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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   28562 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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Everyone tired of RU/UA war? Well, Biden okayed long-range missile strikes against Russian territory as most of you know. Russia's response? After Putin threatening nuclear war in the event of this happening for months, Lavrov (the FM) came out today by going out of his way saying Russia doesn't want nuclear war.

What can we learn from this?

  1. Don't set ridiculous red lines that are easily broken.

  2. Don't threaten a massive response if you were never serious. You will lose face.

What's bizarre to me is that Russia is clearly winning the war, so this type of rhetorical hysteria was an unforced error by Putin. It should also be noted that the recent decision by Biden is a naked attempt to bind the hands of Trump, in order to make it harder to de-escalate once he enters the WH.

This also creates a bizarre internal dynamic within Russia as I'm already seeing Russians on social media saying that Putin is once again displaying weakness. This is of course nonsense (Putin's threats could never be realised), but it nevertheless allows for a narrative to set in that will make any negotiation harder for the Russian side as a popular understanding of Putin as a softie will slowly calcify. Any concession will be ferociously contested as proof of Putin once again going soft.

If NATO directly entered the war with large numbers of its own combat forces, it would defeat Russia's military and drive it out of Ukraine. Russia's only way of stopping NATO from doing that is to make NATO think that if driven far enough into a corner, Russia might actually escalate to using nuclear weapons. This works because, some extreme hawks aside, the vast majority of people who are well informed about the risks probably do not think that ensuring the Kiev government's ability to control Ukraine would be worth, say, a 10% increase in the chance of total nuclear war that would lead to the destruction of every major NATO and Russian city. On the other hand, they might think that it would be worth a 1% increase in that chance. Of course I am making up these specific percentages, but my point is that there is some threshold of the risk of nuclear war above which NATO does not think that helping Kiev with direct military intervention is worth that risk. The Russian government's task is to do whatever it can to make that threshold as low as possible. Hence Russia benefits from behaving in its rhetoric like an increasingly angry man being driven into a corner. Allowing NATO to think that the chance of nuclear war is zero would with very high probability lead to Russian defeat, since Russia is not strong enough to militarily defeat a direct large-scale NATO intervention. On the other hand, Russia of course does not actually want nuclear war any more than NATO does. Russia's proper strategy is thus to act like NATO is driving it closer and closer to the nuclear button with every NATO escalation.

Presumably and I hope, the people who actually make NATO's decisions have studied history and realize that just because NATO has broken multiple Russian red lines without major retaliation, it does not mean that every red line is meaningless. An example from history would be Germany breaking England and France's red lines before World War 2. Germany remilitarized the Ruhr, expanded the size of the Wehrmacht in violation of treaty agreements, united with Austria, and occupied Czechoslovakia all without provoking a large-scale war, but when it invaded Poland then England and France declared war - that had been a red line too far.

If NATO directly entered the war with large numbers of its own combat forces, it would defeat Russia's military and drive it out of Ukraine.

That was my assumption as well back in 2022. But then the Russia sanctions did nothing, Ukraine made some good advances and then got bogged down, and the West started running out of ammo. That last part is what got me. Because that's how the West won WWII against Germany (& Japan) and then the Cold War against Russia. We outproduced them until they couldn't afford it anymore.

Right now, the situation is reversed. It's Russia that enjoys a comfortable margin in artillery, tanks, and men. The West is giving Ukraine everything that isn't nailed down and it still isn't enough. Maybe the problem is a bloated inefficient military sector? Maybe the problem is political will? Maybe the problem is that we don't care enough about Ukraine? But those are all structural factors that are unlikely to change anytime soon. My current thinking is that the West can't challenge Russia in most of Europe and Russia can't challenge us in America proper. Africa is up for grabs and China will get the rest.

The Ukraine war has proven NATO to be a paper tiger.

If NATO directly entered the war with large numbers of its own combat forces, it would defeat Russia's military and drive it out of Ukraine. Russia's only way of stopping NATO from doing that is to make NATO think that if driven far enough into a corner, Russia might actually escalate to using nuclear weapons.

I think you underestimate the reluctance of NATO to become directly involved in a war with Russia, which would easily spill outside of Ukraine.

The logic of the cold war was to prevent any direct conflict between two blocks. If the US gets involved in Vietnam, then the USSR does not ship their troops there to directly fire on US soldiers. Instead, it provides weapons to the Vietcong. Likewise, if the USSR invades Afghanistan, the US will simply provide weapons to their local opponents (Bin Laden and the Taliban, as it turned out) to fight the USSR.

This logic is still very much in play even today. NATO is totally playing by these rules, we arm the Ukraine (with non-nuclear weapons) and let them fight and die for their country as long as they wish to.

Quite frankly, Ukraine is not worth a direct conflict between Russia and NATO. Even if the conflict was initially restricted to Ukrainian soil, these things have a tendency to escalate. Say air defense stationed in Poland becomes involved, then Russia bombs it, then Poland declares that an attack on their soil and invokes article five.

If NATO directly entered the war with large numbers of its own combat forces, it would defeat Russia's military and drive it out of Ukraine.

Assuming it's actually prepared for war - which a peacetime army never is - if it paid the prices of thousands of dead and adapted and the public endured the thousands of KIAs etc and started winning before running out of expensive ammo ..it'd just get tactically nuclearly striked after getting onto rightful Russian clay and then run away, wisely, because a blood soaked piece of mostly useless land is not worth ending the world over.

A huge difference is that being wrong about a nuclear red line quite simply means a pretty serious blow to civilization period. And this makes every “crossing of the Rubicon” an all-in bet that Putin will not use nuclear weapons over whatever this new thing is. And I think honestly it’s pretty obvious that the man has a Rubicon and if we continue to cross false Rubicons we eventually cross the real one, especially if the Rubicon crossed would create a serious threat to Russia as a world power or Putin as leader.

I personally have little confidence in the leadership of NATO to handle this kind of thing. I just find nothing that makes me think that they have thought strategically about anything in the war. The arguments for continuing seem to be nothing more than moral preening. Saying Russia is bad and thus we will fight them and they will lose because bad guys always lose is not the kind of hard nosed strategic thinking I’m looking for in the leadership of NATO. Further, they’ve already been wrong about the state of Russia. It was supposed to collapse in the first months because we disconnected them from the central banks. It turns out they were not economic paper tigers and were more or less fine. They thought once Ukraine got this or that weapon system, that Russian military units would fail and the invasion would end. Turns out the best we can do is hold them in place. If the leaders of NATO can be wrong about the state of Russian and Ukrainian forces, and the Russian economy, I just don’t think they can be able to gage which Red Line is one Red Line too far.

Your comment reminded me of an article that I read previously which explores one of the points you're making in great detail, specifically about the "bad guys always lose" kind of thinking that seems so prevalent in NATO. https://www.ecosophia.net/the-three-stigmata-of-j-r-r-tolkien/

The first of these habits of thought may as well be called the Orc Fallacy. Orcs? Those are the foot soldiers of the Dark Lord Sauron in Tolkien’s trilogy. They’re bad. They’re so bad they’re a caricature of badness. Not only that, they don’t even pretend to believe in the rightness of their own cause; they know they’re on the wrong side, and glory in it. In Tolkien’s world, no orc anywhere ever had a generous thought or did a kindly action. The closest they get to loyalty is a kind of malicious team spirit, coupled with stark terror of what their bosses will do to them if they don’t follow orders. The closest they get to courage is bloodlust coupled with a clear sense of what everyone else in Middle-earth will do to them given half a chance. When they’re winning, they swagger; when they’re losing, they panic and run. For all their apparent strength, in other words, they’re lousy soldiers, and their main function in the trilogy consists of showing up in vast numbers and then being slaughtered en masse by their outnumbered enemies.

As a literary device this sort of gimmick has its problems. As a basic assumption about reality, shaping the way that liberal politicians and bureacrats in the Western world think about the people they hate, it has much greater problems. There are plenty of examples, but the one that comes first to mind just at the moment is the fate of last summer’s Ukrainian counteroffensive.

According to recent news reports, the counteroffensive was planned out in detail by NATO generals. They’re the ones who insisted that the Ukrainian forces should drive south across Zaporhizhia province to the gates of Crimea, and their countries provided the Ukrainian army with the tanks and other equipment that would supposedly guarantee victory. They wargamed out the offensive in repeated exercises, always with the same results. At the heart of their plan, however, was the conviction that Sauron’s hosts would panic and run once the heroic defenders of the West came charging onto the scene. Since “orcs” is a standard slang term for Russians in Ukraine these days, it probably sounded like a slam-dunk.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, nobody seems to have made sure the Russian soldiers in Zaporhizhia agreed with this. As a result, those soldiers went on believing that they were the heroes of the piece, fighting to defend Mother Russia against neo-Nazis at their gates. Instead of milling around aimlessly while the Ukrainians got ready to attack, and then fleeing in terror and dying like flies once the assault began, the Russian forces dug themselves in, built three hardened defensive lines behind the line of contact, and then fought like tigers once the battle got going, mauling one elite Ukrainian armored brigade after another. By the time the counteroffensive ended this autumn, 150,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died uselessly, billions of dollars of NATO armored vehicles had been blown to smithereens, and the Russian Army still held firm.

Don't even have to go that far back in history to find an example. Russia said in 2008 that Ukraine joining NATO was a red line. They invaded in 2022 after the west started pumping the country full of weapons and refused to back off its NATO talks. Now half a million Ukrainians are dead and 6 million fled, it's industry and economy are in ruins and it's demographics with those 6 million being mostly women means it's pretty much done as an independent state even if the war ends tomorrow.

