Re: "there may be a strategic justification for sending arms. That is, although prolonging the war will not save Ukraine, it is serving to reduce Mr. Putin’s ability to pursue further military adventures."
The frontal cortex would ask also whether sending arms substantially increases risk of escalation to a direct war between NATO and Russia.
'Red lines' are shifting under pressure. Today, WSJ reports: "Russian Missiles Strike Ukrainian Military Training Base Near Polish Border
Attack on site where U.S. trained local forces kills at least 35, follows Moscow warning that arms shipments to Kyiv won’t be tolerated.":
A lot of people imagine we can sustain an Afghan-style insurgency in Ukraine if the Russians succeed in occupying(for certain definitions of the word) the country without looking at the operational and strategic environments. There was a lot of desert and mountain between Afghanistan and Moscow, Russian soldiers were fighting an alien population, and the flow of supplies was already constrained by the surrounding territory being controlled by people who were at best only nominally allied with the US. Ukraine is on the southwest edge of the Eurasian hordelands with few barriers between it and Moscow, the population may be hostile but is often Russian-fluent (there's probably a reason Putin wants to bring in Syrians), and it's right up against NATO allies. We're banking an awful lot on the restraint and patience of Putin and his inner circle (who did not talk him down from a full-on Ukraine invasion) to assume that Russian forces will sit there and bleed without making an effort to interdict supplies flowing to the insurgency beyond the Ukraine borders just because those countries are now members of NATO, especially after Biden has publicly admitted to personally killing the Polish MiG transfer because it might widen the war.
I'm not very taken by the metaphor. Seems to me that labeling one view the "frontal cortex" and another the "amygdala" is effectively another way of labeling them "smart" and "stupid". That assumes the wisdom of de-escalation, which is not so obvious to me, even after a little deliberation.
Another framing is that de-escalation at all costs is short run thinking, while tit for tat escalation is long run thinking. That framing has the opposite effect. Or one could stick with the amygdala metaphor and assert de-escalation represents fear without a coherent plan to deter Putin next time.
The metaphor -- frontal cortex (deliberation) vs amygdala (emotion) -- and the case for the frontal cortex don't assume the wisdom of de-escalation, or indeed of any specific policy. The point is to reason to a policy conclusion, after carefully considering strategic context, social psychology, capabilities, key individuals, risk preferences, time preferences, and large degrees of uncertainty.
Let me mention two psychological complications.
(a) Rationalization. The frontal cortex is prone to cover for the amygdala. I shouldn't kid myself that I'm Spock. For example, to extend one of your points: Sophisticated de-escalation talk might represent fear without a plan. Similarly, sophisticated incapacitation/deterrence talk might represent anger or social-desirability bias without a plan for escalation risk.
(b) Psychological realism. The frontal cortex should reckon with the fact that everyone in the strategic context has complex brains (deliberation and emotion). Because no one is Spock, leaders and media have incentive to play to one or another collective amygdala.
Epistemic honesty is hard. And so is decision-making under uncertainty in high-stakes strategic interaction.
Re: Syria. I wonder if the West did not hit the "bitter spot," enough intervention to prolong the war but not enough early on (should Syria have had a flyable air force with which to bomb the rubbles?)
Mar 13, 2022·edited Mar 13, 2022Liked by Arnold Kling
A common problem is that many Western intellectuals assess such situations with "Mind Club Analysis". That is only one entity, usually America or The West has genuine agency, thinks, decides, acts, and everyone and everything else is merely acted upon, either a victim or with a kind of robotic, predictable, reflexive reaction.
Looking at a situation more realistically involves lots of actors exercising independent autonomy and doing unpredictable things for their own reasons which are hard to know in part because that uncertainty and much other secrecy is intentional.
Often times, for example, when a great power is having a hard time or failing at some geopolitical initiative, it's because a rival power is trying to make them fail, which they are all doing to all the others, all the time. Syria played that game a long time before becoming the board for a game between others.
I called social media a window into the collective id here a while back, but perhaps Freud is too out of fashion these days for that to stick. Amygdala works, too.
I am not aware enough of Syria and Ukraine to know if this comparison is valid, according to the social media posts (incl video where they talk about going to Ukraine) ex-military from all over the world seems to be joining the Ukraine fight, UK, Swiss, Indian, Mexican, US, Ex-Marines, etc. Ukraine essentially has unlimited arms, a larger army than only Ukraine could provide, and its men *and* women fighting. Those differences may be marginal but it may be enough. We might know by the end of the month which direction this is going to go as the arms and extra soldiers begin to have a noticeable effect.
Sending some stinger missiles and implementing some sanctions seems within the allowed rules of war. I can’t really comment on swift. Private companies boycotting is new to war but not new to cancel culture.
