The war in Ukraine was completely avoidable- all it really required was for Ukraine to agree to allow the Russian majority east separate, and for NATO to agree to never admit Ukraine to the treaty alliance. However, for the last 30 years NATO had expanded right up to the Russian border, and spent part of the last year and a half trying to induce color revolutions in other former Soviet Republics that are still aligned politically with Russia, like Belurus and Kazakhstan.
Now we are stuck with a situation where the likely path seems to be escalation. Putin bit off more than he could chew with the limited operation, and will now likely commit more forces to the conflict, which runs the risk that the US gets even more deeply involved in supporting Ukraine with air support and possibly actual troops if it looks like Ukraine's effort is about to collapse. The clowns in charge of the west and Russia are going to blunder us into a nuclear exchange if they don't start looking for an off-ramp soon.
WW II was also avoidable, had France & Britain merely surrendered. The 2014 not-quite invasion of the Donbas did not demonstrate a clear preference for Russia, tho the new anti-Russian language laws were very unpopular with many Russian Ukrainians. The takeover of Crimea was far more popular.
One off-ramp is the 1994 borders agreed to by Russia, when Ukraine gave up its nukes. Another might be Russia just keeping Crimea. My family, here in Slovakia, prays for a "just peace", and soon. It is up to Zelensky and Putin -- but the US & EU have influence on how much we support Ukraine, for how long, and for what borders.
Well, Tom, if we are going to treat Putin and Russia like they are Hitler and 1930s Germany, and this is what we have been doing since about 2010, then we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves edging closer and closer to WWIII.
They are far more like Saddam Hussein and Iraq in '91 invading Kuwait, which generated as US led international force with US boots on the ground to kick Saddam's butt back to Baghdad, but let him stay in power.
With a peace agreement where Saddam promised to destroy his nuke program (seems he mostly did) and document their destruction with delivery of the documentation (which he didn't do). He did murder some 30,000 non-combatant Kurds.How many UN SC resolutions did he violate? 7-8? 15-16? He lied to his generals about the nukes, who repeated those untruths to the CIA making them sure he had a WMD program.
(None of which mentioned by Noah in his notes on Iraq and how bad America was.)
We should expect Putin to also lie. (As well as Zelensky and Biden.)
The risk of him using nukes to avoid losing is so high, it becomes unthinkable - so most folk don't really think about it.
But it's why I think Zelensky + Putin will, sometime in 2-22 months, agree to old 1994 borders minus Crimea, but including the rubble of Mariupol.
Actually, no. We aren't treating them like Hitler and 1930s Germany. The West tried appeasement first, not immediate banding together and supplying of arms and reinforcing commitments.
Discussions of "anti-Russian language laws" in Ukraine usually miss the fact that no laws on the subject came into force in 2014. Here is what actually happened. The 2012 Yanukovich-era law then in effect basically gave Russian the same status as Ukrainian, except formally. It was very unpopular with nationally conscious Ukrainians because it did nothing to protect Ukrainian language in Ukraine while Russia was busy promoting Russian language in what it calls its 'near abroad'. After Ukrainian Parliament deposed Yanukovich in late February 2014, "Svoboda" put forward a proposal and the Parliament, in "dizzy with success" mode, voted to repeal this 2012 law. A few days later this change was vetoed by the then interim President and Speaker of Parliament "Bloody Pastor" Turchynov, who had enough sense to realize that this was an extremely bad idea at that moment, so the 2012 law remained in force. Unfortunately the damage was already done, as Russian and pro-Russian media went on to repeat the bogus claims of infringement of Russian-speakers' rights in Ukraine (while infringing far more the rights of non-Russian-speaking minorities in Russia itself, but who cares about that) as if this law had been repealed. In fact it was only invalidated by the Supreme Court of Ukraine in 2018 after a lot of wrangling. The current Ukrainian language law, which is mutatis mutandis about the same as its Russian equivalent with the addition of several years' interim periods for various changes, came into force in 2019.
This line of reasoning matters not a single whit. Even if you concede that NATO expansion pushing against Russian borders is a primary concern and cause for the war it still doesn't hold that Russia invading Ukraine is a justified, or semi justified, or understandable result. Russia invaded a sovereign nation because they had failed for decades to build a coalition of countries willing to work with them. Period, end of story from their point of view. Work with us or face the end of the bayonet is not acceptable to most Westerners, and sometimes there genuinely are wars with an aggressor and an aggrieved, and it shouldn't be a shock to anyone there there isn't much discussion about how Germany wasn't exactly treated fairly at Versailles, or how North Korea was separated from South Korea by the West, because every response isn't proportional, and any response isn't justified by some complaint (real or imagined).
I am not justifying the invasion, but I understand it from the Russian point of view. Why, exactly, was NATO expanded to include Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia? Where is the justification for that? You can't come back to me and say the situation in Ukraine is the justification- it is begging the question fallacy to do so. Enlarging NATO that way was always going to be a provocation, and we can't complain now that Russia has acted on that provocation.
Let me try it this way- what would the US do if China or Russia installed a government in Mexico that swore alliances to them and declared the US an enemy nation? I am pretty certain we wouldn't just sit back and take it.
This entire war was fathered by a bunch of morons on all sides, and the morons are still in charge of all sides, and none of them look to be finding a way to end it, only escalate it. I grew up in the Cold War, and I was never as afraid of nuclear war than I am today watching the clown shows running the world's various governments. Right now the best outcome I can see coming is a stalemate in Ukraine where the Russians and Ukrainians slaughter each other in a trench warfare, with my tax dollars funding half the killing.
The justification is that NATO is a military treaty. A larger alliance has (potentially) military benefits, and the purpose of NATO is to prevent a large European power from expanding its power through military subjugation of their neighbors, and Russia is the most likely culprit in such a scenario which is why those specific countries were interested in joining NATO and why NATO was interested in them joining. Russia's only complaint boils down to 'independent countries actually acting independently of Russian interests.
