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No, Russia did not aim to conquer all of Ukraine with the thunder run to Kiev, fielding maybe 200-300,000 men in all theatres. They hoped the Ukrainian state would disintegrate and that they could install a new government.
That's an interesting choice of words. The US has, in marked contrast to Mearsheimer's proposals, created a coalition of Russia, China and Iran! Wilhelm was a strategic genius compared to what passes for American leadership. Was it truly impossible to pass up on inviting such mighty powers as the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, was it absolutely necessary to antagonize a great power with thousands of hydrogen bombs? Apparently so!
Significantly? Finland and Sweden make up maybe 5% of NATO's military potential. This war has already been pretty disastrous for the West.
The effectiveness of sanctions has been greatly undermined. Russia and China are working together more and more. Europe has taken a massive hit to their economy, suffering at least a trillion dollars in damage. Apparently they had to spend 700 billion in subsidies to reduce the pain by 2023: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/singapore-speech-hrvp-borrell-shangri-la-dialogue_en
Most importantly, Western stockpiles of key weapons have been greatly diminished. Western military industrial capabilities have been revealed to be shockingly weak. What good is our spending if Russia, Iran and North Korea are outproducing us in munitions? ATGMs, MANPADs, artillery shells are all important and would be needed for war with China, especially if it escalates beyond Taiwan, into Korea and elsewhere. Stockpiles have been greatly diminished for Ukraine and cannot be quickly refilled.
A multi-year period of vulnerability is opened up right as the threat from China becomes most acute. I expect some sneer about Australian bias for Asia but let's be realistic - China is the primary threat. Ukraine is not a key node of the world economy like East Asia.
Furthermore, the war is not going well for Ukraine.
10/10 for quibbling, we still showed up to Afghanistan and Iraq. We'd almost certainly join America in any war, unlike a good chunk of NATO. We're helping in Ukraine with Wedgetails, we sent over some Bushmasters. Australia is absolutely a party to this war. Furthermore, I am also Western and have a legitimate stake in the affairs of matters that concern the West, such as the conflict with Russia and China.
It's interesting that you seem to think that the extensive use of Russian helicopter gunships and drones don't show air superiority. Apparently dropping glide bombs doesn't count as air superiority either. I'm sure that reassures the poor troops on the ground dealing with FABs!
If you use some niche definition of air superiority like 'controlling the airspace directly above the grey zone so much that your aircraft can fly at all altitudes unmolested by AA' then sure, I guess the Russians don't have air superiority. Though that definition sounds rather more like air dominance. In practical terms if you're being bombed by enemy aircraft much more than your aircraft are bombing the enemy, then you don't have air superiority. In practical terms, why would the Russians fly any closer than needed to an enemy with plentiful SAMs, Manpads and so on? Do they need to be firing their cannons before they have air superiority? The practical definition is the superior definition because it actually matters and is relevant to the substance on the ground. The Russians can use air power to bomb/ATGM the Ukrainians, not with impunity but with considerable effect. That's why normal people and even such revered institutions as the Atlantic Council agreed that Russia had air superiority.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/it-is-still-far-too-early-to-write-off-ukraines-counteroffensive/
What is the point of these perverse language games?
Chance of success was negligible, they were relying on 'and then a miracle happens' like the Ardennes offensive. The goal was as you say, to sever the land bridge and threaten Crimea, just like how the Germans wanted to split up the Allied armies and repeat 1940. That makes sense. But the goal was not achievable against a well-prepared enemy with superior resources. The Ukrainians should have recognized this and refrained from attacking a superior force with what they had available.
I think it is tragic that enormous costs are being incurred in pursuit of delusional and undesirable goals.
I'm lost for words. Europe, which contains two nuclear powers, is weaker than Ukraine with European support? Europe, with thousands of aircraft, is weaker than Ukraine which might get a few F-16s to supplement a handful of remaining Soviet aircraft? Didn't you just say the Russians were a worn-out husk?
