Some commentors on Insty are already trashing Johnson because he might continue funding Ukraine. To my mind we had better continue funding them, because if we don’t Putin will take a lot more of Ukraine, and will look for more elsewhere. And Ukraine is a Bread Basket that provides food stuffs to a lot of the world. I don’t want Boots on the Ground, and I don’t think they are needed but Military Aid certainly is needed. There is a lot at stake here.
Isolationists never tire of a new conflict to loose.
The are good and valid arguments both for and against supporting Ukraine. I’m for supporting Ukraine.
My granddaughter was into power cheerleading. You know, the kind where a little Kewpie Doll sized gal was atop a five story pyramid, thrown a couple dozen feet in the air spinning and caught. That kind of thing.
Similar to this but not as fluid and very much higher rhythms.
Her dad refused to go see her performances because he just couldn’t stand seeing her doing the stuff.
Both have their points and I love watching both.
As it’s open:
I stock up on eggnog this time of year, freeze it and have it for coffee year round.
My dog, Hizi, loves the stuff and I can’t blame him. So much so that once he sees the first cartoon, every time I go to the fridge thereafter he stands there looking at the carton, hoping I’ll drip some in his bowl.
Just stands there staring. Not at me, at the carton.
Sometimes I’ll be an ass and leave the door open while I set up things for breakfast.
And he’ll just stand there staring.
It might not be nice but hey, he doesn’t fork over any money to buy the stuff.
Re: Gaza
After Israel has completed all military operations in Gaza, Israel should have the Egyptians take over Gaza.
Recall, that Israel assumed control of Gaza as a result of the 1967 war. Prior to that Egypt controlled Gaza beginning in 1949.
The Egyptians are no fans of Hamas and Israel most likely would have far less problems with Gaza.
A “new” occupation of Gaza by Israel will be a disaster for Israel. It did not work the first time at all, which led to the Israeli pull-out in 2005.
Gaza has been self-governing since 2005 and that did not work; the Gazans voted in Hamas as their government.
If Egypt controlled Gaza, they would be far more brutal and deadly in asserting control over Gaza and killing any remaining Hamas terrorists and also not be so concerned with human rights.
Of course, as one would expect, if Egypt employed any/all means to assert control over Gaza, the “world community” would remain silent.
You see, it’s OK if Arabs kill Arabs (and Jews) or if Arabs place their boot heels upon the necks of other Arabs.
It’s only Jews that are not allowed to retaliate in any way, shape or form.
Re: Shirehome @ 10:05
If Ukraine falls, the Baltic states will be next in Putin’s hit parade. That is a slam dunk.
Ukraine is the very large canary in the coal mine and already there are “cracks” appearing in western aid and attitudes in helping Ukraine.
If Ukraine falls, it will convince Putin that NATO is a paper tiger. They may not be, but what really matters is what Putin believes and he will act upon what he believes.
The recent actions / policies of Poland, Sweden and Finland tell you all you need to know about Putin’s goals.
gaza is not something egypt wants to take care off, they were an approach into Israel in 67, hence Israel occupied it, so there isn’t a magic answer, the settlements were the decent part of gaza, look what they did to them,
“. . . Israel should have the Egyptians take over Gaza.”
Mr. Tyler, even supposing Israel would look favorably on the idea of Egypt exercising sovereignty over Gaza (for maybe it would, and maybe not so much, I can’t say), how, how!, in practice would this “should have” work, exactly? If Egypt does not desire it, how is Israel to make it happen? Threats? Bribes (what’s in it for Egypt that does not strain its already overburdened political-economic life)?
I’m not imaginative enough to see this exit. But perhaps that’s not so for others; perhaps I’m overlooking something obvious, something crucially effective?
After Israel pounds Gaza for a while, I think they should pull back and publicly announce they will not inspect any cargo going into Gaza, etc from the outside world and seal off their border to Gazan workers and be completely hands off until Gaza does something. I guess they still have to sell or give water and electricity ???? Then announce if Gaza does something, they will pound it again.
I am not sure why anyone is concerned about “Putin” taking control of Ukraine. Or the Baltic States, for that matter. For most of my life, what was formerly called “the” Ukraine was actually one of the Republics constituting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR (you may substitute “Putin” if you wish, although the USSR was much more open about its goal of world domination under comunism) also controlled all three of the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuanian and Estonia. Add to that Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia , Romania, Bulgaria and, lest we forget, East Germany. Yet, somehow, America survived, and in fact prospered! Eventually the USSR simply disintegrated under economic pressure and Ukraine became independent, as did the rest of the former client states. However, it did not take long for the cabal that ran and continues to run American foreign policy (the real “deep state”) to insert itself into that region, culminating in the “color revolution” that toppled the duly-elected, pro-Russia government and installed a regime beholden to The West. Over the past two decades, Ukraine has bled citizens and gradually slipped into economic insignificance, along with most of the rest of that part of Europe. Since the cabal that owns Biden wants to maintain its mortmain over the NATO region, despite the utter uselessness of NATO since the dissolution of the USSR, they want to continue to foment the conflict, since it means that vast sums of money will continue to flow into their bank accounts. All this has done is manage to kill a million or so Ukrainians and Russians and devastate the landscape, which will never become productive again in my lifetime. This is madness. We had no business entering the conflict, and did so only for the venal reasons I cited. Biden himself was eager to participate since he and his family were profiting equally handsomely from the grift, graft and corruption. Only we, the people, suffer from the continued conflict. But it’s always that way, isn’t it?
Steve-
I agree that whatever happens in Ukraine, et. al., has very little effect on me, my family, or other people that I care about. That said, I am rooting for the Ukes to preserve their country and what passes for freedom in that corner of the world.
Yet, I agree with you that we should not be emptying our defense stores or treasury for them.
The European Union collectively has an economy and population close enough to ours that they could, if they cared, take over the defense of eastern Europe. They would have to give up some of their social goodies, and get their hands dirty (and maybe bloody). So be it. Ukraine may be a lost cause if we pull out, but they could save the Baltics, etc., if they wanted to. I have no problem with them buying stuff from Raytheon and other American companies, but the borrowing huge sums that my grands will have to pay back to give it to foreigners has to stop now.
So for the first few seconds, it looked as if there was an athlete/acrobat and a flexible junior high kid to throw around. But the little one was just as powerful. Where do they get these people?
Here is one of the reasons why we should reconsider aid to Ukraine– leaving aside the illegitimate events of 2014 that led to the conflict– like the illegal overthrow of a democratically elected President of Ukraine, then sending private armies fielded by ultra-nationalists from the western Ukraine’s Anti Terrorist Operation (ATO) to the east. This is a war that Europe needs to fight. We need to wean Europe off a US military dependency.
The dependency isn’t just Ukraine– it’s much of Europe itself. We created such a dependency of US military security, that Europe never did the hard lifting to provide for their own security. How much of an existential threat is Europe facing when they’ve failed to provide 2% support for NATO– let alone the estimated 6-7% necessary to fund their security? Apparently, Europeans don’t consider the threat significant enough.
“Europe would not be ready to replace the United States. It could certainly take steps to strengthen its defense potential, deploy all the resources of lawfare to try to meet the additional challenges to international law that a victory by Trump or one of his look-alikes would pose, and strengthen its economic and social cohesion — it should even start today, as this author has suggested.
But even if Europe were to enter a war economy in the full sense of the term, as President Macron suggested in June 2022, it would still be more than a decade before it could acquire the conventional military potential of the United States. If we were to add to this the US nuclear deterrent potential, the basis of the global deterrence set out in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the defense expenditure of each European state would have to amount, according to some estimates, to 6% or 7% of GDP, from the current 2%. Needless to say, neither the governments nor the public would be keen to do so, especially given the concomitant need for cuts in areas like social support and health.
It is therefore far from certain that Europe alone, even when including the UK and Norway, could withstand high-intensity conventional aggression from Russia. France, whose nuclear strike force is independent, would have to drastically revise its nuclear doctrine, and London, whose deterrent is integrated into NATO (and currently being updated at a cost of around $38bn) , would have to do the same.”
Charles Freeman sounds like he’s not of this world if he’s referring to the war between Hamas and Israel. Not only has Israel tried diplomacy over and over, but it is up against a barbaric enemy whose goal is Israel’s complete destruction. He is assuming that all parties to a war are rational actors with bona fide grievances and goals. But that’s often untrue. The goal is often the destruction and/or complete subjugation of a country and its population under a tyrannical regime. And the goals often don’t stop with conquering that one country.
Neo,
I do think the list is good advice to any country contemplating military action– after all other means have been exhausted in situations involving states that share similar worldviews. What we are seeing in the ME is the clash of worldviews.
I ran across this list in reference to the Russian-Ukraine war.
Ambassador Freeman is very critical of the Israeli lobby, but fails as most of our bureaucratic policymakers do/did when it comes to radical Islam. They still think that we can/could reason our way to a solution– ignoring the last 50 years.
Has the West alienated “moderate” Muslims with our heavy-handed approach to the radical attacks by Islamists, or is the brutality of the Islamists sufficient to prevent any reaction by “moderates” to embrace compromise? It’s probably some of each.
The uncompromising nature of Islam makes negotiation meaningless. Any compromise by Islamists is tactical (the same for the totalitarian leftists in our midst today). When Arafat walked away from negotiations in 2000, it was just the prelude to the long war.
Here’s a recounting of the affair by Ehud Barak:
Israel was offering almost all of the PLO demands.
“Arafat said no. Enraged, Clinton banged on the table and said: “You are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe.” A formal Palestinian rejection of the proposals reached the Americans the next day. The summit sputtered on for a few days more but to all intents and purposes it was over.
Today Barak portrays Arafat’s behaviour at Camp David as a “performance” geared to exacting from the Israelis as many concessions as possible without ever seriously intending to reach a peace settlement or sign an “end to the conflict”.
“He did not negotiate in good faith; indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying no to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own,” he says. Barak shifts between charging Arafat with “lacking the character or will” to make a historic compromise (as did the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1977-79, when he made peace with Israel) to accusing him of secretly planning Israel’s demise while he strings along a succession of Israeli and Western leaders and, on the way, hoodwinks “naive journalists”.”
Mostly, I think the US has failed to understand the limits of uniformed military power against insurgent/terrorist enemies.
Richard Aubrey: Where do they get these people?
Raise ’em tough, they grow up tough.
My daughter (13 at the time and five foot nothing) could wrestle maybe half of my stunt group to the ground.
Andre, an adult, brought handcuffs one day and was play threatening the gals with them and they’d run away squealing. All in fun.
My daughter took him head on and not only got him down but cuffed one on him and the other to a banister.
No one set him free for maybe half an hour.
Another thing:
I had a work out room with a kick bag hanging from the ceiling by nylon rope.
She’d remove the bag, make a loop, lay face down, stick her feet through and hand over hand herself to the ceiling and back, keeping herself parallel to the floor.
A couple of the guys tried and apparently didn’t learn my lessons about body physics and part way up they’d invert to hang from their feet.
Like with Andre, no one would help, just laugh and watch them painfully and with great difficulty lower themselves head first towards the floor. I think only Jud didn’t make it and dropped himself on his skull.
More laughter.
Brain E:
He keeps regurgitating the same line:
” leaving aside the illegitimate events of 2014 that led to the conflict– like the illegal overthrow of a democratically elected President of Ukraine,”
Turtler schooled him repeatedly about this alternative reality to no avail.
um, actually Turtler’s defense of the situation was there was an immediate need to replace Yanukovych as justification.
France and Germany had negotiated a deal with Yanukovych where he would replace his administration with ministers more in line with the protestors and hold elections early. That would have been a compromise that followed the constitution (at least didn’t subvert it). There was nothing in the Ukraine constitution that allowed the violent overthrow of the President.
The protestors rejected the deal and threatened Yanukovych and members of the Rada.
Brain E:
Did any other things happen in Ukraine in 2014, such as Russia seizing Crimea, fomenting and supporting the proxie war in the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine, supplying the Russian SAM that shot down and killed everyone aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (fired from the Donbas Peoples whatever (Vladland)).
Nothing to see as usual when it comes to Russian aggression.
Brain E misremembers as usual,
um, you’ve got your timeline mixed up. What came first?
charles freeman is the counterpart to Richard Dalton, chairman of the middle east institute, he went native in Arabic, (he replaced the unreplaceable hume horan) when the latter complained about chinese silkworms prince bandar arranged to buy, also grovelled to the Chinese, most heavily https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/03/the_chas_freeman_controversy.html
it would be a short list of diplomats to list, that are actually on our side, freeman is probably among the worst
Brain E:
Are you that dense, that internal politics in Ukraine and the ouster of a Russian stooge is more important than Russia seizing Crimea, fomenting a civil war, and murdering all those aboard that airliner.
Find your moral compass.
Don’t regurgitate the Ukrainians are Nazis, Russian speakers are oppressed, Ukrainians don’t have a culture. Heard it before and not buying that spin.
om, just because Ukraine ought to win against Russian aggression doesn’t mean to me that the US ought to participate. Why is it unreasonable to simply defer that problem to the EU, as Brian E suggests?
Why not hold that the EU is a lot closer, needs to put its big boy clothes on, and stop peeking out from behind Uncle Sam? Isn’t the EU more populous, more wealthy, and more technologically superior to Russia, such that deferring to them is not a denial of which side ought to be the victor?
It seems to me that Israel is a different matter largely because it is the David in a religious war against the Goliath of some 2 billion Muslims. Iran alone has a GDP 4x that of Israel, which when considering contributions of other Muslim states, is imbalanced the other way. And Israel can expect absolutely no real help from the EU, given the pressures of their Muslim contingents.
Bill K:
What exactly do you mean “ought to participate?”
Like training Ukrainians, providing intelligence, providing ordnance and equipment? Providing intelligence services (CIA) in country to advize the Ukrainian equivalents?
IIRC the people resisting the Russian invaders are Ukrainians and various foreign (pay attention) volunteers. Not US soldiers, marines, airmen, or sailors.
Brain E and the other isolationists seem quite happy to ignore or accept Russian imperial aggression. They balk at sending weapons, weapon systems and probably if pressed, non military aid, anything beyond condolences. Reasons.
Whether they will also throw Israel aside is unknown as yet.
om, count me an isolationist then if Europe won’t step up. They need their hand forced. I’d rather pick my battles – no to Ukraine, yes to Israel, and yes, in both cases I’m referring to intelligence, ordnance and equipment.
And in neither case do I favor sending soldiers for the sake of those countries. But I think a case can be made for sending soldiers to rescue Americans if trapped in either situation.
One son has served in the Army, the other a sergeant in the Marines, which reminds me of the Marine hymn phrase, “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” That reference to Tripoli goes back to the Barbary pirates who took American hostages, and Thomas Jefferson didn’t take that lying down. So I may be an isolationist, but a discriminating isolationist.
Europe…could certainly take steps to strengthen its defense potential, deploy all the resources of lawfare to try to meet the additional challenges to international law that a victory by Trump or one of his look-alikes would pose…it should even start today, as this author has suggested.
CEPA lost a lot of credibility with me right there.
I wasn’t going to say anything to Brain E regarding CEPA, as just a casual search revealed they are antithetical to his isolationist bent; pro NATO, pro European/American mutual security interests. General Ben Hodges is one of their big muckety mucks.
He is the anti-Col. McGreagor. It was almost a LOL.
To all you idolationists, should the US not send MIA2 Abrams or allow others to send F-16s to Ukraine, or ATACMS, GLSDBS, or more HIMARS rockets? Can’t be to careful with Roosia.
This Time It’s Different
Meanwhile … back at South Park, “Joining the Panderverse” has dropped. You can watch it for free and without giving up your email or other ID:
Quite brilliant and subversive for those following the entertainment culture wars.
Cartman is worried Disney executives are hiding under his bed to exchange him for a Diverse Female Character, Body Snatchers style.
Bob Iger, Disney CEO, and Kathleen Kennedy, Lucas Film President, appear under their own names.
There is a multiverse portal from the Panderverse to the South Park universe which is exchanging characters.
In a subplot white collar characters discover they are losing their jobs to artificial intelligence and handymen — “people who know how to do stuff” — are becoming billionaires.
I’m in awe.
Pretty funny huxley. Did the oven door get fixed?
And here I was out tending to Halloween, but I guess duty or at least internet infamy calls.
@steve (retired/recovering lawyer)
(PS: Good luck on your continued recovery.)
I am not sure why anyone is concerned about “Putin” taking control of Ukraine. Or the Baltic States, for that matter.
For starters, I imagine the Ukrainians and people of the Baltic States would be concerned, as would people like Georgians, Moldovans, and Poles. And for good reason. It does not take much research to find accurate accounts of state sponsored terrorism, ethnic and sectarian cleansing, and massacre of groups like the Ingush in Northern Ossetia and ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and there are plenty of people living today who have memories and even scars of the Soviet occupation of places like the Baltic and Poland. Can we blame them for such concern?
Moreover, can we fault ourselves for being concerned of the knock on effects?
For most of my life, what was formerly called “the” Ukraine was actually one of the Republics constituting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR (you may substitute “Putin” if you wish, although the USSR was much more open about its goal of world domination under comunism) also controlled all three of the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuanian and Estonia. Add to that Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia , Romania, Bulgaria and, lest we forget, East Germany.
The best rebuttal to that is
A: “About that, how did that happen?”
and
B: “How’d that go last time?”
There have been at least two and maybe three times where the Kremlin (speaking broadly of the kind of authoritarian or totalitarian political, bureaucratic, and military regime in centered in Moscow) took control of Ukraine.
1. From about the 1640s to 1660s (exact start date depends) to the 1700s/1710s (again, exact date will depend), when the Tsardom took advantage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s war weariness from supporting the Habsburgs in the Thirty Years War, failed attempt to impose a Polish Tsar in Moscow, and epic mishandling of its Cossacks (and their ensuing revolt) to obtain political hegemony over half of “The Ukraine”, before slowly politicking its way to control the other half and wiping out all opposition to create a Russian hegemony over the region that would last for at least 200 years.
2. 1918-192X, when in the wake of the collapse of the Russian Empire and then the nascent Russian Republic in the face of the stress from WWI (and more than a little bit of German prodding) the Bolsheviks rallied and began pursuing Lenin’s dream of an expansionist “Soviet Union” (term is slightly anachronistic but close enough) that would spread across the world, during which time Ukraine was first on the chopping block and one of the few that was actually conquered and absorbed, followed by protracted guerilla war, “bandit fighting”, and “land reform” that killed millions and caused a peacetime famine or three.
3. The debatable case here is from 1944-195X, when in the wake of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union and ensuing almost-complete conquest of Ukraine, the Soviets fought back and reconquered Ukraine before having to fight a host of guerilla groups such as the Polish Home Army, Belarusian Partisans, and most (in)famously Ukrainian Nationalists, one group of which was under the command of Ukrainian Fascist and Guerilla Leader Stephan Bandera.
This one is a rougher fit for the pattern for a couple reasons, starting with the fact that at the time Ukraine was already integrated into the politics of “Moscow” and treated as rightfully part of that government (because of the events of the second period), and also it had more muted effects. But I think on close examination it fits.
One could wedge Putin’s current misadventures as a fourth, if one so wishes.
In any case, in spite of happening decades apart and with the main split being under VERY different regimes and ideologies, there are several patterns that emerge that are downright concerning, even for those of us a world away. Because when Moscow gains control of Ukraine, a few things happen.
A: You generally have the pause of a generation or two, usually about 10-40 years, as Moscow makes itself comfortable, deploys garrisons, secret police, and colonists to the South, and proceeds to brutally stomp out remaining resistance that no longer poses a threat to the continued presence of the regime but which can make life difficult and screw with the fine quotas. Call this the “digestion” period or the pacification period.
B: The ensuing fallout from the conquest and “digestion”/pacification period screws with food supplies from Ukraine and the Black Sea coast in general to the wider world (especially Western Europe) and helps cause or worsen everything from mild instability to apocalyptic struggles.
C: As a continuation from B, Moscow generally tries to monopolize and then weaponize the food supplies from the region, selling them to the West and the wider world for political gain, largely for industrial and military development.
D: Moscow forms a partnership with at least one German polity in order to help coordinate its foreign policy in Europe proper and to help pave the way for partition and conquest of its ‘near abroad.” In the first period this happened with the Habsburgs of Austria, and to a much lesser extent Hohenzollern Prussia. In the second this was obviously and most infamously Nazi Germany. This is one area where the Third starts to break down, as there simply wasn’t any German state independent or capable enough to act as an independent ally (with relations with newly independent Austria being tense and fraught, even if somewhat cooperative). But you can see ghosts of it in the detente with Germany and reliance on German appeasement in Russia’s recent misadventures in places like Georgia and Ukraine.
E: You see a MASSIVE ramp up in aggression and military adventurism from Moscow, as it begins attacking and expanding where it reaches in an incredibly violent, startling burst of activity (even by the standards of the period in question), generally lasting for at least a decade and often well up to that. This generally lasts until the government gets involved in a war that pushes the abilities of the regime to their limit (basically forcing it into a war for survival, at least as a Great Power if not as a nation) and thus forces a lengthy recovery period, or when it simply overextends and overspends and begins dialing down in order to recover. Often a mixture of both (especially in the first one).
The big exception is the Third Example, which saw much more muted (and some might argue absent) effects, with no (overt) wars of aggression emanating from the Kremlin in Europe, no German partner in crime, and much less instability in the world as a result of the disruptions in Black Sea food disruption.
I’d argue that this is the result of a few different things.
I: WWI and WWII: the Elephants in the room, as well as the fallout from thereof. Simply put, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler didn’t do things cheaply. It takes a special kind of man to gloat about famine in one’s “own” country and how one should take advantage of it to steal from churches (as Lenin did), let alone to try and start a World War immediately after losing the previous one. All of the aforementioned were incredibly devastating, but for our purposes Hitler is the X factor since he was “outside” the Kremlin and he not only helped kick start WWII in concert with the Soviets, but then kicked off the most devastating single conflict in human history when he betrayed them in 1941. The Soviets ultimately won, but at immense cost that trashed Central and Eastern Europe, and that was with Western support. This meant the Soviets were even more focused on licking their wounds than their predecessors, that the instability of the West from things like disrupted Ukrainian and Black Sea cereals generally faded into the background from the wider war damage when almost everybody had either lost a family member or friend to the Axis, and with the US factoring in.
II: Stalin’s Death and Khruschev’s humiliation. Simply put, we have VERY good evidence Stalin was actively planning a Third World War (as well as other things like an extermination of the Jewish communities in his jurisdiction, sparing only “assimilated” and fanatical Bolsheviks of Jewish heritage like his favorite “Iron Lazar” Kaganovich) at the time he died. This was a seminal moment in history and probably one of the single greatest bullets the world and especially the West has dodged, and while Khruschev was also committed to global revolution he was less committed to specifically being the person to destroy the non-Capitalist world and to some degree of reform and civilianization of the Soviet Union. This resulted in a shift away from the war effort and military to light industry and the civilian sector, and also helped when Khruschev faced down the US over Cuba and Khruschev ultimately blinked, stepping away from the apocalyptic crusade.
III: The US. While North America was already a global factor as far back as the 17th century and particularly weighed in on WWI, it was after WWII that it took a particularly active effort in stabilizing the West after the damages of WWII. Partially pursuing its (and FDR/Truman’s) old ambitions, partially for competition, and partially to prevent either a Fascist resurgence or communist aggrandizement, the US weighed in and provided a much higher degree of food and financial aid than was possible before.
IV: Nukes. Tying in to III, there were not nuclear weapons in the 1660s. Ivan Grozny didn’t haven’t to face the prospect of getting nuked from the skies. Yekaterin and Elizabeta didn’t have to face off against Curtis LeMay, and even Lenin might have thought twice about his attempts to invade continental Europe if he expected to face Stratofortresses with Fat Men. At the end of WWII the US had nukes and the Soviets did not, and in the fog of war this seemed to be a good counter to Soviet conventional military power (especially when weighed in with other factors like air power and the navy). So the Soviets quickly expedited the development of their own nukes.
V: That the patterns I mentioned before were for the most part still present, but more subdued. While the Soviet Union did not try to invade Western Europe again after 1945 or fight nearly as many wars as it did in the 1920s or as the Tsarists did in the 1600s and 1700s, it did finance and support a host of proxy wars, rebellions, and coups spanning from Cuba to East Asia. By 20 years after 1945 Communist regimes were popping up in Asia, Africa, and even Hispanic America, Socialist and Nationalist dictatorships in the Middle East aligned with the Soviets were flexing their muscles, and the world had already gone to the bring over Cuba (and Castro’s two faced recklessness and apparent desire to start a nuclear apocalypse). Moreover, the disruption of the Eastern European breadbasket did affect Western Europe and the wider world, it was just mitigated and largely helped push these places towards the US (which was of course happy to provide the foodstuffs). And “Ostpolitik” would already blight the world.
All of this should give the analyst pause, if stuff like Kadyrov’s ranting did not by itself. It should also make us believe that the effects of Russia dominating Ukraine would be QUITE BAD.
Yet, somehow, America survived, and in fact prospered!
Yeah about that.
Firstly: The US was a direct beneficiary of the instability caused by the “Soviet Experiment” in Ukraine and elsewhere, as it turns out that gunning your own people into starvation and then allying with the W R O N G person means there’s less competition for US cereals.
and
Secondly: The US ultimately prospered IN SPITE Of spirited Soviet efforts to destabilize and destroy us with the help of Ukrainian and Black Sea resources, not because of them. And ironically the US was largely a beneficiary of the Russian Empire’s use of those resources because its main Western rival was Britain and to a lesser extent France up until WWII, and until around the middle of the 19th century those were our most pressing strategic rivals.
I would not want to gamble that the US would be so prosperous in spite of that.
Eventually the USSR simply disintegrated under economic pressure and Ukraine became independent, as did the rest of the former client states.
In large part due to consistent pressure from the West and especially the US, and sponsorship for dissidents and rebels going back decades.
However, it did not take long for the cabal that ran and continues to run American foreign policy (the real “deep state”) to insert itself into that region,
*Sigh.*
I have LITTLE love for Foggy Bottom, but the US had already “inserted itself into that Region” decades before the fall of the Soviet Union. Indeed one thing that neither Putin’s Russia nor the US like to emphasize was the degree to which the US financed Russian and later Soviet industrialization, especially in the region (mostly under FDR). Moreover, our support for Ukrainian and Polish guerillas in the 1940s and 1950s is well documented and decently acknowledged even if it isn’t exactly public knowledge.
And of course, there’s the “little” fact that we helped negotiate the return of Soviet nuclear weapons and technology on Ukrainian soil to Russia. Something that is again vividly documented and a clearcut example of the “foreign policy” “cabal” in the US intervening in the region, but which Kremlin apologists seem loathe to acknowledge. Gee, I wonder why?!?
culminating in the “color revolution” that toppled the duly-elected, pro-Russia government
Oh God Give Me Strength.
The “Color Revolution” buzzword obscures the fact that what happened in 2014 was one part of said “duly-elected, Pro-Russia Government” (namely the Verkovna Rada, the Ukrainian Legislature or Parliament) “toppling” another part of said “duly elected Pro-Russia Government” (the President and his Cabinet under Yanukovych), as a result of investigations into Yanukovych’s corruption, brutality, and violations of the constitution when dealing with dissent. Yanukovych was legally summoned to appear before the Rada and answer questions about his conduct and that of his cabinet, and he instead chose to flee the country, claiming that he was under threat (which was probably partially true) but at no point bothering to explain how he would execute his duties.
Which unsurprisingly led to the Legislature getting sick of his BS and voting to remove him from office on grounds of incapability to carry out his duties, which I will be the first to admit was legislatively sketchy due to the Ukrainian Constitution being written so poorly that there is basically no way to remove a President for non-health related incapacity save impeachment (which was deemed to be too long), so this was extraconstitutional and a grievous flaw (and one made worse by the failure of any post-2014 Ukrainian government to FIX THIS).
Though I note that it is at least as extraconstitutional as Yanukovych’s emergency laws (the so-called Dictatorship Laws) and especially Yanukovych claiming to still be President and exercising the duties of the President while outright failing to carry out one of the textbook charges of the Constitution.
Oh yeah, and the legislature that removed Yanukovych? It was made up primarily of Yanukovych’s own Coalition and was by and large democratically elected in the exact same election he was. But he and his cabinet so wore out his welcome that even most of his party did not want anything to do with him by the end, to the point where he was explicitly condemned and disowned by the Party of Regions.