As far as you analogy goes- you skipped a whole bunch of steps. First Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in the 90s in exchange for Russian recognition of independence. They had already set and agreed to the conditions that would allow an independent nation in that geographic region, and they were the ones violating that agreement with the occupation of Crimea nearly a decade ago. Then Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine (complete with denials that there were going to invade up to the last minute) without provocation even after being largely granted the territory in Crimea without major repercussions from the West.
To claim to understand Russia's position and to blame the outcomes, even partially, on the West no appeasing Russia or backing down to their demands is extremely short sighted. Russia had already gained control of a substantial portion of Ukraine and the West mostly said 'this far, and maybe farther, maybe not' and Russia took that as tacit agreement that they could take all of Ukraine afterwards.
We have already gone one step down the appeasement path, and the only reason we aren't two steps down is that the Russians completely failed in their invasion of a country 1/8th their size. Had they not badly bungled almost every aspect of the war it is very likely that Ukraine would be divided in half or fully a satellite state at this point.
You are skipping a whole lot steps yourself- we promised the Russians in 1991 not to expand NATO to their borders, and we reneged on that promise not long afterwards. We share the blame here, and I no longer will participate in efforts to deny our country's share of the blame for this fiasco. I wish the Ukrainians well, but I see no good outcomes for them that don't include them ceding the territory taken in Crimea and the Donbass- they won't get those back without troops and air support from NATO, and I won't ever support that kind of action agains a nuclear power that can annihilate the world.
People who insist on not recognizing facts on the ground are going to get all of us killed if an end to this conflict isn't found in the next year. Where the hell are the peace nogotiations?
I think the war was completely avoidable if the US / NATO had not embraced Ukraine as its "project". But that decision was made long, long ago. The last six years or so has only been a question of whether and when Putin would make a military response. The one thing that may have cooled Putin's jets would have been Europe being prepared to shut-off Russia energy. But Europe didn't do that, in fact Europe made itself even more reliant on Russia. And so Putin saw the US flee from Afghanistan and he saw Europe captive on Russia energy supplies and Putin figured the West had no stomach to actually fight Russia.
Thing is, Putin has several lifelines. First is the US elections where Congress may likely become divided or even grant the GOP a majority. A Republican Senate would likely rubberstamp Ukraine funding, but a Republican House may not. Second is the economic collapse of Europe and the arrival of winter. How much misery do Western leaders wish to impose on its people?
The situation is sad because neither Russia nor Ukraine are strong enough to win but a stalemate creates ever greater misery for all of Europe.
I'm hardly a booster for Ukraine. I think the war was entirely avoidable and that the "good side" shares a lot of blame for it starting. I think many of the problems Ukraine had will still be there after the war even if they win, though I hope the experience of fighting the war might generate enough social bonding to break out of some old equilibirums. If the best case scenario outcome comes to pass, I still don't think supporting Ukraine was worth the risks.
However, I think the Vietnam reference is flawed.
1) Vietnam was a guerrilla conflict, this is a conventional conflict.
2) Ukraine has clear war aims that are measurable and achievable (we can debate how achievable they are, but "push army to the following borders" is certainly clear and at least possible).
3) America was the aggressor in Vietnam, Russia is the aggressor here.
4) The Vietcong could call on essentially unlimited reserves of fighters and the war itself generated new Vietcong fighters. Russia has the men it went into the conflict with and it has clearly shown it can't or won't replace them.
For the first six months of the conflict it seemed as if we were in a First World War trench warfare type situation. One in which nobody was going to move the front lines much and a lot of people would die in artillery duels. In such a situation, continuing the war in a futile attempt to wrest control of the Donbass seemed really dumb and immoral.
Now it appears that Ukraine is capable of large scale offensive action that can break Russian lines. Given all I've outlined above, they will eventually win the war.
Maybe in some alternate timeline of more reasonable people, we could skip all of the fighting and dying to get to that point and negotiate some deal, but I don't really see it happening. Probably the most likely outcome for a negotiated settlement is if both sides were pessimistic and thought there was something to gain from peace. Other than saving a few lives, its not clear to me that the Ukrainian side would gain much from peace at this point. Putin also isn't going to give up all that territory without a fight.
I don't think Putin will mobilize or use nukes. I think he will do what he's done the whole war, putz around and always wait till its too late to matter.
> Russia has the men it went into the conflict with and it has clearly shown it can't or won't replace them.
This is not quite correct. Russia runs only voluntary recruitment campaigns inside the country proper, but for months now it has been rounding up men in LDNR, kitting them up with whatever leftovers were available, giving them two or three weeks training if they're lucky, and using them in frontal attacks and trenches to shore up its own numbers. These units (called 'mobiki') have taken a lot of casualties, which may partly account for large discrepancies between Russian casualty numbers reported by UAF General Staff and those deduced from tracking Russian military burials and circumstantial evidence. You can find a recent video from Luhansk with girls saying there aren't any men around any more, just grandpas and boys. If Russia kept taking and consolidating control of ever more territory, it might have been able to keep recycling Ukrainian citizens this way, but as things stand, this is a non-renewable resource.
He did declare partial mobilization today, 300k reserves to be called up and all existing enlistments prolonged indefinitely. Does that count as putzing around in your opinion? And a more interesting question, why has he behaved this way? What do you think?
Isn't the Ukrainian army at this point like 3x that? With their six months training already under their belt instead of starting from scratch.
If Putin were taking this war seriously he should call up a minimum of a million men, six months ago. Honestly, given that Russia is 3x the size of Ukraine, shouldn't it be mobilizing a force 3x the size.
If you really going to fight a country with 44 million people, you're going to need millions of men. That's what Russia went into Ukraine with when it pushed the Germans out.