Russia clearly has red lines. I don't know why the imperialist faction of western political groups is so intent on finding out where its nuclear one is.

I don't know why the imperialist faction of western political groups is so intent on finding out where its nuclear one is.

Is that a rhetorical question? It is very useful for an imperialist faction to know where the nuclear line of their enemy actually is, rather than where they say it is.

I suppose, but when we decide to find out how far a drop is before it's lethal, which is of course useful information. I propose that we throw you and the other neocons off for the test. Not random Americans or Ukrainians.

Too antagonistic. Don't get personal.

Your conduct in other threads right now is, while not quite as bad, not good.

You've been warned about this before. A lot. Ever since your first ban, where you claimed you were taking your ball and going home because this place sucks so much, and yet you keep coming back.

You've collected an impressive eight warnings since then, but no bans. And contrary to what some people think, I don't look forward to banning people (it's clearly a failure to steer people towards better participation, but some people are unwilling to change). I can only conclude you've interpreted our forbearance as tolerance and weakness.

One week ban.

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.

I wonder if this move is actually about Trump, designed to rope him into a Logan Act violation in which he contacts Putin to make some diplomatic assurances ahead of being sworn in.

Wouldn't matter. What are they going to do, prosecute him in the next two months? Impeach him?

How does this make it harder for Trump to de-escalate? The U.S. already enjoys near-total leverage over Ukraine. Calling a Russian bluff is purely improving our leverage against them.

Not by much, mind you, and I can’t say I endorse the brinksmanship…but conditional on it working as intended, I don’t see how Trump’s options are any more limited.

I think it depends on what form of deescalation you're talking about. If we just pull all funding and equipment then things will deescalate as Ukraine will fall over in a few months. This is easy regardless, and maybe slightly easier if Biden fucks things up enough that Russia refuses to negotiate since Trump can just say he tried but Biden mishandled things too much so his only option is to just pull out.

The other form would be some sort of negotiated settlement, how this plays out is less within the US's control. Russia is having a lot of success now with Ukraine facing serious infantry shortages. There are no weapons systems or equipment we can send that would make up for the lack of bodies Ukraine has to actually man it. Russia might just prefer to continue the grind for another year or so, capture the rest of the territories they annexed, see if they can push Ukraine to a complete collapse. Further escalation makes it harder to bring them to the negotiating table.

Can we give it a month before we prognosticate about red lines and weakness? Russia's response isn't guaranteed to appear within the quote tweets of one social media cycle. This would be like saying Americans showed weakness after 9/11 because Bush was still in the situation room on 9/12.

So far the Russian responses have been very asymmetric, and I think their audience is US policymakers, not the public (in the US or Russia).

Very plausible the Russian response was the recent anchor-dragging to cut fiber-optic cables, or something else the public will never connect to Russia (like an industrial "accident" or cartels getting their hands on a batch of US surface-to-air missiles "via the Ukrainian black market.")

I think the obvious escalation here is that the houthi's suddenly sink a western military vessel in the red sea with far more advanced and accurate missiles. It's more symmetrical, you strike us via a proxy, we strike you via a proxy. It also has the added benefit for Russia of shifting US and the public's focus more to the middle east which a lot of the zionists in the incoming administration already seem to be focused on.

Oh and there will be some big conventional missile launch pummeling the last remaining bits of Ukraine's industry and electrical grid of course.

Yep, 100% agree with this – I guess the Red Sea "feels" asymmetric to me inasmuch as it's another theater entirely, but you're right that it's very much the same game we're playing in Ukraine.

A source of mine in federal law enforcement claims the cartels already regularly get their hands on brand-new current Russian issue weaponry. This is probably due to corruption, rather than Russian policy, but it still wouldn’t be much of an escalation to give them weapons.

Sure, if they want to hurt Mexico. For reasons discussed elsewhere in the thread, the cartels don't want to get into a shooting war with US law enforcement.

So you're saying there's a chance?

In all seriousness, this prediction market does seem broken. 2024 is almost over. I'd rate the chance of a nuclear detonation at less than 1% with high confidence. It seems like free money for people who want to take the "No" bet, even if it's relatively small impact and the liquidity is extremely low.

North Korea has performed six nuclear tests since 2006. Based on this alone there's about a 17% chance that North Korea detonates a nuclear weapon in any 6 month period. But with only 6 weeks of the year left, the chance should now be 4%. That prediction market was broken from the start because nobody seemed to account for the most likely nuclear use case.

For a second I was thinking maybe it was warped because of the risk of no longer existing if you win the bet (is there a name for that? Not quite counterparty risk), but that would cause mispricing in the opposite direction.

It seems the Yes side is whale dominant. A nuclear test explosion would also cause it to resolve to Yes; the big Yes whale could well be some Russian or North Korean general with insider knowledge of an upcoming test hoping to make some side money.

ETA: the Yes whale has also bet on Iran getting a nuclear weapon before the end of 2024, so I guess that's his theory.

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.

Perhaps it's too soon to say? Potentially, this is a precursor campaign to a wider conflict between democratic and revisionist states, and if you take those blocs as the relevant units of analysis, the ledger is less clear. The American public increasingly has less commitment to maintaining the existing order, and the Ukraine war has set a precedent and provided an example for other states to learn from. If those end up causing a wider conflict to resolve favorably to the revisionist powers, ideologues in Moscow will be patting themselves on the back for putting an end to the looming Atlanticist threat etc.

On the other hand, Russia becoming a poorer farming and resource extraction vassal for a foreign power isn't quite what I'd call a glorious victory for the Russian nation, but I guess everyone has their own goals and values.

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.

why Russia started the war in the first place

To keep NATO from militarizing Russia's southern border. Since then NATO has spent vast resources trying to do so and the Ukrainian military is largely defeated.

but between the Russian world and the west. Instead of a campaign to unify of the Russian peoples

A large portion of the Russians are now under Russian control together with the valuable land in Ukraine. Left is a dysfunctional rump state with a demographic pyramid that makes South Korea's look healthy.

Russia is succeeding with its main objective, a multipolar world order. NATO has been cutting down on military spending for 30 years and deferring expenses and investments. Vast resources have been squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ammunition stockpiles are low, equiptment is old and bases are in a sad state. Most European militaries couldn't even put together a functioning brigade before this war. Russia has created an endless black hole for military resources. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians will have to be trained over the next decades. Ukraine has the world's fourth largest air defence at the start of the war. It is effectively spent and they are currently burning through NATO's stockpile at a far higher rate than NATO can manufacture. Meanwhile SAM systems are being consumed at a high rate in the middle east. Ukraine's military is a quarter the size of the US military. Rebuilding it from ruins after the war is going to cost vast resources for many decades.

Russia's army is bigger now than at the start of the war and is fighting more effectively. Their airforce, navy and nuclear force is pretty much undamaged. The arms production has increased substantially. Between China and Russia NATO doesn't have the capacity to invade Iraq or play global hegemon. Russia doesn't have to defeat NATO, they just have to soak up resources to the point that the empire can't be sustained.

When russians fight, they only gain experience and become stronger. When ukrainians fight, they just die.

When russians have to re-equip their army, they only get better and more efficient at manufacturing. When westerners have to re-equip a small army, their empire just collapses.

When russians fight, they only gain experience and become stronger. When ukrainians fight, they just die.

To a great extent yes. Ukraine has lost more officers than Russia. They are running into German WWI problems where they take their best men and put them into elite units and send those men out first. Ukraine leads more from the front which causes higher death levels among officers. Ukraine rebuilt its military in a more western fashion with a professional NCO corps which is much harder to replace casualties in.

When russians have to re-equip their army, they only get better and more efficient at manufacturing

Russians have done a far better job at scaling manufacturing during this war. Also They aren't trying to control the middle east and fight a war against China.

I'd just add that the biggest W for Russia in terms of creating a multipolar world order was financial and diplomatic, I think, not even military – for instance, Western nations freezing their assets and cutting them off from SWIFT, which both allowed them to popularize their alternative and put non-Western nations on notice that their assets in the West and any financial system that depends on Western countries are at risk.

(However on the flip side, I'm not sure the Russian air force is undamaged; they've lost a lot of Su-34s and Su-25s, haven't they?)

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

Ok, question: did Shogunate Japan lose the First Imjin War? They occupied Korea, but by your logic they lost because Hideyoshi had once told his retainers that his ambition unironically included “world conquest”?

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.

Unfortunately your argument fails because you used the letter “e” multiple times throughout the post. This was supposed to be a constrained writing assignment where you don’t use the letter “e”. You may have made some good points, in a well-written post, but unfortunately you fail because you didn’t meet the arbitrary victory conditions that I just made up.

Fortunately we can refer to victory conditions that Russian authorities established nearly four years ago, instead of inventing new arbitrary victory criteria. :-)

Here is a [reddit post of a full machine translation.]

I think you forgot to insert the link.

Oops! Thanks.

By domino strategy: take your own troops and conquer Korea. Take Korean troops and conquer China. Take Chinese troops and conquer the world. A strategy Genghis Khan also used quite successfully with many defections even of Han Chinese generals and troops into his army. Mongol invasions of Japan or Đại Việt were only minority "Mongol" armies with majority fielded by subjected nations,.

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).

He died before conquest of China was even completed and his grandsons were mediocrities. He probably would if he had twice more DALY. If anything, the empire continying to expand for decades after his death (unlike Alexander's) is quite an accomplishment.

A peace activist might say that nobody wins in any war, as the price measured in material cost and human lives is often enormous compared to any gains.

