Putin... Why?

[alai]

a large number of the woke crowd

Many of the woke crowd

By all means, please don't let the actual topic detain you from your customary wokeological maunderings.

[cherrypoptart]

Thanks.

Point is, nobody is going to do anything. Not physically.

If Russia wants it, Russia can take it.

I don't mind helping the Ukrainians with arms. Maybe they can turn it into another Afghanistan. I wouldn't count on it but they deserve a fighting chance.

Sure sanctions. Unfortunately Russia has Europe by the short hairs on energy.

The only serious constructive suggestion I might offer is if Europe really wants to be able to hit Russia they should go to war against fossil fuels. Put all the money and scientific expertise that would have been spent on newer and better weapons, bigger and more menacing militaries, into renewable energy instead. They can fight Russia and climate change and pollution at the same time.

An outside the box approach that probably wouldn't amount to much is to just try to get Russia to tell us what they want, exactly. What cities. What swath of land. What ports. What is it you are trying to get out of all of this?

And then see if they have something to trade. Russia has plenty of land. Maybe a land swap. It wouldn't necessarily be contiguous but it could open up opportunities for Ukraine. Maybe some land in the Far East, provide Ukraine some opportunities for trade and economic development with Far East Asia. Maybe a piece of
Sakhalin since Russia stole that from Japan anyway. Yeah I doubt anyone would actually go for it but since Russia can take what they want anyway at least Ukraine might get something out of it besides dead people. It'd take some Donald Trump level master negotiating acumen to pull off a win-win like that though.

[alai]

The only serious constructive suggestion I might offer is if Europe really wants to be able to hit Russia they should go to war against fossil fuels. Put all the money and scientific expertise that would have been spent on newer and better weapons, bigger and more menacing militaries, into renewable energy instead. They can fight Russia and climate change and pollution at the same time.

I dunno if you follow any developments further to the left than Joe Manchin on this, but that kinda is the plan.  Unfortunately everyone -- aside from Joe! -- sees gas as the "stopgap" to that.

An outside the box approach that probably wouldn't amount to much is to just try to get Russia to tell us what they want, exactly. What cities. What swath of land. What ports. What is it you are trying to get out of all of this?

He's issued a laundry-list of demands already, and they're already well off the scale of what Nato and the EU could possibly countenance.  Not necessarily wise to encourage him to make more, especially ones that presuppose changing international boundaries -- something that he denies wishing to do.  (Any more than he already has.)

It'd take some Donald Trump level master negotiating acumen to pull off a win-win like that though.

His actual level of acumen, or the one asserted in that book he doesn't seem to have read, much less written?

[alai]

Professor Mary Elise Sarotte, author of "Not One Inch", on the eastward expansion of Nato being a failure and/or a betrayal...

"I hesitate to say what is inside Vladimir Putin's mind.  I don't really know if it really believes this, or just thinks it's incredibly useful to instrumentalise..."

Also theorises nothing will happen at least until after the Winter Olympics, as the Chinese complained about Russian antics in 2008, so Xi will get sulky if something like that happens again.  Gabriel Gatehouse earlier saying that local intelligence is that Russian forces don't yet have either the numbers or the stance to invade.

[Fenring]

He's issued a laundry-list of demands already, and they're already well off the scale of what Nato and the EU could possibly countenance.  Not necessarily wise to encourage him to make more, especially ones that presuppose changing international boundaries -- something that he denies wishing to do.  (Any more than he already has.)

Well his demands aren't actually undoable, it's just that the West won't do them. Why would they give up powerful threatening positions? But if they actually did I'm not so sure it would matter that much. Nowadays it's not that hard to muster forces even if you're a country or two further away. If it ever came to all-out war it's not like the presence or lack thereof of bases along the Russian border would make or break the ability to move in troops. And tbh it would probably be to the benefit of Western countries to scale down the amount of bases in the first place. Currently it seems to me, like much of the military industry, of being mostly a corporate welfare system.

[TheDrake]

it would give the appearance that we believe white people are worth saving but Arabs are not

Um, Afghans are not Arabs.

[cherrypoptart]

"He's issued a laundry-list of demands already..."

