This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I feel like NATO expansion was a complete own-goal. What does the United States get out of any NATO member state that joined after 1990? Are we really expecting the Polish winged hussars to open a second front on the Mongolian Steppes in response to a Chinese attack on the US? These states are a massive liability for no discernible benefit. I would support kicking Eastern Europe out of NATO. If Western Europe doesn’t agree to that, then they can start their own alliance with blackjack and hookers.
NATO expansion to the east was a great move in hindsight.
Russia was always going to be hostile to any nation that tried to project power east of Berlin, so the only options were to either kick Russia while it was down or stand by and let it reassemble the borders of the USSR, then fight it on much more equal terms.
Why did you link to a 17-min long video from a YT channel of rather dubious inclinations?
It's a good primer on why Russia is so obsessed with pushing as far west as possible, and therefore why friendly relations are unlikely with any nations holding power in Eastern Europe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well no, there are other options: the US could have tried to integrate Russia into NATO, or simply not tried to project power past Berlin. The former seems very hard to get but has incredible payoff, and I am sorry it didn't seem to get much serious consideration from the West (perhaps there were good reasons it was a nonstarter – but I can't help thinking that if we can put up with having Turkey in NATO Russia could surely have been shoehorned in somehow.)
There were attempts to build better relations between Russia and the West during the 90s, then briefly during Obama's first term. They never came to much because Russia never gave up the dream of dominating Eastern Europe.
Refusing to grant NATO entry to countries east of Berlin would have just made them easy targets when Russia regained its strength. The Baltics would almost certainly have been either invaded, or pressured into becoming defacto Russian client states by this point.
Also under Bush. The US has repeatedly attempted a rapprochement with Russia but from what I can tell continues to refuse to make vital concessions to them. Which might be good! But it's not surprising rapprochement fails.
From an American realpolitik perspective it would be infinitely better to have a good relationship with Russia and have Eastern Europe as Russian client states than it is to have Russia as an enemy and be rolling the dice on Eastern European states. However, obviously, some of this is with the benefit of hindsight and also presupposes a stable US-Russia alliance which frankly I think would be a very delicate thing, perhaps an impossible one (Russia has no friends only interests etc. etc.) I don't think it's fair to tell Bill Clinton he goofed up by not anticipating that we would need to pivot to the Pacific badly in 20 years. Obama, however...
An alliance with Russia would be basically impossible if they were gobbling up democratic European states, and even if the US ignored what they were doing I don't see why they wouldn't just become hostile to the US again once they reassembled the borders of the USSR. Putin's Russia is stilly highly ideologically opposed to the US just like the USSR was, but instead of Communism it has negativity towards democracy and hallucinating that the CIA has a 100% effective anti-Russian brainwashing technique in the form of "color revolutions".
Even just having Poland on the US's side is a great deal because they're a fantastic foil for tinpot dictators. It's not inaccurate to think that Ukrainians looked at how Poland was doing, and how Belarus was doing, and said "I think I'll take some of the former, thanks".
And isn't needed, for what I am talking about. If the United States wants to contain China, it needs to prevent alliance formation; forming its own alliances is one way of doing this, but not the only way. China and Russia are not natural allies, but their mutual dislike of the United States pushed them closer together now than they were for much (perhaps all) of the Cold War, when they were ostensibly ideologically aligned.
I don't think this is true. Russia and democratic countries like India, Israel, France, Germany, South Korea all have or have had recently cordial relations, including mutually beneficial trade deals, sometimes for sensitive items such as military equipment. Shoot, after the end of the Cold War, Yakovlev assisted Lockheed Martin with VTOL technology for the F-35B.
In fact, let's talk about Israel. Israel has refused to send military aid to Ukraine or sanction Russia, not because they aren't a US ally (they ostensibly are) or because they are a Russian ally (they aren't) but because they want to maintain good relations with Russia and think they have a lot to lose by angering them. If the United States wants to compete with China, it is in its best interest for Russia to have a similar relationship with it - not necessarily one that is hostile towards China, but one that is not willing to participate in broader coordinated action against the United States. However, I think the ship has sailed on that, but it hadn't probably as late as the Obama administration.