While Russia is not winning by its original stated victory conditions, Ukraine is not winning either by its own stated conditions (no territorial concessions), which look more unlikely for Ukraine to achieve by each day. Slow Russian progress implies that currently Russia is *losing less'.

What were their formal goals? What did Putin actually say at the start of the war?

Demilitarization, denazification and neutrality. He was saying this in early 2022, they constituted the original peace offer and he's still maintaining these demands today. These three were the primary goals of the war.

Demilitarization looks like it'll be reached at some point if only via attrition and Ukrainian military defeat. Denazification = installing some kind of more acceptable government - still up in the air. Neutrality, still up in the air.

Then there are various formally annexed provinces of Ukraine, some of which Russia has control of on the ground. These were added as goals with the constitutional changes in September 2022.

Russia has thus achieved partial success on 2 of 4 of their primary goals and seems to enjoy the upper hand on the battlefield. This we can observe since the original US-Ukrainian goal (pre-2014 borders for Ukraine) has been largely abandoned.

I'm reminded of this Onion article:

U.S. loses Vietnam War: Ford Urges All Americans to Salute Our Vietcong Rulers

Russia is losing Ukraine in the sense that the US lost in Vietnam. They are failing to achieve their war objectives and are paying a high cost in blood and treasure.

But, in a different way, they are winning since they are grinding Ukraine down faster than they themselves are being ground down.

In any case, war is almost always negative sum. There can be multiple losers. This seems to be the case here. Russia is losing, but Ukraine is losing ever worse. And, in the end, it will be Russia, not Ukraine which imposes its conditions upon the other side unless a truce is arranged soon.

There can be multiple losers

And there is a clear winner, too, the US.

Even Ukraine being ruined is a good thing if you take the longer view - sure, there will be tensions and resentment for some years, decades maybe, but these are people with a common language and culture. You can't rule out another reorientation in 10 years, so squint a little, and civilizationally degraded and depopulated Ukraine is weaker future Russia.

If by the US you mean the oligarchs and the MIC then yes. Though it seems short term focused given the damage they've done to global finance. For us ordinary serfs living here not much of a win.

They’re paying a cost, but I would argue Ukraine is paying a much greater one and thus losing. Ukraine always had a much smaller population, was less militarized, more rural, etc. than Russia. If NATO a we’re not sending billions in aide and weapons, Russia would be much closer to victory than they are now. Ukraine can absolutely stalemate them for a while — until their military population shrinks to the point where they can’t hold territory, or the “allowance” gets cut off, or the public turns against the war because life without electricity and running water is miserable. Basically all we can do is keep Ukraine from losing for a while, at a cost of billions a month, at risk of Russia going after NATO, and until the last Ukrainian dies in a foxhole. That’s not us winning. It’s certainly not winning for Ukraine.

They’re paying a cost, but I would argue Ukraine is paying a much greater one and thus losing.

By that logic the Vietcong lost the Vietnam war.

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.

This is the same bot talking point NAFO bots spam all over twitter...

It's less an endorsement of the war and more an indictment of our government spending. DOGE save us.

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.

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.

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.

American appetite for ending the war is shrinking, which is reflected in Trump's election on pledging to negotiate peace. America might have more money to spend than Russia, but is less willing to spend it.

I'm sorry, I may misunderstand. You think that Trump or his administration is going to reduce government spending?

Not SlowBoy, but I'm pretty sure he was saying Trump was less willing to spend on Ukraine specifically, not government spending in total. He is, of course, free to correct me.

at risk of Russia going after NATO, and until the last Ukrainian dies in a foxhole

Russia will go after nato with what economy and military industrial complex?

He has given several red lines about under what conditions he’d consider using nuclear weapons. The latest one being “don’t allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russia. Good thing we’re doing exactly that…

China's, presumably.

This is all a ploy to teach Russia about the power of friendship imported cheap labor.

To a large extent aren't we already in a position where if China truly cut Russia off, Russia couldn't continue the war?

I remain convinced from as soon as it became clear the Kiev wouldn't fall that the war will continue until Xi decides he wants a Nobel Peace Prize to burnish China's reputation abroad.

I find your framing a bit odd.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Who is this 'we'?

Liberal Western State Dept Consensus

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.

A true statement if we hadn't declared them a proxy via pouring in oodles of money and having leaders going around making declarations. The Biden-NATO philosophy appears to be "Speak loudly and carry a tiny stick."

Again, I will ask who this 'we' is, because this goes beyond a lack of shared consensus.

"We" are NATO and establishment American foreign policy persons.

Just as importantly "they" are foreign belligerents. What you seem to care about is what France or Finland thinks of these entities. That is largely irrelevant. What Russia thinks is relevant. And they decided that the Biden administration was a good time to invade. They decided that Germany had crippled its own economy with Green pipedreams.

Also its important to keep an eye on one of the most important, but mercurial NATO members: Turkey. Turkey has bucked the rest of the members more than ever and was closer to exiting the alliance 2021-present than any time since it joined.

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.

That capacity has proven both far too slow to materialize and far to expensive for the welfare states to maintain.

But if you think NATO prestige is important, its a huge loss.

Why? I genuinely know very little about NATO so this question is sincere. Why would Finland and Sweden join if NATO is dead? Why would Ukraine losing discredit NATO when it wasn't even a member? It got a shitload of money just for being a proxy, presumably we would do much more for a legit member. Money can't guarantee victory but money is useful and people want money, why would that prospect not retain its attractiveness? If I offer to give any student at my local high school free SAT tutoring and a student I tutor gets a very low score does that completely discredit me and prove my tutoring was worthless? Not at all, at the end of the day he has to take the test and I can only do so much. The tutoring could remain an extraordinarily good deal for anyone willing to take it.

Sweden and Finland would join because they already were effectively joined as establishment American (to be distinguished from America as a whole) proxies and joining merely formalized that. The problem remains that the whole alliance is entirely dependent on America because the rest of them are sclerotic, and the alliance, unfortunately, comprises countries that encourage the US to follow us down that path.

Money can't guarantee victory

This is antithetical to the theory of being a NATO proxy as Ukraine is. The theory of the NATO hegemony is that American establishment types can just bully the world with their wallet and win. If you actually need AMERICA (aka our 18-40 year old men and the engineers and tradesmen supporting them) to control and win a regional skirmish like Ukraine, the theory is dead.

If I offer to give any student at my local high school free SAT tutoring and a student I tutor gets a very low score does that completely discredit me and prove my tutoring was worthless?

A fairly good analogy. Tutoring for standardized tests has little value (although it has increased recently as the tests have had their predictive qualities intentionally lowered).

If I offer to give any student at my local high school free SAT tutoring and a student I tutor gets a very low score does that completely discredit me and prove my tutoring was worthless?

The problem in the analogy is this + the "free" part. Because its clearly not free. You make regional enemies by agreeing to be a NATO proxy.

Well, on the other hand Georgia (erstwhile NATO candidate) just reelected an anti-Western party, and Erdogan is flirting with BRICS. It may be fair to say that the war galvanised the cultural West, so Sweden and Finland (which realistically had nothing to fear from Russia either way) joined as a symbolic gesture of support; but as far as the idea that siding with NATO will make your life materially better (as opposed to any spiritual satisfaction you may derive if you sympathise with its cause) goes, we have at least weak evidence (and justification) that fence-sitters became more skeptical.

Who do you think the Finns had to defend themselves against, twice, in the 20th century? And after WW2, did they build defenses and spend a lot on their military over the decades just for fun? No.

All neighbors of Russia have something to fear from them. They are imperialist, now as ever before.

Finland clearly joined to prepare for a possible Russian attack in the medium term future.

It may be fair to say that the war galvanised the cultural West, so Sweden and Finland (which realistically had nothing to fear from Russia either way) joined as a symbolic gesture of support

Completely untrue in case of Finland and almost certainly Sweden as well.

On what basis do you figure? There is little use arguing about counterfactuals, but I would have taken a bet against Russia attacking either Finland or Sweden conditional on them not joining NATO at very high odds. I never saw an argument for why they would do so that was not based on some form of "because it would be the evil-maxxing thing to do", or ascribing territorial expansion to them as a motive (which also doesn't really seem to mesh with reality, and is instead fielded as part of a rhetorical trick to deny their stated reasons for attacking UA).

Even if you don't think that Russia has territorial expansion aspirations (which it does, but agreeing to disagree ...), the Finnish public is afraid of Russia invading and wants to defend against it by joining NATO. You can say that it's symbolic by the leadership, and the public is being tricked into being afraid of something that would never happen, but what is the evidence for that?

Since Finland and Sweden hold important strategic locations in the Baltic/Arctic area (northern Finnish Lapland and Åland in case of Finland, Gotland in case of Sweden) that Russia might wish to control in the event of a wider NATO/Russia conflict.

Even if we assume that Russia would actually engage in a direct conventional war against NATO (which continues seeming very far-fetched to me), and somehow could magically summon the manpower and materiel for such an undertaking, I don't see what benefits it would gain from expending its resources (which would presumably still be finite, even if we assume for the sake of argument they are ~10x what they have now) on such an undertaking. The Ukraine war clearly shows that naval area denial currently has the upper hand in a near-peer conflict, so all major surface combatants would be disabled or pinned in port within a few weeks of the beginning of such a war; and with anti-ship missiles taking some one-digit number of minutes to strike a target, an Incheon-style landing around Warsaw would be as unrealistic to stage from Åland as it would be to stage from Kronstadt (or more so, since it would be harder to get an air defense umbrella even over the staging area).

