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Random thoughts on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — 48 Comments

  1. “If there’s anything that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has taught us, it’s that he is serious about his hatreds and is contemptuous of the rationalist tolerance that undergirds how we see the world.”

    The writer of those words is a bigger problem for the West than Putin. Tyrants, dictators, revanchists, and the like have always been with us. How does “rational tolerance”…whatever it’s supposed to mean…explain things like Iraq, Yemen, and our 20-year-engagement and then abandonment of Afghanistan?

    Mike

  2. Gerhard Schroeder is currently the chairman of the board of Nord Stream AG and of Rosnef. Dirty Hands.
    One of Putins’ spurious reasons for the invasion was to stamp out Nazism in the Ukraine.

  3. MBunge:

    He’s not talking about everything the West does. Obviously, there are irrational and intolerant elements in the west, as well. But he’s talking about the mostly-European idea that developed countries have reached a state of rational dealings with each other that preclude war with each other, and that diplomacy will solve everything that is a problem among westernized nations. Putin is thumbing his nose at that.

    Of course, I suppose one could argue whether Peter the Great’s campaign to make Russia a western nation really succeeded.

  4. How many fellow journalists or writers has the author of the quote assassinated Mike? Or are speech and thoughts a bigger threat than tanks and wet work, say in Eastern Europe, or Canada, or Venezuala? Just speculating.

    And how is the situation in Yemen, formented by Iran, a consequence of
    western wrong think?

    If you respond keep it polite and civil.

  5. Obviously, there are irrational and intolerant elements in the west, as well. But he’s talking about the mostly-European idea that developed countries have reached a state of rational dealings with each other that preclude war with each other, and that diplomacy will solve everything that is a problem among westernized nations. Putin is thumbing his nose at that.

    Well, you could put it that way. I don’t know that war is precluded so much that war in the service of sheer malevolent ambition is precluded. Again, you cannot make any kind of business case for what Putin is doing. You cannot attribute it to the Russian state’s actual security dilemmas. (Well, Geoffrey Britain has decided to puke out a lot of pixels trying and failing). You cannot attribute it to a project to protect one state from another. The stated excuse that he has to clean out the Nazis is a power move because the whole idea is so stupid. It’s a lie, he knows it’s a lie, we know it’s a lie, and he knows we know. (It fools some senile crank like Paul Craig Roberts or the lesser sort of the Unz commentariat).

    Here we are:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnb_3ibUp38

    This is not where we want to be.

  6. Of course, I suppose one could argue whether Peter the Great’s campaign to make Russia a western nation really succeeded.

    You don’t have to be western to be prudent, sensible, and content. The world doesn’t need Russia or China to be western. The world benefits when Russia and China are countries content simply to be. All but a few countries manage that.

  7. What an education this has been in just how mistaken highly intelligent people can be on vital issues.

    The logical contradiction between the belief in the malevolence of the West’s current leadership so often expressed here and the certainty that, that same leadership and their propaganda outlets in the media are sincere and without an agenda in their portrayal of Putin’s Russia is most illuminating.

    The cavalier dismissal of an opponent’s actual motivations in favor of a simplistic demonization of their actions indicates a mindset unwilling to contemplate any challenge to their accepted orthodoxy.

    I guess its simply a basic facet of human nature, whether on the left or right, dogma must be defended at all cost.

    Evidenced by Art’s charming characterization of a logically consistent counter argument to his accepted orthodoxy “(Well, Geoffrey Britain has decided to puke out a lot of pixels trying and failing).” [my emphasis]

    Sadly it’s still true, “When the debate is lost, the loser resorts to slander” Socrates

  8. The logical contradiction between the belief in the malevolence of the West’s current leadership so often expressed here and the certainty that, that same leadership and their propaganda outlets in the media are sincere and without an agenda in their portrayal of Putin’s Russia is most illuminating.

    It doesn’t matter that Joe Biden’s a $h!t. He’s not the one running an invasion of a harmless neighboring state with the object of annexing it. Try to focus.

