It's entirely possible that annexation would be better than autonomy. A legitimate gripe about the autonomy deal is that it would give Putin power inside Ukraines parliament. Smart commentators noted that autonomy was probably more pro-Putin then annexation.
If Donbass was just annexed this could be avoided. The autonomy thing seems more about saving face (pretending that borders are sacrosanct) than finding a good workable solution.
Zelensky tried to implement Minsk, as promising to end the Donbass war was part of his landslide victory, including going out to Donbass and telling the nazies that he wasn't some loser they could push around. However, when push came to shove it turned out they could push him around. It probably doesn't help that the oligarch behind Zelensky funds Azov and other far right military groups and uses them as a personal army.
And of course the west encouraged Zelensky to take a hard line stand, which he eventually came around to after realizing he couldn't actually command the army in Donbas anyway.
I still think the fundamental problem with Ukraine is that it isn't a natural country. People in the middle provinces could probably get along, but the far west and far east are just fundamentally at odds.
Today I saw a picture from an Azov base in Maripoul. The DPR capture it and they found a woman's corpse in the basement. It had been tortured and a bloody swastika carved into her stomach. Maybe you can say this is propaganda, but I've seen plenty of images and videos like this from all over Ukraine, most of it uploaded by Ukranians. How can somebody from Maripoul and somebody from Lviv ever get along. A divorce makes a lot more sense.
There's a lot of daylight between 'Putin is rational, self-interested, and driven by totally-legitimate security interests' and 'Putin is Hitler.' First, I think it's clear that Putin wasn't just looking for neutrality and the eastern breakaway regions recognized, he wanted to subsume the whole of Ukraine, whether by annexation or installing a puppet regime; when I see people writing as if they think he just wanted neutrality and the eastern regions, it's self-discrediting at this point.
Anyway, the rule of balance of power politics is that a nation will expand its influence and territory until its hegemony matches its military might, or contract in influence and territory as the case may be. In order for Russia to reach the point where it's willing to accept neutrality + independence for Donetsk/Luhansk or something like that, it had to be made to realize that it wasn't as militarily powerful as it thought it was, enough to take the whole country at a tolerable cost. It wasn't just a matter of the parties not 'negotiating hard enough.' Sometimes wars have to be fought so nations can learn what they are or aren't capable of.
Re: "So one lesson, call it the Bob Wright lesson, is that we should try harder at negotiation."
What if "we" (presumably, US/NATO) believes that it doesn't have to negotiate a deal because Russia will look wrong if Russia invades? Negotiations aren't salient, vivid, categorical -- and invasion is. Instead, "we" pokes the bear, in the belief that (a) the bear probably won't invade because it's a bad look, and (b) most people will focus naturally on the invasion rather than the poking, if the bear does invade.
Hitler did not invade Czechoslovakia; he was "invited in" after he browbeat the Czech leader. The leaders of Poland, on the other hand, refused to hand anything over to Hitler, so he did invade Poland.
Czechoslovakia emerged from WW2 relatively unscathed, certainly compared to Poland.
The lead up to the war that started in September 1939 is much more nuanced (and fascinating) than most people are aware.
Re: "A lesson we could be learning is that the consequences of any foreign policy, including non-interventionism, are difficult to evaluate at the time they are undertaken and difficult to predict relative to the long term. I think of that as the libertarian humility lesson. It is the one I would push the most."
Is it difficult to evaluate the short-term consequences of military intervention? Well, one consequence, invariably, is great collateral harm: many innocent civilian deaths and massive property destruction. This much we do know. Anyone who rejects collective guilt will evaluate these clear and present collateral harms as awful.
Is it plausible that short-term consequences of non-intervention would be similarly awful? Those who advocate war bear the burden of proof. It speaks volumes that no-one makes the counter-argument: 'If we attempt to incapacitate our enemy, by means of war, we very probably will thereby save more lives in the short term than war kills.'
Long-term consequences of any foreign policy are indeed shrouded in uncertainty. For example, does military intervention strengthen deterrence? Or does it plant seeds of revanche?
Thus we have certainty of massive clear-and-present harms versus conjectures about the balance and scale of uncertain long-term costs and benefits. This contrast justifies a baseline presumption against military intervention. Do those who favor military intervention make a clear and convincing case?
Libertarian humility need not entail paralysis. It can focus on clear-and-present peaceful help for the weak and the vulnerable; for example, humanitarian aid and open borders for war refugees.
A libertarian coda: War, today, causes bigger government, which then persists long-term.
Note: Economic sanctions are an intermediate remedy. Richard Hanania and Arnold Kling make strong cases against sanctions.
How does the West offer the Ukraine status quo in exchange for Russia not changing the status quo? But fine, let's be willing to settle for that in a negotiation in which each side will initially ask for more.
I don't see how opposing the "current thing" is operational. And what if the definition of the current thing is multidimensional. Is green energy investment the current thing? Or is it the belief that unaverted climate change will cause huge costs?
