The Brits developed a very similar plan based on their position as the global financial clearinghouse in the early 20th Century and implemented it against Germany in 1914. It didn't work out quite as well as they hoped. Here's a review of the book 'Planning Armageddon' that explains it - https://warontherocks.com/2013/08/suicide-is-not-a-war-winning-strategy/
I ran across an interesting factoid when reading the book 1913 (a broad review of the status of the world in 1913 written without attempts to foreshadow WWI, and a bit of bias towards projections that postulate it not happening). Even with the 1920s and 1950s booms, global trade did not return to its 1913 share of global output until *1970*.
I completely agree with the first part of your assessment. War is terrible and it seems understating it to say that it creates huge negative externalities.
Why make them worse with sanctions then? Because sanctions deter war. Yes, there are still wars, but if we reduce the cost of waging war, it will become a more acceptable tool of policy. This has been proven time and again throughout human history.
Second, if you come all the way around to the point of saying something like "civilian sanctions are tanamount to war crimes" (I'm seeking to clarify here... are you saying that?) this seems to strongly undercut the basic freedom we (should) have to trade with whom we choose. Why should I be forced to produce, against my will, for someone engaged in criminal and immoral action? I shouldn't.
I think as a matter of economics, most boycotts are stupid, but people should still have a right to it, just like they have a right to do all sorts of other stupid things they shouldn't do.
I am not sure anyone is arguing that private companies or individuals shouldn't "have a right to" boycott as they please. I think the point is that doing so is (a) immoral in that they tend to hurt innocent civilians most and (b) that, historically, they have generally been inneffective in bringing about the sought after resolution.
With regard to the war deterrence here, wouldn't it have been far more effective to cease the needless provocation (at least from my vantage point) of expanding NATO up to Russia's borders? Several policy analysts and pundits, going back to the 1990s, have argued that the continued eastward expansion of NATO made no sense and would ultimately lead to hostilities between Russia and the West. Putin has been on record for years that this would be his "red line". It seems these prognosticators may have been onto something.
I agree that NATO expansion to Ukraine was a needless provocation, but it's pretty evident that it wasn't Putin's only red line. The start of the war in 2013-2014 was caused by Putin's red line against Ukraine joining the EU, which it was poised to do. All of which is to say that NATO expansion probably isn't the cause of the war. Maybe if everyone were more skillful and subtle than they actually were, a free Ukraine on a path to EU membership (and even a free Russian on a path to EU membership) could have been accomplished without war.
The legal government was violently overthrown in 2014 and the people that supported that government were violently suppressed.
There would have been a new election in a few months. If all that was at stake was a trade deal you could just wait a couple of months, elect a new government, and pass a new law.
Yeah, we've talked about this and we aren't going to agree on it.
1. The "legal government" was also doing a lot of illegal stuff, including violently and illegally suppressing the original Maidan protests.
2. Russia had already quite transparently intervened (as it had many times over the previous history of Ukrainian independence), making the likelihood that Ukraine could simply continue with the status quo and "try again" at the next election almost impossible.
Once this kind of escalatory spiral is reached, it's almost impossible to undo. Both sides engaged in clearly illegal and violent actions that de-legitimized them and de-legitimized the prospect for a fair election. Further, the subsequent Russian invasion (the 2014 one) sealed this for good by taking any prospect of a fully Ukrainian election off the board.
It's like saying the 2020 US election was literally stolen by fraud. If one truly believes that, "just wait for the next election" is no longer an option. The people who stole it once aren't gonna stop.
"The 'legal government' was also doing a lot of illegal stuff, including violently and illegally suppressing the original Maidan protests."
I'm not endorsing this because I don't know enough to evaluate, but this U. of Ottawa professor has presented what he says is evidence of sniper fire coming from Maidan protester-controlled buildings.
I think the original sin of Ukraine is that it is in a sense not a real country. The parts taken from Poland around Lviv are one country. The deeply Russian parts in the south and west another. The parts in between a third.
The west and Russia tried to run a proxy war between these factions until eventually it became a real war. Lots of mistakes were made on both sides.
"What is a realistic settlement that would allow these people to live in peace" has always taken second stage to this proxy war because Ukraine itself just isn't that valuable. The proxy actors on either side get used by the puppet masters.
Hence, I think the best outcome is a peace and at least partial breakup. The war will be fought to the last Ukrainian, as our host says.
I'd personally be pleased if my governor could figure out how to get about 80% of the companies which banned Russia and which mostly deal in vices of one kind or another to ban our state too.
Re: "Let me try to draw a line between war sanctions and civilian sanctions. War sanctions would be attempts to keep Russia from re-supplying its military. I support war sanctions."
This is an instance of a keyhole solution -- a policy tailored (a) to remedy a problem and (b) to refrain from causing collateral harms.
The question naturally arises: What are keyhole solutions in policy toward Ukraine?