You can say the Russian people would hate it, but they will hate losing a long drawn out war more. What's the point of being a dictator if you can't actually do anything. Trying to mobilize after a failure reeks of weakness.
Putin hasn't acted like a person who takes this war seriously, he acts like someone reacting to the latest development with the minimal level of effort deemed necessary. If he doesn't take the war seriously, he shouldn't have invaded. The whole thing feels like a stunt he didn't think through and still isn't thinking through. He can still get a lot of people killed with such muddled thinking, but I don't think it's going to give him a W.
> Putin hasn't acted like a person who takes this war seriously
This still doesn't explain why he acts like that. His speeches and writings on the subject of Ukraine have been bellicose enough.
> they will hate losing a long drawn out war more
I'm not sure about that. A lot, perhaps the majority, of Russians seemingly don't give a flying fuck about foreign affairs or politics in general. They just want to grill. It's similar to how pre-modern peasants felt about the wars of their king, now that I think of it.
There are enough rebuttals to FdB's points in his comment section, including by a Swede (Nick), a Finn (jnlb), a Brit (Tom W) and a probable ex-Warsaw Pact guy (Vlad the Inhaler). One of Nick's points is so good that I'll take the liberty and quote it here:
--
To be perfectly frank, I think the isolationists/anti-imperialists are coping far harder than the interventionists. After all, they are suddenly confronted with a situation where the United States gets to intervene in a conflict without any moral doubts and the Russians, the righteous enemies of the Great Satan/the manly anti-woke exemplars of lost virtue (pick your favourite), did something widely condemned and worse yet keep bungling it spectacularly. NATO is suddenly rejuvenated and retroactively justified, American power abroad is solidified for another generation, the defence budget is secured from cuts, and all this while looking good.
The unread McRaney seems to be consistent with what works according the recent Chris Blattmann book "WHY WE FIGHT The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace".
No talk of "conspiracy theories" should be discussed without explicit note of the two year Russia Collusion Hoax investigation based on FBI accepting Clinton campaign lies and lying itself.
Because Democrats have far more college educated personnel who have emotional commitments to their truths, it seems unlikely that organized Republicans would actually use the street epistemology or deep canvassing, but I'd be happy to hear otherwise.
But David denies the possibility of his claims, implicitly PC/woke, being wrong
"If it's actually a true thing, if it's actually something that the evidence will support over and over again, if it's actually an actual, fundamental STEM-based truth, a stronger epistemology will get you closer to that STEM-based truth and that's what happens in a street epistemology thing."
False. All group IQ testing shows differences in average group IQs.
Group average performance on math SAT or chess tournaments show sex differences.
I'd guess David McRaney is unwilling to attempt to change minds to be more true in these two highly polarized and politicized areas.
I often wish Arnold would be a bit more clear in what he thinks - but just making a clear point gives lots of room to commenters, like me, to add other ideas. Which seems consistent with leaving more room for we readers.
My daughter recently gave me the third edition of Kling's Three Languages of Politics, and I think McRaney really avoids these three axes which are quite compelling. In the added chapter on Trump, there might be a new fourth axis of elite vs ordinary, which I think is part of the post-smartphone social media change.
Re: Freddie deBoer- this is why narrative writing is so fraught, you just have to drop highly salient facts to make it work. Ukraine was expected to lose the war quickly, and when they didn't lose it quickly they were expected to lose it in short order anyway, and then they were expected to lose it eventually. and the discussions were on how much land they would give up and in what regions would satisfy Russia. Only in the last few weeks have we gotten to the point where serious people are discussing how Ukraine might actually win the war and possibly expel Russia. If Americans were chomping at the bit for a righteous war in which the good guys win then this was not it until very, very recently. This entirely throws off his analysis because now the Americans are spending resources on a lost cause on a matter of principle or strategic interest, not on some deluded desire to be both righteous and strong. We are far to close to this conflict to be already making such basic mistakes about motivations of participants and onlookers. Yes a few years after the conflict ends the ending, whichever way it goes, will seem inevitable and (not so sharp) commenters will be cherry picking real outcomes against possible outcomes to craft narratives, but to already be framing it as if not only Ukraine winning is likely to a foregone conclusion but as always being such is a great dishonesty.
Noah Smith has been completely right about Ukraine throughout. Many people are trying to be too clever, twisting themselves in pretzels trying to find some justification for not supporting Ukraine. It’s the easiest FP call of my lifetime.
Freddie is a far better writer than Arnold, and a decent & mostly honest thinker. Arnold is an even better, and possibly more truthful thinker, with the writing advantage of brevity. (A similar advantage over Scott Alexander). Left this comment there:
Bravo, Freddie, well said. Very well said.
Tho maybe not as true as you'd like: Ukraine corruption IS talked about.
Russia using nukes IS talked about.
But I believe you're very accurate about recent decades: " no great good wars for the United States to win". Most Americans DO want to be good - and to win wars against bad guys. As you quote Patton (GC Scott) "America loves a winner." Certainly MAGA Republicans strongly do.
Yet you totally fail to note the problem for Biden supporters & Trump haters - if Trump had been allowed to win, Putin wouldn't have attacked.
1) US keeps pumping oil & gas, prices stay lower, Putin & Russia miss out on billions and billions of higher energy profits.
2) US military is not humiliated in leaving Afghanistan. Trump wanted to leave but would "not tolerate a loser." Winding down in far more order, and possibly not yet even gone.
3) Democrats usually sympathize with those who complain about America's imperfections, it's many problems, with America guilty first. So Putin's anti-NATO expansion would have greater retweets.
Because of these facts, any rational arguments against unlimited support for Ukraine risks opening the question about whether it wasn't a global mistake to somewhat unfairly put Biden in the White House. (the censorship of truth on Hunter Biden's laptop means the election was NOT "100% free and fair".)
Arnold wrote: “Although this struck me as correct, I did not like his book as much as I had expected. I can’t quite put a finger on what bothered me about it.”