It's entirely possible that annexation would be better than autonomy. A legitimate gripe about the autonomy deal is that it would give Putin power inside Ukraines parliament. Smart commentators noted that autonomy was probably more pro-Putin then annexation.
If Donbass was just annexed this could be avoided. The autonomy thing seems more about saving face (pretending that borders are sacrosanct) than finding a good workable solution.
Zelensky tried to implement Minsk, as promising to end the Donbass war was part of his landslide victory, including going out to Donbass and telling the nazies that he wasn't some loser they could push around. However, when push came to shove it turned out they could push him around. It probably doesn't help that the oligarch behind Zelensky funds Azov and other far right military groups and uses them as a personal army.
And of course the west encouraged Zelensky to take a hard line stand, which he eventually came around to after realizing he couldn't actually command the army in Donbas anyway.
I still think the fundamental problem with Ukraine is that it isn't a natural country. People in the middle provinces could probably get along, but the far west and far east are just fundamentally at odds.
Today I saw a picture from an Azov base in Maripoul. The DPR capture it and they found a woman's corpse in the basement. It had been tortured and a bloody swastika carved into her stomach. Maybe you can say this is propaganda, but I've seen plenty of images and videos like this from all over Ukraine, most of it uploaded by Ukranians. How can somebody from Maripoul and somebody from Lviv ever get along. A divorce makes a lot more sense.
There's a lot of daylight between 'Putin is rational, self-interested, and driven by totally-legitimate security interests' and 'Putin is Hitler.' First, I think it's clear that Putin wasn't just looking for neutrality and the eastern breakaway regions recognized, he wanted to subsume the whole of Ukraine, whether by annexation or installing a puppet regime; when I see people writing as if they think he just wanted neutrality and the eastern regions, it's self-discrediting at this point.
Anyway, the rule of balance of power politics is that a nation will expand its influence and territory until its hegemony matches its military might, or contract in influence and territory as the case may be. In order for Russia to reach the point where it's willing to accept neutrality + independence for Donetsk/Luhansk or something like that, it had to be made to realize that it wasn't as militarily powerful as it thought it was, enough to take the whole country at a tolerable cost. It wasn't just a matter of the parties not 'negotiating hard enough.' Sometimes wars have to be fought so nations can learn what they are or aren't capable of.
Re: "So one lesson, call it the Bob Wright lesson, is that we should try harder at negotiation."
What if "we" (presumably, US/NATO) believes that it doesn't have to negotiate a deal because Russia will look wrong if Russia invades? Negotiations aren't salient, vivid, categorical -- and invasion is. Instead, "we" pokes the bear, in the belief that (a) the bear probably won't invade because it's a bad look, and (b) most people will focus naturally on the invasion rather than the poking, if the bear does invade.
Hitler did not invade Czechoslovakia; he was "invited in" after he browbeat the Czech leader. The leaders of Poland, on the other hand, refused to hand anything over to Hitler, so he did invade Poland.
Czechoslovakia emerged from WW2 relatively unscathed, certainly compared to Poland.
The lead up to the war that started in September 1939 is much more nuanced (and fascinating) than most people are aware.
Re: "A lesson we could be learning is that the consequences of any foreign policy, including non-interventionism, are difficult to evaluate at the time they are undertaken and difficult to predict relative to the long term. I think of that as the libertarian humility lesson. It is the one I would push the most."
Is it difficult to evaluate the short-term consequences of military intervention? Well, one consequence, invariably, is great collateral harm: many innocent civilian deaths and massive property destruction. This much we do know. Anyone who rejects collective guilt will evaluate these clear and present collateral harms as awful.
Is it plausible that short-term consequences of non-intervention would be similarly awful? Those who advocate war bear the burden of proof. It speaks volumes that no-one makes the counter-argument: 'If we attempt to incapacitate our enemy, by means of war, we very probably will thereby save more lives in the short term than war kills.'
Long-term consequences of any foreign policy are indeed shrouded in uncertainty. For example, does military intervention strengthen deterrence? Or does it plant seeds of revanche?
Thus we have certainty of massive clear-and-present harms versus conjectures about the balance and scale of uncertain long-term costs and benefits. This contrast justifies a baseline presumption against military intervention. Do those who favor military intervention make a clear and convincing case?
Libertarian humility need not entail paralysis. It can focus on clear-and-present peaceful help for the weak and the vulnerable; for example, humanitarian aid and open borders for war refugees.
A libertarian coda: War, today, causes bigger government, which then persists long-term.
Note: Economic sanctions are an intermediate remedy. Richard Hanania and Arnold Kling make strong cases against sanctions.
How does the West offer the Ukraine status quo in exchange for Russia not changing the status quo? But fine, let's be willing to settle for that in a negotiation in which each side will initially ask for more.
I don't see how opposing the "current thing" is operational. And what if the definition of the current thing is multidimensional. Is green energy investment the current thing? Or is it the belief that unaverted climate change will cause huge costs?