And I don't think that's an insane world. Imagine a simple counterfactual where the US had listened to diplomats like Kennan in the 1990s, drawn a hard line at NATO expansion further east (at a minimum, ruling out Georgia, Finland and Ukraine) and instead promoted trade and investment both between itself and NATO and others (such as Germany) while generally keeping its hands off of former SSRs, perhaps telling Russia that NATO's ranks remaining closed its contingent on Eastern Europe remaining peaceful. Fast forward to the Sino-American War of 2027, and now Russia, instead of having already been hit by every sanction imaginable (and surviving), does brisk trade with the West, still uses SWIFT, has some degree of economic and geopolitical integration with most former SSRs, and does not view the West as a threat. Going to Russia under such a situation and saying "hey just sit this one out, we know you are friends with China, but don't give them your satellite imagery or any new arms deals please and thank you" probably wouldn't be a heavy lift! (From what I understand, Putin, who spent some of his formative years in Germany, is probably pro-Western moreso than pro-Asian in terms of his instinctive biases.)
Now, you can argue it wouldn't be worth Poland getting the Belarus treatment or whatever, sure, but the United States losing a war with China is potentially a Very Big Deal, probably much worse than Ukraine losing the war to Russia, and if that's your #1 priority you're going to want as many ducks in a row as you can get. From where I sit, it really looks like the US tried to have its cake and eat it too and as someone who lives here I am more than a bit concerned that we bit off more than we could chew.
Russia obviously knows this is not true or Putin would have been color revolutioned by now. They are concerned both about color revolutions, however, as well as military threats from NATO.
Am I missing something here? I don't typically think of Poland as being a particularly good foil for tinpot dictators. More like a magnet (no offense to the longsuffering Poles).
Sure. I mean, I don't blame countries for wanting their own sovereignty. But this ultimately means that when, say, Iran tries to get nuclear weapons I'm like "well I can't blame them" and when Israel tries to stop them - yeah, can't really blame them either.
In realpolitik terms, there was no realistic scenario where better relations with Russia would make much of a difference in a US-China conflict. Such a war would be dominated by sea + air power, which Russia is anemic in. Russia would be helpful in terms of sending raw materials to China, so having them embargo China during a conflict would indeed be useful for the US, but there was never a realistic chance for US-Russia relations to be good enough to where Russia would consider that rather than simply profiting and staying neutral while continuing to trade. Even if Russia joins China relatively explicitly, how much of a difference would that make? It might help China with marginal things like initial missile stockpiles and intelligence gathering. Those aren't nothing, but they'd be highly unlikely to turn the tables. And they'd be well worth the trouble if it meant the US had a stronger European contingent of allies to call on, even if they're mostly limited to just economic sanctions against China.
Well, first off, Russia is not anemic in sea power. They are anemic in surface sea power. Their submarines are quite good, and they have more than a few of them. Which ties in to my next point –
You wave off "intelligence gathering", but intelligence gathering is VERY important. US intelligence is quite possibly the difference from Russia consolidating control over Hostomel and not. Without the US SIGINT apparatus, there actually was a decent chance the opening Russian bumrush of Ukraine worked. Intelligence wins wars.
And it's arguably even more important in a conflict dominated by sea + air power. A conflict where Russia is giving China targeting data on our aircraft carriers (the way they are allegedly supporting the Houthis now) potentially puts the United States in a position where it can just meekly accept that China will be able to target our ships or attack Russian assets. It's infinitely better to not have to face that dilemma. It's nearly certain we will be faced with it now.
Being able to locate carriers means you can target them; being able to target them means you can sink them; being able to sink them might be decisive.
So, even without even a situation where China and Russia go to open war jointly and Russia does something like "invading Estonia" to tie up US air power in Europe, or "sinking US ships preparing to transit Suez or Panama" to cripple US attempts to surge naval assets to the Pacific, I think Russia could actually be not only important but actually decisive in a conflict.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Politically the hardest part about it is that at least Poland and the Baltic states were always going to apply for NATO membership at one point or another. So the US government either has to engage in political 4D chess to prevent that from even happening or reject such requests publicly, which then obviously opens one up to denunciations from the domestic opposition.
And also Greece, which was a military dictatorship for a period and generally a basket case.
Yeahhhh but from a purely realpolitik perspective Poland and the Baltic states are zip compared to getting Russia on your side. I think the real problem is if it's a two-sheriffs one-town situation, and likely it would have been. Sad!