It would be great if you could try to figure it out! Your book – The Three Languages of Politics – came up in the discussion, so I’m guessing you’ll have something interesting to say.
"Freddie’s point that we’re in one of those times where we need to feel like we’re fighting a good war strikes me as plausible. But I think that the consensus is not as strong and deep as it appears to be."
The last "good war" America was involved in was in 1812.
Regarding Ukraine, there is an undercurrent of worry that the war will expand if Putin feels trapped. CBS Sunday Morning had a story about people in the UK and US building bomb shelters. Many talking heads may be focused on the "good" war, but there is concern out there, too.
I haven't read McRaney's book, but I do not agree that 'to change someone’s mind, you have to make them more comfortable being part of your identity community and less comfortable being part of the identity community that holds the beliefs you want to change'. I think that this is a rather bad idea altogether.
First of all. identity communities based on narrowly held required beliefs are the problem, independent of whether the beliefs in question happen to be true or not. If you are a member of a group that requires you to believe certain things or face shaming or expulsion from the group, leave. If skepticism and doubt have no place in your group, then your group has become poisonous, and it's time to walk away from it.
This whole 'I will make you feel uncomfortable' usually amounts to bullying, and it is very clear that you cannot trust somebody who, instead of presenting evidence and making reasoned arguments tries to jerk you around emotionally and manipulate you into renouncing one set of beliefs so that you can belong to a group that has another set. Whoever plays the 'I will make you feel uncomfortable' card just hardens the opposition. They expected to get a fight from the untrustworthy, and you showed up right on schedule and flashed your 'I am an emotional bully' card.
At least in the podcast I heard with Russ Roberts, what McRaney was saying was not "I will make you feel uncomfortable". He explicitly argued what you're saying here, in fact, that this immediately entrenches people in their beliefs.
Rather, the goal was to change minds by making a person feel comfortable enough to reason the strengths and weaknesses of their own position.
After hearing the podcast I want to read the book, but if I had to guess the reason Arnold was disappointed with it is that even in the podcast, he seemed clearly uncomfortable applying his findings equally to the left and right. He was very reticent to admit that many of these techniques seem to be content neutral and could just as easily lead to counterproductive changes in thought. I thought Russ, being a really good interviewer, managed to highlight this without being a dick about it, but it was clear to me. In fairness to McRaney, he did acknowledge his point forthrightly though.
I expect you are on to something with that last paragraph. I find that people who talk about conspiracy theories as a big problem nowadays often share two key themes:
1: The conspiracy theories are all held by people who don't agree with me. People on my side do not have any incorrect theories of how the world works.
2: The conspiracy theories in question are always incorrect, usually to the point of being ridiculous.
(One can argue that we define "conspiracy theory" as incorrect, but then we need to be careful about the language and have a term for " a bunch of people got together to do something immoral or illegal". Conspiracy is usually that word.)
I expect McRaney is hitting point 1 with you (I haven't listened to the podcast). Increasingly I find that point 2 is hitting for me, because increasingly what are called conspiracy theories are turning out to be pretty true, in the broad strokes if not all the details. This makes me think that people who are talking about conspiracy theories being a problem are more concerned with people believing things they don't want them to believe, and less with the truth over all.
I disagree "the" problem is that people form identity communities. That is human nature, and going against nature is always a losing proposition.
A bigger problem is that only 10% at best of the population is swayed by reason and evidence, the rest are easily manipulated by emotional appeals/rhetoric.
Most people are uncomfortable with the inevitable conclusion, which is those that are swayed by reason and evidence must seize power and rule those who are incapable of reason.
It wasn't that people form communities and identify with the communities that is the problem. It's when the community starts policing what people in the communities are allowed to believe and shaming and ostracising dissenters that the community becomes cultish/poisonous.
So if a hypothetical "cult" polices for virtue, and ostracizes for vice, and upholds the true, the good, and the beautiful, and eschews the false, the bad, and the foul... Then you won't join it on the principle that it... Does or doesn't do what, exactly?
I don't want you and your 10% to seize power. I don't want the nudgers-in-chief to seize power. I don't want the globalists to seize power. I want to set up enduring institutions which makes it very, very, difficult for anybody to have much power over other people at all, which means designing to resist the actions of those who want it.
Because it's a blatant emotional crutch. Motivated reasoning. EVERYONE is easily manipulated by emotional appeals and rhetoric. EVERYONE believes they're swayed by reason and evidence.
Again, the Roberts/McRaney podcast was good, and one reason it was good was because it succinctly identified this problem.
My better idea is that like Socrates, I realize I know nothing, which makes me the wisest of men.
Another good idea is to not promote any idea that transparently sounds like something a cartoon supervillain would say.
The war in Ukraine was completely avoidable- all it really required was for Ukraine to agree to allow the Russian majority east separate, and for NATO to agree to never admit Ukraine to the treaty alliance. However, for the last 30 years NATO had expanded right up to the Russian border, and spent part of the last year and a half trying to induce color revolutions in other former Soviet Republics that are still aligned politically with Russia, like Belurus and Kazakhstan.
Now we are stuck with a situation where the likely path seems to be escalation. Putin bit off more than he could chew with the limited operation, and will now likely commit more forces to the conflict, which runs the risk that the US gets even more deeply involved in supporting Ukraine with air support and possibly actual troops if it looks like Ukraine's effort is about to collapse. The clowns in charge of the west and Russia are going to blunder us into a nuclear exchange if they don't start looking for an off-ramp soon.
WW II was also avoidable, had France & Britain merely surrendered. The 2014 not-quite invasion of the Donbas did not demonstrate a clear preference for Russia, tho the new anti-Russian language laws were very unpopular with many Russian Ukrainians. The takeover of Crimea was far more popular.