But of course this doesn’t fit with the “Color Revolution” narrative, because that would require answering pointed questions from people like me asking how and why this sea change happened in the Blue Coalition and the Party of Regions, and why it was carried out by people the US State Department spent years trying (and failing) to prevent the election of.
Secondly: A Tyrant is a Tyrant, regardless of if they are “duly elected” or not. I would have hoped this should have been obvious in current year given the likes of Obama and Hugo Chavez, but apparently not. Yanukovych was duly elected (after I note trying and failing to rig the 2004 Presidential Election). This is true. However, one does not have unlimited power because one wins an election, even legitimately, and the Ukrainian President and Prime Minister both swear an oath to abide by and obey the Constitution. By any stretch of the imagination Yanukovych Broke said oath, the only question is how seriously and in how many ways.
Thirdly: The people yammering on about Yanukovych being “duly elected” pointedly ignore the fact that he was duly elected by triangulating between the breakup of his victorious rivals in the Orange Coalition (to the point where Tymoshenka and Poroshenko were at least as focused on going after each other as they were him) and Yanukovych explicitly promised to negotiate an EU Association Agreement in order to better Ukrainian trade diplomacy and the economy, so that it could triangulate between the EU and Russia.
Only for Yanukovych to then renege upon being elected and walk back. Which irritated not just his old pro-Western “Orange” rivals but also much of his “Blue” Russophone base in the Donbas, which led to the Euromaidan Protests and made Yanukovych desperate enough to start ramping up pressure, first legally and then illegally.
and installed a regime beholden to The West.
A: Ukraine was already “beholden to the West’ to varying degrees. One thing I liked pointing out to Kremlin propagandists trying to claim Euromaidan was a coup or “color revolution” was that Ukraine fought alongside us in Afghanistan and Iraq, not just under Poroshenko but also Yanukovych. Ditto the probably-dodgy-and-unethical-but-not-WMD-like-the-propaganda-said Biological Lab Research Agreement under Poroshenko’s Term, which Yanukovych never withdrew from.
B: The “regime beholden to the West” that was “installed” in the “Color Revolution” dissolved in a matter of months as it called for early elections, electing the Poroshenko Cabinet which governed until 2019, at which point it was beaten in the polls by Zelenskyy’s Party.
Ukraine’s been through at least three distinct regimes.
Over the past two decades, Ukraine has bled citizens
True. Turns out being invaded by Russia and subject to war does that.
and gradually slipped into economic insignificance,
False, as the Grain deal do.
along with most of the rest of that part of Europe.
Uh WHAT?!!?
Finland, Poland, and the Baltics all face major problems but they have made steady growth economically. As I note did Ukraine and Georgia up until they got dragged into their own various wars.
Since the cabal that owns Biden wants to maintain its mortmain over the NATO region,
What “NATO region”?
despite the utter uselessness of NATO since the dissolution of the USSR,
Ask the Poles who were our third largest ally in Iraq about the “uselessness” of NATO. It has massive issues but it is still telling.
they want to continue to foment the conflict, since it means that vast sums of money will continue to flow into their bank accounts.
Ukraine is a corrupt cesspit with lots of Dem and Western Globalist money, but so is Russia. And there’s something incredibly perverse about blaming even Biden and Obama over “Formenting the Conflict” when Putin is the one that invaded Ukraine in 2014, escalated the invasion in 2022, and pushed intentionally outrageous and untenable demands for “peace” such as the “demilitarization” of Ukraine and the abolition of its sovereign foreign policy.
Not unlike what we saw with Moldova. But that tends to get memory holed because it isn’t easy to blame on Western Globalists (on the Right), it isn’t easy to blame solely on Putin (for the knee jerk Putin haters), and it isn’t possible to honestly blame on NATO expansion (for the left).
All this has done is manage to kill a million or so Ukrainians and Russians and devastate the landscape,
Logic would blame the aggressor, Putin’s Russia, for that.
which will never become productive again in my lifetime.
Dubious, and depends on how long you live. For starters, the war has never directly reached or done much damage to places like Galicia and did passing damage to the agricultural and industrial heartlands on the Western Bank.
This is madness.
No, it’s typical savagery and thuggery from the Bald Chekist in Moscow. Evil yes. Stupidity probably. Madness kind of but not really. Especially when you factor in the echo chamber he’s had to operate in.
We had no business entering the conflict, and did so only for the venal reasons I cited.
Steve, this is BULLSHIT and Wrong.
Moreover, I can prove it.
When Ukraine agreed to denuclearize in the aftermath of the Soviet Breakup, it got to a negotiating table set up by us, Russia, and Britain. In which all sides hammered out Ukrainian independence, territorial arguments, and denuclearization.
This was the Budapest Memorandum of 1994.
The main body of that text contained the following:
1. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
2. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
3. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the Principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
4. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.
5. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm, in the case of Ukraine, their commitment not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.
6. Ukraine, The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America will consult in the event a situation arises which raises a question concerning these commitments.
The Russian Government Violated Every Single One Of These Points. But the US’s stated obligation to support Ukraine remains, especially in light of that. And as a “recovering lawyer” I expect you to know the importance of that, as well as its limits, and how it applies to other stuff like the Helsinki Final Act.
Now you are welcome to make the argument that entering into this agreement was a mistake, and we should renege. Indeed I have been willing to argue that in a limited fashion (in case we need to disengage from Eastern Europe to survive the imminent threats to our freedom at home, AND doing so will result in less rather than more danger).
But that doesn’t change the fact that it did make it “our business.”
While the aforementioned historical record gives ample reason for us to worry about a Russian government taking power in Ukraine.
Though frankly I go back further. I still remember Georgia in 2008. Another post-Soviet country that was far away and which we knew little about, another country gravely mired in corruption and politics and both Kremlin and Foggy Bottom Tomfoolery. But one that also fought alongside us heroically against the likes of Al Qaeda, and which even if it HADN’T deserved better than to be chopped up and violated by the Kremlin and its pet sectarian attack dogs.
If we have “no business” working to defend Ukraine or Georgia from attack, then where the hell will we?
Biden himself was eager to participate since he and his family were profiting equally handsomely from the grift, graft and corruption.
This is true, but also besides the point. He was profiting handsomely from graft in Ukraine, but was even before the invasion. Moreover, a nation should not become fair game to invade, violate, and partition just because it is hideously corrupt. By any metric the “Republic of China” during the Nanjing Decade was vastly worse in basically every aspect than Ukraine has been at any point since independence, but you don’t see many people arguing this fully justified Stalin or the Japanese Middle Management Fascist Cliques invading and brutalizing it so.
Only we, the people, suffer from the continued conflict. But it’s always that way, isn’t it?
Perhaps you should discuss with the Ukrainians or Georgians or Moldovans how they expect to suffer if Putin is allowed to get his way AGAIN as he has in Georgia and Transnistria.
As for myself, I’m a student of history, a basement dwelling autist*, and a wargamer and bibliophile. I’ve studied things like this a few times, and I’m not inclined to take the chance that things will go better this time. Putin’s conduct and that of his regime is enough that I believe it should be punished harshly, and I believe it is in the West’s and most importantly AMERICA’S interests to do so.
* Technically I moved out of the basement a few years back but hey.
Turtler, that was quite a compendium but impressive. I knew only about half or less. Food for thought, and I may have to change my opinion.
But in regard to that 1994 memorandum and as a bibliophile with this verse in mind, Proverbs 26:17, “Like one who takes a dog by the ears, So is one who passes by and meddles with strife not belonging to him”, how would you answer when the strife doesn’t belong to us as a nation? Any general principles for this isolationist-leaner?
@Bill K
But in regard to that 1994 memorandum and as a bibliophile with this verse in mind, Proverbs 26:17, “Like one who takes a dog by the ears, So is one who passes by and meddles with strife not belonging to him”, how would you answer when the strife doesn’t belong to us as a nation? Any general principles for this isolationist-leaner?
I’m not sure I can give you general principles as an isolationist, as I admit I have always been an interventionist and a hawk, albeit one that admits we have squandered much and need time to lick our wounds at home. And in particular I would argue that frankly, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 probably stands out as one thing that it’d be appealing to have stood out of from an isolationist POV (and honestly it is pretty clear it was unwise to rely so much on Russian goodwill when Transnistria was just a couple years ago). But what starts in Ukraine tends not to end in it, as I mentioned before. In particular when an aggressive, authoritarian regime takes power in Ukraine it tends to quickly (relatively speaking) capitalize on those and start launching misadventures abroad. I’ve cited the Russian/Soviet examples there but the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Mongols both come to mind for it.
Simply put, I am staunchly opposed to committing troops except as advisors and trainers (and if they die or get captured, that’s unfortunate but we have to suck it up), but I do support giving the Ukrainians what resources they need to at a minimum destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and preferably to evict the Russian military and its local quislings from their homeland, or at least as much as they can.
While we profoundly disagree on many things such as basic foreign policy alignment, I do think it is probably not a good omen to allow a regime (either directly or through trusted mouthpieces such as talking heads in propaganda press or vassals like Kadyrov) to openly talk about first strikes (including with WMD) on the US or its allies without retaliation. Since Putin and those around him seem insistent on the idea that they need to escalate the war in the West, I’d much rather they spend that effort and blood and treasure in places like Ukraine than further West.
Moreover, while the wisdom of the Budapest Memorandum I think was questionable (especially since I am leery of anti-proliferation among non-totalitarians), I do think we have committed to it and there is no good reason to withdraw from it at this venue. Especially not given how Putin takes glee in scalping our allies and his neighbors, and while part of me would take joy at him humiliating Obama and Biden and their ilk, that would be more than cancelled out by the misery that he has and would inflict on Ukrainians and Moldovans like he has on Georgians and his own people, as well as his alignment with our avowed enemies (and no, I do not think for a Second that we are fundamentally responsible for Putin’s Pro-CCP alignment; pace Steve one “bipartisan” consensus for the cabals driving foreign policy was trying to woo Putin into some kind of partnership or alliance, and every President in my lifetime has made the attempt. Mark Steyn pegged Putin specifically and the Kremlin’s “organs” more broadly as favoring a CCP alliance almost regardless of what happens nearly 20 years ago, and I have to concur. The Kremlin is happy to play the crybully and cite real and imagined grievances to try and justify its policies, but I think its policies are mostly not occasioned by them but are instead being dressed up to try and pass them off. That includes NATO expansion, which if anything was frankly caused by bitter memories of Russian and Soviet imperialism going back to the 19th century as well as general instability, and Serbian and Russian misadventures such as Transnistria).
Moreover, on the subject of Proverbs, I do think Proverbs 3:27-30
Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,
when it is in your power to act.
Do not say to your neighbor,
“Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you”—
when you already have it with you.
Do not plot harm against your neighbor,
who lives trustfully near you.
I would also point to 29:22
An angry person stirs up conflict,
and a hot-tempered person commits many sins.
The Bible may encourage people not to meddle in strife that doesn’t belong to yourself (though I admit as someone who has done a fair bit of counseling this has always sat uneasily with me), but it also recognizes that there will be bad actors, and they will be responsible for a huge portion of the strife and at a minimum one should guard against it and help those harmed by them. I would say likewise here.
Ironically I do think Putin being stuck fighting another decade or so in Eastern Ukraine would likely help undermine his striking capabilities and give us time to sort things out at home.
But to respond to your other comments:
om, just because Ukraine ought to win against Russian aggression doesn’t mean to me that the US ought to participate.
I would agree. However, I think the nature of the Budapest Memorandum and the assurances vested in it, the Helsinki Final Act, and Astana Accord underline why we should.
Why is it unreasonable to simply defer that problem to the EU, as Brian E suggests?
In a good world, it wouldn’t be unreasonable. But unfortunately we don’t live in such.
And part of this is due to the sins of our forebearers. In the middle of WWII the likes of FDR and Truman (with broad public support) decided we did not want to work with the major European Powers as equals or allies but ultimately as superiors. There’s a lot desirable about that, especially given the follies and crimes they have done, but it also meant we had to be on the spot. And it also meant things like Suez 1956 blew up in our faces badly with long term fallout.
We’ve in some ways tried to atone for that mistake over the years, but it will be a long issue.
Why not hold that the EU is a lot closer, needs to put its big boy clothes on, and stop peeking out from behind Uncle Sam?
The EU’s divided, like it probably should be. Some EU nations like the Dutch, Poles, and Greeks have done so. Some such as France and Germany most assuredly have not. And some like Hungary and Turkey enjoy playing both sides.
Isn’t the EU more populous, more wealthy, and more technologically superior to Russia, such that deferring to them is not a denial of which side ought to be the victor?
It is, but unfortunately “the EU” for better and worse does not fully exist (and honestly that’s probably a good thing).
It seems to me that Israel is a different matter largely because it is the David in a religious war against the Goliath of some 2 billion Muslims. Iran alone has a GDP 4x that of Israel, which when considering contributions of other Muslim states, is imbalanced the other way. And Israel can expect absolutely no real help from the EU, given the pressures of their Muslim contingents.
Agreed on the whole, though I also argue in some ways Israel is less crucial and destabilizing in terms of resources, even if demographically and symbolically it is at least as important and possibly moreso. Imagine the social upheaval in the century after the fall of Outremer from the Crusades, and the Eastern European turmoils of the 17th entries. I want neither today.
Turtler-
Impressive, and for the sake of argument, stipulate 100% true and accurate.
I still do not see why my money should be paying for it, to a far greater degree than a typical German, Czech, Frenchman, or whatever is paying for it. (I’m assuming without checking that the Pole, Estonian, etc. are at least starting to arm up).
More importantly, why should my child, who is currently on the pointy part of the spear, risk his life and limb, when the German, etc., is not doing so? My kid joined the military to help protect this great nation that has been so good to him and his family.
Re: Budapest Memo. Assume the Ukraine has nukes. Have they used them yet in the current war? Would they use them ever, and then be annihilated by the superior Russian force? Not relevant.
@Bill K
om, count me an isolationist then if Europe won’t step up. They need their hand forced. I’d rather pick my battles – no to Ukraine, yes to Israel, and yes, in both cases I’m referring to intelligence, ordnance and equipment.
Fair, though I would argue in many cases they are more linked than we care to admit, especially since Putin has allowed Kadyrov to turn Chechnya into basically the Diet Daesh and is allowing him to have steadily more influence in Moscow itself, in addition to the demographic “bomb” that will make Russia increasingly more Muslim and also the rapproachment with the PRC and Iran.
And in neither case do I favor sending soldiers for the sake of those countries. But I think a case can be made for sending soldiers to rescue Americans if trapped in either situation.
Agreed there.
One son has served in the Army, the other a sergeant in the Marines, which reminds me of the Marine hymn phrase, “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” That reference to Tripoli goes back to the Barbary pirates who took American hostages, and Thomas Jefferson didn’t take that lying down. So I may be an isolationist, but a discriminating isolationist.
Understandable, and I sympathize there entirely. My kudos to your brave sons, whatever our differences.
focusing on 94, is a little unhelpful to the discussion, as far as parallels come to mind, putin probably saw the 90s much like the Time of Troubles between the Ivans, at the turn of the 17th Century, when Russia was in weakened state, khelmenitsky rises later in the mid century and he did manage to make the best of things, well survive, for a time, the track record of live ukrainian nationalists is not encouraging, and that’s being charitable,
@West TX Intermediate Crude
Impressive, and for the sake of argument, stipulate 100% true and accurate.
Thank you kindly.
I still do not see why my money should be paying for it, to a far greater degree than a typical German, Czech, Frenchman, or whatever is paying for it. (I’m assuming without checking that the Pole, Estonian, etc. are at least starting to arm up).
The Poles and Estonians are doing so, and generally are paying for it through the nose in a way the Czechs, French, and Germans should be (and some of the other Euros are like the Dutch).
But I would respond that I sympathize with that, but I would argue on what we mean by seeing why.
In terms of pure merits and ethics, I completely agree, I do not see why you should pay more for it than the Germans, French, and even other Euros that are paying their share. It is an injustice, and while partially Made in America is also enabled by moral cowardice and greed among the Euros (looking particularly at Germany here). In a better world- and one where Trump and others got their way on NATO armaments – the EU should be taking priority.
But in terms of seeing about how things lie as the world does, I’d have to disagree. The brutal reality is that the FDR-Truman-Ike Continuum’s decision to seriously screw over our Western Euro allies during and after WWII has had disasters consequences for the world, starting with fostering dependence and enervation in the West (and one reason why even as an Anglophone American and WASP I do feel a great amount of sympathy for DeGaulle). They’re also dealing with their own issues too. Moreover, if we’ve learned one thing from this it is that we should not rely on Germany to act as a check to Russian imperial ambitions, because pretty much every time that’s happened bad things have ensued.
So I favor a two track policy of arm twisting the Euros to take up more of the burden and doing it.
More importantly, why should my child, who is currently on the pointy part of the spear, risk his life and limb, when the German, etc., is not doing so?
I would agree entirely, and that is why in spite of being one of the resident Ukraine and Anti-Kremlin hawks I have always pointed out that I will not support sending the US to war over Ukraine as it stands now, and frankly am leery even about support troops (were I King with the relevant legislative/constitutional authorities it would be volunteer only). But that also ties back to how European weakness in many ways is not happenstance but the fruit of a poisonous tree much of US Foreign policy has cultivated, and how specifically we almost certainly Do Not want to rely on the Germans to take lead on this.
But I agree.
My kid joined the military to help protect this great nation that has been so good to him and his family.
Agreed.
Re: Budapest Memo. Assume the Ukraine has nukes.
Fair.
Have they used them yet in the current war?
Probably not. One of the underappreciated reasons for Budapest was that there was widespread anti-Nuker sentiment in Europe and especially Eastern Europe, and denuclearization (now seen as folly) was popular will in Ukraine, and if our system of government means anything at all it means the public should generally get what they want (“Good and Hard” at the risk of citing one particularly famous prog). Moreover they are fighting on their own soil and lack the independent nuclear deterrence to threaten Russia with MAD without NATO (which opens up their own cans of worms). Even assuming the facilities do not get captured or destroyed (which is a BIG if) I doubt the Ukrainians would want to fire them off.
Would they use them ever, and then be annihilated by the superior Russian force?
Maybe if they believed the fat lady was about to sing or defeat was imminent and so they might as well go down swinging, or if they decided on a high risk gamble like the “Nuclear Warning Shot” in French nuclear doctrine, of atomizing a sizable Russian military force to try and press the situation to the negotiating table. But those are big and costly ifs in a country that has had Literally Chernobyl happen on its soil and the truth is the Ukrainian national identity has generally survived well in exile or underground.
So we’d likely see threats to that effect and possible use, but if that didn’t work attempts to transport their nuclear deterrence to the West as leverage to encourage Guerillamania to make Afghanistan look casual. Which in some ways it already is (the losses the Russian Military and its vassal troops have taken trying to hold the Donbas and parts of the South make even Communist losses among both USSR and Communist Afghan troops downright paltry).
Not relevant.
I disagree. And to that I’d throw the hypothetical right back at you:
Do you see Putin’s Dictatorship chancing an invasion of a nuclear-armed state with assurances to its independence and territorial integrity by the US and UK?
Do you see any other Russian government doing so? And if so, what would its composition?
For all of Putin’s rhetoric about NATO expansion, the behavior of he and his ilk has been even more revealing. At no point have they invaded a country actually in NATO, nor one armed with nuclear weapons or even breakout capacity for it. One reason why I am leery at best about anti-proliferation outside of the Middle East and its ilk. Which is also why I do view it as greatly relevant.
And in any case all involved viewed it as relevant enough to make the agreement in the first place. And while from an America First POV I do believe it had some serious defects (including the fact that bluntly the US and to a lesser extent UK didn’t get enough “out of” it for what it was, especially knowing what we know of Ukrainian and Russian government stances at the time as well as since), but it was a fundamentally sound document in line with many of our policies and public sentiment.
And even if I wouldn’t be opposed to chucking it or ignoring it, I am opposed to allowing Putin or any other anti-Western, anti-American tinpot to violate it and humiliate us over it without repercussion. Nemo me impune lacessit. Beyond the moral and practical fallout of allowing people who fought alongside us in Iraq and Afghanistan to be victimized by this goon, I don’t think the US needs any more black eyes over failure to support its allies or co-belligerents in the face of people who downright hate us.
@miguel cervantes
focusing on 94, is a little unhelpful to the discussion,
A: I disagree.
B: Putin apparently did not disagree enough to think it unnecessary to pretend he was not invading Ukraine in 2014, hence the (im)plausible deniability over his Little Green Men.
C: Even if I conceded that point, omitting any mention of it is at least as unhelpful to the discussion as much as focusing on it. In any case, while Budapest helps cement the legal rationale for supporting Ukraine (though even that is not strictly necessary given things like the Helsinki Final Act) for practical as well as humanitarian reasons I have no reason to want any authoritarian government – especially one centered in Moscow to dominate Ukraine.
as far as parallels come to mind, putin probably saw the 90s much like the Time of Troubles between the Ivans, at the turn of the 17th Century, when Russia was in weakened state,
He certainly has been happy to posture about that, though I think even he can tell some of the differences. In any case the Time of Troubles seems to sit hard with the Muscovite “Organs” as a whole, to the point where the Kremlin-financed and stage managed propaganda film 1612 managed to completely ignore the defining moment of 1612: the Polish-Lithuanian garrison’s surrender in Moscow.
Indeed, the entire occupation of the Polish-Lithuanian Military of Russia’s autocratic capital basically got memory holed, with the Poles magically being beaten off on the outskirts in a way they never were. Other Kremlin propaganda and narratives are more honest but they generally prefer avoiding that. I have at least some idea why. In large part because as much as 1612 is a seminal event in the Russian national epic, it is quite scathing for the conduct of the Russian State and (most of) its elites. The Poles entered Moscow with the active collaboration of much of the Muscovite aristocracy and occupied it with their foreign rites and languages for about a year, with few of the “Organs” or Servitors of what I’d later call the Kremlin emerging well. In contrast liberation came not from people like Vladimir Putin or even Yev Prigozhin, but from medium ranked elites and a borderline Levee en Masse.
It’s a sharp rebuke to the idea of Moscow and the Moscow-founded government as central to the story of Russia, and so I’m not surprised the Kremlin likes glossing over some uncomfortable truths about it in comparison to the more conventionally edifying stories of 1812-1815 and 1941-1945. My opinion on Putin’s self-awareness has steadily decreased over the course of this year, but I’m pretty sure even he knows well enough to realize why he does not. A Russian friend of mine has expressed exasperation on the limits the regime puts on political mobilization (even in support of the regime) and this largely dovetails with my own experiences and that of some other astute analysts like Whatifalthist. In general popular mobilization is risky for autocracies, and has been in Russia since at least the Mongol Yoke.
khelmenitsky rises later in the mid century and he did manage to make the best of things, well survive, for a time, the track record of live ukrainian nationalists is not encouraging, and that’s being charitable,
Sure, but that’s also against the backdrop of being flanked on all sides by hostiles in a way that isn’t the case here.
Turtler:
Once again, Game (Steve), Set (Bill K), and Match (West Texas …..).
Brain E still pops out with his usual from time to time, Ukrainian Derangement Syndrome?
@Brian E
Here is one of the reasons why we should reconsider aid to Ukraine– leaving aside the illegitimate events of 2014 that led to the conflict– like the illegal overthrow of a democratically elected President of Ukraine,
We’ve been over this ground many many times before, and we’ve come to a surprising amount of common ground and conclusions before.
Including
A: Yanukovych was the democratically elected President of Ukraine.
B: The Verkovna Rada that removed him and his cabinet were the democratically elected legislature of Ukraine.
C: Yanukovych was a pretty bad dude who did what can be *generously* referred to as constitutionally and ethically “dubious” behavior that got him in trouble.
D: The Rada’s vote to remove him was also constitutionally dubious, in large part due to the poor composition of the Ukrainian Constitution lacking any means to remove a sitting President for any reasons save health (which wasn’t the case in Yanukovych) or impeachment (which I think is what should have been done but which would have taken a while and which I think the history since then justifies a fair bit of caution about).
then sending private armies fielded by ultra-nationalists from the western Ukraine’s Anti Terrorist Operation (ATO) to the east.
Fair, though many of said ultra-nationalists were not from Western Ukraine but from Eastern Ukraine but were native to the East, as Kharkhiv (one of the major homes of Right Sector) shows. And of course the Kremlin has been happy to invade with its own forces of private armies, including a host of ultra-nationalists and even outright Neo-Nazis.
This is a war that Europe needs to fight.
Agreed, and parts of Europe are doing so.
We need to wean Europe off a US military dependency.
Agreed, though that comes with its own issues especially given what a militarily independent few governments in Europe that – say – elect a Muslim dominant government might do. It’d also cut against the grain of decades of US Foreign policy and even more domestic European.
The dependency isn’t just Ukraine– it’s much of Europe itself. We created such a dependency of US military security, that Europe never did the hard lifting to provide for their own security. How much of an existential threat is Europe facing when they’ve failed to provide 2% support for NATO– let alone the estimated 6-7% necessary to fund their security? Apparently, Europeans don’t consider the threat significant enough.
Agreed, though this depends much on which “Europeans” we are talking about. The Dutch are not Germans, nor are Poles Hungarian.
“Europe would not be ready to replace the United States. It could certainly take steps to strengthen its defense potential, deploy all the resources of lawfare to try to meet the additional challenges to international law that a victory by Trump or one of his look-alikes would pose, and strengthen its economic and social cohesion — it should even start today, as this author has suggested.
Ah yes, the casual demonization of Trump. I wish I were surprised. And this is ironically one of the best arguments against European military independence, at least from an America First POV, and it also reminds us that historically adventurous Europeans have been the main existential threat to the US.
But even if Europe were to enter a war economy in the full sense of the term, as President Macron suggested in June 2022, it would still be more than a decade before it could acquire the conventional military potential of the United States. If we were to add to this the US nuclear deterrent potential, the basis of the global deterrence set out in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the defense expenditure of each European state would have to amount, according to some estimates, to 6% or 7% of GDP, from the current 2%. Needless to say, neither the governments nor the public would be keen to do so, especially given the concomitant need for cuts in areas like social support and health.
Which brings us there.
It is therefore far from certain that Europe alone, even when including the UK and Norway, could withstand high-intensity conventional aggression from Russia.
I’m more optimistic. Ukraine is a fraction of Europe’s military capabilities and yet it has withstood “high-intensity conventional aggression from Russia” in spades. We’ve been overestimating Russian/Soviet military capability for about a century now.
France, whose nuclear strike force is independent, would have to drastically revise its nuclear doctrine, and London, whose deterrent is integrated into NATO (and currently being updated at a cost of around $38bn) , would have to do the same.”
Honestly conventional military strength is one of the least of issues I see. The social rot and entitlement are both root causes of this and more metastasized. I do think a more or less united European NATO would be more than capable of checking a Russian conventional military attack to at least a draw, and likely more. It’s the unconventional threats I’m worried about.
Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public policy institution based in Washington DC
Once again we see a case where “non-partisan” means demonizing the right.
I mostly conclude this is PR with little effective change, especially since the ATO label was largely a polite diplomatic fiction where we pretended the Little Green Men in the Donbas and Crimea were all (at least officially) local pro-Russian separatists, even as the Kremlin publicly or not so publicly admitted that was not the case in everything down to “Oopsie” court case mentions.
Some sound advice by Charles Freeman, former diplomat who among other roles, was the translator for President Nixon during his visit to China.
That would be a pleasant change from Mr. Freeman’s usual caliber of commentary. However, I have my doubts.
*Wars do not decide who is right. They determine who is left.
This is true, and old wisdom going back to the Jus Bellum. However, the origins of the war as well as the conduct and cause of it do decide who is right.
*The best way to avoid war is to reduce or eliminate the apprehensions and grievances that cause it.
Bullshit. But well befitting one of the Best and Brightest responsible for bungling Indochina.
The best way to avoid war is to destroy, cripple, or remove the ability of would be opponents to engage in war. As my man Niccolo pointed out, it is better to be feared rather than loved because love is voluntary, fear is not. So too is the difference between capabilities and grievances/apprehensions.
It might be an exaggeration to say that people or regimes can pick up or drop off “apprehensions” or “grievances” whenever they want since such things can take on a life of their own (as Argentina and the Falklands show), but they are ultimately something that is willed, and the choice to act on them is DEFINITELY willed. In contrast, you can’t just will lack of capability to act on something into the ability to strike.