See, if we could get GREECE AND TURKEY into the SAME military alliance we could get Poland and Russia in one. Surely the CIA has a magic mind-control ray that could make that work, or maybe USAID could gainfully employ the entire intelligentsia of Eurasia on the condition that they meme NATO-CSTO into being.
That's actually a rather good point I never thought about before.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Where do we put the cost of this catastrophic war and entirely foreseeable loss in Ukraine, a loss so bad it's possible it could end the alliance altogether? Do we put it in the "it's a good idea to extend NATO eastward" argument or somewhere else?
no one is getting into nuclear Armageddon to defend Eastern Europe (except maybe the British who have been nuts for 120 years) which makes all of this a giant bluff which was eventually called
the Americans were never going to be used as mercenaries (who pay Europe for the privilege) against the Russians if push came to shove
NATO's decline is almost entirely unrelated to Ukraine, and if anything Ukraine helped to rally + expand NATO. It got Sweden and Finland to join, remember?
NATO's decline, or really America's waning interest, is mostly caused by a combination of China's rise and negative partisanship where modern US conservatives hate Ukraine mostly just because US liberals like it.
Okay, so the cost of the Ukraine War can be attributed to the "it's a good idea to extend NATO eastward" argument?
Expanding NATO for what? No one is going to face nuclear Armageddon to defend Joensuu, Finland. Adding Sweden and Finland to NATO doesn't change anything except maybe a few pins on the "things to obliterate with Nuclear Weapons" map for the Russians in case of Armageddon.
NATO has emptied its treasuries and armories to lose the Ukraine War. This line of argument may have had more support in 2022 when the TURBO AMERICA meme was getting passed around, but it's 2025 where Russia is obviously winning the war and NATO has emptied their armories. NATO is weaker now, even with the added military powerhouses of Sweden and Finland than they were in Feb 2022. Instead of a stronger NATO, you get a deindustrializing Europe in huge debt, empty armories, and paper militaries.
NATO is a jobs program for unimpressive American and Euro midwits "elites" to give them excuses to go to expensive parties on the public dole; it's not a serious military alliance and hasn't been for decades.
is NATO stronger than ever or is NATO in decline? you don't get to have both at the same time and if you're arguing it was strong before the Ukraine loss and is declining now when the loss is all but accomplished you're making my point for me
(edit: saying NATO is in decline "only" because the US has lost interest in Europe because of an ascendant China is an argument against the idea that eastward expansion was a good idea; if the pivot to Asia was going to happen, it is dumb to provoke a war in Europe and blow a bunch of money and weapons there)
completely wrong to the point it makes me question if you interact with american conservatives
american conservatives don't "hate" Ukraine and NATO because of liberals, they want US wealth to be focused on the US
NATO was stronger because of the Ukraine war, but now its weaker because Trump is trashing both the organization and US allies. Simple.
A larger NATO spreads the cost of defense over more countries. It also gives the US the diplomatic leverage to do stuff like enact the chips ban on China, for which critical machine tools were manufactured only in Europe.
Sending weapons to Ukraine has give the US some ability to rebuild its shattered defense-industrial base, trading out old stock leftover from the Cold War for more modern kit. The notion that the US has "emptied its armory" is egregiously wrong. The US apparently never had the political will to part with enough stuff for Ukraine to get a decisive advantage. The notion that the US doesn't have any tanks or planes or ships because they were all sent to Ukraine is just goofy.
On the money aspect, the US has sent about $110 billion to Ukraine over 3 years, although even that number is probably too high since much of the value "lost" was due for disposal anyways and is being replaced by more modern kit as I said above. Even taking the $110 billion number at face value, it's still tiny in comparison to America's other priorities. It's like a week's worth of spending on SS + Medicare, the two largest welfare programs for old people. The Afghan war wasted $2,300 billion on a war that was genuinely unwinnable (and that Trump was more than happy to can-kick on for the 4 years of his first term) since we were never going to be up for the ethnic cleansings required to bring long-term stability.
This makes me wonder if you genuinely interact with American conservatives. Maybe some small fraction are genuinely principled, hardcore isolationists, but I highly doubt that's the genuine plurality position. As always, Catturd serves as a good barometer of the modern US conservative movement. He uses the monetary cost as an argument, sure, but he goes much further in seeming to genuinely hate Zelensky. There's also this weird quirk where the monetary cost only matters in relation to Ukraine, but it mattered a lot less when it came to getting out of Afghanistan early, or for aid to Israel, etc.
