Treaties are pieces of paper, ask the native american's how much the US cares about treaties. Trying to hold the US population hostage to a group of war mongering imperialists because some out of them have made agreements with other countries has nothing to do with morality. It's part of this whole conveniently framing things in bizarre ways in a weak attempt to justify your position thing you have going here that isn't convincing anyone.
Thank you for continuing to not contest the point on affordability. Thank you also for continuing the underscore your lack of counter-argument on the issue of affordability by introducing amusing divergences that demonstrate good humor.
Comedy is, after all, about the gap between expectations and delivery. For example, one might expect that a moral condemnation of broken treaties and war mongers of a century ago to be an admonishment to not break other treaties or tolerate imperialist war mongers in the present. Instead, spending treasure to honor treaties and otherwise protect independent states from a warmongering imperialist is itself the basis of condemnation.
This is funny because the punchline is that you don't actually care about unindictable spending or honoring treaties or opposing warmongering imperialists.
Dean
11hr ago
For Gillibrand, another way to look at it is that is anyone were to be on a deception scheme, she'd be one of the best candidates to play along.
Gillibrand is not only on the Armed Services committee, she is specifically on the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, which is to say she has considerably influence on how the military gets to do research and development and against what. Gillibrand is also on the Senate's Select Intelligence Committee, which is to say she has far greater access than most Congressional leaders. She would be one of the highest cleared persons in the US Senate to know and access things, from both military and intelligence understanding, and while that doesn't mean she has exercised the power it would take quite a bit of exceptional circumstances to try and stop her.
It also means, however, that Gillibrand would have incentive to play along with any 'this totally isn't us' ploy. 'Oh, we don't know who's flying these things- that's why we need more money' is a basic needs-justification for her committees to get more influence over the budget, just to give one incentive. Not spoiling her relationship with her executive branch interlocuters is another.
I respect your reasoning and you're not wrong to have skepticism, but in this context (a) she probably is among the best person in Congress best placed to know, and there are reasons who might not forthcoming even if she did. (If she does- it could also be that she doesn't.)
Dean
11hr ago
It is also very useful for a nonimperialist faction to know where the nuclear line of their enemy is.
In fact, it's particularly useful to know if/when the enemy is imperialist towards them.
There's no incentive for Ukraine to give up territory without some kind of Western security guarantee (lest Putin decides to pick up where he left off at a later date),
There's an anti-incentive, even. Perun had a good section recently on the risks of a ceasefire, on how the nature of a ceasefire can actually increase risk over a short-to-medium term (months to a few years) absent other items to prevent a return to conflict.
In short, the current conflict has been as stable as it is because while Russia's force generation rate outpaces Ukraine's, so has its force expenditure. As such, even as Russia raises more stuff (men material), it expends more stuff faster (casualties / ammunition) such that the relative balance stays relatively stable (Russia having slow advances on a small part of the front) as opposed to decisive relative advantage (the opening months of 2022 where the hypermajority of Russian offensive gains were achieved).
In a ceasefire, force generation infrastructure is still there to build up advantages, but expenditures stop and transition to stockpiling. This allows periods of rest / refit / reorganization / retraining which can allow a force to constitute both greater quantity and quality for overmatch than it would if the conflict just straight continued. Because of how numeric advantages can scale non-linearly (the relative advantage of having a 3-to-1 advantage is considerably more than a 2-to-1 advantage despite having the same unit of relative advantage above 2 that 2 has over 1), a current-but-lesser disadvantage can be less dangerous than a later-but-larger disadvantage.
This is especially true if the larger force generator continues generation systems (the already established Russian 2025 war economy budget) while the smaller force ceases force generation (such as foreign supporters cutting aid flow on cost-saving grounds). It's also true if the larger force generator has reasons to believe long-term disadvantages await, and thus limited time-window incentives to act sooner than later.
This is how Russia can be (paradoxically to some) both a higher short-term threat and a lesser long-term threat in its current state circa late 2024. In the long-term, the Russian loss of much of the Soviet inheritance has degraded its strategic center of gravity, the Russian economy will go through painful rebalancing, and when the current war reserves are put back into stock there will be a long and hard period of recapitalization to get back to a post-soviet military. In the short-term, however, it retains enough that it can continue to generate forces at a rate that it's neighbors do not match. The awareness that there is an only short-term advantage in turn drives a 'use it or lose it' opportunity window.
This is why I've noted in the past there's a considerable European security interest in not having the war end in the near term. From the European security interest, the Russian force generation potential needs to be matched / beaten, and that requires the time for them to scale their industrial base even as Russia does not have the opportunity to turn attention to them before complete. And the Ukrainians, in term, have a security interest in not having a Russia able to simply out-generate them and come back for march on Kyiv but with better planning.