    The cavalier dismissal of an opponent’s actual motivations in favor of a simplistic demonization of their actions indicates a mindset unwilling to contemplate any challenge to their accepted orthodoxy.

    I’m divining his motivations. You’re trading in excuses for his actions which do not make much sense. You can try putting an academic gloss on it. (I’m a lapsed student of IR and pretty immune to those characters).

    Evidenced by Art’s charming characterization of a logically consistent counter argument to his accepted orthodoxy “(Well, Geoffrey Britain has decided to puke out a lot of pixels trying and failing).” [my emphasis]

    You haven’t been slandered, you’ve been mocked. Consistency or inconsistency is not the salient feature of the theses you’ve been pushing. Incongruence with events and common-and-garden human motivation is.

  9. Geoffrey is pure of heart and action, others not so much. Boiled it down to the nub?

    What we have here is a failure to, what is that word I was looking for …., concentrate.

  10. Putin’s invasion reminded me of a passage in All Quiet on the Western Front, in which some German soldiers are discussing the reason for the war:

    Kat shrugs his shoulders. “There must be some people to whom the war is useful.”

    “Well, I’m not one of them,” grins Tjaden.

    “Not you, nor anybody else here.”

    “Who are they then?” persists Tjaden.

    “It isn’t any use to the Kaiser either. He has everything he can want already.”

    “I’m not so sure about that,” contradicts Kat, “he has not had a war up till now. And every full-grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise he would not become famous. You look in your school books.”

  11. Re: nuclear power plants
    France just announced a program to build 6 nuclear plants and keep open several operating facilities.
    They claim it’s for climate change , but more likely, they see the danger of relying upon Russian oil/gas and intermittent / unreliable wind and solar.

    The disaster at the Fukushima accelerated Germany’s plans to shudder their nuclear plants. The fact that Germany does not experience earthquakes of any significance or tsunamis – the causes of the Fukushima disaster – is of no consequence.

    The USA imported in 2021 about 209,000 barrels per day of RUSSIAN OIL!!!
    In the year 2020, the USA imported from Russia about 76,000 barrels of oil per day.
    That’s about a 2 3/4 increase in oil imports from Russia in one year.

    Apparently, Russian oil/gas does not in any way contribute to “climate change, “but oil and gas produced in the USA does. Therefore, joke bidet has to limit US production but not Russian production.

  12. JohnTyler:

    Yes, their reasoning is absurd. Their stupidity is profound, as well as their denial of reality.

    They’re getting a little dose of reality now, but they may just shrug it off as before.

  13. “But he’s talking about the mostly-European idea that developed countries have reached a state of rational dealings with each other that preclude war with each other, and that diplomacy will solve everything that is a problem among westernized nations.”

    That is a delusion produced by Europe being largely dependent on American hegemony and security guarantees. There’s nothing rational about it and it’s one of the main reasons NATO still exists as a club whose sole purpose is to exclude Russia.

    I mean…Turkey is a member of NATO.

  14. “Again, you cannot make any kind of business case for what Putin is doing.”

    That’s just dumb. Successfully reabsorbing Ukraine into a Russian Empire/ethno-state could GREATLY benefit Putin (and maybe Russia) and far outweigh the fairly weak short-term costs which currently seem likely. Of course, you can also game out consequences that would be terrible for Putin and Russia.

    Let’s put it this way, Russia has a hell of a lot more legitimate reasons to invade Ukraine than the United States ever did to invade Iraq.

    Mike

  15. Eventually with Bunge it all comes back to Iraq. Dig deeper, when Vlad’s former employer, the USSR, invaded Afghanistan, was that a good idea, for the USSR? Don’t get sidetracked onto GWB.

    As regards Turkey and NATO, their continued membership is controversial, as Turkey didn’t used to be ruled by an Islamicist, Erdogan. Wise people have noticed the change.

  16. Anyone who says we currently have any capability to do much about this is fooling themselves.

    In Afghanistan we could not even manage an orderly retreat. So any sort of actual offensive against a near peer is out.