The obvious strategy for Russia to pursue if it for some reason decided to fight a conventional do-or-die war against NATO on the offensive would be to seize the Baltics and then try to ram through the Suwałki gap as in Cold War planning scenarios. They didn't attack Sweden in WWII either, when it still would have made more sense (as naval action had not yet been rendered quite as impossible by modern reconnaissance and targeting) and they had a bigger and better army; and even their action against Finland was decidedly half-hearted, seemingly only serving to loosen the Finnish chokehold on Leningrad's northern supply lines that gave them trouble during the first half of the war. (As much as it may be flattering to you, it seems implausible that they would have been unable to make it past Vainikkala after fighting their way through to Berlin, if they actually were equally motivated.)

It seems pretty clear to me that the Åland/Gotland explanation was advanced by politicians who had personal incentives to make your respective countries join NATO, and lapped up by a media and population eager to see themselves personally involved on the right side in a conflict that they perceived as just (much like in religious apocalyptic fiction in the vein of Left Behind, the devil always takes very specific personal interest in the author's/reader's country and people).

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I don’t think it makes Putin look weak. Everyone knows Biden’s not going to be president for long and that this policy is not long for this world. Putin shaking it off because Trump will change it if he does makes him look pragmatic more than weak.

I'm not sure the red line argument here is very compelling. Are we supposed to believe that Russia is going to nuke the Ukraine or attempt to nuke other US allies because the US gave Ukraine missiles to strike Russian military targets with?

Were a red line to have been advertised, the game theory error here wouls be Putin's because his threat of escalating all the way to nukes would have been implausible. It is like if a parent tells their kids that they are going to cancel Christmas knowing that they would never actually do so. I terrified my kid one time by not telling them I would cancel Halloween if they misbehaved again, which they knew I would not do, but by telling them I would inmediately confiscate all their candy, which they knew I would be happy to do for dental/health reasons. Your threat has to be one that the other side believes you would follow through on, and nuke escalation except in response to nukes is generally not that.

Imagine for a second: you are a the head of a nuclear armed country and currently in a proxy war against other nuclear powers.

You are informed that a large scale ballistic missile attack is under way against targets on your soil including infrastructure, political buildings and military installations, including part of your deterrence chain.

If these missiles are nuclear tipped, your deterrent will be severely weakened. If they are not it will only be slightly blunted.

Do you retaliate with the full strength of your nuclear arsenal, do you launch a conventional attack, what do you do?

Doctrinal answers to this question vary of course. In France we launch a full scale nuclear response. And we make (pretty good) movies about it to make sure people know.

But this isnt the situation Russia faced! If the missiles are headed for your nukes and will seriously debilitate your retaliation ability, maybe we are talking.

One thing that I think you are making a strong argument for is that countries which have only a mofest amount of nukes may behave dangerously because it is easier for them to believe their retaliation ability is being eliminated.

Doctrinal answers to this question vary of course. In France we launch a full scale nuclear response. And we make (pretty good) movies about it to make sure people know.

Maybe that's what the French tell themselves: in practice, France will not unilaterally launch a nuclear strike. Maybe they're more independent than other NATO countries but France is not doing this alone. A catastrophic decision like this will be consulted with the US government.

In practice, the President is ultimately the one giving the order, and he has full latitude to ask or tell allies about it. And frankly I hope there's as much clarity as possible when nuclear weapons are involved.

The system is setup for unilateral strike though. Mostly since it was so in the cold war, when France was distrustful of American leadership and legitimately afraid of Russian tank columns rolling across Europe in a few days.

I have little doubt we would launch if necessary though. The discipline for it is there and the credibility of the deterrent is taken seriously. The last time it was a political topic, the President declared that even a terrorist strike may trigger it if necessary.

I sure hope it's all bluster/madman theory. I do think one should refuse such an order. I understand the need to tolerate collateral damage, but this is nothing but collateral damage. With any luck nuclear disarmament weirdoes have infiltrated the siloes and are just waiting for the right time to not push. Possibly the most lives a man could ever save, allbeit at the cost of a boring career.

US doesn't have any attack ballistic missiles worth the name.

As far as I can tell, no NATO country has accurate, long-ranged (~1000 km+) ballistic missiles that are dual-warhead. Yes, US could theoretically nuke Moscow if someone stuck a nuclear warhead inside a Taurus missile and it didn't get shot down.

But seeing as Russians make no secret of having a dead-hand system, that's of very limited utility.

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).

Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you were more concerned with the American people than with your image in the history books.

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.

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.

But look at the big board! trips They're getting ready to clobber us!

Don't set ridiculous red lines that are easily broken.

I'm feeling a bit spammy at this point, but William Spaniel did it two months ago, and he called out this Wikipedia article in the process.

Seeing what happened after NATO crossed the reddest fo red lines and pulled off a blatantly US coup in Ukraine, what with the US department of state people on the scene, Russians do seem to care about some red lines.

Suppose US somehow converted cca 1000 tomahawks into land-launch configuration, a feat theoretically possible in months if SpaceX or similar company were involved.

Suppose they were trucked to Ukraine, it'd only be like ~200 big trucks, and launched in mass through Belarus against carefully chosen targets which would mean Russians would, even at best ,shoot down only a fraction as intercepting them all would require having an uninterrupted chain of SHORAD along Russian western border, which they don't have.

I doubt Russia has enough fighters and enough AWACS planes to shoot them down. Suppose 100 important targets - bunkers, strategic infrastructure, ammo dumps - were hit in a morning.

Maybe Putin is cuck enough to take that, knowing America doesn't have the depth of arsenal to repeat that. Or maybe next massive cruise missile attack against Ukraine would just keep on going west and start hitting over-the border logistics hubs seeing as it's really hard to argue all that American hardware driven just across the border and fired off wasn't really Ukrainian.

He also has a video on this very topic from yesterday.

Don't set ridiculous red lines that are easily broken. Don't threaten a massive response if you were never serious. You will lose face.

This might be a good lesson if Putin did this. Did he? You don't cite any evidence of this in your post.

What exactly, did Putin say? Here, on a quick Google, according to Newsweek:

In September, Putin changed Moscow's "nuclear doctrine" to include potential responses to an attack that poses a critical threat to the sovereignty of Russia, carried out by a nonnuclear power with the participation or support of a nuclear power.

"Aggression against Russia by any nonnuclear state, but with the support of a nuclear state, is proposed to be considered as their joint attack on Russia," he said during a televised meeting of Russia's Security Council.

"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."

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.)

Now, I'm not saying it's not saber-rattling when Putin comes out and reminds everyone of Russia's nuclear doctrine every few months. But Ukrainian ATACMS strikes are very unlikely to pose a critical threat to the sovereignty of Russia. And while people insist on interpreting this as an aggressive deterrent, it's also worth noting that if you read it literally Putin is telling the United States that if they let Ukraine use a few ATACMS inside of Russia

  • Russia will consider it a joint attack (and as I understand it the US would be, legally, considered a co-combatant, so this isn't surprising)
  • Russia is very unlikely to launch a nuclear retaliatory strike unless the launch is "massive" or poses a "critical threat."

You could see a contrarian newspaper reporting this as "Putin indicates limited ATACMS strikes inside Russia will not draw nuclear response." People always assume the point of these sorts of communications is to threaten, which isn't untrue, but it is also to communicate what is and isn't likely to trigger a genie you can't put back in the bottle, which is very important when two nuclear powers are fighting a proxy war.

Now, if Putin said something else that is actually a red-line, please feel free to comment so I can update my databanks. Otherwise, I think the nuclear portion of this won't be relevant until and unless Ukraine launches so enough ATACMS at critical Russian infrastructure to threaten the safety of the state.

And please, please understand that news stories saying stuff like "RUSSIA UPDATES NUCLEAR POLICIES TO INCLUDE A NUCLEAR RESPONSE TO CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS" are substantively the same ones that have appeared for years every time Russia tweaks its nuclear doctrine (seriously, my second link here links to my third link!) because this is in fact a longstanding part of Russian nuclear doctrine, which has acknowledged that certain conventional attacks may warrant a nuclear response since 1992.

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.

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.

Well, perhaps the term I used ("saber-rattling") makes more sense in the context of Russia than the "red-line" term, which is traditionally how Americans frame their responses.

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.

To the OP's point, though, I think it's fairly unlikely (but more on that below) that Russia will use nuclear weapons in response to ATACMS as the result of most foreseeable and probable events. And if they do, it's extremely unlikely that they use them against the United States. So - unless you disagree - Russia saying "hey if the United States gives Ukraine enough weapons to create a strategic threat to our state we will respond with nuclear force" probably isn't a statement that's being issued to provide "we warned you" cover, since it's unlikely that Russia responds with nuclear weapons except in the specific circumstances they mentioned, which are not likely to happen since it's unlikely the US provides support necessary for Ukraine to pull something of that magnitude off, perhaps due to all the saber-rattling by Russia. Unless you actually think Russia will pop a tactical over a few ATACMS - which would be an interesting argument, and I'd be very happy to hear it :)

I will say that I think Russia has some unusual ideas of what constitutes an existential threat. There's a story that they almost cracked open the silos over a Norwegian rocket launch in Yeltsin's time because they thought it could be a preface to a full-blown attack, and I've heard that the reason they are so concerned about the AEGIS Ashore sites in Romania is because they worry they could be used as a decapitation weapon (any antiballistic missile can technically be used as a ground attack missile...) So I can see a situation where they are preparing cover against a counter-attack because they think Ukraine will pull something like that, or they are afraid they will think Ukraine is pulling like that, and respond accordingly. Let's say hypothetically they use a nuclear cruise missile against a HIMARS they mistakenly(?) assess is being loaded with a WMD. In which case, I agree, the long string of "we told you so" would be helpful to them. But I kinda doubt they are planning to use a tactical nuke in the normal course of events and are laying a trail to justify that.

