In 2016 I wrote a piece here that partially touched on the matter of range in warfare. [stderr]
Other than logistics, it’s what wins battles. I’m going to give a few examples after the main argument, so this may seem a bit like I’m trying to be clever, but it’s really best to get the framing down before we look at the details. My normal technique is to start with details and build up from them. For this situation, that does not work.
May 30, Russia declared World War 3, and (I kid you not) I went and stood out in the yard and sang So Long Mom I’m Off To Drop A Bomb because it was a good brain-test to see if I could remember the lyrics. We sang that (as a family) when that album came out, and my brain still has the song encoded. But I don’t want to scare you a lot, so I’m going to just say “don’t worry too much yet” and I’ll explain that as we go.
What has happened: Russia said “this is World War 3” and NATO said “well, OK then.” The official response from NATO was as shown: “Well, then, the 1997 NATO/Russia act no longer holds since you attacked Ukraine.” The 1997 accord was that NATO would refrain from stationing troops in non-NATO countries that agreed to allow NATO troops. This is statecraft 101: if Poland wants to invite NATO troops to come hang out, it’s up to Poland. That means if Poland wants to invite a whole bunch of NATO assets from Germany or even the continental US, they can. A bit of research last night showed that there has been a lot of US assets in Poland already, doing “training” but being very careful not to be in a position where they could be accused of being part of combat operations against Russia. But this is exactly what Russia has been fearing all along, and now have brought upon themselves.
For example, 7000 US troops, a bunch of strykers, and some HIMARS were already doing training in Poland and were probably driving around enjoying the fine local cuisine, etc., studiously not shooting Russians. The Russians just asked to be punched in the face.
What NATO didn’t say, but just showed with their opening actions, is that what they really meant is, “OK, you’re going to lose that ‘army’ you have in Ukraine if you don’t start thinking about negotiated wind-down to this thing, really quickly.”
NATO’s response to the Russian “World War 3” threat to also engage forces and logistics in Poland and elsewhere was, in fact, the declaration of World War 3, because it’s a general European war with everyone piling on Russia. But Russia sees it as Russia scaring the crap out of NATO. This is a terrible situation and I hope cooler heads prevail. So Russia, which stupidly threatened Finland and Sweden and announced that they are fair game, has set what’s probably the end of the war in motion. Good. I’m sorry for the many Russian soldiers and sailors that are going to die but it’s what they signed up for.
Follow with me: the Russian military in Ukraine is not only logistically stretched and not in very good shape, they have been tactically fixed by the Ukrainians. That means the Ukrainians have their GPS coordinates, and extremely good ideas about their capabilities. The Ukrainians know where their logistics points are, their artillery, their rocket launchers, yadda yadda yadda. If you want to read the 2016 stderr [stderr] piece, now might be a good time, but you don’t have to – I’ll repeat myself. The Russians are in an absolutely horrible situation. It’s multi-level fractally horrible. When NATO responded to the Russian “World War 3” it was with an official “since you guys broke the 1991 agreement. Now, we’re going to be careful and not give the Ukrainians long-range HIMARS missiles that can reach way into Russia – but we’re going to give them HIMARS that they can use within their own borders. After all, they’re blowing the snot out of Ukrainian territory – that just happens to have Russians on it.
Here is the thing: the HIMARS are really, really accurate. They are not dumb-fire rockets like the Russians have. The Russians have some artillery and stuff but right now the Russians are so depleted that they’re fielding T-54 tanks, which are total museum-pieces that can’t survive a straight-up fight with something like a Bradley or a stryker – which the US carefully is not giving the Ukrainians yet. I don’t think they will ever need to because the HIMARS are going to curb-stomp the Russian army.
Depending on the missile load-out HIMARS can hit with precision at 300km. The Russian’s stuff can hit, kinda, out to 80km with, kinda, some precision. The Russians are out-ranged by a huge margin. That means the Ukrainians can sit back out of range of Russian response, and beat the living shit out of them, endlessly, with steel rain from the sky. The Russian “tanks” will no longer be an endagered species, they’ll be extinct.
And that, friends, is why Musashi used an oar that was 4″ longer than Kojiro’s sword, and smashed Kojiro’s skull in: to a sword-master, having 4″ more range turns the fight into a matter of caution but you gotta understand that with a range advantage like we’re discussing there is basically no risk except you’re going to get tired swapping those missile cartridges. And, you may feel bad for the poor Russians.
Admiral Togo did not feel bad for the poor Russian fleet at Tsushima. They had traveled a tremendous distance to engage with his fleet, their hulls were foul, their crews were tired, but – most importantly, the Japanese battleships out-ranged everything the Russians had, by a pretty good range (I’m too lazy to look it up). So that means if the Russians advance, the Japanese could retreat slowly, beating the snot out of the Russians the whole time. The Russians’ guns couldn’t hit the Japanese because they lacked the range. As it happened the Russians’ hulls were so foul the Japanese could even go backwards or forwards faster than the Russians. The Russians could charge toward the Japanese at full speed and never come into range where they could fire and the Japanese could keep the Russian fleet under their guns and curb-stomp them the whole time. When the Russians tried to retreat, the Japanese fleet was faster and could still out-range them.