Should one support foreign attempts to re-supply Ukraine's military? What is the probability that re-supply of Ukraine's military will shorten the war? What is the probability that the Ukrainians will get a better deal from Russia as a result of re-supply of Ukraine's military?
Answers to these questions are colored by informal norms or implicit conventions about "red lines" for what constitutes "aggression," "entry into war," and the like. Remarkably, red lines are at once arbitrary, salient, and common knowledge -- and variously taken for granted, contested, and prone to unravel. They straddle game theory and psychology.
Is bloc membership by Ukraine a red line? Are sanctions acts of war? Why do rival red lines converge (for the moment) at fighter jets and no-fly zones, rather than at foreign re-supply of missiles and ground weaponry?
It seems that both Putin and the West erred badly by expecting a swift end to the invasion. The West had no answer for a prolonged war. It sanctions were focused on preventing Putin from invading the next country. The resistance by the Ukranian people, heroic at first and now tragic, has exposed the emptiness of the support from the West. We are allowing Ukraine to suffer because we are unwilling to do what we needed to do to stop Putin: take arms against the aggression.
That may never have been an option in the minds of the architects of NATO and the EU, which means that they (we) are essentially sanctioning the suffering of Ukraine. Put another way, the West is not to blame for the suffering, but we are responsible for participating in it. Sadly, ironically, tragically.
Shouldn't we presume private sanctions to be efficient and government sanctions inefficient? Private sanctions are market choices. We laugh at private companies "virtue signaling", but the bottom line is that they are giving up profitable transactions. Government sanctions can't make that sort of claim. Further, we should expect private companies to want to go back to making that money as soon as they can. So we shouldn't be too concerned about whether private sanctions will extend too long.
The fantasy, I think, is something like the Arab Spring, when high food prices and Twitter-organized mobs (ie, real life mobs, not virtual ones) helped topple dictatorships in MENA countries, so perhaps one could make the case (I wouldn't) that international sanctions could legitimately cause a popular uprising, the outcome of which is that Putin ends up like Colonel Gadhafi. To the extent there's any rational thought behind this at all, I think this is it.
On the other hand, I would posit that the success of the George Floyd protests in the West (in terms of causing everybody in a position of authority to soil themselves and fall all over one other in a desperate rush to capitulate harder, faster, and more strenuously than the next guy) has caused woke westerners to drastically overestimate the value of public protest in the face of institutional hostility or indifference.
I'd hazard to say that this misinterprets the purpose of the sanctions. To my mind, the idea of these wide-range, crushing sanctions from across the Western world is to outright destroy the Putin regime. Ukraine is not going to get a better or worse deal from that regime, it is going to deal with its successor.
This is basically a war with Russia, which is the only appropriate response to the war that Russia is waging. But the West cannot yet (and hopefully will not ever) get involved into an outright "hot" war with Russia; that would be WW3. Instead, it uses some of the heftiest cold war measures to induce an economic collapse of the current Russian regime. It sadly includes making lives of the population (more) miserable, hopefully without causing any casualties; I suppose that shipping e.g. medical supplies to Russia will never be banned.
This is a big bet on the West's side. It is risky. But not doing that also has poor historical record (Sudetenland, 1936), so it's understandable. Also it conveniently would remove Russia as a major player and competitor, without removing it as a market, if the cold war counterattack succeeds.
Hanania makes many interesting observations about the fog of war; and explains what guides his thinking. Here are his current forecasts (my distillation):
(a) Russia achieves Ukraine neutrality and international recognition of new status of Crimea and Donbas: 35%
(b) Same as (a) above, plus territory along the Black Sea and also Kharkiv in the North: 25%
(c) Same as (b) above, plus Kiev and western Ukraine: 10%
(d) Stalemate: 15%
(e) Ukrainian victory (pro NATO, contra independent Crimea, Donbas): 10%
Re: "I believe that the chance of another financial crisis within the next three years is at least 70 percent, although it probably will start outside the United States."
At Metaculus, there is a question about when the next financial crisis will occur in the United States:
The question was posted eight months ago. Only 24 forecasters have participated. During the first week of the Russia-Ukraine war, the "community prediction" temporarily bumped from June, 2026 to March, 2028. The current prediction is December, 2025 (so, within four years). I am curious to see if forecasting will get 'thicker' on this question.
Great piece with many excellent points. There is one assumption in here that may be accurate, but which it seems that you take as a given:
"Who is feeling the pain in Russia—Putin, his allies, his opponents, or ordinary Russians who have no influence on him?"
The assumption (it seems) is that the ordinary Russians have no influence on him. That's possible, but as you allude to, one could argue that the sanctions create enough dissatisfaction that it pushes Putin out.
I'm not sure that is the likely outcome, but it doesn't seem totally farfetched.
Historically, the rate of coups, assassinations, depositions, etc. of czars, kings, and emperors and so forth was quite high. There are reasons to believe modern counterintelligence and surveillance makes this much less likely than in the past, but still, the chances are still probably not negligible in present circumstances.
