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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35955 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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The people running the place would likely end up dead, probably after being tortured, or in a very unpleasant prison for the rest of their lives (if they’re lucky). And it’s their incentives which drive Russian decision-making around this war. On top of that, what many ordinary Russians seem to find intolerable about the consequences of giving up and going home is that they think the subsequent regime collapse would leave Russia as (something like) a Western colony.

Why on Earth would Putin lose his life if he lost the war?

Not very familiar with the history of Russia I see, the Anglosphere's history of relatively peaceful transitions of power every decade or so going back over a century is an aberration rather than the norm.

I don’t understand, who are all of these tinpot dictators you’re thinking of who have decisively lost wars of choice, much less ones with the US or its proxies, and then ridden happily off into the sunset? What is the precedent for that? Mussolini was strung up from a lamppost. Gaddafi died on the end of a bayonet. Najibullah was hanged on a traffic pole. Just to name a few.

Wars are very expensive in terms of political capital and betting your capital on winning a war is extremely different from having the ability to preserve yourself if that bet goes terribly wrong. The question here is really, “How could there be people who can start and sustain a war as long as their populace thinks they’ve got a shot at winning, but not protect themselves from the backlash or the victors when they lose?” And put like that it is self-answering.

Gaddafi died on the end of a bayonet.

I'm not going to disagree with your overall point, but Gaddafi was engaged in direct military conflict with the Reagan administration several times (almost dying in a 1986 US airstrike), but managed to rule for almost two more decades before the bayonet incident. Saddam Hussein survived the overwhelming loss in the Gulf War and ruled for at least another decade. Castro died of old age, despite the Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs fiascos. Kim Jung Un and Khomeini still rule their anti-American fiefdoms.

Being a tinpot dictator isn't alone sufficient to guarantee a bad outcome, although you're correct that there are plenty of examples of it happening. In this particular instance, I expect either Putin loses power (either violently or through some sort of brokered exile) or Russia continues its current path towards irrelevant North Korean-style dictatorship.

Gaddafi's downfall came after a deal was struck where he agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons and America agreed not to interfere in Libya.

The subsequent NATO intervention in Libya was a message to the world that the best way to hold on to your sovereignty is to have a plausibly functioning nuclear weapons program. North Korea was prescient in its nuclear ambitions. Its territorial integrity has not been violated save for some shenanigans at border crossings that aren't reflections of state policy.

Snow Crash is fiction, but it seems to have understood this concept as well. The world's only remaining sovereign tows around a nuclear weapon that is wired to go off in the event of his untimely death.

despite the Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs fiascos.

Despite? The Bay of Pigs was not a fiasco for Castro but the United States. It was a victory for Castro.

Putin is losing a war on what Russian elites regard as Russian soil right now, seeing as they just annexed it, and it’s internal perceptions that matter here. However, there’s nothing unique about losing on your own soil, what matters is the stakes, and wars that impinge on your own country simply tend to be higher-stakes than those that don’t. That doesn’t mean the only really high-stakes wars are of that kind.

I said end up dead or unpleasantly imprisoned, which is what that backlash generally consists in. I doubt anywhere would take Putin as a non-criminal exile were he deposed.

I said end up dead or unpleasantly imprisoned, which is what that backlash generally consists in. I doubt anywhere would take Putin as a non-criminal exile were he deposed.

There is a long history of finding small pro-Western countries to offer asylum to dictators the West wants to encourage to retire. Most obviously, the Gulf sheikdoms will admit billionaires no questions asked as long as they keep the vodka and bacon discreet.

Gaddafi, Milosevic, and Saddam didn't just lose wars on symbolic home ground - they lost wars against people who were explicitly after them. Gaddafi lost a civil war, Milosevic and Saddam lost to foreign interventions that had their removal as a goal.

Putin's loss scenario in Ukraine is humiliating, but the Ukrainians aren't coming to get him.

Lots of Ukraine’s allies want Putin gone even if the Ukrainians have not made that an explicit war goal of theirs. Biden said in his Poland speech “This man cannot remain in power,” and his team had to walk it back, but I think it clearly reflects prevailing sentiment among Western elites.

None of them are going to physically invade Russia to apprehend or kill Putin. Merely being disliked by Western elites is eminently survivable. He might have to settle for vacationing in Sochi instead of the Mediterranean, but that ship sailed months ago anyway.

merely being disliked by Western elites is eminently survivable

Maybe if you’re Fidel Castro. Otherwise, seems like a decidedly mixed bag to say the least. And not having to do things yourself is exactly what proxies (like Ukraine) are for.

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