Personally, from where I sit right now, I think as long as the US is holding Ukraine's hands, they will keep aiming at random ammo dumps, the Russians will remind everyone of their nuclear doctrine periodically, and no nuclear weapons are likely be used (although I reserve the right to change my mind in the face of exciting new evidence!)

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. :-)

(and as I understand it the US would be, legally, considered a co-combatant, so this isn't surprising)

Selling arms to a belligerent on normal commercial terms definitely doesn't breach neutrality under international law (although the arms shipments themselves are usually legitimate military targets). Nor does providing them on less-than-commercial terms (such as Lend-Lease in WW2, which was legally compatible with US neutrality). It isn't obvious why giving them away free would change the logic.

Russia has claimed that Ukrainians are unable to use western weapons without a level of in-theatre technical support which would make the supplier a co-belligerent, but I don't believe them.

My understanding of neutrality law is so-so, but as I understand it, you're very much incorrect here, at least as far as traditional understandings of neutrality goes.

Selling arms to a belligerent on normal commercial terms definitely doesn't breach neutrality under international law (although the arms shipments themselves are usually legitimate military targets).

My understanding is that it does not breach neutrality norms if they are being sold under equal terms to both sides. Which obviously is not happening here.

Nor does providing them on less-than-commercial terms (such as Lend-Lease in WW2, which was legally compatible with US neutrality).

It may have been legally compatible with US neutrality law, but that does not mean that it was not a breach of traditional norms surrounding neutrality - it was very obvious to everyone that the US was not a neutral party, and that it was aiding Britain against Germany.

It isn't obvious why giving them away free would change the logic.

This is a pretty clear breach of traditional neutrality. If you are aiding one party militarily, you aren't neutral (although that doesn't necessarily qualify as an act of war, as I understand it, but it might be considered a cause for war.) There was a huge fracas during the American Civil War when the Americans accused the British of breaching neutrality by building warships for the Confederacy.

Russia has claimed that Ukrainians are unable to use western weapons without a level of in-theatre technical support which would make the supplier a co-belligerent, but I don't believe them.

Well, as per US reporting, it appears that the Russians were at least partially correct about this, and the Pentagon is now soliciting bids for contractors to provide technical support in-theater.

(There's also the interesting question of how you define "in-theater"? The Russians are supposedly providing satellite intelligence to the Houthis to attack US shipping, is that a neutral act? Is it not an act of war, or, at a minimum, a valid cause for war? But of course the United States has been providing similar intelligence support to the Ukrainians since the beginning of the war, as has been acknowledged.)

It may have been legally compatible with US neutrality law, but that does not mean that it was not a breach of traditional norms surrounding neutrality - it was very obvious to everyone that the US was not a neutral party, and that it was aiding Britain against Germany.

The US was, uncontroversially, legally neutral under international law during the Lend-Lease period - that's why Germany had to declare war after Pearl Harbour - everyone understood that they were not already at war.

This mattered - before Pearl Harbour, U-boats did not operate in US waters. After Pearl Harbour and the declaration of war, they did - the period between Pearl Harbour and the US putting effective anti-submarine defences in place is called the Second Happy Time (happy, that is, for U-boat captains) by military historians.

There is a big difference between an unfriendly country and a country you are actually at war with. There are times when this matters - in the case of the US vs the Soviet Union, it is why we are still alive.

I think you're a bit mistaken about how neutrality works. As I mentioned above, a state of non-neutrality is not the same thing as a state of war. I recommend this CRS report – relevant excerpt:

Under traditional conceptions of neutrality, sending “war material of any kind” to Ukraine or any other belligerent would violate a duty of neutrality; however, some countries, including the United States, have adopted the doctrine of qualified neutrality. Under this doctrine, states can take non-neutral acts when supporting the victim of an unlawful war of aggression.

[...]

Even if qualified neutrality did not apply in this instance and U.S. security assistance breached a duty of neutrality, international law would limit the breach’s legal consequences. For example, security assistance to Ukraine would not permit Russia to use force against the United States in response to a neutrality violation unless Russia could satisfy an exception to the U.N. Charter’s prohibition on use of force. Nor would a violation of neutrality, on its own accord, make the United States a co-belligerent or party to the conflict fighting alongside Ukraine. Questions of co-belligerency implicate other legal paradigms and are not resolved by neutrality law alone.

So, yes, US war aid to England did violate neutrality. It did not (by itself) constitute an act of war.

It's certainly true that without the level of intelligence provided by the US (down to specific GPS data) these weapons would not be anywhere near as useful.

In a sense it's a bit silly to argue about whether the Ukies are setting up the target package themselves or letting a US soldier do it before they press the button. Most of the work is probably being done by the DIA here.

I think there is a meaningful difference between this and the F-16s. Whether that raises to cobelligerance is an open question though.

Can anyone steel man Biden's actions here?

The war is coming to a close. Trump's win gives him the political capital to go to the negotiating table and bring this ugly chapter of European history to a close. It will probably result in Russia gaining some of the Russian speaking territories of Ukraine. There's not much we can do about that unless we want to spend a few hundred thousand more lives.

Ideally, Biden would make peace now. It's his last chance to do something good for the world. A Nobel Peace Prize would put a positive sheen on an otherwise terrible Presidency. Failing that, the focus should be on strengthening the Ukrainian front lines. Lines of control tend to ossify into political boundaries.

This pointless escalation does nothing to help Ukraine achieve victory. You're right that Russia is not about to start nuking cities. But there are lots of things that they can do to be annoying, such as restricting exports of key materials, cutting underseas cables, or even blowing up GPS satellites.

Is Biden hoping to bait Putin into an escalation that Trump can't ignore, thereby preventing him from ending the war. If so, this seems evil, there's no other way to put it. The Biden admin and the Cheneys deserve each other.

Can anyone steel man Biden's actions here?

General deterrence-escalation management theory, pattern recognition, coalition management, and/or a kind gift to Trump to boost Trump's chances.

Deterrence of conventional escalation relies on the point that you may not be able to literally prevent another party from taking an action, but you can make the costs via retaliation high enough that it's not worth it. However, since the other side can retaliate against the retaliation, actual war-costs are generally not present (hence the pattern of Russian red lines). The main factors of retaliation in a democratic-state level is to take retaliation that will threaten, if not the actual existence of the government, it's survival to the next election.

Lame duck governments, by their nature, cannot be deterred in this way.

This changes the cost-benefit calculus of a Putin retaliation. No matter what he does, the Biden administration will be gone in about two months. If he retaliates to a 'sufficient' level to match his previously claimed red lines, doing so risks sabotaging whatever chances of a ceasefire deal he wants with Trump by invoking Trump against him. As Putin's macro-economic strategy for the war for the last years has clearly been to front-load the war economy on the expectation of achieving a close in the next two years or so, that's not a risk Putin will credibly take over a marginal increase to Russian rear area losses.

Pattern recognition comes from the point that the risk of Biden doing so is low based on the normal pattern of Russian reactions to claimed red lines of this manner. No one actually believes Russia's nuclear saber ratling about recently lowering the nuclear threshold to make this a nuclear escalation risk, because the Russian nuclear decision has never been deterrent on the doctrine, but Putin, and if he wanted to do a nuclear response the claimed thresholds were met years ago. As the Russians have and will continue to escalate in various ways regardless (including the new import of North Korean troops), this is just a general pattern of how the coalition has been increasing support for Ukraine over time over Russian objections.

The coalition management angle here is that Biden has probably been willing to support loosening the restrictions for awhile, but was withholding for election purposes. Returning to deterrence, the nature of a deterrence threat to electoral stability is that Russia might have ways to make the election decisively worse if Biden acted before, but this threat loses it's relevance after the election occurs. As such, holding the range limit was a matter of the pro-Ukraine coalition stability (for US electoral purposes this time, but other country considerations before such as German tanks), but releasing range now is also a matter of coalition stability. By releasing the conditions now, Biden is creating precedent that Trump cannot block or revoke, while enabling the Europeans to likewise authorize and release their own long-range munitions at their rate of production (and expanding production, as European arms expansion programs are expected to start taking effect next year).

Finally, the gift to Trump is that this assists Trump's leverage in whatever approach Trump makes with Putin next year.

The crux of the 'Trump plan', which it bears repeating isn't actually a plan Trump made or said he would use, is that Trump would make a conditional threat to Putin: accept Western-offered terms, or see an increase in support to Ukraine.

What releasing the range limitation does is provide a relative preview over the next months of what that support can imply. This means theater-level strikes into Russian airfields where the Russian airforce (especially glide-bomb force) has sat out the war out of range of Ukrainian capabilities, rear-area supply depots, and otherwise increasing the burden on Russia's own stretched air network, and so on. As western- including European and American- arms production investments are expected to started coming online next year, and with it even more long-range weapons, this release bolsters the credibility of what that future armament potential means as a reason for Putin to move closer to an acceptable peace terms.

As such, Biden's release of the range limitations is something the pro-peace audience may want to think him for.

The war is coming to a close. Trump's win gives him the political capital to go to the negotiating table and bring this ugly chapter of European history to a close. It will probably result in Russia gaining some of the Russian speaking territories of Ukraine. There's not much we can do about that unless we want to spend a few hundred thousand more lives.

There's not much 'you' can do if you aren't willing to spend a few hundred thousand more live either, besides assume that the Ukrainians will continue fighting without American support.

