The side by side satellite images really show you the devastating effect of the Russian bombings. It looks like a hurricane or tsunami hit the land.
How is this handled after the war, the aggressor should pay for the damages but we can't really force them.
What "siezed Russian assets" are we talking about here? The russian centeral bank deposits held with the federal reserve? Foreign assets of russian companies? Assets of russian "oligarchs"?
>(You do realize these aren't US citizens we're talking about, correct?
You realize that due process isn't something that's reserved for US citizens, right?
> These are Putin's economic hitmen. Fuck them.
Note that I objected to the lack of due processes, not to seizing their assets. Until they have been granted due process, they're merely accused of being "Putin's economic hitmen".
Consider this an arrest, rather than imprisonment. We don't have to prove a man with blood on his hands is the murderer before we arrest him, that comes later.
People are dying every day -- obviously lawsuits and criminal trials take years in complex cases. A lot more people would be dead by then. Our goal in the immediate term is to stop the war. One of the strongest non-kinetic tools we have for that is these sanctions.
When the war ends, then we can figure out due process... for these guys hundred million dollar yachts. I'm sure they can live without a cruise to a resort island in the mean time while we try to save lives in Mariupol.
> Consider this an arrest, rather than imprisonment. We don't have to prove a man with blood on his hands is the murderer before we arrest him, that comes later.
OP isn't talking about freezing the funds, OP is literally asking for the funds to be redistributed right now.
The willingness of people to upend civil rights and due process in times of "emergency" never creases to horrify me. Please remember that the japanese internment camps were basically justified using similar lines of thought.
I think it's pretty rich to link to that poem given the context. It's a poem about the rise of authoritarianism, a poem Putin could have mistaken for a blueprint rather than a warning. Today as people speak out in Russia they are arrested, and that insulates Putin to believe he has the power and right to invade foreign countries. To use this poem as an argument against measures taken to nonviolently stem the tide of authoritarianism is particularly perverse, especially when what we're talking about here is no more abhorrent than seizing luxury assets like yachts and apartments from billionaires.
>It's a poem about the rise of authoritarianism [...] To use this poem as an argument against measures to stem the tide of authoritarianism is particularly perverse
And bypassing due process is also authoritarian. It might be in service of an anti-authoritarian goal, but that just gives me "the world must learn of our peaceful ways, by force" vibes.
> And bypassing due process is also authoritarian.
No it is not, and even if it were, it's decidedly not the brand of authoritarianism that was being warned about in the poem.
Your entire argument seems to hinge on this idea that heretofore unspecified "due process" (what process is due, you haven't suggested) has been violated.
Yet as far as I'm aware, all appropriate processes and procedures were followed by our elected representatives in the course of levying sanctions against foreign nationals. Please point out where any process that was so due was circumvented. What exactly is the due process being violated?
To understand how sanctioning foreign nationals is not authoritarianism, consider the process by which the sanctions came to be. We came together in November of 2020 to elect a new government, entrusted with among other duties, the task of executing a foreign policy. That foreign policy is being executed now, which involves seizing assets of foreign individuals engaged in waging war against an ally. The seizing of assets is done under law, which was written and passed by our elected representatives, and signed into law buy our elected head of state. If at any point in time we deem their actions unfit to represent us, we are able to elect a new government to replace them. This is not authoritarianism. Calling this process authoritarian gives Putin a pass, because it's not at all like what happens in Russia.
I'm sorry you feel like some Russian billionaire's "due process" was violated, but that's simply not the case, and even if it were that is not "authoritarian". Not every bit of government overreach is "authoritarianism".
> that just gives me "the world must learn of our peaceful ways, by force" vibes.
I'm sorry, but as a point of fact it's government force that is used to preserve and enforce property rights. How do you think private property remains private if not for the government's monopoly to arrest and imprison? Peace and goodwill toward men is not keeping the property of Russian oligarchs private -- it's the threat of imprisonment for violating them.
My advice to you is if you're really worried about the issue of civil asset forfeiture, this is not the right context to argue against it. Billionaire Russian oligarchs are not a sympathetic group to champion, and it's really in poor taste in the moment. Your effort is better spent fighting concrete injustices faced by ordinary Americans, rather than making dozens of posts on HN defending... Russian oligarchs engaged in a war of aggression.
>Yet as far as I'm aware, all appropriate processes and procedures were followed by our elected representatives in the course of levying sanctions against foreign nationals. Please point out where any process that was so due was circumvented. What exactly is the due process being violated?
You realize that sanctions =/= expropriation, and we were talking about expropriation?
>I'm sorry, but as a point of fact it's government force that is used to preserve and enforce property rights. How do you think private property remains private if not for the government's monopoly to arrest and imprison? Peace and goodwill toward men is not keeping the property of Russian oligarchs private -- it's the threat of imprisonment for violating them.
I'm not against "force" here, I'm against invoking authoritarian policies to fight authoritarianism. If there are some anti-due process terrorists running around, and the government decides respond by sending them to gulags/gitmo without trial, they shouldn't get to claim the moral high ground. At the very least, the irony shouldn't be lost on them.
>My advice to you is if you're really worried about the issue of civil asset forfeiture, this is not the right context to argue against it. Billionaire Russian oligarchs are not a sympathetic group to champion, and it's really in poor taste in the moment. Your effort is better spent fighting concrete injustices faced by ordinary Americans, rather than making dozens of posts on HN defending... Russian oligarchs engaged in a war of aggression.
Yeah, but the whole point of due process is to protect the unsympathetic. If they're sympathetic they can at least try to win in the court of public opinion. For the unsympathetic, due process is literally all they have.
1. Will there be a trial? The fact that the assets were seized without trial, and that no suggestions of a trial be held suggests that OP (and most people here) are not advocating for trials. If that's the case, I have a hard time understanding how that could be considered "due process".
2. what crimes did the oligarchs actually commit? when was "being a russian oligarch" criminalized? there were russian sanctions that were passed, but those do not give the government authority to expropriate assets
3. any laws passed to expropriate assets sound suspiciously like bill of attainder, which would be banned by the constitution. At best it would allow you to expropriate assets of people who still have connections to putin/russia or whatever.
The difference between these two is that one of them is creating internment camps for innocent people, and the other is taking the wealth of people who enabled genocide to help victims.
That both involve a skip of some civil liberties is hardly a meaningful similarity
> The difference between these two is that one of them is creating internment camps for innocent people, and the other is taking the wealth of people who enabled genocide to help victims.
They certainly weren't considered "innocent" back in the day, at least according to some of the newspaper editorials.
>A Los Angeles Times editorial dated February 28, 1942, stated that:
>As to a considerable number of Japanese, no matter where born, there is unfortunately no doubt whatever. They are for Japan; they will aid Japan in every way possible by espionage, sabotage and other activity; and they need to be restrained for the safety of California and the United States. And since there is no sure test for loyalty to the United States, all must be restrained. Those truly loyal will understand and make no objection.
One of the major things that led to the internment camps was an incident where a Japanese fighter pilot who was shot down during the attack on Pearl Harbor was helped by Japanese-Hawaiians who had lived in US terriorty for years. The Japanese-Hawaiians attacked the guard, helped the pilot escape, burned down a neighbor's house, and took hostages. This caused many Americans to fear that the war effort would be sabotaged by ethnic Japanese (and Germans/Italians, who were spied upon but not placed in camps in large numbers as it would have been infeasible to do so due to their high American population) citizens who had more loyalty to their homeland than their country.
>The behavior of Shintani and the Haradas was included in an official Navy report dated January 26, 1942. The report's author Navy Lieutenant C. B. Baldwin wrote: "The fact that the two Niʻihau Japanese who had previously shown no anti-American tendencies went to the aid of the pilot when Japanese domination of the island seemed possible, indicate[s] [the] likelihood that Japanese residents previously believed loyal to the United States may aid Japan if further Japanese attacks appear successful."
We literally give accused child rapists and serial killers due process. Are you suggesting that's a mistake, or that people accused "Personal cronies of a foreign adversary" are somehow worse?
It's not worse, but then seizing a billionaires boat is also not a huge grievance in the grand scheme of things, so it's not really a thorny ethical problem.
I'm OK living in a world where elites might have higher risks of having their property rights violated during crisis times.
> It's not worse, but then seizing a billionaires boat is also not a huge grievance in the grand scheme of things, so it's not really a thorny ethical problem.
If you're approaching this from a consequentialist perspective, would you also be for preemptively seizing billionaire's assets the moment they're accused of kicking a puppy or whatever? After all, it's "also not a huge grievance in the grand scheme of things, so it's not really a thorny ethical problem".
>I'm OK living in a world where elites might have higher risks of having their property rights violated during crisis times.
Sounds great in theory until one day you're declared an elite[1]. Apparently 16% of peasants were considered kulaks in 1912, although the definition was later changed by the Bolsheviks so I'm not sure how much % actually got persecuted. Regardless I'd say the typical HN reader is at a risk of being considered a kulak.
No, I'm suggesting they are non-citizens as well as agents of foreign adversaries. They are not entitled to much under our laws, especially in a time of war.
"non-citizens as well as agents of foreign adversaries" sounds a lot like enemy spies. To my knowledge we still try them in court, not summarily execute them.
I do consider bringing up child rapists and serial killers to be interesting. Have you heard what Russians are doing with their missiles against Ukrainian civilians?
It's not about who's worse, it's about what we can afford to do.
As Dan Carlin said, what's terrible about authoritarian countries is that fighting them forces you to act like them. If we set ourselves boundaries only we follow, we're doomed to lose.
Following the regular process just gives an advantage to the enemy because he knows he can just put all his foreign assets in the hands of private oligarchs and we'll have our hands tied behind our backs by our own noble principles.
If we don't act bluntly (like confiscating oligarch wealth) we have no leverage at all.
We _can_ afford to give rapists proper due process because society still functions afterwards. But look at what happened during the height of Mafia power. Both Italy and the US had to change the regular due process (RICO, Maxi Trial) because it cannot work when individuals are conspiring behind the scene.
> Following the regular process just gives an advantage to the enemy because he knows he can just put all his foreign assets in the hands of private oligarchs and we'll have our hands tied behind our backs by our own noble principles.
Have the courts freeze the assets of the accused when there is that risk.
I'm pretty sure the President is already authorized to sanction these oligarchs. I'm confident the QAnon members of congress and senate would be suing Biden on their behalf right now if they thought it would even be a pain in his neck. (It wouldn't be)
Mass authorization to strip one's rights without trial isn't due process and the QAnon stuff is a non-sequitur.
The OP claimed that due process is impossible, so I showed how it can work. Funding or plotting genocide would probably be a serious crime anyways, so why not have a proper trial instead of cutting corners?
A functioning justice system is the bedrock of democracy, and it's the last place where you'd want to be making shortcuts. Not only would missteps cause reputational damage for democracies, it's going to ultimately hurt you too.
You are talking about situations that do not include military aggression. We do not grant foreign adversaries the privilege of petitioning our courts and we never have.
>when wars happen realpolitik becomes the primary value system of nations.
And I suppose you're arguing that's a good thing? Everything you said could have been applied to suspected terrorists during the early 2000s, and suspected communists during the McCarthy era. Do you support those actions as well?
To be clear, I'm not against punishing the entities listed. I'm against punishing the entities listed without due process.
There is an element of scale here. The individuals you are talking about have a limited impact. But the oligarchs aren't just individuals, they are billion dollar institutions that are directly tied to the government in question.
Or to put it another way, Osama bin Laden didn't get much due process. But that is the difference between (allegedly) committing a crime and being a threat to a government.
Alleged criminals get due process, threats get "dealt with", for some given value of "dealt with".
Of course then the danger is that governments will see threats that aren't really there and try to turn people into threats rather than criminals to "deal" with them. But to my mind that is an argument for better oversight of the use of the tools that governments have, rather than just removing the "threat" toolkit and leaving only the "criminal" toolkit.