Agreed. The casual assumption that with Putin gone, liberal democracy will of course fill the void because we all know that's the most just and effective system is, uh...unwarranted, I would say. Things are not guaranteed to get better. They may in fact get worse. Are we sure there's no one even more thuggish than Putin lurking in the state security apparatus there who would/could fill the power vacuum?
Speaking only for myself, I don't expect some kind of instant transformation if Putin is deposed, and indeed, he may get replced by an even worse character and/or it may destabilize the Russian system and make things worse for everyone.
Nevertheless, it is at least plausible that with "anyone but Putin" in charge, there is a face-saving way for everyone to simply return to the status quo ante, withdraw from Ukraine, drop all sanctions, fully re-normalize, etc. because everyone will have a Girardian scapegoat and can blame the whole thing on "that demented old madman who decided on his own in secret to do this crazy thing for his own inscrutable reasons and without the consultation of other leaders or the Russian people, who merely went along with it out of terror."
This is the one scenario out of a million other miserable or catastrophic alternatives which provides a satisfactory endgame to all this. Alas, Putin knows this perfectly well, and one ought to presume he's secured himself against this possibility.
Current policy and strategy is not at all based in that expectation, quite the contrary. Hope for the best, plan for the worse, try to aim to nudge things into being less bad. Policy is simply to make this war as costly for Russia as possible without it going to war with NATO or using nukes. Maybe it will be costly enough that they will leave, or maybe just so much as to make their conquest a Pyrrhic victory. Order is based on deterrence of aggression, and deterrence is based on making sure that, one way or another, 'crime doesn't pay'. The US was able to take over Afghanistan and Iraq quickly, but, in retrospect, were they not Pyrrhic victories that make America more hesitant to do it again? Well, ok, this is America we're talking about, maybe the lesson only lasts like five or maybe even six whole minutes, but still.
Human options suck. I say that because the collective actions required to create good individual outcomes are usually the worse option for individuals. So situations unravel and everyone suffers.
The sanctions question is no different than debates on immigration.
Those poor innocent immigrants live in shit-hole countries and doing anything about it is terrible and risky. By coming to a more civilized place, they can unleash their talent and motivation. The civilized place becomes even more civilized.
But, what happens to the uncivilized place that's drained of its most talented and motivated? It gets worse, and the options for everyone there get worse.
Same for the decision to fight. If I'm Ukrainian, do I flee or fight? As an individual soldier, I can't affect the outcome, and if I flee, I've lost something, but I'm still alive. If everyone fights though, we might win, but I might die.
Same for the Russian. If I speak out or disobey my government, I run a risk of death or jail. Better to keep silent, but if everyone keeps silent, we continue to be oppressed. And our oppressor might go out and get me and thousands of other people killed anyway.
While it's understandable to sympathize with the victim and recognize it's dangerous to stand up to oppression, a policy of pacifism encourages victimization and oppression.
I agree with your analysis re: deficit spending as a response to the crisis. I don't think that analysts who forecast that the US will allow the stock and real estate markets to crater are really thinking through the playbook that the government works from. They project what they would do when faced with the same circumstances (realize that prices are supposed to reflect reality and capitulate) versus how the policy makers tend to see such things: they will remove whatever obstacles appear before them, and the government will comply with altering the rules. In my view, yes, they should allow asset markets to crater (even though this would be very bad for me personally), because that reflects the effects of a world of shriveled international trade.
The sanctions strengthen Ukraine's hand, but does it make them less likely to play that hand?
My understanding is that there is a peace offer on the table to Ukraine that is very generous and gives up extremely little compared to the status quo. To not accept it we have to believe either that:
1) Ukraine thinks it can do better
2) Ukrainian leadership can't accept due to internal politics
I was listening to the beginning of a Hoover Institute round table and one of them was going off about how giving up Donbass and Crimea (how do you give up what you don't hold and doesn't want to be a part of you?) was unacceptable because it would mean "Putin wins". This may be one of those ways in which our help isn't actually helping.
The only way out for Ukraine is a peace deal. Peace and peace terms are going to get less generous over time. Maybe Russia's economy will collapse, but that probably isn't going to happen in the next month. Meanwhile, Russia's going to advance deeper and deeper into Ukraine over the next month, and those terms will get worse and worse.
You write as if it's justifiable to have a high degree of certainty and confidence and like it's all very simple, but this situation seems very uncertain, complicated, and I have almost no confidence we can trust any reports about 'deals' (let alone how much trust the Ukrainians can have that the Russians are making offers in good faith and which can be enforced by, what, exactly?) If two years of covid should have taught us anything it would have been to adopt a position of radical skepticism about anything in the press, and that goes triple for war. The truth is that we don't really have any idea what is going to happen with regards to the 'generosity' of offers over time since any one of a thousand events which could dramatically alter the course of the evolution of the situation could happen. For example, if the Ukrainians can slow the advance and continue to impose a 3% attrition rate per week, the Russians might suddenly discover a new well of 'generosity', and that would derive only from details from the battlefield which don't even take the impact of internal or economic pressures into consideration.