Setting aside that Trump has not claimed he would compel the Ukrainians to accept a Russian-acceptable deal, nor was that a fair characterization of the Trump-advisor plan that was claimed to offer that during the election season, Trump doesn't actually have the political capital to do so either. Trump's election gives him as much political capital as his narrow Republican majority cares to back him with, and no further. The Ukraine war is not a priority to Republican majority, let alone compelling an end to it, and Trump attempting to do so is an easy way to break his 2-year trifecta with a party member revolt for... a position he hasn't taken.

And even if Trump wants to, his American political capital doesn't translate into political capital to compel the Europeans to contribute to the concessions Russia has demanded for ending this round of the Ukraine War, nor can he compel them to stop aiding Ukraine, nor does he have the poltiical capital to make the Ukrainian government accept Russian terms, nor does he have the political capital to make the Ukrainians stop fighting.

What Trump can do is make a not-very-credible threat that he will withhold all aid and watch the Ukrainians die even if they die by the hundreds of thousands... but the only way to make that sort of threat credible if the Ukrainians fight on is to stand by while hundreds thousands more lives end.

You may think that shouldn't happen, that there's no reason for that to happen, that it would be a bad idea for the Ukrainians to take a path for that to happen... but that can very well happen regardless of what you think, because you are not the ones who can make that decision. No American is.

At which point, you are just as well off asking what to do on the assumption that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians will die regardless. Even if 'we' do nothing, we would still be spending hundreds of thousands of lives to do nothing.

Ideally, Biden would make peace now. It's his last chance to do something good for the world. A Nobel Peace Prize would put a positive sheen on an otherwise terrible Presidency.

Biden doesn't have the ability to make peace now, because Biden is not, and Americans are not, the hyperagent of the Ukraine War.

The Americans are not able to compel Putin to accept a deal, or to make the Europeans offer concessions so that Putin would take a deal now rather than think he could get a better deal from Trump later.

This pointless escalation does nothing to help Ukraine achieve victory.

Why not, besides your own particular definition of victory?

If one defines victory as Ukraine gaining credible Western security guarantees short of NATO membership that convince Ukraine to accept a Russian demand for no-NATO membership, then demonstrating the effectiveness of previously off-limits capabilities may assuage Ukrainian concerns of post-conflict western support.

If one defines a victory as the Americans negotiating near-term cease fire under Trump, this directly enables Trump to present maximum coercion to get Putin to agree to drop various demands and accept a ceasefire.

If one defines a European victory as further attriting the Russian economic damage of the war to delay by years the functional reconstruction / rebalancing of the Russian military and civil-economy, and thus giving Europe and Ukraine more time to prepare for the next war without American support, this directly enables further attrition of Russian strategic assets whose replacement may add to that time.

There are many theories of victory which this easily supports, regardless of whether you think it's a good idea or not.

You're right that Russia is not about to start nuking cities. But there are lots of things that they can do to be annoying, such as restricting exports of key materials, cutting underseas cables, or even blowing up GPS satellites.

And you believe those are more credible or meaningful threats to refrain from support because...?

You are proposing, variously, a non-threat of a fungible good, an already occurring trend, and an expansion into direct conflict when the purpose of Russian deterence strategy has been to prevent direct conflict with the US.

That's an interesting thing to be deterred by, but not a particularly compelling one.

Is Biden hoping to bait Putin into an escalation that Trump can't ignore, thereby preventing him from ending the war. If so, this seems evil, there's no other way to put it.

That is how things seem if you assume the evil conclusions of your outgroup.

What Trump can do is make a not-very-credible threat that he will withhold all aid and watch the Ukrainians die even if they die by the hundreds of thousands...

Don Junior posts memes about Zelensky having his allowance yanked.

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?

Junior has been pretty involved in things lately. But if you want to be sarcastic about it, fine, I'm sure Trump will rush to sign off on another fifty billion dollar care package after campaigning on what a waste it all is. After all, he wouldn't want the Democrats or some Euro leaders to be miffed at him.

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.

I think it's the correct thing to do.

First, it's far from clear that we're in the 11th hour here, though the war is moving towards an endgame. Russia's stated conditions do not align with the military reality on the ground, for example from the ISW on the recent talks in Turkey: "Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded to the initial reports of the Turkish peace proposal, stating that "freezing" the frontline is "a priori unacceptable" for the Kremlin and that Russian President Vladimir Putin's previously stated conditions for ending the war — which amounted to full Ukrainian capitulation — remain "fully relevant." ". A frozen front with protections for Ukraine aren't enough it seems for the Kremlin, they want far more, which means that this war is not ending in the next weeks or months. This is true for Biden, and this is true for Trump, unless you accept that the Ukrainian military is about the rout, which I don't. You may think so, but if that assumption is not accurate a lot of things you're confused about might slot into place.

Next, Russia has now received direct support from North Korea, which was taken as an escalation in the eyes of Biden's administration, which stated as much. Not only Russia gets to set red lines and act, and the US wants to show that Russia's dreams of forcing a full capitulation of a sovereign nation via escalating force isn't going to work. It seems likely that longer range strikes into Russia will have a marginal but material effect on the frontline - Ukraine has hit ammo dumps and airfields deep in Russia before, it's just able to raise the tempo now.

Ukraine is always the underdog, and now that Russia has got more meat into the fight vs mid 2022 there's unlikely to be sweeping advances into Russian held territory, but they're not out of the fight or broken. From the US point of view, the fastest way of setting the stage for peace might be:

A) Russia needs to understand that it has failed and will fail to achieve its full objectives, which were insane anyway. No escalation of force (further strikes on civilian infrastructure or drafting of their populations/the population of North Korea) by the Russian military will achieve this, and the US has solid escalation dominance in the conventional space if it chooses to use it.

B) Ukraine will be unlikely to see its 2022 borders at the end of the conflict, and needs to accept that unless the Russian military comes apart in its push (unlikely, but not impossible, their losses are staggering). However, a concession needs to come with serious support from the west attached, and the partnership needs to be maintained in order that Ukraine doesn't decide to take matters into their own hands and test their nuclear latency. Ukraine isn't a US puppet, they get agency too, and if NATO abandons them this is a more unstable scenario for NATO and Russia.

Honestly, Trump might well take similar steps when he is in if Russia doesn't accept point A), this isn't as clear cut a scenario as you think.

Finally, as a funny point given the length of all our posts, do we know that the US actually has authorized long range missiles? Nothing official seems to have come out, and the missile strike may not have been ATACMS. The fog of war is real.

There is still no deal that Putin would offer that Zelensky and the Ukrainian people would accept, and Trump's claim that he could end the war in 24 hours is laughable and delusional. Until at least one of Putin or Zelensky are utterly desperate, no peace will be possible. Ukraine is definitely hurting right now, but it's still sitting on more territory than it was in August 2022, and none of Russia's attacks have come close to the scale of territorial gains of the Kharkiv counteroffensive.

Now, would Zelensky's calculus change if the US threatened to cut off aid? Yes, but this would massively alienate Biden from Democratic leadership and American allies in Europe. It's a different story for Trump, of course; not only is there support for these tactics among many in his leadership team, but even European leaders recognise that this is a policy he campaigned on, so he has a democratic mandate to push for it. By contrast, it would seem to many in Europe and in the Democratic party to be a gross betrayal if Biden were to threaten to withhold aid.

That said, I think even Trump will have a harder time of it than he expects. Any pressure applied to Ukraine will also change Putin's calculus, insofar as it will incentivise him to exploit Ukraine's new weakness to push the lines of battle further in Russia's favour. Creating enough desperation on the Ukrainian side without creating corresponding greed on the Russian side will be a very hard needle to thread.

There's also the European factor. If Trump pushes Zelensky too hard (as perceived by Europe), there's a real possibility of a hard transatlantic split emerging. While Europe would struggle to fill the void left by the US if all aid was blocked, it would be interesting to see how far they could "step up", especially if they supplemented their military production with purchases made on Ukraine's behalf from suppliers like South Korea, Turkey, and Pakistan. And while the US has been supplying the lion's share of lethal aid, Europe is sitting on a gold mine in the form of Russia's $180 billion in foreign exchange reserves held at Euroclear in Belgium. Additionally, the US in some cases has been using its diplomatic efforts to restrain transfer of weapons from European countries, most notably Sweden's Gripen with its long-ranged Meteor missiles, which would be far more useful to Ukraine than F-16s and AIM-120s.

That said, I think this scenario is quite unlikely, because it would be the biggest breakdown in Transatlantic relations since at least the Suez Crisis. It would be a huge fillip to European defense contractors like Rheinmetall and Thales - and a corresponding disaster for Lockheed, Northrop, General Dynamics, etc. - insofar as it would make it politically and strategically very difficult for Europe to buy American arms and equipment for decades to come. It would strongly increase the probability of European neutrality in any conflict in the Pacific, and could tempt Europe to closer economic relationships with China, as well as leading to a wider cooling-off of co-operation in the Middle East and beyond. The French in particular would be ecstatic at all of this. Consequently, I think it's unlikely that even a Trump White House would push Ukraine so hard as to prompt a split in American-European policy. But hell, Bolton seems to think Trump will pull out of NATO, so anything is possible. It would sure as hell be interesting times if they did.

Until at least one of Putin or Zelensky are utterly desperate, no peace will be possible.

Desperate or dead. Yes, they might get replaced by someone even more hawkish, but that's not a given. For example, Ruslan Stefanchuk doesn't strike me as a hawk. And since the line of succession stops at him, if he ends up dead as well, then Ukraine will have to deal with its kryptonite: multiple concurrent hetmans.

