I am deeply sceptical of analogies between Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine that do not see the similarities between Hamas and Putin. Hamas wishes to end Israel, genocidally preferably, though driving the Jews into the sea would be sufficient: they tell us so. Putin wants to end Ukraine as an entity and identity separate from Russia: he told us so. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
Another thing Hamas and Putin have in common: no agreement with either is worth the paper it is printed on.
The difference is that Israel is stronger than Hamas and Russia is stronger than Ukraine. We are not forcing Ukrainians to fight, but we are enabling them to do so. If they are willing to continue to resist, we should continue to enable them to do so.
Where the “fight to the last Ukrainian” criticism of US support has some bite is being too restrictive on how the Ukrainians can use the Western-supplied weapons and not having a strategy of victory.
The other issue is that Hamas absolutely a proxy for Iran and, as Sunnis, its most disposable proxy. Ukraine is a nation in its own right. Proxy does not seem to be quite so accurate a description: or they are proxies in a somewhat different sense. One for the attack on Israel, the other for the defence of Europe. Which is certainly how a lot of Europeans see it: notably the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Swedes …. While the Japanese, South Koreans and Australians see it as a proxy for restraining China, with Taiwan the analogy to Ukraine (in so many ways).
This is obviously false. Ukraine has draconian conscription, emigration is illegal, and elections have been suspended indefinitely. Under such circumstances, it's a cruel joke to guess at what Ukrainian's want, as they have to be forced into these wants at the point of a gun.
Russia maintains a higher percentage of volunteers than Ukraine in its armed forces. Call them killer mercenary thugs if you want, but at least they are there by choice.
"Putin wants to end Ukraine as an entity and identity separate from Russia"
If true, this is still not the same war aim as Hamas. Hamas wishes to literally KILL ALL THE JEWS.
Russia does not wish to genocide the Ukrainian people. If anything, it would probably prefer to achieve a change in government with minimal killing, as that would be in their interest.
Let's say Russia achieved its goal of regime change. It's not like the old regime in Ukraine was giving a good life to the Ukranian people, nor was there any evidence it was moving in the right direction. The Ukranian government seems a stupid thing to die for, which is why people have to be forced into doing so.
And even given this, since about a month into the war, the goal of Ukranian regime change was abandoned by Russia. The status quo ante-bellum was offered, and Russian troops were removed to the far east separatist areas. This offer, which would have preserved Ukraine's government in its loyal territory at little cost, was turned down.
The purpose of turning it down mainly seems to have been the hope that some crushing battlefield victory might cause regime change in Russia. Two years later, no such victory has come. The situation is worse and not better. This could have been predicted at the time. I've even seen Ukraine supporters call turning this deal down stupid.
I think that what has happened is that a good deal was scotched for some pie in the sky homerun by people who wouldn't be paying the price in the trenches. And now we are so deep into it that nobody wants to admit how stupid they've been.
"If they are willing to continue to resist, we should continue to enable them to do so."
What the Ukrainian's want (see above) and what we want are not the same thing. We have no obligation to them at all.
I do not support using my tax dollars to provide weapons so a bunch of slavs, many there against their will, can kill each other in trenches that barely move to determine which of two loser governments controls some shelled out villages in some god forsaken corner of the planet.
Also, I think you do a disservice to Israel. They are a good country fighting what is basically pure evil for their own survival. Ukraine the Russia are basically the same government and same people fighting a war for utterly retarded reasons that they could end tomorrow.
The "good deal was scotched" not only US/NATO fantasies of regime change in Russia, and making the Donbas safe for LGBTQ, but to perpetuate the defense industry grift and to gratify the power trip of the DC Blob,
I'm pretty positive Hamas has no interest in hunting down Jews living in Chicago or Antarctica unlike the good Herr Wiesenthal. Islam is pretty tolerant of Jews as Allah never told them to go genocide their neighbors and take their land unlike his chosen people. Israel is the Islamic problem, not Jews.
Well, they don't seem to treat Jews in the west too well either, but I digress.
It's not like all the Jews in Israel are going to abandon their homes and leave. They are going to have to kill them to get rid of them.
By contrast, Russia doesn't seem to have any desire to displace Ukranians. In fact I think they would be happy if any Ukranians in any territories they controlled stayed. That is not true of Hamas.
Look, I think of the Ukraine war more like some 18th century conflict where two governments have a limited war and maybe one annexes a province from the other. Whereas the Hamas war is more like what the Germans were trying to do with General Plan Ost or the Holocaust.
I don't disagree with your broader point but my annoyance is this keeps getting framed by the Western Jew lobby as a genocidal war and it's simply not. Even if Hamas walked every Jew in Israel into the sea, it would end there, it's simply a means to an ends of liberating Palestine. Hamas isn't sending death squads to New York to kill Weinstein, the US can do that themselves just fine.
They want the Jews out of what they consider Arab land. If there were 9.5 million Korean people living there who wouldn't move, they would want to kill those people. That doesn't mean they're genocidal against Koreans.
What they want is ethnic cleansing, strictly speaking.
Because it's not about religion but the land. Jews exist just fine in Islamic Malaysia for example as do faiths not of the book. ISIS is simply an outlier on par with other extremist regimes like the USA and North Korea.
"I think that what has happened is that a good deal was scotched for some pie in the sky homerun by people who wouldn't be paying the price in the trenches. And now we are so deep into it that nobody wants to admit how stupid they've been."
Alas, I think that is true. As in WW I, the more death and destruction, the more the protagonists say, "We've lost so much, we can't stop now."
Keep in mind that Ukraine has a very large Russian ethnic and Russian speaking populace, a 70% majority of the population in the Donbas or eastern portion. This population had long been badly mistreated by the Kiev government and by its ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi groups including the Azov Battalion, which became a Brigade of the regular army. The people of the Donbas would rather rule itself or be ruled from Moscow than Kiev for understandable reasons. Just as we in the US would not tolerate the Soviets bringing Mexico or Canada into the Warsaw Pact,, the Russians cannot accept NATO membership for Ukraine. So while I am sympathetic to the national aspirations of the Ukrainian ethnic and speaking population, the only reasonable option is a partition, or possibly something like the Finlandization of the Ukraine that was the modus vivendi during the Soviet era, and even those would now be very problematic.
The US didn't tolerate Zimmerman either hence our outrage over it. Also the entire "Good Neighbor Policy". Ukraine wants to be part of NATO for the graft, nothing more nothing less. They would like to part of the OSCE and EU too for the same reason.
I don't see how either is anything like Putin's complaints and invasion of Ukraine. We didn't invade Mexico because of the Zimmerman telegraph. Quite the opposite, the good neighbor policy stated we would REDUCE interference in internal affairs of Latin American countries. Thanks for clarifying and strengthening my point.
The Ukrainian was NOT Finlandized during the Soviet era. Finland was an independent country that was careful to be non-aligned internationally, no western weapons, but took no orders from Moscow. The Ukraine, however, was the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a province of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and very much took orders from Moscow.
Actually, I would go even further on the analogy between Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine in one sense. Like the Palestinians, Ukrainian nationalists are motivated by a perceived historical grievance against neighboring Russia, and just as Hamas wishes to end Israel, Ukrainian nationalists seek to end Russia as a state. Although Ukrainian nationalists represent a minority of the Ukrainian population, they exercise an outsized political influence in Ukraine, and just as Iran exploits Hamas in its proxy war against Israel, the US foreign policy establishment has exploited the Ukrainian nationalist movement in its proxy war against Russia. Separately, with regard to the argument that US support for Ukraine has been too restrictive and not having a strategy of victory (the argument of Anne Applebaum, who knows nothing about military strategy and has not specified what the alternative winning strategy would be), once Russia shifted to a war of attrition based on its massive defense industrial complex (a legacy of the Soviet system), there was no strategy of victory for Ukraine against Russia. The underestimation of Russia's military capabilities is one of the puzzling aspects of this war.
In the beginning there was an over-estimation of Russia's military. That wasn't replaced by a military under-estimation. If anything, it was an under-estimation of Putin's resolve to continue in the face of huge losses. Maybe there wasn't enough consideration of how things might proceed but more likely there wasn't any agreement a better alternative was available. In that way, US and its two "proxies" face very similar situations.
Putin rolled the dice on the idea that the Ukranian state would collapse overnight because it is in actuality a really shitty state.
When that didn't happen, he tried to back out. We should have let him. But the calculus from the people not fighting the war was "maybe we get a huge propaganda win". When confronted with what essentially amounted to regime change, Putin mobilized. Once both countries mobilized, obviously the larger country will likely prevail, and it not neither will prevail. This downside, while high probability, would be incurred by some poor slavs and not the decision makers. Like WWI, which this war looks like.