    And this is not on the technology, or ground personnel. They are both superb. It comes down to,

    1) We are basically leaderless. The US has no actual POTUS. Just some sort of odd ventriloquist dummy trotted out to give talking points made my liberal consensus.
    2) The heads of the military arms appear to have been chosen more for malleability than combat skills. Anyone actually dangerous has been effectively drummed out.
    3) So our last few “military actions” have been ruled by lawyers. With ridiculous rules of engagement on our side. And no rules opposing us.
    4) We have repeatedly shown you simply have to dig in and wait. The handcuffed military will never do what is required to win. Sit it out for a new president and it will all be effectively over.

    After seeing on Ace’s site that the Chinese took the intelligence from our request for assistance from them. Straight to Putin, shows who they actually respect. And I fully believe the Chinese are waiting to see how this shakes down for their move on Taiwan before Biden is run out of office.

  17. Let’s put it this way, Russia has a hell of a lot more legitimate reasons to invade Ukraine than the United States ever did to invade Iraq.

    In your imagination, only.

    The Ukraine is a harmless middle income country notable for political corruption and blah economic performance. I keep hearing how we must all respect Putin’s desire for a buffer state. He’s mistreated his buffer state so badly in recent years that they’ve been looking for other options, but we’re not expected by these same opinionators to be ‘understanding’ about that.

    Now, back to Bush. He had a trilemma in 2002. Do you take the sanctions off and allow Iraq to rebuild its military (keeping in mind what it did with that military between 1974 and 1991), or do you maintain the sanctions (keeping in mind that international agencies – Big Consciences Mark Steyn called them – were estimating the sanctions were causing 500,000 excess deaths a year), or do you remove the government? Here’s the thing, as time goes on, you only get to see the downside of the option you select.

    (Bunge is sufficiently addled on this subject that he fancies western militaries are responsible for every dead body in Iraq since March 2003, even though we withdrew from the country ten years ago and the leftoids at the Iraq Body Count will tell you that perhaps 15% of those killed over that time were actually killed by western troops).

  18. Art Deco,

    I get it, look at Putin’s invasion and ignore the strategic reality that forced it upon him.

    As for his treatment of Ukraine, interesting that you focus upon one side of that street and pretend that the other side doesn’t exist. Hint: focus is immeasurably improved when you use both eyes.

    “I’m divining his motivations.”

    Sure by focusing solely upon his actions and ignoring the strategic considerations that he’s repeatedly stated for years form his perceptions. Strategic considerations that any competent military strategist would agree with but which you, from your possession of ‘truth’ cavalierly dismiss as a fantasy. Only the militarily ignorant would label obvious and indisputable strategic considerations as ‘excuses’, as they exist like all facts as true, whether we accept them or not.

    “You haven’t been slandered, you’ve been mocked.”

    Ah. A rose by any other name… but lest you think me offended, rather than simply stating an observation, let me assure you that the ‘mockery’ of a vain, proven fool is of little consequence.

    If you dont grasp the reasons for an event(s) you cannot judge the congruence of the factors involved in events.

  19. I get it, look at Putin’s invasion and ignore the strategic reality that forced it upon him.

    Nothing forced it on him outside of your imagination.

    A rose by any other name

    No, they just both take aim at your pride. I’m not injuring your reputation, just chuckling at you while you do the injury to yourself.

  20. “Geoffrey is pure of heart and action, others not so much. Boiled it down to the nub?” om

    I cannot recall ever having made any claim, other than sincerity, to pureness of heart and action.

    But I’m not the one denigrating the integrity of those with whom I disagree. That you’ve amply demonstrated to be your speciality.

    Most recently by twice accusing me of being “Vlad’s boy”. Whereas I’ve never questioned your sincerity, just your judgement..

    In a different time when ‘honor’ was taken seriously, you and I would settle that insult upon the field of honor.

    Instead, in our more ‘enlightened’ time I have to rely upon at least some realizing that it reveals, once again just how petty you are in the face of reasoned disagreement.

  21. “Nothing forced it on him outside of your imagination.”

    There are a number of acknowledged experts, that I’ve linked to who share that ‘imagination’. Interesting, if dishonest that you ignore them.