"we're going to violate people's rights, but don't worry because we promise that we'll only be using it against Bad People. You're not a Bad People supporter/sympathizer, are you? Yeah that's what we thought."
You are not alone in that sentiment. I wrote my representative to tell him that I will absolutely not support seizure of foreign national private assets. I don't care that they are billionaires or that they are wealthy because they bow to Putin. We don't throw our laws out the window for political expediency.
But it's not, we've known for years they are milking the Russian people both legally and illegally. So you're basically feeling sorry for Russian oligarchs?
As mentioned elsewhere, I'm not feeling sorry for the oligarchs. I'm appalled how easily we as a society are willing to skip due process, given a sufficiently evil sounding villain.
They're gonna be okay, even if their fortunes are cut in half they're still billionaires. We all know that if you're a billionaire in Russia you are are criminal beholden to Putin. I'm sure they have bucketloads of documents at the CIA with more details than one person can read in a lifetime.
Thing is, you remind me of every armchair general who pitch a royal racist fit about the BLM protests and that was on behalf of due process for Americans. But a few seized Russian boats gets you all fired up.
War is, by definition, a "massive violation of due process".
I get your point (that ethics and law matter -- including basic principles of law where international law is not codified), and on a certain level this is valid.
But historically speaking, once things ratchet up to a certain level and scope of barbarity (as we are seeing unfold in real time) -- it's just not realistic to sit and wait for a "fair" solution to emerge (in the near term or ever). People are going to be hurt (and treated unfairly) one way or another. It's just a question of who is going to take the hit, and in what form. So if it's at least arguably plausible that measures that inconvenience a few individuals in the top .1 percent net-worth-wise might bring this insane situation to a close sooner rather than later -- I can go with that.
And there's no reason we can't "rub" a bit of due process into the situation -- by saying "OK sure, you can file an appeal, and have a shot at getting your toys and baubles back -- after Russia returns to its borders, and Putin has been decisively removed from power."
You are assuming this city will remain in Ukraine. That might be too optimistic as this is the only part of the coast on the land bridge to Crimea that is not yet under Russian control.
I have some words about Putin that I really want to say. They're against the site guidelines, though, so I am restraining myself. He sure doesn't make it easy...
Not pushing the world really close to a nuclear war also counts, in the eyes of those who think that a direct involvement of NATO would trigger the MAD scenario.
Ukraine would be in substantially worse straits if NATO hadn't been helping with training the last few years, and providing thousands upon thousands of modern antitank and antiair missiles.
I don't think Ukraine would benefit from Russia and NATO coming to blows.
Russian soldiers have been helping rebels and openly fighting in east Ukraine for years as well. Let's not act like Russia didn't start the need for this.
I suggest reading back your own past comments for a quick reality check:
> There is basically no escalation from Russia. [...].
It is just convenient (Biden's domestic issues/Nordstream 2/other unknown reasons) to claim imminent invasion and the media is incentivised to fuel that narrative since it seems to have captured the attention of the populace at large (perhaps based on the Russophobia that is prevalent in mainstream media).
Maybe it's time to be extra aware of your own biases against Russia, NATO, mainstream media...
I was wrong. I admit that. I spoke from a position of superficial knowledge at the time as I ignored the wider context of the situation and was commenting from a position of received wisdom as I was unaware of what a parent post mentioned regarding a widely known fact that NATO was in Ukraine providing thousands of weapons, I was not aware of that and was only commenting on the basis of "received wisdom" on a particular situation.
I have examined my bias against mainstream media and still find them completely warranted, thank you.
No, I am saying that I had not taken Russia's threat model into account. Given that threat model, Ukraine is an existential issue for them and the resolution of the uncertainty that has been in place since 2004 was just a matter of time.
It’s safe to say Ukraine is an existential threat to Putin. Russia as a nation shouldn’t care that Ukraine is democratic and integrating with Europe, except to ask why they couldn’t also.
I don't see how Ukraine being democratic is an existential threat to Putin in any meaningful way. This situation has been almost 14 years in the reckoning since April 2008.
The NATO-US acting from Ukraine possibly attempting to foment "color" revolutions in Russia, NATO missiles on Ukraine soil, an increasingly belligerent leader in Ukraine renewing the push to join NATO and NATO-US arming and training Ukraine troops. These seem to be more likely factors in the invasion.
Given that the "West" has been frothing around the mouth for his ouster (he did once ask to join NATO btw), one could conclude that "He who goes first wins" was a viable strategy for him.
Ukraine would be in substantially better straits if NATO told upfront everyone (including Ukraine and Russia) the Ukraine will not be part of NATO. The biggest country in NATO does not want to enforce no-fly zone and does not want to give planes to Ukraine. When will Ukraine wise up that they will never be part of NATO? US is bleeding Russia as much as possible, Ukrainian suffering be damned. (Putin fell head-first into the biggest geo-political trap in the last 30 years. Similar in size with Vietnam and Afganistan traps).
> The biggest country in NATO does not want to enforce no-fly zone and does not want to give planes to Ukraine.
You can replace "enforce a no-fly zone" with "declare actual war on Russia". A no-fly zone either involves striking targets in Russia and Belarus, or hands the initiative to Russia if/when an air war starts. It is a very bad idea, to put it mildly.
I guess my point was not clear. I meant to say this:
1. Ukraine will never join NATO, and NATO knew this
2. NATO encouraged Ukraine to ask for NATO integration knowing (since Dec 2021) Russia will not stand for it,
3. Russia invades Ukraine and US supports Ukraine with weapons,
4. Russia will spend money, lives, international standing, etc...;
5. US will profit (your enemy's loss is your profit);
6. Ukraine will be burned to the ground.
If NATO told Ukraine from the onset they will never join NATO steps 2 and 3 would not have happened. Which means step 6 would not have happened.
[edit - a typo in the numbers in events sequence. Sorry about that]
> Russia does not get to tell other countries they aren’t permitted to ally with each other.
Logically, no - they don’t. In the real world, it does not work that way. Hence, the US has the Monroe Doctrine. It’s also the reason why US has invaded Latin American countries and many other ones. “Might is right” is an unfair unfortunate realty in international military situations.
Americans have superpower bias. They think that every country can ally and antagonize any other country they want. When you're a buffer state, you don't have that privilege. If Mexico started talking about a military alliance with Russia, they would have some American freedom missiles delivered very shortly. Ukraine is Russia's Mexico.
It goes back way earlier than that. Russia has repeatedly expressed in no uncertain terms that Ukraine is the single one red line that they will never accept joining NATO. A very insightful article on FP on the topic:
It's totally nonsensical and does not map to Putin's writings on the essential unity of Ukraine and Russia or myriad other geographic, demographic, and resource-based practicalities of why Putin wants this war.
Please see my earlier comments for why this but-NATO! argument is the opium toked by demagogues and their acolytes.
The entire Ukraine joining NATO thing is such Russian garbage. Ukraine would not have been allowed NATO membership precisely because they have a "unresolved external territorial disputes", which is exactly why Putin invaded both Georgia and Ukraine (e.g. Crimea) in the first place. Putin wants to make another Belarus plain and simple.
Putin was going to invade in either case. He didn't invade because Ukraine was courting NATO, he invaded because things were looking up for Ukraine and Russia has been languishing for a couple decades now and he didn't want an up and coming democracy beside him, he wanted a Soviet style puppet state than he could dominate. It also gives him an excuse to push foreign countries out of Russia so he can tighten his fist around the throats of Russians even tighter and blame it on the West
I wish NATO countries would send so many antitank and antiaircraft military equipment that the Ukrainians would push back and say "hold up we have enough for now" . Why are we being so slow to send them military equipment? It's a lot cheaper now than when Russia invades a NATO country and the gloves come off.
There's much more the international community could do even without direct war. It should be possible to station troops in the West of country, thus freeing up Ukrainians to fight. If Putin wishes to attack them, than he'll be the one escalating.
It would be not too different than Idlib, which hasn't led to massive war, with the exception the government will have invited these troops.
Sure, we should act according to Putin's whims. So if Putin says 'do not help Ukraine or else' we stay. If Putin invades the Baltics, well, no ICBMs, right. If Putin nukes Ukraine we do nothing (no ICBMs right?). Can't we just surrender the world to him to stop these ICBMs?
Good thing we didn't have this attitude during the Cold War. We can help, and we should not going to listen to a non-ultimatum which hasn't been even given.
We had exactly this attitude during the cold war lol. Nato's actions here are absolutely consistent with the principles of deterrence worked out during the cold war.
There's a reason there were endless proxy wars, guerrilla trainings, and secret arms supplying back then. Neither side would risk a direct conflict with the other, so they did all that instead.
You'll notice that's the exact same toolbox they're drawing on now. They didn't invent this shit for putin.
That's basically the predicament the entire world has been in ever since the first nuke was developed. It's just that no nuclear power has quite passed a line that another nuclear power isn't willing to accept. If what you said above were to happen we're basically in uncharted territory.
I'd step out on a limb and say maybe the best move is to let the aggressors take whatever they want, nobody really knows.
Putin has been bombing in the West, but there's no Russian troop presence anywhere nearby and he wouldn't dare bomb near an actual deployment of foreign troops.
I don't doubt a lot of people think the Western forces would be invulnerable to Russian fire and suggest even setting up a no-fly zone (i.e. engaging Russian military vessels). I don't see any rational basis for this belief though. Even Ukraine itself has not declared a war with Russia, what Western country would, in your opinion?
The legal basis for presence in the Ukraine would be no different from the legal basis for Russia's presence in Syria (except this government isn't in the habit of using WMDs against its own citizens).
If Putin wants to commit suicide by being dumb, we can't stop him, but he should know an attack would end up badly (for the Russians). We can see they have difficulty with merely the regular Ukrainian army.
Well, this the question, why would it end badly for Russians?
I mean, the Twitter difficulties are definitely a thing but as far as I can tell in reality Ukraine has its cities encircled or lost, its military either hiding in the encircled cities or being ground down in cauldrons, Ukraine has not succeeded in any significant counter offense, it's out of fuel even to retreat and regroup.
And Ukraine had an army better than any EU country other than Turkey and Russia had not been waging a total war (thus the forces hiding in cities are not being burned with tactical nukes/thermobaric munitions). Russia is not Syria, it has air force and navy, great anti-air and anti-ship capabilities, military intelligence of all kinds (and nukes, of course). What is going to ensure the Western victory, angry twits? As far as I know, Twitter is banned in Russia already. More sanctions? These seem to hurt the West more than Russia at the moment and Russia has not even started turning off oil, coal and gas.
>>More sanctions? These seem to hurt the West more than Russia at the moment
Source? Because on the face of it, that sounds actually crazy. Russia has been reduced to economic rubble already. By summer, they won't be able to run their farms that operate foreign equipment, their planes can't fly anywhere but even if they could that's a moot point because very soon they won't be able to maintain them, tens of thousands of Russians are fleeing the country every day(and I can only imagine a lot of them are the best and brightest and also people with means to actually escape). It looks like the best they can hope for is for China to buy them out and that they can become a slightly better equipped North Korea 2 - a chinese vassal state.
>>Russia has not even started turning off oil, coal and gas.
I'll give them one thing - Russia has been better at sanctioning themselves than "the west" could ever hope for. Just today they announced a 10 year ban on any foreign company that doesn't return by 1st of May, in addition to the legislation that is getting rid of copyright as well as patent protection for foreign companies in the country. Why would anyone do any business with them long term.
So yeah, I absolutely expect them to destroy whatever sliver of economy they still have and actually turn off the gas. I can't wait actually.