Any initial narrative about an over-estimation of Russia's military amounted to pure propaganda. Anyone with any expertise on military affairs knew that the initial invasion was of insufficient size to achieve any kind of military victory, and was instead intended to achieve some other political objective, including perhaps a negotiated settlement. Unfortunately, as you suggest, the initial gambit was misinterpreted as a sign of weakness, or lack of resolve on Putin's part. As for huge losses, Russia has been mum on its casualties, so any estimates of Russian losses are pure guesswork, but its slow attrition strategy is designed to conserve its forces, and whatever the losses are, they are significantly less than those of Ukraine thanks in large part to artillery dominance. The people running our foreign policy are clowns. If they had any sense, they would have avoided getting into this mess in the first place. And as I have said before, the timing of the October 7th attack was partly a response to the perceived weakness of the US following the much ballyhooed but ultimately failed Ukrainian 'counteroffensive in spring-summer 2023. In this respect, Israel as well as Ukraine are victims of the ineptitude of our foreign policy establishment.
Yeah Perun has a good episode on this lately in that Russia has started to move to an actual war economy and a full war economy can always out compete even the combined West on a peace charity economy. It's not that Russia doesn't have the industrial capacity, it just needed time to retool from refrigerators to tanks. The US today can't push the same number of tanks we could in 1944 but we could given time and need and that is the path we forced Putin onto. Economically the Russian economy is the best it's been in years with real wages rising, etc and to the point their central bank is trying to prevent overheating.
Ukraine can't win this unless the West commits and then to Arnold's point, we will sacrifice Ukrainians as much as we can. Besides two birds one stone as it's more dead Orthodox Slavs on both sides, a win for the Papist West.
"Anyone with any expertise on military affairs knew that the initial invasion was of insufficient size to achieve any kind of military victory."
I hadn't heard it was undersized. Maybe so. Or maybe it's a different version of what I've heard numerous times. Ukraine was expected to fall in days to a few weeks. Russia's invasion was ineptly executed and Ukraine's defense was far stronger than expected.
"whatever the losses are, they are significantly less than those of Ukraine"
Every source I've heard or found estimates Russia's losses are larger.
"The people running our foreign policy are clowns. If they had any sense, they would have avoided getting into this mess in the first place."
How would they have avoided this? Allow Russia to decide what ho joins NATO or EU? (As for clowns, I would agree that Biden made totally inept statements at least once.)
"And as I have said before, the timing of the October 7th attack was partly a response to the perceived weakness of the US following the much ballyhooed but ultimately failed Ukrainian 'counteroffensive in spring-summer 2023"
Huh? Ukraine's weakness made Hamas think Israel was weak? You don't think they did this as soon as they figured out they could? You think this was a strategy they had sitting on the shelf waiting until US looks weak? Really?
1) size of initial invasion. Right, it's a different version of what you've heard, i.e. what you've heard is propaganda. It is indisputable that the initial invasion was undersized. That's why Andrei Illarionov, a fierce Putin critic, infamously rejected claims that the Russians were poised to invade; based on consultations with military experts, he argued that the size of the force gathered at the border was far too small.
2) Russian losses. According to military experts (not me), artillery is the critical determinant of relative losses, and even the mainstream press acknowledges that Russia fires far more artillery shells than Ukraine does (because Russia outproduces all of NATO combined). Of course, as I said, Russia is secretive about its losses, while it does track and catalogue Ukrainian losses, so there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the relevant figures. Ukraine suffered large losses in the failed counter-offensive, is suffering large losses on the front line as it moves westward, and also as a result of the Kursk incursion. In any event, Russia has a much larger population and can better absorb losses than Ukraine.
3) Clowns. Look, every additional NATO member adds to our military burden. Ukraine has been a corrupt basket case, politically and economically, since it became independent after the USSR collapsed. Why as Americans would we want Ukraine to become a NATO member? What is the benefit to us? And don't give me some story about defending freedom and democracy. This conflict has always been about using Ukraine to get at Russia, for reasons I cannot fathom. (ps., it is not clear Russia is absolutely opposed to Ukraine joining the EU) Also, if the purpose of NATO is to defend Europe from Russia, it should encourage members to build up their armed forces, but it does the opposite, i.e. it is based on the premise that we are going to rescue Europe from Russia, and that doesn't make any sense (we are separated from Russia by 2 oceans, which gives Russia an unsurmountable home field advantage in any continental war in Europe).
4) October 7th. NATO planned the Ukrainian counter-offensive, and supplied the equipment and munitions used to carry it out. We huffed and puffed, but the Russian house did not get blown down. We looked weak, and Israel, which is viewed as a US client state (which it basically is) was an inviting target. And the October 7th attack forced us to divert some munitions from Ukraine to Israel, so it essentially opened up a 2nd front against the US. And obviously, the October 7th attack had been planned for some time, and the only question was the best time to launch it. I'm not the only one making this connection, though for the most part neither proponents of the Ukraine conflict (who don't want to admit the blowback problem) nor opponents (most of whom blame Israel for the October 7th attack, just as they blame the US for the Ukraine conflict) acknowledge the connection.
I found sources that said Russia's forces at the border were too small to OCCUPY a resistant population. Before invasion it wasn't known what Putin’s objective might be. It wasn't known whether the invading force was too small for his intention until after the invasion had started. Obviously it failed but even now we still don't know exactly what his intent was. Depending on intent it could still be argued the failure was more ineptitude than size of force.
1 “The underestimation of Russia's military capabilities is one of the puzzling aspects of this war.”
My apologies for not being more clear previously. Invading with the intent to occupy the country with a force too small does not support your statement that I quote.
Despite the force being too small to occupy, it was still widely predicted that Ukraine could not withstand for long. This was in part an underestimation of Ukraine but largely because everyone thought Russia’s military capabilities were far greater than they have been to date. I'm not saying Russia won't eventually prevail given a larger number of men and equipment but nobody, except apparently you, is arguing Russia’s military has come close to expectations. Any puzzlement has been over how inept Russian military has been. This article gives a good summary in the first couple of paragraphs.
2 Other than a Newsweek article that for some reason only used numbers from Russian sources, everything I've ever heard or found googling says Russia has lost far more men than Ukraine. Here’s one.
Are you saying numbers from Russia are more trustworthy? What is your source?
3 “every additional NATO member adds to our military burden.”
This implicitly assumes that more countries means war against NATO is more likely. I don't agree.
4 Ukraine has never gotten nearly as much supplies as needed so saying some was diverted to Israel seems a rather tenuous claim at best. Be that as it may, how is Oct 7 working out for Hamas? Did their timing (after Ukraine offensive) help them?
I doubt I want to try to reach some agreement on what “client state” means but I suspect we can agree that for ~50 years Israel was highly dependent on the US. That is no longer true. Today's Israeli economy could easily fund their own defense but US funding continues in part because ending it would be politically difficult for both sides. Now if Israel were boycotted and could not buy anything, that's something entirely different.
"Anyone with any expertise on military affairs knew that the initial invasion was of insufficient size to achieve any kind of military victory." Oh, twaddle. Russia's military was big enough to conquer the Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine. Which it pretty much has done.
I feel fairly sure that if Zelensky had said after two months, "You can have that land and we won't join NATO", Putin would have been happy to stop. Of course, that would be a violation of international law and Putin is not a good man but it sure looks like that's the way the war is going to end two or more years--and lots of death and destruction--later.
Your comment about Putin wanting to end Ukraine as a separate entity isn’t supported by what Putin said here or anywhere else. True he believes they are one people but recognizes Ukraine as a separate country and repeatedly supports Ukrainian identity. He just wants it to be a compliant neighbor and to not be anti-Russia which he thinks has been imposed on it by Western meddlers. I think it’s unfair and doesn’t respect Ukrainian sovereignty but it’s a lot different from wanting to end its separate identity. Let’s be honest the US would not tolerate a bordering state being anti-American and backed by the Russians and Chinese. Look at all the stuff we did to Cuba. If it were Canada or Mexico you better believe we would have done regime change. Why is Russia different?
I think it's probably fine to say that if Kiev fell without resistance at the beginning he would have done some regime change. But that's long in the past, and even if it happened there is a difference between ending a Ukrainian political regime and ending the Ukrainian people.
Hamas doesn't want BiBi gone, it wants all the Jews dead.
I wanted to write something like you did and decided against it. It seems I made the right decision. I have little doubt you are a better writer and your odds of success were better. I think you failed. Your odds would improve in a longer response but maybe not much. I still lean towards your view though and I'm glad to know we share a similar view.
With regard to the long-term strategic outlook in the Middle East, David Goldman (Spengler) wrote a more optimistic assessment (perhaps overly optimistic) based on demographic and economic considerations in an August 15th article in Asia Times, titled 'Israel is the Future of the Middle East.'