I have no doubt that the likes of Egypt and Jordan have plenty of “apprehensions” and “grievances” about and against Israel. So why have they not militarily acted on them? Many reasons, starting with political, diplomatic, and economic. But at rock bottom is probably the realization that they would lose and lose quite decisively. Again. And while the Hashemites in Amman and the rotating juntas and cliques in Cairo or whatever the new capitol is supposed to be may be egotistical tyrants and proud to boot, they are not so proud or deluded as to ignore that.
This is why it is better to render an enemy INCAPABLE of pursuing its grievances or vendettas against you than it is to address them.
And the wisdom behind this is implicitly shown in the target selection by the Kremlin and its ilk. Is it any wonder why for all the bluster and having trusted regime stalking horses talking about nuking Poland or extending the “Special Military Operations” to Moldova, the Baltics, or Sweden’s coastal littoral the Kremlin has pointedly limited its ACTUAL Military misadventures to much smaller, less populous, and weaker non-NATO countries in its “Near Abroad.”
Indeed, even when a given power has ACTUAL and VERY JUSTIFIED apprehensions and grievances, as India (which Mr. Freeman was supposedly an expert in) when we made the dumb mistake of supporting the Pakistani Military’s genocides in Bengal with a Carrier Group to intimidate the Indians (only to get chased off by the Soviets in one of the only cases in the Cold War where I actually am glad we lost to the Reds), the knowledge the Indians had on our capabilities and that they were incapable of decisively defeating us greatly affected how they conducted their policy.
In contrast, Hanoi continued pursuing its total war policy throughout the decades between 1945 and 1975 if not 1979, and ultimately won.
Moreover, I note that Freeman does not give any guidance for what to do if someone’s “grievances” or “apprehensions” are intractable and existential to the point that they cannot realistically be ameliorated. Because “We’re apocalyptic, Communist totalitarians that want to kill you and forcibly unite the country” does not bode well for a peaceful solution involving two Vietnams or Two Koreas. Which is why Korea ultimately was won not by ameliorating the apprehensions of Pyongyang, Beijing, or Moscow but by deterring them that this was a money and blood sink they had no prospect of meaningful victory in.
*When you refuse to hear, let alone address an aggrieved party’s case for adjustments in your policies toward it, you risk a violent reaction from it.
One risks violence and violent reaction from simply existing. This does not mean one should abdicate responsibility to analyze and address the case on its merits.
Including evaluating on whether said “aggrieved party’s case” is self-serving bullshit or even just the fig leaf meant to cover up a far more insidious agenda.
There’s a REASON why appeasement is a Dirty Word, and I thank God for it. Because the West “addressed aggrieved parties’ cases for adjustments in their policy” straight into another World War.
*No one should enter a war without realistic objectives, a strategy to achieve them, and a plan for war termination.
Sure, but this also implicitly favors the aggressor, who has the chance to at least come up with them, and not the defender.
*Self-righteousness and bravery are no substitutes for military mass, firepower, and stamina.
Now Chas Freeman (not you Brian E), I realize you’re an over credentialed idiot, but even you should know that Bravery IS A KEY COMPONENT OF MILITARY MASS’S DEFINITION>/b> precisely because without bravery or at least the base willingness to fight (even if grudgingly) and awareness to do so, you can have things like Fort Detroit, Fort Douamont, and Stettin where often much larger forces surrender to the outnumbered but more astute.
Now there is a key to this, in that self-righteousness and bravery are not absolute substitutes for firepower and stamina and military (as the Japanese found out), but they ARE key ingredients in determining Force Generation for Military Mass and Stamina.
*In the end, wars are won and lost on the battlefield, not with propaganda inspired by and directed at reinforcing wishful thinking.
This is kind of rich coming from someone whose defining “Public Service” occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, which was ultimately dominated by the Allied defeat in Indochina, which outside of the final military collapse of the South in 1975 (which itself was only possible due to political and diplomatic factors) was decided far more by propaganda and wishful thinking (on both sides, but victoriously so by the Communists) than by what happened on the Battlefield.
Indeed, I do think Sun Tzu is somewhat overrated but he was quite astute when pointing out how often one wins before going to war or loses without it.
*What has been lost on the battlefield can seldom, if ever, be recovered at the negotiating table.
Somewhere in hell, Thieu and Ho are laughing with Tallyrand and Fouche. And they’re probably joined with Lenin after Brest-Litovsk.
*When wars cannot be won, it is usually better to seek terms by which to end them to reinforce strategic failure.
Which brings us to the question of what decides if wars can or cannot be won.
Because to be really Blunt Mr. Freeman, I DO NOT HAVE A HIGH OPINION OF YOUR JUDGEMENT ON THIS MATTER. And I think my conclusions are borne out in spades by both the pseudo-profound sounding drek quoted here and by his actual, underwhelming (to put it mildly) history. Some of it is good, if often a bit idealistic, but other parts of it are so terrible (either by being incoherent, incomplete, self-contradictory, or outright wrong) that I must
I do think the list is good advice to any country contemplating military action– after all other means have been exhausted in situations involving states that share similar worldviews. What we are seeing in the ME is the clash of worldviews.
I don’t think it is good advice, for the reasons I’ve mentioned. Some of it is good, not so much others.
I ran across this list in reference to the Russian-Ukraine war.
And that brings us back to many of the other issues with it, especially Mr. Freeman’s frankly dire track record.
Ambassador Freeman is very critical of the Israeli lobby, but fails as most of our bureaucratic policymakers do/did when it comes to radical Islam. They still think that we can/could reason our way to a solution– ignoring the last 50 years.
Frankly if that was all Ambassador Freeman failed at I’d be plenty surprised. But it isn’t. Far from it as I’ve established, and this is implicitly shown if one bothers scrutinizing his maxims with historical knowledge. Some hold up (such as what one should go into a war with). Most don’t. And I’m not surprised he is happy to screw over our Israeli allies.
Has the West alienated “moderate” Muslims with our heavy-handed approach to the radical attacks by Islamists, or is the brutality of the Islamists sufficient to prevent any reaction by “moderates” to embrace compromise? It’s probably some of each.
I’d argue moreso the latter, precisely because again, love or gratitude are voluntary, fear is not (or at least not primarily so). In the end “moderate Muslims” have generally been dependent on enough coercive force, whether provided by the West or by closer to home (such as the Hashemite family dictatorship in Jordan). I think Osama’s proverb about the Strong Horse touches on something Mr. Freeman has.
The uncompromising nature of Islam makes negotiation meaningless. Any compromise by Islamists is tactical (the same for the totalitarian leftists in our midst today). When Arafat walked away from negotiations in 2000, it was just the prelude to the long war.
Indeed, which I think goes back to Freeman’s long list of failures in dealing with totalitarian and totalizing ideologies and actors going back to his less than stellar role in India-Pakistan, Vietnam, and China.
Here’s a recounting of the affair by Ehud Barak:
Israel was offering almost all of the PLO demands.
“Arafat said no. Enraged, Clinton banged on the table and said: “You are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe.” A formal Palestinian rejection of the proposals reached the Americans the next day. The summit sputtered on for a few days more but to all intents and purposes it was over.
Today Barak portrays Arafat’s behaviour at Camp David as a “performance” geared to exacting from the Israelis as many concessions as possible without ever seriously intending to reach a peace settlement or sign an “end to the conflict”.
“He did not negotiate in good faith; indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying no to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own,” he says. Barak shifts between charging Arafat with “lacking the character or will” to make a historic compromise (as did the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1977-79, when he made peace with Israel) to accusing him of secretly planning Israel’s demise while he strings along a succession of Israeli and Western leaders and, on the way, hoodwinks “naive journalists”.”
Arafat didn’t negotiate – he just kept saying no
I wish I were surprised.
Of course, the issue I have with this is why we do not consider the possibility being broader. Not just with Muslims but also with the CCP or the Kremlin. If Putin and Xi or at least some people in their inner circles are behaving in a similar fashion. There’s certainly ample grounds to suspect this given the perennial Lucy and the Football regarding Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, to cite just a few.
Mostly, I think the US has failed to understand the limits of uniformed military power against insurgent/terrorist enemies.
Agreed, but I think we also generally struggle to plan ahead longer than election cycles, which is a problem when dealing with clashes of worldviews or civilizations that might last generations (or even longer). Coolidge(one of the underappreciated POTUSes IMHO) said that “The Business of America is Business.”
Well, the Business of Vladimir Lenin and his regime, like that of the Wahhabists in the Desert, is making us Dead, Converted, or Slaves and making “America” as founded and conceived no more. And I would argue America is very poorly equipped to deal with problems like that, including at home.
Mr. Freeman seems not to have learned much from this.
um, actually Turtler’s defense of the situation was there was an immediate need to replace Yanukovych as justification.
It went significantly beyond that, starting with the fact that Yanukovych was knowingly abusing a blind spot in the Constitution in order to avoid legal scrutiny. Probably because said legal scrutiny would have (further) revealed a whole host of unconstitutional, illegal, and inhumane conduct by himself and/or his cabinet members.
France and Germany had negotiated a deal with Yanukovych where he would replace his administration with ministers more in line with the protestors and hold elections early. That would have been a compromise that followed the constitution (at least didn’t subvert it).
Indeed, but this also involved the Rada having the power to call the President and his Cabinet before it to answer.
There was nothing in the Ukraine constitution that allowed the violent overthrow of the President.
This is true, but
A: The “violent overthrow” didn’t happen or at least was not the main event.
B: The Ukrainian Constitution ALSO has nothing in it that would allow a Ukrainian President to flee from legal scrutiny before the Legislature and essentially stonewall, continuing to assert he is in good health and exercising the duties of the President while refusing to exercise one of the most important of such duties.
And while I have issues with Yanukovych and his intelligence and awareness I do not think he was daft enough to not know this.
The protestors rejected the deal and threatened Yanukovych and members of the Rada.
Which is nice and all, but this doesn’t ignore the fact that “The Protestors” didn’t act as a united bloc, as I pointed out.
Moreover, it wasn’t “The Protestors” that called Yanukovych to appear before the Rada, and it wasn’t “The Protestors” that ultimately voted to remove him after he conspicuously failed to show. You have argued this involved coercion from The Protestors, but that is at best punting the question to the side without addressing it. Likewise the norm of Parliamentary systems with broad interpretive power (I personally oppose this, indeed it was a problem the Founders identified with the British system way back in the 1750s and 1760s, but it is still there. And to be honest there are some virtues to it given how it leaves little oxygen for all-powerful executive strongmen.)
@om
I appreciate the compliment, but you are being rather caustic and IMHO counterproductive.
Did any other things happen in Ukraine in 2014, such as Russia seizing Crimea, fomenting and supporting the proxie war in the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine, supplying the Russian SAM that shot down and killed everyone aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (fired from the Donbas Peoples whatever (Vladland)).
As Brian E pointed out, those things happened after Yanukovych’s ouster, and Brian E was arguing that they were caused by it (which he argued was illegal, which I disagree with or at least argue was no less illegal than Yanukovych’s actions and probably less so).
Are you that dense, that internal politics in Ukraine and the ouster of a Russian stooge is more important than Russia seizing Crimea, fomenting a civil war, and murdering all those aboard that airliner.
Find your moral compass.
If Brian E is arguing that Yanukovych’s ouster caused those things, he could make a decent argument for that. And even I’d argue that Yanu’s removal certainly was a trigger prompting Putin to act (even if the actual plans were drawn up well before as a contingency).
Though I would argue that it is not as important, and even if I agreed with Brian E’s premises completely (which I do not; though I disagree with fewer than your summary implies I believe there are some crucial differences) it would not justify Putin’s behavior.
And I have reason to believe Putin agrees with me, considering how he felt the need to do the Little Green Man Ensemble Show rather than just bluntly declare his reaction to it.
Don’t regurgitate the Ukrainians are Nazis, Russian speakers are oppressed, Ukrainians don’t have a culture. Heard it before and not buying that spin.
Fair, but I haven’t seen Brian E argue that much. Though I would note that Putin has been quite draconian at supporting regimes that are similar in such behavior… so long as they align with him. I am sure the Russophone and Chinese North Koreans (what very few are left) and even Kazakhs can attest.
“….Putin has been quite draconian at supporting regimes that are similar in such behavior….”
Yup, and there’s a REASON why in spite of being stereotypical US Imperialist Interventionist Neocon Hawk, I don’t want US troops going ANYWHERE for a couple years, including to war. We just need time to lick our wounds and bandage things before the spiral grows worse, and the last thing the Republic needs is the Left with even more sweeping emergency powers, because I frankly fear the Left and Islamists at home more htan I fear the Islamists, Putin, or XI abroad.
If that means Ukraine and Israel have to be sacrificed so be it.
But for what it is worth I do not think that is the case. Both have deep troubles in war economically, but both have shown themselves to be plenty willing to fight to exist, and in good positions to prevail.
In some ways I wish we could say the same. But I guess there’s a reason why Mr. Freeman’s claptrap strikes me as so recent even though it was probably quite a long ago. We still haven’t gotten a good cure for Vietnamitis.
“If that means Ukraine and Israel have to be sacrificed so be it.”
Sounds like a fair trade-off to me:
Hey, Vlad: I’ll give ye’ Ukraine if ye’ give mah mullah pals the Zionist Entity!
– – – – – – – – – –
And it looks like Jake “Golden Boy” Sullivan is head-over-heels impressed with KJP’s oh-so-carefully-modulated talking points!!
“Jake Sullivan threatens force against Iran while calling Israeli ‘extremist settler’ violence unacceptable”— https://nypost.com/2023/10/29/news/sullivan-threatens-force-against-iran-calls-extremist-settler-violence-unacceptable/
(Well, it figures…)
@Barry Meislin
Sounds like a fair trade-off to me:
Hey, Vlad: I’ll give ye’ Ukraine if ye’ give mah mullah pals the Zionist Entity!
The issue, as Steyn and VDH pointed out, is Vlad tends to be a bad man to make deals with and tends not to stick to them. So even if that were a fair trade it probably wouldn’t work
And Kremlin BS aside Ukraine wasn’t really “ours” to give, as shown by the almost stereotypically strong Open Russian Decapitation Strike being strung out and shot from every which way around Kyiv and similar bitter resistance elsewhere like the airports of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Some of the arguments posted by the Russian aggression isolationist are, IMO, bullsh*t and me being blunt about them may be counterproductive, but it is good that you are willing to destroy them (such arguments) in detail.
“…Vlad tends to be a bad man to make deals with…”
Indeed.
And our “man” in DC? What about “him”?
(As for ‘Ukraine wasn’t really “ours” to give…’ well…we sure gave it “our best shot”…in Feb. 2022(!))
See, here’s what Vlad likes so much about “Biden”…as he (a la Dubya) looks into the latter’s glassy eyes and sees a…sympathetic psychopath.
Someone he “understands”.
Someone he can do business with.
(Which might just raise the question, where was “he” over the past 23-odd years?)
@Barry Meislin
I liked Bush until that statement. I saw video of them sitting and looking into each other’s eyes and thought “Putin is a friggin’ psycho.” It was obvious he looked like a predator.
Either Bush was stupid or he lied. Either way, it was over.
Probably were playing a round of “whoever blinks first loses”.
Bush blinked first and…so he had to make that pre-agreed-upon statement.
(Well…it’s a better explanation than “Love at first sight”….)
I mentioned an episode from “Friends” on the “Sharing food” topic. Yesterday I noticed announcements that Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing on “Friends”, had died in an “apparent drowning” in his hot tub. He was only 54.
Perry’s problems with alcohol and drugs were hardly a secret — even I, a devout non-reader of “People Magazine,” knew. His life was hard on his body.
I don’t have any inside dope on Perry. I just liked him from “Friends” and the great screwball crime-comedy, “The Whole Nine Yards.”
RIP
Open Thread Sunday – National Defense stuff The Future of the Aircraft Carrier – New Threats, Power Projection & Growing Fleets – Perun
Timestamps:
00:00:00 — The Future Of The Aircraft Carrier
00:01:35 — What Am I Talking About?
00:02:15 — History
00:08:17 — What Makes A Carrier?
00:13:55 — Global Carrier Forces
00:25:46 — Strategic Power Projection
00:29:44 — Economics
00:39:56 — Vulnerabilities
00:47:52 — Countermeasures & Challenges
00:55:58 — If Not The Carrier, What?
01:04:20 — What Next For The Carrier
01:06:20 — Conclusion
01:06:44 — Channel Update
“If Brian E is arguing that Yanukovych’s ouster caused those things, he could make a decent argument for that. And even I’d argue that Yanu’s removal certainly was a trigger prompting Putin to act (even if the actual plans were drawn up well before as a contingency).” – Turtler
That was the point I was making, which I’m sure um understood. The problem debating/arguing with someone like um is he conflates support for Eastern Ukraine as support for Russia.
Donbas separatism was an issue long before the Maidan riots, but I suspect it was the precipitating event for both Crimea and the Donbas to break away. Would it happened later at some time. Crimea for sure. Yanukovych had signed a new lease for the Sevastopol naval base which was set to expire in 2017 I believe– which a pro-European president would probably have canceled.
A survey taken in the spring of 2014 before residents of the Donbas separated from Ukraine attempted to identify the issues most concerning to the Donbas following the Maidan riots.
“Of the six issues that formed the core of the separatist program, there were only two on which a majority of Donbas survey respondents held opinions in sync with the separatists’ program: Ukraine’s entry into the Customs Union as opposed to the EU, and opposition to the rise of nationalist radicalism. A
minority of respondents supported each of the other four separatist issues. However, these minorities were relatively substantial, indicating that there was a core of Donbas residents who formed a support base for separatism. This tells us that despite Russia’s policy of paying and busing in people to participate in separatist protests, many separatist supporters originated locally.”
The six areas of the separatists program were:
1. Separate from Ukraine/Join Russia: 29% favor; 52% oppose; 15% uncertain
2. Federal state structure: 40% favor; 49% oppose; 8% uncertain
3. Russian language rights:35% favor; 59% oppose; 8% uncertain
4. Defend Berkut: 32% favor; 59% oppose; 5% uncertain
5. Oppose nationalist radicals/Right Sector is a threat: 68% favor; 5% oppose; 5% uncertain
6. Join Eurasian customs union: 68% favor; 10% oppose; 10% uncertain
“Had ethnic Russians in Donbas strategically been hiding their pro-Russian and separatist views for many years, waiting to express them given a suitable political opening? The analysis presented in this article reveals this picture of static attitudes based on fixed ethnic identities to be mistaken. Support
for unification with Russia and for a host of other pro-Russia policies may have existed among a certain constituency of the oldest generation of Donbas residents who never accepted the Soviet Union’s collapse and exhibited a strong sense of nostalgia toward the Soviet Union. But the survey data presented here clearly show divided opinions among ethnic Russians on most key issues associated with separatism, with the exception of joining the Customs Union and a fear of radical extremism.”
“…the feelings of betrayal by Kyiv that most likely were confined to a minority of the population in Donbas in spring 2014 may have spread as a result of the violence and economic suffering of the ATO and civil war. This sense of betrayal and abandonment has significant potential to stimulate a new sense of identity, especially one along regional lines, strengthening political alienation among Donbas citizens and possibly leading them to side with the separatists of the DNR and LNR.”
The study acknowledges that Russian propaganda may have influenced some responses.
“Listening to voices of locals, we hear many ordinary citizens who parroted these slogans. Yet we also hear explanations of support for separatism that have
nothing to do with the oppression of Russian-speakers, or the need to establish Novorossiya. Existing research on biased media effects argues that Russian propaganda exerted a larger impact on Ukrainian citizens who were already pro-Russian than on those who opposed Russia (Peisakhin and Rozenas
2017). Thus, while we should not discount the role of Russia in manipulating popular opinion, we also cannot assume that Russian messaging dominated the way ordinary people understood their own motivations and interests.”
Who supported separatism in Donbas? Ethnicity and popular opinion at the start of the Ukraine crisis
The problem with Brain E is taking the ouster of Yanukivitch (unconstitutional possibly) and not recognizing that it was a pretext (likely) for Vlad’s invasion of Crimea, fomenting seccessional (civil) war in the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts, and the shooting down of the MH-17 civilian airliner.
One Vlad toady gets removed from office in Ukraine and flees to Vladland. Vlad invades Crimea, starts a war in Ukraine by proxies, and his proxies kill hundreds shooting down a civilian jet.
But Brain E can’t connect the dots or recognize the difference.
A paper cut came first (Yanukivitch ouster). Vlad responded with a knife to Ukraine’s kidneys. But Brain E can’t grasp severity of the actions and consequences.
Pathetic.
“Friends” was also on my mind for a random French reason.
I just learned that the French have more words for family members than we do. In particular the youngest child is called “le benjamin,” if a boy, or “la benjamine,”‘ if a girl.
That rang an Old Testament bell — Benjamin, Jacob’s youngest son!
Then, getting back to “Friends” — the biggest plot arc in the ten-season series was the relationship between Ross, the paleontologist, and Rachel, the rich girl beauty, he had loved since high school. Ross goes through sitcom hell trying to win Rachel and keep her.
This is Jacob and Rachel in Genesis. Jacob offers his labor to Laban, Rachel’s father, for seven years in order to marry her. One of the most poignant lines in the Old Testament:
_________________________________
And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had to her.
Of course, Bible readers know the story had yet another twist — Jacob is tricked into marrying Leah, Rachel’s sister, so Jacob has to work another seven years to marry Rachel.
I always felt kinda bad for Leah, since Jacob didn’t want her, but anyway Benjamin became Jacob’s youngest son. And the etymology for “le benjamin” is indeed Benjamin.
I wonder how many French speakers know that today?
Re: Leah
At his death, Jacob requested to be buried next to Leah, at the family cemetery. He did not mention Rachel, who died giving birth to Benjamin on the road to Bethlehem and was buried there.
@Brian E
That was the point I was making, which I’m sure um understood.
I can believe that.
The problem debating/arguing with someone like um is he conflates support for Eastern Ukraine as support for Russia.
The issue is that “support for Eastern Ukraine” or rather the separatist states in it is largely support for Russia. As I will detail later, they already started out quite closely (with the genuine grassroots unrest and protests in places like Crimea and the East being weaponized and militarized by the injection of provocateurs from “the Organs” such as the SVR and FSB stiffened by no small number of false-flagged Russian Federation Ground Forces and GRU units), and if anything have become even closer with the Kremlin’s wading in to infighting and power games in the separatist areas along with a significant number of coincidental assassinations.
Moreover, your framing ignores that frankly most of the “Eastern Ukraine” remained loyal to the Ukrainian government, even previous strongholds of “Blue” or Pro-Russian support such as Kharkhiv, that it took significant effort and no small amount of mostly Rus Fed provided artillery to squelch loyalist defenders even in inner city Donetsk and Luhansk (the very capitals of the separatist states), and while it’s one thing to gripe in polls or at the ballot box but it’s another to jump on board with an invading military and occupation force. Moreover, I suspect that things such as the generally disorderly and authoritarian nature of the occupation regimes, lack of support from both Moscow and Kyiv, and ruinously heavy conscription have done little to bolster love for the regime even among those who originally supported it.
I have a lot bad to say about Poroshenko (I find him to be a rather hypocritical kleptocrat) but I find his speech about “Why we (the Ukrainian Loyalists) will win” to have been quite astute. Which is generally why Kremlin apologists have to chop the speech up and then take it out of context to pretend it is gloating about shelling Donbas schoolyards rather than pointing out how the Kremlin’s occupation regimes were not inclined to form a functioning or prosperous society and didn’t have the resources to do so even if they were so inclined, especially when waging war. Though I could have mentioned that by simply pointing to Transnistria. And it does make me wonder if the decision to escalate the invasion as well as the heavy attacks on infrastructure were made in part to help stem the bleeding.
Donbas separatism was an issue long before the Maidan riots,
Not really. Donbas REGIONALISM and PARTICULARISM were issues long before Maidan, but that hardly equated with separatism, which remained a fringe position with minority support probably even at its peak (which was likely soon after the invasions in 2014 when you had new governments relatively well supported by the Kremlin advocating it, and feeding off of the existing regional tension).
It is certainly true that the Donbas Basin has its own regional identity and socioeconomic interests, and that both led it to generally gravitate more towards Russia, with Yanukovych being an example of that in action. However, that did not mean that the public was consistently in favor of unity with Russia, especially after it became clear in the mid 1990s that Russia was not interested in absorbing a large rust belt (at least during peacetime) at the cost of political and economic concessions.
but I suspect it was the precipitating event for both Crimea and the Donbas to break away.
I suspect “the precipitating event for both Crimea and the Donbas to break away” was the wholesale deployment of Russian special forces and intelligence assets to forcibly make them break away, happening after the “Maidan Riots” had been going on for months and after Yanukovych was ousted. As is borne out by the timeline. Even Putin doesn’t claim that the Little Green Men in Crimea were not Russian Spec Ops any more (though even if he was their cooperation with Russian Naval Units should have tipped off enough), and while he has not deigned to make similar admissions about the operations in the Donbas I have little reason to believe the MO was substantially different (and indeed, it probably was even moreso since the takeover and “separation” began in Crimea and only then hit the Donbas in spite of the Donbas being much more divided and subject to greater social unrest, in part because it isn’t and generally never was as pro-Russia as Crimea).
To be fair the Russian invasions were not coming out of the blue or with zero political support or tension, and indeed you had a good number of grassroots and authentic “Anti-Maidans” movements and even paramilitaries out in force. But it was almost certainly the Decisive event, especially outside Crimea. Because one thing that becomes clear if one actually looks at things like the voting patterns (especially for Yanukovych’s removal from office) is that political interests in and around the Donbas and even Crimea were not nearly as pro-separation or pro-annexation as they imply.
Would it happened later at some time. Crimea for sure.
Except Crimea – as recent events pointed out – is not naturally a prosperous region, especially there, and while Crimea’s population was probably naturally the most pro-Russian and pro-Annexation there was, it still had sizable numbers of Pro-Ukrainian members (especially among the Crimean Tatars) and would require significant investment from Russia as well as working co-dependence with Ukraine for it to be prosperous.
As all sides learned from the Dam/Water Wars upstream and the ongoing quasi-blockade. It turns out that the public isn’t terribly interested in going on tourist vacation to an occupied region.
Yanukovych had signed a new lease for the Sevastopol naval base which was set to expire in 2017 I believe– which a pro-European president would probably have canceled.
Possible, though I’m leerier. In general pro-Western politicians were inclined to let the treaty run out. But more importantly,
A: The Ukrainian government had every right to do so, as even the Kremlin admitted vis a vis the Astana Declaration and the Helsinki Final Act.
and
B: The Kremlin decided not to even take the “chance” and instead forced the issue.
A survey taken in the spring of 2014 before residents of the Donbas separated from Ukraine attempted to identify the issues most concerning to the Donbas following the Maidan riots.
“Of the six issues that formed the core of the separatist program, there were only two on which a majority of Donbas survey respondents held opinions in sync with the separatists’ program: Ukraine’s entry into the Customs Union as opposed to the EU, and opposition to the rise of nationalist radicalism.
This largely dovetails with my own research (will have to get back on academia to check), but I think it ignores an important aspect.
While the popular opinion in the Donbas did indeed generally support entry into the Customs Union with Russia “as opposed to the EU”, popular sentiment would probably have favored a “Yes to Both.” The Donbas is a Rust Belt and has been for decades, and the economic bread and butter issues weigh very heavily, especially since the years of “Oil Wars” and customs/tariff issues hurt them in the pocketbook more than most. This is one reason why Yanukovych’s election platform of negotiating an Association Agreement with the EU raised eyebrows but did not seem so out of the blue. In general the public in the Donbas (unsurprisingly) wants better conditions to sell their goods and hoped to leverage both EU and Russia against each other in negotiations.
Which is one reason why Yanukovych’s decision to walk away from the negotiations and in favor of Putin’s “deal” was viewed on the whole with mixed to negative reactions.
Firstly: Rightly or wrongly (and I am no fan of the EU on the whole) Ukrainian popular sentiment held great hopes for the EU Association Agreement and had an I believe overly rosy view of it, which meant disappointment was sharp, and while it was less acute in the Donbas it was still there.