The Russians somehow move into the Balkans? Through Romania or Hungary, NATO members that decide that the Warsaw Pact was underrated and lobby to rejoin? Russia invades Moldova, another huge and valuable territory of enormous import to world affairs? Or do they teleport across into Serbia to enjoy the unique strategic advantages of total encirclement by a hostile alliance bloc? I'd say 'These words do not mean what you appear to think they mean.' But I can't even conceive of what they might mean.
Yes. This is the retreat to the semantic bailey that I noted before.
That the Russians thought they only needed 200-300,000 men in all theaters to overthrow the Ukrainian government, rearrange borders, and establish a compliant state that would implement the Russian kill-lists on pro-western influencer persons was incompetent, but that is what they thought they needed for what they tried to do. That the Russians were incompetent does not negate the intent, which is the Mearsheimer argument on basis of intent as indicated by size failed, and why his maintenance of the position has evolved into the semantic retreat that simultaneously tries to ignore intent and then quibble on the back end what conquest entails if it does succeed.
This goes back to the point that it's not a contrast, but simply a non-falsifiable assertion that can politely ignore that Mearsheimer's proposals also created a basis for a coalition of Russia, China, and Iran, and the factors within the leadership of Russia, China, and Iran that would exist regardless (and because) of Mearsheimer's proposals.
It's also another example of Mearsheimer's tendency to slide into hyperagent / hypoagent faming bias, which is another of Mearsheimer's common failings in international affairs. The US creates conditions, other actors have conditions imposed by the US, their own leader's actions are a consequence of American agency, and so on.
Very sophmoric, and Mearsheimer's inexperience in international affairs and unfamiliarity with how other actors make decisions shows in this field.
This is another one of those claims where it's evident you aren't really party to the cultural touchpoint for the reference, and thus miss the metaphor.
I'll skip forward a bit because basically everything between is old hat at this point that's been hashed a dozen hundred times at this point, just to point to a thing I think makes the general point better for the audience.
The point of perverse languages games is as you just demonstrated: to claim the connotations of a state of affairs described by a descriptive doctrinal ('niche') definition, when the conditions to meet that state aren't being met, by substituting a watered down ('practical') definition that can be retreated to if challenged but otherwise can be used to claim the authority / argumentative advantage of the stronger descriptive definition.
In other words, a banal motte-and-bailey argument.
The motte is that a Ukrainian offensive was obviously a non-starter idea because the Russians were [controlling the airspace directly above the grey zone so much that their aircraft can fly at all altitudes unmolested by AA], the bailey is that Russians could apply enough air power from a distance and didn't need to be closer to have effects, and the discrepancy is that the conditions implied by being able to fly over the enemy unmolested are not the same conditions if you refuse to fly over the enemy because they still have plentiful SAMs, MANPADs, and so on.
This discrepancy matters, because the difference between those two states is what determines the viability of limited offensives. After all, it's not like Russia suddenly or just recently in 2023 gained the superior air position, regardless of whether you call it air superiority or air dominance- there had been two separate major Ukrainian successes that occurred despite the same general match of airpower.
Your loss of words is forgivable, given your evident lack of familiarity with the European capabilities, or the degree of European military support to Ukraine.
Yes, the Europeans, with their thousands of planes, lack the land force to match what Ukraine has fielded in a conflict which has demonstrated there is no substitute for land force volume. Much like Russia, the investment in their aircraft and nuclear weapons do not, in fact, automatically translate to land force capability, and unlike the Ukrainians the Europeans have not been investing for the better part of the last decade into how to generate a large standing ground army. Doing so now would be long, difficult, politically disruptive, economically expensive in the midst of major military recapitalization, and quite likely to be unfeasible in terms of scope and effectiveness in the near term.
As such, the Europeans could try to prioritize all resources into generating a large, cohesive, land force by the time the Russians finish the Ukraine War, or they could funnel resources to empower the already large, cohesive land force so the Russians can't finish the Ukraine War.
It doesn't matter whether E > U or U >E, but rather if E < R, and U < R, but E + U > R.
I think we could both CTRL-F the previous arguments to find out if I did, or if you just attempted a perverse language game for a strawman that reverses a position in the previous post.
