Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Realistically it'd probably be better to the westernising part of Ukraine to shed the east and Crimea but why would they agree to that?

And would the eastern parts (not Crimea and those two fake states) actually want that? Most of the fighting is happening there and I don't believe that the people there aren't fighting the Russians too.
So while there might be more russian speakers in those regions they might not necessarily like the russians any more than the western part.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I've seen some talk criticizing the structure and nature of NATO membership as being at least part of what has led to this.

When a country joins an alliance like NATO it can be a major shift in the balance of power, it also changes the potential options for dealing with such a country. A NATO member, you risk a true WW3 situation if you go to war with them. This limits even the diplomatic pressure you can put on these countries. NATO membership requires a set of conditions to be met, and then has to be approved by the whole alliance. Additionally, NATO Article 10 explicitly makes the alliance open to any members who meet those conditions. This is a little rough because it means you can't explicitly guarantee, at an alliance-level, that X country will never be permitted to join NATO, since NATO Article 10 doesn't allow that. This creates a condition in which a country imminently joining NATO, is actually a very ripe target for attack. It puts (in this case Russia) in a position where at no other time is war, in the cost/benefit analysis, more likely to seem appealing than when NATO membership is imminent but not finalized.

Such conditions have actually led to a number of wars historically, including arguably WWII--Hitler attacked Poland when he did in part because of the new treaty arrangement in which Western powers had committed to the defense of Poland. In that case, the treaty commitment had already been made, but no military forces had been deployed, Hitler reasoned that during the "implementation gap" was his best chance to take Poland, and if he waited his Western enemies might be able to position strategic forces to make it hard on him to take Poland. He also reasoned that if Poland fell quickly, the Western allies would be loath to actually go to war over the piece of paper they had just signed relatively shortly before guaranteeing Poland's security.

The approach the United States has with Taiwan has actually been noted as probably as superior way to protect such countries than the NATO membership process.

The formal treaty language the U.S. has with Taiwan (that creates the so called "strategic intentional vagueness") is:

- Neither guarantees nor relinquishes U.S. military involvement in the case of an invasion of Taiwan
- Commits the United States to "make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary for Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense
- Consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific and a grave concern to the United States
- Requires the U.S. to "maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would threaten the security, social or economic system of the people of Taiwan

This is an interesting bit of diplomacy because it provides for a ton of U.S. support, but with no red line guarantees. Probably the single biggest piece of it is the commitment that the United States must maintain capacities to help Taiwan "resist resorts to use of force" against Taiwan. It doesn't commit to actually resisting, but maintaining that capacity. That creates a sort of effect where the U.S. officially is saying "we've laid a loaded American gun nearby in case we need to use it, whether we use it or not we won't say outright."

Now there were several conditions that made such an arrangement possible with Taiwan--one, in negotiating formal relations with the PRC, it was basically understood that while the U.S. would recognize the PRC as China, there was going to be some "agree to disagree" on the exact way Taiwan was to be handled. While the PRC made it known it would never agree or endorse U.S. support for China, it wasn't going to allow that to block U.S./PRC relations on other matters. Another was that because we had formally viewed Taiwan/ROC as "China" up until this point, and had provided them with a lot of military support to that point, there wasn't really an inflection point where the PRC had a big opening where it could have tried to invade right quick in the early 1980s.

For that reason such an arrangement between Ukraine/United States probably would not have done a lot because it likely would have precipitated an immediate Russian invasion at whatever point it was done, but it could be a formula for managing things like Finland/Sweden, where we can put them somewhat under an aegis of strategic protection and not provide Putin the obvious implementation period of NATO membership in which he feels he could act militarily without serious consequence.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

No matter how much I try, I still can't quite see how Putin thought this was a good idea, win or lose on the battlefield.

Hell, how many discussions have we had in this very forum about the obsolescence of NATO? He just rendered all of them moot with a stroke.

I read an article in The New Statesman which argued that Poutine wants to create a New World Order () with himself on the top and nothing of importance happening without Moscow's say so.  Presumably he saw NATOs failure in Afghanistan and his own victory in Syria as evidence that NATO was weak; that he would easily win in Ukraine; and then the rest of the world would fear him. 

Even if the war had gone off well it's hard to see how that would have worked.  Russia's economy is smaller than Canada's (despite having over three times the population of Canada).  He can't afford to be a super power.

The path Russia is on now it's hard to conclude their most likely end state is anything but a junior partner in vassalage to China.

not even Italy to China's Germany but Bulgaria or Romania...
Or Tannu Tuva to China's USSR

[Tamas]

Indeed if at the very start of a war there's already unrest that's unlikely to become better.

My biggest worry is that if Putin faces a choice between being deposed -with everything that can mean for his person- and a gamble at nuclear escalation, I don't think we can rely on his conscience.


Speaking of which I may be very wrong on this as I am not familiar with the finer details, but isn't Putin the first truly one-man dominating dictator since Stalin? From my limited readings of history it feels like all other communist leaders had to have the Politburo's consent (how they gained and maintained that is another matter) and once they lost it they were out.

[OttoVonBismarck]

At the end of the day the United States cannot bow to nuclear saber rattling. The Soviets had leaders who did just that for many years and across both parties, all of our Cold War Presidents never once simply kow towed to it, nor should we do so now. Avoid unnecessary escalation and try to find de-escalation off ramps, absolutely, but you don't cave on anything you're doing because a Russian autocrat reminds you he has nuclear weapons.