Forumposter123's position makes sense. The terms Russia has set forth (assuming what I have read is accurate) seem reasonable. And while you are certainly correct that the Russians may be acting duplicitously, the alternative to accepting those terms is the slow but steady leveling of Ukraine and more loss of life. I cannot see why it is better to go with the latter option.
We can certainly argue about what makes sense or not albeit based on the information we have which is of very poor quality. If we knew what SECDEF knows, we might come to very different conclusions.
That being said, even if we did know what he knows, what 'makes sense' is not the same as what any government of Ukraine can credibly commit to in an agreement, since all such governments in such circumstances must have a way to promise that they can get their armed forces and general population to go along with the deal, as opposed to kicking them out and continuing to fight, which is by no means guaranteed once emotions are running hot, blood in the streets, buildings turned to rubble, and so forth.
As it is, while you may disagree, it seems clear to me at least that, reports of 'offers' aside, Putin will not accept anything short of all of Ukraine, and likewise, the Ukrainian people will also not accept anything short of all of Ukraine.
Many, many people are thus going to die one way or another, there is no way around it. But those deaths are just the start because there is no good endgame that seems plausible at this point.
Sure, the Russians could be lying. I'd still take it. If they then renege you can tell the world what a bunch of liars they are.
What would an ideal settlement be?
It's difficult for me to understand why Crimea and Donbass are red lines for Kiev, other than for pissing contest reasons. And I can't see Putin giving up on his bare minimum stated war goals of mostly territory friendly to him that he already controls.
I really don't see why you believe in Putin's 'stated war aims' any more than the claims of Ukraine or anybody else. I highly recommend this piece from four months ago in which Rumer and Weiss presciently called it and explained the background quite well.
Again, it's a mistake to understand this war purely through the lense of security or georgraphic-demographics. Putin clearly *believes* and feels deeply that all of Ukraine is properly part of Russia. When he decided to go for it, he went for the whole enchilada.
What would Ukranian's stand to lose if they agreed to limited and reasonable demands? At best peace. At second best it confirms Putins maximalist goals to everyone and maybe buys some time.
I'm just not seeing the downside here. If you're in a total war its best to expose that to all the parties involved.
2. How does that bought time affect the strategic balance?
Like, I'm sure Russia would say that Ukrainian demilitarization is reasonable. They've made that one of their conditions for ending the war. There's an obvious downside for Ukraine to accept peace, disarm, and then be unable to defend itself against a follow on Russian invasion.
There's a whole host of stuff like this that requires negotiation and frankly we have no idea of who's offering what.
Nato demilitarization is so technical that I don't think we are going to get anywhere on debating it online. I doubt anything either of us could read would have enough detail for us to opine, even if we had the expertise.
In general I think anything that ends the war today is in their favor. Over time Ukraine is going to grow economically and re-arm. The west will probably give them billions of dollars. None of that can happen in the short term. In the short term they are just going to lose more territory every day.
As for Donbass and Crimea, it seems reasonable to me that Ukraine ought to be able to acknowledge officially what has been the case unofficially for eight years now. I'm not sure what is to be gained by continuing to try to force hostile people that don't want to be part of your country into your country. In fact the treatment of Crimea and Donbass by Ukraine shows how little they care about people they claim to be their fellow citizens.
When Zelesky says he won't give up an inch of soil he just comes off as sloganeering rather than facing reality. It's not even his to give really.
Why should we allow Twitter mobs to arbitrate which wars are just our not, and dictate our policy response through sanctions against the warring party? It is certainly possible to justify Russia's intervention on the grounds that allowing it's neighbor to become a military proxy for it's rival is an existential threat for Russia. This is an easy case to argue practicing just a tiny bit of Robert Wright's cognitive empathy. And yet the narrative has been so tightly controlled by the West that even saying that is potential cancel fodder.
Compare that to the jingoism about America's invasions on the other side of the world, with far weaker claims to self defense as justification. Or compare that to the silence over the endless cruelty in Yemen.
The point is that Twitter mobs are fickle, biased and their attention easily manipulated. I don't think they should be arbitrating which wars are just and therefore subject to sanction.
The Brits developed a very similar plan based on their position as the global financial clearinghouse in the early 20th Century and implemented it against Germany in 1914. It didn't work out quite as well as they hoped. Here's a review of the book 'Planning Armageddon' that explains it - https://warontherocks.com/2013/08/suicide-is-not-a-war-winning-strategy/
I ran across an interesting factoid when reading the book 1913 (a broad review of the status of the world in 1913 written without attempts to foreshadow WWI, and a bit of bias towards projections that postulate it not happening). Even with the 1920s and 1950s booms, global trade did not return to its 1913 share of global output until *1970*.
the link is quite relevant and interesting. recommended
I completely agree with the first part of your assessment. War is terrible and it seems understating it to say that it creates huge negative externalities.