You think NATO is stronger in January 2025 than it was in January 2020? For any comparison from before the war or the start of the war to at any point after summer of 2023, I honestly don't think this is a defensible position at all.
it's simply patently ridiculous to characterize "conservatives," the major part of which has been talking about getting out of entangling alliances requiring hundreds of military bases all over the world and the continuing forever wars for at least 15 years as "you just hate the libs"
we're just too far apart on what reality looks like to really have a productive discussion without expending a lot of effort hashing out the factual disagreements we have and, to be frank, I don't think you acknowledging what I view as reality would change your ideological opinions anyway
Certainly NATO was stronger before Trump's election in 2024 than it was in 2020. That's really not a very high bar since Trump was trashing NATO in his first term too. The fact you can't even begin to see how this could be possible is indicative that you're either using some weird scorecard in terms of "stronger", or something else similarly strange is going on. I don't think I've seen any serious piece of analysis claim NATO got weaker from Trump --> Biden.
Further, if you don't think negative partisanship is the absolute most critical factor driving basically every voter in the US for the past decade, you're quite wrong. This applies to both sides for what it's worth. There are a few principled ideologues out there, but the id of both sides' voterbase looks a lot closer to Catturd's twitter feed than it does to a coherent list of policy positions.
You're right that it seems we're probably too far apart to have a productive discussion.
I'm using a weird scorecard where the strength of NATO is its ability to affect and put in place what it wants in the real world. It's an amalgamation of the strength of its various militaries, economies, and possible budgets and includes a comparison between NATO's position compared to its mortal foe and only reason for existence , the USSR which died 35 years ago so we use Russia now instead.
In 2020, NATO was strong and sizing up consuming Ukraine and giving Russia a black eye. They had more money, they had a better industrial base, and they had full armories. NATO weapon lethality and tactics on the battlefield was perceived as high. They fully believed and had reason to believe they could spank Russia and get them to behave so the gas would keep flowing. In 2024, the Ukraine War was a loser and nothing was going to change that. Europe (and the US) had already used all of their usable escalatory threats, they've already emptied their armories and "excess" money they could give, and it wasn't working. Each day of 2024 was Russia winning more and being in a better position in Ukraine and in the world.
at some point, reality was going to need to rear its ugly head about the Ukraine War and the Euros and many Americans who bought their own insane levels of propaganda about the conflict and what was happening there was going to end and the Trump election is forcing that issue; it's not that NATO was riding high before bad guy Trump ruined the parade, it's that Trump is turning the lights on
nah, the "negative partisanship" angle is a simplistic analysis; there are actual real differences between the values stacks of "conservatives" and "liberals," and it's not just that the other likes or dislikes what the other is doing but that these value stacks sort into real world behaviors and each group's behavior is a signal to low-info people about what they would likely think if the knew more anyway
productive discussions are pretty rare, especially about this topic, it's why I mostly avoid them and simply let my predictions and bets do the talking most of the time but I think there is value in competing realities to put their cards on the table for others to read
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Come on now, I no longer hate my old hometown that much...
Would US be facing nuclear Armageddon to defend Alaska?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’d file it under “nice work, if you can get it”. If they had gotten Ukraine into NATO as a fait-accompli, I think it would have been a good move, and would leave the alliance in a pretty rock solid strategic position over the years. But the State Department badly misjudged Russia’s temperament and now they’re throwing money down a hole and having to contemplate a war that they are under-armed to fight.
This war was great for NATO no matter what. Whether Trump destroys NATO himself is a different matter that's more related to domestic negative partisanship. The war has:
etc.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think State badly misjudged Russia's temperament, at least not for lack of intel and understanding. You can read Bill Burn's diplomatic cables where he talks about Ukraine being an absolute red line for all Russians, even liberal ones.
It really doesn’t feel like they anticipated or were preparing for a war though. It took them four months of panicking and hand-wringing before the first substantial aid packages started to arrive.
I suspect this might be because they expected Russia to roll Ukraine in 72 hours. But I'm open to State just not knowing what they really should know by virtue of their job.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know which liberal Russians Bill Burn polled, the ones I've heard from were unanimous on "Russia gotta stay the fuck out of Donbass with their 'polite green men'".