[Sheilbh]

Speaking of which I may be very wrong on this as I am not familiar with the finer details, but isn't Putin the first truly one-man dominating dictator since Stalin? From my limited readings of history it feels like all other communist leaders had to have the Politburo's consent (how they gained and maintained that is another matter) and once they lost it they were out.

Well we haven't seen the Politburo's verdict on this adventure yet.

As I say, I could be wrong but I think an isolated leader living in a bubble with limited and easily controlled sources of information is one that's relatively easy to plot against if you need to.

[Solmyr]

Indeed if at the very start of a war there's already unrest that's unlikely to become better.

My biggest worry is that if Putin faces a choice between being deposed -with everything that can mean for his person- and a gamble at nuclear escalation, I don't think we can rely on his conscience.


Speaking of which I may be very wrong on this as I am not familiar with the finer details, but isn't Putin the first truly one-man dominating dictator since Stalin? From my limited readings of history it feels like all other communist leaders had to have the Politburo's consent (how they gained and maintained that is another matter) and once they lost it they were out.

Yes, there was at least a possibility that someone really unpopular with the ruling elite could be forced out. Khrushchev got dumped in 1964 and Gorbachev almost had the same in 1991 (but the general Soviet collapse took precedence).

The problem here is that both Khrushchev and Gorbachev could enjoy retirement at the dacha after being removed. I doubt Putin can count on that.

[Sheilbh]

Yes, there was at least a possibility that someone really unpopular with the ruling elite could be forced out. Khrushchev got dumped in 1964 and Gorbachev almost had the same in 1991 (but the general Soviet collapse took precedence).

The problem here is that both Khrushchev and Gorbachev could enjoy retirement at the dacha after being removed. I doubt Putin can count on that.

But I think the problem he faces is that with the sanctions that have been announced - especially personally sanctioning him - it's now clear to everyone around him that even if they take Ukraine, the best they can hope for is a dacha - not the villa on Lake Como. It's why I think sanctioning the securocrats may have more impact than the oligarchs.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I've always been a little skeptical on how useful sanctioning oligarchs is, but the one take I saw recently that seemed like it may help on some level basically said--if you sanction an oligarch such that they can no longer easily travel in the West, or easily play with their toys, it doesn't make them disloyal to Putin, but it may make them a "voice" in the halls of power for advocating keeping "business as usual" flowing. I think there is probably some truth to that, but I still think it's a little hard these days because the "inner oligarchs" who seem to have the highest access to Putin seem to come from more of a security background than they seem to be of the Roman Abramovich type.

[celedhring]

VDL announces that EU airspace is closed to Russian airplanes, also RT will be banned.

I'm with Sheilbh on this, RT is pretty irrelevant and it seems unnecessary to hand the Russians a chance to reciprocate.

[DGuller]

Putin sure looks like a man liable to be deposed, though it could be just wishful thinking.  I still can't fathom how he thinks broadcasting shots of him sitting alone two miles away from another breathing human being projects strength.  I hope it's a sign that he lost his grip on personal protection reality just as much as he lost his grip on geopolitical reality.  I also can't help but wonder whether Shoigu's face of dismay is a deliberate signaling act, surely he's savvy enough to know that it has an effect of undermining Putin.

[The Brain]

Putin looks incredibly weak. His best combat formations engaged in Ukraine and performing poorly (it seems), his propaganda game is abysmal (the Nazi country with a Jewish democratically elected president...), whatever's left of his prestige is in freefall... He finally decided to pull down his pants and wave his dick around, and turned out it was a 2 incher.

Putin thought he'd dictate peace in Kyiv within 48 hours. -Und jetzt?

I am somewhat philosophical about the nuclear threat. As has been said the West cannot bow to it, so in practice it should mean very little. If the Russians want to start the apocalypse they can do so at any time. This has been a basic fact since before I was born. A bit like a planet killer meteorite it would be sad but whatchagonnado. I think it's unlikely that Putin launches a nuke in a situation where there isn't open combat between Russian and NATO forces. And if he attempts to do so anyway, our last hope is that his palace guard decides to grant him suicide without making it a collective one.

[Tamas]

One fairly classic reason for rushing into a war like he did would be feeling your throne wobble under you and intending to stabilise it with a win. I guess we'll see, if nothing else via a nuclear flash nearby.

[The Brain]

Putin sure looks like a man liable to be deposed, though it could be just wishful thinking.  I still can't fathom how he thinks broadcasting shots of him sitting alone two miles away from another breathing human being projects strength.

Yeah the laughable theatrics that he for some reason decided on made him look very weak.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's really startling how much smarter PRC is in how it is ran than Russia under Putin, and how many internet keyboard warriors have been sucking Putin off as the master chess player all these years.

Putin has spent much of his time in power fixated on territorial claims and trying to replicate the Soviet Union. Since Deng PRC has focused on building up a robust, educated, Chinese economy, understanding that from that base comes power that cannot be taken away easily. In all ways that matter China is far more properly equipped to handle the real power politics of the 21st century. Russia is a corrupt petrostate isolated and alone.

Even if Putin had won a lightning war and a secured Ukrainian puppet regime, what would that really mean? What is the real "value" to Ukraine? China isn't strong because it takes this or that piece of territory, China is strong because it has a huge middle class, well educated population, vast investments in a huge range of manufacturing and technology industries. China looked at the world and was like "how can we be like the United States in the ways that makes it strong, without losing CCP control of the country?" Putin looked at the world and said "if I act like the world was when the Soviet Union was around, the world will change so that the Soviet approach is viable again."