so now that you are properly introduced to ncd, let me lay out an argument for escalation. since you’re not willing to watch that presentation by former australian military analyst, i’m gonna explain its main point there anyway
but first of all, you need to understand why russia initiated this war at all. in a way, this is not a new thing; in fact, it’s fourth attempt at this from putin’s side, it’s just that it worked three times in the past and it made little noise in the west, and this includes your info bubble.
attempt number one starts somewhere in 1999. yeltsin government is falling apart; he knows he’s gonna rot in prison until end of his days for corruption unheard of even in soviet times. boris needs a cover; a way out. he needs a presidential pardon, and for that he needs a trusted man to become a president. there’s this young man, pretty high up in the party structures and trusted by yeltsin, vladimir putin, at the time prime minister, but also virtually unknown by the wider public. yeltsin wants him to win presidental election, and for that putin needs a story.
so one beautiful autumn day in 1999 several apartment blocks were blown up. it attracted obvious and warranted attention, and such a heinous crime calls for prosecution and punishment. without much doubt in party controlled state media blame was squarely laid on chechens, putin declared war on them, and subsequently he won presidential elections with some 80% of vote.
some people that paid attention were able to point out that it’s very obvious setup and it’s actually FSB, agency putin worked in before and had buddies in, that is behind bombings. but this didn’t really matter: critical voices got silenced 12345 and anyway, entire country was set in nationalist fervor. what, are you against war? are you siding with chechen terrorists?
propaganda flows. it turns normal people into tribal nationalists; it’s the lazy way - repeat after me - us good, them bad. are you going against glorious leader? then you’re one of them, the others, the enemy. criticism puts target on your back, fear alone silences opposition. our nation is great and good, and woe to anyone that goes against it. this was a fertile ground for expansionist nationalism. there were ever so louder claims for reestablishment of former soviet union, not for its socialist ideals, but because it was big. nationalists liked this, and the same people were groomed for years to be putin’s base, because, again, it’s easy propaganda. it’s also kind of propaganda putin himself seems to believe in
so it turns out that global economy doesn’t ride on patriotism and in 2008 people’s lives got shit in russia for reasons. putin’s ratings dropped significantly, and now we have situation where solid chunk of his voter base are nationalists. the solution is obvious:
attempt number two: invasion of georgia (2008). this is when south ossetia and abkhazia were formed. also at the same time georgia had govt favourable to general west, instead of russia. in eyes of nationalists, it was a success, even if not full: georgia was weakened and humiliated, even if not subjugated completely. putin’s ratings went up again.
somehow west remained silent on this act of blatant aggression. georgia was even considered nato candidate, but as you can’t get in as a country with undetermined borders, georgia was left alone after 2008.
years pass, lives of common russian people go to shit again, nationalism is always high, and what better tool is to make people happy again than invasion of neighbour? the solution is obvious:
attempt number three: invasion of donbas (2014)and crimea (2014) i don’t think i have to explain this one to you. pro-russian ukrainian president stopped from signing association agreement with EU, which is first step of getting in EU; people didn’t like that for a long time; this lead to change of government; new govt had to deal with punitive invasion. again, nationalists were very happy with this development, and putin’s ratings again went up.
years pass, global economy goes to shit again, this time because of pandemic, thoroughly cooked with nationalist propaganda russian population is unhappy again. putin, believing in military might of his army, chooses the obvious:
in 25 february 2022 full scale invasion of ukraine begins. initially, putin’s ratings go up again; however this time they bit much more they could chew, and we’re now in this situation.
i think several things should be clear to you. first of all, primary objective of putin is to hold power in russia. it’s not as fun when all you have is nuclear wasteland. second of all, you should clock by now that this is rise of fascism, and failing to react to it amounts to appeasement. historically, this is a bad thing. historically, people also don’t learn this.
another thing is that putin’s voters are by now unhinged nationalists. putin can’t win, he’s unable to; he can’t use nukes, because there’s already nuclear bunker buster with his name somewhere in the midwest; he can’t escalate, because he has nothing to escalate with; and can’t back down, because he’d lose all support. the only thing putin can do is to keep war at this level or lower, that is, to deescalate, most specifically he wants western military aid to be as low as possible.