Handle's Law of Casus Belli Retro-Induction: "Whoever made what you claim to be the first unjustified move will then counter that it was the justified reaction to their rival's unjustified move, ad infinitum." A Corollary is: "The Futility of Dialectic Regarding the Mideast".
Russia's claimed position is that they were pushed into a corner with the realizing that softer deterrence approaches to keep Ukraine from crossing its red lines had failed and further such efforts would be futile with time running out, which required Russia to either fight or suck up a huge, long-term geostrategic loss in the strength of their position in the Black Sea region in addition to other new risks like NATO encirclement of their buffer satrapy of Belarus, and weakened ability to use it to apply pressure on the Suwałki Gap to prevent isolation of Kaliningrad.
There is no question that US (er, "NATO") strategy in the region has focused on achieving these goals for a long time, which is to say, to defang Russia, normalize relations between it and it's European neighbors, and gradually nudge it over time further and further away from Soviet-Superpower mentality into "Just Another Country" mindset, convergence with and integration into the broader "European Project", as a kind of "Giant Frozen Serbia with Oil and Nukes." The Russian regime does not want Russia to be "Just Another Country".
I haven't paid attention in a while, but not long ago there was a certain attitude in the American national security scene of 'inevitability' to this outcome, and that the smart course would be "frog-boiling", to be patient, wait it out, to very gradually ratchet up the temperature and apply small amounts of high-bang-for-buck pressure here and there when opportunities arose, but to avoid going too far, too fast in ways that would provoke a counterproductive reaction. Americans who tend to support the Russian position in this matter (or who support Ukraine but who think the present conflict was both avoidable and should have been avoided) will claim that this is exactly the unwise mistake the US made, and that thus, per my law above, the real casus belli is the US launching pushing the proxy to cross the red line, thus triggering the proxy war against Russia.
There is no general law of proxy war 'effectiveness' (however defined); historically it seems to depend significantly on the details particular regime and context. Consider, for example, the impact in terms of public willingness to support certain military actions of cold-war-era proxy wars against the US such as with Korea, Vietnam, and arguably in certain fronts in the "Global War on Terror."
I think this gets at the right answer regarding Russia and Ukraine. If we get down to the essence of it, I don't think it's reasonable to blame America (because the proximate cause here was clear Russian invasion), but it's certainly reasonable to think that more skillful and less grasping American foreign relations over both the short and longer term could likely have prevented outright war.
In legal terms, America's blame is something on the level of involuntary manslaughter. Our policies and interventions were stupid, reckless, and counterproductive, but not intentional.
Iran, on the other hand, is quite explicit and intentional. Again, in legal terms, it's the equivalent of first degree murder.
Jeff Sachs is one of those Americans who support the Russian position and blames the US for triggering the proxy war against Russia. I am somewhat sympathetic to this position, but when he goes off on one of his rants about how he persuaded the US to establish a stabilization fund for Poland and argues that the US should have done the same thing for Russia in the 1990s, I roll my eyes. Poland was content to be "Just Another Country," as you put it (or perhaps more accurately, "just another US client state"), but I agree with you that the Russian regime does not want to be "Just Another Country," nor did the current regime's predecessor (the chaotic Yeltsin regime) want to be "Just Another Country." Personally, I have no problem with Russia wanting to maintain its 'big power' status, and in any event, I don't see any way of changing their mind that doesn't involve an undesirable conflict, but by the same token, I reject Sachs' claim that we had a duty to help stabilize their economy in the 1990s given their long-term geopolitical objectives.
I think your instincts about Sachs are correct. I think Putin is just Russian. I have problems with both sides of the argument on the Ukraine conflict. Sometimes I get the feeling that the world has become like the film (original and remake) Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and almost everyone around me has been snatched. But who knows, perhaps I'm the one whose body has been snatched.
Poland seems to be 50/50 "Just Another Country", and Hungary 40/60 (though I suspect this will move more in the direction of JAC with time with generational turnover). I think you could say that both of those nations would be happily in the 100% JAC camp 30 years ago, but convergence with the European Project (i.e., internationalist progressivism) now requires crossing two difficult cultural lines, (1) Swamping of local population with mass Immigration of mainly poor Africans and Muslims, and (2) Legal mandates for the whole woke package including the perpetual discrimination-inquisition and especially all the LGBTXYZ stuff. Europe isn't going to let them pick and choose though.
A more interesting question is whether one -can- pick and choose. If your nation's value system isn't running on Full Portfolio Progressivism code, then what -other- code is it running on, and why? If you can't define and justify that, then your next generation's elites are just going to do what all the other young elites did in every other comparable context, which is just become good progressives and flip all those "backwards" positions toward the enlightened arc of history the minute they have sufficient power to do so.
My impression is that Putin, for all his faults, grasps the nature of the problem with the phrase "spiritual sovereignty". I think an argument can be made that Russian culture cannot maintain whatever is left of a strong national ethos as a special and distinct people if it just turns into Canada-East. The same can even be said for states in the US with maybe Texas playing the role of Russia and maybe Florida that of Hungary/Poland.
"There is no question that US (er, "NATO") strategy ... is ... to defang Russia, normalize relations between it and it's European neighbors, and gradually nudge it over time further and further away from Soviet-Superpower mentality into "Just Another Country" mindset, convergence with and integration into the broader "European Project", as a kind of "Giant Frozen Serbia with Oil and Nukes." The Russian regime does not want Russia to be "Just Another Country""
Impressive yes. But simultaneously frightening when contemplating how it might be applied in an authoritarian state.
What happens when the instruments of modernity are weaponized? Do we shed this tools opting for self preservation and thereby disconnect (at least partially) ourselves from society? Or do we continue to use the tools and leave ourselves open to attack? Whichever we choose would seem to introduce a lot of friction and inefficiency to the whole project of improving human flourishing
"They have executed this strategy with energy and determination, to the great benefit of Ukraine, and its future prospects are bright—but only if we have the patience to stick with it." -- This sounds like something someone could have said with some plausibility in the autumn of 2022. To say this unironically in the middle of 2024?
Seems like the play Israel has made for a long time. Eventually, perhaps in generations, some large scale social or technological change might end the war. Perhaps gene editing will make the Arabs smarter. Or oil will become less valuable and they will be impotent. Or leadership will all go UAE style and just want to fuck blondes instead.
As long as nobody puts a nuke in Tel Aviv before then, occasional Oct 7th are horrible but not existential.
You've said it before and it is no doubt true but reading it anew makes me as sad as last time.
I have a hard time with comparing the two proxy wars and I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe they are every bit as comparable as you make it seem and my reaction against it is entirely emotional. Or maybe the similarities are no greater than both being wars.
I was thinking of trying to compare the two sets of circumstances but moving from thoughts to words brought to light how involved that would be. Too much for here. Maybe beyond my capabilities too. Instead I'll ask a question. Was the US a proxy for France in our revolutionary war?
Ok, more questions. If Israel and Ukraine are US proxies, (is that a reasonable framing?) and Hamas/Hezbollah/Palestinians are Iran's proxies, who is Russia's proxy?
For the record, the American Revolution was absolutely a proxy war between France and England. Barbara Tuchmann's The First Salute goes into great detail about how instrumental French support was to the cause of the Revolution and the reasons that support was offered.
Absolutely - Since you use this word, it is especially worthwhile to note that it very much depends on whose definition you use. If we use Oxford, your claim fails twice as the war was not started by France and France did contribute troops and naval protection.
I was at Yorktown recently and for some reason had not expected to see that there are 3 flags flying at equal height over the site of the surrender.
Still, to mix up my references, I think it would be amusing to watch you stand up on Bob Dylan’s coffee table and tell General Washington he fought a proxy war.
I’m working on a piece about why the other Sunni powers might condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza but still maintain ties. My guess is they are all waiting for the big confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program. There the Saudi’s, Israelis, and other Sunnis are aligned against Iran and crew. Israel is a key ally.
The US is doing in Ukraine what Iran is doing in Gaza. The Russians and the Israelis are the non-proxies though their positions relative to the proxy combatant are opposite.
Iran is far closer to being a regional hegemon in the style of 1930s Germany than Putin's Russia which makes our policy with respect to the two conflicts seem quite unfocused, absent other considerations.
There are many parts of the proxy arguments being made that I'm not sure I agree with. You made one I disagree. I'd argue Israel is a US proxy every bit as much as Ukraine.
Any discussion of war is incomplete without understanding the goals of the opposing sides, including goals of supporters in a so-called proxy war. Contrary to popular opinion, negotiations do not end wars. Wars only end when one side or the other, or both sides at the same time, give up on goals that are at odds with their enemy's goals. The American Revolution only ended when the British gave up on the idea of maintaining the US as British Colonies. World War II only ended when Germany, Japan, and Italy gave up on the goal of regional domination. Negotiations are useful for wrapping up lose ends but do not end wars, only dropping conflicting goals ends wars.