Once the HIMARS take the field, the Russian ‘army’ is toast. I mean that. If the Ukrainians want to use their over-ranged gear to wipe the Russian army out, they will be able to. The Russians have nothing on the field that can withstand a hit from HIMARS, they have nothing on the field that can reach the HIMARS, and they have nothing that can outrun or run away from the HIMARS; they’ll be under its fire canopy for longer than they will be able to survive to escape. That is exactly what Togo did to Admiral Zinovy. If you read a history of the engagement, it usually says something like “Admiral Togo destroyed the Russian fleet.” Accurate.
That’s the state of play, right now. There are HIMARS already in Poland. There are other assets moving around. There is discussion about whether Germany wants to send tanks to Poland. As someone interested in military history, I am torn between going “OMG holy shit! Panzers in Poland!” and just sitting and bawling my eyes out. Remember, these are tanks that are designed to brush off the state-of-the-art Russian stuff that Russia never managed to build more than a few of. And let’s not even talk about how much an M-1 or Leopard tank out-ranges the pathetic 70’s stuff the Russians have in the field. The US has also fielded 65 attack helicopters to Poland, for “training”, and I hope they are enjoying the local culture. Notice how the attack copters are not being put into the mix. Yet. The US has also forward-stationed a bunch of F-35s in Germany, a couple B-1s, and some A-10s.
If I were one of the Russian high command, I would be trying to think about how to extract my ‘army’ while it was still an effective fighting force (which, note, it isn’t).
Another thing: it is almost certain that the Russian navy, right now, is stalked at range by a small fleet of attack submarines. If the order is given, the Russian navy will be called upon to do another performance of “synchronized sinking.” The attack submarines have very long-range torpedoes that are pretty much 100% accurate and a few missile ships could clean up the rest but mostly it’d be time to ask the Russian admiral to strike their colors and save the lives.
[Japanese casualties at Tsushima: 3 torpedo boats, 117 dead.
Russian casualties at Tsushima: 5,045 dead 803 injured 6,016 captured 6 battleships sunk 1 coastal battleship sunk 14 other ships sunk 2 battleships captured 2 coastal battleships captured 1 destroyer captured 6 ships disarmed (126,792 tons sunk) ]
That’s the tactical analysis.
The strategic analysis is more interesting. Did the US plan this all along, and provoke Putin into destroying Russia? Because if this goes down hard, Russia will be humbled, and – in their own vocabulary – “demilitarized” All of the stuff with the CIA-backed “orange revolution” and so forth, it’s kinda convenient, isn’t it? But it was Putin’s big move. I doubt a conspiracy; I bet this situation is emergent from some US provocation, sure, but there’s a lot of chunks swirling in the soup and really who cares? Note that there was a similar question as to whether Saddam Hussein was mouse-trapped into going into Kuwait for a thorough curb-stomp in which he effectively lost Iraq’s entire army. I think the Kuwait thing was diplomatic incompetence, wow, there we go again.
You’ve probably been thinking about nuclear war this whole time. What about that?
Well, the Russians have a problem. Their nuclear arsenal’s command-control is pretty hierarchical. The problem with a dictatorship is that the guy at the top wants to make the decision for launches. Then, the orders go out, the missiles are readied, everyone is talking on the secure comms grid about the thing that is about to happen. I really hope the NSA has done its job and that comms grid is pretty compromised. Just knowing that the order for a launch went out is enough: wherever Putin, personally, is, is probably gone. Conventional explosive, but a lot of it, moving very fast. My guess is that with the top of the hierarchy removed, the Russian strategic forces decide to pack up and go home, because there may be cruise missiles heading to their current location. If it’s a command node, they’re probably right. If the NSA has been a tiny bit competent they have all the coordinates of all of those, to 6 decimal places. If the NSA has been a tiny bit competent there are, right now, satellites watching all that stuff in real time and the operations center is staffed 24/7 and they have an industrial coffee-maker going. If the Russians roll back the silo doors, bad things will happen.
But that’s why I wonder if this whole thing was a set-up to take Russia off the table as a super power, by stomping a boot through their ass so hard they never have any ass, again.
I don’t approve of this violence. But I gotta admit, if someone’s thinking of throwing nukes around, I want maximum dissuasion. There’s still a chance something goes wrong and a Russian ballistic missile sub escapes the synchronized sinking exercise, and destroys a US city or 2. But I’d say the odds are very small, less than 2%. Remember: the Russian navy is garbage that mostly is trying not to sink, and their ballistic missile submarines are loud and their hulls are fouled. There are American attack subs hanging in the water, dead silent, 2 miles from each of them. If they start to position for a launch, they’ll die.
Remember how I said I think the US has been positioning itself, very sneakily, to win World War 3? We may find out.
I weep for the poor Russian kids who joined the army because it’s food, or it’s cool, or whatever.
The F-35 may have logistics problems, and so forth, but it looks like the US forces would just make one pass through the zone, and the Russian air force is dead gone. So it doesn’t matter if the F-35 lost its stealth coating in that one strike; it also lost its enemy.
