On the fifth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of many unanswered questions is why Russia has launched a military campaign at huge cost with maximalist objectives, and then declined to use the vast majority of its fixed wing combat aircraft.
Indeed, as that could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust.
Russia wants 3 things as far as I know:
I imagine that they will continue military action until Ukraine agrees to these terms. Unless NATO intervenes militarily, which opens the door for a nuclear holocaust, Russia knows that they will eventually control the country and will be in position to implement their demands.
To understand why Russia is behaving the way it is you have to start from the premise that NATO is a hostile military alliance with the ultimate goal of enacting regime change in Russia.
Whether this is actually the case or not is entirely besides the point. This is what Russia is convinced of, and NATO actions can certainly be interpreted that way especially given that NATO refuses to negotiate with Russia in good faith and has now expanded right up to their border.
What happened in Ukraine is akin to if Russia engineered regime change in Mexico to install a pro-Russian government, and then Mexico asked to join CSTO and host Russian nukes on US border.
Starting from this perspective conflict is inevitable, and then it simply becomes a question on whose terms this conflict will happen. Russia calculated that they are likely in the best position they’re going to be to take Ukraine, and that their position will steadily become worse going forward. They’re willing to take any amount of economic blow back because they see this as an existential threat.
Well, #1 is a done deal. That’s not going to change. #3 is hypothetically on the table, but is a hard sell given the current circumstances. #2 just won’t happen. They’d never agree to it in a million years, not unless they are thoroughly broken… and the sorts of misery that have to be put on them for that are the same that would provoke western intervention.
It would be irrational for Ukraine to agree to demilitarization. For reasons I hope are obvious to everyone. But if we can ignore those…
Then we have to assume that the secessionists in Donbass and Luhansk won’t give up either. The Ukrainian government would no longer be able to resist them (with or without Russia sending weapons to the secessionists). They’d see their country whittled away over a few decades, until nothing is left.
They really have been put into circumstances where #2 is a dealbreaker, so if that’s a non-negotiable point for Russia… this is utterly fucked. There will be no peace.
I really wish someone would put forth the option of Russia joining NATO. Maybe if they were in the club, they’d no longer feel like it’s specifically designed to threaten them. Even if 70 years ago it was made clear that the Soviet Union wasn’t welcome, supposedly they’re no longer that entity, right?
Right, that’s what I’m thinking as well. Crimea isn’t going back to Ukraine and neutral status is something that could be negotiated. I don’t see Ukraine agreeing to demilitarization unless Russia destroyed their military by force. I’m hoping that’s the point Russia is willing to bend on.
Donbass republics are likely lost to Ukraine at this point as well. It’s hard to see how they’d go back regardless of what ends up being negotiated.
Joining NATO is precisely what Russia floated in the 90s, but was rejected out of hand. This was the turning point when Russia started treating NATO as a hostile alliance. This article is the best summary of the role NATO actually plays in practice that I’ve come across.
I have read that Stalin himself floated this in the 1950s, shortly after it was announced. That because NATO was designed specifically to thwart USSR, this was not only rejected, but with the maximum possible insult (privately at least, not publicly).
That’s all ancient history.
If they floated this in the 1990s and it was rejected again, then Clinton was a bigger fool than I figured him for. And even for my anti-commie tendencies, it seems… well, “harsh” doesn’t quite cut it. Irrationally brutal? I dunno. I hope you’re wrong on that and just misremembering something. I don’t see how that could ever be a defensible policy.
Then Russia is, regrettably, justified in that stance. That needs to change.
Whatever else I am, I am not a warmonger. If Russia were genuinely invaded by another power (China I suppose, no one else is realistic), I don’t see why we shouldn’t do what we can to put a stop to it. We wouldn’t be able to help at that point though, for the same reasons we can’t do much about Ukraine… the invader has nukes and the threat of using them is implicit if not explicitly made.
However, if Russia were inducted into NATO, then the potential invader would have to know that we’d retaliate and resist. It should deter that. Let them in for fuck’s sake. Fast-track it.
Yeh, and pragmatists in the Ukrainian government know that as well, it’s just impossible for them to say it out loud. They don’t like it, but I suspect when the microphones are turned off they’re resigned to that.
For me? Personally? It’s not even that big of a deal. In principle, secession is no different than divorce, and a seceding region doesn’t have to have a good reason or any reason at all to do so. It’s a shitty tactic to use in war. And we both know that this was egged on by Moscow. I think we disagree only on whether the Russians cheated in that game.
