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What would the Russian reaction to this be? Would Russia sit around idly while a neighbour with a hostile government nuclearizes? Or would they go in hard and pre-empt nuclearization? One of Zelensky's many bizarre pre-war diplomatic maneuvers was making strange threats about nuclearization. Big nuclear powers tend to get hysterical when hostile neighbours nuclearize or are nuclearized. See the Cuban Missile Crisis for example. The US was hours away from launching a disarming strike on Cuba, they were dropping dummy depth charges on Russian submarines.
Furthermore, the Ukraine war is if anything much less a war of conquest than our Middle East wars. Ukraine is full of Russians and Russian speakers. The commander of the Ukrainian army is Russian, Russian family, educated in Moscow. A significant number of the forces Russia has were drawn from Donetsk and Luhansk which were provinces of Ukraine. Many of the territories in question were part of Novorossiya: Catherine the Great founded Dnipropetrovsk, for instance. Both sides appeal to common historical concepts, calling each other Nazis. The majority of fighting is conventional, between uniformed soldiers.
In Iraq and Afghanistan there was a much clearer division between 'us' and 'them'. Nobody ever found any historical claim for the US to be involved in running Afghanistan or Iraq, such an idea is ludicrous. They're on the other side of the world! The wars were justified via broader universal liberal principles, the need to reshape the Middle East...
At no point was the commander of the Taliban American or British, it was a war between Muslim Afghans/Arabs vs secular European/Americans. There were some auxiliaries drawn from the locals but these proved to be extremely low-quality troops and caused considerable green-on-blue attacks. Western-trained auxiliaries usually disintegrated the moment they ran into any motivated local force (like the Taliban or ISIS) without Western backup. The local population was not really aligned with Western forces and much of the fighting was unconventional with guerrilla tactics and suicide bombings. There was a massive ideological clash in all respects, the forces of Islam vs the forces of secular liberal democracy.
If an alien race shows up and conquers the world, installing strange values like mandatory veganism and bestiality, that's a war of conquest. They can't say 'oh we're just installing a new regime not conquering anything!' when they have no legitimate claim to Earth and only a bunch of perverts and weirdoes collaborating for them.
My point is that we should not conclude that because Russia invaded Ukraine, they will also try and invade Poland or Sweden or Azerbaijan. Ukraine-Russia is a special case where there are a wide range of justifications for Russia beyond 'Russia must grow larger'. The naval base in Crimea, the Novorussia territories, laws regarding the Russian language, potential NATO expansion...
Nor should the rules-based order be held up as this golden age because there was no conquest. The 'rules-based order' directly led to the situation today. Putin has complained repeatedly about the invasion of Iraq, various unilateral actions from the West. China wasn't keen on it either. What were the rules of the rules based order, are they listed anywhere? If we lack the strength to enforce the 'only we can invade countries' equilibrium because we abused it (and failed to even reap any gains from abusing it), then it's time to abandon it and move on without any nostalgia. Rebuilding this equilibrium is not desirable! Lessons must sink in.
They weren't dropping dummy depth charges - they were dropping live ones, but refraining from dropping nuclear depth charges.
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They might, however, try to invade the Baltics, which seems to be the much more common claim.
The Baltics are full NATO members.
After Ukraine, 'full NATO member' is not enough by itself - which member makes all the difference. US would do nothing, Western Europe would do nothing, Poland wouldn't move without US moving first, and if we did, it would be a criminal mistake.
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What are the gains from invading the Baltics relative to the risks? It doesn't make sense from Russia's perspective unless NATO dissolves. The botched handling of the Russia-Ukraine war seems to have done a lot of damage to NATO unity but NATO isn't totally broken right now.
Fears about the Baltics from Ukraine are rehashed domino syndrome that makes even less sense.
