What does Putin want (and whatabout it)

nan said:

jamie said:

of course - now Vlad is saying that sanctions are basically a declaration of war.  He isn't a rational actor and this mentality didn't start in 2014.  The Russian people are against the war.  Don't believe the 68% poll that is for the military action.  Those numbers would probably change if people were actually able to report on what's happening.   Unfortunately, avoiding something worse has to happen within Russia.  Slowing down the Russian advance has helped to buy some time.  But it's also making Vlad mad - which is not good.  

I agree that sanctions are a type of war.  Lots of people not deemed mentally ill think sanctions = war.  I also don't see how you psychologically analyse a world leader in such detail (not just on this post).  You also speak for the Russian people and can determine what they would think if given "facts" from western journalists. And you are sure the Russian advance has been slowed down.  And you know that "Vlad is mad which is not good."   

With views like this we are all going to die. 

Yes we are Nan.  Next week.  Probably on Tuesday.    

sbenois said:

Yes we are Nan.  Next week.  Probably on Tuesday.    

That's perfect because I'm going to Florida which is like Hell on Earth anyway.  Probably worse than the real deal. 

Hi Nan

When did you get back?

Where were you?

And why in the name of everything would you go to Florida? If my only choices were Florida and Ukraine I would not go to Florida!

nan said:

nohero said:

The fact of an election debunks all of the theories blaming the “coup” for the Ukrainian government’s positions now. 

No, because the coup caused agreements to be signed which charted the course and the west kept their hand involved.  They provided major weapons to right wing groups and encouraged the war in the east.  They planted ideas about NATO.  Zelensky ran on a peace platform, but they made sure he would not have peace.  

That's a false description of Ukraine's status, it doesn't even match up with how Trump was able to dangle weapons in order to extract "help" from Ukraine. 

I don't know who you mean by the "they" who "made sure" that Zelensky would not have peace.  In fact, it was Putin who made sure Zelensky didn't have peace, by invading.  It was in all the papers.

A  different view:

https://www.politico.eu/article/what-the-crisis-in-ukraine-tells-us-about-ourselves-race-war/

There’s talk of Russian mobile crematorium trucks have crossed into Ukraine. I’m following so many people in Ukraine and outside posting videos. 
They’re saying maybe they won’t take their dead soldiers back to Russia. Then I saw a video of about 200 freshly dug graves. I just can’t figure out how to post the videos here. Some are gruesome. 

jamie said:

 Do you think sentencing someone to 15 years for printing the word WAR or reporting on what's happening on the ground is rational?  

Nan, I am also curious about this.  Is it the mark of a good leader to jail press members for speaking the truth?

Klinker said:

jamie said:

 Do you think sentencing someone to 15 years for printing the word WAR or reporting on what's happening on the ground is rational?  

Nan, I am also curious about this.  Is it the mark of a good leader to jail press members for speaking the truth?

It's harsh, but it isn't necessarily irrational.  I see it as the behavior of a cornered regime.

nan said:

The point is that if we can see how big powers work, why would we deliberately piss one of them off and risk nuclear war?   Who does that?  Especially when we do the same and worse?  It's not like we have some high moral ground here.

Also, it is legit to be against war and yet seek to understand the conditions that brought it about.  Otherwise no lessons can be learned to avoid the next one or even to stop this one from getting worse. I'm really not in the mood for WW3, how about you?

And speaking about the actual views of actual Ukrainians, are you assuming they were all on board with these changes?  Mate, in his article, says they were for the most part not in favor of the coup,  lukewarm on NATO, and liked Yanukovych.  Not what you hear in mainstream news but he provides some evidence:

By backing a far-right coup in Kiev, the US overcame the inconvenient hurdle of Ukrainian popular opinion.

Summarizing contemporaneous polls days before the Februrary 2014 coup, political scientists Keith Darden and Lucan Way observed in the Washington Post that "none show a significant majority of the population supporting the protest movement and several show a majority opposed." The most accurate survey "shows the population almost perfectly divided in its support for the protest: 48 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed." Despite being the target of the Maidan protests and deeply corrupt, Yanukovych "is still apparently the most popular political figure in the country," they added.

The Ukrainian population's division over the Maidan protests also extended to the issue that helped spark it: Yanukovych's rejection of a trade deal with the European Union. According to Darden and Way, "there is little evidence that a clear majority of Ukrainians support integration into the European Union," with most polls showing "around 40-45 percent support for European integration as compared to about 30 to 40 percent support for the [Russian-led] Customs Union – a plurality for Europe but hardly a clear mandate."

