerate freedom rather then embracing the security state. I believe that the West, generally, is weaker now then they were before 9/11 because of how we responded to that attack. It is subjective of course, but terrorism is an attack on an idea, not a ship or even persons. That attack worked, and we reacted in precisely the manner the attackers hopes we would react, or in this case, over-react.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Eh, I disagree w/the claim we reacted precisely how they hoped we would react. I don't think the jihadists care at all about U.S. hardening the commercial flight sector or things like the Patriot act--if anything the Western security state makes the jihadist's job harder. They were not just hoping it would lead to American war in the Middle East, they were hoping it would lead to war between American and the Middle Eastern regimes, and that AQ would be able to become a rallying point of Islamic opposition.

Instead it first resulted in an attack on Afghanistan--which was never remotely an AQ goal, in fact nothing about our invasion of Afghanistan was good for AQ. Then it resulted in an invasion of Iraq, which in theory could have advanced AQ goals because it did see us topple a secular autocrat and opened a void for an Islamist insurgency, but AQ was not able to capitalize.

AQ's goal was never to see America randomly attack Muslim countries, it was to unite the Muslim world in a military opposition to the West, and for that unification to involve a toppling of secular Muslim autocrats in favor of a sort of revived Caliphate.

[Berkut]

I think there is more subjectivity to this though. Islamic jihadists want more then just the US in a war with someone in the Middle East. There is a war of ideas happening as well, and one of the important ideas in the secular liberal west is that the liberal, free order has value and meaning.

The embrace of the security state to the inevitable detriment of the liberal state is one that aligns with one of the core ideas of any ideology in opposition to the liberal West. That all this "freedom" and "liberty" is fake bullshit. There is no reason to fear Islamic authoritarianism because in reality, the alternative is authoritarian as well, they just hide it better begin McDonalds and porn videos. (Same thing with Russian despotism, or Chinese authoritarianism or any other non-liberal ideology for that matter).

This circles neatly back around to Russia and Putin and why he hates the West as well. 

They really do hate us for our freedom, as trite as that sounds. An attack that results in us *voluntarily* removing our own freedoms, and engaging in wars were we inevitably stomp all over other peoples freedom is exactly what they want. And we gave it to them.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think there is more subjectivity to this though. Islamic jihadists want more then just the US in a war with someone in the Middle East. There is a war of ideas happening as well, and one of the important ideas in the secular liberal west is that the liberal, free order has value and meaning.

The embrace of the security state to the inevitable detriment of the liberal state is one that aligns with one of the core ideas of any ideology in opposition to the liberal West. That all this "freedom" and "liberty" is fake bullshit.

I don't buy into this, I think this is a very Americanized propaganda view. Islamic Jihadists care about traditional Islamic values. They do not "hate freedom", they hate Western secular values. They do not view it as a valid form of "freedom" for a woman to work outside the home and walk around in a bikini. However, no one views themselves as the "bad guys" in their own narrative, and Islamic Jihadists don't promote the idea that "freedom is fake and bad." Instead they say that Western values represent corruption and moral decay. They work from an entirely different set of operating principles, one that does not come from the englightenment and that does not contain elements of secular humanism or individualism. Islamic Jihadists genuinely don't care about the moral decay of the West, they care about it when they perceive that it is "infecting" Muslims.

Maybe a better way of thinking about it--there is not a global agreement on the form of freedom that is "good." In almost every country I can imagine, there is widespread belief you should not be terrorized or victimized by government. But there is a lot of difference of opinion outside of that. For example imagine a country that allowed for the purchase of child prostitutes as young as age 8 years old. That country would view that as a freedom and a good thing. We would view it with disgust, outrage, and extreme revulsion because we would say that is an abomination. Well, hard as it can be to accept, there are things we take for granted in the West that are seen that way by peoples who were not raised with Western values.

There is no reason to fear Islamic authoritarianism because in reality, the alternative is authoritarian as well, they just hide it better begin McDonalds and porn videos. (Same thing with Russian despotism, or Chinese authoritarianism or any other non-liberal ideology for that matter).

I think this is all wrong, also. The Chinese are pretty big on actually explaining the superiority (in their minds) of their ideology. They paint democracy as a system where the rich and powerful can corrupt the system to dominate the working class--and to be frank, there are incredibly true elements to that.