Putin's goal for Ukraine is obvious, complete domination of Ukraine as part of "Greater Russia." Ukraine's goal is to maintain independence. The US supports Ukraine's goal in what I see as a morally correct decision. The US does not have any other "proxy war" goals except to support the independence goals of all countries in the region.
The Israel/Palestinian picture is almost as clear but not often discussed the way it should be. Palestinian goals include destruction of State of Israel, but not necessarily through genocidal actions. I don't believe genocide is their goal at all. What they want is all of Palestine ruled by Palestinian Muslims. Jews may be allowed to live there so long as they are subservient to Palestinian rule.
Israeli goals are just the same but from the opposite point of view, all of Palestine under one Nation (called Israel) under Jewish Rule. Palestinian Muslims will not necessarily be removed as long as they submit to Israeli rule and become semi-willing 2nd class citizens. This is not a stated goal for the State of Israel but can be easily inferred based on Israeli actions (controlling movement and building settlements within occupied territories, etc.).
One problem with understanding the goals and tactics of each side in the Israel/Palestine conflict is assuming it encompasses many, separate wars when it is really just one war. There have been some quite periods, and some combatants (like Egypt and Jordan) have dropped out, but it has really been the same war since Israel declared independence in 1948. The primary combatants, Israelis and Palestinians, have remained the same and their goals have remained the same as well. So when Hamas executes an attack like Oct. 7, it is not the start of a new war, rather it is a new battle in a very old war.
The role of Iran is interesting and a bit more difficult to decipher. It appears the goal of Iran is regional domination, and it uses the emotional appeal of the Palestinian conflict to inspire proxies into fighting for them. Iran can stay out of direct conflict and maintain a sense of instability while assuming a leadership role for itself. If Israel were destroyed, Iran's proxy war would not be over since Sunni countries would resist Iranian domination.
The US tries to maintain a role of international leadership with a goal of autonomy for all. This is particularly difficult when it comes to Israel because of the long-standing US/Israeli ties. Because of these ties the US tends to ignore the moral lapses of Israeli regimes. This is a real shame since peace in the Middle-East is not possible without moral clarity on the part of the US.
A quibble. The end of WW II did not have to wait until "... Italy gave up on the goal of regional domination." Mussolini's government had fallen and Italy was completely occupied by Allied troops before the end of WW II. They no longer mattered.
Of course, and Germany surrendered before Japan. Timing of the surrenders does not matter as much as the fact that they did surrender and gave up regional domination goals. On the other hand, Germany surrendered after the First World War but did not give up its goal of regional domination. World War II, from the perspective of Germany and the Allies, was really just a continuation of the First World War, same combatants, same goals. Wars are not really over until the groups (countries) in conflict no longer have conflicting goals, or one side no longer has the means to continue fighting and cannot acquire the means. The Israel/Palestine war will continue for a long, long time. Iran's continued involvement may or may not evaporate in a relatively short period of time. Israel's belligerence toward Iran does not make it more likely that Iran will end its involvement.
"Wars are not really over until the groups (countries) in conflict no longer have conflicting goals, or one side no longer has the means to continue fighting and cannot acquire the means."
I agree. Though there is a potential major misunderstanding embedded in that statement. Countries don't go to war; governments do. Because the people who run the government do. From the moment of the armistice, there were people in Germany who did not give up the goal of regional domination, but they were a minority and the policy of the various governments from 1918-33 was rather the opposite. Those who still harbored expansionist views took advantage of the hyperinflation, depression, and failure of the various governments to make Germany a respected member of the "international community" to eventually gain power in 1933 (a story told in Adam Tooze's The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931).
Yes, no discussion of a group's goals is complete without a thorough understanding of a group's internal dynamics. But I hesitate to use the word "governments." Is Hamas a government? I don't see them as a government, but maybe I am mistaken.
Groups large enough and strong enough to wage war are a mix of leadership and members, often but not necessarily countries and governments. Leadership sets goals but only with some level of consent from the members. Thus Hitler could only rise to power due to support of a reasonably large segment of the German population, but once in power he could pursue his goals, which of course meant continuing the Great War.
Putin has a goal of destruction of Ukraine as an independent entity. But I don't think his goal is a Russian goal, it's just that Putin has so much power that the people of Russia do not dare oppose him. If Putin were suddenly removed from power, I believe the invasion of Ukraine would end quickly. Any emerging leader of Russia would gain support by declaring the invasion of Ukraine "just not worth it."
Most wars end by one side losing the will to pursue a conflicting goal, that leadership decides continued fighting is "just not worth it." The other option is one side loses the means to keep fighting so gives up due to weakness and lack of support.
Israel seems intent on destroying Hamas, thus ending the war by destroying the opposing side's ability to keep fighting. But this will not work. Even if Hamas is destroyed, the ability, and will, of the Palestinian people will persist. Some other organization will rise to replace Hamas and oppose Israel. The Palestinian people have too much international support to completely lose the means to keep fighting, and Israeli actions make the will to continue fighting stronger, not weaker.
A regime change in Israel, through elections of course, could change the goal of Israel from one of victory through military might to one of peaceful co-existence. I am not sure if this is possible given Israeli internal politics but I remain hopeful. I am sure many Israelis would rather live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors but I am not sure how much they would be willing to give up to achieve peace. I am almost positive that Israelis would not give up Israeli settlements in the West Bank to make a 2-state solution possible, but I do believe a power-sharing agreement, a one-state solution, may be possible.
I like to believe Iran could be persuaded to give up its proxy war status, to decide "its just not worth it" to continue supplying armaments to its proxies. But I do not understand the motivations of the Iranian regime, or their goals, enough to know why they keep doing what they are doing, and what may compel them to stop.
Hamas won the last election in Gaza and has run the government since then. I suppose you can say that they aren't exactly the government; they just control it. But that means that Hamas' decisions are also the government's decisions.
My sense of the situation in Iran is that the liberal Iranians who don't like the regime have a relatively comfortable standard of living and they know what a civil war would mean for their livelihood. (Which is entirely reasonable of them.) The mullahs aren't going to get overthrown. Perhaps there could be a coup, but I think the most likely scenario for change in Iran would be an Iranian Gorbachev rather than a "fall of the regime."
It might be that Russia is using Iran as a proxy against the US or US interests or allies. The recent long range missile attack on Israel from the Houthi faction in Yemen may have been a warning. The Houthis claimed it was a supersonic missile, though this was denied by the Israelis. Supersonic missiles are an existing Russian technology, and in June Russian President Putin warned that they could furnish weaponry to adversaries of Western nations that supply arms to Ukraine. Though that missile did little damage, it showed that the Houthis (Iran) could easily be used in the way that Putin discussed. The Iran supported blockage of Red Sea shipping by the Houthis could be another example. An enormous amount of shipping (other than Russian and Chinese vessels) has been forced to go around the Cape of Good Hope at great expense, helping to drive inflation in the West.
"Worldwide, Muslims vastly outnumber Jews. If even a small fraction of Muslims are committed to the destruction of Israel, sooner or later they may prevail." wow.
Let us say that the Jews killed all the Palestinians. Morally, I don't even have a problem with this. If it would end there, I would even say it was prudent.
What are the odds that, in response to this, Iran or really any Muslim just decided to smuggle a nuke or biological weapon or whatever into Tel Aviv? Israel is a small dense country. How hard could it be to kill them all if you didn't care anymore what happens after?
There are too many Muslims to kill them all. And if you don't kill them all, won't they take revenge?
the establishment (including and especially the IDF general staff) are vehemently opposed to the war in aza and wants a return to october 6 and preserve hamas as a political "partner to peace"
the general public (including the lower ranks of IDF commanders) wants a swift and total occupation of the aza strip
the current government (apart from the security minister galant who is establishment) shares the publics goals but does not feel it has the political power to directly defy the "security system"
I am deeply sceptical of analogies between Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine that do not see the similarities between Hamas and Putin. Hamas wishes to end Israel, genocidally preferably, though driving the Jews into the sea would be sufficient: they tell us so. Putin wants to end Ukraine as an entity and identity separate from Russia: he told us so. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
Another thing Hamas and Putin have in common: no agreement with either is worth the paper it is printed on.
The difference is that Israel is stronger than Hamas and Russia is stronger than Ukraine. We are not forcing Ukrainians to fight, but we are enabling them to do so. If they are willing to continue to resist, we should continue to enable them to do so.
Where the “fight to the last Ukrainian” criticism of US support has some bite is being too restrictive on how the Ukrainians can use the Western-supplied weapons and not having a strategy of victory.