This is why, absent security guarantees that would credibly prevent a Russian aggression, the logic of continuing to apply an economic-attritional war still applies, even if the US reigns in support. It's not that slowly losing the Donbas is good, or wouldn't happen faster with less US aid, it's that the costs of doing so are lower than the costs of trying to stop Russia attempting march on Kiev v2 with a year of buildup and reset. (Not least of which because a slow but steady series of bad news can change the US political calculus to re-enable aid, but more rapid defeat in the later scenario would preclude the time for American aid to make as much of a difference before whatever status quo extension hits.)
The question of how likely that is will matter quite a bit to people who dismiss the risk... but this in turn returns to the question of who expected the Russians to invade in 2022. And this, in turn, turns to Putin, and his credibility of convincing other actors that he totally wouldn't break his word that he poses no threat to Ukraine yet another time.
Dean
13hr ago
I can be serious and I can be silly, and tend to retort in kind. Arguing a shared memes on the part of Trump Jr. are meaningfully demonstrative of Trump's viewpoint is silly. Noting that the Trump selectees for Trump's cabinet are Ukraine skeptics is serious... but so is noting that many of Trump's selectees are pro-Ukraine, which undercuts the credibility of a hardline anti-Ukraine position.
If Trump is supposed to have strong opinions on the Ukraine war, he certainly isn't manning his administration to reflect that, as the adage 'personnel are policy' applies here. Trump Jr. is a person of interest in the Trump administration, but he is far from the only person, and we can just selectively choose quotes whichever way we want.
That Obama tried to circumvent the treaty process by creating a treaty in all-but-name without getting the domestic political support for the not-treaty to exist beyond his own partisan tribe's span of power, mostly by trying to argue that the consequences of ending it were too big to let it end.
This was both bad statecraft and bad precedent, and would have posed exceptional risk to US policy stability if Presidents got accustomed to trying to engineer too-big-to-fail international agreements to bind their opposition-party successors. International relations is a field that relies on stability and predictability, which is undermined if you build castles on sand and then dare your political opponents not to shake them too much. This is a bit like building near a fault line but hoping there isn't an earthquake, and the best way for sound building codes to be enforced is for the occasional reminder of why building codes are needed.
The end of JCPOA was a salutory reminder to most parties involved that (a) if you want an agreement with the US get it in binding writing, (b) if you want a binding written agreement with the US it needs to be politically palatable to the American democratic representatives, and (c) if you want a proposal to be palatable to American democratic representatives, you should probably not be killing Americans via a proxy warfare policy.
Thank you for not contesting the point of affordability, I appreciate the concession in good humor. You do, however, bring an interesting question.
What are the maximum, and the minimum, non-indictable levels of military spending?
For the level of spending to be an indictment implies a non-indictable level of spending. That amount, in turn, would morally need to align with the legal obligations that the American legislature has passed on the American government, which includes things like security treaties.
Perhaps it's too soon to say?
If it is too soon to say, then it's too soon to claim victory either, which is to say one lacks the grounds to claim a policy success.
Moreover, if conditions you want are occurring for reasons other than your policy- like the American public continuing it's trend towards disinterest in European affairs- then the resources you invested in your policy for an effect that was already going to happen were wasted. Sure, you can pay the weatherman money until you get a sunny day, but a policy of paying weathermen for sunny days is a bad policy even if you get sunny days.
Fortunately we can refer to victory conditions that Russian authorities established nearly four years ago, instead of inventing new arbitrary victory criteria. :-)
Dean
13hr ago
I'm sorry, I may misunderstand. You think that Trump or his administration is going to reduce government spending?
Dean
17hr ago
But you are putting in the thought, and as they say plans inevitably fail but planning is priceless. It's easier to recalibrate an imperfect model than to try and create a new inevitably flawed model instead.
I doubt that either Russia/Ukraine can afford to basically totally avoid talking to Trump until the German election; they both have a bit too much to lose.
Yup. And we've seen evidence of that on both ends, including Zelensky's late-election engagements with Trump.
Zelensky has played this much, much safer (and smarter) than many of his European peers. When a lot of the European elites were happy to publicly dump on Trump after he left in 2020 on the assumption he'd never be back, Zelensky never took the opportunities he might have had to join in to the partisan delight of the current-month losers. While there are doubtless countless Ukrainians who perceive Trump as pro-Russian as many Europeans do, Zelensky maintained a neutrality with Trump directly- even at the cost of enduring swipes- that has kept Trump relatively restrained as well, and thus in a position to work with.
If I had to make my own decision tree metaphor, I'd expect Zelensky's preference/plan to be that he views going along with Trump enough to keep Trump from doing a cut-off, but also more than happy to let negotiations fail so that Trump blames Russia. There are a lot of ways for Russia, or even the Europeans, to snarl talks in a way that Trump doesn't blame Ukraine/Zelensky. If Trump is empowered to do the talks, but the talks then fail, most of the threat of a Trump cut-off go away.