One other interesting matter of range: the US (and soon NATO) have been heavily shifting their battle rifles over to .300 AAC “blackout” calibre. It significantly out-ranges the small arms rounds used in most of the world, and it’s got good stability and range even when it’s subsonic. The whole idea of the round is that most of the forces in the world are using old .223 or AK-47 7.62x39mm which has an effective range of around 300m. The .300 blackout can hit out to 400m. So, if you’ve got some old-school infantry gear, your enemy out-ranges you by 100m and their shots are silent. They know where you are (and can hit you) and you don’t know where they are (and can’t hit them) life really sucks when you’re out-ranged: your enemy can take his time, aim, wait for you to stick your head up and …
Sadly, the US won’t be sending the missiles with that range (these guys). Maybe partly because they cost nearly a million a pop. They’ll be sending ones with a range of 70+ km, which will still just about out-range Russia’s stuff.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2022/05/31/biden-decoded-ukraine-will-get-us-rocket-systems-but-not-long-range-missiles/?sh=d99e9c1a389e
Hey Marcus,
Good post, and yes I think the post-TIA Marcus is indistinguishable from the pre-TIA guy. Both of you give waaaay too much credit to the “brains” in the CIA and the NSA.
“Did the US plan this all along, and provoke Putin into destroying Russia?”
The US involvement with the world, I would say from the signing of the Declaration of Independence on, has been an unending comedy of racism: We like corporations that sell bananas cheaply, therefore living wages for non-white banana harvesters are anti-American. We like cheap gasoline, therefore muslim Iran needs to lose their democratically elected leader, and they need their monarch restored to power. We like European political ideas to filter through the world, therefore we need to send an army to Vietnam to oppose self-rule by asian people. Putin is a white guy, so he must be OK, but then he starts killing white Ukranian babies and women, so we give some weapons to Ukraine. Putin sends the Russian army into a meat-grinder that we happened to send a few weapons into, hey! we must be geopolitical geniuses!
This is a really interesting analysis. It makes me wonder – is Putin really that dumb? I know there are and have been world leaders where the answer is an emphatic “Yes – they really are that dumb” but I had thought he was smarter than this. I know he worked in the KGB – maybe it’s paranoia that makes him think this is a good idea. Whatever his reasoning, **I** sure can not figure it out.
Russia also has lots of different bombers, with way more range than necessary, which it’s already used a number of times so far. (Couldn’t give you any exact figures, but it’s true in any case.) Those could come equipped with nuclear missiles too, of course. Double-plus-ungood, in other words.
I’m sure Ukraine will find a use for the rockets, but I doubt it will accomplish much other than prolong the war and get more people killed.
Since we’ve got our own kind of gun problem here, maybe we should’ve sent all of ours to Ukraine. That way, everybody’s happy. (Just kidding, that’s absurd. But since literally everyone would hate it, Biden is the kind of guy who would contemplate that sort of thing very very seriously, in between naps.)
I have even stronger doubts that Russia will back down because of anything like this. Hurt or struggling, maybe, but not that…. Just think about how long our population has acquiesced to our own disastrous military adventures over the past several decades. None of them had anything even approaching the kind of strategic importance to the US as Ukraine does to Russia.
So, they just can’t lose this one, meaning the worse things go for them, the more desperate they’ll become. It shouldn’t have to be said, but a desperate country with a huge nuclear arsenal is not in anyone’s interests. (Are some people insanely aching for that kind of shit anyway? Yes.)
Moral of the story: There isn’t a style of weaponry that will make things better here, because it’s not a comic book movie and the good guys can’t win by punching a bad guy in the face very hard. We won’t back down. They won’t back down. The only thing we even think of doing is escalating more and more and more.
We should be doing everything we possibly can to reach a peace agreement as soon as possible. But, spoiler warning: we’re not going to do that, because this country can never look at itself in the mirror and can’t get its head out of its own ass.
So, just more face-punching, while we’re all informed that anyone who thinks like this must be working for the terrorists or the commies or whatever. Same old thing.
cr @4:
‘We’ (hoi polloi like thee and me) don’t actually know what ‘we’ (US government? NATO?) are doing, or not doing in that regard. But another possible reason for lack of visible progress could be that nothing Putin says, or agrees to, can be trusted. He makes Trump look like the mythical version of George Washington. It’s as though you haven’t been paying attention since Putin took office.
kestrel@#3:
This is a really interesting analysis. It makes me wonder – is Putin really that dumb?
Could another superpower, like – say – the US, have a president suffering from dementia?
I think Putin’s used to getting his way and probably surrounds himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear. Nobody can be good at all the things. What are Putin’s main skills? Appears to be “grabbing the reins of power and hanging on” – that does not make him a strategic genius on the global stage.
I don’t think I would give the CIA credit for the Orange Revolution. It started a whole series color revolutions, which seems to have greatly benefited Ukrainians and many of the countries in Eastern Europe that were formerly ruled by the USSR.
Giving Ukraine enough artillery range to deal with the Russian shelling is crucial to their ability to defend and retake any lost ground.
Any negotiations are in Ukraines court, since they are the people currently getting killed by one power crazed tyrant. Putin is following a fairly stereotypical path for dictators. They surround themselves with incompetence and grift, which leads to drinking your own kool-aid and deciding you can invade your neighbors and be welcomed. ( or send a deranged mob to congress to try to remain potus)
Rob Grigjanis, #5:
We know perfectly well that they (mostly the US but also other countries) have been sending enormous amounts of weapons, military equipment, etc. to Ukraine as well as providing other types of military assistance.