in other words, putin wants a ceasefire; some sort of situation like war in donbas was in before 2022. this would allow him time to regroup, regenerate forces, train new conscripts, manufacture weapons. maybe even it’d be enough time for the western population to lose interest. then, after another few years, he would try this shit again
on the other hand you have nato, which has unique opportunity of completing their long running strategic objective of removing russian threat on budget and without risking their own soldiers. it’s pretty straightforward that it is in nato’s interest to escalate aid and it’s in putin’s regime interest for aid to go down. it’s also favourable from humanitarian viewpoint, as more military aid to ukraine means shorter war
another thing that follows: there can not be peaceful coexistence between current russian government and ukraine, and other western countries more generally. sustainable international situation would require both change of government and cultural shift in russia away from nationalism, not unlike denazification in germany after ww2. unfortunately, while you can change government relatively easily, that second part will remain a problem for some decades from now, because there seems to be no one willing to push for that kind of changes right now. all these small time nazbols and neotsarists won’t disappear even if all of current russian high command hangs in hague today, this would require time and massive effort
and yet another thing: because no peace or ceasefire negotiations with russians would be held in good faith (currently), you should talk to them in language they understand. arming ukraine allows for sustained negotiations that russians can’t dodge or skew: on battlefield. because nationalism of this kind rides on cult of power, defeating them cracks that worldview ever so little and might plant a forbidden thought in them: maybe it’s glorious leader that is wrong
and when it comes to supporting militarily a country that was attacked, i have to quote general Sherman:
You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.
and by the way, the deep deep shit belarus is in right now can be traced to late 90s, when lukashenko proposed union state. this was a trick that was supposed to land him position of president of both belarus and russia. he got in the deal with expectation of replacing yeltsin, but didn’t expect putin to come up
Good write up but I don’t really think the fascist - appeasement thing is a valid comparison.
Just because a country aggressively invades a country does not mean they will necessarily invade another. For example US invasion of Iraq. US obviously is a dangerous country but there hasn’t been any other invasions in the last 2 decades and it doesn’t look like there will be another in the foreseeable future. (I know Afghanistan is an invasion too but not on the same scale. Hundreds of thousands of troops were deployed in Iraq, similar to Ukraine)
Second, we must look at the context behind the invasion. Like you pointed out, this is essentially a war of independence. Ukraine has always been in Russian sphere (if not outright part of Russia) and is considered a geostrategic + ideological priority for Russia. Kiev for example is the birthplace of the Russian people.
So it makes perfect sense that they would try to keep the country in chains and we see the start of the invasion back in 2014 because of the coup that took out the pro-Russian government.
These circumstances are not really going to crop up again. No country but Ukraine (to a lesser degree, Belarus, but that is firmly in Russian sphere) holds as much significance to Russia.
The only realistic thing Russia would go to war for going forward is to keep old Soviet Republics (like Georgia) in line.
Keep in mind if we’re reciting 20th century history as if it’s the Bible on how to act towards aggressive countries - that Germany annexed Austria peacefully. They annexed Sudetenand (sort of) peacefully. When they invaded Poland they did so with relative ease and without losing a significant amount of their fighting power. Iirc it only took them about a month to finish their invasion of Poland. Contrast that to the Ukraine v Russia War where we’ve entered the 2nd year with no signs of stalemate easing up.
Throughout all of their territorial expansions before WW2, the Germany military force did not get significantly weakened.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, has been a disaster for Russia. They are desperately burning through Soviet stockpiles of tanks from the 50s or even earlier. It might take decades for them to return to their previous fighting strength.
I really don’t think it’s likely Russia starts another war any time soon. So trying to compare this with Nazi Germany and “appeasement” I think is a bit reductionist. The circumstances are different.
eh my main point was to explain how russian external politics mesh with russian internal politics. it’s not 1:1 by any measure, but through all of this russian govt was going through far right playbook, line by line
spoiler
and i had opportunity to step on my soapbox for five minutes
yeah this might be a stretch, but do you remember if there were anything close to weapon transfers like now in 2014 or 2008? chechen wars weren’t even really reacted to, except for 1. human rights abuses, and 2. for countries that already had a grudge with russia. in both cases, the most common response was strongly worded letter. for example, poland accepted 90k of chechen refugees; however this did exactly nothing against destruction of grozny, and most importantly was no impediment to gaining internal recognition for putin
Throughout all of their territorial expansions before WW2, the Germany military force did not get significantly weakened.