A possible sticking point / friction is the European-held Russian foreign assets and European sanctions on Russia, including gas sales, which are a medium-term need for Russia to re-fund it's economic rebalancing. Regaining those funds and restoring gas sales has been a major reoccuring demand to date, and it is something I think Americans who just want an end to the war underestimate Russia's willingness to press on. It matters in our discussion context because it's an issue the Ukrainians have no actual leverage on- the Ukrainians can't compel the Europeans to agree- and Trump in turn can't blame the Ukrainians if the Europeans refuse despite Ukrainians 'willingness.'
This may be a major asset for the Europeans to keep Trump supporting Ukraine, if only because it can also be used to backstop more or less 'bribes' to convince Trump to continue support. Things like 'the frozen funds will be used to cover the costs of American arms / buy American,' either directly (interest on the investments going to loans for buying American arms) or indirectly (the Germans agree to spend their new debt on buy american). Especially since it would be relatively politically popular in Europe to refuse a Trump demand for a concession to Russia that can be used to help the Ukrainians, which is three distinct politically popular things.
Dean
18hr ago
I, too, find people other than Trump sharing memes to be very credible insights into Trump's intentions.
Remember that time Trump shared the CNN-wrestling GIF, which foreshadowed the campaign of amateur wrestling stunts at the expense of journalists?
Dean
18hr ago
Basically all we can do is keep Ukraine from losing for a while, at a cost of billions a month,
Do you think billions a month is a burdonsome amount in the context of government policy?
As a reminder- last year the Americans allocated $820 billion to national defense in 2023. As of earlier this year, the Americans spent about $64 billion in military assistance across the 30-ish since the Feb 22 invasion.
Over 3 years the entire Ukraine War military support costs has been less than 8% of 1 year of American DoD spending, or less than 3% per year on an annual spending level. 3% isn't nothing, but it would take decades for the current level of Ukraine War spending to match (1) year of 'normal' DoD spending.
DoD spending which is, by US treaty-law, required to enable/prepare the US to fight... Russia. Who incurs the harm and cost of every munition provided to the Ukrainians used against them. A war-preparation requirement which is increasingly less likely as the Russians lose their cold war strategic stockpiles and devolve into a Soviet Era military which will require years to decades of recapitalization, particularly if the Russians bork themselves by unsustainable spending for medium/longterm economic overheating issues.
There are plenty of other arguments one can make about Ukraine, and I'm not going to argue them in this point, but 'we're spending unsustainable amounts of money' is the opposite of reality. The business case / government finance case is for supporting the Ukraine War, not against it.
Dean
19hr ago
And I'd like to say again I agree with your conclusion on Russia nuclear weapon usage and saber rattling!
This was purely a dissent on how the Russian state communicates threats. :-)
Dean
20hr ago
This would be your reminder that Genghis Khan not only failed to conquer the world, but failed to conquer Japan, and vice-versa when Japan's occupation of Korea did not in turn to conquering the steppe (or even China).
Ultimately, strategy game snowballs mechanics of win more to win more don't actually pan out in reality. Even the historical domino theory was simultaneously vindicated (the fall of Vietnam to communists did lead to communist takeovers of the Indo-China peninsula) and it's disrepute (the fall of Indo-China did not translate to ever-building momentum for further communist takeovers).
Dean
20hr ago
No sounding risk there! I fully support a vie is that he's writing to his topic, and not other relevant topics, which makes my point only a quibble that has weight if he doesn't write on them because he doesn't think of them. If he thinks of them, but chooses to write to other points, that is in no way a failing of him (as opposed to just an unavoidable limitation of limited materiel).
Of course, I would like to know more about the coalition dynamics and how they could come into play. Do you think the Europeans are getting their business up to snuff enough that even if Trump tries to utilize this "concept of a plan" dual-threat that Europe will be able to promise enough support for Ukraine in the event that America abandons them that Ukraine's estimate of the costs won't shift enough to overcome the bargaining friction? Or is there some other dynamic of the coalition management that you think is more salient to be thinking about?
Shrugs No one knows. The coalition is in the process of changing right now, and no one can actually speak for what the next form will reflect.
Part of this is the Trump ambiguity, but another is Germany, who is a key requirements to answering that question and will become clear in March, when the German election occurs. One of the key points of the German government decision to trigger early elections is to break the debt limit so that they can spend more aggressively to support things like Ukraine.
IF that happens, then there is a much greater chance for Ukraine aid to continue going forward because Germany may be able to help offer 'enough' to keep the Ukrainians willing to fight. This, in turn, changes any Trump calculus- not only would Trump have less leverage (Ukraine is not solely dependent on him), but he might even take credit for the expenditures ('see what I could do that Biden couldn't') and even conditionally support expanding aid ('Germany, I'll give you a good aid to buy more ammo from me on the cheap'). On the other hand, if the post-election coalition can't change the debt limit, then Trump has more leverage... but that leverage may be translated not into actually revoking Ukraine aid, but getting other policy concessions.