Of course, there’s also some humanitarian aid, which I fully support. But the issue is with the militaristic, anti-peace shit, and that is definitely something hoi polloi such as us know for a fact is happening. So please don’t give me that.
We know more than enough, and it is the opposite of reaching a peace agreement as soon as possible.
Nothing I said was based on Putin’s trustworthiness or on any of his claims, agreements, etc. So your response here seems to come out of nowhere.
Of course, I could point out that the US can’t be trusted either, if you just feel like trading that kind of shit back and forth for a while, but I don’t think it would be constructive.
Well, y’all know how much I love me some F-35. Maybe we’ll get to see if they really work. (hint: probably not)
cr @8: “in that regard” was referring to what you wrote regarding a peace agreement.
With whom would this peace agreement be, if not Putin? Given Putin’s track record, what would such an agreement be worth? How are these points “out of nowhere”?
Sure, but presumably the agreement would be primarily between Ukraine and Russia.
wait, I feel like I’m missing some key info here…
Weren’t the previous World Wars basically two (or more) factions of allied countries squaring up and bombing the shit out of each other? Who is allied with Russia this time around? or does Russia, who can’t even roll over Ukraine (never mind occupy…) think they can somehow also go toe-to-toe with multiple, better-armed, better-funded countries?
Work has been keeping me pretty busy lately, and there is enough domestic bullshit that I really don’t want to try and follow the news in my meager free time, but I feel like something this important should have still leaked through my meager sanity-preserving-boundaries…
Is this real?…
lochaber@#11:
Is this real?…
If Russian state communications says it’s World War 3, I’m not gonna argue with them. It might ignite World War 3.
But, seriously. Yes, it appears that Russia declared (read the thing the Russian state communications said) that they intend to “demilitarize NATO” I agree that’s a World War – it’s just Russia against the world.
We humans have to figure out how to put our better specimens in power.
PS, if there’s some way in all of this that BoJo winds up at the bottom of a well, that’s also a touchpoint for “positive outcomes” Can we pinpoint bomb him?
Marcus @12:
They’ve been talking smack since day one, with the apparent purpose of making decadent Westerners nervous. Couple weeks (?) ago, the Russian Hannity said that, after they take Ukraine, they were going to roll over NATO. Not long after the invasion, they were saying that supplying Ukraine with weapons amounted to a declaration of war.
I see, I thought you were suggesting that I believed the US wasn’t pursuing peace because of something Putin had said.
This at least doesn’t come out of nowhere…. But this is always how peace works: you have two sides fighting each other and not trusting one another. Despite all of that, they reach an agreement.
So if you’re saying the US isn’t wiling to do that because it doesn’t trust Putin (even if that’s reasonable or justified), then that’s exactly what it means to say that the US isn’t doing what it needs to do in order to get such an agreement: put aside the fear/hate/distrust/etc. and deliver on a peace plan anyway.
So, you (if “you” are the US) don’t get to shift blame back to your opponent, since in fact it’s your distrust and inaction (or even worse, attempts at escalation) which are the issue that prevents an agreement, not the reasons you might conjure up for this decision that you are taking not pursue an agreement.
The US will have to play a major role no matter what, even assuming this doesn’t devolve further into a more direct US vs. Russia war, rather than a proxy war. They need to trust that we’ll keep our side of the bargain (whatever that turns out to be), as NATO’s de facto leader and main military powerhouse.
OT: Something good from Russia. TCM is airing Tarkovsky’s Solaris in a few minutes. ‘Night all!
Marcus:
I don’t think we should lean too hard on that. I mean, it’s “state media,” but so is PBS for instance. Of course it is somewhat different in Russia, but not so different…. The way i see it, they want to feed the population with these ideas and get a sense of how well those ideas land. It’s probably some kind of sign of how they’re thinking behind the scenes, but that’s still a long way from an official declaration or something like that.
consciousness razor@#16:
I agree. But NATO also took their statement as a thing to point to regarding the nullification of the 1997. All this stuff was probably inevitable. But historians will want to point to a date/time, if we have historians that survive the climate catastrophe.
Update: Germany to supply IRIS-T air defence system to Ukraine. There goes the Russian ‘air force’ – effectively a static “no fly” zone.
Holy shit… I kinda hate that meme/movie, but,
Like, what angle am I missing? Ukraine has basically stalled a Russian invasion just through force of will and pretty minimal supplying from outside parties. The U.S., if not all of NATO, has been rearranging and training pretty much all of their military forces against U.S.S.R./Russia for the past… 70? years? like, from the U.S. Military standpoint, this is the fight we’ve been itching for, and are actually properly equipped for, for longer than anyone currently serving has been alive. And there is money, so, so, so fucking much money…. Like, the U.S. wouldn’t even need to deploy troops, just throw a fraction of our annual military budget worth of equipment at neighboring allied countries, and maybe a couple IKEA-style instruction manuals, just to, I don’t know, save on training expenses?