There are two obvious benefits: Russian minorities (1/4 of Estonia and Latvia) and land bridge to Kaliningrad via Lithuania (Suwalki Gap) that can be also carved through Poland. Both would be cheered by Russian population. Now about the risks: if NATO replies in full force, Russia is screwed. If NATO is fractured (isolationist USA, indecisive Germany and France, token help from other countries), then invasion of the Baltics will be a piece of cake. The latter situation would permanently shatter NATO credibility which would be a huge Russia gain. Therefore, the likelihood of Russia invasion of the Baltics is inversely proportional to NATO cohesion.
There is one aspect that is rarely discussed in this context that is extremely important. Currently, these countries face Russia alone (+ Belarus). If Russia conquers Ukraine, they will face Russia+Belarus+Ukraine. Russia will utilize strategic location, resources, industry, and population of Ukraine for further expansion.
Why were the Baltics even added to NATO? They seem more like a liability to the alliance than anything.
On the basic level, they applied, presented a path to have NATO-quality military, and after getting ready, whey were accepted unanimously by all other NATO members. On the more abstract level, peace in Europe leads to prosperity. On a deeper level, the only path for small countries to be protected from aggressive neighbors is to join an alliance or develop nuclear weapons. We are all better when they choose the former than the latter.
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NATO is, in fact, larger than it was at the start of the war.
And substantially less militarily equipped. Vast sums of arms and ammunition (and plenty of "trainers") were sent to Ukraine to be destroyed or sold on the black market. Sure, there are more nations in NATO, but the USA is making loud noises about leaving and the military investment just isn't there. NATO being larger doesn't even rise to the level of a refutation of RandomRanger's point - bigger is not always better.
I mean one of Russia's stated aims, halting NATO expansion at its borders, has resoundingly failed.
Those NATO arms also erased vast quantities of Russian invaders and their hardware, making Russia even less of a threat to NATO than they were before the war. I do agree with RandomRanger that Russia is unlikely to try invading the Baltics. Not because they don't want to, but because we and they now know they're completely incapable of such a feat.
It is generally agreed that the Russian army is stronger than it was before the war started. A lot of the corruption and dead weight was forcibly cleaned out by actual combat, and they've made multiple advances in weapon technology in the same timeframe. Their missile technology has advanced to the point that it is superior to NATO technology (there's no NATO equivalent to the Oreshnik) and their soldiers have substantially more experience on modern battlefields than NATO troops, and against NATO weaponry to boot. Even on the manufacturing side, they're producing substantially more shells and ammunition than NATO is, especially if you include all their other allies. If Russia wanted to invade and take over the entirety of Western Europe the only way to stop them would be nuclear. Have you seen the pathetic size and readiness of most NATO militaries?
Before we engage in fantasies of mighty Russian army reaching the English channel like the last three years never happened, how long would you estimate it would take them to reach Zaporizhzhia & Odessa, let alone Lviv?
The current situation is the equivalent of the entire US army being halted in Tijuana during an attempted invasion of Mexico (and indeed, having to fight the Mexicans in Arizona two years into the war).
All of Russia's "superpower" credentials are gone.
They'd just let the British leadership know that the start of the conflict would involve an oreshnik hitting them and the Brits would immediately surrender when they learned that it wouldn't just be poor people dying.
If we're going to adopt that metaphor then you would also have the entirety of China and Latin America supplying advanced munitions, satellite targeting data, ammunition, "trainers", training and equipment while also sanctioning the US' economy and preventing any chips from TSMC getting exported. It's actually entirely believable to me that the US would struggle to take territory in those circumstances - and at the same time, when that support came to an end, the US would be able to bulldoze their way to Chile without much difficulty.
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I don't think a total invasion of Ukraine made a great deal of sense either. Nonetheless, I don't think it's necessarily likely Russia would simply invade the Baltics. More likely is that they would practice 'hybrid warfare', attacking pipelines and shipping, conducting political interference in Baltic countries and probing for weaknesses, positioning themselves to take advantage of any fracture in NATO's resolve as and when the time comes.
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Russia's historical claims on Ukraine don't justify invasion. Territorial sovereignty isn't negated by shared cultural history. This principle has been foundational to post-WW2 order.