No, Mearsheimer proposed competition with China and rapprochement with Russia and Iran, or at least not going out of our way to antagonize them.
Have you actually read Mearsheimer's books or journal articles? If so, you clearly haven't understood them. At no point does he say this. He has a structural model of international relations where the great powers act according to various motivations. This is pretty basic undergraduate-level stuff.
Kherson and the other counteroffensives in 2022 were successful because the Russian army was barely there or decided to withdraw, assessing that it was too risky to be potentially cut off behind a river. The differences between the 2022 pre-mobilization Russian army, spread more widely across unfortified or difficult-to-defend land and the situation in 2023 are considerable.
You need to understand that Russia possessed air superiority and that air superiority is NOT the sole determinant of battles (I think I understand why US struggles so much with COIN with this mindset). Attacking an absent enemy with air superiority is one thing, a fortified and numerous enemy with air superiority is something totally different.
I'm especially staggered that you spend a paragraph lambasting me for motte and bailey and then admit the Russians had the 'superior air position' through the whole war. You just invented a synonym for air superiority that perfectly undermines both your motte-and-bailey argument and your 'Russia didn't have air superiority' point. Wake up! You're defending positions so silly even the Atlantic Council has written them off.
No, they don't. Between Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Turkey... they can muster a larger army than Ukraine with active troops alone, let alone reservists (or disabled draftees). They are much stronger than Ukraine. This isn't a debate, you're just wrong. Check wikipedia if you like, it's pretty obvious how much larger the European NATO armies are than Ukraine's.
Sounds pretty worn out to me. But I'm sure you can conjure up some elaborate meaning where worn-out means something totally different. And of course you can create some fantasy world where the face-tanked, unmodern (but not worn out!) Soviet stocks are capable of struggling with Ukraine but would beat Europe's far larger and better militaries.
Supporting nuclear proliferation to countries that a party is actively trying to prevent from having nuclear weapons and has active territorial disputes with is absolutely going out of your way to antagonize them.
Mearsheimer's books and journal articles are consistently framed in hyperagent and hypoagent paradigm. This is a meta-crticism, and it is a significant part of why much of his stuff is merely undergraduate-level, as the models don't actually reflect how coalitions of allies operate.
A laugh is competing with a yawn. The motte and bailey you were accused of was precisely because of the overreach of degree, and you yourself conceded the doctrinal definition did not apply, which itself undermined the earlier appeal to authority of the Atlantic Council for using the same term.
While I am glad to see you conceding that air superiority (and thus also less dominating degrees of aerial advantage, or whatever term you prefer to for that degree) alone is not decisive, this was rather the point you were being led to in the original contestation of your original framing, which also rested on other unreasonable points you long since abandoned (as befits the retreat to the motte).
Ah, yes, wikipedia. That infallible source of all the context we need to know on military readiness. Why if we go by wikipedia, the Germans have 270 Leopard 2 tanks of various sorts!
And if we look back to 2018, the Germans had 9 operational Leopard 2s available for a NATO task force expected to have 44. Which they also couldn't support in various other fills either- 3 of 14 Marauder infantry fighting vehicles, aircraft able to fly only 1/3rd of the year, and generally unable to compose a ready force of 5000 people despite a wiki-size of over 180,000 active personnel... and it wasn't even the only country sending to it. Wiki doesn't list the number of machine guns the German army has, but they certainly showed up to a NATO exercise in 2015 with broomsticks painted black due to a lack of working ones available.
This is sad- and mockable- but hardly unique. The tank donation effort in 2023 showed that countries that nominally had hundreds of tanks, like Spain, only had a few dozen in readiness or near-readiness states they could spend, with repairing 20 taking a year. When the propaganda of 'NATO is running out of key weapon systems!' is raised, the kernel of truth being exagerated is that some systems being donated- such as tanks- are running out because most can't run at all. They weren't meaningfully maintained for decades, to a degree that some countries had less than 10% in a condition to hand over to fight.