and we’re in very good situation that russians are this incompetent. and it’s not the first time either: secondary objective of chechen wars, aside from that above, was remaking public image of russian army as a capable force, because failure in afghanistan was still a fresh memory. results were, so to speak, suboptimal
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, has been a disaster for Russia
now, after 1.5 years of full scale war you can say that, but it was far from obvious two years ago or on 2014
1991 iraq war and invasion of afghanistan at least had clearly stated rationale and objectives, nothing like nebulous drivel you’ll hear from russians about satanist gay nazis threatening russian sphere of influence
Ukraine has always been in Russian sphere (if not outright part of Russia) and is considered a geostrategic + ideological priority for Russia. Kiev for example is the birthplace of the Russian people.
through history ukraine had much more western influence than russia, you can see borders of historical states even today if you know what you’re looking for. election results, railway density, dominant religion, language, types of industry present and many other factors delineate cleanly former borders of polish-lithuanian commonwealth, for example. especially for some last 300 years or so ukrainians got increasingly strong opinions on whether they are part of that russian world or not. (i’d like to notice that this line of propaganda, the one when novorossia was introduced and such was only heated up after 2010 or so, i don’t know exactly why)
this propaganda for internal consumption is not the only russian objective however. they still can try to stir shit in moldova or pollute western information space with their psyops, i don’t think they have ever stopped, probably they take overtime instead, even if prigozhin’s part is out. if you haven’t heard of this man, look up konstantin malofeev
look around there and in /r/noncredibledefense. feel like home if you want to, but don’t expect this place to change significantly
and no, i’m not afraid of russian nukes specifically because nato also has nukes. this logic worked for 70 years already, and it will work now (on top of some of these russian nukes probably not working, that is)
The best predictor for the future is the past. Until it isn’t
It’s not like we’ve had nuclear weapons for centuries. It’s still relatively new in a geopolitical sense. Eventually someone will get an itchy trigger finger
Yeah Russia, India and china should start addressing climate change. People should stop buying Russian gas and oil while screaming about the environment.
Do you… Do you hear your own words? Holy cow. No, it’s fucking not. It’s the highest price this world can pay after doing nothing for the climate.
so now that you are properly introduced to ncd, let me lay out an argument for escalation. since you’re not willing to watch that presentation by former australian military analyst, i’m gonna explain its main point there anyway
but first of all, you need to understand why russia initiated this war at all. in a way, this is not a new thing; in fact, it’s fourth attempt at this from putin’s side, it’s just that it worked three times in the past and it made little noise in the west, and this includes your info bubble.
attempt number one starts somewhere in 1999. yeltsin government is falling apart; he knows he’s gonna rot in prison until end of his days for corruption unheard of even in soviet times. boris needs a cover; a way out. he needs a presidential pardon, and for that he needs a trusted man to become a president. there’s this young man, pretty high up in the party structures and trusted by yeltsin, vladimir putin, at the time prime minister, but also virtually unknown by the wider public. yeltsin wants him to win presidental election, and for that putin needs a story.
so one beautiful autumn day in 1999 several apartment blocks were blown up. it attracted obvious and warranted attention, and such a heinous crime calls for prosecution and punishment. without much doubt in party controlled state media blame was squarely laid on chechens, putin declared war on them, and subsequently he won presidential elections with some 80% of vote.
some people that paid attention were able to point out that it’s very obvious setup and it’s actually FSB, agency putin worked in before and had buddies in, that is behind bombings. but this didn’t really matter: critical voices got silenced 1 2 3 4 5 and anyway, entire country was set in nationalist fervor. what, are you against war? are you siding with chechen terrorists?