That's what they say they want but knowing Russians the way I do, which to be honest is not at all but anyway, knowing what I know about them they are lying. That's not what they really want but they can't actually come out and say what they really want because that would make them appear to be as evil as they actually are. Do I know what they really want? Not really. I don't know that much about the situation. About all I know is the little bit I see in the news, what I read here, and what I learned from playing RISK. But my guess is what they really want, mostly from what I learned playing RISK, is to seize more territory like they did with Crimea and what they say they want is just the rationalizations they believe give them a good enough appearance of provocation to take it.

[cherrypoptart]

"Um, Afghans are not Arabs."

Not as accurate but easier to get the generally racist point across than saying that defending Ukraine but not Afghanistan makes it look like we are racist because we'll defend white people but not Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Nuristanis, Aimaqs, Turkmen, Balochs, Pashai, Nuristani, Gujjars, Brahui, Qizilbash, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Sadats, some others, and even a few actual Arabs.

[alai]

Not as accurate but easier to get the generally racist point across [...]

Anti-racist racism!  Whatever next.  You could just have said "South Asian".  Arguably even "Middle Eastern" -- a somewhat loose usage, but not as wildly incorrect as "Arab".  Or just "Afghan people."

Saying "Arab" is especially cringe-making because of its "polite word for Muslim" or indeed "I'm confused about the difference between Arabs and Muslims" connotations.

But my guess is what they really want, mostly from what I learned playing RISK, is to seize more territory like they did with Crimea and what they say they want is just the rationalizations they believe give them a good enough appearance of provocation to take it.

It's a popular theory, though not quite lurid enough for the British FO, hence the increasingly lurid "OMG INVASIONS AND PUPPET REGIMES" guff from that quarter, that even the Ukrainians say is over-excited nonsense.  (The British Tories have a cake ambush and a Baby Trump PM to distract from, after all.)  But the whole Russian strategy on Donbas relies on making out it's nothing to do with them, so pretty hard to get them to start demanding port cities, and rather upsetting for Ukraine if you start offering on their behalf.

Well his demands aren't actually undoable, it's just that the West won't do them. Why would they give up powerful threatening positions?

They're pretty politically undoable, given that Nato decision-making is -- supposedly -- by consensus, and most of the countries Putin's demanding withdrawal from are rather spectacularly opposed to the idea.  Never mind them being de-memebershipped, which is only on that list:  I've no idea if there's any mechanism for that at all.  From a US PoV, there's options of quitting itself, no longer honouring its Article 5 commitments (see also, the ruminations of The Former Guy), or generally scaling back its commitment of forces (... after years of scolding others to scale them up).

It requires quite the imaginative effort on my part to empathise with (let's say) the Polish government, but if the US "pulls a Kurds" on them, they'll have some reason to feel aggrieved.  They've joined a multinational organisation with a treaty commitment to defend against "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe" (HINTHINTBYRUSSIAHINTHINTHINT), been shameless sycophants to successive US administrations, including supporting their more "military adventurist" antics, and now the Joe Rogan listenership is totally over that, and wants to defend their eastern border from...  maybe say France?

[Fenring]

They're pretty politically undoable, given that Nato decision-making is -- supposedly -- by consensus, and most of the countries Putin's demanding withdrawal from are rather spectacularly opposed to the idea.  Never mind them being de-memebershipped, which is only on that list:  I've no idea if there's any mechanism for that at all.  From a US PoV, there's options of quitting itself, no longer honouring its Article 5 commitments (see also, the ruminations of The Former Guy), or generally scaling back its commitment of forces (... after years of scolding others to scale them

Politically impossible, yes. But there's money involved with that, not safety concerns IMO. As for de-membership, I mean I don't even really know what that entails in brass tacks other than removing military bases and presumably the gravy train that goes along with the money flowing through them (services, contractors, etc). It's not like NATO will magically allow Poland to be conquered just because they shut down a costly military base there.