>Russia has been reduced to economic rubble already
Sure, this is what Obama said in 2014. Since then Russia modernized its military: deployed the new MBT, 5th gen fighter, hypersonic missiles among many things (and actually used the latter in combat just recently) and waged two successful military campaigns (Syria and Ukraine). What did the Western military do in the same time? Managed to screw up the retreat from Afghanistan and the West-backed forces in Syria lost/defected. Any successes of the Western military might I had missed?
And the WH Press Secretary had been telling us that the inflation the US is suffering is caused by Putin so I am guessing it's the effect of the sanctions since I doubt very much Putin is in control of the US economy just yet (that's assuming WH is not blatantly lying and there is some link between Putin and inflation).
Maybe you missed it, but the sanctions imposed on Russia in the last two weeks are nothing like we've ever seen. The position Obama was in 2014 is not even comparable. Also, has he really actually said that? I find that hard to believe.
Are you denying Obama proclaimed Russian economy is "in tatters"? Is the current state of "being reduced to economic rubble" even worse than being "in tatters"?
I'd like to see the whole scale, please. I am curious what's next after "reduced to rubble" since that is what will be needed if the EU/US are going to fight Russia. I just hope it does not push my gas prices over 20 $/gal.
I'm not denying anything - I'm asking you for a source where he said that, because I'm genuienly not aware of him doing so.
And like I said, current economic sanctions are worse than anything we've ever used against a developed country in terms of economic punishment. So whatever image you have of Russia in 2014 - now is worse.
>>I just hope it does not push my gas prices over 20 $/gal.
One good source is his speech at the State Of The Union in January of 2015 (though he had been claiming it as soon as they imposed the sanctions in different words perhaps). I am sorry, I thought you are feigning ignorance since you seem to be speaking with authority on the sanctions effect on Russia yet appear to be ignorant of what the POTUS who imposed those sanctions had to say about their effect.
> I don't see how it would.
Figures. As I said further up thread, many people seem to be applying their ignorance to analyze a complex geopolitical situation.
The entire world is not just America you know. I'm not American so I'm not particularly aware of what your president said in 2014. America isn't the only country imposing meaningful sanctions on Russia. I don't think that's ignorance either - you probably don't know what was the Polish presidential stance in 2014 either and I wouldn't call you ignorant because of it.
And I looked up the transcript of the State of The Union address you mentioned and he does indeed say that. Thanks.
Sure I don't even know that Poland had a president. But I don't claim authority i.e. I am not saying "Russia is going to starve this summer because the mighty Polish sanctions deprive it of strategic sunflower seeds" or "Russia is going to crush Poland by sending 10M Africans through the Belarus border!". I just notice that economic claims, especially formulated in such imprecise terms as "tatters" and "rubble" seem to appear the result of political posturing and not an actual analysis of economic effects. There are no effects of the sanctions wrt the campaign in Ukraine, at least ones that I can observe, so I don't see how any hypothetical sanctions could have stopped the hypothetical future military conflict between Russia and NATO.
> Is the current state of "being reduced to economic rubble" even worse than being "in tatters"?
Probably far worse, though actual measurements will take time; also, if the sanctions are maintained equally well, given how much more comprehensive they are, it will be much harder for Russia’s economy to reconfigure and bounce back as it did post-2015.
Except the 2014 sanctions have not ended and Russia had been cutting ties with the West ever since then. New sanctions might be harder but Russia is also much less vulnerable to them.
I am sure the sanctions will hit hard people who still have ties with the West e.g. people working for the Western companies or doing business with Western companies but I don't see how this can affect Russia's military capability. Some "model" not getting paid from Instagram/OnlyFans is not going to slow down military production and deployment.
Obama did in fact say that in his 2015 SotU [0]. And he was right, while it rebounded after 2015, the Russian GDP/capita dropped almost 12% in 2014 and almost 34% in 2015.
>If Putin wishes to attack them, than he'll be the one escalating.
So you want to send boots on the ground in ukraine. Presumably you also think doing so isn't escalatory. However, you also think if some of them get killed, it's putin that's escalating? That almost sounds like "if you get hit it's your own fault"[1] logic.
The situation is closer to 1914 than 1939. And I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that the escalation that led to the first world was a colossal mistake
1914 saw large imperialist empires on both sides. There were no real "good guys" in that war, as both sides were looking to either keep and consolidate power over colonial empires (the Entente) or break up the colonial empires to get some for themselves (the Germans and Austrians).
1939 saw an ambitious despot attack democracies to brutally subjugate them. That is also what we are seeing now.
It literally started with the Austrian empire invading semi recently independant Serbia for bullshit reasons. Yes I guess we can see how russia is evil now. And when we look back at ww1 we think that the situation Was much more ambiguous with tons factors and motivations from all sides. but that's hindsight! if you go back to 100 years ago that was exactly how the french or the russians were justifying the war. "The evil Austrians were trying to subjugate our slav brothers and we need to save them". The Austrians will probably not stop at serbia, and take over the balkan. Yet, we can still see that saving the Serbs was not worth the carnage of the great war.
My point here isn't that russia will be proven right in the future.
Its that war always sounds like a good solution, or even the only solution to avoid something worse.
But we have to avoid getting into that same cycle over and over again, Especially when we are in a nuclear world.
By the way, the comparison with 1939 Germany is completely spurious imo. Germany did not attack Poland because it was a democracy, had already purged it's own Jewish population, had started gassing the disabled and mentally ill, had already eaten 2 medium-sized countries in a year, was in an offensive pact with italy, openly planned to engage in ethnic cleansing...
If you think that is comparable to the current situation then all nuance has been lost and all wars are comparable to ww2. That ww2 was morally unambiguous makes it very convenient to use and project ourselves as the equivalent of the allies in 1939 and call for military action while the opposite is true for the first war. But the comparison is still baseless beyond the war rhetoric
It's not quite like that though. In Ukraine Putin's already lost 466 tanks, 95 planes, 5 generals, a few thousand troops depending on how you define that one and so on. And that's in three weeks - not sure how long they can keep it up. Also the west seems to be increasing support a bit - I think there are better surface to air missiles and switchblades on the way.
We may be a week or two from "culmination point" when the strength of the Ukrainian forces exceeds that of the Russian ones.
And then those other countries are NATO and attacking them would be quite a different kettle of fish. Those truck convoys probably would have been smoking ruins within a day if NATO air forces had had a go.
You are high on twitter propaganda. Loses are meaningless to Putin as long as objectives are completed. Mariupol is done, surrounded and in ruins. Messages showed up suggesting Russians started sending people to gulags/concentration camps https://twitter.com/timesobs1/status/1505258913398235145
My country is next on the list together with other Baltic nations. This current inaction is identical to start of WW2 with everyone paranoid about their own nose and "unnecessary escalation". We have maybe 2-3 weeks to sent troops into UKR before its too late. If we dont help Ukraine its a sign NATO wont intervene beyond sending arms and "stay strong" prayers when our time comes. Another Yalta is on the table, after all why should we risk Nuclear war if Putin gives us a word he will stop at German border, right? :(
The realpolitik of the modern world is that you can't mess too much with any nuclear nation, no matter how much it sucks. All you can do is get your own nukes and make the red lines very clear, and cut off trading and diplomatic ties to the extent it won't be treated as a declaration of war. Unfortunately, the decision of x vs. total nuclear annihilation is very heavily weighed towards x, no matter what that x may be.
I'm starting to feel that our sense of morality is not well adapted to a world where a despot can end civilization with the push of a button.
Looking at these photos, I think we (NATO) should intervene with troops and air support. For all the cries of "never again", we just sit on our hands and watch a Hitler like dictator destroy a neighboring country in a territorial war. Its clear Russia's army is a paper tiger, and I doubt Putin has the balls to use nukes.
Hitler is reviled for the Holocaust, not merely invading another country in a war of conquest.
This whole situation is depressing and frustrating all around, but I don’t think anyone is being hypocritical.
War of conquest became taboo after WW2, written down in the UN chapter. The concept of "crimes against peace" itself was ironically invented by Soviets.
I was specifically referring to Hitler's territorial expansion prior to WWII.
Putin's expansion into Crimea and Ukraine reminds me very much of Hitler's expansion into Austria and Czechoslovakia. Its my firm belief that we're at the "Peace in our time" phase, just before WWIII, and it would be better to nip it in the bud and take action now, rather than 2 years from now, when Putin has had more time to prepare, and he attempts to invade a country that we are obligated by treaty to defend.
Russia is not the USSR of old or Germany in the 30s. It's not a great economic power with an independent industrial base. Right now, Putin is throwing in all the conventional forces he can spare, but Ukraine – a smaller and poorer country - has managed to stop the attack with some material support from the West.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has not been idle. Europe is increasing military spending significantly. Unprecedented sanctions are in place, and their purpose is to destroy Russian economy and cut their access to many key technologies. If the sanctions remain in place, a large part of the Russian losses in Ukraine will be permanent.
We might well be in 1939, when hitler had not yet done the holocaust. The comparison seems fair to me. Who knows what Putin would be capable of if he kept on going full tyrant for another 3 years…
The allies fought Germany because they had no choice - the Nazis basically declared war on the world. Yet the Holocaust is very much a post-facto justification. At the time, the allies did nothing to impede the Holocaust, and it played very little part in their justifications (just watch 'Why we fight' and check where it's mentioned - nowhere).
Only after WW2 the allies decided to remember the Holocaust existed, and justice still played a second fiddle to interests.
Hitler was reviled for everything he did, not just the Holocaust. The Allies didn't even know about the true extent of the Holocaust until they started liberating concentration camps in 1945.
It's one thing to shoot down a russian jet that was allegedly flying into turkish airspace (despite the kremlin claiming otherwise). It's a whole other thing to declare a no-fly zone above ukraine and actively shooting down jets.
Why Turkey can defend its airspace and Ukraine can't do the same together with its international partners, in a manner similar to EU airspace protection for example?
You're not arguing against an impartial observer. You're arguing against putin. You seriously think that putin is going to be persuaded by this type of lawyering? I think even to a layperson it's fairly obvious that the two represents two very different actions, and very different levels of escalation when it comes to their relations.
The main practical concern here is just that russia can launch planes and missiles from inside russia. If you want them to stop you're going to have to bomb some airbases.
Or you're going to honor the border I guess? Are they free to bomb civilians as long as it launches from their side? Even the best planes will get shot down if you give the other side enough chances, is nato going to allow that? Anyway where even is the border at 50k feet? How many conflicts have started because a pilot accidentally entered another country's airspace? Or at least that the other country claimed they had.
He is rational, just misinformed. Dude is scared shitless of losing and he knows he can’t win this game. He will pretend he’s willing to though, because it works.
Maybe, though it is still to be seen. One of the more "interesting" sub-games in the bigger war is how much support NATO is willing to give to Ukraine. The English sending MANPADS is apparently fine, even though Russia said beforehand that they would regard the delivery of weapons an act of war. The Polish jets were a step too far. USA sending over drones (sorry, "loitering munitions") and anti tank weapons is apparently still OK.
The same logic that works against the West has also been working against Putin: "what are you going to do about it; escalate into WW3?"
The problem with the Polish jets was apparently that they planned to fuel and load them from a German airbase. It wouldn't really matter that the planes only were flown by Ukraine pilots. The German airbase would still be a legitime military target.
And then NATO would have to respond when cruise missiles started flying into some of their member states.
The significance was that they needed to be based in a NATO country, and not in Ukraine. I agree that it wouldn’t make much of a difference if it was Poland or Germany.
The problem with the jets is that everyone involved thinks that they are a bad idea whose military utility isn't worth the degree of provocation no matter what route they are supplies through, but no one wanting to be the country to say no to Ukraine about it; all the maneuvering was about countries making it so someone else would have to be the one to say no.
The US finally said no to the specific plan, and put forth the general rationale for the more general no when it did so.