Like, prior to three months or so ago, I probably would not have felt in this way, but a lot of my thoughts/understandings have drastically changed since Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine. Is the Russian command that deluded? Is this some sort of ridiculously convincing “rope-a-dope”? are there unanticipated allies hiding in the wings? whatever’s going on, I feel like I’m missing something…
enlisted me, twenty years ago, would probably be pretty hyped about the potential opportunity of getting to square up and go after a near-peer power, that we had actually been training and equipped for, as opposed to just going and terrorizing some random poor brown people…
I doubt the US is in anyway responsible for this situation. Seems like it’s just a product of classic corruption and authoritarianism. Everyone from the top down was lining their pockets and lying to avoid getting booted out.
Peace won’t happen in the current situation, for that Putin has to come to the table with reasonable terms which will result in him losing power. He doesn’t have power to enforce unreasonable terms, and Ukraine doesn’t seem to want to stop fighting yet.
My bet this is going to end with a military coup in Russia. Eventually.
Hopefully before someone tries to order nuclear strikes.
Oh, does anyone know how different the long range HIMARS looks to the short range HIMARS? Especially when in a crate?
According to the grauniad, US is providing 4 HIMARS and it will take weeks to train the Ukrainians on their use.
So it’s not going to be a great big bear-stomp.
dangerousbeans @21: HIMARS is a launch platform, generally mounted on a truck. The missiles are in a pod mounted on the launcher. The pod can carry either six short-range (80km) or one long-range (300 km) missile.
Reuters: Sweden to supply anti-ship missiles to Ukraine.
NATO appears to be taking a strategy, for now, of building a bleed on the Russians. Instead of “boom, there goes your army” it’s going to be “you are bleeding and it just keeps getting worse.”
Marcus, #25:
In one word: “quagmire.”
Examples:
– Vietnam vs. France and vs. USA
– Afghanistan vs. USSR and vs. USA
– Iraq vs. USA
– At least arguably, a bunch of other places throughout Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East should also count for the US, although those shitfests have been conducted somewhat differently.
You could also say Ukraine should count for the US as well, given how much we’ve committed to it, for who knows how long…. I guess to a lesser extent the other NATO countries too, but mostly the US at this point, although in the long run they may be paying a bigger price since it is their neighborhood after all.
Anyway, I think it’s definitely an unforced error on our part. We can more or less get away with that shit so much because we’re so powerful. Russia however is a different story: definitely in a better position than they were 20-30 years ago, but that’s not saying much. So, it might strategically “work” in the sense of hurting Russia, but the idea that this will have “good” results is simply not believable.
cr @26: How is Putin invading Ukraine an unforced error on anyone but Putin’s part? Is it “historical reasons”, like not giving written guarantees for everything Russia wanted in 1990? Or do you think supplying Ukraine with arms is an error?
Rob Grigjanis, #27:
To be clear, you’ve put it in terms of “Putin invading Ukraine” (actually Russia, not one dude). However, I was talking about various other parts of this entire catastrophe, from the beginning and into the foreseeable future. So please understand it that way.
Both. The Mearsheimer lecture (among others) that I linked in the previous thread does a pretty good job of laying out most of the recent “historical” parts. It’s okay if you don’t want to bother watching that, but I’ll say it is well-presented and interesting. There are a lot of mistakes to talk about:
– We should not have expanded NATO at all, after the Soviet Union fell.
– We should not have insisted, in 2008, that Georgia and Ukraine would also join NATO.
– We should not continue to have NATO and act as Europe’s defense force. They should do that themselves, and that ball should’ve at least started rolling in the 1990s if not earlier.
– We should not have been involved in any capacity with the 2014 coup.
– We should not have been providing Ukraine with military aid before.
– And we shouldn’t be doing so now. Because our first priority should be peace (not hurting Russia, hurting Putin, etc.).
This isn’t good for Ukraine, nor is it good for the US, for NATO, for Europe, or for the rest of the world. We’re risking WW3, and what we get out of this deal is that there are tons of dead people, with more to come, while everyone else has to deal with an economic disaster. That is more or less why we should not have done any of it.
Anyway, those are things we did, which are of course not the same events as “Putin invading Ukraine.” I obviously wouldn’t need to explain how the latter was an unforced error committed by the US. But regarding the things we did do, mentioned above, I think it’s pretty clear.
cr @28: Some curious wording there. The US insisted that Georgia and Ukraine join NATO? It’s as though you won’t grant agency (or maybe even sovereignty?) to Georgia or Ukraine. Or Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, etc?
I think you should learn a bit more history. The countries mentioned above have been under the oppressive thumb of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, off and on, for centuries. They rightly see Russia as a permanent threat.
Right. Being nice to Putin will fix everything. Bloody hell.
As far as the US leaving NATO, hey, just vote for Trump. I’m sure he’ll oblige. And good riddance. With any luck, Ukraine will be recovering from this obscenity by then.
The problem I have with this analysis is that it’s all about the US. It suggests that the only thing that are important are US actions and Putin’s reactions to those actions. And citing Mearsheimer isn’t helpful, because (a) he doesn’t credit countries like Ukraine or Poland with having ANY agency, and (b) he sees all of this in an unchanging 300+ year old framework, which is a lousy starting point.