Secondly: The terms of the “deal” were viewed as bad (indeed I have characterized them as basically the fig leaf over Putin strongarming Yanukovych). Cheaper Gas has long been one of Ukraine’s big economic and foreign policy goals, but just about anybody sober for the past couple decades realized that as far as gas rates went what Moscow Giveth, Moscow could Taketh away, and so there was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And 15 Billion USD in loans sounds like a lot (and indeed on the whole it IS) but it’s not as large as expected, and it was also to the Ukrainian Government proper, which Donbassers knew would most likely spend most of that on the core areas around the Dnieper (in large part due to the longstanding malinvestment and lack of investment that happened).
So they were aggravated. Notably, this DIDN’T generally make them abandon Yanukovych or the affiliation to the Blue Coalition (and as we’ll see those two were hardly as synonymous, though that wasn’t clear to many at the time and still now). But it did dampen their support for him and did make some of them come out in protest. Which stunned both Yanukovych and Moscow, which had relied on the Donbas as a reliable source of patronage, voice, and muscle (including Mineriad-style-but-less-violent bussing of pro-Blue miners into Kyiv for the competing protests). Apparently as Euromaidan kicked off Yanukovych’s proxies faced much more trouble getting volunteers or employees to agree for the trip to Kyiv and other Dnieper core cities, and also faced some (albeit largely insignificant) protests in his core.
And that I think had a much greater effect on his strategy and even state of mind than is usually held. It’d be a bit like if Texas – say – turned on the Republican nominee. And I think it helped incentivize Yanukovych to do some rather foolish and even illegal things to try and stem the tide in contrast to his previous “Wait and See” use of the media and simply waiting out the protestors. Though to be fair it’s not sure if those would have worked as well as they did here given how Euromaidan was much larger and broader than most of the previous Pro-Orange protests.
In any case, it’s worth noting that virtually all Donbas MRs either abstained or voted for Yanu’s removal, which I think is another issue. People often view Yanukovych as being some kind of Avatar of Donbas Sentiment (and indeed I think he viewed himself as such), and often for good reason since he was seen as a “Local Man Makes Good” and a source of patronage and support. But this could be overstated, especially since national politics meant Yanukovych had to be a creature of Kyiv as well as the Donbas and his interests were often not 100% overlaps with that of the locals (who were focused more on bread and butter economic issues as well as the aforementioned cultural ones, and who were also on the front lines of the tariff and gas conflicts).
This meant Yanu’s hold over his constituents was a lot more fragile and conditional than many expected, and even in the separatist regimes where Euromaidan is a common focal point actual love for Yanu is limited. He hasn’t for instance been invited to take power in the region for a number of reasons, and while part of that’s probably fear of his power or the fact that he might be a rival for patronage, but a lot of it is probably that he’s not that loved.
“…the feelings of betrayal by Kyiv that most likely were confined to a minority of the population in Donbas in spring 2014 may have spread as a result of the violence and economic suffering of the ATO and civil war.
And there’s the rub with this narrative. And something I think you are overlooking in your desire to separate “Support for Eastern Ukraine” and “Support for Russia.” Like I mentioned before, while Donbas regionalism was quite entrenched and widespread, separatism was not. At least prior to 2014 and even – according to this – into Spring 2014. Around the time when Little Green Men with a huge amount of weaponry and equipment and large amounts of support from Russian Federation military units (and indeed sometimes outright Russian Federation military units) poured in.
This sentence pivots the point away and is more in line with my understanding. That while pro-Russian sentiment and regionalism were genuine up to a point, that point was much less than what the separatists claimed.
And that Separatism was largely a forceful import from the Kremlin deploying false flagged military troops and intelligence assets to violently engineer “separatism”, and that while there was a correlation between ethnic Russian and Russophone identities on one hand and separatism, this was not a strict causation with plenty of ethnic Ukrainians and mixed identity people serving with the “Separatists” and their Kremlin paymasters and many ethnic Russians and Russophones remaining loyal (and sometimes even becoming infamous, such as much of Azov Battalion).
It’s also why I am cautious at attributing too much weight to local politics or identity to explaining the war or separatism. The timeline is way too convenient and so is the outbreak of it. I believe the Occam’s Razor is simply that while there was chaos and a cold civil standoff in Ukraine (and especially in the East), the cause of the war was the Russian Military occupying Crimea and engineering its secession with the help of allies in the local government and paramilitary, finding this had worked, and then deciding to do so in a much larger and bloodier fashion in the Donbas with mixed results.
This sense of betrayal and abandonment has significant potential to stimulate a new sense of identity, especially one along regional lines, strengthening political alienation among Donbas citizens and possibly leading them to side with the separatists of the DNR and LNR.”
The “possibly” there is having to do a lot of work, and it’s largely undermined by other events. Such as the failure of the “separatists” to claim the entire Donbas even today, the fact that after 2015 their territory was generally shrinking in the leadup to the escalated invasion in 2022, and the failure of the “Separatists” to form a stable or functional government (even in contrast to their peers in Crimea).
As such I am inclined to call a spade a spade and conclude the DNR and LNR are largely Russian client regimes propped up by direct military occupation. That does not negate the need to consider their local effects and legitimacy (or lack thereof).
But it does mean I see no special need for extensive navel-gazing or assuming these were primarily indigenous or homegrown movements when the chronology indicates otherwise. The sentiments of Donbas locals are important, but not more important than things such as Strelkov etc. al. and the Russian Federation’s willingness to commit military forces to help take over,
Turtler,
We are mostly rehashing our original points.
Yanukovych had suggested that Ukraine join both the EU and Custom’s Union, but that was rejected by the EU. It’s unfortunate, because as the poll indicates the regional interests of the Donbas highly favored the Customs Union.
About 1/3 of the population in the Donbas favored independence, similar to the American Revolution, though only about 1/3 were against the rebellion compared to 52% of Donbas.
Voting patterns between 1991-2006 for most of the eastern region. First number is nationalist/pro independence and the second number is communist/pro Russia index.
Dnipropetrovsk 28, 50; Kherson 28, 54; Mykolaiv 28, 55; Odesa 26, 53; Kharkiv 25, 55; Zaporizhzhia 25, 58; Donetsk 20, 63; Luhansk 18, 69, Crimea 17, 60.
Obviously sentiments changed in subsequent years and the pro-separationist sentiments were still highest in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, which, of course, are the regions that separated from the Kiev regime.
Your argument for the overthrow of Yanukovych is largely because he was a corrupt politician (not particularly unique in Ukraine politics).
As the video I linked to shows, the Rada after the overthrow was “trying to legitimize” the new government. It was a revolution in all senses as they reverted to the 2004 constitution– but the sticking point was how to legally oust Yanukovych. As the legislator says, there were three options for Yanukovych– he could resign, they could impeach him, or he could take the course of Ceau?escu. The Rada took a fourth option– declare he had abandoned his office, even though he was still in the country at the time. I suppose he could have returned to Kiev and possibly a sniper’s bullet.
There are indications the war isn’t going well for Ukraine. Before you add it’s not going well for Russia either– I would suggest the type of trench warfare favors Russia. The average age of the Ukraine solder is 43 years old. They are running out of young men to fight. The Minister of Defense recently said something to the effect that the world couldn’t provide the amount of ammunition Ukraine needed (yes Russia may be running low as well).
If there is a finite amount of ammunition in the short term– I would much rather it be sent to Israel. Their fight is truly existential.
Brain E:
Rehashing old points, facts and history (Turtler) vs spin (Brain E).
It is passing strange that Brain E forgets history of the Soviets and Russia regarding elections: It not who votes that counts. Who counts the votes is what counts. Or the “elections” in newly occupied areas of Ukraine that now favor Vladland. Or the history of elections in areas occupied by the USSR following WWII that nearly always went pro Soviet. Or closer to home our election in 2020. Polls and elections are to be trusted Brain E?
Yes the war against the Russian invasion of Ukraine is very costly to Ukraine, and latest “200” (KIA) counts for the Russian invaders are 300,000. That’s right Brain E, 300,000 Russian dead for you man’s vanity. How is the grand Russian offensive in Adiivka going General Brain E?
But stop supplying arms to Ukraine because they should be sent to Israel? Is this your new spin? Does Israel need HIMARs rockets or ATACMs or MIA3 tanks or F-16s? IIRC Israel has a tiny land area compared to the front lines contested in Ukraine, not the same problems at all.
What a strategic maroon you seem to be.
um, you really need to work on your reading comprehension.
Brain E:
“I would suggest the type of trench warfare favors Russia.” Funny that Ukraine has been methodically forcing Russians out of trench positions in the south and the east. While the Russians have been assaulting Ukrainian fortified positions for at least two weeks around Adviika with horrific losses.
Not to worry though according to Brain E, Russian prisoners can always be sent to die in Ukraine and eventually Ukraine will run out of ordnance to kill them. Especially if he gets his wish and shuts off ammuntion to Ukraine.
See Adviika, you moron. See Ukrainian counterbattery fire and suppression Russian arty. See Russia forced to leave Sevastapol. See Russian infantry attacks decimated by cluster munitions. See ATACMs decimate Russian rotary wings on the ground.
Nope nothing to see from Brain E. Because Russia is on the march to victory?
But, but, but, Israel!
Walk, chew gum. Try it Brain E.
“That’s right Brain E, 300,000 Russian dead…– um
You may be the only person left that believes Ukraine has “liquidated” 300,000 Russian soldiers.
“The total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began 18 months ago is nearing 500,000, U.S. officials said, a staggering toll as Russia assaults its next-door neighbor and tries to seize more territory.
The officials cautioned that casualty figures remained difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, and Kyiv does not disclose official figures. But they said the slaughter intensified this year in eastern Ukraine and has continued at a steady clip as a nearly three-month-old counteroffensive drags on.
Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
But Russians outnumber Ukrainians on the battlefield almost three to one, and Russia has a larger population from which to replenish its ranks.
Ukraine has around 500,000 troops, including active-duty, reserve and paramilitary troops, according to analysts. By contrast, Russia has almost triple that number, with 1,330,000 active-duty, reserve and paramilitary troops — most of the latter from the Wagner Group.”
Granted these are American estimates, and our intelligence agencies have been known to be….well, rather dumb.
500,000 killed and wounded is a staggering number for a war only 1-1/2 years old.
It’s one of the reasons the war needs to end– and the war will only prolong if we keep feeding it.
Om, I don’t think the US ever really cared if Ukraine “wins” (reclaim all the land previously held prior to the 2014 overthrow). They’ve only provided the type of weapons necessary to keep Ukraine from losing. The US goal was to de-stabilize and topple the Putin.
Had they wanted Ukraine to make a decisive offensive, they would have waited another year to build up the advanced weapon systems and air superiority needed to overcome the Russian defenses. That’s going to take more than a few dozen F-16s.
@Brian E
Sorry for the delay, I was distracted and recent blog posts pushed this back.
We are mostly rehashing our original points.
Indeed we are.
Yanukovych had suggested that Ukraine join both the EU and Custom’s Union, but that was rejected by the EU. It’s unfortunate, because as the poll indicates the regional interests of the Donbas highly favored the Customs Union.
If anything it was even more strongly rejected by the Russian Government, which I note had already been fighting trade and tariff wars with Ukraine. Indeed, while the EU was lukewarm about allowing Ukraine to remain within the Russian Customs Union with an Association Agreement of trade with the EU, the Kremlin (already struggling with its own economic woes and things like the pensions issue) reacted sharply and with broad public support against it, claiming (and with fair point) that Ukraine being both in the customs union and an association agreement would undermine Russian economic policy.
That’s more important because it undermined the less offensive middle ground Yanukovych campaigned on and which was broadly supported by the Blues (especially his Donbas Base). In effect Yanukovych and most Ukrainian factions wanted to play both sides (though with different levels of emphasis and preference), while both the EU (w/ US support) and Russia tried to press them to choose one. But the rejection of Ukraine being able to sign the Association Agreement without suffering yet another tariff war was decisive and came from Moscow.
This is important to emphasize because
A: It points to some important divergences between the Donbas populace’s interests and those of Russians proper, and between the former and their presumed champion Yanukovych.
B: It came across a backdrop of literally years upon years of economic tension and regular trade wars between Russia and Ukraine (indeed, the Kharkhiv Pact was positioned as a way to end yet another tariff war).
About 1/3 of the population in the Donbas favored independence, similar to the American Revolution, though only about 1/3 were against the rebellion compared to 52% of Donbas.
And how do we know this? How do you know this?
Because we don’t even know that in regards to the American Revolution. It is quite literally a guesstimate by John Adams in reference to the Ongoing *French Revolutionary* wars, not America’s own.
Don’t hang your tri-cornered hat on those percentages. This famous quote comes from a letter Adams wrote in 1815 to Massachusetts Senator James Lloyd, saying “I should say that full one third were averse to the revolution…. An opposite third… gave themselves up to an enthusiastic gratitude to France. The middle third,… always averse to war, were rather lukewarm both to England and France;….” Truth is, Adams was not addressing America’s rebellion – he was writing about American attitudes towards the French Revolution, when Americans grappled with either supporting France or maintaining commercial ties with Britain. The mistake appears to stem from historian Sydney George Fisher, who misinterpreted Adams’s meaning in his 1908 book, The Struggle for American Independence, Volume I. Others, reading the quote without the full context of Adams’s letter, have repeated the error ever since. In Fisher’s defense, it is easy to get the context of the passage wrong because it’s buried in the middle of a somewhat windy paragraph that jumps around with references to multiple topics, years, and other correspondence. And that paragraph is buried in the middle of a somewhat windy letter (at 2,105 words) which also jumps around with references to multiple topics, years, and other correspondence. Fisher may have missed the point because he got tired of looking for it.
Moreover, I have no reason to believe that one third of the people in the Donbas favored “Revolution”, considering how the territory occupied by the Kremlin’s proxies was well below that, and the onset of the conflict started East and tried to spread West, not consistent with sporadic grass roots conflicts as various paramilitaries sized each other up and engaged in escalating conflict (like our own American Revolution, which saw sharp outbreaks in the American South and West as well as at Boston as the two sides squared off) but very consistent with a Kremlin military Entrada based in the territory of the Russian Federation.
Like exactly what we saw conquer Crimea just days earlier.
And in light of the Kremlin’s proven track record with vote rigging (see: overturns in nay votes for Herod’s Law in response to the Magnitsky Act, to cite just one) and the proven track record of the Kremlin or at least its local allies for torturing and murdering opponents of “separatism” or “independence” as well as the methodologically bankrupt way in which they have conducted themselves (in sharp contrast to the American Revolution at least in the Continental Congress, where dissenting members of Congress retained their seats unless they were found guilty of treason like Ben Church or chose to abdicate their seats such as “Colonial British Reformists/Colonial British Whigs” like Isaac Low, who were opposed to military occupation and foreign legislation but identified themselves as Britons who did not want independence or war against their country and who generally were allowed to leave in peace even if their property was confiscated), I do not regard the “independence” referenda as legitimate.
Voting patterns between 1991-2006 for most of the eastern region. First number is nationalist/pro independence and the second number is communist/pro Russia index.
Dnipropetrovsk 28, 50; Kherson 28, 54; Mykolaiv 28, 55; Odesa 26, 53; Kharkiv 25, 55; Zaporizhzhia 25, 58; Donetsk 20, 63; Luhansk 18, 69, Crimea 17, 60.
Obviously sentiments changed in subsequent years and the pro-separationist sentiments were still highest in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, which, of course, are the regions that separated from the Kiev regime.
But Kherson, Zaporizhizhia, Odessa, and Kharkhiv (among others) did not “separate from the Kyiv regime”, or in the case of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia only “did so” after the surprise Russian breakthrough and advance from Crimea and the partial occupation of those regions, after which “separation” and “annexation” referenda were rapidly manifested. As I’m sure they would be if the Kremlin’s troops took Kharkhiv. I fail to see why I should regard these obviously coerced and illegitimate referenda occurring under the color of force to be substantially different in nature from those in Crimea or the Donbas. The true popularity or result may have been different in terms of vote counts (though as I’ll cover later, we don’t have much reason to believe the official results accord much with their true popularity), but they were ultimately made possible by occupying Kremlin troops getting the “right” answer.
This is why I think that after a point reading through old electoral results is almost tea leaf or entrail reading. The commonality in “separatism” isn’t voting patterns or averages from 1996-2006. It isn’t even the presence or prevalence of Anti-Maidans (or else Kyiv itself and Odessa might be suspect).
It is the presence of Russian military forces or proxies thereof, Moscow-sponsored state terrorism, and the presence or absence of pro-Kyiv troops or paramilitaries. This is one reason why for instance it took so long for the Kremlin to siege down the inner city airports of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Trying to paint this as some kind of American Revolution against an illegitimate government in Kyiv or an organic outgrowth of Donbas and Crimean Regionalism (especially once you get past the certain point of “The public in these regions majorly favored ties with Russia, and was opposed to Euromaidan) is that Marquis de Lafayette didn’t arrive on the Boston Siege Lines with false-flagged French Regiments in 1775, and Baron von Steuben did not carry a commission from the Prussian Crown. Moreover, fighting in places where the Russian Military couldn’t reach remained much less serious and low level than in the places where it could and did, as Odessa shows. Because AGAIN, there’s a quantifiable difference between voting for a Pro-Russian trade policy, or even joining an Anti-Maidan and engaging in some scrummage with Maidanites, and enlisting in a collaborationist and outlaw paramilitary in concert with a foreign military and against a national government.
And that’s ignoring the fact that (much to the consternation of many that viewed a pro-Russian orientation or annexation as a salve for their problems but with the predictions I figured) the actuality of Russian military rule in the Donbas and Crimea has turned out VERY Different from what was hoped for, especially for those in the Donbas. Not only did they overestimate Moscow’s willingness and ability to provide and underestimated their dependence on Ukraine (something that even the post-national totalitarian mass murdering gits of Khruschev’s Central Committee could see in their brutally utilitarian decision to transfer the peninsula), but they also probably did not expect protracted martial law (in the case of Crimea) and the depths of sanctions, or (in the case of the Donbas) an even greater collapse in economic potential and the unstable rule of more or less lawless warlords.
Your argument for the overthrow of Yanukovych is largely because he was a corrupt politician (not particularly unique in Ukraine politics).
If you have to mutilate my fundamental point in order to make it more palatable or easy to refute, you have already given it up.
My argument for the overthrow of Yanukovych is partially because he was a corrupt politician (and a SPECTACULARLY corrupt one even by Ukrainian standards). However, it was PRIMARILY because he violated his oaths of office and the constitutional guarantees of his fellow citizens and refused to answer for it in the chamber duly constituted for it.
That’s an important distinction.
Corrupt politicians are not and were not particularly unusual in Ukraine. Corrupt politicians that give broad leverage for the torture and murder of peaceful protestors and give sanction to anti-Jewish propaganda by government organizations like Berkut, however, Are. That’s a different kind of corruption from “merely” unethical grabbing from the till or “questionable” contractual relations (as former President Poroshenko’s chocolate company can attest). Ideally both should be punished with removal from office, but there’s a pretty qualitative difference when blood and rights are on the like.
And clearly Yanukovych agreed, given how he had weathered many corruption investigations before but found the summons to answer for his Cabinet’s conduct and the Dictatorship Laws to be something else.
As the video I linked to shows, the Rada after the overthrow was “trying to legitimize” the new government. >/blockquote>
Which isn’t surprising, because again even I admit this was a contentious and legally dubious move.
And unlike Yanukovych (whose moves were if anything even MORE legally dubious but who didn’t need to take responsibility beyond shouting accusations and outright lies from exile, and who probably WOULDN’T and indeed HASN’T been asked to take responsibility because nobody likes him that much), the Rada still had their jobs to do.
It was a revolution in all senses as they reverted to the 2004 constitution–
After legislative procedures by the Parliament, as the changes from it were done.
but the sticking point was how to legally oust Yanukovych. As the legislator says, there were three options for Yanukovych– he could resign, they could impeach him, or he could take the course of Ceau?escu.
Indeed, which was a problem. They should have pursued impeachment and the summons to answer questions was obviously geared towards that.
And Yanukovych knew it, which is why he and his cabinet (the obvious targets of the impeachment and probable criminal proceedings afterwards) did a runner. In doing so they exploited a foundational weakness of the Ukrainian Constitution (and one that STILL REMAINS and which I condemn the new governments for not addressing). Namely that there is no explicit statutory grounds for removing a President outside of impeachment or health reasons, meaning that someone who was “possibly” guilty of high crimes and who was refusing to carry out his literally enumerated constitutional duties but who refused to resign and continued to insist he occupied the office of the President was a problem without enumerated remedy.
Hence the Ad Libs solution to deal with an Ad Libbed problem, drawing on the (overly) broad legislative and interpretative powers of Parliament. I don’t like it and I especially don’t like the refusal to amend the constitution to deal with this problem, and I have happily criticized the process by which it was done.
However, I am not going to pretend it happened in a vacuum, and particularly not the context and timing from which Yanukovych fled Kyiv. Which not only factored in the street climate and the extra-parliamentary street radicals opposing the deal and threatening his life (which you emphasize almost to the exclusion of all others) but also the Parliamentary inquiry into Yanukovych’s cabinet, which more closely dovetails to the decision to flee.
The Rada took a fourth option– declare he had abandoned his office, even though he was still in the country at the time.
This is a bit misleading. Firstly, we aren’t sure if he was still in the country in the time due to how Yanukovych has been proven to be willing to lie under oath of perjury. But that’s a minor issue.
Secondly: Even if he was “still in the country at the time” he was very obviously refusing legal summons from the Democratically Elected Ukrainian Legislature (especially since these summons were far broader than the more contentious and later vote to remove him).
This would be a bit like if Biden was about to be impeached (swell dream I know) deciding to refuse to appear or even to provide mandated evidence but instead running up to Kiska, or Puerto Rico, or more accurately his home state of Delaware while grabbing lots of stuff and obviously gassing up a jet ready to skirt to Russia/Cuba/Canada.
Sure, all those territories are within the legal territory of the US. But they’re obviously not where the President’s legal duties in the context of legislative hearings regarding him are. And Yanukovych knew this.
Which is why I characterize this as an abuse of the loophole in the Constitution and an abdication of his duties.
I suppose he could have returned to Kiev and possibly a sniper’s bullet.
Or he could have broadcast his reasons for not going back to Kyiv or found some way to testify remotely. Which I note he did not.
But as our own US Presidency shows, sometimes carrying out the duties involves the risk of catching a bullet (sniper or otherwise). And the Ukrainian Constitution makes Parliament’s ability to compel testimony quite clear.
There are indications the war isn’t going well for Ukraine.
Sure, but the same also applies there.
Before you add it’s not going well for Russia either– I would suggest the type of trench warfare favors Russia.
You would suggest that, but I’d argue history gives plenty of reasons to believe otherwise. Especially since Russia actually has a rather poor track record with trench and positional warfare (with a few very bright spots otherwise).
This seems counterintuitive, given Russia’s advantages (and even moreso those advantages it is Perceived to have) and the nature (or at least perceived nature) of trench warfare. Russia has more soldiers, more people, and more materials, and trench warfare is an attritional slog. Ego we should expect them to have the edge, right?
Well, not exactly.
People are right that trench warfare is an attritional slog, but they tend to ignore its other aspects. Such as that it tends to reward not merely (and sometimes not even primarily) manpower and material numbers but the ability to concentrate forces and deliver sudden, relatively decisive blows in a local sector and speed of response. Weight of Force offensives are way less effective than we’d expect, as the Germans concluded correctly at the Champagne Offensives in 1915 (….before proceeding to stake their war effort on such a weight of force offensive at Verdun the following year, because Falkenhayn apparently didn’t even remember his own post-mortem of the Second Battle of Champagne).
What matters isn’t so much who has the mostest but who can get “there’ with the mostest, firstest and then draw them back.
Which is one reason why Russia has actually had a pretty poor track record in trench war. The big exception I can think of (and admittedly it is a BIG exception) being its track records in the late 16th and 17th centuries (with some notable exceptions such as the disastrous Livonian War and the defeats on the Chinese frontier) and the 1877-1878 revenge tour for Crimea. It lost the Crimean War (and indeed was starting to run into trouble in both the Danube Basin and the Caucasus even before Western Intervention, and then had its main Black Sea base besieged and crushed). It traded blows with the Polish-Lithuanians in the 16th and 17th centuries and ultimately prevailed but mostly lost to Sweden in similar conflicts (with the change coming largely due to reforms in the Russian field armies and field victories helping to bring about the collapse of Sweden in the Great Northern War), lost WWI badly in spite of a similar force ratio to the Central Powers as we see here. It struggled with the Mannerheim Line and ultimately pierced it at great cost, held Odessa and Sevastopol decently well but had to withdraw, and was contingent on victories elsewhere to save Leningrad (with Kursk being the big counter example of a masterfully conducted positional defense-and-attack, but one where they benefitted from Western intelligence intercepts and the enemy being on the offensive).
We saw similar indications during the long Donbas War between 2014 and the start of 2022, with Russian/Kremlin Proxy occupations peaking in 2015 and slowly, steadily decreasing in the years afterwards.
There are a few big reasons for this underperformance, but a lot of it tends to come down to the traditional inflexibility in Russian military leadership going back centuries (which people would THINK would be an advantage or at least less of a problem in trench warfare but Really, Really Isn’t), mobility problems (both in speed and flexibility), and applied firepower (aka not just the raw amount of firepower but where one can put it and how accurately).
(I’d probably guess that one reasons for the success in positional warfare during the 16th and 17th centuries came largely due to a mixture of factors. Firstly that while society and the state were highly authoritarian and rigid, they were not so rigid or pervasive due to things such as communication lag. Secondly, the lay of the geography was very different; because while you could barely throw a stone in Western Europe or even the Balkans without it hitting a star fort, this was very different with wide vistas of tundra, taiga, and grasslands that left unsupported forts defenseless and prioritized massed infantry and “shooting” cavalry, two things Russia excelled at, and allowed one that dominated the field to cut off major fortresses and conquer entire regions. The Russians benefitted from this at Smolensk and Orsha, but suffered it at Novgorod and at Albazin). Thirdly, combat experience and pervasive discipline through society mixed with technological lag and distance helped create a welcome case where society and subordinates were generally loyal to the Tsar but given broad latitude to pursue the campaign according to their instincts and whatever letters the Tsar came through. This helped conquer Kazan a generation or two earlier and largely saw the Russians conquer most of “Grand Lithuania.”
It’s not so tenable later as technological progress was directed to cementing the regime’s control over its armies (especially after the likes of the Decemberists and Revolutionary Infighting in WWI), the landscape filled out, and it became harder to hide. The sweeping maneuvers Russia is good at are not so plausible on the industrial jungle of the Donbas and the Upper Dnieper.
Many of these apply to the Ukrainian military as well, and it’s one reason why its offensives have been slow, bloody, and grinding. But it generally has fought the war better than the Kremlin has since 2015-6 ish (with some notable exceptions) and is generally more responsive and able to get more accurate intel.
The average age of the Ukraine solder is 43 years old. They are running out of young men to fight.
Ironically the source of that largely came to the opposite conclusion, as Ben Wallace wrote.
Ukraine can also play its part. The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40. I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but the fact is that Russia is mobilising the whole country by stealth. Putin knows a pause will hand him time to build a new army. So just as Britain did in 1939 and 1941, perhaps it is time to reassess the scale of Ukraine’s mobilisation.
TL:DR, while they are increasing the age ranges for mobilization (as is Russia de facto) they are largely trying to call up older personnel first in a given age bracket,
So they are running out of them much less than this indicated.
The Minister of Defense recently said something to the effect that the world couldn’t provide the amount of ammunition Ukraine needed (yes Russia may be running low as well).
This I largely believe, or at least leavened with the usual caveats of “We want more/we want to overestimate what we want to help generate pressure (and/or more stuff to skim)”. But we can see the same for the Russian military and its auxiliaries. It’s the classic “Shell Shortage” style with production being outstripped by use.
If there is a finite amount of ammunition in the short term– I would much rather it be sent to Israel. Their fight is truly existential.
On that much we agree.
However, I do think that Israel has much fewer need for shells for a number of reasons. Starting with that it is a smaller country with smaller numbers of better quality guns, better quality optics and detection, an irregular enemy, and a different way of fighting. While in my darker moments I do consider the merits or detriments of blasting the entire Gaza Strip flat and the mythical lack of rooftops makes for funni memes about “Queers for Palestine”, it’s not what the Israelis are actually going to do. That coupled with the disconnect and non-overlaps in some of the shells and I figure we can do both.
You may be the only person left that believes Ukraine has “liquidated” 300,000 Russian soldiers.