(OTOH, the tolerance for acts that might be seen as provocation by Russia among NATO countries—at least those on the Eastern flank—is going up rapidly, with Estonia and Lithuania calling for a NATO-enforces No Fly Zone, and Poland hold-my-beering them and calling for a NATO peacekeeping force in Ukraine.)
Except US was the initiator of the whole idea with Blinken doing press rounds for over a week telling everyone how he negotiated this deal with Polish gov.
AFAIK it was an American base in Germany. Americans were ok with Poland donating their planes to Ukraine, but not ok with Poland donating their planes to the US to donate to Ukraine.
Yes, because of a simple reason - NATO will only defend its members if they didn't "provoke" the other side to attack. Poland is in a far too precarious position to risk anything that could be read as provoking Russia and therefore losing the protection of NATO - Putin would happily take Poland next after Ukraine. Giving the jets to US and then US giving them to Ukraine would avoid that particular issue, but US decided against it.
The problem with Polish MIGs was deferring the decisions entirely into US hands and exposing all talk and no will, at least when no profits are to be made by US arms manufacturers /1. All of a sudden something "obvious and imminent" became "complicated and untenable".
/1 Of the declared $800mil Anti armor launchers account for ~$400mil, then the other $400mil pays for some small arms, personal armor, ammo and 100 drones? Its pure mil complex walfare program.
>The same logic that works against the West has also been working against Putin: "what are you going to do about it; escalate into WW3?"
It's not so much that putin doesn't have the balls to escalate into WW3, it's that supplying weapons isn't considered very escalatory (for all sides involved), so putin is more likely to let it slide rather than escalate himself. It's not something that can universally extended (eg. to no fly zone or boots on the ground).
> It's not so much that putin doesn't have the balls to escalate into WW3, it's that supplying weapons isn't considered very escalatory
It wasn't seen as too likely to effect the conflict, but as the conflict drags out it becomes a greater irritant. Russia is recently openly threatening to attack “supply lines” of those arms if they continue; since anything in Ukraine is already clearly subject to attack this at least implicitly is a threat to potentially attack convoys and logistics points outside of Ukraine.
Gladly its not you to decide that, as sad as the situation is. And also as sad as it is, the Hitler comparison is still inappropriate in both directions, please refrain for dignity.
I think OP is referring to 1939 Hitler, i.e. invaded countries and clearly doesn’t care about killing civilians, but before the Holocaust. It’s clear from the last couple of weeks that Putin doesn’t even flinch at the thought of killing thousands of innocent civilians just to satisfy his own twisted reality.
Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and the international community did essentially nothing about it. It both emboldened him for further invasions, and provided him a huge manufacturing power to pump out tanks and armaments. If the international community said "Hell no, we're defending Czechoslovakia on principle because that invasion is BS", they would have fought a much weaker Germany and very likely prevented WWII (or at least one nearly as bad). Frankly I don't see how you can argue that's not an extremely apt comparison.
"Balls" have little to do with it. It looks to me like the invasion of Ukraine was the act of a desperate old man whose time is running out to achieve his ambitions, and a mistake based on wishful thinking rather than a sober assessment of relative military capability and popular sentiment of the two countries. This is not a man you can trust to be rational. We should assume he will continue to act out of pride and delusion. If he thinks he doesn't have anything left to lose, we should assume nukes are on the table.
Unfortunately with that logic then we will never push back against Russia. Putin invades Poland? “Oh we shouldn’t attack because Putin is irrational and might use Nukes, we’ll try appeasement first.” This interview with exiled Russian M. Khodorkovski (who used to be the richest guy in Russia until Putin jailed him for 10 years) is pretty convincing that this fear makes the “West” look weak to Putin and he’ll keep pushing until he’s stopped. https://youtu.be/OX6ISz0FotU
Poland is a NATO member, so invading it would trigger a really massive response of all treaty members to which NATO has been preparing since 1970s at least.
Ukraine is being beaten exactly because it is not a NATO member, but actively considered to become one.
Yep. If we had any justification for military intervention in Ukraine, they wouldn't have been invaded in the first place. We kind of just have to hope this damages Putin's and/or Russia's power enough that they don't do it again. Signs are not entirely unfavorable on that front.
Exactly, but then why doesn’t NATO just start a massive response now to save the lives of potentially tens of thousands of Ukrainians that may die in the next few weeks?
Just to write down a thought that nobody likes to express--maybe the best move is to let a nuclear aggressor take whatever they want. I think in retrospect it might seem like the best move if things take a turn for the worse.
If you are at an ATM at night and somebody draws gun on you and says "Your money or your life." Do you (a) not take them seriously and argue about how theft is immoral on principle (b) scream and yell hoping to attract attention (c) give up some money to live another day?
Sometimes stupidly standing on principle or not taking your counter party seriously can be very costly.
In Sun Tzu's art of war where does it say to become so immersed in your own propaganda that you ignore reality?
in this case "stupidly standing on principle" it's trying to keep Ukraine as sovereign state and not be absorbed to be part of Russia. The costs are high, but independence wars are rarely cheap
Dude you outed yourself when you referred to Ukraine as Russia's "home turf". I guess I shouldn't point this out so I don't help, but, you're being way too obvious to be effective, unless this is actually some kind of pro-Ukraine reverse-troll designed to get us to respond to you with anti-Russian posts (in which case, you're doing fine, I suppose).
[EDIT] oh and this:
> What I find perplexing is how our leadership class in Washington could be so dumb to pick a fight with no possible upside.
Even if the rest of your post was entirely serious and even if all the other points were valid, this is nuts. If the West did force this war on purpose, holy shit has it ever been the greatest victory for cynical realpolitik ever. Russia's decline has been accelerated by a couple decades, at least. No possible upside? In what universe?
How has Russia's decline been accelerated by Washington stupidity? In what dimension? On Twitter or CNN?
Let me know when NATO is marching across Siberia.
Because in the real world what matters is real resources.
I am sure Russia has its own problems but the idea that Washington/London is the eternal capital of a world empire and that China and India and the Gulf Arabs and the former European colonies in Africa will just roll over to go against their own interests to support the almighty paper dollar seems ridiculous to me.
> I am sure Russia has its own problems but the idea that Washington/London is the eternal capital of a world empire and that China and India and the Gulf Arabs and the former European colonies in Africa will just roll over to go against their own interests to support the almighty paper dollar seems ridiculous to me.
Oh, of course not. The future is probably Chinese and African (largely Nigerian). Maybe Indian. Only way the back half of this century isn't the beginning of another long stretch of Chinese dominance is if they totally fuck it up.
What kind of outcome can you think of where Russia's economy isn't pushed back at least 30 years?
Fighting wars over natural resources haven't made sense in more than hundred years. They are such small part of the global economy, and the cost of land grabs and long term occupation is way too expensive.
So NATO doesn't need to march across Siberia. If there isn't a regime change, Russia is going to end up like North Korea. Isolated, desperately poor, and except that they have some nukes, ignored and irrelevant.
> If the West did force this war on purpose, holy shit has it ever been the greatest victory for cynical realpolitik ever.
There's a huge middle ground that consists of various levels unnecessary antagonization and dismissal of the associated risks. We have to be able to criticize the choices and policies that pushed us in this direction without facing a blanket assumption that we are endorsing or trying to justify Putin's actions.
Oh, there's definitely room to analyze and criticize the broader moves and policies that've been made by the "West" here. No doubt. And I doubt anyone imagined this particular outcome.
When someone with a gun asks for the content of your wallet, you give it to them, and make sure you aren't unarmed next time you meet. When someone is trying to drag you away to enslave or rape you, you fight with everything you got.
Even if some of your arguments are valid, this war should have been fought between two armies. Right now the might of Russian war machine is solely concentrated on civilians, any validity of this war has evaporated.
Why would Russia be attacked by Ukraine or West? That's paranoia. We wanted to trade, not fight, and we really tried, many times over. For some time, Russia was deemed an ally, until the Russian government turned imperialistic.
Anglo-America has always been imperialistic. It still thinks it can dictate terms unilaterally. Eventually billions of people will wake up and realise there is no particular reason why they deserve a lesser standard of living than 300-400 million or perhaps a billion westerners. In fact that is happening right now, evidenced by India and China aligning with Russia against US/UK. Anyway time will tell if it all ends an Soviet style implosion or a big bang but lies can't last forever.
The purpose of History is not to assign blame for current wrongs based on past wrongs. The purpose of History is to not repeat past mistakes.
I'm not saying that America's hands are clean, but dude, you need to focus on the situation of today, and you need to direct your anger and frustration in the right place. Don't transpose past wrongs to the present, or current but irrelevant wrongs to the situation in Ukraine.
Your ideas are extremely loosely connected to current events, and your perspective is unproductive, or "academic" at best.
Russian independence was already secured by nuclear weapons. Russia’s war in Ukraine is obviously a war of aggression, not to mention a foolish miscalculation.
There's Russian tanks rolling everywhere in Ukrains and civilians getting bombed and the only think you can talk about are ... the americans. That's some pretty deep obsession right there...
> Has any common French or German who now stand to experience higher prices and economic disruption.
I can answer that, the country will live on, we're not the ones getting bombed. price increases are very small compared to what the Ukrainians have to pay to fight for their country. Solidarity will work.
Russians will be deemed worse than ISIS for history books. All the suffering they caused to their neighbors, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia. Millions of refugees, hundreds of thousands killed, families destroyed, hopes and dreams perished - all for Russian people imperialist ideology.
I hope to some day see Russian federation dissolved into it's federal states.
You know the west is weak when we're thinking about reconciliation when they're still bombing civilians. Do you think Russians are stopping to think whether killing pregnant women is bad for reconciliation?
> "...Ukrainian television and radio were cut, and car stereos became the only link to the outside world. They played Russian news, describing a world that couldn’t be further from the reality in Mariupol."
As much as the whole world wants to believe that the people of the Russian Federation are uninformed, or disallowed the information, and disinformed by the propaganda...the grim reality seems that they rather need to believe that propaganda, because it seemingly absolves them of the resposibility for these atrocities
The simple folks of Russia are very much familiar with the horrors and the scale of such war atrocities as from the vast WW2 history, just as from Grozny and Aleppo times. They get how cruel and mindless this is. Just they cannot admit to themselves and their children that this time they are the aggressor side.
It must be the same kind of "fear of blame" that is not that different from decades of Stalin's rule. For many citizens of the Russian Federation, it's the only place to live their lives, there's no exit, not much choice for change. The fear has simply transformed the reality, just as it has done it in times before...
I have no hopes that these folks would suddenly "wake up to truth". Nor that they would attain to any collective remorse for this. Perhaps this fear could only be supplanted by their personal grief.
The Russian country seems to have turned into a Federation of Fear - the main product that its rulers now want to export to the rest of the world. It's the grief that the world is already harvesting.
It's no use to blame Putin's subjects for all this. They did not push for this war. They were as surprised as anyone from the invasion, but of course they will support their army now because they have spent a decade learning to hate the west and blame it for every evil[1].
But putin also calculated (correctly) that the west wouldn't react strongly , like it didnt react with syria, georgia, karabakh, libya. Invading weak countries to make a victory lap is how he legitimizes himself to his subjects and to the nearby dictators (like aliyev). This was made worse by watching how afghanistan ended, and how the US is quickly shifting to the Pacific. The US needs to set a red line to stop him, that is the only thing that delegitimizes him
I've been text messaging with random Russians a bunch over the last couple weeks and have had conversations with ~100 people, some of them quite extensive. Not once has anyone really condemned the war. A few are cynical about their government, people, and the rest of the world, and sad that this has to happen. But the vast majority weren't even that. Just straight up nationalist, repeatedly saying that they had to do something or they would be destroyed by the west. And insisting that Ukraine belonged to Russia. Absolutely no-one denied the facts as far as the toll on human life or the destruction of Ukraine, and not a single person thought its a "special operation" instead of a war. I heard a lot of what seems to me to be extreme paranoia about NATO, America, and Nazis just waiting for an opportunity to invade and destroy them.