Maybe we should start with Putin – his priors, his vision, his track record. Because it really doesn’t make any sense to talk about Ukraine since 2014 without thinking about Putin’s rise to power, about Chechnya (a key element in that rise), Georgia, and other Russian-provoked conflicts. Putin’s vision has been the subject of much debate – how important are the explicitly Ivan Ilyin and Aleksandr Dugin? – but Putin’s endorsement of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by which Germany and Russia agreed to make Poland disappear, and his manifesto from 2021 about Ukraine are pretty strong indicators. Above all, none of Putin’s actions seem to be motivated by fear of or competition with NATO and the West. (Indeed, with his success in weakening the West by funding Brexit and getting Trump elected, Putin probably concluded that he had nothing to worry about from that quarter.)
I recommend Timothy Snyder as an antidote to Mearsheimer, either https://youtu.be/AC0ITS4WaTE or this essay: https://reees.macmillan.yale.edu/news/timothy-snyder-god-russian
There were objections from other NATO countries, ones that at least had the fucking sense to recognize (and/or care about) the problem that Russia sees that sort of thing as a threat.
We were the ones with the power/ability to insist on that declaration (by NATO), not Georgia or Ukraine which can’t dictate what NATO does.
Their agency and sovereignty, like any other country’s, do not extend in that way. Because it’s not something that any old country out there just gets if it (or some of its population) merely happens to want that. It’s a membership that NATO countries themselves would have to consider and approve — obviously, they have their own agency and sovereignty too.
But you’re clearly just regurgitating some cheap talking points here, not thinking about what any of it is even supposed to mean. (Hint: it’s pure bullshit.)
I understand that just fine. It’s not a given that we should get ourselves tangled up in that. We should try to avoid wars with nuclear powers … right?
It’s always the same shit, whenever anyone tries to argue for peace. Utterly predictable.
Look, there are no serious plans that anyone can offer you to “fix everything.” That is not and has never been on the table. I would still prefer to not break everything, and one rather important piece of that plan is to avoid getting into a fucking war with Russia.
And for fuck’s sake, it’s a country, not a person named “Putin,” Rob. That’s what we’re dealing with here: a big fucking nuclear-armed country.
Nah, he has his own bizarre agenda, but the foreign policy “blob” would not let him do that even if he were serious about it.
It’s always funny watching you avoid answering actual questions. Did the US insist that Georgia and Ukraine join NATO, as you wrote?
You’re the sort of Westerner Putin loves. He says ‘boo’, you jump.
P.S. Right now, Russia is Putin.
From what Russia’s representatives say and do, it is apparent that negotiating peace is not possible at this point. Putin won’t accept anything less than total submission by Ukraine to all his terms. He already reneged on several international treaties. There are absolutely zero reasons to think that he, and thus Russia, can be trusted. Appeasing him would be an exercise in futility.
We (the countries that are free from Russia’s rule) can either help Ukraine or let it fall, but nothing in between. In all this mess is exactly and only one power that can stop the war instantly – and that is Russia.
As far as expanding NATO eastward – it was not NATO who forced us (Poles, Czechs etc.) to join. We wanted to join because we remembered how life was under the Russian boot and we did not want to risk it again, thank you very much.
@consciousness razor
how are other countries not helping Ukraine going improve the chances of peace?
this isn’t the first recent conflict between the two, and Russia is intent on annexing Ukraine. if Russia does annex Ukraine, there will just be a significant ongoing insurgency (hardly peace).
seems like peace requires Russia to change tack, and diplomacy isn’t working for that. giving Ukraine enough weapons to stay independent seems like the best option.
Russia has demonstrated that it has no interest in peace, which Putin made blatantly obvious by invading Ukraine. All the scary WW3 rhetoric comes from Putin, along with the devastation and death that he, personally, sent to Ukraine.
It takes some extra twisty logic to claim that the US is somehow to blame for the lack of peace.
In light of reality, giving Ukraine what they need in terms of fighting against a forcible annexation is fighting for peace. Russias track record under Putin is far more pertinent to any talk of peace. If he wants to decimate his armies, the end result might be far more peaceful for not only Russias neighboring countries, but could start off a far more peaceful chapter in world history. At present, there is not much the US can do to stop Russian aggression, but giving the defenders of Ukraine a fighting chance is morally necessary and a good use of all that wasted taxes that otherwise is just sitting in warehouses waiting to be decommissioned.
Lithuania crowdfunded a Baryktur missile for 6 mil. The Turkish company has given it to them for free, and said to use the money for humanitarian aid.
The US is not the only country that is doing it’s best to help the people of Ukraine by giving them what they have asked for , but we are the one that Putin is trying to blame for his murderous devastation. He sounds like any other abuser, their violence is always the victims fault. If those ‘Nazis’ hadn’t provoked Putin by existing, he would not have to bomb them to rubble and attempt a bit of genocide.
I’ve been thinking about my initial reaction to my analysis that led to me writing this post.
Basically, I see that Putin is insisting that the war be fought on terms that are “Russia can’t lose.” We get to bomb your cities but we threaten to nuke you if you bomb ours. Essentialy Putin is saying he expects everyone to do this his way.