[Aris Katsaris]

They're pretty politically undoable, given that Nato decision-making is -- supposedly -- by consensus, and most of the countries Putin's demanding withdrawal from are rather spectacularly opposed to the idea.  Never mind them being de-memebershipped, which is only on that list:  I've no idea if there's any mechanism for that at all.  From a US PoV, there's options of quitting itself, no longer honouring its Article 5 commitments (see also, the ruminations of The Former Guy), or generally scaling back its commitment of forces (... after years of scolding others to scale them

Politically impossible, yes. But there's money involved with that, not safety concerns IMO. As for de-membership, I mean I don't even really know what that entails in brass tacks other than removing military bases and presumably the gravy train that goes along with the money flowing through them (services, contractors, etc). It's not like NATO will magically allow Poland to be conquered just because they shut down a costly military base there.

Putin wants to conquer Poland, and he wants to conquer to Baltics, or to at least have them under the constant THREAT of being invaded and conquered, that's why he wants NATO to remove itself from those countries and leave them undefended.

We're still discussing why Putin wants NATO gone? Why an invader and conqueror of nations want the defending forces to be gone, and the targets of his greed to be effectively excluded from a defensive alliance?

He wants NATO gone, so that Russia can more easily subdue all those nations that NATO will withdraw from.

[alai]

Politically impossible, yes. But there's money involved with that, not safety concerns IMO. As for de-membership, I mean I don't even really know what that entails in brass tacks other than removing military bases and presumably the gravy train that goes along with the money flowing through them (services, contractors, etc). It's not like NATO will magically allow Poland to be conquered just because they shut down a costly military base there.

Easy enough to imagine when someone else's concerns are at issue.  Like I said before (but flipping the example around), imagine Russia-aligned Pennsylvania.  You're living in Ohio for the purposes of this alt-hist exercise.  Obviously I'm not going to be so ridiculous as to suggest it's nuclear-armed...  Obviously the Russia nukes are deployed to the rear in Quebec.

And as also previously noted, Poland is one of the minority of Nato members spending more-than-guideline amounts of their own money on their own defence.  So the idea that it's just a shakedown operation for US Keynesian multipliers seems both uncharitable -- even to the Poles! -- as well as implausible.  (But I admit I did once watch an entire congressional "oversight" hearing on the DoD, and indeed apart from a famous flameout from some attempted political posturing about Critical Race Theory, there was absolutely no "oversight", and it was wall-to-wall "why aren't you spending yet more taxpayers' money, entirely coincidentally particularising to what happens in my own district".  So I do understand to predisposition to perceive pork.)

De-membership is exactly the removal of the treaty commitment to not allow Poland to be attacked.  The commitment that a certain previous US commander-in-chief was openly scoffing at, despite being a clear and binding obligation in international law at the time.  It's the exact different between Poland and Ukraine's current and recent situation.  Poland's not going to agree to that at any speed, so the only way of forcing it to happen is for the US itself to withdraw.

What military bases Poland has is down to Poland, but the US, separately and distinctly, could start refusing to forward-deploy units there.

Putin wants to conquer Poland, and he wants to conquer to Baltics, or to at least have them under the constant THREAT of being invaded and conquered, [...]

That "at least" is doing a whole lot of work in that sentence.  Given that those countries pretty much feel that way anyway, the latter is trivially satisfied.  So that's a pretty big distinction you're breezing over.

[alai]

Poland's not going to agree to that at any speed, so the only way of forcing it to happen is for the US itself to withdraw.

Or, doing some more google-grade research, there's another theory that was doing the rounds during one of the various series of "Turkey Behaving Badly".  There's no provision in the North Atlantic Treaties for expulsion of a member, or even suspension.  But one might invoke the "treaty on treaties", declare some hapless too-far-east country to be in "material breach" of the treaty in some respect, and do it that way.

Sounds a remote possibility to me, and on the "honourable conduct" scale, it'd be somewhere south of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.  But out of deference to Syrian Kurdistan, I'm not going to go so far as say 'inconceivable'.

[Aris Katsaris]

That "at least" is doing a whole lot of work in that sentence.  Given that those countries pretty much feel that way anyway, the latter is trivially satisfied.  So that's a pretty big distinction you're breezing over.