The whole experience has been kind of shocking to me. I went into this believing that Russians where like innocent captives of evil politicians and oligarchs and had no idea what was going on. But based on the conversations I've had, that is not the case at all. They know exactly what is going on as far as the cost in human lives, and believe it's necessary to ensure their own survival.
I haven't really talked to anyone who's contested the fact that thousands of Russian soldiers and Russian speaking Ukrainian civilians have been killed.
I think you need to watch this one[0], it's an explanation of what you are seeing. In general, that is the propaganda doing it's job. It's similar to all countries, we all have our propaganda and our view of our situation in the world. Russias is the classical "It's us against them! And we are surrounded by our enemies!". I'm sure North Korea is about the same only worse.
You know, if I lived in Russia right now, and some random person I never heard of started texting me and talking about the war, I'd at least have to consider the possibility that they were FSB, and guard my words accordingly.
Not saying that all the people you texted thought that way, but I'm not sure you can reach a definitive conclusion based on your experiment.
Yes, of course it's likely there are some who oppose the war but are uneasy about expressing that to a stranger. I was just surprised to get no support at all.
This is a great point! Without verifying the entity on the other end of the line and the risk that my words could be used against me—and my loved ones—I’d toe the line and parrot back the official position of the corrupt gov’t. What’s the upside to speak out with some random SMS?
> ...They know exactly what is going on as far as the cost in human lives, and believe it's necessary to ensure their own survival.
Given the propaganda and the extensive coverups by govt, it's not really clear what exactly the people know in terms of counts, but for sure the scale of the war is hard to cover up by now.
However, knowing the actual facts is rather irrelevant for them. The pervious decades of "raising from their knees" in fact gave even more rise to the cynicism - another product of the "developed socialism".
Thus lots of educated citizens of Russia would readily accept and justify any form of twisted falsehood as a given, kind of rules of engagement for their daily act of survival.
Sadly, similar cyncism seems to have its place in lives of may people from the former Soviet republics, Ukraine included. Just in Ukraine, there happened to be a practical succession of government and presidents. This has been powering a hope for changes, better future, access to Europe. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation got clearly stuck "in-progress", same as Belarus, and the Central Asian republics. Sans alternative.
How does one reconcile with such a reality? Well, if unable to leave, then adopting some cynical attitude to anything may perhaps become a choice.
UN should just demand from Russian system of power that they delivered suspected war criminal mr Putin to Hague if they want to have any hope of Russia rejoining global economy any time soon.
> UN should just demand from Russian system of power that they delivered suspected war criminal mr Putin
I don't know if your proposal was supposed to be realistic, but it is just idealistically naive at best. Putin is the Russian system of power. Unless you believe that he is going to willingly turn himself in as soon as the UN makes that demand, I don't see any good coming out of such demand by the UN.
Also, don't forget that Russia is one of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, and there is nothing stopping them from vetoing any such statement from being made in the first place (which is one of the major perks of being the permanent member).
No, he's not. Every dictator rules only because there are people close to him who benefit from his rule. Every dictator can be replaced at any moment if people who enable him deem him bad for business.
And that's the case with Russia. I think oligarchs would take him down if they got offered clear road forward from current troubles (if they believed it).
Russia is a member of security council but nothing stops the rest of the world from physically not registering Russia's veto. Or not even letting Russia representative into the room where the issue is decided.
Rulebook has been thrown away by Russia. There's not point of respecting anything about it.
> I think oligarchs would take him down if they got offered clear road forward from current troubles (if they believed it).
They can't, in the 90s oliagarchs had power, not now. With Putin only his silovik cronies can do anything about him, but they won't because the system is set up so that their families would suffer from the hands of his other friends. I see this as completely lost. North Korea has a bigger chance to get a new ruler after the coup than Russia. Putin has more power than a Tsar ever had.
Does anyone else have a problem with the phrase "war's toll"? It sounds like it's uttered by a tight-lipped posh British man talking over grainy black-and-white footage. Can we call it "Human beings choosing to just fucking outright murder innocent civilians for no fucking reason ...'s toll"? These are humans who have decided to commit war crimes and what is essentially genocide. It's not like "oh, man, war just happens, and it really sucks for the people it happens to." No, war doesn't just happen randomly -- these humans are choosing to do this. It's not "war's toll". It's murder.
I completely agree with you. Many small wars that happened since world war II caused the journalist to develop sort of usual war reporing routine and language.
And they are applying by default the same routine to this teritorial invasion of 40mln pro-european country and very probable start of world war 3. It's infuriating that this language muddles the uniqueness of this event and lulls so many people into the sense of safe familiarity.
It's not the war that your dad's war was in some remote country 'sadly tragic'.
With each humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, the US comes that much closer to intervening in a direct way. Neither Ukraine nor Russia will capitulate, they're too evenly matched conventionally. So there will be many, many of these events happening in the future.
Already the leadership of certain NATO countries are calling for a no fly zone, and transfer of various weapons systems. It's a simple exercise to ask yourself what humanitarian disaster would be so egregious that the US would be forced to act because if it did not NATO itself would fracture, with newly-added former Soviet republics and eastern block countries acting on their own.
That event is not very far away. Mariupol is a disaster, but it's one that none of us can influence. We can, however, take steps now for the inevitable arrival of exchange of fire between US and Russian forces.
I'm happy to ratchet down that stand, but until something happens with clear de-escalatory potential, the base case needs to be direct US-Russia confrontation and likely nuclear escalation.
Edit: the split in NATO could come quite quickly. A low-yield nuclear first strike by a cornered Russia into Ukraine would put the entire immediate vicinity (the Baltic states, Poland, etc.) on alert that they're next on the list. The pressure on local politicians to act first and receive reprimand from NATO later could be irresistible. The US's "ironclad" commitment to Article 5 does the rest.
Im honestly surprised they have not intervened directly let. The US invaded Iraq for less. Here is a democratic country needlessly invaded, with obvious civilians being targeted and killed. I think the US politicians are too old and still fear their memories of the cold war. War is hell but not helping is merciless.
The argument was and still is that by "helping" you'd actually cause more devastation(or, at worst - start a nuclear exchange between superpowers).
But like OP said, there has to be a threshold, an attrocity so bad that NATO will be forced to intervene. I personally think seeing 18 month old babies killed by shrapnel is enough - but I'm not in charge of the policy(for better or worse).
Regardless of helping or not helping there will be more devastation, that is unavoidable at this point. Will the world let one person terrorize an entire region and neighboring countries? If US does not intervene in means Putin has won, and can have all of the old soviet states back, the US is too scared to get its hands dirty again. Of course there is massive risk, but we are beyond that point. Without intervention you let Russia expand, rebuild and have the same risk of nuclear war as before, just with a bigger bully. If this invasion was justified in any manner I would feel different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5YgJx8VGRA is a pretty good one, actually. It's in the form of a joke, but the fact that it got a laugh conveys a sort of shared knowledge they were pulling a fast one over the public.
ETA: If you're asking for more "straight news" types of sources, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/iraq-war-... is a pretty neutral and objective retrospective, relying heavily on a Senate Intelligence Committee report that was approved on a bipartisan basis.
> Is there a fine line between hyping the evidence and lying about it? It’s too fuzzy for the Pinocchio Test, as it also falls in the realm of opinion.
Are you saying that lying (to incite a war and perform an invasion) in a manner other than overt and blatant is not really lying, but just a metter of opinion?
> There is a myth about the war that I have been meaning to set straight for years. After no WMDs were found, the left claimed ‘Bush lied. People died.’ This accusation itself is a lie. It’s time to put it to rest.”
If they lied it's not provable. Your claim is opinion not fact.
You perfectly demonstrate what's wrong with American morality. You, as a smart person can't possibly believe, that everybody in the intelligence chain honestly believed that Iraq has WMD. At some level someone conciously created erroneous interpretation of phsyical evindence, someone conciously oversold their case, someone choose not to doubt what the information seems to indicate. Because it was so goddamn convenient to everybody.
And now you state that it all doesn't matter because it's not provable. That the killer didn't kill because he was careful enough to leave no clear evidence only circumstantial.
US in the Iraq was OJ of nations. And Americans are fine with that. Fine with pretending to believe that US didn't invade Iraq just because it wanted to. Not because they honestly believed there were WMDs there.
The same dumb "you can't prove anything therefore I'm blameless' shows up everywhere in US. In courts, in government offices, in corporations. In underlies troubles in so many dysfunctional systems of USA.
Can you cite any of the reasons that led them to think Iraq had WMDs? Any of the documents they used?
Because this is pretty easy to search
>In December 2002, Bush declared, "We do not know whether or not [Iraq] has a nuclear weapon." That was not what the National Intelligence Estimate said. As Tenet would later testify, "We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009." Bush did know whether or not Iraq had a nuclear weapon — and lied and said he didn’t know to hype the threat.
>On CNN in September 2002, Condoleezza Rice claimed that aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." This was precisely the opposite of what nuclear experts at the Energy Department were saying; they argue that not only was it very possible the tubes were for nonnuclear purposes but that it was very likely they were too
>In August 2002, Dick Cheney declared, "Simply stated, there's no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." But as Corn notes, at that time there was "no confirmed intelligence at this point establishing that Saddam had revived a major WMD operation." Gen. Anthony Zinni, who had heard the same intelligence and attended Cheney’s speech, would later say in a documentary, "It was a total shock. I couldn't believe the vice president was saying this, you know?
The americans lied and it led to a million lost lives and ruined the future of an entire generation. I guess it's different from the current situation and no one actually cares but I think it's important to not forget how vile the 2003 invasion was. Yes we don't have to bring it up (I didnt) in every conversation but we don't have to whitewash the events either
- Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.
- We are not detecting portions of these weapons programs.
- Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons and missiles.
- Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material."
There are much more examples. There is a lot of conflicting information as well. All I'm saying is that it's difficult to prove that they lied. My recent assertion tends to be that they made a bad judgement call with bad intelligence.
Why doesn’t Putin just have his army start on the east end of Ukraine and proceed west, killing every single person and destroying every piece of infrastructure in their way?
Anything up to (and perhaps including) that point clearly won’t result in direct intervention, whether due to the fear of nuclear holocaust or for other reasons.
So then why not? If he needs to win at all costs, and he doesn’t care about anything but power, what is holding him back?
Is it because he wants to occupy Ukraine and get its people to contribute to his GDP and their resources to sell? Russia is already devastating Ukraine to such a degree that there will be constant guerrilla fighting as an occupied state and it will take substantial investment to rebuild industry. Russia doesn’t seem to have the people or resources for a long term occupation.
Because there are escalations that can still happen besides direct intervention? The US and EU could do more, but not that much more. China is the only one that can really put the heat on at this point, and they probably do have a limit at which they would.
Or is it because he can’t? Even with the total commitment of all of Russia’s resources, can they not utterly annihilate Ukraine? That seems unlikely (although the cost seems to be far greater than previously believed), although it may require nuclear escalation.
So it seems to me like we’re in a waiting game for Russia’s other trade partners (mostly China) to drop severe sanctions, or for Russia to escalate to nuclear conflict and let that genie out of the bottle, or for Russia to bow out due to lack of resources or regime change.
I think of those options, the most likely is that Russia continues throwing bodies into the Ukrainian meat grinder until they can finally claim a pyrrhic victory. I can’t imagine NATO intervening, no matter how terrible the events, when nukes are on the table.
Another option is Russia coerces Ukraine into accepting the 3 things [1] Russia asked. It can happen. It will be interesting what will the West do if this happens.