The other issue is that Hamas absolutely a proxy for Iran and, as Sunnis, its most disposable proxy. Ukraine is a nation in its own right. Proxy does not seem to be quite so accurate a description: or they are proxies in a somewhat different sense. One for the attack on Israel, the other for the defence of Europe. Which is certainly how a lot of Europeans see it: notably the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Swedes …. While the Japanese, South Koreans and Australians see it as a proxy for restraining China, with Taiwan the analogy to Ukraine (in so many ways).
"We are not forcing Ukrainians to fight"
This is obviously false. Ukraine has draconian conscription, emigration is illegal, and elections have been suspended indefinitely. Under such circumstances, it's a cruel joke to guess at what Ukrainian's want, as they have to be forced into these wants at the point of a gun.
Russia maintains a higher percentage of volunteers than Ukraine in its armed forces. Call them killer mercenary thugs if you want, but at least they are there by choice.
"Putin wants to end Ukraine as an entity and identity separate from Russia"
If true, this is still not the same war aim as Hamas. Hamas wishes to literally KILL ALL THE JEWS.
Russia does not wish to genocide the Ukrainian people. If anything, it would probably prefer to achieve a change in government with minimal killing, as that would be in their interest.
Let's say Russia achieved its goal of regime change. It's not like the old regime in Ukraine was giving a good life to the Ukranian people, nor was there any evidence it was moving in the right direction. The Ukranian government seems a stupid thing to die for, which is why people have to be forced into doing so.
And even given this, since about a month into the war, the goal of Ukranian regime change was abandoned by Russia. The status quo ante-bellum was offered, and Russian troops were removed to the far east separatist areas. This offer, which would have preserved Ukraine's government in its loyal territory at little cost, was turned down.
The purpose of turning it down mainly seems to have been the hope that some crushing battlefield victory might cause regime change in Russia. Two years later, no such victory has come. The situation is worse and not better. This could have been predicted at the time. I've even seen Ukraine supporters call turning this deal down stupid.
I think that what has happened is that a good deal was scotched for some pie in the sky homerun by people who wouldn't be paying the price in the trenches. And now we are so deep into it that nobody wants to admit how stupid they've been.
"If they are willing to continue to resist, we should continue to enable them to do so."
What the Ukrainian's want (see above) and what we want are not the same thing. We have no obligation to them at all.
I do not support using my tax dollars to provide weapons so a bunch of slavs, many there against their will, can kill each other in trenches that barely move to determine which of two loser governments controls some shelled out villages in some god forsaken corner of the planet.
Also, I think you do a disservice to Israel. They are a good country fighting what is basically pure evil for their own survival. Ukraine the Russia are basically the same government and same people fighting a war for utterly retarded reasons that they could end tomorrow.
The "good deal was scotched" not only US/NATO fantasies of regime change in Russia, and making the Donbas safe for LGBTQ, but to perpetuate the defense industry grift and to gratify the power trip of the DC Blob,
I'm pretty positive Hamas has no interest in hunting down Jews living in Chicago or Antarctica unlike the good Herr Wiesenthal. Islam is pretty tolerant of Jews as Allah never told them to go genocide their neighbors and take their land unlike his chosen people. Israel is the Islamic problem, not Jews.
Well, they don't seem to treat Jews in the west too well either, but I digress.
It's not like all the Jews in Israel are going to abandon their homes and leave. They are going to have to kill them to get rid of them.
By contrast, Russia doesn't seem to have any desire to displace Ukranians. In fact I think they would be happy if any Ukranians in any territories they controlled stayed. That is not true of Hamas.
Look, I think of the Ukraine war more like some 18th century conflict where two governments have a limited war and maybe one annexes a province from the other. Whereas the Hamas war is more like what the Germans were trying to do with General Plan Ost or the Holocaust.
I don't disagree with your broader point but my annoyance is this keeps getting framed by the Western Jew lobby as a genocidal war and it's simply not. Even if Hamas walked every Jew in Israel into the sea, it would end there, it's simply a means to an ends of liberating Palestine. Hamas isn't sending death squads to New York to kill Weinstein, the US can do that themselves just fine.
There are 9.5 million Jews in Israel, so like 1.5 holocausts.
And if the Muslim hordes ever become a majority in the west, why shouldn't they do it here too. The left already bows to them.
They want the Jews out of what they consider Arab land. If there were 9.5 million Korean people living there who wouldn't move, they would want to kill those people. That doesn't mean they're genocidal against Koreans.
What they want is ethnic cleansing, strictly speaking.
Because it's not about religion but the land. Jews exist just fine in Islamic Malaysia for example as do faiths not of the book. ISIS is simply an outlier on par with other extremist regimes like the USA and North Korea.
"I think that what has happened is that a good deal was scotched for some pie in the sky homerun by people who wouldn't be paying the price in the trenches. And now we are so deep into it that nobody wants to admit how stupid they've been."
Alas, I think that is true. As in WW I, the more death and destruction, the more the protagonists say, "We've lost so much, we can't stop now."
Keep in mind that Ukraine has a very large Russian ethnic and Russian speaking populace, a 70% majority of the population in the Donbas or eastern portion. This population had long been badly mistreated by the Kiev government and by its ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi groups including the Azov Battalion, which became a Brigade of the regular army. The people of the Donbas would rather rule itself or be ruled from Moscow than Kiev for understandable reasons. Just as we in the US would not tolerate the Soviets bringing Mexico or Canada into the Warsaw Pact,, the Russians cannot accept NATO membership for Ukraine. So while I am sympathetic to the national aspirations of the Ukrainian ethnic and speaking population, the only reasonable option is a partition, or possibly something like the Finlandization of the Ukraine that was the modus vivendi during the Soviet era, and even those would now be very problematic.
A comparison to Mexico and Canada is difficult to fathom. Neither wants to be part of a Russian alliance. Ukraine would like to be part of NATO.
And then there is Cuba.
The US didn't tolerate Zimmerman either hence our outrage over it. Also the entire "Good Neighbor Policy". Ukraine wants to be part of NATO for the graft, nothing more nothing less. They would like to part of the OSCE and EU too for the same reason.
I don't see how either is anything like Putin's complaints and invasion of Ukraine. We didn't invade Mexico because of the Zimmerman telegraph. Quite the opposite, the good neighbor policy stated we would REDUCE interference in internal affairs of Latin American countries. Thanks for clarifying and strengthening my point.
The Ukrainian was NOT Finlandized during the Soviet era. Finland was an independent country that was careful to be non-aligned internationally, no western weapons, but took no orders from Moscow. The Ukraine, however, was the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a province of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and very much took orders from Moscow.
Sorry, I was unclear. I meant Ukraine might be Finlandized as a solution to the present conflict.
Finland went on to join NATO after Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine.
Finland fought the Winter War to avoid joining the Soviet Union. The Ukrainians wish they could have.
Actually, I would go even further on the analogy between Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine in one sense. Like the Palestinians, Ukrainian nationalists are motivated by a perceived historical grievance against neighboring Russia, and just as Hamas wishes to end Israel, Ukrainian nationalists seek to end Russia as a state. Although Ukrainian nationalists represent a minority of the Ukrainian population, they exercise an outsized political influence in Ukraine, and just as Iran exploits Hamas in its proxy war against Israel, the US foreign policy establishment has exploited the Ukrainian nationalist movement in its proxy war against Russia. Separately, with regard to the argument that US support for Ukraine has been too restrictive and not having a strategy of victory (the argument of Anne Applebaum, who knows nothing about military strategy and has not specified what the alternative winning strategy would be), once Russia shifted to a war of attrition based on its massive defense industrial complex (a legacy of the Soviet system), there was no strategy of victory for Ukraine against Russia. The underestimation of Russia's military capabilities is one of the puzzling aspects of this war.
In the beginning there was an over-estimation of Russia's military. That wasn't replaced by a military under-estimation. If anything, it was an under-estimation of Putin's resolve to continue in the face of huge losses. Maybe there wasn't enough consideration of how things might proceed but more likely there wasn't any agreement a better alternative was available. In that way, US and its two "proxies" face very similar situations.
Putin rolled the dice on the idea that the Ukranian state would collapse overnight because it is in actuality a really shitty state.
When that didn't happen, he tried to back out. We should have let him. But the calculus from the people not fighting the war was "maybe we get a huge propaganda win". When confronted with what essentially amounted to regime change, Putin mobilized. Once both countries mobilized, obviously the larger country will likely prevail, and it not neither will prevail. This downside, while high probability, would be incurred by some poor slavs and not the decision makers. Like WWI, which this war looks like.