Why make them worse with sanctions then? Because sanctions deter war. Yes, there are still wars, but if we reduce the cost of waging war, it will become a more acceptable tool of policy. This has been proven time and again throughout human history.
Second, if you come all the way around to the point of saying something like "civilian sanctions are tanamount to war crimes" (I'm seeking to clarify here... are you saying that?) this seems to strongly undercut the basic freedom we (should) have to trade with whom we choose. Why should I be forced to produce, against my will, for someone engaged in criminal and immoral action? I shouldn't.
I think as a matter of economics, most boycotts are stupid, but people should still have a right to it, just like they have a right to do all sorts of other stupid things they shouldn't do.
I am not sure anyone is arguing that private companies or individuals shouldn't "have a right to" boycott as they please. I think the point is that doing so is (a) immoral in that they tend to hurt innocent civilians most and (b) that, historically, they have generally been inneffective in bringing about the sought after resolution.
With regard to the war deterrence here, wouldn't it have been far more effective to cease the needless provocation (at least from my vantage point) of expanding NATO up to Russia's borders? Several policy analysts and pundits, going back to the 1990s, have argued that the continued eastward expansion of NATO made no sense and would ultimately lead to hostilities between Russia and the West. Putin has been on record for years that this would be his "red line". It seems these prognosticators may have been onto something.
I agree that NATO expansion to Ukraine was a needless provocation, but it's pretty evident that it wasn't Putin's only red line. The start of the war in 2013-2014 was caused by Putin's red line against Ukraine joining the EU, which it was poised to do. All of which is to say that NATO expansion probably isn't the cause of the war. Maybe if everyone were more skillful and subtle than they actually were, a free Ukraine on a path to EU membership (and even a free Russian on a path to EU membership) could have been accomplished without war.
The legal government was violently overthrown in 2014 and the people that supported that government were violently suppressed.
There would have been a new election in a few months. If all that was at stake was a trade deal you could just wait a couple of months, elect a new government, and pass a new law.
Yeah, we've talked about this and we aren't going to agree on it.
1. The "legal government" was also doing a lot of illegal stuff, including violently and illegally suppressing the original Maidan protests.
2. Russia had already quite transparently intervened (as it had many times over the previous history of Ukrainian independence), making the likelihood that Ukraine could simply continue with the status quo and "try again" at the next election almost impossible.
Once this kind of escalatory spiral is reached, it's almost impossible to undo. Both sides engaged in clearly illegal and violent actions that de-legitimized them and de-legitimized the prospect for a fair election. Further, the subsequent Russian invasion (the 2014 one) sealed this for good by taking any prospect of a fully Ukrainian election off the board.
It's like saying the 2020 US election was literally stolen by fraud. If one truly believes that, "just wait for the next election" is no longer an option. The people who stole it once aren't gonna stop.
"The 'legal government' was also doing a lot of illegal stuff, including violently and illegally suppressing the original Maidan protests."
I'm not endorsing this because I don't know enough to evaluate, but this U. of Ottawa professor has presented what he says is evidence of sniper fire coming from Maidan protester-controlled buildings.
https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1390020876599500801
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325007236_The_Snipers'_Massacre_on_the_Maidan_in_Ukraine
I think the original sin of Ukraine is that it is in a sense not a real country. The parts taken from Poland around Lviv are one country. The deeply Russian parts in the south and west another. The parts in between a third.
The west and Russia tried to run a proxy war between these factions until eventually it became a real war. Lots of mistakes were made on both sides.
"What is a realistic settlement that would allow these people to live in peace" has always taken second stage to this proxy war because Ukraine itself just isn't that valuable. The proxy actors on either side get used by the puppet masters.
Hence, I think the best outcome is a peace and at least partial breakup. The war will be fought to the last Ukrainian, as our host says.
I'd personally be pleased if my governor could figure out how to get about 80% of the companies which banned Russia and which mostly deal in vices of one kind or another to ban our state too.
Re: "Let me try to draw a line between war sanctions and civilian sanctions. War sanctions would be attempts to keep Russia from re-supplying its military. I support war sanctions."
This is an instance of a keyhole solution -- a policy tailored (a) to remedy a problem and (b) to refrain from causing collateral harms.
The question naturally arises: What are keyhole solutions in policy toward Ukraine?
Should one support foreign attempts to re-supply Ukraine's military? What is the probability that re-supply of Ukraine's military will shorten the war? What is the probability that the Ukrainians will get a better deal from Russia as a result of re-supply of Ukraine's military?
Answers to these questions are colored by informal norms or implicit conventions about "red lines" for what constitutes "aggression," "entry into war," and the like. Remarkably, red lines are at once arbitrary, salient, and common knowledge -- and variously taken for granted, contested, and prone to unravel. They straddle game theory and psychology.
Is bloc membership by Ukraine a red line? Are sanctions acts of war? Why do rival red lines converge (for the moment) at fighter jets and no-fly zones, rather than at foreign re-supply of missiles and ground weaponry?