I think it would be a good video for the good professor, who will absolutely do some good lines on maps if it becomes more relevant!
Dean
21hr ago
I mean, perhaps that was how Russia framed it at home (I trust neither set of sources on this), but it is certainly true that NATO/America has been losing the war as we defined it as well. Putin was a big bad that had to, and would be, soundly defeated by the power of freedom and money. The latter idea, has failed. We are spending many multiples of what Russia is spending to gradually lose terrain.
Who is this 'we'?
This is neither a common definition of victory, nor even an accurate characterization of the comparable expenditures.
I suppose this deal is not so bad if you are a Brit or Canadian who cares nothing about Ukrainian deaths. But if you think NATO prestige is important, its a huge loss. Being a NATO proxy is a provably bad deal now. Even with American investment. Heck, the rest of NATO might as well be dead to the remaining civilized world. Minus America, NATO couldn't help anyone anywhere.
It is certainly a take that a country that was not a member of a regional defensive alliance, and repeatedly disagreed internally and externally about any need to join a defensive alliance, getting repeatedly invaded and suffering major losses when countries that did join the defensive alliance were not invaded is thus a proof against value of being a party of a regional defensive alliance.
It is certainly also a take where a country vastly outnumbered by a power considered one of the strongest in the world, without the supplies to sustain operations for a year, being able to last years and fight the aggressor with designs on the entire country down to border provinces alone thanks to external aid as evidence that the external aid couldn't help anyone.
By contrast, smaller countries around the world often find these things- not being invaded and being able to substantially resist much more capable threatening neighbors if they are invaded- very very helpful, and often something they drive their entire foreign policies around. Were American alliance structures accurately perceived as such a bad deal, we would expect other American alliance members trying to leave or distance themselves from them.
Instead, over the last four years we saw increased interest in joining or strengthening them from Europe (Finland and Sweden) to the Middle East (reported Saudi Arabian terms for Israeli normalization) to Asia (Philippines re-alignment post-Duterte, increasing trends by Vietnam and India) to Latin America (Guyana). By contrast, the states that have notably tried to distance themselves from the US include such notable allies as... Afghanistan (an indefinite money and resource sink), Iraq (also a money sink), and Russia (if you are of the Mearsheimer school of thought).
What you think 'the rest of NATO might as well be dead to the remaining civilized world' means is unclear. The Ukraine War may have surprised you with the level of apathy / disinterest towards the Europeans security concerns among those countries who didn't care to go along with European sanctions, but I assure you this is very much not new or particular to Europe, and is quite consistent with European sensitivities to other states security interests both near (in Europe itself) and afar.
NATO is certainly much weaker now than 2020, but not than 2022. We cratered as a legitimate organization under Biden and it is likely impossible to get lower than Russia just invading again after abstaining for 4 years. But its certainly possible. Trump could keep doing the same things but more. And then our support would get discredited even more.
Again, I will ask who this 'we' is, because this goes beyond a lack of shared consensus.
In 2020, NATO was so legitimate that the Finns and Swedes didn't want to be a part of it, the Ukrainian body politic was ambivalent and still considered a Russian full-scale invasion impossible at a cultural-identity level, and that the Germans and the French were as a matter of policy trying to strengthen their ties with Russia even at the expense of the security interests of other NATO countries, including arms sales and the Nord Stream pipeline whose energy blackmail implications to both the eastern europeans and Germans was only retroactively acknowledged as maybe a bad idea.
In 2020, Russia had not 'abstained' from invading Ukraine for four years, but was at that very time actively running and had been supporting for years two incited rebellion statelets that it was attempting to leverage for demands of sovereignty concessions that would preserve its proxies and give it substantial veto controls of Ukrainian foreign policy, including economic engagement with Europe. That this was a step too far for the French and Germans, who had replaced the Americans in the Russia-Ukraine negotiations years prior and were simultaneously willing to deepen military and economic cooperation in other fronts, is demonstrative of whether it was a virtuous abstinence or not.
In 2024, by contrast, NATO is presumably less legitimate because a non-member state forcing a stalemate of a nation-scale invasion by what was arguably the strongest land army in the world is embarrassing.
And in 2024 NATO is presumably weaker than in 2020 because the addition of Finland and Sweden, years of greatly increased military-industrial investment in their armaments capabilities, and consensus that the Russians are indeed a common threat is... is presumably worth less than the stockpiles given to Ukraine shoot NATO's primary potential adversary in the face, who... apparently grew in relative strength the more NATO munitions were shot in its face and the more of its own munitions it shot at a non-NATO country.
But, you know, vibes.
Dean
22hr ago
Ah, but we are! We are, if anything, over-prioritizing them. And not understanding that is why the advisor is incompetent, and should be removed from the deliberations immediately.