Russia may not win. That’s still a maybe. Progress seems to have slowed.
However, I agree that a true insurgency wouldn’t do ukraine much good.
The question with sanctions, public and private, is whether they can be expected to end and on what terms. If they will go on until Putin is overthrown that doesn’t necessarily help ukraine. Negotiated settlement is still their best bet.
I wonder to the extent some sanctions are permanent regardless of intent. Will people trust western banks?
I haven't hear it stated much, but I wonder how much of the "private sanctions" are simply the result of the state financial sanction. Like, if you're big company X, do you want to send a big shipment of your product to your Russian subsidiary that won't be able to pay you for it?
Of course not. So you suspend your operations because it's the economically sensible thing to do. Given that you've already made that decision, it's sensible to try and get some good PR out of it.
My baseline belief is that companies try to make profit first and most of these guys pulling out of Russia is just as well explainable by "Russia isn't profitable" as "Russia is bad and we are paragons of morality". Likewise, the moment it becomes profitable to trade in Russia again, the "private sanctions will fall away.
To the extent companies really are serious and are going to be outspoken advocates of political opinions, they're going to have their assets seized. Or... Putin has spent his career having people who criticize him tossed out of windows. Does anyone really think he'd hesitate to off a couple of a really troublesome CEOs who open their yaps too much?
All of these kinds of things are going have to be included as countries and companies evaluate the risks of complete dependence on the market.
All that being said, dependence takes away people's freedom to do lots of bad stuff (like wage war), and there are very good reasons to heavily sanction countries that break international norms.
It's a meme free-for-all out there. I doubt he's even aware of many of the best and most effective pro-ukraine memes. It's not always easy to learn what really hit home with the people you want to influence.
Official Ukraine memes are decent but they are only standard Hollywood war tropes and there's an artistry and unpredictability to it that a state cannot harness even via 'influencers' without seeming clumsy and off key. You just gotta hope some meme Michelangelo is out there, on your side, and hearing the Muse.
Sanctions provide reasons to negotiate and reasons not to negotiate. Will a settlement end the sanctions? If sanctions are going to destroy Russia, why should Ukraine concede anything?
Re: "there may be a strategic justification for sending arms. That is, although prolonging the war will not save Ukraine, it is serving to reduce Mr. Putin’s ability to pursue further military adventures."
The frontal cortex would ask also whether sending arms substantially increases risk of escalation to a direct war between NATO and Russia.
'Red lines' are shifting under pressure. Today, WSJ reports: "Russian Missiles Strike Ukrainian Military Training Base Near Polish Border
Attack on site where U.S. trained local forces kills at least 35, follows Moscow warning that arms shipments to Kyiv won’t be tolerated.":
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-missiles-strike-ukrainian-military-training-base-near-polish-border-11647169428
Deterrence or escalation? Decision-making under uncertainty.
A lot of people imagine we can sustain an Afghan-style insurgency in Ukraine if the Russians succeed in occupying(for certain definitions of the word) the country without looking at the operational and strategic environments. There was a lot of desert and mountain between Afghanistan and Moscow, Russian soldiers were fighting an alien population, and the flow of supplies was already constrained by the surrounding territory being controlled by people who were at best only nominally allied with the US. Ukraine is on the southwest edge of the Eurasian hordelands with few barriers between it and Moscow, the population may be hostile but is often Russian-fluent (there's probably a reason Putin wants to bring in Syrians), and it's right up against NATO allies. We're banking an awful lot on the restraint and patience of Putin and his inner circle (who did not talk him down from a full-on Ukraine invasion) to assume that Russian forces will sit there and bleed without making an effort to interdict supplies flowing to the insurgency beyond the Ukraine borders just because those countries are now members of NATO, especially after Biden has publicly admitted to personally killing the Polish MiG transfer because it might widen the war.
I'm not very taken by the metaphor. Seems to me that labeling one view the "frontal cortex" and another the "amygdala" is effectively another way of labeling them "smart" and "stupid". That assumes the wisdom of de-escalation, which is not so obvious to me, even after a little deliberation.
Another framing is that de-escalation at all costs is short run thinking, while tit for tat escalation is long run thinking. That framing has the opposite effect. Or one could stick with the amygdala metaphor and assert de-escalation represents fear without a coherent plan to deter Putin next time.
The metaphor -- frontal cortex (deliberation) vs amygdala (emotion) -- and the case for the frontal cortex don't assume the wisdom of de-escalation, or indeed of any specific policy. The point is to reason to a policy conclusion, after carefully considering strategic context, social psychology, capabilities, key individuals, risk preferences, time preferences, and large degrees of uncertainty.