The same could be said for membership in NATO. "The main obstacle" to Ukraine's ascension to the alliance, F. Stephen Larrabee, a former Soviet specialist on the U.S. National Security Council wrote in 2011, "is not Russian opposition… but low public support for membership in Ukraine itself." Ukrainian support for joining NATO "is much lower in Ukraine in comparison to other states in Eastern Europe," he added, at just 22-25 percent overall.

A Gallup poll released in March 2014 found that "[m]ore Ukrainians saw NATO as a threat than as offering protection." Although that trend has reversed since, Ukrainian support for NATO has increased to barely above 50% in polls that exclude the 3.8 million residents of rebel-held Donetsk and Luhansk.

Let's try a different tack. I'll lay out my general framework for thinking about foreign policy, apply it to Ukraine, and then you can point out where I'm going wrong or where you disagree.

I'll say that I reject the Mearsheimer's realist school as a guide for thinking about what ideal outcomes should be. I think you do need some moral and ethical framework beyond force to set the framework for aspirations. Realism comes in when you shift from aspirations to actions. So for instance, I share basil's horror at what's going on right now in Ukraine and a desire to see Ukraine successfully fight off the invasion, but I don't think his desire to see a NATO imposed no-fly zone is realistic. I do think NATO, and the world generally, should be aggressively pursuing every possible angle to put pressure on Russia to back down and to get as much support to Ukrainians fighting and fleeing as much as possible.

But, I've clearly made a moral judgement here -- that Ukraine's cause is right, that Russia's is wrong, and that the collective global "we" ought to support Ukraine as much as possible within the constraints of realism (one of the major constraints being Russia's nuclear arsenal and credible threats to use it).

How do I come to that judgement? One guiding principle for me is self-determination, both individually and collectively. Feel free to dig up old threads where I argue with terp about libertarianism to see me try to balance that on the individual level. Collectively, though, I think the aspiration is that communities should be able to choose their own way of living.

So, for example, countries invading and occupying less powerful countries is almost never justified. Opposing the American invasion of Iraq was an easy call in this framework. But things like the post Gulf War, pre-invasion No Fly Zones were a harder call -- they did serve to protect people who did not want to live under Hussein and were persecuted by his regime -- in the southern marshes, and in the Kurdish north. National sovereignty is an important principle, but so is supporting people's legitimate aspirations for self-determination.

Ukrainians clearly have an identity distinct from Russia, and a desire to maintain that. It's true that a Ukraine with no prospect of closer ties with the rest of Europe would have been less likely to suffer its current violent invasion, but I can't see that as a morally legitimate outcome. Perhaps, from the perspective of what's possible, given the much greater power of Russia compared to Ukraine, the ability of Ukraine to remain independent was always doubtful, but any claim that Russia has some legitimate claim to suppress Ukrainian self-determination is pure bunk.

I don't know what involvement, if any, the US had in the Euromaiden movement. Clearly, though, Ukrainians played the major role in it. The idea that Ukrainians would just let the US or any other foreign power dictate terms to it flies in the face of the stiff resistance we see them putting up to Russian aggression (and for that matter, in the way Ukraine stood up to Pres. Trump's attempted extortion of Ukraine at a time of great vulnerability).

It's worth asking why the presence of a liberalizing, democratizing society on the borders of Russia presents such a threat to Putin. Is it really a threat to Russia, and Russian self-determination? Or is it a threat to a man determined to deny Russians the ability to determine their own course, a man so scared of the truth that he just forced the passage of a law that will send people to jail for fifteen years for calling the Ukrainian invasion a war?

tjohn said:

It's harsh, but it isn't necessarily irrational.  I see it as the behavior of a cornered regime.

It might be rational but I think we can all agree that leaders who jail members of their own media for printing the truth ought to be condemned in the court of public opinion.

STANV said:

Hi Nan

When did you get back?

Where were you?

And why in the name of everything would you go to Florida? If my only choices were Florida and Ukraine I would not go to Florida!

Hi STANV,   I've been on this topic for a few days.  I was not planning on coming back but the possibility of WWIII upset me so much my usual stress reliving methods were not working.  I'm still around working and I've gone back to being an artist too, which helps me get away from the politics some.  I actually have a great life but I'm not in the mood for nuclear war.  How are you doing?

As for Florida, my sister and I have to fly down there to see our mother who has some significant issues.  We both hate Florida and we are not crazy about our mother either but we are trying to do what's right for her. She's way closer to Jamie's version of Putin than Putin could ever be.   Not looking forward, but maybe I'll have some fun wrestling with an alligator or getting lost in the swamp.  

One version of the NATO expansion argument: Following the end of the Cold War, The US and it's NATO allies unwisely expanded the NATO alliance eastward, provoking growing unease in Russia, ultimately resulting in a pre-emptive war against Ukraine.