If the incoming missiles are a nuclear decapitation strike, the American (or French, or Russian) people are already dead to nuclear genocide, because that is the level of mass nuclear strike that is needed to prevent a counter-MAD reaction by us. The people are doomed regardless, and the advisor's proposal will not help them. This is a consequence of the advisor posing his option after the mass missiles are already flying, where we are in a nuclear response paradigm, and not before, when nuclear pre-emption theory might have mitigated damage.
If the incoming missiles are not a nuclear decapitation strike, then the advisor's proposal will harm the nation's people for the foreseeable future due to the international geopolitical consequences of conducting one's own nuclear genocide on others. If we didn't care about that and were willing to conduct nuclear genocide we would be doing so on our own terms under more favorable conditions before, or later, but not during a context where we will bear maximum and most obvious culpability for irrationally choosing nuclear escalation to the conflict. Arbitrarily doing so in response to yet another conventional strike wave in a war of years of nuclear-capable missile exchanges only heightens the damage, by demonstrating the [insert your state here] as irrational nuclear irrational.
More to the point, if the incoming missiles are not a nuclear decapitation strike, but the enemy actually has the ability to, then retaliating in the advisor's form would result in the [insert your nation's people here] getting nuked, because you provided the nuclear provocation first. That this is happening in the context of a multi-year conventional war with no history of nuclear use / intent / capacity even to use nuclear weapons in the first place, and decades of precedent on the opposing sides own willignness to use nuclear weapons.
The advisor is not providing a recommendation for mitigating the damage of a nuclear exchange, but one that will maximize the damage to the nation's people of a nuclear conflict.
The fact that this is all a consequence of the advisor forgetting the difference between nuclear pre-emption and nuclear response paradigms when his job is supposed to be knowing the difference is why he is out of a job for not paying attention.
He should probably have at least read up on the French nuclear doctrine history instead, which is far more open about the use of a limited pre-emptive nuclear demonstration target to demonstrate awareness, intent, and readiness for further escalation.
How was world conquest supposed to be achieved by occupying Korea?
If world conquest would not be achieved by invading Korea, then not achieving it is not an actual objective of the invasion of Korea. Maybe, in the future, it could matter for a different / later conflict, in which case Hideyoshi indisputably failed that broader conflict, but that conflict is not the conflict for the Korean peninsula.
By contrast,
When Russia invaded Ukraine, it did set out with clear goals on the scope of its intended Ukraine results at the time.
For example, we know they sincerely considered taking Kyiv a capital as a war goal in the opening days of the war not only because they indicated regime change as a goal (the de-nazification line, the flying of Yanukovych to Belarus in the early days to stage with the probable expectation of imposing him as a figurehead of a new government), but because early Russians were found with parade gear and a Russian riot police convoy memorably drove past the front lines into Kyiv. This would make no sense in the 'it's a feint' cope argument from 2022, but is entirely consistent if your stated goal of replacing the current government is an actual goal.
We also know because the Russians accidentally auto-published post-victory propaganda editorials that reflected the intended narratives and framings they intended. Here is a reddit post of a full machine translation. RIA is a Russian domestic news agency, with this message being intended for the Russian audience what this victory means for Russia.
These sort of 'what victory means to us' are propaganda, but propaganda useful for identifying what was to be considered a Russian success to the Russian audience. Part of why they are so useful is precisely because only the strategic-level planners knew enough ahead of time to write and plan the release, and thus give insights into the mindset of what strategic-level planners wanted to convey.
Noting that this was published under the expectation that overall victory was achieved by that non-decisive fighting remained, relevant points of 'did this war succeed in its goals' include-
Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia.
Will the post-war Ukraine be anti-Russia?
If yes, war goal failed.
Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia - for two key reasons. And the issue of national security, that is, the creation of anti-Russia from Ukraine and an outpost for the West to put pressure on us, is only the second most important among them.
Will the post-war situation leave the Ukraine issue as an issue for the next generation to deal with, and leave a anti-Russian/pro-Western Ukraine?
If yes to both, two war goals failed.
The first would always be the complex of a divided people, the complex of national humiliation - when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to come to terms with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples. That is, either to abandon their history, agreeing with the crazy versions that "only Ukraine is the real Russia," or to gnash one's teeth helplessly, remembering the times when "we lost Ukraine." Returning Ukraine, that is, turning it back to Russia, would be more and more difficult with every decade - recoding, de-Russification of Russians and inciting Ukrainian Little Russians against Russians would gain momentum. And in the event of the consolidation of the full geopolitical and military control of the West over Ukraine, its return to Russia would become completely impossible - it would have to fight for it with the Atlantic bloc.
Will the post-war situation in Ukraine mean Kiev is returned to the Russian house? If no, war goal failed.
Will the post-war situation in Ukraine mean that a following fight will mean having to fight with 'the Atlantic block' in the next round? If yes, war goal failed.