[1] the three things are:
1. No NATO integration
2. Recognize Crimea as part of Russia
3. Recognize the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Ukraine already conceded first item. In time they may concede the rest. [edit - formatting. Sorry, I am new to HN so I do not know how editing works very well.]
One of the Ukrainian Twitter feeds I look at lists Russian soldiers Social Media and small town newspaper articles. Its depressing on their side seeing young kids and young fathers coming out of these small rural towns and dying in the army. https://twitter.com/666_mancer. Its interesting to see the translated Russian comments as well.
I understand Russian and have heard interviews from those who evacuated Mariupol. Many are saying Azov isn't letting them leave. A lot of those who evacuated were saved by Russian soldiers under fire from Ukraine. Unfortunately most of this content isn't available to English speaking audiences. I noticed the AP press article above doesn't even mention Azov Battalion which is defending the city. For example, they said the roads are full of mines, but didn't say who placed the mines. How do you have a report about a war in a city without mentioning the defending army? Only mention of a Ukrainian soldier was when one pleaded to people to stop looting. The article also shows a tank blasting an apartment building. I watched another video that showed Russian/Chechen troops fighting Ukrainian soldiers in the top floor of an apartment building in Mariupol. People who lived there were in the basement. In other words, the defending army takes positions on the top floor of these buildings with people huddled in the basement.
This is a complete disaster and we need to give voices to the people who live there. This is a horrendous situation for the people in Mariupol and the people there deserve good reporting. It's clear both sides have blood on their hands and Urban warfare is the worst kind. It should never have led to this.
EDIT2: I want to be very clear I am not defending Russia. I do not support this war. I am criticizing the poor reporting and that the truth of what is happening is complex.
What's even more confusing is when they thank the Russian soldiers. Probably because some percentage of people in Mariupol are pro-russia and some percentage are pro-ukraine. Once you understand this, it becomes less confusing.
271 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 275 ms ] threadYou realize that due process isn't something that's reserved for US citizens, right?
> These are Putin's economic hitmen. Fuck them.
Note that I objected to the lack of due processes, not to seizing their assets. Until they have been granted due process, they're merely accused of being "Putin's economic hitmen".
People are dying every day -- obviously lawsuits and criminal trials take years in complex cases. A lot more people would be dead by then. Our goal in the immediate term is to stop the war. One of the strongest non-kinetic tools we have for that is these sanctions.
When the war ends, then we can figure out due process... for these guys hundred million dollar yachts. I'm sure they can live without a cruise to a resort island in the mean time while we try to save lives in Mariupol.
OP isn't talking about freezing the funds, OP is literally asking for the funds to be redistributed right now.
Since it will be governments (maybe) seizing those assets and not members of HN - would that be sufficient to not horrify you?
I'm not arabic/muslim so the chances of me being targeted by anti-terror regulation is probably fairly low. Yet, I'm still against them. This comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...#Text
And bypassing due process is also authoritarian. It might be in service of an anti-authoritarian goal, but that just gives me "the world must learn of our peaceful ways, by force" vibes.
No it is not, and even if it were, it's decidedly not the brand of authoritarianism that was being warned about in the poem.
Your entire argument seems to hinge on this idea that heretofore unspecified "due process" (what process is due, you haven't suggested) has been violated.
Yet as far as I'm aware, all appropriate processes and procedures were followed by our elected representatives in the course of levying sanctions against foreign nationals. Please point out where any process that was so due was circumvented. What exactly is the due process being violated?
To understand how sanctioning foreign nationals is not authoritarianism, consider the process by which the sanctions came to be. We came together in November of 2020 to elect a new government, entrusted with among other duties, the task of executing a foreign policy. That foreign policy is being executed now, which involves seizing assets of foreign individuals engaged in waging war against an ally. The seizing of assets is done under law, which was written and passed by our elected representatives, and signed into law buy our elected head of state. If at any point in time we deem their actions unfit to represent us, we are able to elect a new government to replace them. This is not authoritarianism. Calling this process authoritarian gives Putin a pass, because it's not at all like what happens in Russia.
I'm sorry you feel like some Russian billionaire's "due process" was violated, but that's simply not the case, and even if it were that is not "authoritarian". Not every bit of government overreach is "authoritarianism".
> that just gives me "the world must learn of our peaceful ways, by force" vibes.
I'm sorry, but as a point of fact it's government force that is used to preserve and enforce property rights. How do you think private property remains private if not for the government's monopoly to arrest and imprison? Peace and goodwill toward men is not keeping the property of Russian oligarchs private -- it's the threat of imprisonment for violating them.
My advice to you is if you're really worried about the issue of civil asset forfeiture, this is not the right context to argue against it. Billionaire Russian oligarchs are not a sympathetic group to champion, and it's really in poor taste in the moment. Your effort is better spent fighting concrete injustices faced by ordinary Americans, rather than making dozens of posts on HN defending... Russian oligarchs engaged in a war of aggression.
You realize that sanctions =/= expropriation, and we were talking about expropriation?
>I'm sorry, but as a point of fact it's government force that is used to preserve and enforce property rights. How do you think private property remains private if not for the government's monopoly to arrest and imprison? Peace and goodwill toward men is not keeping the property of Russian oligarchs private -- it's the threat of imprisonment for violating them.
I'm not against "force" here, I'm against invoking authoritarian policies to fight authoritarianism. If there are some anti-due process terrorists running around, and the government decides respond by sending them to gulags/gitmo without trial, they shouldn't get to claim the moral high ground. At the very least, the irony shouldn't be lost on them.
>My advice to you is if you're really worried about the issue of civil asset forfeiture, this is not the right context to argue against it. Billionaire Russian oligarchs are not a sympathetic group to champion, and it's really in poor taste in the moment. Your effort is better spent fighting concrete injustices faced by ordinary Americans, rather than making dozens of posts on HN defending... Russian oligarchs engaged in a war of aggression.
Yeah, but the whole point of due process is to protect the unsympathetic. If they're sympathetic they can at least try to win in the court of public opinion. For the unsympathetic, due process is literally all they have.
Reactions to war a blunt like this. It could have been avoided only by Russia.
It's quite literally bypassing due process, unless I'm misunderstanding something here.
1. Will there be a trial? The fact that the assets were seized without trial, and that no suggestions of a trial be held suggests that OP (and most people here) are not advocating for trials. If that's the case, I have a hard time understanding how that could be considered "due process".
2. what crimes did the oligarchs actually commit? when was "being a russian oligarch" criminalized? there were russian sanctions that were passed, but those do not give the government authority to expropriate assets
3. any laws passed to expropriate assets sound suspiciously like bill of attainder, which would be banned by the constitution. At best it would allow you to expropriate assets of people who still have connections to putin/russia or whatever.
That both involve a skip of some civil liberties is hardly a meaningful similarity
They certainly weren't considered "innocent" back in the day, at least according to some of the newspaper editorials.
>A Los Angeles Times editorial dated February 28, 1942, stated that:
>As to a considerable number of Japanese, no matter where born, there is unfortunately no doubt whatever. They are for Japan; they will aid Japan in every way possible by espionage, sabotage and other activity; and they need to be restrained for the safety of California and the United States. And since there is no sure test for loyalty to the United States, all must be restrained. Those truly loyal will understand and make no objection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
>The behavior of Shintani and the Haradas was included in an official Navy report dated January 26, 1942. The report's author Navy Lieutenant C. B. Baldwin wrote: "The fact that the two Niʻihau Japanese who had previously shown no anti-American tendencies went to the aid of the pilot when Japanese domination of the island seemed possible, indicate[s] [the] likelihood that Japanese residents previously believed loyal to the United States may aid Japan if further Japanese attacks appear successful."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident
I'm OK living in a world where elites might have higher risks of having their property rights violated during crisis times.
If you're approaching this from a consequentialist perspective, would you also be for preemptively seizing billionaire's assets the moment they're accused of kicking a puppy or whatever? After all, it's "also not a huge grievance in the grand scheme of things, so it's not really a thorny ethical problem".
>I'm OK living in a world where elites might have higher risks of having their property rights violated during crisis times.
Sounds great in theory until one day you're declared an elite[1]. Apparently 16% of peasants were considered kulaks in 1912, although the definition was later changed by the Bolsheviks so I'm not sure how much % actually got persecuted. Regardless I'd say the typical HN reader is at a risk of being considered a kulak.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak#Dekulakization
As Dan Carlin said, what's terrible about authoritarian countries is that fighting them forces you to act like them. If we set ourselves boundaries only we follow, we're doomed to lose.
Following the regular process just gives an advantage to the enemy because he knows he can just put all his foreign assets in the hands of private oligarchs and we'll have our hands tied behind our backs by our own noble principles.
If we don't act bluntly (like confiscating oligarch wealth) we have no leverage at all.
We _can_ afford to give rapists proper due process because society still functions afterwards. But look at what happened during the height of Mafia power. Both Italy and the US had to change the regular due process (RICO, Maxi Trial) because it cannot work when individuals are conspiring behind the scene.
And Russia functions as a giant mafia state.
Have the courts freeze the assets of the accused when there is that risk.
The OP claimed that due process is impossible, so I showed how it can work. Funding or plotting genocide would probably be a serious crime anyways, so why not have a proper trial instead of cutting corners?
A functioning justice system is the bedrock of democracy, and it's the last place where you'd want to be making shortcuts. Not only would missteps cause reputational damage for democracies, it's going to ultimately hurt you too.
And I suppose you're arguing that's a good thing? Everything you said could have been applied to suspected terrorists during the early 2000s, and suspected communists during the McCarthy era. Do you support those actions as well?
To be clear, I'm not against punishing the entities listed. I'm against punishing the entities listed without due process.
Or to put it another way, Osama bin Laden didn't get much due process. But that is the difference between (allegedly) committing a crime and being a threat to a government.
Alleged criminals get due process, threats get "dealt with", for some given value of "dealt with".
Of course then the danger is that governments will see threats that aren't really there and try to turn people into threats rather than criminals to "deal" with them. But to my mind that is an argument for better oversight of the use of the tools that governments have, rather than just removing the "threat" toolkit and leaving only the "criminal" toolkit.
That's .... the point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...
I get your point (that ethics and law matter -- including basic principles of law where international law is not codified), and on a certain level this is valid.
But historically speaking, once things ratchet up to a certain level and scope of barbarity (as we are seeing unfold in real time) -- it's just not realistic to sit and wait for a "fair" solution to emerge (in the near term or ever). People are going to be hurt (and treated unfairly) one way or another. It's just a question of who is going to take the hit, and in what form. So if it's at least arguably plausible that measures that inconvenience a few individuals in the top .1 percent net-worth-wise might bring this insane situation to a close sooner rather than later -- I can go with that.
And there's no reason we can't "rub" a bit of due process into the situation -- by saying "OK sure, you can file an appeal, and have a shot at getting your toys and baubles back -- after Russia returns to its borders, and Putin has been decisively removed from power."
Where are those? I skimmed the link article and couldn't find any.
Sure we can. Germany was paying WWII reparations into the 90's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkJUZZpH6M (skip to the end)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEdlINn2uA0
Warning that some of the videos and the account appears to be pro-russian(?).
awful, awful, awful...
https://mobile.twitter.com/christogrozev/status/150421396163...
I don't think Ukraine would benefit from Russia and NATO coming to blows.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/12/uk-troops-se...
They are not in Ukraine participating in combat in the current conflict.
> There is basically no escalation from Russia. [...]. It is just convenient (Biden's domestic issues/Nordstream 2/other unknown reasons) to claim imminent invasion and the media is incentivised to fuel that narrative since it seems to have captured the attention of the populace at large (perhaps based on the Russophobia that is prevalent in mainstream media).
Maybe it's time to be extra aware of your own biases against Russia, NATO, mainstream media...
I have examined my bias against mainstream media and still find them completely warranted, thank you.