One off-ramp is the 1994 borders agreed to by Russia, when Ukraine gave up its nukes. Another might be Russia just keeping Crimea. My family, here in Slovakia, prays for a "just peace", and soon. It is up to Zelensky and Putin -- but the US & EU have influence on how much we support Ukraine, for how long, and for what borders.
Well, Tom, if we are going to treat Putin and Russia like they are Hitler and 1930s Germany, and this is what we have been doing since about 2010, then we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves edging closer and closer to WWIII.
They are far more like Saddam Hussein and Iraq in '91 invading Kuwait, which generated as US led international force with US boots on the ground to kick Saddam's butt back to Baghdad, but let him stay in power.
With a peace agreement where Saddam promised to destroy his nuke program (seems he mostly did) and document their destruction with delivery of the documentation (which he didn't do). He did murder some 30,000 non-combatant Kurds.How many UN SC resolutions did he violate? 7-8? 15-16? He lied to his generals about the nukes, who repeated those untruths to the CIA making them sure he had a WMD program.
(None of which mentioned by Noah in his notes on Iraq and how bad America was.)
We should expect Putin to also lie. (As well as Zelensky and Biden.)
The risk of him using nukes to avoid losing is so high, it becomes unthinkable - so most folk don't really think about it.
But it's why I think Zelensky + Putin will, sometime in 2-22 months, agree to old 1994 borders minus Crimea, but including the rubble of Mariupol.
Actually, no. We aren't treating them like Hitler and 1930s Germany. The West tried appeasement first, not immediate banding together and supplying of arms and reinforcing commitments.
Discussions of "anti-Russian language laws" in Ukraine usually miss the fact that no laws on the subject came into force in 2014. Here is what actually happened. The 2012 Yanukovich-era law then in effect basically gave Russian the same status as Ukrainian, except formally. It was very unpopular with nationally conscious Ukrainians because it did nothing to protect Ukrainian language in Ukraine while Russia was busy promoting Russian language in what it calls its 'near abroad'. After Ukrainian Parliament deposed Yanukovich in late February 2014, "Svoboda" put forward a proposal and the Parliament, in "dizzy with success" mode, voted to repeal this 2012 law. A few days later this change was vetoed by the then interim President and Speaker of Parliament "Bloody Pastor" Turchynov, who had enough sense to realize that this was an extremely bad idea at that moment, so the 2012 law remained in force. Unfortunately the damage was already done, as Russian and pro-Russian media went on to repeat the bogus claims of infringement of Russian-speakers' rights in Ukraine (while infringing far more the rights of non-Russian-speaking minorities in Russia itself, but who cares about that) as if this law had been repealed. In fact it was only invalidated by the Supreme Court of Ukraine in 2018 after a lot of wrangling. The current Ukrainian language law, which is mutatis mutandis about the same as its Russian equivalent with the addition of several years' interim periods for various changes, came into force in 2019.
War is always avoidable by pre-emptive surrender.
Then, by all means, pick up a rifle and buy yourself a ticket to Kyiv.
This line of reasoning matters not a single whit. Even if you concede that NATO expansion pushing against Russian borders is a primary concern and cause for the war it still doesn't hold that Russia invading Ukraine is a justified, or semi justified, or understandable result. Russia invaded a sovereign nation because they had failed for decades to build a coalition of countries willing to work with them. Period, end of story from their point of view. Work with us or face the end of the bayonet is not acceptable to most Westerners, and sometimes there genuinely are wars with an aggressor and an aggrieved, and it shouldn't be a shock to anyone there there isn't much discussion about how Germany wasn't exactly treated fairly at Versailles, or how North Korea was separated from South Korea by the West, because every response isn't proportional, and any response isn't justified by some complaint (real or imagined).
I am not justifying the invasion, but I understand it from the Russian point of view. Why, exactly, was NATO expanded to include Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia? Where is the justification for that? You can't come back to me and say the situation in Ukraine is the justification- it is begging the question fallacy to do so. Enlarging NATO that way was always going to be a provocation, and we can't complain now that Russia has acted on that provocation.
Let me try it this way- what would the US do if China or Russia installed a government in Mexico that swore alliances to them and declared the US an enemy nation? I am pretty certain we wouldn't just sit back and take it.
This entire war was fathered by a bunch of morons on all sides, and the morons are still in charge of all sides, and none of them look to be finding a way to end it, only escalate it. I grew up in the Cold War, and I was never as afraid of nuclear war than I am today watching the clown shows running the world's various governments. Right now the best outcome I can see coming is a stalemate in Ukraine where the Russians and Ukrainians slaughter each other in a trench warfare, with my tax dollars funding half the killing.
The justification is that NATO is a military treaty. A larger alliance has (potentially) military benefits, and the purpose of NATO is to prevent a large European power from expanding its power through military subjugation of their neighbors, and Russia is the most likely culprit in such a scenario which is why those specific countries were interested in joining NATO and why NATO was interested in them joining. Russia's only complaint boils down to 'independent countries actually acting independently of Russian interests.
As far as you analogy goes- you skipped a whole bunch of steps. First Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in the 90s in exchange for Russian recognition of independence. They had already set and agreed to the conditions that would allow an independent nation in that geographic region, and they were the ones violating that agreement with the occupation of Crimea nearly a decade ago. Then Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine (complete with denials that there were going to invade up to the last minute) without provocation even after being largely granted the territory in Crimea without major repercussions from the West.
To claim to understand Russia's position and to blame the outcomes, even partially, on the West no appeasing Russia or backing down to their demands is extremely short sighted. Russia had already gained control of a substantial portion of Ukraine and the West mostly said 'this far, and maybe farther, maybe not' and Russia took that as tacit agreement that they could take all of Ukraine afterwards.
We have already gone one step down the appeasement path, and the only reason we aren't two steps down is that the Russians completely failed in their invasion of a country 1/8th their size. Had they not badly bungled almost every aspect of the war it is very likely that Ukraine would be divided in half or fully a satellite state at this point.