The Cuban Missile Crisis comparison falls apart because Ukraine wasn't pursuing offensive capabilities against Russia. NATO membership is defensive.
While Western interventions have questionable legality, Russia's annexation of territory represents a different category of violation. Iraq wasn't annexed, whatever other flaws that campaign had.
Ukraine in the '94 borders is an ahistorical construct. Much of the east was desert before Moscow's soldiers secured it and colonized it. Crimea was settled by slabé trading mortal enemies of Europe, and incorporated into Russia after a century of warfare.
Claiming Crimea and Novorussia has anything to do with the historical Ukraine is crazy. Both of these areas were transferred to Ukraine by Soviet politicians. These transfers directly lead to the Ukrainian civil war, as Russians in them had markedly different preferences compare to those in historical Ukraine lands.
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It seems a lot less destabilizing if "I deserve this territory because our leader founded the cities" and "my nationality inhabits the place" is preferred to "I have this ideology and I want to spread it".
The former cedes Taipei to China. The latter cedes the world to China.
The former cedes Eastern Ukraine to Russia or accepts that it's vaguely contestable (Germany would have a similar claim on Kaliningrad for instance). The latter cedes the world to Russia, or as much as they can get their hands on.
We can't go around attacking random countries around the world for the most abstract, random reasons and then complain when other people do the same thing to their neighbours for much more reasonable causes. The territorial sovereignty of Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya (or Pakistan for that matter, the US freely bombs and sends special forces in there) is totally worthless. We wield arbitrary power over much of the world because we're rich and strong. But others are rich and strong, they can do the same thing as us.
Who made the rule that 'annexing territory is uniquely bad'? Where was it agreed that you can have a war to install a puppet government but not annex? Would it be OK if Putin just set up more puppet governments, more people's republics like Donetsk and Luhansk? No, obviously not. The exact same people were bitching before Russia annexed those people's republics and after, they'd just find different words.
Ah, I see we have a new contender: "All cities named Alexandria rightfully belong to Greece except maybe the one in Virginia." Maybe the US should have handed Afghanistan and Iraq over to them.
ETA: Sarcasm, if unclear.
Macedonia, surely.
Alexander's birthplace is in modern Greece, but we've probably stumbled into two deep, opposing wells of nationalism: It's now "North Macedonia" which was IIRC a requirement to get Greece to agree to it's joining NATO.
And the EU, I believe.
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That's as may be, but it was destabilising enough to cause World War II, where Hitler's stated casus belli was precisely protecting the rights of ethnic Germans outside the internationally recognised borders of Germany.
You do not want to reopen all the historical grievances over European borders.
The victorious Allies at the end of WW2 (notionally including the USSR, although they partially ratted). At the time we made this rule, our armies and those of our client states controlled essentially the whole world except China (which was a failed state).
The rules don't allow you to have a war to install a puppet government - although arguably they did allow you to have a war to reinstall a pre-existing puppet government that had been overthrown by its own people. The US invasion of Iraq was against the rules - this was not controversial at the time. The people claiming it was within the rules were lying about WMDs in order to protect Tony Blair's domestic position, but the key players in the Bush administration wanted to set a precedent that the rules no longer applied and the US could use its superior military power to do what it wanted.
Russia has been establishing client states inside the internationally recognised borders of other countries since long before the Euromaiden and DPR/LPR. Transnistria was carved out of Moldova in 1990, Artsakh out of Azerbijan (by Armenia with Russian support, rather than Russia directly) in 1991, South Ossetia out of Georgia in 1992, and Abkhazia out of Georgia in 199. The 2008 Russo-Georgian war was triggered by a Georgian attempt to reconquer South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which is why "Who was the aggressor?" is a scissor.
If "We respect the currently-existing internationally recognised boundaries of sovereign states" is a foundational principle of the so-called rules-based international order (and it is - it is essential to the peace of Europe given the artificial nature of borders in eastern Europe) then Russia has been violating it since as soon as post-Soviet Russia was a functioning state.