While I am pleased that you are including Turkey as European for the sake of the argument- it's one of the only reasons anyone does, and I'll admit I hadn't been when I was referred to the Europeans- there is a reason they and the third most tank-heavy force in NATO are aimed at eachother, and the readiness counter-point remains: the on-paper strength of the Europezns is not their real power level,. And this is without the many other obstacles to a coherent land force, ranging from expeditionary projection to political willingness to pursue. Recapitalizing, repairing, and restoring a capable European ground force will be long and expensive without being forced to fight while doing it.
By contrast, and returning to the basis of the earlier argument, the Ukrainians are already in the field, have already proven their ability to do significant damage ot the Russians if armed, and arming them avoids the European weaknesses while letting them plan (and bolster) their strengths.
No need. In the non-fantasy world, the Europeans have been neglecting their ground forces for decades to the degree that their actually available forces are not far larger, or far better.
It's not like this is traditional proliferation. A huge number of Soviet nuclear weapons ended up in Ukraine with messy questions of PALs and operational control, especially of bombers. There's a distinction between the US sponsoring Ukrainian nuclear weapons like with Britain and simply not pressuring them to denuclearize. The latter is much less aggressive. Furthermore, the US had more freedom to impose upon Russia in the mid-1990s than the late 2000s, for obvious reasons. Creating a favourable status quo in the 1990s but not continuing to prod the bear has advantages. Incorporating the militarily weak and hard to defend Baltics is much less reasonable, long-term costs for negligible gains. Then consider the frankly sadistic-in-retrospect policy of prodding Ukraine into denuclearizing, then wooing them towards the West (without actually promising to defend them), incentivizing Russia to maul the country and derail such efforts.
Likewise with Taiwanese nuclearization. The US quashed that twice. I imagine there's regret floating around in Washington over that decision, if the self-consciousness for regret exists.
I said Russia had air superiority for the 2023 counteroffensive and that they had extensively fortified and prepared for a Ukrainian attack in that area (it was telegraphed not merely via satellite imaging but also being the obvious route for any Ukrainian attack). Most people agree with this. This was in service to my broader point that the celebrated NATO generals who expected a successful counterattack were foolish, they seemed to expect the Russian army to disintegrate upon contact with NATO-supplied armour.
You said first that Russia didn't have air superiority, they were merely dropping glide bombs, using attack helicopters (where have the Ukrainian attack helicopters gone I wonder) and drones. You then said that I wasn't using the doctrinal term correctly when I pointed out how you were necessarily changing the goalposts by taking 'air superiority' well beyond the realms of common sense. Then you said I was motte-and-baileying regarding the distinction between air superiority and air supremacy.
Here's US doctrine: https://www.doctrine.af.mil/Portals/61/documents/doctrine_updates/du_17_01.pdf?ver=2017-09-17-113839-373
The Ukrainians received prohibitive interference from Russian airpower during their counteroffensive, from Ka-52s for instance. The Russian defence was not similarly pounded by Ukrainian airpower.
Here's another article saying the Russians had air superiority: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-07-31/ka-52-alligator-the-russian-helicopter-slowing-ukraines-counteroffensive-in-the-south.html
I can find more if you like!
Sure, the German army is weak. The Europeans don't have much ammunition relative to force size. I'll even say that the Ukrainian army might be the strongest army in Europe aside from Russia and maybe Turkey. But the combined power of all the European states is much much greater than Ukraine's! They actually have navies and even aircraft carriers. They have nuclear weapons. Yes, nuclear weapons are relevant to military power, they render the whole idea of a Russian invasion ridiculous. There is no plausible gain for a Russian invasion of Europe that outweighs the high risk of a nuclear exchange, even a nuclear exchange they 'win'.
You started off saying "Russia can have more military power than Europe, but not more than Ukraine with European support" then quickly shifted to 'land force power' and mass when I pointed out the vast difference in air power, naval power and nuclear power. Navies and air forces are relevant here. And just consider the military potential! Ukraine has 36 million at most. Europe has about 500 million. Please stop trying to twist your words around to justify these silly positions.
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