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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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I'm certain there are numerous records of Western and Russian leaders saying things that totally support any given picture, including this one.

Really? Can you show me records of Putin saying "really Ukraine joining NATO is fine, I don't care"? Or Medevev or Yeltsin, even?

Are Putin's decisions sound, practical? maximizing interests of his own country, roughly based on reality as it can be observed?

It is hard to know the totality of information Putin is acting on. But on balance I think Putin has governed fairly well, from where I sit. You can look at "national vital signs" types of stats like life expectancy to see that. I think that Russians are slightly more paranoid than is corresponding with reality, but I think their general concerns about NATO are quite sane. Whether or not the "SMO" will prove to be a massive win or a massive blunder is probably too soon to tell, but my guess is that it will end up being a win, albeit one with a cost.

Based on Russian rhetoric and expecting from them self-interested actions, you might well argue that moving westward was actually more sound of strategy after 2014 than before.

Yes, I actually think there is a decent argument to be made here. Unfortunately(?) I was following this back before 2014 and so I consider mistakes made at that time and even before to be worth re-litigating.

Basically, I think there's this 'noble savage' view of Russia/Putin in the sense that there are supposed to be totally sound, realistic, predicable motivations in the driver's seat, they're just not easy to grasp for a Westerner, but I don't believe any of it holds up or amounts to more than wishful attempts to force orderly models on a messy world.

Sure, I agree that people are always trying to essentially force orderly models on a messy world. But whatever messy eccentricities there are with Putin and Russia, I think that "great powers are likely to intervene to stop hostile alliance formation on its borders" is just sort of something you should anticipate as a general rule. I think this in part because I, too, live in a great power and when the shoe was on the other foot (as it has been several times) we responded with military coercion.

Now, I agree that this general model is necessarily fine-grained enough to predict exactly what Russia's specific response was going to be. But it's good enough to anticipate a hostile response.