Now this problem is gone - Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated, but it will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state of part of the Russian world. Within what boundaries, in what form will the alliance with Russia be consolidated (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus)? This will be decided after the end is put in the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end.
Will the war end with Ukraine in some form of Russian alliance-consolidation (CSTO, Eurasian Union, Union State, etc.)?
If not, war goal failed.
And here begins the second dimension of the coming new era - it concerns Russia's relations with the West. Not even Russia, but the Russian world, that is, three states, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole. These relations have entered a new stage - the West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe. And he is loudly indignant at this, although in the depths of his soul he must admit to himself that it could not be otherwise.
Will post-war Ukraine act as a geopolitical whole with Russia?
If not, war goal failed.
Did anyone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kyiv? That the Russians will forever be a divided people? And at the same time when Europe is uniting, when the German and French elites are trying to seize control of European integration from the Anglo-Saxons and assemble a united Europe? Forgetting that the unification of Europe became possible only thanks to the unification of Germany, which took place according to the good Russian (albeit not very smart) will. To swipe after that also on Russian lands is not even the height of ingratitude, but of geopolitical stupidity. The West as a whole, and even more so Europe in particular, did not have the strength to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence, and even more so to take Ukraine for itself. In order not to understand this, one had to be just geopolitical fools.
Did Russia give up Kyiv?
If yes, war goal failed.
(I will break flow to note here that this refrain of Kyiv is part of the very explicit acknowledgement that Russian war aims were well beyond the eastern most Russian-speaking provinces. There is no 'we only wanted the Russia-speaking bits.')
More precisely, there was only one option: to bet on the further collapse of Russia, that is, the Russian Federation. But the fact that it did not work should have been clear twenty years ago. And already fifteen years ago, after Putin's Munich speech, even the deaf could hear - Russia is returning.
Will this war end with Russia returning as a great power?
If not, war goal failed.
And so on. Most of the article then begins pontificating on geopolitics, where you get more into bad analysis than actual objectives, but what the Russian perspective of Russian victory to a Russian audience is already established enough for the point.
What's bizarre to me is that Russia is clearly winning the war,
I would disagree. Russia is clearly losing the war, not least because they already defined what victory looks like, and it's not like circa 2025.
Saying Russia is winning the war requires ignoring the vast majority of the context, and claimed reasons, for why Russia started the war in the first place. It requires forgetting what they themselves claimed was the impact and implications of victory as they intended it to be when they thought they were in reach of their earliest intentions. It requires forgetting the pre-war demands, the pre-war justifications for what the war would achieve, and what the war was supposed to result in.
Russia is not winning the war because it is taking and may keep territory in the Donbas, it is losing the war because Russia itself framed the war not as a conflict between itself and Ukraine, but between the Russian world and the west. Instead of a campaign to unify of the Russian peoples, a gain of the Donbas is the formalized loss of the greater Ukraine in a civil war of the Russian peoples that will cost the Russian nation blood and treasure for decades and centuries to come. Millions of Russian-worlders have died, fled, or defected to the adversaries that the war was meant to improve the Russian position against. In so much that NATO is worse off in 2024 than 2022, it's because of reasons other than Ukraine, and in many respects NATO is considerably stronger and more threatening than before.
To quote a wit, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was worse than a crime, it was a mistake. One does not clearly win a mistake.
Edit
To elaborate by copy-pasting a response lower down up here-
When Russia invaded Ukraine, it did set out with clear goals on the scope of its intended Ukraine results at the time.
For example, we know they sincerely considered taking Kyiv a capital as a war goal in the opening days of the war not only because they indicated regime change as a goal (the de-nazification line, the flying of Yanukovych to Belarus in the early days to stage with the probable expectation of imposing him as a figurehead of a new government), but because early Russians were found with parade gear and a Russian riot police convoy memorably drove past the front lines into Kyiv. This would make no sense in the 'it's a feint' cope argument from 2022, but is entirely consistent if your stated goal of replacing the current government is an actual goal.
We also know because the Russians accidentally auto-published pre-written post-victory propaganda editorials that reflected the intended narratives and framings they intended. Here is a reddit post of a full machine translation. RIA is a Russian domestic news agency, with this message being intended for the Russian audience what this victory means for Russia.
These sort of 'what victory means to us' are propaganda, but propaganda useful for identifying what was to be considered a Russian success to the Russian audience. Part of why they are so useful is precisely because only the strategic-level planners knew enough ahead of time to write and plan the release, and thus give insights into the mindset of what Russian leaders wanted to convey as why the victory was a glorious success. These elements of success, in turn, are goals- goals the war is meant to change versus no war.
Noting that this was published under the expectation that overall victory was achieved by that non-decisive fighting remained, relevant points of 'did this war succeed in its goals' include-
Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia.
Will the post-war Ukraine be anti-Russia?
If yes, war goal failed.
Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia - for two key reasons. And the issue of national security, that is, the creation of anti-Russia from Ukraine and an outpost for the West to put pressure on us, is only the second most important among them.
Will the post-war situation leave the Ukraine issue as an issue for the next generation to deal with, and leave a anti-Russian/pro-Western Ukraine?
If yes to both, two war goals failed.
The first would always be the complex of a divided people, the complex of national humiliation - when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to come to terms with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples. That is, either to abandon their history, agreeing with the crazy versions that "only Ukraine is the real Russia," or to gnash one's teeth helplessly, remembering the times when "we lost Ukraine." Returning Ukraine, that is, turning it back to Russia, would be more and more difficult with every decade - recoding, de-Russification of Russians and inciting Ukrainian Little Russians against Russians would gain momentum. And in the event of the consolidation of the full geopolitical and military control of the West over Ukraine, its return to Russia would become completely impossible - it would have to fight for it with the Atlantic bloc.
Will the post-war situation in Ukraine mean Kiev is returned to the Russian house? If no, war goal failed.
Will the post-war situation in Ukraine mean that a following fight will mean having to fight with 'the Atlantic block' in the next round? If yes, war goal failed.
Now this problem is gone - Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated, but it will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state of part of the Russian world. Within what boundaries, in what form will the alliance with Russia be consolidated (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus)? This will be decided after the end is put in the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end.
Will the war end with Ukraine in some form of Russian alliance-consolidation (CSTO, Eurasian Union, Union State, etc.)?
If not, war goal failed.
And here begins the second dimension of the coming new era - it concerns Russia's relations with the West. Not even Russia, but the Russian world, that is, three states, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole. These relations have entered a new stage - the West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe. And he is loudly indignant at this, although in the depths of his soul he must admit to himself that it could not be otherwise.
Will post-war Ukraine act as a geopolitical whole with Russia?
If not, war goal failed.
Did anyone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kyiv? That the Russians will forever be a divided people? And at the same time when Europe is uniting, when the German and French elites are trying to seize control of European integration from the Anglo-Saxons and assemble a united Europe? Forgetting that the unification of Europe became possible only thanks to the unification of Germany, which took place according to the good Russian (albeit not very smart) will. To swipe after that also on Russian lands is not even the height of ingratitude, but of geopolitical stupidity. The West as a whole, and even more so Europe in particular, did not have the strength to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence, and even more so to take Ukraine for itself. In order not to understand this, one had to be just geopolitical fools.
Did Russia give up Kyiv?
If yes, war goal failed.
(I will break flow to note here that this refrain of Kyiv is part of the very explicit acknowledgement that Russian war aims were well beyond the eastern most Russian-speaking provinces. There was no 'we only wanted the Russia-speaking bits,' which has become a more modern revisionism of downplaying Russian failures by de-scoping the initial claims.)
More precisely, there was only one option: to bet on the further collapse of Russia, that is, the Russian Federation. But the fact that it did not work should have been clear twenty years ago. And already fifteen years ago, after Putin's Munich speech, even the deaf could hear - Russia is returning.
Will this war end with Russia returning as a great power?
If not, war goal failed.
And so on. Most of the article then begins pontificating on geopolitics, where you get more into bad analysis than actual objectives, but what the Russian perspective of Russian victory to a Russian audience is already established enough for the point.
Do you retaliate with the full strength of your nuclear arsenal, do you launch a conventional attack, what do you do?
You eject the advisor who raised the dilemma for the same reason you would if they raised the fear of waking Godzilla: if you are in a decision to launch nuclear missiles, you want serious people asking serious questions.
If you are right to fire him you've just avoided a catastrophic nuclear policy failure that would lose your nation it's global position as a credible power for generations. Assuming a mass nuclear strike at odds with all intelligence, precedent, and political contexts of the supposed aggressor and backer states is the mark of an incompetent who should not be in the halls of power. You will have done your nation a service.
If he was right and the incoming missiles are nuclear missiles planning a preemptive nuclear holocaust, then your country is already doomed to lose its global position as a credible power regardless because there is currently a mass nuclear holocaust in progress and nothing you can do would stop it. You won't feel bad, or anything, for long, and he'll be dead too soon to be vindicated. The fact that the fate of the nation is the same whatever option he offered the atomic underscore to the point that it wasn't a good policy question.
Regardless of which, the second-strike nuclear capability is already underway and ready to ruin the lives of those who were so irrational that nuclear deterrence doctrine wouldn't work against them anyway, so even if you are about to be nuclear ash you can rest easy (or at least with a bit of spite).
Dean
1d ago
Spaniel is good, and you're accurately reflecting much of what he's said over the last months. Kudos for keeping attuned!
Spaniel's work does have a weakness, though, in that he approaches his work (videos and books) from a more game-theory/'lines on maps' perspective, of more direct actor cost-benefits, and doesn't really touch on coalition management. That's not to say he doesn't think of it- he may leave it out for simplicity's sake- but he doesn't necessarily show that he thinks of it either.