    A bit of projection there sir, it is you who has exhibited more than a normal share of overweening pride. Clearly, you view disagreement as an intolerable offense to your opinions. Demonstrated by your frequent substitution of insult for reasoned rebuttal. So much so that our host has had to rebuke you over it.

  22. The US military and Germany are in agreement that Global Warming is the greatest threat to the security of the US and Germany. Maybe racism is the bigger threat in the US, but AGW still tops Russia. So, the EU should just stop importing fossil fuels from Russia. It could explain that the governments are finally doing something about it and just rename the hardship as conservation. Conservation was popular a few years ago, and we should bring it back.

  23. It’s amazing that people who pride themselves on their ability to consider both sides of an argument and reach a dispassionate reasoned conclusion immediately revert to one-sided instinct when something which *really* pushes their buttons comes down the pike.

    In this blog and its comments I see *some* ability to look at both sides of the US domestic politics clown show and some understanding that there’s more to *that* than just the two-party Punch and Judy show put on for public entertainment. Not much… but at least some of the time folks here can grasp at the nettle.

    But as soon as it comes to foreign entanglements, there’s zero desire or ability to look at things from the other side’s perspective(s) or to even be able to view the USA foreign policy establishment from ten thousand feet as a unitary Borg object which viewed from afar does 99% the SAME @#$% regardless of who is in power… All the copium still gets smoked in the Muh Dems pipe with a dusting of foreigner hatred whenever the domestic clown show angle isn’t enough to wallpaper over the cracks.

    The Evil Foreign Nation Cope is likely getting worse compared to years past because in the West it is literally illegal to express any exasperation at all the usual troublemakers and degenerates and imported aliens who do not belong… so all that bottled up anger has to be vented upon a permitted target.

  24. Geoffrey results to the slander dodge, objects when I don’t accept his self bestowed authority. Doesn’t like to be tagged as an apologist for Vlad’s invasion of Ukraine.

    His honor has been tarnished his feelings have been hurt. In the olden days you wouldn’t be posting on the interweb.

    You can “insult” me as being a backer or NATO and not trusting in Vlad’s good intentions especially after recent events. Vlad’s feelings and national insecurities are killing people. Ukraine didn’t invade Roosia. Face up to the basic facts on the ground. Willful blindness.

    And here is Z to provide the Xi approved take. Spoken by one who must watch what he says or Xi’s watchers will silence him.

  25. There are a number of acknowledged experts, that I’ve linked to who share that ‘imagination’. Interesting, if dishonest that you ignore them.

    It doesn’t matter that John Mearsheimer is amusing himself manufacturing intellectual board games where the participants are ‘forced’ to do this or that within the parameters of the game. It’s still a fantasy.

    And I didn’t ignore them. I sat in their bloody classrooms for several years. I just stopped believing it was a worthwhile intellectual subdiscipline.

  26. Evil Foreign Nation Cope is likely getting worse compared to years

    It’s actually a function of observing the behavior of several evil foreign nations, whose conduct bears little relation to the day to day behavior of ordinary foreign nations with their messy human reality.

  27. A bit of projection there sir, it is you who has exhibited more than a normal share of overweening pride

    Take your aricept. You’re getting incoherent.

  28. “I keep hearing how we must all respect Putin’s desire for a buffer state. He’s mistreated his buffer state so badly in recent years that they’ve been looking for other options, but we’re not expected by these same opinionators to be ‘understanding’ about that.”

    Why are you being so willfully stupid about this? Did a Russian hooker give you “the clap?”

    Here’s why we need to be “understanding” when it comes to Putin and Russia.

    Russian military ranked #2 in the world: https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php

    And ranked #2 here: https://www.businessinsider.in/defense/ranked-the-worlds-20-strongest-militaries/slidelist/51930339.cms

    And ranked #2 here: https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/social-relevance/strongest-militaries-in-the-world-2021-535078.html?picid=2079757

    And, of course, Russia probably having more nukes than the U.S., Great Britain, and France COMBINED: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat

    There are a lot of trend lines that look really, really, REALLY bad for Russia over the next 50 to 100 years. But right now, they are pretty clearly the second greatest military power on the planet and could likely roll across Europe from Poland to Portugal if the U.S. wasn’t standing in their way.