My analysis, of the stomp-ability of the Russian navy and its army in Ukraine were unconsciously biased by my opinion that, fuck it, face-stomp the bear. Crush their “army” and offer its survivors surrender on terms that it disarms or dies. And sink the Russian navy. That will solve the Russians wanting a warm water port.
As I said above, I do not believe Putin has as credible a nuclear threat as he thinks he does. And if he loses his army and navy all at once, maybe if he’ll listen to an order to keep his hand from even twitching for the button or he personally will die along with a lot of Russian nuclear command stations.
Hitler was a gambler who was going to keep throwing the dice no matter what. Early in his career his sheer effrontery let him successfully out-play other powers that were still tired from WW1. But it becomes clear that he was going to keep throwing the dice, with increasingly wild schemes, and he was going to spin himself up to try anything he thought he could do. I think Putin is in that state of mind, too. This whole “lets blow up some cities”‘ is a replay of S Ossetia and Georgia. He thinks that he can do that. Even if he’s reasoned with, he’ll slip the rails later over something else. Like Hitler, he is used to fucking around and even if he loses, he doesn’t really face the consequences.
I doubt we could send Bush with some pictures of the “highway of death” to tell him it’s next wednesday if his artillery does not cease firing deliberately to destroy cities. I’d also have Bush give him a map with the location of all of Russia’s ballistic missile submarines. Bush is an ass but he’d have the gravitas and Putin would feel respected. Might listen.
Note on that last point: I’m willing to bet that the location of all Russian boomers is known. If it is then Russia can be face-stomped. If it is not, then all those fancy things we spent money on are no good and bitch, I want my money back. A few years ago I was talking to a guy at USENIX who said that there are satellite-based things that can image through a lot of water and see ballistic missile subs that don’t have their fancy coatings all fresh and tight. [and he explained some of how it works] There are electronic monitoring stations everywhere.
I am not sure if I am impressed by our boomers but they are way more impressive than the Russian ones, and our attack subs are actually damn good. Then there was that stirling-engined Swedish sub that took thru-the-periscope photos of the Carl Vinson. And the Japanese have those electric hybrid subs that are ghosts in the water. The Russian navy is mostly Kuznetsov-grade. It’s about as state of the art as those 1990s tanks they are driving in Ukraine.
Putin is probably like Hitler and Trump and Saddam Hussein and Bonaparte: he believes his own bullshit. The time for half measures may be over.
Putin has to believe his own bullshit, otherwise he would have retired years ago. he’s lined his pockets enough
Personally, I know fuck-all about military whatever-the-shit. I have no idea how credible your estimation of the current situation is, but I generally trust your judgement.
My big take-away, however, is that things are escalating on a global scale. It really feels like the big nuclear powers are getting twitchy fingers. This is bad news for everyone. It’s bad news for idiot states like Germany (hi!) that act as launch-proxies for the US empire, because they voluntarily paint big, red, blinking, honking targets on their backs if a large-scale conflict ever does break out.
Also:
You don’t build nuclear weapons unless you secretly-but-not-really-but-actually-maybe-for-real plan to eventually use them.
Also also:
Germany generously donating heavy weapons to the Ukraine can be translated as: Its dumping its out-dated garbage for free in order to make space for new hi-tech murder technology, all the while looking good in the press. Lots of contracts. Lots of money to be made.
In short:
This is a game solely played by sociopaths. Regular people are somehow cut out of the proceedings entirely. So much for democracy. (As a voter, nobody fucking asked me what I think about sending weapons to a foreign conflict. Yes, I’m pissed.)
Rob Grigjanis, #32:
Yes, which is what I said and what I meant. I don’t know why you think I was avoiding whatever question you have about that.
It’s also not hard to find info about this yourself, rather than asking me. That’s what you should do anyway, if you just don’t want to take my word for it, since me saying it again does nothing to alleviate such doubts. Wikipedia, 2008 Bucharest summit, April 2:
April 3:
cr @40:
Oh, I did look it up. I was just curious to see your response, since I saw no mention whatsoever of the US “insisting” on Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO.
The US and Poland supported membership in the action plan, which a long way from “joining NATO”. And rewriting “support” as “insistence” is just weird and misleading.
…which is a long way…
klatu@#39:
This is a game solely played by sociopaths. Regular people are somehow cut out of the proceedings entirely. So much for democracy.
Yup. When I realized that, it was really upsetting. We are all just tokens in the games of some of the worst people on earth, and they think nothing of our well-being. Some of them actively hate us.
dangerousbeans, #35:
I have no problem whatsoever with “helping” them. That’s not the same as sending them tons of military aid, which as I mentioned we’ve been doing, way before the official start of the war on Feb. 24, 2022.
If we had not done that shit I brought up earlier in the fist place, that would’ve been helpful. And now that we’re already in this fucking mess, we can still try to help by ending it ASAP, by seriously engaging in a diplomatic peace process. Of course, we should also offer whatever humanitarian aid we can.
There are plenty of reasons to doubt that is what they intend, not least because it would be extremely stupid to try to do that.
It’s about like saying the US would annex Quebec or something…. No matter how much anyone in this country might want it (just use your imagination here), that would be a gigantic and endless pain in the ass for us…. And as much as Quebecers would hate it, I’m sure, they still wouldn’t be nearly as antagonistic/militaristic about it as many Ukrainians are toward Russia. A “significant ongoing insurgency” (as you called it) is not beneficial for them, and I’m sure they understand that (better than you might).