Not really. It’s a common estimate, mostly admittedly derived from the Ukrainian MOD, who are biased and tend to overclaim but generally have been far more accurate in their estimates than most of the alternatives.
“The total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began 18 months ago is nearing 500,000, U.S. officials said, a staggering toll as Russia assaults its next-door neighbor and tries to seize more territory.
Firstly: Why I should trust a general piece from the Times or what anonymous “US Officials” say to the Times NOW is beyond me. While I’m not totally adverse to using them to prove a point if I think it fits, in this case there’s not much substance here.
Secondly: There are a few things to note.
A: This piece was published in August, meaning we’re looking at three entire months of pretty high intensity combat after the estimate, even if it were accurate.
B: There’s the perennial issue of counting what is and isn’t a “Russian” Casualty, given conscription in the Donbas and the deployment of volunteers and mercenaries.
C: There’s the simple fact that “US Officials” in addition to being anonymous are filtering older data because they’re further removed from it.
300,000 KIA for one side is not exactly out of the realm of possibility, and if anything I generally estimate Ukrainian and Russian losses to be higher than US estimates let alone their own (though lower than what each other claim for their enemies).
I am more inclined to trust Ukrainian sources for casualties both because of bias (including my own) but also a greater track record and the Kremlin’s confirmed tendency to cremate its dead without confirmation, worse wound treatment policy, and general tendency to lie on an even more egregious scale, and because the US is somewhat further up the chain.
Granted these are American estimates, and our intelligence agencies have been known to be….well, rather dumb.
And in this case obsolete in estimates and out of it.
500,000 killed and wounded is a staggering number for a war only 1-1/2 years old.
Agreed.
It’s one of the reasons the war needs to end– and the war will only prolong if we keep feeding it.
Sorry Brian E, but Georgia called. It probably has something to say about that.
The War can feed itself, and to some degree will. In the absence of Western aid to Ukraine it would probably simmer down to a kind of stalemate (like what the Kremlin wishes) much like what we saw during the “Donbas War” from 2015-2021 or on the Georgian-Separatist frontiers, until a few years later.
Likely when one side (likely Russia) will try again.
It’s an old and ugly pattern we’ve seen play out time and again.
And even if it doesn’t, the war would still simmer on and people would hurt and die, as they did even after the war fell off the news around 2016.
Om, I don’t think the US ever really cared if Ukraine “wins” (reclaim all the land previously held prior to the 2014 overthrow).
Sadly agreed.
They’ve only provided the type of weapons necessary to keep Ukraine from losing.
Yeah no, I disagree. The Ukrainians have shown they have a good capacity to hold territory and even counterattack on a small scale using a trickle of resources in a low intensity war. This is the lesson of the Donbas War. There’s a reason why Putin at least openly claims he wants a ceasefire (I am reminded of Hamas pulling a dozen or so 9/11s equivalent on Israel and then talking about it). What the Ukrainians are afraid of is not so much outright losing so much as failing to reclaim their territory and allowing the retrenchment of the occupation governments, trapping them in the old No Peace, No War thing we saw during the Donbas and especially which has been the fate of Georgia.
The US goal was to de-stabilize and topple the Putin.
A: That is a goal I would broadly support.
B: Wouldn’t by logic be one of the key advantages to that being giving Ukraine as much support as possible for it to win? Things like forcing Putin to outright declare war and call up conscription or worse face the loss of Crimea would do a lot of damage.
Especially given how destabilizing the “keep Ukraine from losing” resources has been, what with Prigozhin’s abortive road trip to Moscow.
Had they wanted Ukraine to make a decisive offensive, they would have waited another year to build up the advanced weapon systems and air superiority needed to overcome the Russian defenses. That’s going to take more than a few dozen F-16s.
Few problems.
Firstly: War is always at least a two player game and the enemy gets a vote too. The Kremlin’s already been attacking at several points along the line (most infamously at Avadivka).
Secondly: This was against the backdrop of economic instability and the threat of Russian reneging on the Black Sea Cereals deal. So there was a feeling that there had to be a push to threaten the Crimean bridge and the Russian navy’s bases (at least by long range fire).
Thirdly: That would also allow the Russians to build up their systems and air superiority (or at least try to) and it seems like there was a consensus that a higher tempo of operations and pressure would benefit Ukraine more than Russia due to various things. And that seems to have worked at Kherson.
(It’s also one reason why Russia has a worse track record at trench warfare than we’d expect. Ironically Russia has tended to do fairly well at high tempo choreographed operations in the field, but the level of independent organization and adjustment as well as logistics tend to make positional attack or defense weaknesses of theirs. Especially outside of the likes of Suvorov.
People tend to forget that as devastating as it was, Brusilov’s offensive ultimately bogged down and was repulsed by a mixture of Austro-Hungarian and German troops scraped together and able to hammer the attackers down.)
I’ll break your reply down into smaller replies.
Domino Theory “For all of Putin’s rhetoric about NATO expansion, the behavior of he and his ilk has been even more revealing. At no point have they invaded a country actually in NATO, nor one armed with nuclear weapons or even breakout capacity for it.— Turtler
This is one the reasons I don’t buy the narrative that Russia must be defeated in Ukraine because his expansionist policies would advance to eastern Europe.
The bordering NATO countries are spending in excess of 3% GDP on defense, unlike most of the western European countries. With article 5, and the guarantee that a full fledged support by the US under article 5 and our ability to project air dominance is more than enough deterrent.
———
Joining the EU
A few points. The article you linked to says it was the EU, not Russia that was the barrier to a “tri-lateral” agreement.
“On 26 November, President Yanukovych called the EU agreement a ‘dead end’ for Ukraine, and made its signature at some point in the indefinite future conditional on ‘agreement on normal conditions’. On the same day, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov criticised the EU for failing to offer financial compensation with regard to the limitation of the access of Ukrainian goods to the Russian market after signing the Agreement. He (Yanukovych) also stated that in order to protect its exports, Ukraine was proposing the start of trilateral talks with the EU and Russia. On 21 November the initiative was already supported by Vladimir Putin, which indicates that this was a joint initiative by Kyiv and Moscow. “
And this from a National Interest article: “While Russia has not opposed some links between ex-Soviet republics and the European Union, it (Russia) has opposed the EU Partnership Agreements because these bind the signatories to the EU in such a way as to make membership in the Moscow-sponsored entities (the customs union, the single economic space, and so on) impossible.”
Europe would have had to make some adjustments to the agreement to allow Ukraine to benefit from both the Customs Union and the EU, which they were unwilling to do.
Brain E:
I’ve been working so couldn’t get back to your points. But Turtler has been very thorough.
You may not care whast happens in Ukraine except if Russia is forced to stop and retreat. Then you will care immensely. Your “point” that if the US wanted Ukraine to win the US should have counciled Ukraine to wait at least a year (or more?) is just ignorant and foolish. You think Russia would just sit around while Ukraine accumulates ordnance, equipment, manpower? The Russians spent a year laying minefields 6 to 10 miles deep in the south IIRC. How would more time for Russia make things better?
What a McGreagor you turn out to be.
um, quite frankly, you’ve added nothing to the conversation but snark, so no problem. You should continue to work more.
As to why I believe the summer counter-offensive turned out to be ill-advised, look at the results. Without air superiority, the results are similar to what Russia is facing near Avdivka– large losses of equipment and high casualties.
The counter-offensive was more of a political necessity than a military one. The weather didn’t cooperate, supplies of new weapons were late arriving and Ukraine can’t sustain the level of human losses that attacking rather than defending brings.
Delaying a large scale attack like that envisioned to cut the land bridge doesn’t affect the defensive action Ukraine is mounting, letting Russia sustain the larger amounts of casualties and equipment losses.
Meanwhile better air weapons (though from what I’ve read, the Grippen would be a better choice for Ukraine than F-16) would give them needed stand-off support for the offensive. Even if Ukraine gains an advantage, this will continue for several years unless there is a political intervention. One more year of defensive actions, while the West decides if they’re going to give Ukraine the amount of advanced weaponry wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the war.
Why do I think the “counter-offensive” was mainly political? Because some of Europe’s political class was basically saying so a year ago. Had Ukraine even advanced to Tokmak, Europe would likely stay in the conflict. Now, maybe not.
Had they just told Europe the weapon deliveries and weather made a summer attack impossible might have bought them another year.
“*No one should enter a war without realistic objectives, a strategy to achieve them, and a plan for war termination.”
“*Self-righteousness and bravery are no substitutes for military mass, firepower, and stamina.”
“*In the end, wars are won and lost on the battlefield, not with propaganda inspired by and directed at reinforcing wishful thinking.”
Southern counteroffensive runs out of steam as West scrambles to deliver aid
By the way, the article isn’t as negative as the headline makes it out to be.
leaving aside the illegitimate events of 2014 that led to the conflict–
==
They weren’t illegitimate and they didn’t lead to the conflict.
Art Deco
You’ve said that before. Please explain why your conclusion is correct.
The constitution of Ukraine specifically outlined three methods of removing a president. The vote to remove Yanukovych didn’t have the necessary votes required had they followed the impeachment process– which required judicial review.
Had Yanukovych not been overthrown, you’re suggesting Crimea and the Donbas would have declared their independence regardless.
Brain E:
If Vlad hadn’t seized Crimea and fomented uprising in the Donbas and Luhansk, but wait a minute he did. If Vlad hadn’t invaded Ukraine in 2022, 300,000 Russians wouldn’t have died in Ukraine.
If Ukraine had Grippens they wouldn’t need F-16s,
If the Ukrainian’s hadn’t kicked the Russians out of Kherson and Khakhiv and essentially bled the Wagner Group white in Bahkmut in 2022 expectations wouldn’t have been so high in 2023. But while Vlads little minions were left alone in the south they weren’t just doing nothing. They sewed minefields 10 miles wide. If Brain E had a brain he would know that “the enemy gets a vote in any attack.” But unlike Brain E’s favorite army (it ain’t Ukrainian) the Ukrainian army realized that the NATO-lite (lite on air power) plan wasn’t working this summer. Vlad’s army just keeps doing the same bloody thing to meet Vlad’s political goals.
If Brain E had a brain he would recognize that war is politics taken to an extreme. Vlad’s political goal is to exterminate or castrate the Ukrainian state. Brain E is good with that, hence my “snark” and contempt.
If Brain E could learn after being schooled by Turtler he wouldn’t continue to be ignorant.
Brain E:
Repeating quotes from an old political hack won’t make them profound or useful, but Turtler pointed that out weeks ago.
Water off a duck, that’s how you roll.
“But a legal gap remains (in following the constitution). According to the terms of an EU-brokered peace deal finalized on February 21, Yanukovych was due to sign a measure returning Ukraine to its 2004 constitution. (In 2010, Yanukovych restored the country’s 1996 constitution, which hands greater power to the presidency.)”
“Yanukovych, however, failed to sign the measure. The omission appears to leave Kyiv in the kind of legal limbo that may prove fodder for future arguments against the current government transition.
The 1996 and the 2004 constitutions are uniform when it comes to the reasons for removing a president, with Article 111 stating the parliament has the right to initiate a procedure of impeachment “if he commits treason or other crime.”
“However, it is not clear that the hasty February 22 vote upholds constitutional guidelines, which call for a review of the case by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court and a three-fourths majority vote by the Verkhovna Rada — i.e., 338 lawmakers.”
The problem, or should I say one of the problems is only 328 lawmakers voted for the measure to remove him– short of the required 3/4 and there was no review by the Constitutional Court.
The other problem or should I say one of the problems is Turtler has indicated the Rada required Yanukovych to return and answer questions why he abandoned his position. Yes, he left Kyiv, along with much of his cabinet, but since when is leaving the capitol sufficient proof he abandoned his position?
The riots that left protestors and police dead couldn’t be justification of a crime since somewhere between 14 and 20 police were killed. Someone in the crowd was shooting the police.
Do I have the timeline right?
Feb. 20 marks the final bloody day of the protests.
Feb. 21 Yanukovych was supposed to sign an agreement brokered by Germany and France to sign a bill restoring the 2004 constitution which limits the President’s powers. In addition, he agreed to early elections.
Feb. 22 Rada votes to remove him as president.
Feb. 24 Rada elects Yatsenyuk President. He was “our guy” according to Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine.
March 17 Crimea declares its independence and intentions to join Russian Federation, after holding a referendum March 14.
May 12 Donetsk and Luhansk declare independence after holding a referendum May 11.
Some commentors on Insty are already trashing Johnson because he might continue funding Ukraine. To my mind we had better continue funding them, because if we don’t Putin will take a lot more of Ukraine, and will look for more elsewhere. And Ukraine is a Bread Basket that provides food stuffs to a lot of the world. I don’t want Boots on the Ground, and I don’t think they are needed but Military Aid certainly is needed. There is a lot at stake here.
Isolationists never tire of a new conflict to loose.
The are good and valid arguments both for and against supporting Ukraine. I’m for supporting Ukraine.
My granddaughter was into power cheerleading. You know, the kind where a little Kewpie Doll sized gal was atop a five story pyramid, thrown a couple dozen feet in the air spinning and caught. That kind of thing.
Similar to this but not as fluid and very much higher rhythms.
Her dad refused to go see her performances because he just couldn’t stand seeing her doing the stuff.
Both have their points and I love watching both.
As it’s open:
I stock up on eggnog this time of year, freeze it and have it for coffee year round.
My dog, Hizi, loves the stuff and I can’t blame him. So much so that once he sees the first cartoon, every time I go to the fridge thereafter he stands there looking at the carton, hoping I’ll drip some in his bowl.
Just stands there staring. Not at me, at the carton.
Sometimes I’ll be an ass and leave the door open while I set up things for breakfast.
And he’ll just stand there staring.
It might not be nice but hey, he doesn’t fork over any money to buy the stuff.
Re: Gaza
After Israel has completed all military operations in Gaza, Israel should have the Egyptians take over Gaza.
Recall, that Israel assumed control of Gaza as a result of the 1967 war. Prior to that Egypt controlled Gaza beginning in 1949.
The Egyptians are no fans of Hamas and Israel most likely would have far less problems with Gaza.
A “new” occupation of Gaza by Israel will be a disaster for Israel. It did not work the first time at all, which led to the Israeli pull-out in 2005.
Gaza has been self-governing since 2005 and that did not work; the Gazans voted in Hamas as their government.
If Egypt controlled Gaza, they would be far more brutal and deadly in asserting control over Gaza and killing any remaining Hamas terrorists and also not be so concerned with human rights.
Of course, as one would expect, if Egypt employed any/all means to assert control over Gaza, the “world community” would remain silent.
You see, it’s OK if Arabs kill Arabs (and Jews) or if Arabs place their boot heels upon the necks of other Arabs.
It’s only Jews that are not allowed to retaliate in any way, shape or form.
Re: Shirehome @ 10:05
If Ukraine falls, the Baltic states will be next in Putin’s hit parade. That is a slam dunk.
Ukraine is the very large canary in the coal mine and already there are “cracks” appearing in western aid and attitudes in helping Ukraine.
If Ukraine falls, it will convince Putin that NATO is a paper tiger. They may not be, but what really matters is what Putin believes and he will act upon what he believes.
The recent actions / policies of Poland, Sweden and Finland tell you all you need to know about Putin’s goals.
gaza is not something egypt wants to take care off, they were an approach into Israel in 67, hence Israel occupied it, so there isn’t a magic answer, the settlements were the decent part of gaza, look what they did to them,
“. . . Israel should have the Egyptians take over Gaza.”
Mr. Tyler, even supposing Israel would look favorably on the idea of Egypt exercising sovereignty over Gaza (for maybe it would, and maybe not so much, I can’t say), how, how!, in practice would this “should have” work, exactly? If Egypt does not desire it, how is Israel to make it happen? Threats? Bribes (what’s in it for Egypt that does not strain its already overburdened political-economic life)?
I’m not imaginative enough to see this exit. But perhaps that’s not so for others; perhaps I’m overlooking something obvious, something crucially effective?
After Israel pounds Gaza for a while, I think they should pull back and publicly announce they will not inspect any cargo going into Gaza, etc from the outside world and seal off their border to Gazan workers and be completely hands off until Gaza does something. I guess they still have to sell or give water and electricity ???? Then announce if Gaza does something, they will pound it again.
I am not sure why anyone is concerned about “Putin” taking control of Ukraine. Or the Baltic States, for that matter. For most of my life, what was formerly called “the” Ukraine was actually one of the Republics constituting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR (you may substitute “Putin” if you wish, although the USSR was much more open about its goal of world domination under comunism) also controlled all three of the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuanian and Estonia. Add to that Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia , Romania, Bulgaria and, lest we forget, East Germany. Yet, somehow, America survived, and in fact prospered! Eventually the USSR simply disintegrated under economic pressure and Ukraine became independent, as did the rest of the former client states. However, it did not take long for the cabal that ran and continues to run American foreign policy (the real “deep state”) to insert itself into that region, culminating in the “color revolution” that toppled the duly-elected, pro-Russia government and installed a regime beholden to The West. Over the past two decades, Ukraine has bled citizens and gradually slipped into economic insignificance, along with most of the rest of that part of Europe. Since the cabal that owns Biden wants to maintain its mortmain over the NATO region, despite the utter uselessness of NATO since the dissolution of the USSR, they want to continue to foment the conflict, since it means that vast sums of money will continue to flow into their bank accounts. All this has done is manage to kill a million or so Ukrainians and Russians and devastate the landscape, which will never become productive again in my lifetime. This is madness. We had no business entering the conflict, and did so only for the venal reasons I cited. Biden himself was eager to participate since he and his family were profiting equally handsomely from the grift, graft and corruption. Only we, the people, suffer from the continued conflict. But it’s always that way, isn’t it?
IDF, “Operational Update From Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi” (2:20 min): https://youtu.be/B1QkcHOObgk?si=H4vh94jVESwqCNlN
Steve-
I agree that whatever happens in Ukraine, et. al., has very little effect on me, my family, or other people that I care about. That said, I am rooting for the Ukes to preserve their country and what passes for freedom in that corner of the world.
Yet, I agree with you that we should not be emptying our defense stores or treasury for them.
The European Union collectively has an economy and population close enough to ours that they could, if they cared, take over the defense of eastern Europe. They would have to give up some of their social goodies, and get their hands dirty (and maybe bloody). So be it. Ukraine may be a lost cause if we pull out, but they could save the Baltics, etc., if they wanted to. I have no problem with them buying stuff from Raytheon and other American companies, but the borrowing huge sums that my grands will have to pay back to give it to foreigners has to stop now.
So for the first few seconds, it looked as if there was an athlete/acrobat and a flexible junior high kid to throw around. But the little one was just as powerful. Where do they get these people?
Swatted — “Man who deployed ‘doxxing trucks’ to homes of pro-Palestine Ivy League students had his home searched by SWAT team in early morning raid”: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12682933/Man-deployed-doxxing-trucks-homes-pro-Palestine-Ivy-League-students-home-searched-SWAT-team-early-morning-raid.html
Here is one of the reasons why we should reconsider aid to Ukraine– leaving aside the illegitimate events of 2014 that led to the conflict– like the illegal overthrow of a democratically elected President of Ukraine, then sending private armies fielded by ultra-nationalists from the western Ukraine’s Anti Terrorist Operation (ATO) to the east. This is a war that Europe needs to fight. We need to wean Europe off a US military dependency.
The dependency isn’t just Ukraine– it’s much of Europe itself. We created such a dependency of US military security, that Europe never did the hard lifting to provide for their own security. How much of an existential threat is Europe facing when they’ve failed to provide 2% support for NATO– let alone the estimated 6-7% necessary to fund their security? Apparently, Europeans don’t consider the threat significant enough.
“Europe would not be ready to replace the United States. It could certainly take steps to strengthen its defense potential, deploy all the resources of lawfare to try to meet the additional challenges to international law that a victory by Trump or one of his look-alikes would pose, and strengthen its economic and social cohesion — it should even start today, as this author has suggested.
But even if Europe were to enter a war economy in the full sense of the term, as President Macron suggested in June 2022, it would still be more than a decade before it could acquire the conventional military potential of the United States. If we were to add to this the US nuclear deterrent potential, the basis of the global deterrence set out in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the defense expenditure of each European state would have to amount, according to some estimates, to 6% or 7% of GDP, from the current 2%. Needless to say, neither the governments nor the public would be keen to do so, especially given the concomitant need for cuts in areas like social support and health.
It is therefore far from certain that Europe alone, even when including the UK and Norway, could withstand high-intensity conventional aggression from Russia. France, whose nuclear strike force is independent, would have to drastically revise its nuclear doctrine, and London, whose deterrent is integrated into NATO (and currently being updated at a cost of around $38bn) , would have to do the same.”
Without the United States, Europe Is Lost
https://cepa.org/article/without-the-united-states-europe-is-lost/
Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public policy institution based in Washington DC
From 2018: Kyiv Rebrands Its War In The East
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-fighting-donbas-rebranding-ato-/28985423.html
Some sound advice by Charles Freeman, former diplomat who among other roles, was the translator for President Nixon during his visit to China.
*Wars do not decide who is right. They determine who is left.
*The best way to avoid war is to reduce or eliminate the apprehensions and grievances that cause it.
*When you refuse to hear, let alone address an aggrieved party’s case for adjustments in your policies toward it, you risk a violent reaction from it.
*No one should enter a war without realistic objectives, a strategy to achieve them, and a plan for war termination.
*Self-righteousness and bravery are no substitutes for military mass, firepower, and stamina.
*In the end, wars are won and lost on the battlefield, not with propaganda inspired by and directed at reinforcing wishful thinking.
*What has been lost on the battlefield can seldom, if ever, be recovered at the negotiating table.
*When wars cannot be won, it is usually better to seek terms by which to end them to reinforce strategic failure.
Stick to law steve.
“Never be productive again in your lifetime.” But given the rest of your comments, do you really care about Ukraine or Europe for that matter?
Isolationists are always ready not to fight or care IMO.
And truisms from foggy bottom. When wars cannot be won, you’ve lost. Good luck with that. The Melian Dialogs are calling.
To Steve and Brain E:
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/10/28/massive-pro-hamas-protest-in-the-uk-spells-doom-for-europe-n2165633
Not our problem assuredly.
Brian E:
Charles Freeman sounds like he’s not of this world if he’s referring to the war between Hamas and Israel. Not only has Israel tried diplomacy over and over, but it is up against a barbaric enemy whose goal is Israel’s complete destruction. He is assuming that all parties to a war are rational actors with bona fide grievances and goals. But that’s often untrue. The goal is often the destruction and/or complete subjugation of a country and its population under a tyrannical regime. And the goals often don’t stop with conquering that one country.
Neo,
I do think the list is good advice to any country contemplating military action– after all other means have been exhausted in situations involving states that share similar worldviews. What we are seeing in the ME is the clash of worldviews.
I ran across this list in reference to the Russian-Ukraine war.
Ambassador Freeman is very critical of the Israeli lobby, but fails as most of our bureaucratic policymakers do/did when it comes to radical Islam. They still think that we can/could reason our way to a solution– ignoring the last 50 years.
Has the West alienated “moderate” Muslims with our heavy-handed approach to the radical attacks by Islamists, or is the brutality of the Islamists sufficient to prevent any reaction by “moderates” to embrace compromise? It’s probably some of each.
The uncompromising nature of Islam makes negotiation meaningless. Any compromise by Islamists is tactical (the same for the totalitarian leftists in our midst today). When Arafat walked away from negotiations in 2000, it was just the prelude to the long war.
Here’s a recounting of the affair by Ehud Barak:
Israel was offering almost all of the PLO demands.
“Arafat said no. Enraged, Clinton banged on the table and said: “You are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe.” A formal Palestinian rejection of the proposals reached the Americans the next day. The summit sputtered on for a few days more but to all intents and purposes it was over.
Today Barak portrays Arafat’s behaviour at Camp David as a “performance” geared to exacting from the Israelis as many concessions as possible without ever seriously intending to reach a peace settlement or sign an “end to the conflict”.
“He did not negotiate in good faith; indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying no to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own,” he says. Barak shifts between charging Arafat with “lacking the character or will” to make a historic compromise (as did the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1977-79, when he made peace with Israel) to accusing him of secretly planning Israel’s demise while he strings along a succession of Israeli and Western leaders and, on the way, hoodwinks “naive journalists”.”
Arafat didn’t negotiate – he just kept saying no
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/23/israel3
Mostly, I think the US has failed to understand the limits of uniformed military power against insurgent/terrorist enemies.
Richard Aubrey:
Where do they get these people?
Raise ’em tough, they grow up tough.
My daughter (13 at the time and five foot nothing) could wrestle maybe half of my stunt group to the ground.
Andre, an adult, brought handcuffs one day and was play threatening the gals with them and they’d run away squealing. All in fun.
My daughter took him head on and not only got him down but cuffed one on him and the other to a banister.
No one set him free for maybe half an hour.
Another thing:
I had a work out room with a kick bag hanging from the ceiling by nylon rope.
She’d remove the bag, make a loop, lay face down, stick her feet through and hand over hand herself to the ceiling and back, keeping herself parallel to the floor.
A couple of the guys tried and apparently didn’t learn my lessons about body physics and part way up they’d invert to hang from their feet.
Like with Andre, no one would help, just laugh and watch them painfully and with great difficulty lower themselves head first towards the floor. I think only Jud didn’t make it and dropped himself on his skull.
More laughter.
Brain E:
He keeps regurgitating the same line:
Turtler schooled him repeatedly about this alternative reality to no avail.
um, actually Turtler’s defense of the situation was there was an immediate need to replace Yanukovych as justification.
France and Germany had negotiated a deal with Yanukovych where he would replace his administration with ministers more in line with the protestors and hold elections early. That would have been a compromise that followed the constitution (at least didn’t subvert it). There was nothing in the Ukraine constitution that allowed the violent overthrow of the President.
The protestors rejected the deal and threatened Yanukovych and members of the Rada.
Brain E:
Did any other things happen in Ukraine in 2014, such as Russia seizing Crimea, fomenting and supporting the proxie war in the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine, supplying the Russian SAM that shot down and killed everyone aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (fired from the Donbas Peoples whatever (Vladland)).
Nothing to see as usual when it comes to Russian aggression.
Brain E misremembers as usual,
um, you’ve got your timeline mixed up. What came first?
charles freeman is the counterpart to Richard Dalton, chairman of the middle east institute, he went native in Arabic, (he replaced the unreplaceable hume horan) when the latter complained about chinese silkworms prince bandar arranged to buy, also grovelled to the Chinese, most heavily
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/03/the_chas_freeman_controversy.html
furthermore,https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/03/dni_dennis_blair_manipulated_i.html
it would be a short list of diplomats to list, that are actually on our side, freeman is probably among the worst
Brain E:
Are you that dense, that internal politics in Ukraine and the ouster of a Russian stooge is more important than Russia seizing Crimea, fomenting a civil war, and murdering all those aboard that airliner.
Find your moral compass.
Don’t regurgitate the Ukrainians are Nazis, Russian speakers are oppressed, Ukrainians don’t have a culture. Heard it before and not buying that spin.
om, just because Ukraine ought to win against Russian aggression doesn’t mean to me that the US ought to participate. Why is it unreasonable to simply defer that problem to the EU, as Brian E suggests?
Why not hold that the EU is a lot closer, needs to put its big boy clothes on, and stop peeking out from behind Uncle Sam? Isn’t the EU more populous, more wealthy, and more technologically superior to Russia, such that deferring to them is not a denial of which side ought to be the victor?
It seems to me that Israel is a different matter largely because it is the David in a religious war against the Goliath of some 2 billion Muslims. Iran alone has a GDP 4x that of Israel, which when considering contributions of other Muslim states, is imbalanced the other way. And Israel can expect absolutely no real help from the EU, given the pressures of their Muslim contingents.
Bill K:
What exactly do you mean “ought to participate?”
Like training Ukrainians, providing intelligence, providing ordnance and equipment? Providing intelligence services (CIA) in country to advize the Ukrainian equivalents?
IIRC the people resisting the Russian invaders are Ukrainians and various foreign (pay attention) volunteers. Not US soldiers, marines, airmen, or sailors.
Brain E and the other isolationists seem quite happy to ignore or accept Russian imperial aggression. They balk at sending weapons, weapon systems and probably if pressed, non military aid, anything beyond condolences. Reasons.
Whether they will also throw Israel aside is unknown as yet.
om, count me an isolationist then if Europe won’t step up. They need their hand forced. I’d rather pick my battles – no to Ukraine, yes to Israel, and yes, in both cases I’m referring to intelligence, ordnance and equipment.