Spot on.
It seems that both Putin and the West erred badly by expecting a swift end to the invasion. The West had no answer for a prolonged war. It sanctions were focused on preventing Putin from invading the next country. The resistance by the Ukranian people, heroic at first and now tragic, has exposed the emptiness of the support from the West. We are allowing Ukraine to suffer because we are unwilling to do what we needed to do to stop Putin: take arms against the aggression.
That may never have been an option in the minds of the architects of NATO and the EU, which means that they (we) are essentially sanctioning the suffering of Ukraine. Put another way, the West is not to blame for the suffering, but we are responsible for participating in it. Sadly, ironically, tragically.
Shouldn't we presume private sanctions to be efficient and government sanctions inefficient? Private sanctions are market choices. We laugh at private companies "virtue signaling", but the bottom line is that they are giving up profitable transactions. Government sanctions can't make that sort of claim. Further, we should expect private companies to want to go back to making that money as soon as they can. So we shouldn't be too concerned about whether private sanctions will extend too long.
The fantasy, I think, is something like the Arab Spring, when high food prices and Twitter-organized mobs (ie, real life mobs, not virtual ones) helped topple dictatorships in MENA countries, so perhaps one could make the case (I wouldn't) that international sanctions could legitimately cause a popular uprising, the outcome of which is that Putin ends up like Colonel Gadhafi. To the extent there's any rational thought behind this at all, I think this is it.
On the other hand, I would posit that the success of the George Floyd protests in the West (in terms of causing everybody in a position of authority to soil themselves and fall all over one other in a desperate rush to capitulate harder, faster, and more strenuously than the next guy) has caused woke westerners to drastically overestimate the value of public protest in the face of institutional hostility or indifference.
I'd hazard to say that this misinterprets the purpose of the sanctions. To my mind, the idea of these wide-range, crushing sanctions from across the Western world is to outright destroy the Putin regime. Ukraine is not going to get a better or worse deal from that regime, it is going to deal with its successor.
This is basically a war with Russia, which is the only appropriate response to the war that Russia is waging. But the West cannot yet (and hopefully will not ever) get involved into an outright "hot" war with Russia; that would be WW3. Instead, it uses some of the heftiest cold war measures to induce an economic collapse of the current Russian regime. It sadly includes making lives of the population (more) miserable, hopefully without causing any casualties; I suppose that shipping e.g. medical supplies to Russia will never be banned.
This is a big bet on the West's side. It is risky. But not doing that also has poor historical record (Sudetenland, 1936), so it's understandable. Also it conveniently would remove Russia as a major player and competitor, without removing it as a market, if the cold war counterattack succeeds.
Your post made a lot of sense to me.
Here is an article that takes a similar thoughtful, "seeing around corners" approach.
https://theintercept.com/2022/03/10/ukraine-russia-nato-weapons/
Re: The difficulty of making well-founded subjective probability estimates of various possible outcomes of the Russia-Ukraine war.
See Richard Hanania's latest essay, "Why forecasting war is hard":
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-forecasting-war-is-hard?s=r
Hanania makes many interesting observations about the fog of war; and explains what guides his thinking. Here are his current forecasts (my distillation):
(a) Russia achieves Ukraine neutrality and international recognition of new status of Crimea and Donbas: 35%
(b) Same as (a) above, plus territory along the Black Sea and also Kharkiv in the North: 25%
(c) Same as (b) above, plus Kiev and western Ukraine: 10%
(d) Stalemate: 15%
(e) Ukrainian victory (pro NATO, contra independent Crimea, Donbas): 10%
(f) International escalation of war: 5%
Re: "I believe that the chance of another financial crisis within the next three years is at least 70 percent, although it probably will start outside the United States."
At Metaculus, there is a question about when the next financial crisis will occur in the United States:
https://www.metaculus.com/questions/7467/next-great-financial-crisis-in-the-us/
The question was posted eight months ago. Only 24 forecasters have participated. During the first week of the Russia-Ukraine war, the "community prediction" temporarily bumped from June, 2026 to March, 2028. The current prediction is December, 2025 (so, within four years). I am curious to see if forecasting will get 'thicker' on this question.
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1501741668231364608
Hospital in Germany says it won't treat Russian patients. As we all know expats living in Munich are a hotbed of Putinism.
They already denied 20 year olds treatment over vaccine status, and closed the bank accounts of Canadian truckers and anyone that sent them $5.
1. Not a hospital, but a private cosmetic surgery clinic.
2. The RTL article linked in the tweet helpfully describes the response as a "Shitstorm" (LOL) of criticism which resulted in...
3. A Rapid retraction, apology, and donation of 10k Euros to Doctors Without Borders
Great piece with many excellent points. There is one assumption in here that may be accurate, but which it seems that you take as a given:
"Who is feeling the pain in Russia—Putin, his allies, his opponents, or ordinary Russians who have no influence on him?"