There is still no deal that Putin would offer that Zelensky and the Ukrainian people would accept, and Trump's claim that he could end the war in 24 hours is laughable and delusional. Until at least one of Putin or Zelensky are utterly desperate, no peace will be possible.

A week or so ago, I posted a comment that appears to have been mostly ignored. In it, I referred to the work of William Spaniel, a political scientist of game theory and international conflict, who was in turn referring to a Trumpist think tank plan to end the war. Short short story is that it's basically a two-sided threat to make both Putin/Zelensky, well, not necessarily "utterly desperate", because from his academic view, you don't need utter desperation to make peace. Instead, simply shift their estimates of the costs/benefits enough to overcome whatever bargaining friction is still getting in the way. (One needs some Lines On Maps lore from his channel to understand that the major view of his discipline is that wars don't just happen because of substantive disagreements; you need both a substantive disagreement and a bargaining friction.)

That said, I think even Trump will have a harder time of it than he expects. Any pressure applied to Ukraine will also change Putin's calculus, insofar as it will incentivise him to exploit Ukraine's new weakness to push the lines of battle further in Russia's favour. Creating enough desperation on the Ukrainian side without creating corresponding greed on the Russian side will be a very hard needle to thread.

Maybe to go into slightly more detail, the proposed plan is not to try to simply manage Russian greed in some way. Instead, it's to just straight threaten them, too. If they don't agree to basically whatever Trump has decreed, he will flood Ukraine with unthinkable quantities of top-tier weapons (and remove many of those silly restrictions on them). That would shift Putin's calculus to being almost entirely about whether he actually can really escalate against a full-fledged and unleashed American proxy without being even more directly escalated on. Because if not, that's a pretty significant threat that opens up a wide range of plausible bargains.

I didn't go into full detail in my other comment, but he thinks that the spectre of Trump (and possibly this Trumpist plan) could have been part of the impetus for both Ukraine's Kursk offensive and also Russia's recent ramping up in the east. If they think that Trump could get elected, roll in, threaten the crap out of both of them, and just up and declare that he thinks the solution should be X (plausibly with it corresponding to the current state of the war, with some horsetrading), and if at that point they'd have nothing better to do than accept, then they're both incentivized to rapidly ramp up as much as they can and make as many gains as they can now, before Trump draws his line, probably even if it's unsustainable.

That threat to Putin is oversold though.

First, it's not immediately clear extra military aid will be a decisive war-ending move, an extra thousand armored vehicles or guided missiles will help, sure, Ukraine will certainly welcome it, but currently the greatest challenge for the Ukrainian military is a manpower shortage, that the extra metal does not solve. Even with "lend-lease on steroids," I don't believe it to be likely that Ukraine will be able to push the Russians back to the 2022 borders, maybe it'll just be enough to stabilize the front lines.

Second, Trump has an electoral mandate to reduce aid to Ukraine, not increase it. That's what he ran on. Putin knows this. This makes Trump's threat of increasing Ukraine aid a lot less credible. He knows that if Trump follows through with this threat, the American electorate will become displeased that the aid dollars doubled and yet the war still has no end in sight.

On the first point, I don't think the requirement (from his academic view) is that it needs to be a decisive move or push the Russians back to the 2022 borders; it just needs to be enough of an increased threat of costs (on both sides) to overcome the bargaining friction that is keeping the war going. I've been kind of slow to take on this sort of mental shift after watching his videos for a while, but I'm finding the logic relatively more compelling over time.

On the second point, I don't really know. I don't pay attention to all the details of political campaigns. My non-hyper-focused read was that he just campaigned on, "The war is really bad and destructive; I'm going to end it; I'll do it immediately; don't ask me how." I don't know that he ever really committed to any sort of plan. It's worth pointing out here that this includes him not committing to this think tank plan... or even really ever acknowledging it at all, as far as I know. It's just an idea that's out there that seems interesting and has bounced around in my mind.

Yeah, besides a lot more Abrams and Bradleys and F-16s (which definitely aren't nothing, but aren't superweapons either) it's not really clear to me what the US has left to give at this point. We won't give them F-35s. We probably won't give them the other really wacky silver bullets we have.

Second, Trump has an electoral mandate to reduce aid to Ukraine, not increase it.

He also put Rubio in SecState. Rubio voted against Biden's Ukraine aid bill in April. So I think that signals where he's gonna go, although I don't consider Rubio a Russia dove or something.

I do think I kinda agree with @Dean above, though, that in a sense it's a gift to Trump. Gives him maximal leverage and, as Dean points out, since it's a lame duck call it's less likely that Putin will escalate (at least in the short term, until he susses out Trump's negotiation posture).

Yeah, besides a lot more Abrams and Bradleys and F-16s (which definitely aren't nothing, but aren't superweapons either) it's not really clear to me what the US has left to give at this point. We won't give them F-35s. We probably won't give them the other really wacky silver bullets we have.

More missile AA. Ukraine is generally good at counterbattery fire, but needs something to counter Russian precision-guided bombs. One Patriot per 50km of frontline will change a lot.

I suspect we're in a bad way on Patriot ammo, which matters a lot if we go up against China. We might be able to get the ones Israel recently retired.

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.

At the risk of sounding like I'm just trying to defend some random video-maker's honor, I'd say that I don't think he totally ignores that stuff. For example, here. I would agree, however, that even his analysis of coalition dynamics is a bit America-focused (which somewhat makes sense, since America is the big dog in the coalition and has some of the most important political dynamics happening right during this time), and a little less of getting into the nitty gritty of the other individual coalition nations' politics. He hasn't made a video specifically on that German development yet, though I think it would plausibly fall within the general thrust of the description of European dynamics in the video I linked in this comment.

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?

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!

That makes sense. I'd imagine that a lot of eyes would be on trying to estimate the electoral dynamics, and there's obviously a lot of probability there. All parties will care a lot about assessing the following lines-on-maps: what might it look like if they take a Trumpist think tank peace plan essentially on day one; what might it look like if Ukraine burns Trump enough that he withdraws support and they have to proceed with the war with just other European support; what might it look like if they successfully delay the Trumpist stick from being final until after the German election (and the resulting German policy becomes more clear).

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. But they both probably have to work through the various probability assessments to determine whether they want to approach Trump with a, "You're so great, Donald! You can make peace happen; let's do it right now!" or a, "You're so great, Donald! You can make peace happen; let's begin a deliberative process to start working through our negotiating issues over the next few months. There are a lot of intricate details, but we know that you're an incredible negotiator who will have no trouble working through all of them once we can (eventually) get everything on the table for you." We'd probably need to draw some decision trees and estimate some probabilities/costs have any sense for which parameter regions lead to which results.

I would suspect that there are a number of possible regimes, too. If the Trumpist think tank plan really does have strong enough sticks, there might be enough of a bargaining range already and enough risk in waiting that it best serves both sides to agree quickly. (Notwithstanding any concerns about whether US Intel is capable of making such an assessment either way... or whether Trump would believe their assessment and go in with a correct estimate of the other parties' interests.) I would also suspect, with lack of any other looming possible game changers in the near future, the most likely outcomes are either 1) Negotiated peace almost immediately (in diplomatic timescales) after Trump takes office, 2) Negotiated peace soon after the German election, or 3) Something significant enough happens in the German election that lead to a parameter regime such that war continues for some time, with or without US support. Or, of course, 4) Someone screws up trying to string Trump along, he loses it, they get the stick, then scramble to get back to the negotiating table and salvage anything they can salvage. Of course of course, Trump could also lose interest, not pursue this think tank plan, do something wild and completely different, or whatever. It's kind of an annoyingly big game tree... :/

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.

There's also the European factor. If Trump pushes Zelensky too hard (as perceived by Europe), there's a real possibility of a hard transatlantic split emerging. While Europe would struggle to fill the void left by the US if all aid was blocked, it would be interesting to see how far they could "step up", especially if they supplemented their military production with purchases made on Ukraine's behalf from suppliers like South Korea, Turkey, and Pakistan.

This would be a huge Russian victory. I don't think it would be remotely hard for them to make nice with Germany if the EU broke from the States, particularly since that plausibly means the end of NATO, no more US troops in Europe, no more US nuclear umbrella, no more US replacement for cheap Russian gas...

England would stick with the US and FVEYS would become the new NATO. The rest of Western Europe, led by Germany, would count the beans and bullets and make nice with Russia. (France and some of the former SSRs might have different ideas).

England would stick with the US and FVEYS would become the new NATO.

In the scenario we are looking at (where NATO breaks up because Trump offers parts of eastern Europe to Russia as a sphere of influence), this is a tough call. Trump and Russia are extremely unpopular in the UK - we just had a general election where the Trumpy party got 14% of the popular vote and 5/650 seats. And that was with the other three medium/large parties proudly supporting Ukraine and Farage shutting up because he knew that even among his target vote being pro-Russia was a loser. Starmer, essentially everyone in his government, and the civilian Establishment/Deep State would all want to choose Europe over a post-NATO MAGA US, and would by default have public support to do this. (There is, unsurprisingly, an even broader consensus that being forced to choose is a disaster and that we should hedge in so far as it is possible).

Under normal circumstances, if Starmer tried to do this he would be foiled by the UK national security Deep State, who are integrated with their US counterparts through arrangements like FVEYS in a way which would be ultra-painful to unwind.* But Trump is appointing a DNI who is sympathetic to Russia with a mandate to purge the US national security Deep State of the kind of people who make FVEYS work. So the UK Deep State has the choice of "Do we stick with our friends and risk being shafted they get purged and Tulsi sends all our secrets to Moscow, or do we throw our hat in with the dastardly Frogs who are at least sane?" And that is a sufficiently close call that "the elected politicians we nominally work for favour Europe" could be a deciding factor.