We don’t need to make up things like this for them anyway. Russia has explicitly laid out a bunch of terms that they want, which are not the annexation of Ukraine. By assuming (which is all it is) that you know for a fact that they wouldn’t settle for anything less, what you’re doing is merely pretending as if there can be no peace process with terms that can be negotiated and accepted.
All you have to do is come at this honestly, without sneaking in tons of your own assumptions or misconceptions. Then just try to understand what they say their issues are from their point of view and work with that. That is not that hard to do; but practically everyone in the mainstream media has been busy giving bullshit excuses like this for why we shouldn’t even try a peaceful approach, and pretending like the US should only entertain more chaos, destruction and death (as it almost always chooses over peace). It’s their job to be mouthpieces for our military-industrial complex, so just stop listening to them and you will lose nothing of value.
So, even though Russia annexed Crimea, and it’s excuse for this invasion is subversive Nazis and evil Western culture, it’s somehow not really trying to annex more of Ukraine and it’s all the fault of the US for not preventing Russia from invading Ukraine.
That excuse is a paraphrase from Russian tv, so I’m going to trust their official propaganda and conclude they are liars and murderers.
Tethys, #45:
Maybe they want the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist regions. That would be “more of” Ukraine, but it is not “Ukraine.” So I appreciate the honesty in phrasing it that way, but not so much the reading comprehension I guess.
Or, they could be satisfied if those are separate from both Ukraine and Russia, that they would just be the DPR and LPR (or possibly a union of the two). That may be what those separatist groups want, which the Ukrainian government has refused despite all of their bullshitting about democracy and autonomy (this time and also when the issue was Crimea),
Russia has been backing them for a long time now, so it’s not hard to believe they would be on the same page about this by now and be willing to back their plans, whatever those might be. Because if they don’t follow through on that, they’d still have an insurgent mess on their hands after all is said and done, while getting basically nothing for it.
But If those people decide that they do want to join Russia sooner or later, rather than become independent countries, then I think that’s also none of my fucking business. It’s certainly not a good reason to have a proxy war, or maybe a direct war, with another nuclear power that could have even more devastating consequences for the entire fucking planet than a conventional war.
I think the difference is basically that I’m simply not okay with US imperialism. You seem to be, as long as you think there is something desirable (e.g., hurting Russia or Putin) to be gained from it for people like you or people to matter to you. That is just the same thing as simply being okay with US imperialism, because that is always what apologists think about our never-ending military disasters: that they (or somebody who matters) will get something out of it. But that excuse is not good enough. That would be like justifying murder because you don’t like the person who was being murdered — pure nonsense.
Now, when I say that, I think it would’ve been harder to convince you right off the bad that you’re okay with US imperialism. People like you always balk at such things and will just deny it without any further reasoning. All you have to do is say you’re offended and end the conversation.
Perhaps I should’ve started this way, since it might at least get your fucking attention enough to make you think straight. I guess I just doubt most people are able to get over the psychological defenses they put up for themselves in cases like this, so instead it was just about laying out the basic problems more directly, why none of this shit ends well and was a huge blunder that was entirely predictable (and was in fact being predicted many years ago).
But it can also be about why you should not want us doing shit like that anyway, even if it did result in some kind of outcome that you want. Because morally speaking, it just doesn’t make any fucking sense to act like “Putin’s bad” is a good enough excuse for more of our military escapades.
Either style of argument works for me, but i don’t know what might connect more with you.
I’m not ok with imperialism, and my family was in fact evicted from southern Ukraine due to Russians reneging on their promises. I might be a bit biased, but Russia has in fact stayed true to form.
It’s a very strange feeling to watch Russians bombing the shit out of those same villages. Many of our houses were still standing 120 years later, but now they’ve been reduced to rubble.
@consciousness razor: I’d be surprised if any of us are “OK with” US imperialism – it’s more of a bit of ground reality. Its what is, and wishing it were otherwise is pointless, it’s so heavy.
cr @44 & @48:
You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.
But you are OK with Russian imperialism. You’re certainly going to great lengths to make excuses for it. Glad we sorted that out.
Nope. I had no need to argue for it, given the thread and the interlocutors; but I have no doubt that Russia is also at fault for its own part in this and has been making a lot of big mistakes of its own.
What you apparently had trouble with is the idea that the US is in any way responsible for its own shitty decisions that have lead to where we are now. I think it’s pretty fucking obvious that both countries have been awful, and that’s been my position all along.
But I don’t know what makes you think that I went to any lengths at all to make any excuses for Russia. If you can point to anything I’ve actually said to that effect (i.e., not words being put into my mouth by you or anyone else), then I’m certainly happy to rethink whatever it is. If not, then you’re just seeing things that aren’t really there.
The US has not forcibly annexed another country since Hawaii. Russia is attempting to annex Ukraine right now.
Blaming the US for Russias invasion is nonsensical.
Ukraine has been defending itself from various Russian regimes for approximation 300 years, and the Holodomor is far more relevant to current events.
approximationapproximately.