The assumption (it seems) is that the ordinary Russians have no influence on him. That's possible, but as you allude to, one could argue that the sanctions create enough dissatisfaction that it pushes Putin out.
I'm not sure that is the likely outcome, but it doesn't seem totally farfetched.
Historically, the rate of coups, assassinations, depositions, etc. of czars, kings, and emperors and so forth was quite high. There are reasons to believe modern counterintelligence and surveillance makes this much less likely than in the past, but still, the chances are still probably not negligible in present circumstances.
Agreed. The casual assumption that with Putin gone, liberal democracy will of course fill the void because we all know that's the most just and effective system is, uh...unwarranted, I would say. Things are not guaranteed to get better. They may in fact get worse. Are we sure there's no one even more thuggish than Putin lurking in the state security apparatus there who would/could fill the power vacuum?
Speaking only for myself, I don't expect some kind of instant transformation if Putin is deposed, and indeed, he may get replced by an even worse character and/or it may destabilize the Russian system and make things worse for everyone.
Nevertheless, it is at least plausible that with "anyone but Putin" in charge, there is a face-saving way for everyone to simply return to the status quo ante, withdraw from Ukraine, drop all sanctions, fully re-normalize, etc. because everyone will have a Girardian scapegoat and can blame the whole thing on "that demented old madman who decided on his own in secret to do this crazy thing for his own inscrutable reasons and without the consultation of other leaders or the Russian people, who merely went along with it out of terror."
This is the one scenario out of a million other miserable or catastrophic alternatives which provides a satisfactory endgame to all this. Alas, Putin knows this perfectly well, and one ought to presume he's secured himself against this possibility.
It's perfectly reasonable to think Putin might fall and this might be good.
It's just a really stupid thing to bank on as essentially our only policy goal that we are orienting our strategy around?
Current policy and strategy is not at all based in that expectation, quite the contrary. Hope for the best, plan for the worse, try to aim to nudge things into being less bad. Policy is simply to make this war as costly for Russia as possible without it going to war with NATO or using nukes. Maybe it will be costly enough that they will leave, or maybe just so much as to make their conquest a Pyrrhic victory. Order is based on deterrence of aggression, and deterrence is based on making sure that, one way or another, 'crime doesn't pay'. The US was able to take over Afghanistan and Iraq quickly, but, in retrospect, were they not Pyrrhic victories that make America more hesitant to do it again? Well, ok, this is America we're talking about, maybe the lesson only lasts like five or maybe even six whole minutes, but still.
Human options suck. I say that because the collective actions required to create good individual outcomes are usually the worse option for individuals. So situations unravel and everyone suffers.
The sanctions question is no different than debates on immigration.
Those poor innocent immigrants live in shit-hole countries and doing anything about it is terrible and risky. By coming to a more civilized place, they can unleash their talent and motivation. The civilized place becomes even more civilized.
But, what happens to the uncivilized place that's drained of its most talented and motivated? It gets worse, and the options for everyone there get worse.
Same for the decision to fight. If I'm Ukrainian, do I flee or fight? As an individual soldier, I can't affect the outcome, and if I flee, I've lost something, but I'm still alive. If everyone fights though, we might win, but I might die.
Same for the Russian. If I speak out or disobey my government, I run a risk of death or jail. Better to keep silent, but if everyone keeps silent, we continue to be oppressed. And our oppressor might go out and get me and thousands of other people killed anyway.
While it's understandable to sympathize with the victim and recognize it's dangerous to stand up to oppression, a policy of pacifism encourages victimization and oppression.
I agree with your analysis re: deficit spending as a response to the crisis. I don't think that analysts who forecast that the US will allow the stock and real estate markets to crater are really thinking through the playbook that the government works from. They project what they would do when faced with the same circumstances (realize that prices are supposed to reflect reality and capitulate) versus how the policy makers tend to see such things: they will remove whatever obstacles appear before them, and the government will comply with altering the rules. In my view, yes, they should allow asset markets to crater (even though this would be very bad for me personally), because that reflects the effects of a world of shriveled international trade.
The sanctions strengthen Ukraine's hand, but does it make them less likely to play that hand?
My understanding is that there is a peace offer on the table to Ukraine that is very generous and gives up extremely little compared to the status quo. To not accept it we have to believe either that:
1) Ukraine thinks it can do better
2) Ukrainian leadership can't accept due to internal politics
I was listening to the beginning of a Hoover Institute round table and one of them was going off about how giving up Donbass and Crimea (how do you give up what you don't hold and doesn't want to be a part of you?) was unacceptable because it would mean "Putin wins". This may be one of those ways in which our help isn't actually helping.
The only way out for Ukraine is a peace deal. Peace and peace terms are going to get less generous over time. Maybe Russia's economy will collapse, but that probably isn't going to happen in the next month. Meanwhile, Russia's going to advance deeper and deeper into Ukraine over the next month, and those terms will get worse and worse.