Another version: NATO was a defensive alliance among western European countries during the Cold War primarily concerned with the threat of Soviet expansion. Following the end of the Cold War, many former Warsaw Pact and ex-Soviet states sought membership in NATO, looking to secure the newly-won independence from Russia, the USSR successor state. Seeing more and more of its former vassals move permanently beyond its domination, Russia under Putin launched a war to arrest this trend and, if possible, even reverse it.

Which narrative more closely aligns with the facts on the ground?

nohero said:

That's a false description of Ukraine's status, it doesn't even match up with how Trump was able to dangle weapons in order to extract "help" from Ukraine. 

I don't know who you mean by the "they" who "made sure" that Zelensky would not have peace.  In fact, it was Putin who made sure Zelensky didn't have peace, by invading.  It was in all the papers.

Zelensky ran on a peace platform promising to enforce the Minsk Agreements.  He did not do any of that so that's one more reason Putin invaded.  

Obama knew not to give weapons to Ukraine.  He said something about how Ukraine meant nothing to the United States, but it meant everything to the Russians.  Then Trump did provide the weapons, probably so you all would stop thinking he was Putin's puppet.  I remember telling people that as an example of why Russiagate was a hoax and they were like, "Where's Ukraine?"   

Biden continued Trump's policy of sending weapons to Ukraine because Democrats have become security state loving neocons who dangerously view Russia/Putin like a Disney movie villain.  If we had a better relationship with Russia the world would be a better place and this invasion would most likely not happened. 

PVW said:

Let's try a different tack. I'll lay out my general framework for thinking about foreign policy, apply it to Ukraine, and then you can point out where I'm going wrong or where you disagree.

I'll say that I reject the Mearsheimer's realist school as a guide for thinking about what ideal outcomes should be. I think you do need some moral and ethical framework beyond force to set the framework for aspirations. Realism comes in when you shift from aspirations to actions. So for instance, I share basil's horror at what's going on right now in Ukraine and a desire to see Ukraine successfully fight off the invasion, but I don't think his desire to see a NATO imposed no-fly zone is realistic. I do think NATO, and the world generally, should be aggressively pursuing every possible angle to put pressure on Russia to back down and to get as much support to Ukrainians fighting and fleeing as much as possible.

But, I've clearly made a moral judgement here -- that Ukraine's cause is right, that Russia's is wrong, and that the collective global "we" ought to support Ukraine as much as possible within the constraints of realism (one of the major constraints being Russia's nuclear arsenal and credible threats to use it).

How do I come to that judgement? One guiding principle for me is self-determination, both individually and collectively. Feel free to dig up old threads where I argue with terp about libertarianism to see me try to balance that on the individual level. Collectively, though, I think the aspiration is that communities should be able to choose their own way of living.

So, for example, countries invading and occupying less powerful countries is almost never justified. Opposing the American invasion of Iraq was an easy call in this framework. But things like the post Gulf War, pre-invasion No Fly Zones were a harder call -- they did serve to protect people who did not want to live under Hussein and were persecuted by his regime -- in the southern marshes, and in the Kurdish north. National sovereignty is an important principle, but so is supporting people's legitimate aspirations for self-determination.

Ukrainians clearly have an identity distinct from Russia, and a desire to maintain that. It's true that a Ukraine with no prospect of closer ties with the rest of Europe would have been less likely to suffer its current violent invasion, but I can't see that as a morally legitimate outcome. Perhaps, from the perspective of what's possible, given the much greater power of Russia compared to Ukraine, the ability of Ukraine to remain independent was always doubtful, but any claim that Russia has some legitimate claim to suppress Ukrainian self-determination is pure bunk.

I don't know what involvement, if any, the US had in the Euromaiden movement. Clearly, though, Ukrainians played the major role in it. The idea that Ukrainians would just let the US or any other foreign power dictate terms to it flies in the face of the stiff resistance we see them putting up to Russian aggression (and for that matter, in the way Ukraine stood up to Pres. Trump's attempted extortion of Ukraine at a time of great vulnerability).

It's worth asking why the presence of a liberalizing, democratizing society on the borders of Russia presents such a threat to Putin. Is it really a threat to Russia, and Russian self-determination? Or is it a threat to a man determined to deny Russians the ability to determine their own course, a man so scared of the truth that he just forced the passage of a law that will send people to jail for fifteen years for calling the Ukrainian invasion a war?

OK, I'm packing to go to Florida so I can't respond to your long post right now, but I will do so later or tomorrow when I'm stuck at the airport/flying if I can get internet and a plug.  

Nan -- under what conditions should injustice be resisted? Is the threat of violence, or even the use of violence, always reason enough to concede whatever an aggressor demands? Or are there any situations where one should risk violence or even fight back?