I'm not talking about abstract fears of perhaps being threatened by a nasty neighbour like e.g. my own country of Greece has with Turkey -- I'm talking instead about the direct, straightforward knowledge of "If we do anything that displeases Russia, if we dare elect an anti-Russia politician, they're very likely to immediately send in the tanks".

The distinction I was making is just the difference between territories that were directly annexed by the USSR, and the countries that it forced into the Warsaw Pact and which it could then invade at will whenever they displeased it (like it did at different times with Czechoslovakia and Hungary)

[alai]

It was?  I took it to be a literal either/or, on the assumptions his exact intent might be whimsical, opportunistic, or unknowable.  So he's literally planning on fully (re-)annexing all of Central Asia, the Caucasian republics, the Baltics, and the other three former SU Eastern European countries, is that your contention?

[Aris Katsaris]

I don't understand why it's so hard to communicate with you.

What's so difficult to understand with saying that he wants to revert Eastern Europe to the status it had under the Soviet Union's rule, where parts of it is annexed (like he did with Crimea), and parts of it are simply dominated militarily by Russia to effect that there's no true political autonomy (as is currently the case of say, Kazakhstan and Belarus, and used to be the case with a whole lot more countries)?

Are you truly not understanding what I'm saying, or is this some game I'm not getting?

[alai]

To answer the presumably rhetoric question first, what's difficult is mainly a combination of two things: the lack of any clear statement (and indeed, several apparently contradictory statements) and the heated maximalism of the claims of Putin-mind-reading.

So you are saying it's "mix and match" (on some basis, feel free to clarify which, but I'm trying to walk before I run here), not specifically "re-annex the USSR, re-dominate the Warsaw Pact", as we seemed to be getting a couple of posts ago.  Am I at least warm?

[Aris Katsaris]

To answer the presumably rhetoric question first, what's difficult is mainly a combination of two things: the lack of any clear statement (and indeed, several apparently contradictory statements) and the heated maximalism of the claims of Putin-mind-reading.

So you are saying it's "mix and match" (on some basis, feel free to clarify which, but I'm trying to walk before I run here), not specifically "re-annex the USSR, re-dominate the Warsaw Pact", as we seemed to be getting a couple of posts ago.  Am I at least warm?

Let me summarize the whole discussion:

First, I said Putin wants to either (a) conquer nations & parts of nations, or (b) to dominate them with the constant threat of invasion & conquest.

Following that, you implied that (b) is just the normal state that all countries in East Europe are already feeling, so I guess no big deal.

Following that I then explained patiently to you that there's a big difference between a country fearing a neighbour, like e.g. Greece fears Turkey -- and what I meant with (b) being similar to the situation that East Europe nations faced during the Cold War, where they were under the de facto political control of USSR, because it was going to invade them if those countries did anything that displeased the USSR.

Somehow you twisted the above explanation to mean that he wants to annex the *exact* portions that USSR had annexed, and to control the *exact* nations that USSR had controlled.

If you're still not understanding what I'm saying, then I quit trying to explain it to you, because I have spent too much time already on repeating with very small words the very simple statement that he wants to conquer (or dominate with the threat of conquest) countries.

If you simply DISAGREE with what I'm saying about what Putin wants, then simply say that you disagree, instead of trying to tire me out with asking for explanations of what I meant, when what I meant was very very simple from the very beginning.

And if you are still not finding what I said quite simple, that's again your own reading comprehension problem.

[TheDrake]

Well, now we have Boris Johnson, human shield. I guess Russia won't invade until he goes home anyway. He may be hiding from his domestic problems.

[TheDeamon]

This notion of his that NATO has been pushing aggressively toward his border is a song he's been singing for at least ten years, so it's not out of the blue in this instance.

It wasn't just him. Borris Yeltsin complained about it back in the 1990's when NATO initially expanded into parts of the former Warsaw pact. Russia has always been paranoid about invasions coming from their Western border, because their western neighbors have had a historical tendency of having done so.

[TheDeamon]

Nato actually expanded two years ago, and has three countries on its "application list".  But it's certainly been "de-focused" by the US -- right after being the only country ever to invoke its mutual-defence clause, pretty much.  The whole "pivot to China", or to "Jyna", depending on your president at the time.

How people forget their history on this when it is convenient to them.