And in neither case do I favor sending soldiers for the sake of those countries. But I think a case can be made for sending soldiers to rescue Americans if trapped in either situation.
One son has served in the Army, the other a sergeant in the Marines, which reminds me of the Marine hymn phrase, “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” That reference to Tripoli goes back to the Barbary pirates who took American hostages, and Thomas Jefferson didn’t take that lying down. So I may be an isolationist, but a discriminating isolationist.
CEPA lost a lot of credibility with me right there.
I wasn’t going to say anything to Brain E regarding CEPA, as just a casual search revealed they are antithetical to his isolationist bent; pro NATO, pro European/American mutual security interests. General Ben Hodges is one of their big muckety mucks.
He is the anti-Col. McGreagor. It was almost a LOL.
To all you idolationists, should the US not send MIA2 Abrams or allow others to send F-16s to Ukraine, or ATACMS, GLSDBS, or more HIMARS rockets? Can’t be to careful with Roosia.
This Time It’s Different
Meanwhile … back at South Park, “Joining the Panderverse” has dropped. You can watch it for free and without giving up your email or other ID:
https://ww9.0123movie.net/movie/south-park-joining-the-panderverse-1630855974.html
Quite brilliant and subversive for those following the entertainment culture wars.
Cartman is worried Disney executives are hiding under his bed to exchange him for a Diverse Female Character, Body Snatchers style.
Bob Iger, Disney CEO, and Kathleen Kennedy, Lucas Film President, appear under their own names.
There is a multiverse portal from the Panderverse to the South Park universe which is exchanging characters.
In a subplot white collar characters discover they are losing their jobs to artificial intelligence and handymen — “people who know how to do stuff” — are becoming billionaires.
I’m in awe.
Pretty funny huxley. Did the oven door get fixed?
And here I was out tending to Halloween, but I guess duty or at least internet infamy calls.
@steve (retired/recovering lawyer)
(PS: Good luck on your continued recovery.)
For starters, I imagine the Ukrainians and people of the Baltic States would be concerned, as would people like Georgians, Moldovans, and Poles. And for good reason. It does not take much research to find accurate accounts of state sponsored terrorism, ethnic and sectarian cleansing, and massacre of groups like the Ingush in Northern Ossetia and ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and there are plenty of people living today who have memories and even scars of the Soviet occupation of places like the Baltic and Poland. Can we blame them for such concern?
Moreover, can we fault ourselves for being concerned of the knock on effects?
The best rebuttal to that is
A: “About that, how did that happen?”
and
B: “How’d that go last time?”
There have been at least two and maybe three times where the Kremlin (speaking broadly of the kind of authoritarian or totalitarian political, bureaucratic, and military regime in centered in Moscow) took control of Ukraine.
1. From about the 1640s to 1660s (exact start date depends) to the 1700s/1710s (again, exact date will depend), when the Tsardom took advantage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s war weariness from supporting the Habsburgs in the Thirty Years War, failed attempt to impose a Polish Tsar in Moscow, and epic mishandling of its Cossacks (and their ensuing revolt) to obtain political hegemony over half of “The Ukraine”, before slowly politicking its way to control the other half and wiping out all opposition to create a Russian hegemony over the region that would last for at least 200 years.
2. 1918-192X, when in the wake of the collapse of the Russian Empire and then the nascent Russian Republic in the face of the stress from WWI (and more than a little bit of German prodding) the Bolsheviks rallied and began pursuing Lenin’s dream of an expansionist “Soviet Union” (term is slightly anachronistic but close enough) that would spread across the world, during which time Ukraine was first on the chopping block and one of the few that was actually conquered and absorbed, followed by protracted guerilla war, “bandit fighting”, and “land reform” that killed millions and caused a peacetime famine or three.
3. The debatable case here is from 1944-195X, when in the wake of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union and ensuing almost-complete conquest of Ukraine, the Soviets fought back and reconquered Ukraine before having to fight a host of guerilla groups such as the Polish Home Army, Belarusian Partisans, and most (in)famously Ukrainian Nationalists, one group of which was under the command of Ukrainian Fascist and Guerilla Leader Stephan Bandera.
This one is a rougher fit for the pattern for a couple reasons, starting with the fact that at the time Ukraine was already integrated into the politics of “Moscow” and treated as rightfully part of that government (because of the events of the second period), and also it had more muted effects. But I think on close examination it fits.
One could wedge Putin’s current misadventures as a fourth, if one so wishes.
In any case, in spite of happening decades apart and with the main split being under VERY different regimes and ideologies, there are several patterns that emerge that are downright concerning, even for those of us a world away. Because when Moscow gains control of Ukraine, a few things happen.
A: You generally have the pause of a generation or two, usually about 10-40 years, as Moscow makes itself comfortable, deploys garrisons, secret police, and colonists to the South, and proceeds to brutally stomp out remaining resistance that no longer poses a threat to the continued presence of the regime but which can make life difficult and screw with the fine quotas. Call this the “digestion” period or the pacification period.
B: The ensuing fallout from the conquest and “digestion”/pacification period screws with food supplies from Ukraine and the Black Sea coast in general to the wider world (especially Western Europe) and helps cause or worsen everything from mild instability to apocalyptic struggles.
C: As a continuation from B, Moscow generally tries to monopolize and then weaponize the food supplies from the region, selling them to the West and the wider world for political gain, largely for industrial and military development.
D: Moscow forms a partnership with at least one German polity in order to help coordinate its foreign policy in Europe proper and to help pave the way for partition and conquest of its ‘near abroad.” In the first period this happened with the Habsburgs of Austria, and to a much lesser extent Hohenzollern Prussia. In the second this was obviously and most infamously Nazi Germany. This is one area where the Third starts to break down, as there simply wasn’t any German state independent or capable enough to act as an independent ally (with relations with newly independent Austria being tense and fraught, even if somewhat cooperative). But you can see ghosts of it in the detente with Germany and reliance on German appeasement in Russia’s recent misadventures in places like Georgia and Ukraine.
E: You see a MASSIVE ramp up in aggression and military adventurism from Moscow, as it begins attacking and expanding where it reaches in an incredibly violent, startling burst of activity (even by the standards of the period in question), generally lasting for at least a decade and often well up to that. This generally lasts until the government gets involved in a war that pushes the abilities of the regime to their limit (basically forcing it into a war for survival, at least as a Great Power if not as a nation) and thus forces a lengthy recovery period, or when it simply overextends and overspends and begins dialing down in order to recover. Often a mixture of both (especially in the first one).
The big exception is the Third Example, which saw much more muted (and some might argue absent) effects, with no (overt) wars of aggression emanating from the Kremlin in Europe, no German partner in crime, and much less instability in the world as a result of the disruptions in Black Sea food disruption.
I’d argue that this is the result of a few different things.
I: WWI and WWII: the Elephants in the room, as well as the fallout from thereof. Simply put, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler didn’t do things cheaply. It takes a special kind of man to gloat about famine in one’s “own” country and how one should take advantage of it to steal from churches (as Lenin did), let alone to try and start a World War immediately after losing the previous one. All of the aforementioned were incredibly devastating, but for our purposes Hitler is the X factor since he was “outside” the Kremlin and he not only helped kick start WWII in concert with the Soviets, but then kicked off the most devastating single conflict in human history when he betrayed them in 1941. The Soviets ultimately won, but at immense cost that trashed Central and Eastern Europe, and that was with Western support. This meant the Soviets were even more focused on licking their wounds than their predecessors, that the instability of the West from things like disrupted Ukrainian and Black Sea cereals generally faded into the background from the wider war damage when almost everybody had either lost a family member or friend to the Axis, and with the US factoring in.
II: Stalin’s Death and Khruschev’s humiliation. Simply put, we have VERY good evidence Stalin was actively planning a Third World War (as well as other things like an extermination of the Jewish communities in his jurisdiction, sparing only “assimilated” and fanatical Bolsheviks of Jewish heritage like his favorite “Iron Lazar” Kaganovich) at the time he died. This was a seminal moment in history and probably one of the single greatest bullets the world and especially the West has dodged, and while Khruschev was also committed to global revolution he was less committed to specifically being the person to destroy the non-Capitalist world and to some degree of reform and civilianization of the Soviet Union. This resulted in a shift away from the war effort and military to light industry and the civilian sector, and also helped when Khruschev faced down the US over Cuba and Khruschev ultimately blinked, stepping away from the apocalyptic crusade.
III: The US. While North America was already a global factor as far back as the 17th century and particularly weighed in on WWI, it was after WWII that it took a particularly active effort in stabilizing the West after the damages of WWII. Partially pursuing its (and FDR/Truman’s) old ambitions, partially for competition, and partially to prevent either a Fascist resurgence or communist aggrandizement, the US weighed in and provided a much higher degree of food and financial aid than was possible before.
IV: Nukes. Tying in to III, there were not nuclear weapons in the 1660s. Ivan Grozny didn’t haven’t to face the prospect of getting nuked from the skies. Yekaterin and Elizabeta didn’t have to face off against Curtis LeMay, and even Lenin might have thought twice about his attempts to invade continental Europe if he expected to face Stratofortresses with Fat Men. At the end of WWII the US had nukes and the Soviets did not, and in the fog of war this seemed to be a good counter to Soviet conventional military power (especially when weighed in with other factors like air power and the navy). So the Soviets quickly expedited the development of their own nukes.
V: That the patterns I mentioned before were for the most part still present, but more subdued. While the Soviet Union did not try to invade Western Europe again after 1945 or fight nearly as many wars as it did in the 1920s or as the Tsarists did in the 1600s and 1700s, it did finance and support a host of proxy wars, rebellions, and coups spanning from Cuba to East Asia. By 20 years after 1945 Communist regimes were popping up in Asia, Africa, and even Hispanic America, Socialist and Nationalist dictatorships in the Middle East aligned with the Soviets were flexing their muscles, and the world had already gone to the bring over Cuba (and Castro’s two faced recklessness and apparent desire to start a nuclear apocalypse). Moreover, the disruption of the Eastern European breadbasket did affect Western Europe and the wider world, it was just mitigated and largely helped push these places towards the US (which was of course happy to provide the foodstuffs). And “Ostpolitik” would already blight the world.
All of this should give the analyst pause, if stuff like Kadyrov’s ranting did not by itself. It should also make us believe that the effects of Russia dominating Ukraine would be QUITE BAD.
Yeah about that.
Firstly: The US was a direct beneficiary of the instability caused by the “Soviet Experiment” in Ukraine and elsewhere, as it turns out that gunning your own people into starvation and then allying with the W R O N G person means there’s less competition for US cereals.
and
Secondly: The US ultimately prospered IN SPITE Of spirited Soviet efforts to destabilize and destroy us with the help of Ukrainian and Black Sea resources, not because of them. And ironically the US was largely a beneficiary of the Russian Empire’s use of those resources because its main Western rival was Britain and to a lesser extent France up until WWII, and until around the middle of the 19th century those were our most pressing strategic rivals.
I would not want to gamble that the US would be so prosperous in spite of that.
In large part due to consistent pressure from the West and especially the US, and sponsorship for dissidents and rebels going back decades.
*Sigh.*
I have LITTLE love for Foggy Bottom, but the US had already “inserted itself into that Region” decades before the fall of the Soviet Union. Indeed one thing that neither Putin’s Russia nor the US like to emphasize was the degree to which the US financed Russian and later Soviet industrialization, especially in the region (mostly under FDR). Moreover, our support for Ukrainian and Polish guerillas in the 1940s and 1950s is well documented and decently acknowledged even if it isn’t exactly public knowledge.
And of course, there’s the “little” fact that we helped negotiate the return of Soviet nuclear weapons and technology on Ukrainian soil to Russia. Something that is again vividly documented and a clearcut example of the “foreign policy” “cabal” in the US intervening in the region, but which Kremlin apologists seem loathe to acknowledge. Gee, I wonder why?!?
Oh God Give Me Strength.
The “Color Revolution” buzzword obscures the fact that what happened in 2014 was one part of said “duly-elected, Pro-Russia Government” (namely the Verkovna Rada, the Ukrainian Legislature or Parliament) “toppling” another part of said “duly elected Pro-Russia Government” (the President and his Cabinet under Yanukovych), as a result of investigations into Yanukovych’s corruption, brutality, and violations of the constitution when dealing with dissent. Yanukovych was legally summoned to appear before the Rada and answer questions about his conduct and that of his cabinet, and he instead chose to flee the country, claiming that he was under threat (which was probably partially true) but at no point bothering to explain how he would execute his duties.
Which unsurprisingly led to the Legislature getting sick of his BS and voting to remove him from office on grounds of incapability to carry out his duties, which I will be the first to admit was legislatively sketchy due to the Ukrainian Constitution being written so poorly that there is basically no way to remove a President for non-health related incapacity save impeachment (which was deemed to be too long), so this was extraconstitutional and a grievous flaw (and one made worse by the failure of any post-2014 Ukrainian government to FIX THIS).
Though I note that it is at least as extraconstitutional as Yanukovych’s emergency laws (the so-called Dictatorship Laws) and especially Yanukovych claiming to still be President and exercising the duties of the President while outright failing to carry out one of the textbook charges of the Constitution.
Oh yeah, and the legislature that removed Yanukovych? It was made up primarily of Yanukovych’s own Coalition and was by and large democratically elected in the exact same election he was. But he and his cabinet so wore out his welcome that even most of his party did not want anything to do with him by the end, to the point where he was explicitly condemned and disowned by the Party of Regions.
But of course this doesn’t fit with the “Color Revolution” narrative, because that would require answering pointed questions from people like me asking how and why this sea change happened in the Blue Coalition and the Party of Regions, and why it was carried out by people the US State Department spent years trying (and failing) to prevent the election of.
Secondly: A Tyrant is a Tyrant, regardless of if they are “duly elected” or not. I would have hoped this should have been obvious in current year given the likes of Obama and Hugo Chavez, but apparently not. Yanukovych was duly elected (after I note trying and failing to rig the 2004 Presidential Election). This is true. However, one does not have unlimited power because one wins an election, even legitimately, and the Ukrainian President and Prime Minister both swear an oath to abide by and obey the Constitution. By any stretch of the imagination Yanukovych Broke said oath, the only question is how seriously and in how many ways.
Thirdly: The people yammering on about Yanukovych being “duly elected” pointedly ignore the fact that he was duly elected by triangulating between the breakup of his victorious rivals in the Orange Coalition (to the point where Tymoshenka and Poroshenko were at least as focused on going after each other as they were him) and Yanukovych explicitly promised to negotiate an EU Association Agreement in order to better Ukrainian trade diplomacy and the economy, so that it could triangulate between the EU and Russia.
Only for Yanukovych to then renege upon being elected and walk back. Which irritated not just his old pro-Western “Orange” rivals but also much of his “Blue” Russophone base in the Donbas, which led to the Euromaidan Protests and made Yanukovych desperate enough to start ramping up pressure, first legally and then illegally.
A: Ukraine was already “beholden to the West’ to varying degrees. One thing I liked pointing out to Kremlin propagandists trying to claim Euromaidan was a coup or “color revolution” was that Ukraine fought alongside us in Afghanistan and Iraq, not just under Poroshenko but also Yanukovych. Ditto the probably-dodgy-and-unethical-but-not-WMD-like-the-propaganda-said Biological Lab Research Agreement under Poroshenko’s Term, which Yanukovych never withdrew from.
B: The “regime beholden to the West” that was “installed” in the “Color Revolution” dissolved in a matter of months as it called for early elections, electing the Poroshenko Cabinet which governed until 2019, at which point it was beaten in the polls by Zelenskyy’s Party.
Ukraine’s been through at least three distinct regimes.
True. Turns out being invaded by Russia and subject to war does that.
False, as the Grain deal do.
Uh WHAT?!!?
Finland, Poland, and the Baltics all face major problems but they have made steady growth economically. As I note did Ukraine and Georgia up until they got dragged into their own various wars.
What “NATO region”?
Ask the Poles who were our third largest ally in Iraq about the “uselessness” of NATO. It has massive issues but it is still telling.
Ukraine is a corrupt cesspit with lots of Dem and Western Globalist money, but so is Russia. And there’s something incredibly perverse about blaming even Biden and Obama over “Formenting the Conflict” when Putin is the one that invaded Ukraine in 2014, escalated the invasion in 2022, and pushed intentionally outrageous and untenable demands for “peace” such as the “demilitarization” of Ukraine and the abolition of its sovereign foreign policy.
Not unlike what we saw with Moldova. But that tends to get memory holed because it isn’t easy to blame on Western Globalists (on the Right), it isn’t easy to blame solely on Putin (for the knee jerk Putin haters), and it isn’t possible to honestly blame on NATO expansion (for the left).
Logic would blame the aggressor, Putin’s Russia, for that.
Dubious, and depends on how long you live. For starters, the war has never directly reached or done much damage to places like Galicia and did passing damage to the agricultural and industrial heartlands on the Western Bank.
No, it’s typical savagery and thuggery from the Bald Chekist in Moscow. Evil yes. Stupidity probably. Madness kind of but not really. Especially when you factor in the echo chamber he’s had to operate in.
Steve, this is BULLSHIT and Wrong.
Moreover, I can prove it.
When Ukraine agreed to denuclearize in the aftermath of the Soviet Breakup, it got to a negotiating table set up by us, Russia, and Britain. In which all sides hammered out Ukrainian independence, territorial arguments, and denuclearization.
This was the Budapest Memorandum of 1994.
The main body of that text contained the following:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
The Russian Government Violated Every Single One Of These Points. But the US’s stated obligation to support Ukraine remains, especially in light of that. And as a “recovering lawyer” I expect you to know the importance of that, as well as its limits, and how it applies to other stuff like the Helsinki Final Act.
Now you are welcome to make the argument that entering into this agreement was a mistake, and we should renege. Indeed I have been willing to argue that in a limited fashion (in case we need to disengage from Eastern Europe to survive the imminent threats to our freedom at home, AND doing so will result in less rather than more danger).
But that doesn’t change the fact that it did make it “our business.”
While the aforementioned historical record gives ample reason for us to worry about a Russian government taking power in Ukraine.
Though frankly I go back further. I still remember Georgia in 2008. Another post-Soviet country that was far away and which we knew little about, another country gravely mired in corruption and politics and both Kremlin and Foggy Bottom Tomfoolery. But one that also fought alongside us heroically against the likes of Al Qaeda, and which even if it HADN’T deserved better than to be chopped up and violated by the Kremlin and its pet sectarian attack dogs.
If we have “no business” working to defend Ukraine or Georgia from attack, then where the hell will we?
This is true, but also besides the point. He was profiting handsomely from graft in Ukraine, but was even before the invasion. Moreover, a nation should not become fair game to invade, violate, and partition just because it is hideously corrupt. By any metric the “Republic of China” during the Nanjing Decade was vastly worse in basically every aspect than Ukraine has been at any point since independence, but you don’t see many people arguing this fully justified Stalin or the Japanese Middle Management Fascist Cliques invading and brutalizing it so.
Perhaps you should discuss with the Ukrainians or Georgians or Moldovans how they expect to suffer if Putin is allowed to get his way AGAIN as he has in Georgia and Transnistria.
As for myself, I’m a student of history, a basement dwelling autist*, and a wargamer and bibliophile. I’ve studied things like this a few times, and I’m not inclined to take the chance that things will go better this time. Putin’s conduct and that of his regime is enough that I believe it should be punished harshly, and I believe it is in the West’s and most importantly AMERICA’S interests to do so.
* Technically I moved out of the basement a few years back but hey.
Turtler, that was quite a compendium but impressive. I knew only about half or less. Food for thought, and I may have to change my opinion.
But in regard to that 1994 memorandum and as a bibliophile with this verse in mind, Proverbs 26:17, “Like one who takes a dog by the ears, So is one who passes by and meddles with strife not belonging to him”, how would you answer when the strife doesn’t belong to us as a nation? Any general principles for this isolationist-leaner?
@Bill K
I’m not sure I can give you general principles as an isolationist, as I admit I have always been an interventionist and a hawk, albeit one that admits we have squandered much and need time to lick our wounds at home. And in particular I would argue that frankly, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 probably stands out as one thing that it’d be appealing to have stood out of from an isolationist POV (and honestly it is pretty clear it was unwise to rely so much on Russian goodwill when Transnistria was just a couple years ago). But what starts in Ukraine tends not to end in it, as I mentioned before. In particular when an aggressive, authoritarian regime takes power in Ukraine it tends to quickly (relatively speaking) capitalize on those and start launching misadventures abroad. I’ve cited the Russian/Soviet examples there but the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Mongols both come to mind for it.
Simply put, I am staunchly opposed to committing troops except as advisors and trainers (and if they die or get captured, that’s unfortunate but we have to suck it up), but I do support giving the Ukrainians what resources they need to at a minimum destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and preferably to evict the Russian military and its local quislings from their homeland, or at least as much as they can.
While we profoundly disagree on many things such as basic foreign policy alignment, I do think it is probably not a good omen to allow a regime (either directly or through trusted mouthpieces such as talking heads in propaganda press or vassals like Kadyrov) to openly talk about first strikes (including with WMD) on the US or its allies without retaliation. Since Putin and those around him seem insistent on the idea that they need to escalate the war in the West, I’d much rather they spend that effort and blood and treasure in places like Ukraine than further West.
Moreover, while the wisdom of the Budapest Memorandum I think was questionable (especially since I am leery of anti-proliferation among non-totalitarians), I do think we have committed to it and there is no good reason to withdraw from it at this venue. Especially not given how Putin takes glee in scalping our allies and his neighbors, and while part of me would take joy at him humiliating Obama and Biden and their ilk, that would be more than cancelled out by the misery that he has and would inflict on Ukrainians and Moldovans like he has on Georgians and his own people, as well as his alignment with our avowed enemies (and no, I do not think for a Second that we are fundamentally responsible for Putin’s Pro-CCP alignment; pace Steve one “bipartisan” consensus for the cabals driving foreign policy was trying to woo Putin into some kind of partnership or alliance, and every President in my lifetime has made the attempt. Mark Steyn pegged Putin specifically and the Kremlin’s “organs” more broadly as favoring a CCP alliance almost regardless of what happens nearly 20 years ago, and I have to concur. The Kremlin is happy to play the crybully and cite real and imagined grievances to try and justify its policies, but I think its policies are mostly not occasioned by them but are instead being dressed up to try and pass them off. That includes NATO expansion, which if anything was frankly caused by bitter memories of Russian and Soviet imperialism going back to the 19th century as well as general instability, and Serbian and Russian misadventures such as Transnistria).
Moreover, on the subject of Proverbs, I do think Proverbs 3:27-30
I would also point to 29:22
The Bible may encourage people not to meddle in strife that doesn’t belong to yourself (though I admit as someone who has done a fair bit of counseling this has always sat uneasily with me), but it also recognizes that there will be bad actors, and they will be responsible for a huge portion of the strife and at a minimum one should guard against it and help those harmed by them. I would say likewise here.
Ironically I do think Putin being stuck fighting another decade or so in Eastern Ukraine would likely help undermine his striking capabilities and give us time to sort things out at home.
But to respond to your other comments:
I would agree. However, I think the nature of the Budapest Memorandum and the assurances vested in it, the Helsinki Final Act, and Astana Accord underline why we should.
In a good world, it wouldn’t be unreasonable. But unfortunately we don’t live in such.
And part of this is due to the sins of our forebearers. In the middle of WWII the likes of FDR and Truman (with broad public support) decided we did not want to work with the major European Powers as equals or allies but ultimately as superiors. There’s a lot desirable about that, especially given the follies and crimes they have done, but it also meant we had to be on the spot. And it also meant things like Suez 1956 blew up in our faces badly with long term fallout.
We’ve in some ways tried to atone for that mistake over the years, but it will be a long issue.
The EU’s divided, like it probably should be. Some EU nations like the Dutch, Poles, and Greeks have done so. Some such as France and Germany most assuredly have not. And some like Hungary and Turkey enjoy playing both sides.
It is, but unfortunately “the EU” for better and worse does not fully exist (and honestly that’s probably a good thing).
Agreed on the whole, though I also argue in some ways Israel is less crucial and destabilizing in terms of resources, even if demographically and symbolically it is at least as important and possibly moreso. Imagine the social upheaval in the century after the fall of Outremer from the Crusades, and the Eastern European turmoils of the 17th entries. I want neither today.
Turtler-
Impressive, and for the sake of argument, stipulate 100% true and accurate.
I still do not see why my money should be paying for it, to a far greater degree than a typical German, Czech, Frenchman, or whatever is paying for it. (I’m assuming without checking that the Pole, Estonian, etc. are at least starting to arm up).
More importantly, why should my child, who is currently on the pointy part of the spear, risk his life and limb, when the German, etc., is not doing so? My kid joined the military to help protect this great nation that has been so good to him and his family.
Re: Budapest Memo. Assume the Ukraine has nukes. Have they used them yet in the current war? Would they use them ever, and then be annihilated by the superior Russian force? Not relevant.
@Bill K
Fair, though I would argue in many cases they are more linked than we care to admit, especially since Putin has allowed Kadyrov to turn Chechnya into basically the Diet Daesh and is allowing him to have steadily more influence in Moscow itself, in addition to the demographic “bomb” that will make Russia increasingly more Muslim and also the rapproachment with the PRC and Iran.
Agreed there.
Understandable, and I sympathize there entirely. My kudos to your brave sons, whatever our differences.
focusing on 94, is a little unhelpful to the discussion, as far as parallels come to mind, putin probably saw the 90s much like the Time of Troubles between the Ivans, at the turn of the 17th Century, when Russia was in weakened state, khelmenitsky rises later in the mid century and he did manage to make the best of things, well survive, for a time, the track record of live ukrainian nationalists is not encouraging, and that’s being charitable,
@West TX Intermediate Crude
Thank you kindly.
The Poles and Estonians are doing so, and generally are paying for it through the nose in a way the Czechs, French, and Germans should be (and some of the other Euros are like the Dutch).
But I would respond that I sympathize with that, but I would argue on what we mean by seeing why.
In terms of pure merits and ethics, I completely agree, I do not see why you should pay more for it than the Germans, French, and even other Euros that are paying their share. It is an injustice, and while partially Made in America is also enabled by moral cowardice and greed among the Euros (looking particularly at Germany here). In a better world- and one where Trump and others got their way on NATO armaments – the EU should be taking priority.
But in terms of seeing about how things lie as the world does, I’d have to disagree. The brutal reality is that the FDR-Truman-Ike Continuum’s decision to seriously screw over our Western Euro allies during and after WWII has had disasters consequences for the world, starting with fostering dependence and enervation in the West (and one reason why even as an Anglophone American and WASP I do feel a great amount of sympathy for DeGaulle). They’re also dealing with their own issues too. Moreover, if we’ve learned one thing from this it is that we should not rely on Germany to act as a check to Russian imperial ambitions, because pretty much every time that’s happened bad things have ensued.
So I favor a two track policy of arm twisting the Euros to take up more of the burden and doing it.
I would agree entirely, and that is why in spite of being one of the resident Ukraine and Anti-Kremlin hawks I have always pointed out that I will not support sending the US to war over Ukraine as it stands now, and frankly am leery even about support troops (were I King with the relevant legislative/constitutional authorities it would be volunteer only). But that also ties back to how European weakness in many ways is not happenstance but the fruit of a poisonous tree much of US Foreign policy has cultivated, and how specifically we almost certainly Do Not want to rely on the Germans to take lead on this.
But I agree.
Agreed.
Fair.
Probably not. One of the underappreciated reasons for Budapest was that there was widespread anti-Nuker sentiment in Europe and especially Eastern Europe, and denuclearization (now seen as folly) was popular will in Ukraine, and if our system of government means anything at all it means the public should generally get what they want (“Good and Hard” at the risk of citing one particularly famous prog). Moreover they are fighting on their own soil and lack the independent nuclear deterrence to threaten Russia with MAD without NATO (which opens up their own cans of worms). Even assuming the facilities do not get captured or destroyed (which is a BIG if) I doubt the Ukrainians would want to fire them off.
Maybe if they believed the fat lady was about to sing or defeat was imminent and so they might as well go down swinging, or if they decided on a high risk gamble like the “Nuclear Warning Shot” in French nuclear doctrine, of atomizing a sizable Russian military force to try and press the situation to the negotiating table. But those are big and costly ifs in a country that has had Literally Chernobyl happen on its soil and the truth is the Ukrainian national identity has generally survived well in exile or underground.