The NATO-US acting from Ukraine possibly attempting to foment "color" revolutions in Russia, NATO missiles on Ukraine soil, an increasingly belligerent leader in Ukraine renewing the push to join NATO and NATO-US arming and training Ukraine troops. These seem to be more likely factors in the invasion.
Given that the "West" has been frothing around the mouth for his ouster (he did once ask to join NATO btw), one could conclude that "He who goes first wins" was a viable strategy for him.
You can replace "enforce a no-fly zone" with "declare actual war on Russia". A no-fly zone either involves striking targets in Russia and Belarus, or hands the initiative to Russia if/when an air war starts. It is a very bad idea, to put it mildly.
If NATO told Ukraine from the onset they will never join NATO steps 2 and 3 would not have happened. Which means step 6 would not have happened. [edit - a typo in the numbers in events sequence. Sorry about that]
Look, if I murder my neighbor because they’re friends with the other neighbor I hate, I’m the bad guy.
Russia does not get to tell other countries they aren’t permitted to ally with each other.
Logically, no - they don’t. In the real world, it does not work that way. Hence, the US has the Monroe Doctrine. It’s also the reason why US has invaded Latin American countries and many other ones. “Might is right” is an unfair unfortunate realty in international military situations.
It goes back way earlier than that. Russia has repeatedly expressed in no uncertain terms that Ukraine is the single one red line that they will never accept joining NATO. A very insightful article on FP on the topic:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-cri...
Please see my earlier comments for why this but-NATO! argument is the opium toked by demagogues and their acolytes.
It would be not too different than Idlib, which hasn't led to massive war, with the exception the government will have invited these troops.
Good thing we didn't have this attitude during the Cold War. We can help, and we should not going to listen to a non-ultimatum which hasn't been even given.
There's a reason there were endless proxy wars, guerrilla trainings, and secret arms supplying back then. Neither side would risk a direct conflict with the other, so they did all that instead.
You'll notice that's the exact same toolbox they're drawing on now. They didn't invent this shit for putin.
I'd step out on a limb and say maybe the best move is to let the aggressors take whatever they want, nobody really knows.
Apparently I'm not the only one thinking this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30730140
If Putin wants to commit suicide by being dumb, we can't stop him, but he should know an attack would end up badly (for the Russians). We can see they have difficulty with merely the regular Ukrainian army.
And Ukraine had an army better than any EU country other than Turkey and Russia had not been waging a total war (thus the forces hiding in cities are not being burned with tactical nukes/thermobaric munitions). Russia is not Syria, it has air force and navy, great anti-air and anti-ship capabilities, military intelligence of all kinds (and nukes, of course). What is going to ensure the Western victory, angry twits? As far as I know, Twitter is banned in Russia already. More sanctions? These seem to hurt the West more than Russia at the moment and Russia has not even started turning off oil, coal and gas.
Source? Because on the face of it, that sounds actually crazy. Russia has been reduced to economic rubble already. By summer, they won't be able to run their farms that operate foreign equipment, their planes can't fly anywhere but even if they could that's a moot point because very soon they won't be able to maintain them, tens of thousands of Russians are fleeing the country every day(and I can only imagine a lot of them are the best and brightest and also people with means to actually escape). It looks like the best they can hope for is for China to buy them out and that they can become a slightly better equipped North Korea 2 - a chinese vassal state.
>>Russia has not even started turning off oil, coal and gas.
I'll give them one thing - Russia has been better at sanctioning themselves than "the west" could ever hope for. Just today they announced a 10 year ban on any foreign company that doesn't return by 1st of May, in addition to the legislation that is getting rid of copyright as well as patent protection for foreign companies in the country. Why would anyone do any business with them long term.
So yeah, I absolutely expect them to destroy whatever sliver of economy they still have and actually turn off the gas. I can't wait actually.
Sure, this is what Obama said in 2014. Since then Russia modernized its military: deployed the new MBT, 5th gen fighter, hypersonic missiles among many things (and actually used the latter in combat just recently) and waged two successful military campaigns (Syria and Ukraine). What did the Western military do in the same time? Managed to screw up the retreat from Afghanistan and the West-backed forces in Syria lost/defected. Any successes of the Western military might I had missed?
And the WH Press Secretary had been telling us that the inflation the US is suffering is caused by Putin so I am guessing it's the effect of the sanctions since I doubt very much Putin is in control of the US economy just yet (that's assuming WH is not blatantly lying and there is some link between Putin and inflation).
Maybe you missed it, but the sanctions imposed on Russia in the last two weeks are nothing like we've ever seen. The position Obama was in 2014 is not even comparable. Also, has he really actually said that? I find that hard to believe.
And like I said, current economic sanctions are worse than anything we've ever used against a developed country in terms of economic punishment. So whatever image you have of Russia in 2014 - now is worse.
>>I just hope it does not push my gas prices over 20 $/gal.
I don't see how it would.
> I don't see how it would.
Figures. As I said further up thread, many people seem to be applying their ignorance to analyze a complex geopolitical situation.
And I looked up the transcript of the State of The Union address you mentioned and he does indeed say that. Thanks.
Probably far worse, though actual measurements will take time; also, if the sanctions are maintained equally well, given how much more comprehensive they are, it will be much harder for Russia’s economy to reconfigure and bounce back as it did post-2015.
I am sure the sanctions will hit hard people who still have ties with the West e.g. people working for the Western companies or doing business with Western companies but I don't see how this can affect Russia's military capability. Some "model" not getting paid from Instagram/OnlyFans is not going to slow down military production and deployment.
[0] Here's one piece of analysis after, and referring to, the description: https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/21/obamas-remarks-on-russias-ec...
So you want to send boots on the ground in ukraine. Presumably you also think doing so isn't escalatory. However, you also think if some of them get killed, it's putin that's escalating? That almost sounds like "if you get hit it's your own fault"[1] logic.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZSoJDUD_bU
"cant risk WW3 over Ukraine"
"cant risk WW3 over Poland"
"cant risk WW3 over Latvia"
"cant risk WW3 over Estonia"
etc, etc ...
1914 saw large imperialist empires on both sides. There were no real "good guys" in that war, as both sides were looking to either keep and consolidate power over colonial empires (the Entente) or break up the colonial empires to get some for themselves (the Germans and Austrians).
1939 saw an ambitious despot attack democracies to brutally subjugate them. That is also what we are seeing now.
My point here isn't that russia will be proven right in the future. Its that war always sounds like a good solution, or even the only solution to avoid something worse. But we have to avoid getting into that same cycle over and over again, Especially when we are in a nuclear world.
By the way, the comparison with 1939 Germany is completely spurious imo. Germany did not attack Poland because it was a democracy, had already purged it's own Jewish population, had started gassing the disabled and mentally ill, had already eaten 2 medium-sized countries in a year, was in an offensive pact with italy, openly planned to engage in ethnic cleansing...
If you think that is comparable to the current situation then all nuance has been lost and all wars are comparable to ww2. That ww2 was morally unambiguous makes it very convenient to use and project ourselves as the equivalent of the allies in 1939 and call for military action while the opposite is true for the first war. But the comparison is still baseless beyond the war rhetoric
We may be a week or two from "culmination point" when the strength of the Ukrainian forces exceeds that of the Russian ones.
And then those other countries are NATO and attacking them would be quite a different kettle of fish. Those truck convoys probably would have been smoking ruins within a day if NATO air forces had had a go.
My country is next on the list together with other Baltic nations. This current inaction is identical to start of WW2 with everyone paranoid about their own nose and "unnecessary escalation". We have maybe 2-3 weeks to sent troops into UKR before its too late. If we dont help Ukraine its a sign NATO wont intervene beyond sending arms and "stay strong" prayers when our time comes. Another Yalta is on the table, after all why should we risk Nuclear war if Putin gives us a word he will stop at German border, right? :(
I'm starting to feel that our sense of morality is not well adapted to a world where a despot can end civilization with the push of a button.
Because we're currently talking about Mariupol here...
https://twitter.com/KSergatskova/status/1504782169188806664
Putin's expansion into Crimea and Ukraine reminds me very much of Hitler's expansion into Austria and Czechoslovakia. Its my firm belief that we're at the "Peace in our time" phase, just before WWIII, and it would be better to nip it in the bud and take action now, rather than 2 years from now, when Putin has had more time to prepare, and he attempts to invade a country that we are obligated by treaty to defend.
Russia is not the USSR of old or Germany in the 30s. It's not a great economic power with an independent industrial base. Right now, Putin is throwing in all the conventional forces he can spare, but Ukraine – a smaller and poorer country - has managed to stop the attack with some material support from the West.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has not been idle. Europe is increasing military spending significantly. Unprecedented sanctions are in place, and their purpose is to destroy Russian economy and cut their access to many key technologies. If the sanctions remain in place, a large part of the Russian losses in Ukraine will be permanent.
Only after WW2 the allies decided to remember the Holocaust existed, and justice still played a second fiddle to interests.
That's a very bold claim to make. What is that based on?
Or you're going to honor the border I guess? Are they free to bomb civilians as long as it launches from their side? Even the best planes will get shot down if you give the other side enough chances, is nato going to allow that? Anyway where even is the border at 50k feet? How many conflicts have started because a pilot accidentally entered another country's airspace? Or at least that the other country claimed they had.
>How many conflicts have started because a pilot accidentally entered another country's airspace? Or at least that the other country claimed they had.
Exactly 0.
Are you sure there were no consequences?
The same logic that works against the West has also been working against Putin: "what are you going to do about it; escalate into WW3?"
And then NATO would have to respond when cruise missiles started flying into some of their member states.
The US finally said no to the specific plan, and put forth the general rationale for the more general no when it did so.
(OTOH, the tolerance for acts that might be seen as provocation by Russia among NATO countries—at least those on the Eastern flank—is going up rapidly, with Estonia and Lithuania calling for a NATO-enforces No Fly Zone, and Poland hold-my-beering them and calling for a NATO peacekeeping force in Ukraine.)
/1 Of the declared $800mil Anti armor launchers account for ~$400mil, then the other $400mil pays for some small arms, personal armor, ammo and 100 drones? Its pure mil complex walfare program.
It's not so much that putin doesn't have the balls to escalate into WW3, it's that supplying weapons isn't considered very escalatory (for all sides involved), so putin is more likely to let it slide rather than escalate himself. It's not something that can universally extended (eg. to no fly zone or boots on the ground).
It wasn't seen as too likely to effect the conflict, but as the conflict drags out it becomes a greater irritant. Russia is recently openly threatening to attack “supply lines” of those arms if they continue; since anything in Ukraine is already clearly subject to attack this at least implicitly is a threat to potentially attack convoys and logistics points outside of Ukraine.
Ukraine is being beaten exactly because it is not a NATO member, but actively considered to become one.
Not a lot. Unfortunately, Russia's doing it anyway.
Sometimes stupidly standing on principle or not taking your counter party seriously can be very costly.
In Sun Tzu's art of war where does it say to become so immersed in your own propaganda that you ignore reality?
[EDIT] oh and this:
> What I find perplexing is how our leadership class in Washington could be so dumb to pick a fight with no possible upside.
Even if the rest of your post was entirely serious and even if all the other points were valid, this is nuts. If the West did force this war on purpose, holy shit has it ever been the greatest victory for cynical realpolitik ever. Russia's decline has been accelerated by a couple decades, at least. No possible upside? In what universe?
Let me know when NATO is marching across Siberia.
Because in the real world what matters is real resources.
I am sure Russia has its own problems but the idea that Washington/London is the eternal capital of a world empire and that China and India and the Gulf Arabs and the former European colonies in Africa will just roll over to go against their own interests to support the almighty paper dollar seems ridiculous to me.
Oh, of course not. The future is probably Chinese and African (largely Nigerian). Maybe Indian. Only way the back half of this century isn't the beginning of another long stretch of Chinese dominance is if they totally fuck it up.