I think the ones Bill Burns polled were the ones near positions of power. Have you heard of a guy named Alexei Nalvany? Not that he ever had a particularly realistic shot at power, but he was the Western-beloved liberal opposition to Putin...and in 2014 after Russia seized Crimea he said "Is Crimea some sort of sausage sandwich to be passed back and forth?" and told Ukrainians to get real, they weren't getting Crimea back. (FWIW, I believe he recanted in 2023 from prison, but at that point I think he had probably realized that he did not need to fear electoral repercussions.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What do you think would have happened if Ukraine had been accepted into NATO overnight on February 22, 2022?
Do you think Russia wouldn't have invaded? If you think the reason it wouldn't have worked is because it's too close to the invasion, when do you think it would have worked? 2014? 2017?
No one is going to get into nuclear Armageddon to defend Eastern Europe except maybe the British whose foreign policy establishment has been nuts for over a century and who burned their empire and wealth to the ground in order to perpetuate their nuttery.
What has happened over the last few years is well-beyond any requirement of Article 5. Despite the constant desperate framing by neocons and other anti-Russian warhawk ethnics who have weaseled their way into the machinations of the US and NATO foreign policy establishment, it does not require the other parties to declare or go to war.
Whether NATO snuck in a brigade in 2014 or 2022 makes no difference. At some point, that bluff is going to be called.
If you’re unfamiliar with the idiom, “nice work if you can get it” carries with it the sly implication that said work would be nigh-impossible or at least very difficult to get.
I’m on record here several times saying that I think it was a stupid plan because of its high likelihood of backfiring. I think if they were going to try to pull it off, it would have best to do it sometime back when Alanis Morrisette and overly baggy jeans were still popular.
Oh, fair enough!
No one was going to do that during that time period. If you had told the people of the time that in 25 years they were going to be fighting over the Oskil River with Russia, I think they would have assumed nuclear war had already happened. It took the silliness of 9/11 and the initial success of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars to make NATO think this was something which could happen.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So would I, better no guarantees than false guarantees. False guarantees lead to complacency and Ukraine scenario for us.
More options
Context Copy link
George F. Kennan was rather prophetic about this in his dying years (I bolded the most important parts):
More options
Context Copy link
The benefit is fewer wars and more stability, which helps everybody.
Plus more military bases I guess. Better to have one somewhere than to need one somewhere and not have one.
I cannot disagree more. Ever look at the US national debt?
More options
Context Copy link
Fewer wars?
Removing Ukraine from status of a buffer state and into US ally sure was peaceful!
What is your argument in plain English?
I know I wasn't the one you asked, and I'm also fairly certain that you comprehend what his(?) argument actually is, but I'll chime in.
We have ample evidence at this point to conclude that eastward NATO expansion was going to lead to more wars and less stability as opposed to not expanding NATO eastwards in exchange for a renegotiated peaceful coexistence with the newly reformed Russian state.
This assumes Russia wouldn't have just invaded those countries anyways, which was almost guaranteed to happen. Russia right now is like Germany after WW1: a revanchist power that's seething in resentment. It hasn't had its face smashed against the concrete like WW2 Germany or Japan did in a way that would convince the populace that war wasn't the answer. The only options were to actually do the smashing, which would be very problematic given its nuclear stockpiles, or to contain it. For the containment strategy, abandoning Eastern Europe would have just drawn the line in a less advantageous position.
That may be the situation now, but it wasn't in 1991. Also, one cannot 'abandon' something one never had, or never promised to claim and defend in the first place.
There was little chance reproachment would have ever worked. Russia has always really, really wanted to dominate Eastern Europe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not too sure what the evidence is for this. Surely, for all we know, less NATO expansion would lead to more invasions, because Russia would not have to worry about making an enemy of other treaty bound countries.
Has Russia attacked any of its neighbors that were not considered for NATO expansion?
We have, in fact, 4 clear examples from recent history of Russia not attacking her neighbor even when it goes down the obvious years-long path towards NATO expansion, namely Poland and the 3 Baltic states. All in all, yes, both of those narratives are wrong.
Because all countries are of course interchangeable. Say, having Monaco have a single North Korean base is entirely the same as if Spanish left-wing insanity took a turn and they adopted Juche as state ideology.
This is all so stupid and so tiresome.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link