    That sort of power should be respected but at the very least it MUST be factored in when making decisions that touch upon it. Instead, we’ve got U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger calling for the U.S. and NATO to create a “no fly” zone over Ukraine, which means shooting down Russian military aircraft, and Hillary Clinton went on MSNBC and called for cyber attacks on Russian government institutions, which could easily be classified an act of war.

    Wake the f up.

    Mike

  29. Why are you being so willfully stupid about this? Did a Russian hooker give you “the clap?”

    Non sequitur and vulgar.

    Here’s why we need to be “understanding” when it comes to Putin and Russia.

    You’re arguing a different point.

    And, of course, Russia probably having more nukes than the U.S., Great Britain, and France COMBINED

    Be quite skeptical of that contention. I cannot help but notice that two of your other links were to newspapers.

    Russia spends about 4% of its domestic product on its military. It’s domestic product at purchasing-power-parity is about 18% of that of the United States.

    Our problem vis a vis the Russian military is the insistence of politicians (including those in uniform) on using our military as a toy theatre for their social fantasies rather than building and maintaining a fighting force.

  30. Can’t imagine why Mearsheimer doesn’t get much airtime in this locale.

    He’s a common and garden academician in a less-than-rigorous subdiscipline. Why should he get ‘air time’? (He also despises Jews and wishes they be injured, but that’s a plus with you).

  31. “Non sequitur and vulgar.”

    Well, when I pointed out Russia has more legitimate reason to invade Ukraine than the U.S. did to invade Iraq your response was something from a deranged person. I mean…9/11? Weapons of Mass Destruction? Nope! It was all about George W. Bush’s LONGTERM STRATEGIC THINKING about Iraq rebuilding its military. Even you can’t actually believe that.

    Mike

  32. “Be quite skeptical of that contention.”

    Translation: I can’t refute this point so I’m just going to imply it’s wrong.

    Mike

  33. “Eventually with Bunge it all comes back to Iraq.”

    If you were as smart as you think you are, you’d realize that this situation actually goes all the way back to Serbia.

    Mike

  34. While Rome burned, Nero played his violin.

    While Ukraine burned, President Biden [took a vacation in Delaware].

    SHAMEFUL.

  35. @Art+Deco:

    Mearsheimer’s super terrible sin was writing a book about a thing which actually exists: The Israel Lobby.

    The Number One Rule in the modern world is that certain things must not be seen or named. This goes well beyond AIPAC, Adelson flying a convicted traitor back to Israel in his private Jet to be met on the tarmac by the Prime Minister and given a hero’s welcome, and your canard of ‘Anti-Semitism’… it’s not calling Blacks out, not calling Pedophiles out, pretending that Women are Men and Men are Women or some magical nth dimensional Brony Gender.

    This whole argument between Putin and the Western Elites is a macrocosm of Seeing and Naming versus Refusing to See and Misnaming and Lying.

    Western Elites today are allergic to Reality. Russians less so. Chinese less so. There’s two ways to wake up and get with the program. Looks like West going for the Hard Way.

  36. Mearsheimer’s super terrible sin was writing a book about a thing which actually exists: The Israel Lobby.

    There are all kinds of lobbies.

    See Daniel Drezner on his thesis, which Drezner sees as driven by their career commitment to the realist school of thought. Since American policy making in the Near East is generally incongruent with what realist conceptions would expect, they had to come up with another vector.

    The twofer was that it was congruent with Mearsheimer’s basic hostility to Jews, which was tarted up as an observational assessment of Israel and the adjacent territories given in a lecture to an Arab chauvinist ‘center’ in 2010. This was several years after The Israel Lobby appeared. Mearsheimer’s 2010 assessment is now the official line of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and is basically an Arab chauvinist position, so you can see how influential The Israel Lobby is among the American NGO sector.

  37. Translation: I can’t refute this point so I’m just going to imply it’s wrong.

    The correct translation is that it sounds really off, but I’m not familiar with the right source material to use in investigating it. Why would a country which has a military budget 1/5th of ours have 5x as many warheads?