You are skipping a whole lot steps yourself- we promised the Russians in 1991 not to expand NATO to their borders, and we reneged on that promise not long afterwards. We share the blame here, and I no longer will participate in efforts to deny our country's share of the blame for this fiasco. I wish the Ukrainians well, but I see no good outcomes for them that don't include them ceding the territory taken in Crimea and the Donbass- they won't get those back without troops and air support from NATO, and I won't ever support that kind of action agains a nuclear power that can annihilate the world.
People who insist on not recognizing facts on the ground are going to get all of us killed if an end to this conflict isn't found in the next year. Where the hell are the peace nogotiations?
"we promised the Russians in 1991 not to expand NATO to their borders"
That's not correct.
https://theconversation.com/ukraine-the-history-behind-russias-claim-that-nato-promised-not-to-expand-to-the-east-177085
I think the war was completely avoidable if the US / NATO had not embraced Ukraine as its "project". But that decision was made long, long ago. The last six years or so has only been a question of whether and when Putin would make a military response. The one thing that may have cooled Putin's jets would have been Europe being prepared to shut-off Russia energy. But Europe didn't do that, in fact Europe made itself even more reliant on Russia. And so Putin saw the US flee from Afghanistan and he saw Europe captive on Russia energy supplies and Putin figured the West had no stomach to actually fight Russia.
Thing is, Putin has several lifelines. First is the US elections where Congress may likely become divided or even grant the GOP a majority. A Republican Senate would likely rubberstamp Ukraine funding, but a Republican House may not. Second is the economic collapse of Europe and the arrival of winter. How much misery do Western leaders wish to impose on its people?
The situation is sad because neither Russia nor Ukraine are strong enough to win but a stalemate creates ever greater misery for all of Europe.
Agree with the first PP, the second we'll have to wait and see...
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Covid 19 vaccine damage repair protocols:
https://davenarby.substack.com/p/covid-19-vaccine-damage-repair-protocol
I'm hardly a booster for Ukraine. I think the war was entirely avoidable and that the "good side" shares a lot of blame for it starting. I think many of the problems Ukraine had will still be there after the war even if they win, though I hope the experience of fighting the war might generate enough social bonding to break out of some old equilibirums. If the best case scenario outcome comes to pass, I still don't think supporting Ukraine was worth the risks.
However, I think the Vietnam reference is flawed.
1) Vietnam was a guerrilla conflict, this is a conventional conflict.
2) Ukraine has clear war aims that are measurable and achievable (we can debate how achievable they are, but "push army to the following borders" is certainly clear and at least possible).
3) America was the aggressor in Vietnam, Russia is the aggressor here.
4) The Vietcong could call on essentially unlimited reserves of fighters and the war itself generated new Vietcong fighters. Russia has the men it went into the conflict with and it has clearly shown it can't or won't replace them.
For the first six months of the conflict it seemed as if we were in a First World War trench warfare type situation. One in which nobody was going to move the front lines much and a lot of people would die in artillery duels. In such a situation, continuing the war in a futile attempt to wrest control of the Donbass seemed really dumb and immoral.
Now it appears that Ukraine is capable of large scale offensive action that can break Russian lines. Given all I've outlined above, they will eventually win the war.
Maybe in some alternate timeline of more reasonable people, we could skip all of the fighting and dying to get to that point and negotiate some deal, but I don't really see it happening. Probably the most likely outcome for a negotiated settlement is if both sides were pessimistic and thought there was something to gain from peace. Other than saving a few lives, its not clear to me that the Ukrainian side would gain much from peace at this point. Putin also isn't going to give up all that territory without a fight.
I don't think Putin will mobilize or use nukes. I think he will do what he's done the whole war, putz around and always wait till its too late to matter.
> Russia has the men it went into the conflict with and it has clearly shown it can't or won't replace them.
This is not quite correct. Russia runs only voluntary recruitment campaigns inside the country proper, but for months now it has been rounding up men in LDNR, kitting them up with whatever leftovers were available, giving them two or three weeks training if they're lucky, and using them in frontal attacks and trenches to shore up its own numbers. These units (called 'mobiki') have taken a lot of casualties, which may partly account for large discrepancies between Russian casualty numbers reported by UAF General Staff and those deduced from tracking Russian military burials and circumstantial evidence. You can find a recent video from Luhansk with girls saying there aren't any men around any more, just grandpas and boys. If Russia kept taking and consolidating control of ever more territory, it might have been able to keep recycling Ukrainian citizens this way, but as things stand, this is a non-renewable resource.
He did declare partial mobilization today, 300k reserves to be called up and all existing enlistments prolonged indefinitely. Does that count as putzing around in your opinion? And a more interesting question, why has he behaved this way? What do you think?
Isn't the Ukrainian army at this point like 3x that? With their six months training already under their belt instead of starting from scratch.
If Putin were taking this war seriously he should call up a minimum of a million men, six months ago. Honestly, given that Russia is 3x the size of Ukraine, shouldn't it be mobilizing a force 3x the size.
If you really going to fight a country with 44 million people, you're going to need millions of men. That's what Russia went into Ukraine with when it pushed the Germans out.
You can say the Russian people would hate it, but they will hate losing a long drawn out war more. What's the point of being a dictator if you can't actually do anything. Trying to mobilize after a failure reeks of weakness.
Putin hasn't acted like a person who takes this war seriously, he acts like someone reacting to the latest development with the minimal level of effort deemed necessary. If he doesn't take the war seriously, he shouldn't have invaded. The whole thing feels like a stunt he didn't think through and still isn't thinking through. He can still get a lot of people killed with such muddled thinking, but I don't think it's going to give him a W.
> Putin hasn't acted like a person who takes this war seriously
This still doesn't explain why he acts like that. His speeches and writings on the subject of Ukraine have been bellicose enough.