There is a big divide between Western enlightenment ideals and the ideals much of the rest of the world holds. Western enlightenment ideals view a specific brand of personal, individual liberties as being foundationally important for a free society. Countries like China or Islamic autocracies do not talk the way you're talking, instead they point out that Western style democracy has many flaws--and that a traditional form of government that protects the health and welfare of its people is superior to one in which dangerous factions and corrupt individuals can attempt to seize power through democracy.

There is even some core criticisms of our democratic systems, that frankly, cannot just be easily laughed away as "they hate our freedoms." The reality is in representative governments, we do not make laws and we do not run things. Elected officials do, and in basically all major representative democracies, elected officials overwhelmingly are peopled by those of the elite classes of society. Most major Western democracies have faced serious crises due to elected officials being corrupted, and due to dangerous factions capable of carrying harmful passions into public office. None of this is to say I disagree with the old aphorism--"Democracy is the worst form of government, other than all the other forms we have tried." Democracy has serious problems, and for many societies where people are generally actually fairly happy about how things are right now, it is easy to make a compelling argument that changing to democracy is dangerous and scary. Most Chinese people are very happy with their lives. Most Russian people were as well until relatively recently. In the Middle East many people in some of the worst countries are not particularly happy, but jihadism attempts to explain much of their unhappiness by blaming it on Western corruption, and promises that if you embrace jihadism your life will have meaning and you can restore traditional Islamic values and society will be good again.

There is very little evidence in my mind that people are simply selling the idea that freedom is bad, so if we can get Americans to reduce their freedoms that is...good?

[crazy canuck]

I think there is more subjectivity to this though. Islamic jihadists want more then just the US in a war with someone in the Middle East. There is a war of ideas happening as well, and one of the important ideas in the secular liberal west is that the liberal, free order has value and meaning.

The embrace of the security state to the inevitable detriment of the liberal state is one that aligns with one of the core ideas of any ideology in opposition to the liberal West. That all this "freedom" and "liberty" is fake bullshit. There is no reason to fear Islamic authoritarianism because in reality, the alternative is authoritarian as well, they just hide it better begin McDonalds and porn videos. (Same thing with Russian despotism, or Chinese authoritarianism or any other non-liberal ideology for that matter).

This circles neatly back around to Russia and Putin and why he hates the West as well.

They really do hate us for our freedom, as trite as that sounds. An attack that results in us *voluntarily* removing our own freedoms, and engaging in wars were we inevitably stomp all over other peoples freedom is exactly what they want. And we gave it to them.

I agree that there is a war of ideas going on.  But it is a battle between Islamic sects.  It is not a battle with the West.  As Otto pointed out, the West is not part of that discussion.  It is the evil (in AR's analogy -  the school yard bully. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Not to detract from the long side bar, but ISW had a pretty interesting analysis of the overall strategic situation for Ukraine which I found pretty compelling:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-16

My take away is Ukraine really cannot afford to make peace without at bare minimum recovering the territory marked out in this photo:

https://i.imgur.com/80x004w.jpg

Some of it is fairly intuitive if you understand the implications of modern artillery, but it is probably good to understand that anything less than this and there is not really any good reason for Ukraine to look for peace--even if it means years of war.

[alfred russel]

I think there is more subjectivity to this though. Islamic jihadists want more then just the US in a war with someone in the Middle East. There is a war of ideas happening as well, and one of the important ideas in the secular liberal west is that the liberal, free order has value and meaning.

The embrace of the security state to the inevitable detriment of the liberal state is one that aligns with one of the core ideas of any ideology in opposition to the liberal West. That all this "freedom" and "liberty" is fake bullshit. There is no reason to fear Islamic authoritarianism because in reality, the alternative is authoritarian as well, they just hide it better begin McDonalds and porn videos. (Same thing with Russian despotism, or Chinese authoritarianism or any other non-liberal ideology for that matter).

This circles neatly back around to Russia and Putin and why he hates the West as well.

They really do hate us for our freedom, as trite as that sounds. An attack that results in us *voluntarily* removing our own freedoms, and engaging in wars were we inevitably stomp all over other peoples freedom is exactly what they want. And we gave it to them.

As stupid as I think airport security is and as happy as it makes me to say that saying yes to stupid security lines is letting Al Qaeda win, I don't think they give a shit about our freedoms or even really our continued existence. The ultimate goal was in the Islamic world. They wanted to provoke a west vs. islam conflict and they never got it. They got a west vs. the taliban conflict, and arguably a west vs. saddam hussein conflict. But 9/11 ultimately alienated Al Qaeda from the bulk of the islamic world.