You do realize that the United States invoked the Self Defense clause of the NATO agreement because everyone asked them to do so? This was especially important for Germany to provide more direct military assistance as well. I believe it also was a consideration for a few other nations as well. The United States had no need for the allied help, and could have done it alone(probably would have been better off if it had done so--fewer troops available to invade Iraq), but because its allies asked them to invoke the treaty so they could justify helping.... Now 20 years later it's become an international talking point for China and many other nations to use against the United States.

Kind of like how the US is also blamed for Libya, never mind it was France and Italy leading the charge on that one, not the Obama Admin. They begged, pleaded, and cajoled, the United States reluctantly went along with it. I seem to recall nearly all of the former Yugoslavia military operations were comparable stories in the 1990's. The US is a war monger leading NATO into all kinds of wars... That's it allies asked the US to involve itself in.

And people outside the US wonder why the so many in the United States often want to tell  the rest of the world to "*censored* off."

You ask us to intervene and "do something." Then you blame us for the intervention having taken place, and criticize everything we do in the process.

[TheDeamon]

We should learn from bloody History. Each "concession" merely increases the appetite of the villain.

For Hitler after the Rhineland, came the Anschlus of Austria, and after the Anschluss came Sudetenland, and after Sudetenland came the rest of Czechoslovakia, and after Czechoslovakia came Poland, and (finally) WW2.

For Putin after Transnistria, came Abkhazia. After Abkhazia came South Ossetia. After South Ossetia came Crimea. After Crimea came Donbas. And now after Donbas, comes the rest of Ukraine.

Time & time again shows that concession to a villainous imperialist merely make everything worse.

Idiots want us to concede towards Putin the same way that Chamberlain made a pact in Munich with Hitler to recognize his conquest of Sudetenland.

Putin's situation is complex. But I think his situation is more nuanced and complicated, as well as playing on a much larger stage, than you are considering at present.

You're forgetting about China and Taiwan.

China desperately needs the US and its allies to be engaged in a war with Russia if they want to take Taiwan any time soon. And if China's demographics and current financial situation is as bad as many suspect, if China doesn't invade Taiwan "soon," they probably won't do so in our lifetime.

Putin's gamble is that if the US has to choose between fighting a two-front war between Russia and China or fighting a war against China over Taiwan while sacrificing Ukraine to Russia, the United States will sacrifice Ukraine.

NATO has already pretty much communication that's exactly what they're going to do -- no military response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

If Putin knows Xi Jinping is going to be invading Taiwan shortly after their Propaganda extravaganzas also known as the Winter Olympic Games this month and the Winter Paralympic Games ending on March 16th. Then what Russia is doing is just the pre-show entertainment to a much larger %^$&storm that's coming soon.

And I do fully believe that Putin totally would sacrifice China if he manages to secure a large landgrab in Ukraine in exchange for it.

[TheDeamon]

Do I know what they really want? Not really. I don't know that much about the situation. About all I know is the little bit I see in the news, what I read here, and what I learned from playing RISK. But my guess is what they really want, mostly from what I learned playing RISK, is to seize more territory like they did with Crimea and what they say they want is just the rationalizations they believe give them a good enough appearance of provocation to take it.

Russia is basically in demographic collapse, they need more people, and more advanced industry. Ukraine gives them both, although Ukraine's demographics aren't much better than the Russian ones.

The other thing Russia likely wants is "a more defensible border" with its neighbors, rather than a wide open plain. Which means they need Ukraine, all of it. Then some more of Poland to go with it. They want mountain passes and other geographical features on their western and southern borders to limit the number of land invasion routes they need to defend against from NATO.

[TheDeamon]

From a US PoV, there's options of quitting itself, no longer honouring its Article 5 commitments (see also, the ruminations of The Former Guy), or generally scaling back its commitment of forces (... after years of scolding others to scale them up).

Bill Clinton made noises about leaving NATO. The Bush 43 Admin complained about NATO, but given they'd agreed to invoking Article 5 (something now being held against the US), and their getting help in Afghanistan because of it, they were more discrete in their critiques of NATO member activities.