Let me mention two psychological complications.
(a) Rationalization. The frontal cortex is prone to cover for the amygdala. I shouldn't kid myself that I'm Spock. For example, to extend one of your points: Sophisticated de-escalation talk might represent fear without a plan. Similarly, sophisticated incapacitation/deterrence talk might represent anger or social-desirability bias without a plan for escalation risk.
(b) Psychological realism. The frontal cortex should reckon with the fact that everyone in the strategic context has complex brains (deliberation and emotion). Because no one is Spock, leaders and media have incentive to play to one or another collective amygdala.
Epistemic honesty is hard. And so is decision-making under uncertainty in high-stakes strategic interaction.
Re: Syria. I wonder if the West did not hit the "bitter spot," enough intervention to prolong the war but not enough early on (should Syria have had a flyable air force with which to bomb the rubbles?)
A common problem is that many Western intellectuals assess such situations with "Mind Club Analysis". That is only one entity, usually America or The West has genuine agency, thinks, decides, acts, and everyone and everything else is merely acted upon, either a victim or with a kind of robotic, predictable, reflexive reaction.
Looking at a situation more realistically involves lots of actors exercising independent autonomy and doing unpredictable things for their own reasons which are hard to know in part because that uncertainty and much other secrecy is intentional.
Often times, for example, when a great power is having a hard time or failing at some geopolitical initiative, it's because a rival power is trying to make them fail, which they are all doing to all the others, all the time. Syria played that game a long time before becoming the board for a game between others.
I called social media a window into the collective id here a while back, but perhaps Freud is too out of fashion these days for that to stick. Amygdala works, too.
I am not aware enough of Syria and Ukraine to know if this comparison is valid, according to the social media posts (incl video where they talk about going to Ukraine) ex-military from all over the world seems to be joining the Ukraine fight, UK, Swiss, Indian, Mexican, US, Ex-Marines, etc. Ukraine essentially has unlimited arms, a larger army than only Ukraine could provide, and its men *and* women fighting. Those differences may be marginal but it may be enough. We might know by the end of the month which direction this is going to go as the arms and extra soldiers begin to have a noticeable effect.
Sending some stinger missiles and implementing some sanctions seems within the allowed rules of war. I can’t really comment on swift. Private companies boycotting is new to war but not new to cancel culture.
Russia may not win. That’s still a maybe. Progress seems to have slowed.
However, I agree that a true insurgency wouldn’t do ukraine much good.
The question with sanctions, public and private, is whether they can be expected to end and on what terms. If they will go on until Putin is overthrown that doesn’t necessarily help ukraine. Negotiated settlement is still their best bet.
I wonder to the extent some sanctions are permanent regardless of intent. Will people trust western banks?
I haven't hear it stated much, but I wonder how much of the "private sanctions" are simply the result of the state financial sanction. Like, if you're big company X, do you want to send a big shipment of your product to your Russian subsidiary that won't be able to pay you for it?
Of course not. So you suspend your operations because it's the economically sensible thing to do. Given that you've already made that decision, it's sensible to try and get some good PR out of it.
My baseline belief is that companies try to make profit first and most of these guys pulling out of Russia is just as well explainable by "Russia isn't profitable" as "Russia is bad and we are paragons of morality". Likewise, the moment it becomes profitable to trade in Russia again, the "private sanctions will fall away.
To the extent companies really are serious and are going to be outspoken advocates of political opinions, they're going to have their assets seized. Or... Putin has spent his career having people who criticize him tossed out of windows. Does anyone really think he'd hesitate to off a couple of a really troublesome CEOs who open their yaps too much?
All of these kinds of things are going have to be included as countries and companies evaluate the risks of complete dependence on the market.
All that being said, dependence takes away people's freedom to do lots of bad stuff (like wage war), and there are very good reasons to heavily sanction countries that break international norms.
I wonder to what extent Zelensky’s media background helped with the meme war.
It's a meme free-for-all out there. I doubt he's even aware of many of the best and most effective pro-ukraine memes. It's not always easy to learn what really hit home with the people you want to influence.
Official Ukraine memes are decent but they are only standard Hollywood war tropes and there's an artistry and unpredictability to it that a state cannot harness even via 'influencers' without seeming clumsy and off key. You just gotta hope some meme Michelangelo is out there, on your side, and hearing the Muse.
Sanctions provide reasons to negotiate and reasons not to negotiate. Will a settlement end the sanctions? If sanctions are going to destroy Russia, why should Ukraine concede anything?
It takes two to make a deal.
You were fine up until the last two paragraphs. Then you just became nasty for no good reason. Reinforced my point.