You write as if it's justifiable to have a high degree of certainty and confidence and like it's all very simple, but this situation seems very uncertain, complicated, and I have almost no confidence we can trust any reports about 'deals' (let alone how much trust the Ukrainians can have that the Russians are making offers in good faith and which can be enforced by, what, exactly?) If two years of covid should have taught us anything it would have been to adopt a position of radical skepticism about anything in the press, and that goes triple for war. The truth is that we don't really have any idea what is going to happen with regards to the 'generosity' of offers over time since any one of a thousand events which could dramatically alter the course of the evolution of the situation could happen. For example, if the Ukrainians can slow the advance and continue to impose a 3% attrition rate per week, the Russians might suddenly discover a new well of 'generosity', and that would derive only from details from the battlefield which don't even take the impact of internal or economic pressures into consideration.
Nobody knows nothin'.
Forumposter123's position makes sense. The terms Russia has set forth (assuming what I have read is accurate) seem reasonable. And while you are certainly correct that the Russians may be acting duplicitously, the alternative to accepting those terms is the slow but steady leveling of Ukraine and more loss of life. I cannot see why it is better to go with the latter option.
We can certainly argue about what makes sense or not albeit based on the information we have which is of very poor quality. If we knew what SECDEF knows, we might come to very different conclusions.
That being said, even if we did know what he knows, what 'makes sense' is not the same as what any government of Ukraine can credibly commit to in an agreement, since all such governments in such circumstances must have a way to promise that they can get their armed forces and general population to go along with the deal, as opposed to kicking them out and continuing to fight, which is by no means guaranteed once emotions are running hot, blood in the streets, buildings turned to rubble, and so forth.
As it is, while you may disagree, it seems clear to me at least that, reports of 'offers' aside, Putin will not accept anything short of all of Ukraine, and likewise, the Ukrainian people will also not accept anything short of all of Ukraine.
Many, many people are thus going to die one way or another, there is no way around it. But those deaths are just the start because there is no good endgame that seems plausible at this point.
Sure, the Russians could be lying. I'd still take it. If they then renege you can tell the world what a bunch of liars they are.
What would an ideal settlement be?
It's difficult for me to understand why Crimea and Donbass are red lines for Kiev, other than for pissing contest reasons. And I can't see Putin giving up on his bare minimum stated war goals of mostly territory friendly to him that he already controls.
I really don't see why you believe in Putin's 'stated war aims' any more than the claims of Ukraine or anybody else. I highly recommend this piece from four months ago in which Rumer and Weiss presciently called it and explained the background quite well.
https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/12/ukraine-putin-s-unfinished-business-pub-85771
Again, it's a mistake to understand this war purely through the lense of security or georgraphic-demographics. Putin clearly *believes* and feels deeply that all of Ukraine is properly part of Russia. When he decided to go for it, he went for the whole enchilada.
What would Ukranian's stand to lose if they agreed to limited and reasonable demands? At best peace. At second best it confirms Putins maximalist goals to everyone and maybe buys some time.
I'm just not seeing the downside here. If you're in a total war its best to expose that to all the parties involved.
1. What constitutes "reasonable"?
2. How does that bought time affect the strategic balance?
Like, I'm sure Russia would say that Ukrainian demilitarization is reasonable. They've made that one of their conditions for ending the war. There's an obvious downside for Ukraine to accept peace, disarm, and then be unable to defend itself against a follow on Russian invasion.
There's a whole host of stuff like this that requires negotiation and frankly we have no idea of who's offering what.
Nato demilitarization is so technical that I don't think we are going to get anywhere on debating it online. I doubt anything either of us could read would have enough detail for us to opine, even if we had the expertise.
In general I think anything that ends the war today is in their favor. Over time Ukraine is going to grow economically and re-arm. The west will probably give them billions of dollars. None of that can happen in the short term. In the short term they are just going to lose more territory every day.
As for Donbass and Crimea, it seems reasonable to me that Ukraine ought to be able to acknowledge officially what has been the case unofficially for eight years now. I'm not sure what is to be gained by continuing to try to force hostile people that don't want to be part of your country into your country. In fact the treatment of Crimea and Donbass by Ukraine shows how little they care about people they claim to be their fellow citizens.
When Zelesky says he won't give up an inch of soil he just comes off as sloganeering rather than facing reality. It's not even his to give really.
Why should we allow Twitter mobs to arbitrate which wars are just our not, and dictate our policy response through sanctions against the warring party? It is certainly possible to justify Russia's intervention on the grounds that allowing it's neighbor to become a military proxy for it's rival is an existential threat for Russia. This is an easy case to argue practicing just a tiny bit of Robert Wright's cognitive empathy. And yet the narrative has been so tightly controlled by the West that even saying that is potential cancel fodder.
Compare that to the jingoism about America's invasions on the other side of the world, with far weaker claims to self defense as justification. Or compare that to the silence over the endless cruelty in Yemen.
The point is that Twitter mobs are fickle, biased and their attention easily manipulated. I don't think they should be arbitrating which wars are just and therefore subject to sanction.
Excellent points