You are too focused on the "us" side of the equation. If the postulate is that 9/11 was conceived as a plan to provoke a west vs. islam war that ultimately led to the defeat of the west and establishment of a caliphate, and it was a success because it kicked off a couple decades of adventures in islamic countries, what you miss is the the "islam" side didn't rise up against us. They were more like, "well we don't really like you over here, but 9/11 was pretty bad so you kind of have justification" and generally not wanting to be associated with islamic extremism especially after that.

[Berkut]

I think there is more subjectivity to this though. Islamic jihadists want more then just the US in a war with someone in the Middle East. There is a war of ideas happening as well, and one of the important ideas in the secular liberal west is that the liberal, free order has value and meaning.

The embrace of the security state to the inevitable detriment of the liberal state is one that aligns with one of the core ideas of any ideology in opposition to the liberal West. That all this "freedom" and "liberty" is fake bullshit.

I don't buy into this, I think this is a very Americanized propaganda view. Islamic Jihadists care about traditional Islamic values. They do not "hate freedom", they hate Western secular values. They do not view it as a valid form of "freedom" for a woman to work outside the home and walk around in a bikini. However, no one views themselves as the "bad guys" in their own narrative, and Islamic Jihadists don't promote the idea that "freedom is fake and bad." Instead they say that Western values represent corruption and moral decay. They work from an entirely different set of operating principles, one that does not come from the englightenment and that does not contain elements of secular humanism or individualism. Islamic Jihadists genuinely don't care about the moral decay of the West, they care about it when they perceive that it is "infecting" Muslims.

Maybe a better way of thinking about it--there is not a global agreement on the form of freedom that is "good." In almost every country I can imagine, there is widespread belief you should not be terrorized or victimized by government. But there is a lot of difference of opinion outside of that. For example imagine a country that allowed for the purchase of child prostitutes as young as age 8 years old. That country would view that as a freedom and a good thing. We would view it with disgust, outrage, and extreme revulsion because we would say that is an abomination. Well, hard as it can be to accept, there are things we take for granted in the West that are seen that way by peoples who were not raised with Western values.

There is no reason to fear Islamic authoritarianism because in reality, the alternative is authoritarian as well, they just hide it better begin McDonalds and porn videos. (Same thing with Russian despotism, or Chinese authoritarianism or any other non-liberal ideology for that matter).

I think this is all wrong, also. The Chinese are pretty big on actually explaining the superiority (in their minds) of their ideology. They paint democracy as a system where the rich and powerful can corrupt the system to dominate the working class--and to be frank, there are incredibly true elements to that.

There is a big divide between Western enlightenment ideals and the ideals much of the rest of the world holds. Western enlightenment ideals view a specific brand of personal, individual liberties as being foundationally important for a free society. Countries like China or Islamic autocracies do not talk the way you're talking, instead they point out that Western style democracy has many flaws--and that a traditional form of government that protects the health and welfare of its people is superior to one in which dangerous factions and corrupt individuals can attempt to seize power through democracy.

There is even some core criticisms of our democratic systems, that frankly, cannot just be easily laughed away as "they hate our freedoms." The reality is in representative governments, we do not make laws and we do not run things. Elected officials do, and in basically all major representative democracies, elected officials overwhelmingly are peopled by those of the elite classes of society. Most major Western democracies have faced serious crises due to elected officials being corrupted, and due to dangerous factions capable of carrying harmful passions into public office. None of this is to say I disagree with the old aphorism--"Democracy is the worst form of government, other than all the other forms we have tried." Democracy has serious problems, and for many societies where people are generally actually fairly happy about how things are right now, it is easy to make a compelling argument that changing to democracy is dangerous and scary. Most Chinese people are very happy with their lives. Most Russian people were as well until relatively recently. In the Middle East many people in some of the worst countries are not particularly happy, but jihadism attempts to explain much of their unhappiness by blaming it on Western corruption, and promises that if you embrace jihadism your life will have meaning and you can restore traditional Islamic values and society will be good again.

There is very little evidence in my mind that people are simply selling the idea that freedom is bad, so if we can get Americans to reduce their freedoms that is...good?

Ugggh. Of course nobody says freedom is bad. 

I am using the term from our own, liberal perspective.

It's just a handy label. 

And they most certainly reject it, as you say. I am not even sure where we are disagreeing.