So we’d likely see threats to that effect and possible use, but if that didn’t work attempts to transport their nuclear deterrence to the West as leverage to encourage Guerillamania to make Afghanistan look casual. Which in some ways it already is (the losses the Russian Military and its vassal troops have taken trying to hold the Donbas and parts of the South make even Communist losses among both USSR and Communist Afghan troops downright paltry).
I disagree. And to that I’d throw the hypothetical right back at you:
Do you see Putin’s Dictatorship chancing an invasion of a nuclear-armed state with assurances to its independence and territorial integrity by the US and UK?
Do you see any other Russian government doing so? And if so, what would its composition?
For all of Putin’s rhetoric about NATO expansion, the behavior of he and his ilk has been even more revealing. At no point have they invaded a country actually in NATO, nor one armed with nuclear weapons or even breakout capacity for it. One reason why I am leery at best about anti-proliferation outside of the Middle East and its ilk. Which is also why I do view it as greatly relevant.
And in any case all involved viewed it as relevant enough to make the agreement in the first place. And while from an America First POV I do believe it had some serious defects (including the fact that bluntly the US and to a lesser extent UK didn’t get enough “out of” it for what it was, especially knowing what we know of Ukrainian and Russian government stances at the time as well as since), but it was a fundamentally sound document in line with many of our policies and public sentiment.
And even if I wouldn’t be opposed to chucking it or ignoring it, I am opposed to allowing Putin or any other anti-Western, anti-American tinpot to violate it and humiliate us over it without repercussion. Nemo me impune lacessit. Beyond the moral and practical fallout of allowing people who fought alongside us in Iraq and Afghanistan to be victimized by this goon, I don’t think the US needs any more black eyes over failure to support its allies or co-belligerents in the face of people who downright hate us.
@miguel cervantes
A: I disagree.
B: Putin apparently did not disagree enough to think it unnecessary to pretend he was not invading Ukraine in 2014, hence the (im)plausible deniability over his Little Green Men.
C: Even if I conceded that point, omitting any mention of it is at least as unhelpful to the discussion as much as focusing on it. In any case, while Budapest helps cement the legal rationale for supporting Ukraine (though even that is not strictly necessary given things like the Helsinki Final Act) for practical as well as humanitarian reasons I have no reason to want any authoritarian government – especially one centered in Moscow to dominate Ukraine.
He certainly has been happy to posture about that, though I think even he can tell some of the differences. In any case the Time of Troubles seems to sit hard with the Muscovite “Organs” as a whole, to the point where the Kremlin-financed and stage managed propaganda film 1612 managed to completely ignore the defining moment of 1612: the Polish-Lithuanian garrison’s surrender in Moscow.
Indeed, the entire occupation of the Polish-Lithuanian Military of Russia’s autocratic capital basically got memory holed, with the Poles magically being beaten off on the outskirts in a way they never were. Other Kremlin propaganda and narratives are more honest but they generally prefer avoiding that. I have at least some idea why. In large part because as much as 1612 is a seminal event in the Russian national epic, it is quite scathing for the conduct of the Russian State and (most of) its elites. The Poles entered Moscow with the active collaboration of much of the Muscovite aristocracy and occupied it with their foreign rites and languages for about a year, with few of the “Organs” or Servitors of what I’d later call the Kremlin emerging well. In contrast liberation came not from people like Vladimir Putin or even Yev Prigozhin, but from medium ranked elites and a borderline Levee en Masse.
It’s a sharp rebuke to the idea of Moscow and the Moscow-founded government as central to the story of Russia, and so I’m not surprised the Kremlin likes glossing over some uncomfortable truths about it in comparison to the more conventionally edifying stories of 1812-1815 and 1941-1945. My opinion on Putin’s self-awareness has steadily decreased over the course of this year, but I’m pretty sure even he knows well enough to realize why he does not. A Russian friend of mine has expressed exasperation on the limits the regime puts on political mobilization (even in support of the regime) and this largely dovetails with my own experiences and that of some other astute analysts like Whatifalthist. In general popular mobilization is risky for autocracies, and has been in Russia since at least the Mongol Yoke.
Sure, but that’s also against the backdrop of being flanked on all sides by hostiles in a way that isn’t the case here.
Turtler:
Once again, Game (Steve), Set (Bill K), and Match (West Texas …..).
Brain E still pops out with his usual from time to time, Ukrainian Derangement Syndrome?
@Brian E
We’ve been over this ground many many times before, and we’ve come to a surprising amount of common ground and conclusions before.
Including
A: Yanukovych was the democratically elected President of Ukraine.
B: The Verkovna Rada that removed him and his cabinet were the democratically elected legislature of Ukraine.
C: Yanukovych was a pretty bad dude who did what can be *generously* referred to as constitutionally and ethically “dubious” behavior that got him in trouble.
D: The Rada’s vote to remove him was also constitutionally dubious, in large part due to the poor composition of the Ukrainian Constitution lacking any means to remove a sitting President for any reasons save health (which wasn’t the case in Yanukovych) or impeachment (which I think is what should have been done but which would have taken a while and which I think the history since then justifies a fair bit of caution about).
Fair, though many of said ultra-nationalists were not from Western Ukraine but from Eastern Ukraine but were native to the East, as Kharkhiv (one of the major homes of Right Sector) shows. And of course the Kremlin has been happy to invade with its own forces of private armies, including a host of ultra-nationalists and even outright Neo-Nazis.
Agreed, and parts of Europe are doing so.
Agreed, though that comes with its own issues especially given what a militarily independent few governments in Europe that – say – elect a Muslim dominant government might do. It’d also cut against the grain of decades of US Foreign policy and even more domestic European.
Agreed, though this depends much on which “Europeans” we are talking about. The Dutch are not Germans, nor are Poles Hungarian.
Ah yes, the casual demonization of Trump. I wish I were surprised. And this is ironically one of the best arguments against European military independence, at least from an America First POV, and it also reminds us that historically adventurous Europeans have been the main existential threat to the US.
Which brings us there.
I’m more optimistic. Ukraine is a fraction of Europe’s military capabilities and yet it has withstood “high-intensity conventional aggression from Russia” in spades. We’ve been overestimating Russian/Soviet military capability for about a century now.
Agreed.
Honestly conventional military strength is one of the least of issues I see. The social rot and entitlement are both root causes of this and more metastasized. I do think a more or less united European NATO would be more than capable of checking a Russian conventional military attack to at least a draw, and likely more. It’s the unconventional threats I’m worried about.
Once again we see a case where “non-partisan” means demonizing the right.
I mostly conclude this is PR with little effective change, especially since the ATO label was largely a polite diplomatic fiction where we pretended the Little Green Men in the Donbas and Crimea were all (at least officially) local pro-Russian separatists, even as the Kremlin publicly or not so publicly admitted that was not the case in everything down to “Oopsie” court case mentions.
That would be a pleasant change from Mr. Freeman’s usual caliber of commentary. However, I have my doubts.
This is true, and old wisdom going back to the Jus Bellum. However, the origins of the war as well as the conduct and cause of it do decide who is right.
Bullshit. But well befitting one of the Best and Brightest responsible for bungling Indochina.
The best way to avoid war is to destroy, cripple, or remove the ability of would be opponents to engage in war. As my man Niccolo pointed out, it is better to be feared rather than loved because love is voluntary, fear is not. So too is the difference between capabilities and grievances/apprehensions.
It might be an exaggeration to say that people or regimes can pick up or drop off “apprehensions” or “grievances” whenever they want since such things can take on a life of their own (as Argentina and the Falklands show), but they are ultimately something that is willed, and the choice to act on them is DEFINITELY willed. In contrast, you can’t just will lack of capability to act on something into the ability to strike.
I have no doubt that the likes of Egypt and Jordan have plenty of “apprehensions” and “grievances” about and against Israel. So why have they not militarily acted on them? Many reasons, starting with political, diplomatic, and economic. But at rock bottom is probably the realization that they would lose and lose quite decisively. Again. And while the Hashemites in Amman and the rotating juntas and cliques in Cairo or whatever the new capitol is supposed to be may be egotistical tyrants and proud to boot, they are not so proud or deluded as to ignore that.
This is why it is better to render an enemy INCAPABLE of pursuing its grievances or vendettas against you than it is to address them.
And the wisdom behind this is implicitly shown in the target selection by the Kremlin and its ilk. Is it any wonder why for all the bluster and having trusted regime stalking horses talking about nuking Poland or extending the “Special Military Operations” to Moldova, the Baltics, or Sweden’s coastal littoral the Kremlin has pointedly limited its ACTUAL Military misadventures to much smaller, less populous, and weaker non-NATO countries in its “Near Abroad.”
Indeed, even when a given power has ACTUAL and VERY JUSTIFIED apprehensions and grievances, as India (which Mr. Freeman was supposedly an expert in) when we made the dumb mistake of supporting the Pakistani Military’s genocides in Bengal with a Carrier Group to intimidate the Indians (only to get chased off by the Soviets in one of the only cases in the Cold War where I actually am glad we lost to the Reds), the knowledge the Indians had on our capabilities and that they were incapable of decisively defeating us greatly affected how they conducted their policy.
In contrast, Hanoi continued pursuing its total war policy throughout the decades between 1945 and 1975 if not 1979, and ultimately won.
Moreover, I note that Freeman does not give any guidance for what to do if someone’s “grievances” or “apprehensions” are intractable and existential to the point that they cannot realistically be ameliorated. Because “We’re apocalyptic, Communist totalitarians that want to kill you and forcibly unite the country” does not bode well for a peaceful solution involving two Vietnams or Two Koreas. Which is why Korea ultimately was won not by ameliorating the apprehensions of Pyongyang, Beijing, or Moscow but by deterring them that this was a money and blood sink they had no prospect of meaningful victory in.
One risks violence and violent reaction from simply existing. This does not mean one should abdicate responsibility to analyze and address the case on its merits.
Including evaluating on whether said “aggrieved party’s case” is self-serving bullshit or even just the fig leaf meant to cover up a far more insidious agenda.
There’s a REASON why appeasement is a Dirty Word, and I thank God for it. Because the West “addressed aggrieved parties’ cases for adjustments in their policy” straight into another World War.
Sure, but this also implicitly favors the aggressor, who has the chance to at least come up with them, and not the defender.
Now Chas Freeman (not you Brian E), I realize you’re an over credentialed idiot, but even you should know that Bravery IS A KEY COMPONENT OF MILITARY MASS’S DEFINITION>/b> precisely because without bravery or at least the base willingness to fight (even if grudgingly) and awareness to do so, you can have things like Fort Detroit, Fort Douamont, and Stettin where often much larger forces surrender to the outnumbered but more astute.
Now there is a key to this, in that self-righteousness and bravery are not absolute substitutes for firepower and stamina and military (as the Japanese found out), but they ARE key ingredients in determining Force Generation for Military Mass and Stamina.
This is kind of rich coming from someone whose defining “Public Service” occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, which was ultimately dominated by the Allied defeat in Indochina, which outside of the final military collapse of the South in 1975 (which itself was only possible due to political and diplomatic factors) was decided far more by propaganda and wishful thinking (on both sides, but victoriously so by the Communists) than by what happened on the Battlefield.
Indeed, I do think Sun Tzu is somewhat overrated but he was quite astute when pointing out how often one wins before going to war or loses without it.
Somewhere in hell, Thieu and Ho are laughing with Tallyrand and Fouche. And they’re probably joined with Lenin after Brest-Litovsk.
Which brings us to the question of what decides if wars can or cannot be won.
Because to be really Blunt Mr. Freeman, I DO NOT HAVE A HIGH OPINION OF YOUR JUDGEMENT ON THIS MATTER. And I think my conclusions are borne out in spades by both the pseudo-profound sounding drek quoted here and by his actual, underwhelming (to put it mildly) history. Some of it is good, if often a bit idealistic, but other parts of it are so terrible (either by being incoherent, incomplete, self-contradictory, or outright wrong) that I must
I don’t think it is good advice, for the reasons I’ve mentioned. Some of it is good, not so much others.
And that brings us back to many of the other issues with it, especially Mr. Freeman’s frankly dire track record.
Frankly if that was all Ambassador Freeman failed at I’d be plenty surprised. But it isn’t. Far from it as I’ve established, and this is implicitly shown if one bothers scrutinizing his maxims with historical knowledge. Some hold up (such as what one should go into a war with). Most don’t. And I’m not surprised he is happy to screw over our Israeli allies.
I’d argue moreso the latter, precisely because again, love or gratitude are voluntary, fear is not (or at least not primarily so). In the end “moderate Muslims” have generally been dependent on enough coercive force, whether provided by the West or by closer to home (such as the Hashemite family dictatorship in Jordan). I think Osama’s proverb about the Strong Horse touches on something Mr. Freeman has.
Indeed, which I think goes back to Freeman’s long list of failures in dealing with totalitarian and totalizing ideologies and actors going back to his less than stellar role in India-Pakistan, Vietnam, and China.
I wish I were surprised.
Of course, the issue I have with this is why we do not consider the possibility being broader. Not just with Muslims but also with the CCP or the Kremlin. If Putin and Xi or at least some people in their inner circles are behaving in a similar fashion. There’s certainly ample grounds to suspect this given the perennial Lucy and the Football regarding Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, to cite just a few.
Agreed, but I think we also generally struggle to plan ahead longer than election cycles, which is a problem when dealing with clashes of worldviews or civilizations that might last generations (or even longer). Coolidge(one of the underappreciated POTUSes IMHO) said that “The Business of America is Business.”
Well, the Business of Vladimir Lenin and his regime, like that of the Wahhabists in the Desert, is making us Dead, Converted, or Slaves and making “America” as founded and conceived no more. And I would argue America is very poorly equipped to deal with problems like that, including at home.
Mr. Freeman seems not to have learned much from this.
It went significantly beyond that, starting with the fact that Yanukovych was knowingly abusing a blind spot in the Constitution in order to avoid legal scrutiny. Probably because said legal scrutiny would have (further) revealed a whole host of unconstitutional, illegal, and inhumane conduct by himself and/or his cabinet members.
Indeed, but this also involved the Rada having the power to call the President and his Cabinet before it to answer.
This is true, but
A: The “violent overthrow” didn’t happen or at least was not the main event.
B: The Ukrainian Constitution ALSO has nothing in it that would allow a Ukrainian President to flee from legal scrutiny before the Legislature and essentially stonewall, continuing to assert he is in good health and exercising the duties of the President while refusing to exercise one of the most important of such duties.
And while I have issues with Yanukovych and his intelligence and awareness I do not think he was daft enough to not know this.
Which is nice and all, but this doesn’t ignore the fact that “The Protestors” didn’t act as a united bloc, as I pointed out.
Moreover, it wasn’t “The Protestors” that called Yanukovych to appear before the Rada, and it wasn’t “The Protestors” that ultimately voted to remove him after he conspicuously failed to show. You have argued this involved coercion from The Protestors, but that is at best punting the question to the side without addressing it. Likewise the norm of Parliamentary systems with broad interpretive power (I personally oppose this, indeed it was a problem the Founders identified with the British system way back in the 1750s and 1760s, but it is still there. And to be honest there are some virtues to it given how it leaves little oxygen for all-powerful executive strongmen.)
@om
I appreciate the compliment, but you are being rather caustic and IMHO counterproductive.
As Brian E pointed out, those things happened after Yanukovych’s ouster, and Brian E was arguing that they were caused by it (which he argued was illegal, which I disagree with or at least argue was no less illegal than Yanukovych’s actions and probably less so).
If Brian E is arguing that Yanukovych’s ouster caused those things, he could make a decent argument for that. And even I’d argue that Yanu’s removal certainly was a trigger prompting Putin to act (even if the actual plans were drawn up well before as a contingency).
Though I would argue that it is not as important, and even if I agreed with Brian E’s premises completely (which I do not; though I disagree with fewer than your summary implies I believe there are some crucial differences) it would not justify Putin’s behavior.
And I have reason to believe Putin agrees with me, considering how he felt the need to do the Little Green Man Ensemble Show rather than just bluntly declare his reaction to it.
Fair, but I haven’t seen Brian E argue that much. Though I would note that Putin has been quite draconian at supporting regimes that are similar in such behavior… so long as they align with him. I am sure the Russophone and Chinese North Koreans (what very few are left) and even Kazakhs can attest.
“….Putin has been quite draconian at supporting regimes that are similar in such behavior….”
Indeed:
“The single greatest threat to America is hiding in plain sight”—
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/single-greatest-threat-america-hiding-plain-sight
@Barry Meislin
Yup, and there’s a REASON why in spite of being stereotypical US Imperialist Interventionist Neocon Hawk, I don’t want US troops going ANYWHERE for a couple years, including to war. We just need time to lick our wounds and bandage things before the spiral grows worse, and the last thing the Republic needs is the Left with even more sweeping emergency powers, because I frankly fear the Left and Islamists at home more htan I fear the Islamists, Putin, or XI abroad.
If that means Ukraine and Israel have to be sacrificed so be it.
But for what it is worth I do not think that is the case. Both have deep troubles in war economically, but both have shown themselves to be plenty willing to fight to exist, and in good positions to prevail.
In some ways I wish we could say the same. But I guess there’s a reason why Mr. Freeman’s claptrap strikes me as so recent even though it was probably quite a long ago. We still haven’t gotten a good cure for Vietnamitis.
“If that means Ukraine and Israel have to be sacrificed so be it.”
Sounds like a fair trade-off to me:
Hey, Vlad: I’ll give ye’ Ukraine if ye’ give mah mullah pals the Zionist Entity!
– – – – – – – – – –
And it looks like Jake “Golden Boy” Sullivan is head-over-heels impressed with KJP’s oh-so-carefully-modulated talking points!!
“Jake Sullivan threatens force against Iran while calling Israeli ‘extremist settler’ violence unacceptable”—
https://nypost.com/2023/10/29/news/sullivan-threatens-force-against-iran-calls-extremist-settler-violence-unacceptable/
(Well, it figures…)
@Barry Meislin
The issue, as Steyn and VDH pointed out, is Vlad tends to be a bad man to make deals with and tends not to stick to them. So even if that were a fair trade it probably wouldn’t work
And Kremlin BS aside Ukraine wasn’t really “ours” to give, as shown by the almost stereotypically strong Open Russian Decapitation Strike being strung out and shot from every which way around Kyiv and similar bitter resistance elsewhere like the airports of Donetsk and Luhansk.
And here’s a medley of entertaining blurbs—starting with the very first headline…
(Scroll down to see if you can spot the disconnect! It’s down there, somewhere…)
https://nypost.com/2023/10/28/news/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-photos-analysis-4/
Turtler:
Some of the arguments posted by the Russian aggression isolationist are, IMO, bullsh*t and me being blunt about them may be counterproductive, but it is good that you are willing to destroy them (such arguments) in detail.
“…Vlad tends to be a bad man to make deals with…”
Indeed.
And our “man” in DC? What about “him”?
(As for ‘Ukraine wasn’t really “ours” to give…’ well…we sure gave it “our best shot”…in Feb. 2022(!))
See, here’s what Vlad likes so much about “Biden”…as he (a la Dubya) looks into the latter’s glassy eyes and sees a…sympathetic psychopath.
Someone he “understands”.
Someone he can do business with.
“March 9, 2022… Will Live In Infamy”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/march-9-2022-will-live-infamy
And you just KNEW this was gonna happen!
(Wait for it…………………………INCOMING!!!)
“Russia: Israel’s Gaza Bombardment Is Against International Law”—
https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/russia-israel-gaza/2023/10/28/id/1140070/
And here we go…
“…Biden Says Mideast Leaders Must Consider a Two-state Solution After War Ends:—
https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/biden-israel-hamas-war-palestinians-independent-state/2023/10/29/id/1140114/
(Which might just raise the question, where was “he” over the past 23-odd years?)
@Barry Meislin
I liked Bush until that statement. I saw video of them sitting and looking into each other’s eyes and thought “Putin is a friggin’ psycho.” It was obvious he looked like a predator.
Either Bush was stupid or he lied. Either way, it was over.
Probably were playing a round of “whoever blinks first loses”.
Bush blinked first and…so he had to make that pre-agreed-upon statement.
(Well…it’s a better explanation than “Love at first sight”….)
I mentioned an episode from “Friends” on the “Sharing food” topic. Yesterday I noticed announcements that Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing on “Friends”, had died in an “apparent drowning” in his hot tub. He was only 54.
Perry’s problems with alcohol and drugs were hardly a secret — even I, a devout non-reader of “People Magazine,” knew. His life was hard on his body.
I don’t have any inside dope on Perry. I just liked him from “Friends” and the great screwball crime-comedy, “The Whole Nine Yards.”
RIP
Open Thread Sunday – National Defense stuff
The Future of the Aircraft Carrier – New Threats, Power Projection & Growing Fleets – Perun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv2C6EZW3Oc
“If Brian E is arguing that Yanukovych’s ouster caused those things, he could make a decent argument for that. And even I’d argue that Yanu’s removal certainly was a trigger prompting Putin to act (even if the actual plans were drawn up well before as a contingency).” – Turtler
That was the point I was making, which I’m sure um understood. The problem debating/arguing with someone like um is he conflates support for Eastern Ukraine as support for Russia.
Donbas separatism was an issue long before the Maidan riots, but I suspect it was the precipitating event for both Crimea and the Donbas to break away. Would it happened later at some time. Crimea for sure. Yanukovych had signed a new lease for the Sevastopol naval base which was set to expire in 2017 I believe– which a pro-European president would probably have canceled.
A survey taken in the spring of 2014 before residents of the Donbas separated from Ukraine attempted to identify the issues most concerning to the Donbas following the Maidan riots.
“Of the six issues that formed the core of the separatist program, there were only two on which a majority of Donbas survey respondents held opinions in sync with the separatists’ program: Ukraine’s entry into the Customs Union as opposed to the EU, and opposition to the rise of nationalist radicalism. A
minority of respondents supported each of the other four separatist issues. However, these minorities were relatively substantial, indicating that there was a core of Donbas residents who formed a support base for separatism. This tells us that despite Russia’s policy of paying and busing in people to participate in separatist protests, many separatist supporters originated locally.”
The six areas of the separatists program were:
1. Separate from Ukraine/Join Russia: 29% favor; 52% oppose; 15% uncertain
2. Federal state structure: 40% favor; 49% oppose; 8% uncertain
3. Russian language rights:35% favor; 59% oppose; 8% uncertain
4. Defend Berkut: 32% favor; 59% oppose; 5% uncertain
5. Oppose nationalist radicals/Right Sector is a threat: 68% favor; 5% oppose; 5% uncertain
6. Join Eurasian customs union: 68% favor; 10% oppose; 10% uncertain
“Had ethnic Russians in Donbas strategically been hiding their pro-Russian and separatist views for many years, waiting to express them given a suitable political opening? The analysis presented in this article reveals this picture of static attitudes based on fixed ethnic identities to be mistaken. Support
for unification with Russia and for a host of other pro-Russia policies may have existed among a certain constituency of the oldest generation of Donbas residents who never accepted the Soviet Union’s collapse and exhibited a strong sense of nostalgia toward the Soviet Union. But the survey data presented here clearly show divided opinions among ethnic Russians on most key issues associated with separatism, with the exception of joining the Customs Union and a fear of radical extremism.”
“…the feelings of betrayal by Kyiv that most likely were confined to a minority of the population in Donbas in spring 2014 may have spread as a result of the violence and economic suffering of the ATO and civil war. This sense of betrayal and abandonment has significant potential to stimulate a new sense of identity, especially one along regional lines, strengthening political alienation among Donbas citizens and possibly leading them to side with the separatists of the DNR and LNR.”
The study acknowledges that Russian propaganda may have influenced some responses.
“Listening to voices of locals, we hear many ordinary citizens who parroted these slogans. Yet we also hear explanations of support for separatism that have
nothing to do with the oppression of Russian-speakers, or the need to establish Novorossiya. Existing research on biased media effects argues that Russian propaganda exerted a larger impact on Ukrainian citizens who were already pro-Russian than on those who opposed Russia (Peisakhin and Rozenas
2017). Thus, while we should not discount the role of Russia in manipulating popular opinion, we also cannot assume that Russian messaging dominated the way ordinary people understood their own motivations and interests.”
Who supported separatism in Donbas? Ethnicity and popular opinion at the start of the Ukraine crisis
https://www.academia.edu/36780173/Post_Soviet_Affairs_Who_supported_separatism_in_Donbas_Ethnicity_and_popular_opinion_at_the_start_of_the_Ukraine_crisis
The problem with Brain E is taking the ouster of Yanukivitch (unconstitutional possibly) and not recognizing that it was a pretext (likely) for Vlad’s invasion of Crimea, fomenting seccessional (civil) war in the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts, and the shooting down of the MH-17 civilian airliner.
One Vlad toady gets removed from office in Ukraine and flees to Vladland. Vlad invades Crimea, starts a war in Ukraine by proxies, and his proxies kill hundreds shooting down a civilian jet.
But Brain E can’t connect the dots or recognize the difference.
A paper cut came first (Yanukivitch ouster). Vlad responded with a knife to Ukraine’s kidneys. But Brain E can’t grasp severity of the actions and consequences.
Pathetic.
“Friends” was also on my mind for a random French reason.
I just learned that the French have more words for family members than we do. In particular the youngest child is called “le benjamin,” if a boy, or “la benjamine,”‘ if a girl.
That rang an Old Testament bell — Benjamin, Jacob’s youngest son!
Then, getting back to “Friends” — the biggest plot arc in the ten-season series was the relationship between Ross, the paleontologist, and Rachel, the rich girl beauty, he had loved since high school. Ross goes through sitcom hell trying to win Rachel and keep her.
This is Jacob and Rachel in Genesis. Jacob offers his labor to Laban, Rachel’s father, for seven years in order to marry her. One of the most poignant lines in the Old Testament:
_________________________________
And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had to her.
–Genesis 29:20 [KJV]
_________________________________
Of course, Bible readers know the story had yet another twist — Jacob is tricked into marrying Leah, Rachel’s sister, so Jacob has to work another seven years to marry Rachel.
I always felt kinda bad for Leah, since Jacob didn’t want her, but anyway Benjamin became Jacob’s youngest son. And the etymology for “le benjamin” is indeed Benjamin.
I wonder how many French speakers know that today?
Re: Leah
At his death, Jacob requested to be buried next to Leah, at the family cemetery. He did not mention Rachel, who died giving birth to Benjamin on the road to Bethlehem and was buried there.
@Brian E
I can believe that.
The issue is that “support for Eastern Ukraine” or rather the separatist states in it is largely support for Russia. As I will detail later, they already started out quite closely (with the genuine grassroots unrest and protests in places like Crimea and the East being weaponized and militarized by the injection of provocateurs from “the Organs” such as the SVR and FSB stiffened by no small number of false-flagged Russian Federation Ground Forces and GRU units), and if anything have become even closer with the Kremlin’s wading in to infighting and power games in the separatist areas along with a significant number of coincidental assassinations.
Moreover, your framing ignores that frankly most of the “Eastern Ukraine” remained loyal to the Ukrainian government, even previous strongholds of “Blue” or Pro-Russian support such as Kharkhiv, that it took significant effort and no small amount of mostly Rus Fed provided artillery to squelch loyalist defenders even in inner city Donetsk and Luhansk (the very capitals of the separatist states), and while it’s one thing to gripe in polls or at the ballot box but it’s another to jump on board with an invading military and occupation force. Moreover, I suspect that things such as the generally disorderly and authoritarian nature of the occupation regimes, lack of support from both Moscow and Kyiv, and ruinously heavy conscription have done little to bolster love for the regime even among those who originally supported it.
I have a lot bad to say about Poroshenko (I find him to be a rather hypocritical kleptocrat) but I find his speech about “Why we (the Ukrainian Loyalists) will win” to have been quite astute. Which is generally why Kremlin apologists have to chop the speech up and then take it out of context to pretend it is gloating about shelling Donbas schoolyards rather than pointing out how the Kremlin’s occupation regimes were not inclined to form a functioning or prosperous society and didn’t have the resources to do so even if they were so inclined, especially when waging war. Though I could have mentioned that by simply pointing to Transnistria. And it does make me wonder if the decision to escalate the invasion as well as the heavy attacks on infrastructure were made in part to help stem the bleeding.
Not really. Donbas REGIONALISM and PARTICULARISM were issues long before Maidan, but that hardly equated with separatism, which remained a fringe position with minority support probably even at its peak (which was likely soon after the invasions in 2014 when you had new governments relatively well supported by the Kremlin advocating it, and feeding off of the existing regional tension).