* Left-wing lore in the UK is that the military has coup plots in place in case a Labour government tries to break the alliance with the US. It isn't clear how plausible this is because the anti-American wing of Labour has never been within sniffing distance of power. Corbyn came closest during the 2017-9 hung Parliament, but part of the reason why Johnson was able to run rings round his opponents was that the Remainer establishment were more committed to preventing a Corbyn government than they were to preventing Brexit - including 20+ members of the Remainer establishment who were Labour MPs.

Trump and Russia are extremely unpopular in the UK - we just had a general election where the Trumpy party got 14% of the popular vote and 5/650 seats.

This is mostly a nitpick in the context of the rest of your post but a third party getting 14% of the vote in the UK is a pretty big deal.

I think part of the issue is that in a post-NATO world, there's a good chance that there's no "Europe" to choose from. The implicit threat of US violence NATO is what holds Germany, France, Poland and Hungary together. My bet is that if NATO evaporates tomorrow, Germany extends the hand (or bows the knee) to Russia relatively quickly. So, far from being a unified front against Russia that England could join, there's actually going to be a band of squabbling nation-states fighting over the best response to massive, combat hardened Russian army on their borders.

That's not to say that there won't be an anti-Russian European coalition that England could be part of and that they would support. But England and the United States have a common interest in preventing a unified and strong Europe. They are natural allies in that regard.

While that’s a strategic Russian victory- at least in the short to medium term- it’s also a huge lift, Germany knows what side of the bread is buttered. You can expect Europe to stick with the states despite the usual grumbling in every scenario short of unilateral U.S. nato withdrawal or civil war.

To be frank, I don't think Germany (or most of NATO) knows shit. They've been getting hard carried for over half a century now and have consistently demonstrated an inability to act either in their own interest or when prodded by the US. They basically exist (along with much of NATO) as the laziest vassal states of all time. If the US withdrew and Russia announced an invasion of Poland in 2034 I doubt Germany would respond until he was past Warsaw, more likely they'd do nothing and surrender when he got to the Neisse river.

Germany has been sitting around on the fence despite all the butter we've put on their bread for years. I suspect that they think that Russia is permanent and must be negotiated with, and that one of these days the United States is going to nope off into another isolationist fit (they're probably correct). So while I agree it's a huge lift and don't predict it, I get the feeling people overestimate German resolve for a confrontation with Russia.

You can expect Europe to stick with the states despite the usual grumbling in every scenario short of unilateral U.S. nato withdrawal or civil war.

I would add at least one more scenario: Trump releases evidence that the US blew up Nordstream. (NB: I'm not claiming that's what happened. Just a black swan that popped into my head!)

I agree this would be a huge victory for Russia - far more meaningful than the last bits of Donetsk/Luhansk/Zaporizhzhia. Cracking apart the European-American alliance has long been a primary geopolitical objective of the reactionary nationalist strain in Russian politics and an absolute precondition for other territorial ambitions. That said, it's going to be challenging for Russia to pull this off - Putin was doubtless hoping/expecting that the Anglo world would be more hawkish on Ukraine than the European world, but if anything the reverse is true, and there's no strong equivalent to America-first isolationism in most of Europe. Consequently, he can't split America from Europe by asking the latter "why are you paying for America's war-mongering?"

Biden is hoping that he can escalate without proportionate response because Putin wants to avoid Trump’s defense / natsec advisors telling him Putin thinks he’s a fool and will tolerate Russian escalation.

Biden knows Trump’s people are sending the message that Trump will be a fresh start on the Ukraine war, unless Russia goes apeshit and does stuff that makes conciliatory moves by the US more difficult. This, in turn, makes it less likely that Putin will respond proportionately to Biden’s escalation in the lame duck period. Whether it works is anyone’s guess.

Biden is hoping that he can escalate without proportionate response because Putin wants to avoid Trump’s defense / natsec advisors telling him Putin thinks he’s a fool and will tolerate Russian escalation.

Yeah, it's likely this is what Biden's handlers think. What a great chance to bomb our enemy for free!

I can see the strategic logic, as long as we assign no value to human suffering. But in my opinion, it's the same sort of thinking that got us embroiled in Vietnam and Iraq. These people think they have it all figured out. And it goes without saying that they never seem to learn any lessons or bear any personal cost for their warmongering.

Neocons delenda sunt

The only way Trump is ending this war is if he forces Ukraine into a settlement that is essentially a capitulation to Russian demands, and I don't see that happening. 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), and there's no way Russia willingly accedes to Ukraine being part of any Western alliance. Furthermore, Trump didn't show anything in his first term to suggest that he's the master dealmaker he makes himself out to be. He shook hands with Kim Jong Un on television but this did nothing other than alienate South Korea. The North kept on ramping up their nuclear program like nothing happened. The Abraham Accords were a nice story but those were a UAE proposal, and it's hard to see what they accomplished in terms of Middle Eastern peace. And the Afghanistan deal was a disaster. To be clear, the US had to pull out, deal or no, but there was no real attempt at ending the civil war or even setting a schedule for withdrawal. All he got in return were some vague promises to not fire on US troops before a certain date. He couldn't even get them to agree to stay out of Kabul until the withdrawal was complete. Then there's the matter of the Iran deal which he claimed to be able to renegotiate, though all he really did was pull out of it, and I'm not aware of any attempt he made at diplomacy.

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.

Also a big hint that the super-mega-hypersonic cruise missiles aren't actually in any state to be used as an actual threat. Correct escalation would have been blowing up the Ukrainian Congress building and saying "stop that", but obviously Russia can't.

Correct escalation would have been blowing up the Ukrainian Congress building and saying "stop that", but obviously Russia can't.

They've had the capability to blow up any building in Ukraine since day 1, if they expend enough missiles on it.

Do you remember when the Ukrainian legion was announced and a large compound in the West of Ukraine got bombed and it was only sheer luck that there weren't hundreds more dead ?

This guy who was there remembers.

What do you mean? Russia just hit Ukrainian power supply facilities (again) – if they wanted to blow up the Ukrainian Congress building they could have done so. But the Ukrainian energy grid and power production facilities – which Russia has, over the course of the last year, damaged to the point of reducing it to 50% of its prior energy generation capacity – is slightly more relevant to the war effort than the Verkhovna Rada.

The precedent against assassinating foreign heads of state is strong for a reason. It isn’t that hard for a competent government with a reasonable amount of funds (in the low tens of millions, ie. nothing for almost any state) to have someone killed. Therefore it’s not in anyone’s interest to engage in that kind of action.

Is there really a norm against killing foreign heads of state in war? It seems to me like this happens all the time.

When the US invades a country like Iraq and declines to kill their leader, one of the main strategic reasons for this decision is so that there exists a clear person with authority to surrender. Often, when a leader is killed without surrendering, the armed forces splinter into a variety of insurgent groups and there is no way to achieve a diplomatic resolution to the conlfict anymore.

This argument suggests that Putin would have a strategic reason to not kill Zelensky, but Zelensky has no corresponding interest in not killing Putin. My guess is that if Zelensky had the chance, he would definitely choose to kill Putin whether or not the US supported the decision.

Medvedev would likely not be any different from Putin, and Zelenskyy knows it. While Zelenskyy’s replacement would probably be more radical if anything.

Except it's not going to be Medvedev. Mishustin would become the acting president, and he's a bean counter extraordinaire, not a hawk looking for judeo-reptiloid Soros agents under his bed.

The US did try to kill Saddam though, and Saddam never bothered to surrender. When your tanks are rolling through Baghdad unmolested it was a pretty clear sign that his reign was over.

n the early morning of 19 March 2003, U.S. forces abandoned the plan for initial, non-nuclear decapitation strikes against 55 top Iraqi officials, in light of reports that Saddam Hussein was visiting his sons, Uday and Qusay, at Dora Farms, within the al-Dora farming community on the outskirts of Baghdad.[153] At approximately 04:42 Baghdad time,[154] two F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters from the 8th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron[155] dropped four enhanced, satellite-guided 2,000-pound GBU-27 'Bunker Busters' on the compound. Complementing the aerial bombardment were nearly 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from several ships, including the Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Cowpens, credited with the first to strike,[156] Arleigh Burke-class destroyers USS Donald Cook and USS Porter, as well as two submarines in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.[157]

I also think (regardless of whether or not Putin has tried to kill Zelensky) that a lot of the weight of Ukraine's decision-making complex is now effectively outsourced to the West. Meaning that killing Zelensky doesn't necessarily impact Ukrainian C&C (although it might impact morale).

Russia has made multiple assassination attempts against Zelensky.

according to Ukraine with zero independent verification of any of this*

I looked for something akin to evidence beyond "Zelensky Aide claims X" and I couldn't find it. Is there actual evidence to support any of this or is every single one a "Ukrainian claims X" story?

Is there another country's media as clownish on the coverage of the Ukraine war as the UK's?

Putin’s control over various factions, especially early in the war with separatist militias, wagner and others in the fray, was tenuous. I question to what extent he authorized most of these attempts (and not because I ascribe to him any particular morality).

None of these factions had credible means to kill Zelensky. Doing it up close is an extremely hard suicidal special-forces operation.

Doing it by Iskander is plausible, but there's little evidence Iskander units take orders from anywhere else but Kremlin.

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