This mattes because Spaniel often frames things like the Kursk offensive in terms of what Ukraine is trying to do towards Russia (for peace negotiations), as opposed to something Ukraine was doing towards it's backers (trying to change the risk calculus for operations on Russian territory). Similarly, he's more inclined to frame western support dynamics in terms of Russian negotiation calclulus, as opposed to 'what keeps the western coalition together.'
Which is a underrated paradigm for analyzing the conflict, because from my perspective it seems obvious that the Biden administration made a very deliberate and explicit priority of keeping the Western coalition together, even when it could have unilaterally rushed various things to the front under Presidential authority, in part for just the sort of dynamic we're seeing emerge with Trump: a coalition that was larger and more than the US, which could (potentially) make do without the US being the dominant lead party, and setting conditions for the Germans / Europeans to take a lead if the US was unable to.
A significant step to that occurred last week, with the German government triggering a new election and an attempt to break the German debt break. This is almost certainly was decided as a consequence of Trump winning, so that the German government- depending on how it reforms next- can try to start assuming debts needed to power a major European increase in aid and orders for Ukraine.
Dean
1d ago
I agree with your conclusions, but disagree with your approach on 'what did they actually say' as a defense against Russian red liens threats. That's providing an overly strict definition of 'red lines' which assumes Russia actually provides clear coherent red lines and does so specifically via Putin, which isn't really how Russia operates.
Russia routinely provides a variety of framings / warnings / threats by different actors within the government. None of these have any actual binding power- Putin's own flip-flops/lies/whatevers have a long story, but the same applies across the foreign ministry, the military, and any other communication channel you like. None of these are absolutely authoritative, and any of these warnings may be ignored, or dismissed, or forgotten as useful.
What Russia does is more of retroactively justify an action based on some previous claim of a red line. There's always a 'our previous warning was ignored' warning to find, even as when Russia is making these warnings it uses them in a more aggressive-bounding function (in the sense of claiming more expansive red lines than one actually has, so that you can get more concessions without making a direct threat).
So when you say something like this-
So (at least here) he actually did not threaten nuclear war in the event of ATACMS strikes. He reminded everyone of Russia's nuclear doctrine. Which – newsflash! – is the same as or arguably more restrictive than US nuclear doctrine in this regard (the United States, unlike some nations, does not have preconditions on nuclear use.)
-this is wrong, because reminding everyone of Russia's nuclear doctrine is how Russia regularly makes threats, because Russia's nuclear doctrine is deliberately vague enough to create space to justify a response. That Russia routinely does not carry through with those justifications is irrelevant to the claim that it's not a threat, because if Russia were to carry through, then Russia would point to something like-
"Russia will also consider the possibility of using nuclear weapons when receiving reliable information about a massive launch of means of aerospace attack and their crossing of our state border."
He added: "This includes strategic and tactical aircraft, as well as cruise missiles and drones, hypersonic and other delivery vehicles. Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in case of aggression, including if the enemy using conventional weapons poses a critical threat."
-as the proof that it warned (i.e. threatened) beforehand.
In other words, it's a motte-and-bailey. It's a threat until it's challenged and retreats to the position of not being a threat, unless there's a counter-attack afterwards in which case it totally was a threat.
Sure, though there's a bit more to it. It's a content neutral argument- it doesn't only matter if the [insert agreement] was a good idea, it also matters how it was went about. Process matters, and American Presidents who ignore process requirements deserve to get their noses rubbed into it, but there are broader benefits as well.
Short-term utilitarianism (the effects of JCPOA are good, therefore we should ignore process to keep it) is a bad governing and international diplomacy model over time, and thus the best way to negate such bad models is to make them survive or die by their own standard. Americans should not make commitments they are not prepared- or able- to keep, and one of those checks is if they have bipartisan support. Policies that will not survive a transition of party, should not be the policy of the united states, and future presidents should remember JCPOA as a cautionary tale of how not to try and establish a legacy policy.
This is particularly true if we want a more restrained American foreign policy aparatus in the future (i.e. in a more multipolar world), where the American executive's limitations are as much as asset as a hinderance. When other parties know that American Presidents have limitations in what they offer, it increases the need for a party to get their agreement in writing through Congress (after which American courts can later overrule different administrations). This, in turn, requires clearly identifiable- and communicable- benefits to the American Congress, and thus electorate, as to why the American commitment should be made.
If the other party is not willing to make such a commitment- or cannot convince the American electorate as to why an American commitment is appropriate- this is a strong argument against the US executive making a commitment themselves and thus exposing the US to future conflicts that they American political base will not support. Since that would see the US abandon the policy regardless- and thus lose legitimacy / credibility / prestige / whatever form of favor you prefer- it is in many cases more important for Presidents to not make bad deals/commitments than it is for them to be able to make any deal they want.
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