STANV said:

A  different view:

https://www.politico.eu/article/what-the-crisis-in-ukraine-tells-us-about-ourselves-race-war/

I noticed that and I saw many people commenting and some other articles.  Probably could be a separate thread topic.  

Klinker said:

Nan, I am also curious about this.  Is it the mark of a good leader to jail press members for speaking the truth?

I am a huge believer in freedom of speech.  I don't think they have that same concept in Russia.  I don't think we have it here either since we are trying to prosecute a journalist for doing journalism.  I think censorship is on the rise all over the globe and people here are only focused on places like Russia while every day more voices are suppressed.

But, I know you want me to bash Putin so OK he's bad.  I never said he was good.  If he was a nice guy, we would not worry about him blowing us up with nuclear bombs.  It's exactly because he is not nice that we should be extra careful and seek clear communication and not do things to deliberately provoke him. 

I love to watch the Komodo Dragon at the Turtleback Zoo but I'm not climbing in the cage and poking him with sticks. Putin has his country and we have ours and we should give him some space and stop trying to run the world because it is killing us domestically.  Where's my Medicare for All???   Even Russia has that!   

View from friend in Germany

[5:56 pm, 04/03/2022] : What we see is a continuous decrease of competitive advantages of Europe by gradually increasing its cost of operation . To cut off Europe from its energy supplies under US pressure will solidify this trend . On the other side the US will consequently manage to create a competitive advantage for itself to be prepared for the next round with china
[5:57 pm, 04/03/2022] : At this moment Europe needs to urgently emancipate and work on bringing Russia back as an ally to ensure lasting continental peace

PVW said:

Nan -- under what conditions should injustice be resisted? Is the threat of violence, or even the use of violence, always reason enough to concede whatever an aggressor demands? Or are there any situations where one should risk violence or even fight back?

OMG you are giving me so much homework!  Of the top of my head I'd say you have to look at the big picture first.  The US is not in charge of the whole world and we are not the good guys.  We only protest injustice when it suits us--normally we are the ones who inflict injustice on others.  We also get along great with many dictators and horrible leaders like Balsonaro in Brazil and Saudi Arabia, and we support that mess in Israel.  So first you have to define injustice and what the stakes are and whose involved etc.  So, in theory one should personally always look for justice and stand up for what's right, but when it comes to countries, it's not always clear what's even going on.  Also, the media does huge coverups, ignores much and frames the information for maximum Manufactured Consent. 

nan said:

OMG you are giving me so much homework!  Of the top of my head I'd say you have to look at the big picture first.  The US is not in charge of the whole world and we are not the good guys. 

Thankfully, the saying is not "Let the one who is without sin lend the first aid".

PVW said:

One version of the NATO expansion argument: Following the end of the Cold War, The US and it's NATO allies unwisely expanded the NATO alliance eastward, provoking growing unease in Russia, ultimately resulting in a pre-emptive war against Ukraine.

Another version: NATO was a defensive alliance among western European countries during the Cold War primarily concerned with the threat of Soviet expansion. Following the end of the Cold War, many former Warsaw Pact and ex-Soviet states sought membership in NATO, looking to secure the newly-won independence from Russia, the USSR successor state. Seeing more and more of its former vassals move permanently beyond its domination, Russia under Putin launched a war to arrest this trend and, if possible, even reverse it.

Which narrative more closely aligns with the facts on the ground?

Two problems with the claim that NATO is a "defensive alliance"

nan said:

The people's opinions were not relevant to the backers of the coup.  They had other plans for Ukraine. 

They did? Because Ukraine didn’t join NATO, and the Russia invaded, and now they really want to.

PVW said:

terp said:

Now do the Houthis in Yemen.

Well, I guess this is the whatabout thread.

That is a really low IQ response.  The night that Putin invaded Ukraine we had dropped bombs in Somalia, Syria, and supported bombings in Yemen.  

Do you ever stop and ask yourself why Americans are obsessing with the plight of the Ukranians, but are blissfully unaware and, by and large, show no passionate support for the Houthis?

terp said:

you realize he was wrong, right?

odd post. Self own.

His point in that context was dead on.

terp said:

That is a really low IQ response.

Nobody takes on the chin here like you, terp. If anybody deserves a counter-slap, it's PVW.

DaveSchmidt said:

terp said:

That is a really low IQ response.

Nobody takes on the chin here like you, terp. If anybody deserves a counter-slap, it's PVW.

Nice avatar!

terp said:

His point in that context was dead on.

No it wasn't. The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with the Baltics.

I suggest you read this.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/03/nato-putin-and-ukraine

terp said:

That is a really low IQ response. 

We can't all be very stable geniuses.