Obama had his share of criticism towards our NATO allies and I'd be surprised if he didn't publicly and openly warn them that if they didn't shape up, the US would be likely to ship out.

So having Trump turn up and threaten to actually ship out should have been a shock to exactly nobody who had been paying attention since the 1990's? The US has been lukewarm towards NATO since then, and all it's managed to do is get us involved in conflicts we really had minimal direct interests in, and we got to be ones everyone beats up on for those military operations having taken place. It's a very dysfunctional and abusive relationship, on both sides. But the US has been the biggest spender, by far, in terms of blood and treasure.

[TheDeamon]

Politically impossible, yes. But there's money involved with that, not safety concerns IMO. As for de-membership, I mean I don't even really know what that entails in brass tacks other than removing military bases and presumably the gravy train that goes along with the money flowing through them (services, contractors, etc). It's not like NATO will magically allow Poland to be conquered just because they shut down a costly military base there.

France did it in the 1960's. They didn't fully rejoin NATO until 2008.

Of course, that was voluntary on their part.

[TheDrake]

Politically impossible, yes. But there's money involved with that, not safety concerns IMO. As for de-membership, I mean I don't even really know what that entails in brass tacks other than removing military bases and presumably the gravy train that goes along with the money flowing through them (services, contractors, etc). It's not like NATO will magically allow Poland to be conquered just because they shut down a costly military base there.

France did it in the 1960's. They didn't fully rejoin NATO until 2008.

Of course, that was voluntary on their part.

Unless you are actually reducing forces, does it matter where the bases are financially? Unless you're suggesting we could eliminate those units rather than redeploying them, the cost argument makes little sense to me.

[TheDeamon]

I was speaking to the de-membership part with NATO. France is the only nation to join, then (mostly) leave, only to return several decades later.

Typically US foreign bases see some degree of financial support by the host nation, at least when it comes to developed nations. Less developed ones likely don't get subsidized by the locals like the US enjoys in Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Britain where US forces in their nations are concerned.

The US still pays into many projects at said facilities if it is for US use, but not as much as they would if they tried to do so in the US itself. The US still pays for the payroll, equipment and everything else the US is using. It's just the "plant and facilities" that often gets fuzzy.

[TheDrake]

So rather than costly bases, they're actually money saving bases then, right?

[TheDeamon]

So rather than costly bases, they're actually money saving bases then, right?

Yes, and no? It also depends on the host nation in question as I alluded to? The US covers more expenses in some nations than in others. Also the cost of deploying and sustaining forces on the other side of the world also factor in as well. Even if the facility costs are cheaper, there are new and different expenses (like international travel/shipping) which start to come into things.

Although I do think the CBO believes the bases in the four nations I explicitly mentioned do save the US taxpayers a little bit of money on balance. But not much during peacetime.

[rightleft22]

A few leaders such as the Dutch Premier describes Putin as very paranoid. Apparently his personal Covid Vladimir Putin precautions were extreme - might explain that big table

Putin is a master at creating narrative - gaslighting - (one of the things Trump admires because for the most part Putin keeps getting away with it)
I'm not threating Ukraine, Ukraine is threating Russia, I'm not attacking, I'm Peacekeeping... what you see happening isn't what's happing... like some Jedi mind trick (no surprise some of Fox anchors fallen for it) 

Do you think Putin believes the things he says? Has the master gaslighter gaslite himself?

 

[TheDeamon]

Well, China is saying the invasion of Ukraine is the fault of the United States, so the gaslighting certainly is getting around.

Russia is invading Ukraine because the United States of American "made them do it" and China says Russia was justified to do so? Only China also doesn't want to call it an invasion either. 

[rightleft22]

Well, China is saying the invasion of Ukraine is the fault of the United States, so the gaslighting certainly is getting around.

Russia is invading Ukraine because the United States of American "made them do it" and China says Russia was justified to do so? Only China also doesn't want to call it an invasion either. 

China is likely to view this as a win for them (I can't think of it being a win for anyone else)
Gaslighting works best when the one being lit wants to believe what is being sold

I thought the Administration constantly pushing back about what Putin was really doing and preparing for has undone most of the illusion - At least for History it will be clear what really happened