  38. Well, when I pointed out Russia has more legitimate reason to invade Ukraine than the U.S. did to invade Iraq your response was something from a deranged person.

    No, my response was to discuss George Bush’s options in 2002. It seems deranged to you for reasons that have little to do with the subject matter, and that’s something you should ponder. Can’t help you with that.

  39. Mainly because of people like you.

    Their nuclear warheads are aimed at my couch?

    And would you like to suggest that Israel scale its nuclear arsenal proportionately to the US military budget?

    Why in the course of this discussion would I give any thought to Israel’s nuclear weapons at all?

    You’re a guy with Tourette’s who fancies you’re perfectly normal.

  40. @Huxley:

    Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

    At least two opposed world views are in contention.

    People fight wars over such things. Why would they debate them politely?

  41. Actual Genuine Random Thought (*):

    There is nothing on earth so boring as watching the various Ukraine Live Cams on YouTube.

    Obviously the Ukrainians are not going to park any ordnance in front of them let alone drive anything interesting past them.

    * As if anybody here has posted an actual random thought from top to bottom. It is to laugh. Confucius would not approve of the title.

  42. One thing that never got stated clearly is that the USSR was an Empire. People in the 20th century got used to seeing Empires as being composed of geographically separated places, likely abetted by USSR propaganda of the evils of colonialism, but that is not the usual case historically. Putin sees himself as the new Peter the Great, putting the Russian Empire back together and making it even larger if possible.

    Of course he’s not the only tyrant who dreams of rebuilding old empires. Turkey, Iran, and China also have that old dream of power and glory.

  43. Of course he’s not the only tyrant who dreams of rebuilding old empires. Turkey, Iran, and China also have that old dream of power and glory.

    China is a national state with a malevolent desire to abuse its minorities. The peripheral parts of China are very sparsely populated and less than 1% of the total lives in regions which are modally Tibetan or Uighur. Sparsely populated buffer territory aside, China doesn’t have much of a history of ruling outside the ken of the Han Chinese.

    Iran is a multi-national state with a Persian majority. I don’t think it has a history of being territorially ambitious any time in the last century. Its stock in trade is subversion and harassment (as well as aspiring to murder a seven-digit population of Jews).

    No clue what Erdogan’s objects are. I’m not seeing an analogue to the Ukraine or the Baltic states in Erdogan’s foreign policy. (The armistice line running through Cyprus has been in the same position for 47 years). Turkey’s been abusive to it’s minorities since the butt-end of the Ottoman period. Less sanguinary than it used to be, but no change in basic dispositions.

  44. People fight wars over such things. Why would they debate them politely?

    Zaphod:

    I don’t mind heat, but I can do without all this “Jane, you ignorant slut” stuff.

    ^ Old “Saturday Night Live” reference. ^

    I pretty much stop reading comment threads that devolve into poo-throwing, however possibly cogent the information component may be.

    Also, this is neo’s place and by example and request, she’s not much for insults either.

  45. LeClerc:

    I think that Lee Smith article is wrong.

    It’s not that I don’t think the US has been influencing Ukraine. Of course it has. And Russia, China, etc. all do the same – play the power and influence game around the world. But Putin has been talking about re-assembling the former USSR (without the Communism part – just the empire part) for decades. He has designs on Finland, for example. I’ve always been of the opinion that when a strongman says he wants to do something he at least would like to do it. And Putin has made it clear that he thinks the USSR’s fall was a great tragedy – a great great tragedy that must be undone by Russia incorporating a bunch of nations that have been independent ever since. He’s been saying that publicly since 2005 and I bet he’s been thinking it for a lot longer.

    He could not care less what the people of those nations think.

  46. “He’s contemptuous of the rationalist tolerance that undergirds how we see the world.”

    We? Rationalist “tolerance”? I have to say that’s in very very short supply over the last year or so. Don’t think “rationalists” are sitting in my Western Governments. “Rationalizers” maybe. But rational? Only when it comes to figuring out how to sock it to their own populations.

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