It is certainly true that the Donbas Basin has its own regional identity and socioeconomic interests, and that both led it to generally gravitate more towards Russia, with Yanukovych being an example of that in action. However, that did not mean that the public was consistently in favor of unity with Russia, especially after it became clear in the mid 1990s that Russia was not interested in absorbing a large rust belt (at least during peacetime) at the cost of political and economic concessions.
I suspect “the precipitating event for both Crimea and the Donbas to break away” was the wholesale deployment of Russian special forces and intelligence assets to forcibly make them break away, happening after the “Maidan Riots” had been going on for months and after Yanukovych was ousted. As is borne out by the timeline. Even Putin doesn’t claim that the Little Green Men in Crimea were not Russian Spec Ops any more (though even if he was their cooperation with Russian Naval Units should have tipped off enough), and while he has not deigned to make similar admissions about the operations in the Donbas I have little reason to believe the MO was substantially different (and indeed, it probably was even moreso since the takeover and “separation” began in Crimea and only then hit the Donbas in spite of the Donbas being much more divided and subject to greater social unrest, in part because it isn’t and generally never was as pro-Russia as Crimea).
To be fair the Russian invasions were not coming out of the blue or with zero political support or tension, and indeed you had a good number of grassroots and authentic “Anti-Maidans” movements and even paramilitaries out in force. But it was almost certainly the Decisive event, especially outside Crimea. Because one thing that becomes clear if one actually looks at things like the voting patterns (especially for Yanukovych’s removal from office) is that political interests in and around the Donbas and even Crimea were not nearly as pro-separation or pro-annexation as they imply.
Except Crimea – as recent events pointed out – is not naturally a prosperous region, especially there, and while Crimea’s population was probably naturally the most pro-Russian and pro-Annexation there was, it still had sizable numbers of Pro-Ukrainian members (especially among the Crimean Tatars) and would require significant investment from Russia as well as working co-dependence with Ukraine for it to be prosperous.
As all sides learned from the Dam/Water Wars upstream and the ongoing quasi-blockade. It turns out that the public isn’t terribly interested in going on tourist vacation to an occupied region.
Possible, though I’m leerier. In general pro-Western politicians were inclined to let the treaty run out. But more importantly,
A: The Ukrainian government had every right to do so, as even the Kremlin admitted vis a vis the Astana Declaration and the Helsinki Final Act.
and
B: The Kremlin decided not to even take the “chance” and instead forced the issue.
This largely dovetails with my own research (will have to get back on academia to check), but I think it ignores an important aspect.
While the popular opinion in the Donbas did indeed generally support entry into the Customs Union with Russia “as opposed to the EU”, popular sentiment would probably have favored a “Yes to Both.” The Donbas is a Rust Belt and has been for decades, and the economic bread and butter issues weigh very heavily, especially since the years of “Oil Wars” and customs/tariff issues hurt them in the pocketbook more than most. This is one reason why Yanukovych’s election platform of negotiating an Association Agreement with the EU raised eyebrows but did not seem so out of the blue. In general the public in the Donbas (unsurprisingly) wants better conditions to sell their goods and hoped to leverage both EU and Russia against each other in negotiations.
Which is one reason why Yanukovych’s decision to walk away from the negotiations and in favor of Putin’s “deal” was viewed on the whole with mixed to negative reactions.
Firstly: Rightly or wrongly (and I am no fan of the EU on the whole) Ukrainian popular sentiment held great hopes for the EU Association Agreement and had an I believe overly rosy view of it, which meant disappointment was sharp, and while it was less acute in the Donbas it was still there.
Secondly: The terms of the “deal” were viewed as bad (indeed I have characterized them as basically the fig leaf over Putin strongarming Yanukovych). Cheaper Gas has long been one of Ukraine’s big economic and foreign policy goals, but just about anybody sober for the past couple decades realized that as far as gas rates went what Moscow Giveth, Moscow could Taketh away, and so there was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And 15 Billion USD in loans sounds like a lot (and indeed on the whole it IS) but it’s not as large as expected, and it was also to the Ukrainian Government proper, which Donbassers knew would most likely spend most of that on the core areas around the Dnieper (in large part due to the longstanding malinvestment and lack of investment that happened).
So they were aggravated. Notably, this DIDN’T generally make them abandon Yanukovych or the affiliation to the Blue Coalition (and as we’ll see those two were hardly as synonymous, though that wasn’t clear to many at the time and still now). But it did dampen their support for him and did make some of them come out in protest. Which stunned both Yanukovych and Moscow, which had relied on the Donbas as a reliable source of patronage, voice, and muscle (including Mineriad-style-but-less-violent bussing of pro-Blue miners into Kyiv for the competing protests). Apparently as Euromaidan kicked off Yanukovych’s proxies faced much more trouble getting volunteers or employees to agree for the trip to Kyiv and other Dnieper core cities, and also faced some (albeit largely insignificant) protests in his core.
And that I think had a much greater effect on his strategy and even state of mind than is usually held. It’d be a bit like if Texas – say – turned on the Republican nominee. And I think it helped incentivize Yanukovych to do some rather foolish and even illegal things to try and stem the tide in contrast to his previous “Wait and See” use of the media and simply waiting out the protestors. Though to be fair it’s not sure if those would have worked as well as they did here given how Euromaidan was much larger and broader than most of the previous Pro-Orange protests.
In any case, it’s worth noting that virtually all Donbas MRs either abstained or voted for Yanu’s removal, which I think is another issue. People often view Yanukovych as being some kind of Avatar of Donbas Sentiment (and indeed I think he viewed himself as such), and often for good reason since he was seen as a “Local Man Makes Good” and a source of patronage and support. But this could be overstated, especially since national politics meant Yanukovych had to be a creature of Kyiv as well as the Donbas and his interests were often not 100% overlaps with that of the locals (who were focused more on bread and butter economic issues as well as the aforementioned cultural ones, and who were also on the front lines of the tariff and gas conflicts).
This meant Yanu’s hold over his constituents was a lot more fragile and conditional than many expected, and even in the separatist regimes where Euromaidan is a common focal point actual love for Yanu is limited. He hasn’t for instance been invited to take power in the region for a number of reasons, and while part of that’s probably fear of his power or the fact that he might be a rival for patronage, but a lot of it is probably that he’s not that loved.
And there’s the rub with this narrative. And something I think you are overlooking in your desire to separate “Support for Eastern Ukraine” and “Support for Russia.” Like I mentioned before, while Donbas regionalism was quite entrenched and widespread, separatism was not. At least prior to 2014 and even – according to this – into Spring 2014. Around the time when Little Green Men with a huge amount of weaponry and equipment and large amounts of support from Russian Federation military units (and indeed sometimes outright Russian Federation military units) poured in.
This sentence pivots the point away and is more in line with my understanding. That while pro-Russian sentiment and regionalism were genuine up to a point, that point was much less than what the separatists claimed.
And that Separatism was largely a forceful import from the Kremlin deploying false flagged military troops and intelligence assets to violently engineer “separatism”, and that while there was a correlation between ethnic Russian and Russophone identities on one hand and separatism, this was not a strict causation with plenty of ethnic Ukrainians and mixed identity people serving with the “Separatists” and their Kremlin paymasters and many ethnic Russians and Russophones remaining loyal (and sometimes even becoming infamous, such as much of Azov Battalion).
It’s also why I am cautious at attributing too much weight to local politics or identity to explaining the war or separatism. The timeline is way too convenient and so is the outbreak of it. I believe the Occam’s Razor is simply that while there was chaos and a cold civil standoff in Ukraine (and especially in the East), the cause of the war was the Russian Military occupying Crimea and engineering its secession with the help of allies in the local government and paramilitary, finding this had worked, and then deciding to do so in a much larger and bloodier fashion in the Donbas with mixed results.
The “possibly” there is having to do a lot of work, and it’s largely undermined by other events. Such as the failure of the “separatists” to claim the entire Donbas even today, the fact that after 2015 their territory was generally shrinking in the leadup to the escalated invasion in 2022, and the failure of the “Separatists” to form a stable or functional government (even in contrast to their peers in Crimea).
As such I am inclined to call a spade a spade and conclude the DNR and LNR are largely Russian client regimes propped up by direct military occupation. That does not negate the need to consider their local effects and legitimacy (or lack thereof).
But it does mean I see no special need for extensive navel-gazing or assuming these were primarily indigenous or homegrown movements when the chronology indicates otherwise. The sentiments of Donbas locals are important, but not more important than things such as Strelkov etc. al. and the Russian Federation’s willingness to commit military forces to help take over,
Turtler,
We are mostly rehashing our original points.
Yanukovych had suggested that Ukraine join both the EU and Custom’s Union, but that was rejected by the EU. It’s unfortunate, because as the poll indicates the regional interests of the Donbas highly favored the Customs Union.
About 1/3 of the population in the Donbas favored independence, similar to the American Revolution, though only about 1/3 were against the rebellion compared to 52% of Donbas.
Voting patterns between 1991-2006 for most of the eastern region. First number is nationalist/pro independence and the second number is communist/pro Russia index.
Dnipropetrovsk 28, 50; Kherson 28, 54; Mykolaiv 28, 55; Odesa 26, 53; Kharkiv 25, 55; Zaporizhzhia 25, 58; Donetsk 20, 63; Luhansk 18, 69, Crimea 17, 60.
Obviously sentiments changed in subsequent years and the pro-separationist sentiments were still highest in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, which, of course, are the regions that separated from the Kiev regime.
Your argument for the overthrow of Yanukovych is largely because he was a corrupt politician (not particularly unique in Ukraine politics).
As the video I linked to shows, the Rada after the overthrow was “trying to legitimize” the new government. It was a revolution in all senses as they reverted to the 2004 constitution– but the sticking point was how to legally oust Yanukovych. As the legislator says, there were three options for Yanukovych– he could resign, they could impeach him, or he could take the course of Ceau?escu. The Rada took a fourth option– declare he had abandoned his office, even though he was still in the country at the time. I suppose he could have returned to Kiev and possibly a sniper’s bullet.
The Fight for Ukraine: Last Days of the Revolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7e6B64Iqqg
There are indications the war isn’t going well for Ukraine. Before you add it’s not going well for Russia either– I would suggest the type of trench warfare favors Russia. The average age of the Ukraine solder is 43 years old. They are running out of young men to fight. The Minister of Defense recently said something to the effect that the world couldn’t provide the amount of ammunition Ukraine needed (yes Russia may be running low as well).
If there is a finite amount of ammunition in the short term– I would much rather it be sent to Israel. Their fight is truly existential.
Brain E:
Rehashing old points, facts and history (Turtler) vs spin (Brain E).
It is passing strange that Brain E forgets history of the Soviets and Russia regarding elections: It not who votes that counts. Who counts the votes is what counts. Or the “elections” in newly occupied areas of Ukraine that now favor Vladland. Or the history of elections in areas occupied by the USSR following WWII that nearly always went pro Soviet. Or closer to home our election in 2020. Polls and elections are to be trusted Brain E?
Yes the war against the Russian invasion of Ukraine is very costly to Ukraine, and latest “200” (KIA) counts for the Russian invaders are 300,000. That’s right Brain E, 300,000 Russian dead for you man’s vanity. How is the grand Russian offensive in Adiivka going General Brain E?
But stop supplying arms to Ukraine because they should be sent to Israel? Is this your new spin? Does Israel need HIMARs rockets or ATACMs or MIA3 tanks or F-16s? IIRC Israel has a tiny land area compared to the front lines contested in Ukraine, not the same problems at all.
What a strategic maroon you seem to be.
um, you really need to work on your reading comprehension.
Brain E:
“I would suggest the type of trench warfare favors Russia.” Funny that Ukraine has been methodically forcing Russians out of trench positions in the south and the east. While the Russians have been assaulting Ukrainian fortified positions for at least two weeks around Adviika with horrific losses.
Not to worry though according to Brain E, Russian prisoners can always be sent to die in Ukraine and eventually Ukraine will run out of ordnance to kill them. Especially if he gets his wish and shuts off ammuntion to Ukraine.
See Adviika, you moron. See Ukrainian counterbattery fire and suppression Russian arty. See Russia forced to leave Sevastapol. See Russian infantry attacks decimated by cluster munitions. See ATACMs decimate Russian rotary wings on the ground.
Nope nothing to see from Brain E. Because Russia is on the march to victory?
But, but, but, Israel!
Walk, chew gum. Try it Brain E.
“That’s right Brain E, 300,000 Russian dead…– um
You may be the only person left that believes Ukraine has “liquidated” 300,000 Russian soldiers.
“The total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began 18 months ago is nearing 500,000, U.S. officials said, a staggering toll as Russia assaults its next-door neighbor and tries to seize more territory.
The officials cautioned that casualty figures remained difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, and Kyiv does not disclose official figures. But they said the slaughter intensified this year in eastern Ukraine and has continued at a steady clip as a nearly three-month-old counteroffensive drags on.
Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
But Russians outnumber Ukrainians on the battlefield almost three to one, and Russia has a larger population from which to replenish its ranks.
Ukraine has around 500,000 troops, including active-duty, reserve and paramilitary troops, according to analysts. By contrast, Russia has almost triple that number, with 1,330,000 active-duty, reserve and paramilitary troops — most of the latter from the Wagner Group.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html
Granted these are American estimates, and our intelligence agencies have been known to be….well, rather dumb.
500,000 killed and wounded is a staggering number for a war only 1-1/2 years old.
It’s one of the reasons the war needs to end– and the war will only prolong if we keep feeding it.
Om, I don’t think the US ever really cared if Ukraine “wins” (reclaim all the land previously held prior to the 2014 overthrow). They’ve only provided the type of weapons necessary to keep Ukraine from losing. The US goal was to de-stabilize and topple the Putin.
Had they wanted Ukraine to make a decisive offensive, they would have waited another year to build up the advanced weapon systems and air superiority needed to overcome the Russian defenses. That’s going to take more than a few dozen F-16s.
@Brian E
Sorry for the delay, I was distracted and recent blog posts pushed this back.
Indeed we are.
If anything it was even more strongly rejected by the Russian Government, which I note had already been fighting trade and tariff wars with Ukraine. Indeed, while the EU was lukewarm about allowing Ukraine to remain within the Russian Customs Union with an Association Agreement of trade with the EU, the Kremlin (already struggling with its own economic woes and things like the pensions issue) reacted sharply and with broad public support against it, claiming (and with fair point) that Ukraine being both in the customs union and an association agreement would undermine Russian economic policy.
https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2013-11-27/ukraine-withdraws-signing-association-agreement-vilnius-motives-and
That’s more important because it undermined the less offensive middle ground Yanukovych campaigned on and which was broadly supported by the Blues (especially his Donbas Base). In effect Yanukovych and most Ukrainian factions wanted to play both sides (though with different levels of emphasis and preference), while both the EU (w/ US support) and Russia tried to press them to choose one. But the rejection of Ukraine being able to sign the Association Agreement without suffering yet another tariff war was decisive and came from Moscow.
This is important to emphasize because
A: It points to some important divergences between the Donbas populace’s interests and those of Russians proper, and between the former and their presumed champion Yanukovych.
B: It came across a backdrop of literally years upon years of economic tension and regular trade wars between Russia and Ukraine (indeed, the Kharkhiv Pact was positioned as a way to end yet another tariff war).
https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/03/09/underachiever-ukraine-s-economy-since-1991-pub-47451
And how do we know this? How do you know this?
Because we don’t even know that in regards to the American Revolution. It is quite literally a guesstimate by John Adams in reference to the Ongoing *French Revolutionary* wars, not America’s own.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/5641
https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/02/john-adamss-rule-of-thirds/
Moreover, I have no reason to believe that one third of the people in the Donbas favored “Revolution”, considering how the territory occupied by the Kremlin’s proxies was well below that, and the onset of the conflict started East and tried to spread West, not consistent with sporadic grass roots conflicts as various paramilitaries sized each other up and engaged in escalating conflict (like our own American Revolution, which saw sharp outbreaks in the American South and West as well as at Boston as the two sides squared off) but very consistent with a Kremlin military Entrada based in the territory of the Russian Federation.
Like exactly what we saw conquer Crimea just days earlier.
And in light of the Kremlin’s proven track record with vote rigging (see: overturns in nay votes for Herod’s Law in response to the Magnitsky Act, to cite just one) and the proven track record of the Kremlin or at least its local allies for torturing and murdering opponents of “separatism” or “independence” as well as the methodologically bankrupt way in which they have conducted themselves (in sharp contrast to the American Revolution at least in the Continental Congress, where dissenting members of Congress retained their seats unless they were found guilty of treason like Ben Church or chose to abdicate their seats such as “Colonial British Reformists/Colonial British Whigs” like Isaac Low, who were opposed to military occupation and foreign legislation but identified themselves as Britons who did not want independence or war against their country and who generally were allowed to leave in peace even if their property was confiscated), I do not regard the “independence” referenda as legitimate.
But Kherson, Zaporizhizhia, Odessa, and Kharkhiv (among others) did not “separate from the Kyiv regime”, or in the case of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia only “did so” after the surprise Russian breakthrough and advance from Crimea and the partial occupation of those regions, after which “separation” and “annexation” referenda were rapidly manifested. As I’m sure they would be if the Kremlin’s troops took Kharkhiv. I fail to see why I should regard these obviously coerced and illegitimate referenda occurring under the color of force to be substantially different in nature from those in Crimea or the Donbas. The true popularity or result may have been different in terms of vote counts (though as I’ll cover later, we don’t have much reason to believe the official results accord much with their true popularity), but they were ultimately made possible by occupying Kremlin troops getting the “right” answer.
This is why I think that after a point reading through old electoral results is almost tea leaf or entrail reading. The commonality in “separatism” isn’t voting patterns or averages from 1996-2006. It isn’t even the presence or prevalence of Anti-Maidans (or else Kyiv itself and Odessa might be suspect).
It is the presence of Russian military forces or proxies thereof, Moscow-sponsored state terrorism, and the presence or absence of pro-Kyiv troops or paramilitaries. This is one reason why for instance it took so long for the Kremlin to siege down the inner city airports of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Trying to paint this as some kind of American Revolution against an illegitimate government in Kyiv or an organic outgrowth of Donbas and Crimean Regionalism (especially once you get past the certain point of “The public in these regions majorly favored ties with Russia, and was opposed to Euromaidan) is that Marquis de Lafayette didn’t arrive on the Boston Siege Lines with false-flagged French Regiments in 1775, and Baron von Steuben did not carry a commission from the Prussian Crown. Moreover, fighting in places where the Russian Military couldn’t reach remained much less serious and low level than in the places where it could and did, as Odessa shows. Because AGAIN, there’s a quantifiable difference between voting for a Pro-Russian trade policy, or even joining an Anti-Maidan and engaging in some scrummage with Maidanites, and enlisting in a collaborationist and outlaw paramilitary in concert with a foreign military and against a national government.
And that’s ignoring the fact that (much to the consternation of many that viewed a pro-Russian orientation or annexation as a salve for their problems but with the predictions I figured) the actuality of Russian military rule in the Donbas and Crimea has turned out VERY Different from what was hoped for, especially for those in the Donbas. Not only did they overestimate Moscow’s willingness and ability to provide and underestimated their dependence on Ukraine (something that even the post-national totalitarian mass murdering gits of Khruschev’s Central Committee could see in their brutally utilitarian decision to transfer the peninsula), but they also probably did not expect protracted martial law (in the case of Crimea) and the depths of sanctions, or (in the case of the Donbas) an even greater collapse in economic potential and the unstable rule of more or less lawless warlords.
If you have to mutilate my fundamental point in order to make it more palatable or easy to refute, you have already given it up.
My argument for the overthrow of Yanukovych is partially because he was a corrupt politician (and a SPECTACULARLY corrupt one even by Ukrainian standards). However, it was PRIMARILY because he violated his oaths of office and the constitutional guarantees of his fellow citizens and refused to answer for it in the chamber duly constituted for it.
That’s an important distinction.
Corrupt politicians are not and were not particularly unusual in Ukraine. Corrupt politicians that give broad leverage for the torture and murder of peaceful protestors and give sanction to anti-Jewish propaganda by government organizations like Berkut, however, Are. That’s a different kind of corruption from “merely” unethical grabbing from the till or “questionable” contractual relations (as former President Poroshenko’s chocolate company can attest). Ideally both should be punished with removal from office, but there’s a pretty qualitative difference when blood and rights are on the like.
And clearly Yanukovych agreed, given how he had weathered many corruption investigations before but found the summons to answer for his Cabinet’s conduct and the Dictatorship Laws to be something else.
I’ll break your reply down into smaller replies.
Domino Theory
“For all of Putin’s rhetoric about NATO expansion, the behavior of he and his ilk has been even more revealing. At no point have they invaded a country actually in NATO, nor one armed with nuclear weapons or even breakout capacity for it.— Turtler
This is one the reasons I don’t buy the narrative that Russia must be defeated in Ukraine because his expansionist policies would advance to eastern Europe.
The bordering NATO countries are spending in excess of 3% GDP on defense, unlike most of the western European countries. With article 5, and the guarantee that a full fledged support by the US under article 5 and our ability to project air dominance is more than enough deterrent.
———
Joining the EU
A few points. The article you linked to says it was the EU, not Russia that was the barrier to a “tri-lateral” agreement.
“On 26 November, President Yanukovych called the EU agreement a ‘dead end’ for Ukraine, and made its signature at some point in the indefinite future conditional on ‘agreement on normal conditions’. On the same day, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov criticised the EU for failing to offer financial compensation with regard to the limitation of the access of Ukrainian goods to the Russian market after signing the Agreement. He (Yanukovych) also stated that in order to protect its exports, Ukraine was proposing the start of trilateral talks with the EU and Russia. On 21 November the initiative was already supported by Vladimir Putin, which indicates that this was a joint initiative by Kyiv and Moscow. “
And this from a National Interest article: “While Russia has not opposed some links between ex-Soviet republics and the European Union, it (Russia) has opposed the EU Partnership Agreements because these bind the signatories to the EU in such a way as to make membership in the Moscow-sponsored entities (the customs union, the single economic space, and so on) impossible.”
https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ukraine-why-yanukovych-said-no-europe-9453
Europe would have had to make some adjustments to the agreement to allow Ukraine to benefit from both the Customs Union and the EU, which they were unwilling to do.
Brain E:
I’ve been working so couldn’t get back to your points. But Turtler has been very thorough.
You may not care whast happens in Ukraine except if Russia is forced to stop and retreat. Then you will care immensely. Your “point” that if the US wanted Ukraine to win the US should have counciled Ukraine to wait at least a year (or more?) is just ignorant and foolish. You think Russia would just sit around while Ukraine accumulates ordnance, equipment, manpower? The Russians spent a year laying minefields 6 to 10 miles deep in the south IIRC. How would more time for Russia make things better?
What a McGreagor you turn out to be.
um, quite frankly, you’ve added nothing to the conversation but snark, so no problem. You should continue to work more.
As to why I believe the summer counter-offensive turned out to be ill-advised, look at the results. Without air superiority, the results are similar to what Russia is facing near Avdivka– large losses of equipment and high casualties.
The counter-offensive was more of a political necessity than a military one. The weather didn’t cooperate, supplies of new weapons were late arriving and Ukraine can’t sustain the level of human losses that attacking rather than defending brings.
Delaying a large scale attack like that envisioned to cut the land bridge doesn’t affect the defensive action Ukraine is mounting, letting Russia sustain the larger amounts of casualties and equipment losses.
Meanwhile better air weapons (though from what I’ve read, the Grippen would be a better choice for Ukraine than F-16) would give them needed stand-off support for the offensive. Even if Ukraine gains an advantage, this will continue for several years unless there is a political intervention. One more year of defensive actions, while the West decides if they’re going to give Ukraine the amount of advanced weaponry wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the war.
Why do I think the “counter-offensive” was mainly political? Because some of Europe’s political class was basically saying so a year ago. Had Ukraine even advanced to Tokmak, Europe would likely stay in the conflict. Now, maybe not.
Had they just told Europe the weapon deliveries and weather made a summer attack impossible might have bought them another year.
“*No one should enter a war without realistic objectives, a strategy to achieve them, and a plan for war termination.”
“*Self-righteousness and bravery are no substitutes for military mass, firepower, and stamina.”
“*In the end, wars are won and lost on the battlefield, not with propaganda inspired by and directed at reinforcing wishful thinking.”
Southern counteroffensive runs out of steam as West scrambles to deliver aid
https://kyivindependent.com/explainer-is-ukraines-counteroffensive-over/
By the way, the article isn’t as negative as the headline makes it out to be.
leaving aside the illegitimate events of 2014 that led to the conflict–
==
They weren’t illegitimate and they didn’t lead to the conflict.
Art Deco
You’ve said that before. Please explain why your conclusion is correct.
The constitution of Ukraine specifically outlined three methods of removing a president. The vote to remove Yanukovych didn’t have the necessary votes required had they followed the impeachment process– which required judicial review.
Had Yanukovych not been overthrown, you’re suggesting Crimea and the Donbas would have declared their independence regardless.
Brain E:
If Vlad hadn’t seized Crimea and fomented uprising in the Donbas and Luhansk, but wait a minute he did. If Vlad hadn’t invaded Ukraine in 2022, 300,000 Russians wouldn’t have died in Ukraine.
If Ukraine had Grippens they wouldn’t need F-16s,
If the Ukrainian’s hadn’t kicked the Russians out of Kherson and Khakhiv and essentially bled the Wagner Group white in Bahkmut in 2022 expectations wouldn’t have been so high in 2023. But while Vlads little minions were left alone in the south they weren’t just doing nothing. They sewed minefields 10 miles wide. If Brain E had a brain he would know that “the enemy gets a vote in any attack.” But unlike Brain E’s favorite army (it ain’t Ukrainian) the Ukrainian army realized that the NATO-lite (lite on air power) plan wasn’t working this summer. Vlad’s army just keeps doing the same bloody thing to meet Vlad’s political goals.
If Brain E had a brain he would recognize that war is politics taken to an extreme. Vlad’s political goal is to exterminate or castrate the Ukrainian state. Brain E is good with that, hence my “snark” and contempt.
If Brain E could learn after being schooled by Turtler he wouldn’t continue to be ignorant.
Brain E:
Repeating quotes from an old political hack won’t make them profound or useful, but Turtler pointed that out weeks ago.
Water off a duck, that’s how you roll.
“But a legal gap remains (in following the constitution). According to the terms of an EU-brokered peace deal finalized on February 21, Yanukovych was due to sign a measure returning Ukraine to its 2004 constitution. (In 2010, Yanukovych restored the country’s 1996 constitution, which hands greater power to the presidency.)”
“Yanukovych, however, failed to sign the measure. The omission appears to leave Kyiv in the kind of legal limbo that may prove fodder for future arguments against the current government transition.
The 1996 and the 2004 constitutions are uniform when it comes to the reasons for removing a president, with Article 111 stating the parliament has the right to initiate a procedure of impeachment “if he commits treason or other crime.”
“However, it is not clear that the hasty February 22 vote upholds constitutional guidelines, which call for a review of the case by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court and a three-fourths majority vote by the Verkhovna Rada — i.e., 338 lawmakers.”
The problem, or should I say one of the problems is only 328 lawmakers voted for the measure to remove him– short of the required 3/4 and there was no review by the Constitutional Court.
The other problem or should I say one of the problems is Turtler has indicated the Rada required Yanukovych to return and answer questions why he abandoned his position. Yes, he left Kyiv, along with much of his cabinet, but since when is leaving the capitol sufficient proof he abandoned his position?
The riots that left protestors and police dead couldn’t be justification of a crime since somewhere between 14 and 20 police were killed. Someone in the crowd was shooting the police.
Do I have the timeline right?
Feb. 20 marks the final bloody day of the protests.
Feb. 21 Yanukovych was supposed to sign an agreement brokered by Germany and France to sign a bill restoring the 2004 constitution which limits the President’s powers. In addition, he agreed to early elections.
Feb. 22 Rada votes to remove him as president.
Feb. 24 Rada elects Yatsenyuk President. He was “our guy” according to Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine.
March 17 Crimea declares its independence and intentions to join Russian Federation, after holding a referendum March 14.
May 12 Donetsk and Luhansk declare independence after holding a referendum May 11.
https://www.rferl.org/a/was-yanukovychs-ouster-constitutional/25274346.html