> they will hate losing a long drawn out war more
I'm not sure about that. A lot, perhaps the majority, of Russians seemingly don't give a flying fuck about foreign affairs or politics in general. They just want to grill. It's similar to how pre-modern peasants felt about the wars of their king, now that I think of it.
There are enough rebuttals to FdB's points in his comment section, including by a Swede (Nick), a Finn (jnlb), a Brit (Tom W) and a probable ex-Warsaw Pact guy (Vlad the Inhaler). One of Nick's points is so good that I'll take the liberty and quote it here:
--
To be perfectly frank, I think the isolationists/anti-imperialists are coping far harder than the interventionists. After all, they are suddenly confronted with a situation where the United States gets to intervene in a conflict without any moral doubts and the Russians, the righteous enemies of the Great Satan/the manly anti-woke exemplars of lost virtue (pick your favourite), did something widely condemned and worse yet keep bungling it spectacularly. NATO is suddenly rejuvenated and retroactively justified, American power abroad is solidified for another generation, the defence budget is secured from cuts, and all this while looking good.
--
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/war-as-cope-ukraine-as-desert-storm/comment/9011744
The unread McRaney seems to be consistent with what works according the recent Chris Blattmann book "WHY WE FIGHT The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace".
No talk of "conspiracy theories" should be discussed without explicit note of the two year Russia Collusion Hoax investigation based on FBI accepting Clinton campaign lies and lying itself.
Because Democrats have far more college educated personnel who have emotional commitments to their truths, it seems unlikely that organized Republicans would actually use the street epistemology or deep canvassing, but I'd be happy to hear otherwise.
But David denies the possibility of his claims, implicitly PC/woke, being wrong
"If it's actually a true thing, if it's actually something that the evidence will support over and over again, if it's actually an actual, fundamental STEM-based truth, a stronger epistemology will get you closer to that STEM-based truth and that's what happens in a street epistemology thing."
False. All group IQ testing shows differences in average group IQs.
Group average performance on math SAT or chess tournaments show sex differences.
I'd guess David McRaney is unwilling to attempt to change minds to be more true in these two highly polarized and politicized areas.
I often wish Arnold would be a bit more clear in what he thinks - but just making a clear point gives lots of room to commenters, like me, to add other ideas. Which seems consistent with leaving more room for we readers.
My daughter recently gave me the third edition of Kling's Three Languages of Politics, and I think McRaney really avoids these three axes which are quite compelling. In the added chapter on Trump, there might be a new fourth axis of elite vs ordinary, which I think is part of the post-smartphone social media change.
Re: Freddie deBoer- this is why narrative writing is so fraught, you just have to drop highly salient facts to make it work. Ukraine was expected to lose the war quickly, and when they didn't lose it quickly they were expected to lose it in short order anyway, and then they were expected to lose it eventually. and the discussions were on how much land they would give up and in what regions would satisfy Russia. Only in the last few weeks have we gotten to the point where serious people are discussing how Ukraine might actually win the war and possibly expel Russia. If Americans were chomping at the bit for a righteous war in which the good guys win then this was not it until very, very recently. This entirely throws off his analysis because now the Americans are spending resources on a lost cause on a matter of principle or strategic interest, not on some deluded desire to be both righteous and strong. We are far to close to this conflict to be already making such basic mistakes about motivations of participants and onlookers. Yes a few years after the conflict ends the ending, whichever way it goes, will seem inevitable and (not so sharp) commenters will be cherry picking real outcomes against possible outcomes to craft narratives, but to already be framing it as if not only Ukraine winning is likely to a foregone conclusion but as always being such is a great dishonesty.
Noah Smith has been completely right about Ukraine throughout. Many people are trying to be too clever, twisting themselves in pretzels trying to find some justification for not supporting Ukraine. It’s the easiest FP call of my lifetime.
Freddie is a far better writer than Arnold, and a decent & mostly honest thinker. Arnold is an even better, and possibly more truthful thinker, with the writing advantage of brevity. (A similar advantage over Scott Alexander). Left this comment there:
Bravo, Freddie, well said. Very well said.
Tho maybe not as true as you'd like: Ukraine corruption IS talked about.
Russia using nukes IS talked about.
But I believe you're very accurate about recent decades: " no great good wars for the United States to win". Most Americans DO want to be good - and to win wars against bad guys. As you quote Patton (GC Scott) "America loves a winner." Certainly MAGA Republicans strongly do.
Yet you totally fail to note the problem for Biden supporters & Trump haters - if Trump had been allowed to win, Putin wouldn't have attacked.
1) US keeps pumping oil & gas, prices stay lower, Putin & Russia miss out on billions and billions of higher energy profits.
2) US military is not humiliated in leaving Afghanistan. Trump wanted to leave but would "not tolerate a loser." Winding down in far more order, and possibly not yet even gone.
3) Democrats usually sympathize with those who complain about America's imperfections, it's many problems, with America guilty first. So Putin's anti-NATO expansion would have greater retweets.
Because of these facts, any rational arguments against unlimited support for Ukraine risks opening the question about whether it wasn't a global mistake to somewhat unfairly put Biden in the White House. (the censorship of truth on Hunter Biden's laptop means the election was NOT "100% free and fair".)
What IF:
Trump had won?
No Ukraine invasion in 2022.
Arnold wrote: “Although this struck me as correct, I did not like his book as much as I had expected. I can’t quite put a finger on what bothered me about it.”
It would be great if you could try to figure it out! Your book – The Three Languages of Politics – came up in the discussion, so I’m guessing you’ll have something interesting to say.
Important takeaway IMO is that this is a mostly emotional/rhetorical appeal, not a reasoned one (join my tribe you'll feel better).
"Freddie’s point that we’re in one of those times where we need to feel like we’re fighting a good war strikes me as plausible. But I think that the consensus is not as strong and deep as it appears to be."