propaganda flows. it turns normal people into tribal nationalists; it’s the lazy way - repeat after me - us good, them bad. are you going against glorious leader? then you’re one of them, the others, the enemy. criticism puts target on your back, fear alone silences opposition. our nation is great and good, and woe to anyone that goes against it. this was a fertile ground for expansionist nationalism. there were ever so louder claims for reestablishment of former soviet union, not for its socialist ideals, but because it was big. nationalists liked this, and the same people were groomed for years to be putin’s base, because, again, it’s easy propaganda. it’s also kind of propaganda putin himself seems to believe in
so it turns out that global economy doesn’t ride on patriotism and in 2008 people’s lives got shit in russia for reasons. putin’s ratings dropped significantly, and now we have situation where solid chunk of his voter base are nationalists. the solution is obvious:
attempt number two: invasion of georgia (2008). this is when south ossetia and abkhazia were formed. also at the same time georgia had govt favourable to general west, instead of russia. in eyes of nationalists, it was a success, even if not full: georgia was weakened and humiliated, even if not subjugated completely. putin’s ratings went up again.
somehow west remained silent on this act of blatant aggression. georgia was even considered nato candidate, but as you can’t get in as a country with undetermined borders, georgia was left alone after 2008.
years pass, lives of common russian people go to shit again, nationalism is always high, and what better tool is to make people happy again than invasion of neighbour? the solution is obvious:
attempt number three: invasion of donbas (2014) and crimea (2014) i don’t think i have to explain this one to you. pro-russian ukrainian president stopped from signing association agreement with EU, which is first step of getting in EU; people didn’t like that for a long time; this lead to change of government; new govt had to deal with punitive invasion. again, nationalists were very happy with this development, and putin’s ratings again went up.
years pass, global economy goes to shit again, this time because of pandemic, thoroughly cooked with nationalist propaganda russian population is unhappy again. putin, believing in military might of his army, chooses the obvious:
in 25 february 2022 full scale invasion of ukraine begins. initially, putin’s ratings go up again; however this time they bit much more they could chew, and we’re now in this situation.
i think several things should be clear to you. first of all, primary objective of putin is to hold power in russia. it’s not as fun when all you have is nuclear wasteland. second of all, you should clock by now that this is rise of fascism, and failing to react to it amounts to appeasement. historically, this is a bad thing. historically, people also don’t learn this.
another thing is that putin’s voters are by now unhinged nationalists. putin can’t win, he’s unable to; he can’t use nukes, because there’s already nuclear bunker buster with his name somewhere in the midwest; he can’t escalate, because he has nothing to escalate with; and can’t back down, because he’d lose all support. the only thing putin can do is to keep war at this level or lower, that is, to deescalate, most specifically he wants western military aid to be as low as possible.
in other words, putin wants a ceasefire; some sort of situation like war in donbas was in before 2022. this would allow him time to regroup, regenerate forces, train new conscripts, manufacture weapons. maybe even it’d be enough time for the western population to lose interest. then, after another few years, he would try this shit again
on the other hand you have nato, which has unique opportunity of completing their long running strategic objective of removing russian threat on budget and without risking their own soldiers. it’s pretty straightforward that it is in nato’s interest to escalate aid and it’s in putin’s regime interest for aid to go down. it’s also favourable from humanitarian viewpoint, as more military aid to ukraine means shorter war
another thing that follows: there can not be peaceful coexistence between current russian government and ukraine, and other western countries more generally. sustainable international situation would require both change of government and cultural shift in russia away from nationalism, not unlike denazification in germany after ww2. unfortunately, while you can change government relatively easily, that second part will remain a problem for some decades from now, because there seems to be no one willing to push for that kind of changes right now. all these small time nazbols and neotsarists won’t disappear even if all of current russian high command hangs in hague today, this would require time and massive effort
and yet another thing: because no peace or ceasefire negotiations with russians would be held in good faith (currently), you should talk to them in language they understand. arming ukraine allows for sustained negotiations that russians can’t dodge or skew: on battlefield. because nationalism of this kind rides on cult of power, defeating them cracks that worldview ever so little and might plant a forbidden thought in them: maybe it’s glorious leader that is wrong
and when it comes to supporting militarily a country that was attacked, i have to quote general Sherman:
and by the way, the deep deep shit belarus is in right now can be traced to late 90s, when lukashenko proposed union state. this was a trick that was supposed to land him position of president of both belarus and russia. he got in the deal with expectation of replacing yeltsin, but didn’t expect putin to come up
Great write, thanks
gottem
Good write up but I don’t really think the fascist - appeasement thing is a valid comparison.