Fighting wars over natural resources haven't made sense in more than hundred years. They are such small part of the global economy, and the cost of land grabs and long term occupation is way too expensive.
So NATO doesn't need to march across Siberia. If there isn't a regime change, Russia is going to end up like North Korea. Isolated, desperately poor, and except that they have some nukes, ignored and irrelevant.
There's a huge middle ground that consists of various levels unnecessary antagonization and dismissal of the associated risks. We have to be able to criticize the choices and policies that pushed us in this direction without facing a blanket assumption that we are endorsing or trying to justify Putin's actions.
The Crimea in 2014 sure does not count in your recount.
How would you deal with a bully that feels he's got a free reign over you?
I'm not saying that America's hands are clean, but dude, you need to focus on the situation of today, and you need to direct your anger and frustration in the right place. Don't transpose past wrongs to the present, or current but irrelevant wrongs to the situation in Ukraine.
Your ideas are extremely loosely connected to current events, and your perspective is unproductive, or "academic" at best.
You misspelled "almost nobody is standing with Russia". The level of consensus is unprecedented.
An odd defense of the country that seized Crimea.
> It still thinks it can dictate terms unilaterally.
You mean like "you, a sovereign nation, are not allowed to join NATO because we, an entirely different nation, don't want you to"?
> Has any common French or German who now stand to experience higher prices and economic disruption.
I can answer that, the country will live on, we're not the ones getting bombed. price increases are very small compared to what the Ukrainians have to pay to fight for their country. Solidarity will work.
I hope to some day see Russian federation dissolved into it's federal states.
As much as the whole world wants to believe that the people of the Russian Federation are uninformed, or disallowed the information, and disinformed by the propaganda...the grim reality seems that they rather need to believe that propaganda, because it seemingly absolves them of the resposibility for these atrocities
The simple folks of Russia are very much familiar with the horrors and the scale of such war atrocities as from the vast WW2 history, just as from Grozny and Aleppo times. They get how cruel and mindless this is. Just they cannot admit to themselves and their children that this time they are the aggressor side.
It must be the same kind of "fear of blame" that is not that different from decades of Stalin's rule. For many citizens of the Russian Federation, it's the only place to live their lives, there's no exit, not much choice for change. The fear has simply transformed the reality, just as it has done it in times before...
I have no hopes that these folks would suddenly "wake up to truth". Nor that they would attain to any collective remorse for this. Perhaps this fear could only be supplanted by their personal grief.
The Russian country seems to have turned into a Federation of Fear - the main product that its rulers now want to export to the rest of the world. It's the grief that the world is already harvesting.
But putin also calculated (correctly) that the west wouldn't react strongly , like it didnt react with syria, georgia, karabakh, libya. Invading weak countries to make a victory lap is how he legitimizes himself to his subjects and to the nearby dictators (like aliyev). This was made worse by watching how afghanistan ended, and how the US is quickly shifting to the Pacific. The US needs to set a red line to stop him, that is the only thing that delegitimizes him
1.https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_how_russia_has_come_to_lo...
The whole experience has been kind of shocking to me. I went into this believing that Russians where like innocent captives of evil politicians and oligarchs and had no idea what was going on. But based on the conversations I've had, that is not the case at all. They know exactly what is going on as far as the cost in human lives, and believe it's necessary to ensure their own survival.
Do they? Do they know how many Russians have been killed so far?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw
Not saying that all the people you texted thought that way, but I'm not sure you can reach a definitive conclusion based on your experiment.
Given the propaganda and the extensive coverups by govt, it's not really clear what exactly the people know in terms of counts, but for sure the scale of the war is hard to cover up by now.
However, knowing the actual facts is rather irrelevant for them. The pervious decades of "raising from their knees" in fact gave even more rise to the cynicism - another product of the "developed socialism".
Thus lots of educated citizens of Russia would readily accept and justify any form of twisted falsehood as a given, kind of rules of engagement for their daily act of survival.
Sadly, similar cyncism seems to have its place in lives of may people from the former Soviet republics, Ukraine included. Just in Ukraine, there happened to be a practical succession of government and presidents. This has been powering a hope for changes, better future, access to Europe. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation got clearly stuck "in-progress", same as Belarus, and the Central Asian republics. Sans alternative.
How does one reconcile with such a reality? Well, if unable to leave, then adopting some cynical attitude to anything may perhaps become a choice.
https://eng.mil.ru/en/management.htm
UN should just demand from Russian system of power that they delivered suspected war criminal mr Putin to Hague if they want to have any hope of Russia rejoining global economy any time soon.
I don't know if your proposal was supposed to be realistic, but it is just idealistically naive at best. Putin is the Russian system of power. Unless you believe that he is going to willingly turn himself in as soon as the UN makes that demand, I don't see any good coming out of such demand by the UN.
Also, don't forget that Russia is one of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, and there is nothing stopping them from vetoing any such statement from being made in the first place (which is one of the major perks of being the permanent member).
And that's the case with Russia. I think oligarchs would take him down if they got offered clear road forward from current troubles (if they believed it).
Russia is a member of security council but nothing stops the rest of the world from physically not registering Russia's veto. Or not even letting Russia representative into the room where the issue is decided.
Rulebook has been thrown away by Russia. There's not point of respecting anything about it.
They can't, in the 90s oliagarchs had power, not now. With Putin only his silovik cronies can do anything about him, but they won't because the system is set up so that their families would suffer from the hands of his other friends. I see this as completely lost. North Korea has a bigger chance to get a new ruler after the coup than Russia. Putin has more power than a Tsar ever had.
And they are applying by default the same routine to this teritorial invasion of 40mln pro-european country and very probable start of world war 3. It's infuriating that this language muddles the uniqueness of this event and lulls so many people into the sense of safe familiarity.
It's not the war that your dad's war was in some remote country 'sadly tragic'.
Already the leadership of certain NATO countries are calling for a no fly zone, and transfer of various weapons systems. It's a simple exercise to ask yourself what humanitarian disaster would be so egregious that the US would be forced to act because if it did not NATO itself would fracture, with newly-added former Soviet republics and eastern block countries acting on their own.
That event is not very far away. Mariupol is a disaster, but it's one that none of us can influence. We can, however, take steps now for the inevitable arrival of exchange of fire between US and Russian forces.
I'm happy to ratchet down that stand, but until something happens with clear de-escalatory potential, the base case needs to be direct US-Russia confrontation and likely nuclear escalation.
Edit: the split in NATO could come quite quickly. A low-yield nuclear first strike by a cornered Russia into Ukraine would put the entire immediate vicinity (the Baltic states, Poland, etc.) on alert that they're next on the list. The pressure on local politicians to act first and receive reprimand from NATO later could be irresistible. The US's "ironclad" commitment to Article 5 does the rest.
But like OP said, there has to be a threshold, an attrocity so bad that NATO will be forced to intervene. I personally think seeing 18 month old babies killed by shrapnel is enough - but I'm not in charge of the policy(for better or worse).
Source? I thought the US suspected they did but oversold how good the intel was.
There are many indications that it wasn't the case of 'Oops, we were wrong' but rather 'Oops, we lied'
ETA: If you're asking for more "straight news" types of sources, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/iraq-war-... is a pretty neutral and objective retrospective, relying heavily on a Senate Intelligence Committee report that was approved on a bipartisan basis.
> Is there a fine line between hyping the evidence and lying about it? It’s too fuzzy for the Pinocchio Test, as it also falls in the realm of opinion.
High moral standards.
If they lied it's not provable. Your claim is opinion not fact.
And now you state that it all doesn't matter because it's not provable. That the killer didn't kill because he was careful enough to leave no clear evidence only circumstantial.
US in the Iraq was OJ of nations. And Americans are fine with that. Fine with pretending to believe that US didn't invade Iraq just because it wanted to. Not because they honestly believed there were WMDs there.
The same dumb "you can't prove anything therefore I'm blameless' shows up everywhere in US. In courts, in government offices, in corporations. In underlies troubles in so many dysfunctional systems of USA.
Where do I state that? Im just asking you to back up your claims.
Because this is pretty easy to search
>In December 2002, Bush declared, "We do not know whether or not [Iraq] has a nuclear weapon." That was not what the National Intelligence Estimate said. As Tenet would later testify, "We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009." Bush did know whether or not Iraq had a nuclear weapon — and lied and said he didn’t know to hype the threat.
>On CNN in September 2002, Condoleezza Rice claimed that aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." This was precisely the opposite of what nuclear experts at the Energy Department were saying; they argue that not only was it very possible the tubes were for nonnuclear purposes but that it was very likely they were too
>In August 2002, Dick Cheney declared, "Simply stated, there's no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." But as Corn notes, at that time there was "no confirmed intelligence at this point establishing that Saddam had revived a major WMD operation." Gen. Anthony Zinni, who had heard the same intelligence and attended Cheney’s speech, would later say in a documentary, "It was a total shock. I couldn't believe the vice president was saying this, you know?
The americans lied and it led to a million lost lives and ruined the future of an entire generation. I guess it's different from the current situation and no one actually cares but I think it's important to not forget how vile the 2003 invasion was. Yes we don't have to bring it up (I didnt) in every conversation but we don't have to whitewash the events either
https://www.vox.com/2016/7/9/12123022/george-w-bush-lies-ira...
Page 9
"High Confidence:
- Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.
- We are not detecting portions of these weapons programs.
- Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons and missiles.
- Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material."
There are much more examples. There is a lot of conflicting information as well. All I'm saying is that it's difficult to prove that they lied. My recent assertion tends to be that they made a bad judgement call with bad intelligence.
Let's agree to disagree.
Right here:
> If they lied it's not provable. Your claim is opinion not fact.
Calling whether they lied an opinion means that facts that they lied don't really matter.
https://norcaltruth.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/everyone-knew-t...
Why doesn’t Putin just have his army start on the east end of Ukraine and proceed west, killing every single person and destroying every piece of infrastructure in their way?
Anything up to (and perhaps including) that point clearly won’t result in direct intervention, whether due to the fear of nuclear holocaust or for other reasons.
So then why not? If he needs to win at all costs, and he doesn’t care about anything but power, what is holding him back?
Is it because he wants to occupy Ukraine and get its people to contribute to his GDP and their resources to sell? Russia is already devastating Ukraine to such a degree that there will be constant guerrilla fighting as an occupied state and it will take substantial investment to rebuild industry. Russia doesn’t seem to have the people or resources for a long term occupation.
Because there are escalations that can still happen besides direct intervention? The US and EU could do more, but not that much more. China is the only one that can really put the heat on at this point, and they probably do have a limit at which they would.
Or is it because he can’t? Even with the total commitment of all of Russia’s resources, can they not utterly annihilate Ukraine? That seems unlikely (although the cost seems to be far greater than previously believed), although it may require nuclear escalation.
So it seems to me like we’re in a waiting game for Russia’s other trade partners (mostly China) to drop severe sanctions, or for Russia to escalate to nuclear conflict and let that genie out of the bottle, or for Russia to bow out due to lack of resources or regime change.
I think of those options, the most likely is that Russia continues throwing bodies into the Ukrainian meat grinder until they can finally claim a pyrrhic victory. I can’t imagine NATO intervening, no matter how terrible the events, when nukes are on the table.
This is a complete disaster and we need to give voices to the people who live there. This is a horrendous situation for the people in Mariupol and the people there deserve good reporting. It's clear both sides have blood on their hands and Urban warfare is the worst kind. It should never have led to this.
EDIT: Translated Example of an interview from someone evacuated: https://twitter.com/wyattreed13/status/1504743305967554565?s...
EDIT2: I want to be very clear I am not defending Russia. I do not support this war. I am criticizing the poor reporting and that the truth of what is happening is complex.