Any initial narrative about an over-estimation of Russia's military amounted to pure propaganda. Anyone with any expertise on military affairs knew that the initial invasion was of insufficient size to achieve any kind of military victory, and was instead intended to achieve some other political objective, including perhaps a negotiated settlement. Unfortunately, as you suggest, the initial gambit was misinterpreted as a sign of weakness, or lack of resolve on Putin's part. As for huge losses, Russia has been mum on its casualties, so any estimates of Russian losses are pure guesswork, but its slow attrition strategy is designed to conserve its forces, and whatever the losses are, they are significantly less than those of Ukraine thanks in large part to artillery dominance. The people running our foreign policy are clowns. If they had any sense, they would have avoided getting into this mess in the first place. And as I have said before, the timing of the October 7th attack was partly a response to the perceived weakness of the US following the much ballyhooed but ultimately failed Ukrainian 'counteroffensive in spring-summer 2023. In this respect, Israel as well as Ukraine are victims of the ineptitude of our foreign policy establishment.
Yeah Perun has a good episode on this lately in that Russia has started to move to an actual war economy and a full war economy can always out compete even the combined West on a peace charity economy. It's not that Russia doesn't have the industrial capacity, it just needed time to retool from refrigerators to tanks. The US today can't push the same number of tanks we could in 1944 but we could given time and need and that is the path we forced Putin onto. Economically the Russian economy is the best it's been in years with real wages rising, etc and to the point their central bank is trying to prevent overheating.
Ukraine can't win this unless the West commits and then to Arnold's point, we will sacrifice Ukrainians as much as we can. Besides two birds one stone as it's more dead Orthodox Slavs on both sides, a win for the Papist West.
"Anyone with any expertise on military affairs knew that the initial invasion was of insufficient size to achieve any kind of military victory."
I hadn't heard it was undersized. Maybe so. Or maybe it's a different version of what I've heard numerous times. Ukraine was expected to fall in days to a few weeks. Russia's invasion was ineptly executed and Ukraine's defense was far stronger than expected.
"whatever the losses are, they are significantly less than those of Ukraine"
Every source I've heard or found estimates Russia's losses are larger.
"The people running our foreign policy are clowns. If they had any sense, they would have avoided getting into this mess in the first place."
How would they have avoided this? Allow Russia to decide what ho joins NATO or EU? (As for clowns, I would agree that Biden made totally inept statements at least once.)
"And as I have said before, the timing of the October 7th attack was partly a response to the perceived weakness of the US following the much ballyhooed but ultimately failed Ukrainian 'counteroffensive in spring-summer 2023"
Huh? Ukraine's weakness made Hamas think Israel was weak? You don't think they did this as soon as they figured out they could? You think this was a strategy they had sitting on the shelf waiting until US looks weak? Really?
1) size of initial invasion. Right, it's a different version of what you've heard, i.e. what you've heard is propaganda. It is indisputable that the initial invasion was undersized. That's why Andrei Illarionov, a fierce Putin critic, infamously rejected claims that the Russians were poised to invade; based on consultations with military experts, he argued that the size of the force gathered at the border was far too small.
2) Russian losses. According to military experts (not me), artillery is the critical determinant of relative losses, and even the mainstream press acknowledges that Russia fires far more artillery shells than Ukraine does (because Russia outproduces all of NATO combined). Of course, as I said, Russia is secretive about its losses, while it does track and catalogue Ukrainian losses, so there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the relevant figures. Ukraine suffered large losses in the failed counter-offensive, is suffering large losses on the front line as it moves westward, and also as a result of the Kursk incursion. In any event, Russia has a much larger population and can better absorb losses than Ukraine.
3) Clowns. Look, every additional NATO member adds to our military burden. Ukraine has been a corrupt basket case, politically and economically, since it became independent after the USSR collapsed. Why as Americans would we want Ukraine to become a NATO member? What is the benefit to us? And don't give me some story about defending freedom and democracy. This conflict has always been about using Ukraine to get at Russia, for reasons I cannot fathom. (ps., it is not clear Russia is absolutely opposed to Ukraine joining the EU) Also, if the purpose of NATO is to defend Europe from Russia, it should encourage members to build up their armed forces, but it does the opposite, i.e. it is based on the premise that we are going to rescue Europe from Russia, and that doesn't make any sense (we are separated from Russia by 2 oceans, which gives Russia an unsurmountable home field advantage in any continental war in Europe).
4) October 7th. NATO planned the Ukrainian counter-offensive, and supplied the equipment and munitions used to carry it out. We huffed and puffed, but the Russian house did not get blown down. We looked weak, and Israel, which is viewed as a US client state (which it basically is) was an inviting target. And the October 7th attack forced us to divert some munitions from Ukraine to Israel, so it essentially opened up a 2nd front against the US. And obviously, the October 7th attack had been planned for some time, and the only question was the best time to launch it. I'm not the only one making this connection, though for the most part neither proponents of the Ukraine conflict (who don't want to admit the blowback problem) nor opponents (most of whom blame Israel for the October 7th attack, just as they blame the US for the Ukraine conflict) acknowledge the connection.
I found sources that said Russia's forces at the border were too small to OCCUPY a resistant population. Before invasion it wasn't known what Putin’s objective might be. It wasn't known whether the invading force was too small for his intention until after the invasion had started. Obviously it failed but even now we still don't know exactly what his intent was. Depending on intent it could still be argued the failure was more ineptitude than size of force.
1 “The underestimation of Russia's military capabilities is one of the puzzling aspects of this war.”
My apologies for not being more clear previously. Invading with the intent to occupy the country with a force too small does not support your statement that I quote.
Despite the force being too small to occupy, it was still widely predicted that Ukraine could not withstand for long. This was in part an underestimation of Ukraine but largely because everyone thought Russia’s military capabilities were far greater than they have been to date. I'm not saying Russia won't eventually prevail given a larger number of men and equipment but nobody, except apparently you, is arguing Russia’s military has come close to expectations. Any puzzlement has been over how inept Russian military has been. This article gives a good summary in the first couple of paragraphs.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-ill-fated-invasion-ukraine-lessons-modern-warfare
2 Other than a Newsweek article that for some reason only used numbers from Russian sources, everything I've ever heard or found googling says Russia has lost far more men than Ukraine. Here’s one.
https://www.russiamatters.org/news/russia-ukraine-war-report-card/russia-ukraine-war-report-card-july-16-2024
Are you saying numbers from Russia are more trustworthy? What is your source?
3 “every additional NATO member adds to our military burden.”
This implicitly assumes that more countries means war against NATO is more likely. I don't agree.
4 Ukraine has never gotten nearly as much supplies as needed so saying some was diverted to Israel seems a rather tenuous claim at best. Be that as it may, how is Oct 7 working out for Hamas? Did their timing (after Ukraine offensive) help them?
I doubt I want to try to reach some agreement on what “client state” means but I suspect we can agree that for ~50 years Israel was highly dependent on the US. That is no longer true. Today's Israeli economy could easily fund their own defense but US funding continues in part because ending it would be politically difficult for both sides. Now if Israel were boycotted and could not buy anything, that's something entirely different.
"Anyone with any expertise on military affairs knew that the initial invasion was of insufficient size to achieve any kind of military victory." Oh, twaddle. Russia's military was big enough to conquer the Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine. Which it pretty much has done.
I feel fairly sure that if Zelensky had said after two months, "You can have that land and we won't join NATO", Putin would have been happy to stop. Of course, that would be a violation of international law and Putin is not a good man but it sure looks like that's the way the war is going to end two or more years--and lots of death and destruction--later.
Your comment about Putin wanting to end Ukraine as a separate entity isn’t supported by what Putin said here or anywhere else. True he believes they are one people but recognizes Ukraine as a separate country and repeatedly supports Ukrainian identity. He just wants it to be a compliant neighbor and to not be anti-Russia which he thinks has been imposed on it by Western meddlers. I think it’s unfair and doesn’t respect Ukrainian sovereignty but it’s a lot different from wanting to end its separate identity. Let’s be honest the US would not tolerate a bordering state being anti-American and backed by the Russians and Chinese. Look at all the stuff we did to Cuba. If it were Canada or Mexico you better believe we would have done regime change. Why is Russia different?
I think it's probably fine to say that if Kiev fell without resistance at the beginning he would have done some regime change. But that's long in the past, and even if it happened there is a difference between ending a Ukrainian political regime and ending the Ukrainian people.
Hamas doesn't want BiBi gone, it wants all the Jews dead.
I wanted to write something like you did and decided against it. It seems I made the right decision. I have little doubt you are a better writer and your odds of success were better. I think you failed. Your odds would improve in a longer response but maybe not much. I still lean towards your view though and I'm glad to know we share a similar view.
With regard to the long-term strategic outlook in the Middle East, David Goldman (Spengler) wrote a more optimistic assessment (perhaps overly optimistic) based on demographic and economic considerations in an August 15th article in Asia Times, titled 'Israel is the Future of the Middle East.'
https://asiatimes.com/2024/08/israel-is-the-future-of-the-middle-east/
Handle's Law of Casus Belli Retro-Induction: "Whoever made what you claim to be the first unjustified move will then counter that it was the justified reaction to their rival's unjustified move, ad infinitum." A Corollary is: "The Futility of Dialectic Regarding the Mideast".