Just because a country aggressively invades a country does not mean they will necessarily invade another. For example US invasion of Iraq. US obviously is a dangerous country but there hasn’t been any other invasions in the last 2 decades and it doesn’t look like there will be another in the foreseeable future. (I know Afghanistan is an invasion too but not on the same scale. Hundreds of thousands of troops were deployed in Iraq, similar to Ukraine)
Second, we must look at the context behind the invasion. Like you pointed out, this is essentially a war of independence. Ukraine has always been in Russian sphere (if not outright part of Russia) and is considered a geostrategic + ideological priority for Russia. Kiev for example is the birthplace of the Russian people.
So it makes perfect sense that they would try to keep the country in chains and we see the start of the invasion back in 2014 because of the coup that took out the pro-Russian government.
These circumstances are not really going to crop up again. No country but Ukraine (to a lesser degree, Belarus, but that is firmly in Russian sphere) holds as much significance to Russia.
The only realistic thing Russia would go to war for going forward is to keep old Soviet Republics (like Georgia) in line.
Keep in mind if we’re reciting 20th century history as if it’s the Bible on how to act towards aggressive countries - that Germany annexed Austria peacefully. They annexed Sudetenand (sort of) peacefully. When they invaded Poland they did so with relative ease and without losing a significant amount of their fighting power. Iirc it only took them about a month to finish their invasion of Poland. Contrast that to the Ukraine v Russia War where we’ve entered the 2nd year with no signs of stalemate easing up.
Throughout all of their territorial expansions before WW2, the Germany military force did not get significantly weakened.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, has been a disaster for Russia. They are desperately burning through Soviet stockpiles of tanks from the 50s or even earlier. It might take decades for them to return to their previous fighting strength.
I really don’t think it’s likely Russia starts another war any time soon. So trying to compare this with Nazi Germany and “appeasement” I think is a bit reductionist. The circumstances are different.
eh my main point was to explain how russian external politics mesh with russian internal politics. it’s not 1:1 by any measure, but through all of this russian govt was going through far right playbook, line by line
spoiler
and i had opportunity to step on my soapbox for five minutes
yeah this might be a stretch, but do you remember if there were anything close to weapon transfers like now in 2014 or 2008? chechen wars weren’t even really reacted to, except for 1. human rights abuses, and 2. for countries that already had a grudge with russia. in both cases, the most common response was strongly worded letter. for example, poland accepted 90k of chechen refugees; however this did exactly nothing against destruction of grozny, and most importantly was no impediment to gaining internal recognition for putin
and we’re in very good situation that russians are this incompetent. and it’s not the first time either: secondary objective of chechen wars, aside from that above, was remaking public image of russian army as a capable force, because failure in afghanistan was still a fresh memory. results were, so to speak, suboptimal
now, after 1.5 years of full scale war you can say that, but it was far from obvious two years ago or on 2014
1991 iraq war and invasion of afghanistan at least had clearly stated rationale and objectives, nothing like nebulous drivel you’ll hear from russians about satanist gay nazis threatening russian sphere of influence
through history ukraine had much more western influence than russia, you can see borders of historical states even today if you know what you’re looking for. election results, railway density, dominant religion, language, types of industry present and many other factors delineate cleanly former borders of polish-lithuanian commonwealth, for example. especially for some last 300 years or so ukrainians got increasingly strong opinions on whether they are part of that russian world or not. (i’d like to notice that this line of propaganda, the one when novorossia was introduced and such was only heated up after 2010 or so, i don’t know exactly why)
this propaganda for internal consumption is not the only russian objective however. they still can try to stir shit in moldova or pollute western information space with their psyops, i don’t think they have ever stopped, probably they take overtime instead, even if prigozhin’s part is out. if you haven’t heard of this man, look up konstantin malofeev
you seem to be new there
look around there and in /r/noncredibledefense. feel like home if you want to, but don’t expect this place to change significantly
and no, i’m not afraid of russian nukes specifically because nato also has nukes. this logic worked for 70 years already, and it will work now (on top of some of these russian nukes probably not working, that is)
The best predictor for the future is the past. Until it isn’t
It’s not like we’ve had nuclear weapons for centuries. It’s still relatively new in a geopolitical sense. Eventually someone will get an itchy trigger finger
MAD still works? did i miss something
Yeah Russia, India and china should start addressing climate change. People should stop buying Russian gas and oil while screaming about the environment.