The last "good war" America was involved in was in 1812.
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Covid 19 vaccine damage repair protocols:
https://davenarby.substack.com/p/covid-19-vaccine-damage-repair-protocol
Regarding Ukraine, there is an undercurrent of worry that the war will expand if Putin feels trapped. CBS Sunday Morning had a story about people in the UK and US building bomb shelters. Many talking heads may be focused on the "good" war, but there is concern out there, too.
CBS Sunday Morning's only purpose is to terrify normies so as to ruin their Sunday and provide Archons with moar loosh.
I haven't read McRaney's book, but I do not agree that 'to change someone’s mind, you have to make them more comfortable being part of your identity community and less comfortable being part of the identity community that holds the beliefs you want to change'. I think that this is a rather bad idea altogether.
First of all. identity communities based on narrowly held required beliefs are the problem, independent of whether the beliefs in question happen to be true or not. If you are a member of a group that requires you to believe certain things or face shaming or expulsion from the group, leave. If skepticism and doubt have no place in your group, then your group has become poisonous, and it's time to walk away from it.
This whole 'I will make you feel uncomfortable' usually amounts to bullying, and it is very clear that you cannot trust somebody who, instead of presenting evidence and making reasoned arguments tries to jerk you around emotionally and manipulate you into renouncing one set of beliefs so that you can belong to a group that has another set. Whoever plays the 'I will make you feel uncomfortable' card just hardens the opposition. They expected to get a fight from the untrustworthy, and you showed up right on schedule and flashed your 'I am an emotional bully' card.
At least in the podcast I heard with Russ Roberts, what McRaney was saying was not "I will make you feel uncomfortable". He explicitly argued what you're saying here, in fact, that this immediately entrenches people in their beliefs.
Rather, the goal was to change minds by making a person feel comfortable enough to reason the strengths and weaknesses of their own position.
After hearing the podcast I want to read the book, but if I had to guess the reason Arnold was disappointed with it is that even in the podcast, he seemed clearly uncomfortable applying his findings equally to the left and right. He was very reticent to admit that many of these techniques seem to be content neutral and could just as easily lead to counterproductive changes in thought. I thought Russ, being a really good interviewer, managed to highlight this without being a dick about it, but it was clear to me. In fairness to McRaney, he did acknowledge his point forthrightly though.
I expect you are on to something with that last paragraph. I find that people who talk about conspiracy theories as a big problem nowadays often share two key themes:
1: The conspiracy theories are all held by people who don't agree with me. People on my side do not have any incorrect theories of how the world works.
2: The conspiracy theories in question are always incorrect, usually to the point of being ridiculous.
(One can argue that we define "conspiracy theory" as incorrect, but then we need to be careful about the language and have a term for " a bunch of people got together to do something immoral or illegal". Conspiracy is usually that word.)
I expect McRaney is hitting point 1 with you (I haven't listened to the podcast). Increasingly I find that point 2 is hitting for me, because increasingly what are called conspiracy theories are turning out to be pretty true, in the broad strokes if not all the details. This makes me think that people who are talking about conspiracy theories being a problem are more concerned with people believing things they don't want them to believe, and less with the truth over all.
I disagree "the" problem is that people form identity communities. That is human nature, and going against nature is always a losing proposition.
A bigger problem is that only 10% at best of the population is swayed by reason and evidence, the rest are easily manipulated by emotional appeals/rhetoric.
Most people are uncomfortable with the inevitable conclusion, which is those that are swayed by reason and evidence must seize power and rule those who are incapable of reason.
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Covid 19 vaccine damage repair protocols:
https://davenarby.substack.com/p/covid-19-vaccine-damage-repair-protocol
It wasn't that people form communities and identify with the communities that is the problem. It's when the community starts policing what people in the communities are allowed to believe and shaming and ostracising dissenters that the community becomes cultish/poisonous.
So if a hypothetical "cult" polices for virtue, and ostracizes for vice, and upholds the true, the good, and the beautiful, and eschews the false, the bad, and the foul... Then you won't join it on the principle that it... Does or doesn't do what, exactly?
... allows criticism and disagreement as to what is true, good, beautiful, false, bad and foul.
The "good" (edited: from "bad", my bad heheh) cult you describe currently holds power in every nation I'm aware of.
And yet you assume that me and mine seizing power would somehow make things worse. Why?
because you think the problem is that 'they are the bad cult' rather than 'they hold power over you'.
How emotionally comfortable for those who seize power that they're the super smart people who are swayed by reason and evidence.
Why would you assume they are comfortable with this?
Also, you got a better idea? I'm all ears baby.
I don't want you and your 10% to seize power. I don't want the nudgers-in-chief to seize power. I don't want the globalists to seize power. I want to set up enduring institutions which makes it very, very, difficult for anybody to have much power over other people at all, which means designing to resist the actions of those who want it.
Problem is, the institutions you desire can't be created without... (Wait for it...) Power.
The globalists already have power. Unless you first gain at least enough power to be sovereign from them, you won't get to build your institutions.
I strongly recommend you read The Populist Delusion by Neema Parvini.
I live in Sweden. I think that our institutions held up pretty well over the Pandemic.
Because it's a blatant emotional crutch. Motivated reasoning. EVERYONE is easily manipulated by emotional appeals and rhetoric. EVERYONE believes they're swayed by reason and evidence.
Again, the Roberts/McRaney podcast was good, and one reason it was good was because it succinctly identified this problem.
My better idea is that like Socrates, I realize I know nothing, which makes me the wisest of men.
Another good idea is to not promote any idea that transparently sounds like something a cartoon supervillain would say.
You assume wrong, I'm not comfortable with what must be done. But be done it must.
"My better idea is that like Socrates, I realize I know nothing, which makes me the wisest of men."
So, that non-answer indicates you will do nothing, and therefore be ruled. Hope you're OK with that.