Russia's claimed position is that they were pushed into a corner with the realizing that softer deterrence approaches to keep Ukraine from crossing its red lines had failed and further such efforts would be futile with time running out, which required Russia to either fight or suck up a huge, long-term geostrategic loss in the strength of their position in the Black Sea region in addition to other new risks like NATO encirclement of their buffer satrapy of Belarus, and weakened ability to use it to apply pressure on the Suwałki Gap to prevent isolation of Kaliningrad.
There is no question that US (er, "NATO") strategy in the region has focused on achieving these goals for a long time, which is to say, to defang Russia, normalize relations between it and it's European neighbors, and gradually nudge it over time further and further away from Soviet-Superpower mentality into "Just Another Country" mindset, convergence with and integration into the broader "European Project", as a kind of "Giant Frozen Serbia with Oil and Nukes." The Russian regime does not want Russia to be "Just Another Country".
I haven't paid attention in a while, but not long ago there was a certain attitude in the American national security scene of 'inevitability' to this outcome, and that the smart course would be "frog-boiling", to be patient, wait it out, to very gradually ratchet up the temperature and apply small amounts of high-bang-for-buck pressure here and there when opportunities arose, but to avoid going too far, too fast in ways that would provoke a counterproductive reaction. Americans who tend to support the Russian position in this matter (or who support Ukraine but who think the present conflict was both avoidable and should have been avoided) will claim that this is exactly the unwise mistake the US made, and that thus, per my law above, the real casus belli is the US launching pushing the proxy to cross the red line, thus triggering the proxy war against Russia.
There is no general law of proxy war 'effectiveness' (however defined); historically it seems to depend significantly on the details particular regime and context. Consider, for example, the impact in terms of public willingness to support certain military actions of cold-war-era proxy wars against the US such as with Korea, Vietnam, and arguably in certain fronts in the "Global War on Terror."
I think this gets at the right answer regarding Russia and Ukraine. If we get down to the essence of it, I don't think it's reasonable to blame America (because the proximate cause here was clear Russian invasion), but it's certainly reasonable to think that more skillful and less grasping American foreign relations over both the short and longer term could likely have prevented outright war.
In legal terms, America's blame is something on the level of involuntary manslaughter. Our policies and interventions were stupid, reckless, and counterproductive, but not intentional.
Iran, on the other hand, is quite explicit and intentional. Again, in legal terms, it's the equivalent of first degree murder.
Jeff Sachs is one of those Americans who support the Russian position and blames the US for triggering the proxy war against Russia. I am somewhat sympathetic to this position, but when he goes off on one of his rants about how he persuaded the US to establish a stabilization fund for Poland and argues that the US should have done the same thing for Russia in the 1990s, I roll my eyes. Poland was content to be "Just Another Country," as you put it (or perhaps more accurately, "just another US client state"), but I agree with you that the Russian regime does not want to be "Just Another Country," nor did the current regime's predecessor (the chaotic Yeltsin regime) want to be "Just Another Country." Personally, I have no problem with Russia wanting to maintain its 'big power' status, and in any event, I don't see any way of changing their mind that doesn't involve an undesirable conflict, but by the same token, I reject Sachs' claim that we had a duty to help stabilize their economy in the 1990s given their long-term geopolitical objectives.
As Sachs seems a little unstable himself, it’s not surprising that he glosses right over the madness or hubris of Putin.
All the above comments may be sound, yet I am still left thinking none of this happens without the sociopath.
I suppose this is why “blame the US” seems a bit like (sorry) gaslighting.
I think your instincts about Sachs are correct. I think Putin is just Russian. I have problems with both sides of the argument on the Ukraine conflict. Sometimes I get the feeling that the world has become like the film (original and remake) Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and almost everyone around me has been snatched. But who knows, perhaps I'm the one whose body has been snatched.
Poland seems to be 50/50 "Just Another Country", and Hungary 40/60 (though I suspect this will move more in the direction of JAC with time with generational turnover). I think you could say that both of those nations would be happily in the 100% JAC camp 30 years ago, but convergence with the European Project (i.e., internationalist progressivism) now requires crossing two difficult cultural lines, (1) Swamping of local population with mass Immigration of mainly poor Africans and Muslims, and (2) Legal mandates for the whole woke package including the perpetual discrimination-inquisition and especially all the LGBTXYZ stuff. Europe isn't going to let them pick and choose though.
A more interesting question is whether one -can- pick and choose. If your nation's value system isn't running on Full Portfolio Progressivism code, then what -other- code is it running on, and why? If you can't define and justify that, then your next generation's elites are just going to do what all the other young elites did in every other comparable context, which is just become good progressives and flip all those "backwards" positions toward the enlightened arc of history the minute they have sufficient power to do so.
My impression is that Putin, for all his faults, grasps the nature of the problem with the phrase "spiritual sovereignty". I think an argument can be made that Russian culture cannot maintain whatever is left of a strong national ethos as a special and distinct people if it just turns into Canada-East. The same can even be said for states in the US with maybe Texas playing the role of Russia and maybe Florida that of Hungary/Poland.
"There is no question that US (er, "NATO") strategy ... is ... to defang Russia, normalize relations between it and it's European neighbors, and gradually nudge it over time further and further away from Soviet-Superpower mentality into "Just Another Country" mindset, convergence with and integration into the broader "European Project", as a kind of "Giant Frozen Serbia with Oil and Nukes." The Russian regime does not want Russia to be "Just Another Country""
Yup.
Prescient call on electronic warfare. Israel may have taken out a large swath of hezbollah leadership by causing their beepers to blow up. Impressive.
Impressive yes. But simultaneously frightening when contemplating how it might be applied in an authoritarian state.
What happens when the instruments of modernity are weaponized? Do we shed this tools opting for self preservation and thereby disconnect (at least partially) ourselves from society? Or do we continue to use the tools and leave ourselves open to attack? Whichever we choose would seem to introduce a lot of friction and inefficiency to the whole project of improving human flourishing
"They have executed this strategy with energy and determination, to the great benefit of Ukraine, and its future prospects are bright—but only if we have the patience to stick with it." -- This sounds like something someone could have said with some plausibility in the autumn of 2022. To say this unironically in the middle of 2024?
"Put up with it while waiting the situation out."
Seems like the play Israel has made for a long time. Eventually, perhaps in generations, some large scale social or technological change might end the war. Perhaps gene editing will make the Arabs smarter. Or oil will become less valuable and they will be impotent. Or leadership will all go UAE style and just want to fuck blondes instead.
As long as nobody puts a nuke in Tel Aviv before then, occasional Oct 7th are horrible but not existential.
"fight Russia to the last Ukrainian."
You've said it before and it is no doubt true but reading it anew makes me as sad as last time.
I have a hard time with comparing the two proxy wars and I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe they are every bit as comparable as you make it seem and my reaction against it is entirely emotional. Or maybe the similarities are no greater than both being wars.
I was thinking of trying to compare the two sets of circumstances but moving from thoughts to words brought to light how involved that would be. Too much for here. Maybe beyond my capabilities too. Instead I'll ask a question. Was the US a proxy for France in our revolutionary war?
Ok, more questions. If Israel and Ukraine are US proxies, (is that a reasonable framing?) and Hamas/Hezbollah/Palestinians are Iran's proxies, who is Russia's proxy?
For the record, the American Revolution was absolutely a proxy war between France and England. Barbara Tuchmann's The First Salute goes into great detail about how instrumental French support was to the cause of the Revolution and the reasons that support was offered.
Absolutely - Since you use this word, it is especially worthwhile to note that it very much depends on whose definition you use. If we use Oxford, your claim fails twice as the war was not started by France and France did contribute troops and naval protection.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/proxy-war
Note: I'm rather perplexed by the definition. How does a country start a war without becoming involved?
I was at Yorktown recently and for some reason had not expected to see that there are 3 flags flying at equal height over the site of the surrender.
Still, to mix up my references, I think it would be amusing to watch you stand up on Bob Dylan’s coffee table and tell General Washington he fought a proxy war.
Washington the politician might object to that characterization, but I bet Washington the military strategist would nod in agreement.
I’m working on a piece about why the other Sunni powers might condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza but still maintain ties. My guess is they are all waiting for the big confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program. There the Saudi’s, Israelis, and other Sunnis are aligned against Iran and crew. Israel is a key ally.
Not quite understanding the proxy part on Israel if they are actually there and fighting.
The US is doing in Ukraine what Iran is doing in Gaza. The Russians and the Israelis are the non-proxies though their positions relative to the proxy combatant are opposite.