The concern though, in Ukraine, is that it doesn’t stop there. Sympathizers in the bordering areas will be pissed that their neighbors 5 miles down the road got to leave but that they didn’t. If Ukraine is hobbled so that they can’t police that (demilitarized), then they are looking at no longer having any sort of country at all in 40 years time.
Even should Russia acknowledge that concern and attempt to mitigate it (so that negotiations can go forward), the jackasses in Donbass won’t necessarily obey. Russia might have set something up there that they’d lose control of, and this alone could torpedo peace talks.
At this point I really think that NATO needs to be disbanded and new security architecture created for Europe based on current realities. NATO is a historical artifact of the world order that was formed after WW2, and that world order no longer exists. Ultimately, the only way that peace can be achieved is by creating a framework that addresses everyone’s security concerns.
I really don’t see secession as a big deal either. I think the problem for smaller nations is that they’re always going to end up under pressure from larger nations. Countries like Ukraine are stuck in the middle of geopolitical games between forces that are much bigger than them.
Ukraine dissolving entirely is also a very real possibility. That could happen very rapidly once Ukrainian military is defeated. There are a lot tensions within the country that have been escalating over the past decade. Ukraine splitting up into separate states may actually be the best result going forward.
Possibly. But such a scenario could only work once things are calmed down… otherwise it just looks like (to one side) that you’re wanting that because it’s momentarily convenient.
And when will things ever calm down? Even should the current crisis resolve itself, there will be another somewhere else, and soon. Russia’s not the only problematic entity… Turkey likes to stir shit just as much. The Balkans are, well, the Balkans… aren’t they about due to blow up on their own again, even without outside help?
Considering the European tradition of ignoring everything until the world nearly ends and only afterward doing something about it, there’s just never going to be an opportunity.
For that matter, how do you even design it so that it is both effective and doesn’t look like (to the Russians) to be NATO 2.0 and made just to fuck with them?
I highly recommend this book from Ray Dalio to get an idea of what we can expect going forward. I find it does a really good job putting current events into historic context and makes a strong case that what we’re currently seeing is par for the course for where we happen to be in the historical cycle.
I agree with you that there’s pretty much no chance of NATO being abolished in the foreseeable future. If Russia chose to play a smart diplomatic game, I think they could’ve managed to wean Europe from NATO by offering trade and cooperation. Unfortunately, they chose to start a war and confirm all the fears Europe had regarding them.
And I don’t really see how an architecture could be designed that doesn’t look like a threat to either Europe or Russia at this point. Both sides have plenty of reasons to mistrust each other, and I think we’ll continue to see a very tense situation in the foreseeable future.
As someone firmly on the other side of this, with strong and persistent anti-Russia biases, I can still say that if they had done so this would’ve worked.
It’s what I want, it’s what everyone wants. Hell, they might even have done the economic warfare thing themselves, gotten revenge on a few enemies if that’s what they wanted, and everyone would still cheer them on for it.
There’s some sort of underdog “we can’t ever win” attitude going on with them that compels this sort of behavior. Which is strange coming from the first nation to ever make it into space. The only one who was ever a plausible rival to the US.
I don’t want the Russian people miserable. I don’t want them to suffer in poverty. I don’t have any burning need to see them punished (and I’d struggle to think of anything they should be punished for). Hell, on the other hand, there’s Germany… “cough cough”.
Honestly, I wish someone in the US state department would pull their head out of their ass and at least try to convince Russia that they should join NATO, and at least make them feel like they are wanted within it. I don’t want them to be our enemy, and I don’t think we can afford for them to be it. We’ve at least been allies, if a long time ago. We should be again.
Having grown up in USSR, I can give you some insight into what people in Russia think. People deeply resent the west because they feel that the west chose to treat the Soviet Union as the enemy. It was promptly invaded in 1918 right after the revolution ended. Then it was plunged into WW2 a couple of decades later, and after that there was the Cold War. USSR has been under threat of war from the western world throughout its whole existence.
Then in the 90s when USSR collapsed everyone thought that we’d join the west and live as one big happy family since we chose to adopt the western model and there was nothing left to fight about. Instead of that Russia treated to economic shock and plundering by western powers. Life became absolutely horrific for the vast majority of people, and I personally remember things like food shortages during that time.
This was the point where people realized that the west never had any good intentions towards Russia. This is precisely what gave rise to Putin who managed to take control of the economy and make Russia a sovereign state again.
Nowadays there’s deep mistrust on both sides, and I really don’t know how that can be bridged after this war. It seems to me that relations between the west and Russia are rolling back to USSR days where both sides are treating each other as an enemy and an existential threat. I suspect that things will get a lot worse before they get better.