Iran is far closer to being a regional hegemon in the style of 1930s Germany than Putin's Russia which makes our policy with respect to the two conflicts seem quite unfocused, absent other considerations.
There are many parts of the proxy arguments being made that I'm not sure I agree with. You made one I disagree. I'd argue Israel is a US proxy every bit as much as Ukraine.
Fair enough.
Any discussion of war is incomplete without understanding the goals of the opposing sides, including goals of supporters in a so-called proxy war. Contrary to popular opinion, negotiations do not end wars. Wars only end when one side or the other, or both sides at the same time, give up on goals that are at odds with their enemy's goals. The American Revolution only ended when the British gave up on the idea of maintaining the US as British Colonies. World War II only ended when Germany, Japan, and Italy gave up on the goal of regional domination. Negotiations are useful for wrapping up lose ends but do not end wars, only dropping conflicting goals ends wars.
Putin's goal for Ukraine is obvious, complete domination of Ukraine as part of "Greater Russia." Ukraine's goal is to maintain independence. The US supports Ukraine's goal in what I see as a morally correct decision. The US does not have any other "proxy war" goals except to support the independence goals of all countries in the region.
The Israel/Palestinian picture is almost as clear but not often discussed the way it should be. Palestinian goals include destruction of State of Israel, but not necessarily through genocidal actions. I don't believe genocide is their goal at all. What they want is all of Palestine ruled by Palestinian Muslims. Jews may be allowed to live there so long as they are subservient to Palestinian rule.
Israeli goals are just the same but from the opposite point of view, all of Palestine under one Nation (called Israel) under Jewish Rule. Palestinian Muslims will not necessarily be removed as long as they submit to Israeli rule and become semi-willing 2nd class citizens. This is not a stated goal for the State of Israel but can be easily inferred based on Israeli actions (controlling movement and building settlements within occupied territories, etc.).
One problem with understanding the goals and tactics of each side in the Israel/Palestine conflict is assuming it encompasses many, separate wars when it is really just one war. There have been some quite periods, and some combatants (like Egypt and Jordan) have dropped out, but it has really been the same war since Israel declared independence in 1948. The primary combatants, Israelis and Palestinians, have remained the same and their goals have remained the same as well. So when Hamas executes an attack like Oct. 7, it is not the start of a new war, rather it is a new battle in a very old war.
The role of Iran is interesting and a bit more difficult to decipher. It appears the goal of Iran is regional domination, and it uses the emotional appeal of the Palestinian conflict to inspire proxies into fighting for them. Iran can stay out of direct conflict and maintain a sense of instability while assuming a leadership role for itself. If Israel were destroyed, Iran's proxy war would not be over since Sunni countries would resist Iranian domination.
The US tries to maintain a role of international leadership with a goal of autonomy for all. This is particularly difficult when it comes to Israel because of the long-standing US/Israeli ties. Because of these ties the US tends to ignore the moral lapses of Israeli regimes. This is a real shame since peace in the Middle-East is not possible without moral clarity on the part of the US.
A quibble. The end of WW II did not have to wait until "... Italy gave up on the goal of regional domination." Mussolini's government had fallen and Italy was completely occupied by Allied troops before the end of WW II. They no longer mattered.
Of course, and Germany surrendered before Japan. Timing of the surrenders does not matter as much as the fact that they did surrender and gave up regional domination goals. On the other hand, Germany surrendered after the First World War but did not give up its goal of regional domination. World War II, from the perspective of Germany and the Allies, was really just a continuation of the First World War, same combatants, same goals. Wars are not really over until the groups (countries) in conflict no longer have conflicting goals, or one side no longer has the means to continue fighting and cannot acquire the means. The Israel/Palestine war will continue for a long, long time. Iran's continued involvement may or may not evaporate in a relatively short period of time. Israel's belligerence toward Iran does not make it more likely that Iran will end its involvement.
"Wars are not really over until the groups (countries) in conflict no longer have conflicting goals, or one side no longer has the means to continue fighting and cannot acquire the means."
I agree. Though there is a potential major misunderstanding embedded in that statement. Countries don't go to war; governments do. Because the people who run the government do. From the moment of the armistice, there were people in Germany who did not give up the goal of regional domination, but they were a minority and the policy of the various governments from 1918-33 was rather the opposite. Those who still harbored expansionist views took advantage of the hyperinflation, depression, and failure of the various governments to make Germany a respected member of the "international community" to eventually gain power in 1933 (a story told in Adam Tooze's The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931).
Yes, no discussion of a group's goals is complete without a thorough understanding of a group's internal dynamics. But I hesitate to use the word "governments." Is Hamas a government? I don't see them as a government, but maybe I am mistaken.
Groups large enough and strong enough to wage war are a mix of leadership and members, often but not necessarily countries and governments. Leadership sets goals but only with some level of consent from the members. Thus Hitler could only rise to power due to support of a reasonably large segment of the German population, but once in power he could pursue his goals, which of course meant continuing the Great War.
Putin has a goal of destruction of Ukraine as an independent entity. But I don't think his goal is a Russian goal, it's just that Putin has so much power that the people of Russia do not dare oppose him. If Putin were suddenly removed from power, I believe the invasion of Ukraine would end quickly. Any emerging leader of Russia would gain support by declaring the invasion of Ukraine "just not worth it."
Most wars end by one side losing the will to pursue a conflicting goal, that leadership decides continued fighting is "just not worth it." The other option is one side loses the means to keep fighting so gives up due to weakness and lack of support.
Israel seems intent on destroying Hamas, thus ending the war by destroying the opposing side's ability to keep fighting. But this will not work. Even if Hamas is destroyed, the ability, and will, of the Palestinian people will persist. Some other organization will rise to replace Hamas and oppose Israel. The Palestinian people have too much international support to completely lose the means to keep fighting, and Israeli actions make the will to continue fighting stronger, not weaker.
A regime change in Israel, through elections of course, could change the goal of Israel from one of victory through military might to one of peaceful co-existence. I am not sure if this is possible given Israeli internal politics but I remain hopeful. I am sure many Israelis would rather live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors but I am not sure how much they would be willing to give up to achieve peace. I am almost positive that Israelis would not give up Israeli settlements in the West Bank to make a 2-state solution possible, but I do believe a power-sharing agreement, a one-state solution, may be possible.
I like to believe Iran could be persuaded to give up its proxy war status, to decide "its just not worth it" to continue supplying armaments to its proxies. But I do not understand the motivations of the Iranian regime, or their goals, enough to know why they keep doing what they are doing, and what may compel them to stop.
Hamas won the last election in Gaza and has run the government since then. I suppose you can say that they aren't exactly the government; they just control it. But that means that Hamas' decisions are also the government's decisions.
My sense of the situation in Iran is that the liberal Iranians who don't like the regime have a relatively comfortable standard of living and they know what a civil war would mean for their livelihood. (Which is entirely reasonable of them.) The mullahs aren't going to get overthrown. Perhaps there could be a coup, but I think the most likely scenario for change in Iran would be an Iranian Gorbachev rather than a "fall of the regime."
It might be that Russia is using Iran as a proxy against the US or US interests or allies. The recent long range missile attack on Israel from the Houthi faction in Yemen may have been a warning. The Houthis claimed it was a supersonic missile, though this was denied by the Israelis. Supersonic missiles are an existing Russian technology, and in June Russian President Putin warned that they could furnish weaponry to adversaries of Western nations that supply arms to Ukraine. Though that missile did little damage, it showed that the Houthis (Iran) could easily be used in the way that Putin discussed. The Iran supported blockage of Red Sea shipping by the Houthis could be another example. An enormous amount of shipping (other than Russian and Chinese vessels) has been forced to go around the Cape of Good Hope at great expense, helping to drive inflation in the West.
"Worldwide, Muslims vastly outnumber Jews. If even a small fraction of Muslims are committed to the destruction of Israel, sooner or later they may prevail." wow.
Let us say that the Jews killed all the Palestinians. Morally, I don't even have a problem with this. If it would end there, I would even say it was prudent.
What are the odds that, in response to this, Iran or really any Muslim just decided to smuggle a nuke or biological weapon or whatever into Tel Aviv? Israel is a small dense country. How hard could it be to kill them all if you didn't care anymore what happens after?
There are too many Muslims to kill them all. And if you don't kill them all, won't they take revenge?
the internal view from the israeli right:
the establishment (including and especially the IDF general staff) are vehemently opposed to the war in aza and wants a return to october 6 and preserve hamas as a political "partner to peace"
the general public (including the lower ranks of IDF commanders) wants a swift and total occupation of the aza strip
the current government (apart from the security minister galant who is establishment) shares the publics goals but does not feel it has the political power to directly defy the "security system"
so the war is going on and on