What was destabilising about it was that a Germany that did control all the majority german areas was too powerful for France and Britain. By that criterion, most any process of border drawing other than the Vienna congress will be "destablising" sometimes.
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The primary cause of WW2, as opposed to a German-Polish or German-Soviet war. was British and French leaders being terminally stupid and lacking basic concepts of strategic thought such as 'do not start major wars without offensive capabilities' or 'make alliances with the strongest nearby powers before starting a war'. For some reason they believed that the borders they'd drawn up in 1919 at Versailles were sacred, precious, perfect creations that had to be defended at all costs. Nobody who lived in Eastern Europe liked those borders and they were nearly all later revised by Germany and then the Soviet Union. Poland was very happy to rip some land off Czechoslovakia, Ukraine did the same to Poland later on... It was a feeding frenzy.
The 'Czechoslovakians' didn't even like Czechoslovakia. The country broke up once Germany took the Sudetenland and it broke up again in the 1990s.
And as the cherry on top, European leaders have now totally dissolved the normal meaning of borders with mass migration. The population of London is something like 30% British! It's bizarre to go to so much effort defending Ukraine's borders when it is apparently impossible for the British government to prevent random people coming over the channel and living in their country.
The result of artificially creating and defending this weird equilibrium isn't that it stays perfect and static forever. It's that change happens suddenly and chaotically in a vast storm surge that smashes every bulwark and barrier established against it. WW2 is one example. No static system can survive a dynamic world.
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China was a victorious ally.
It was also a failed state and didn't control its territory - Chiang and Mao are fighting each other before the Japanese surrender.
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Why not?
Europe is the hospice of nations. There's not a single country there today not ruled by senile boomers and their senile preferences for dying in front of the idiot box.
You could reopen every single historical grievance and absolutely nothing would happen.
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so the issue wasn't murdering a million Iraqis, wrecking the country for generations and level the countries infrastructure. The great crime would have been giving them two senators, social the protection provided by the US constitution? If anything the crime was not giving them some form of citizenship. The British empires had tiers of citizenship which granted colonials some basic rights and a basic status. Why aren't people in occupied parts of eastern Syria given any recognition by the US government?
Afghanistan was colonized for 20 years yet no Afghan had access to the US legal system or bill of rights. Veterans of a de facto US military can't get access to the VA.
Typically, when a state annexes some territory, they do not give full citizenship to the people they conquered. At best, the conquered are second class citizens, at worst they are driven off the land or outright murdered. Also, the states that tend to favor imperialistic expansion are often not the states that put a lot of stock on citizen rights. If Hitler had extended German citizenship to the French, that would have improved their situation somewhat, but not greatly. Being treated by the Nazis as they treated e.g. German socialists would not have been a great improvement.
If Afghanistan is an example of colonization, it is a non-central example.
Normally, colonizers extract resources from their colony, their motivations are fundamentally economic.
We could debate if that was the case for Iraq (which has oil), but the occupation of Afghanistan was a net loss for the US taxpayer. I am sure that some PMCs and military industrial companies made a killing, but for the US as a whole it was a very expensive misadventure, which is why Biden pulled out.
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The British Empire allowed any colonial the right to move to the UK and even to vote in British elections (a right commonwealth citizens still have), but because travel was very expensive, there was no welfare state, and the condition of the domestic poor in the UK was very poor (by 1870ish perhaps somewhat better than for the Indian urban poor, but not enough to be a huge pull factor) very few made the move until after WW2, and those who did were usually rich aristocrats and some merchants and academics.
Today, the only result of granting the Afghans citizenship would have been that all of them moved to the US. The same thing can’t really work. The crime in Iraq, by the way, was siding with the Shias, something many intelligent analysts warned Cheney and Rumsfeld about. It was possible to purge the Baathists and yet maintain a minority-rule Sunni power structure (they tend to be more competent than Shiites in Iraq, certainly militarily) with some token Shiite representation, and that’s what should have been done. (Not that I supported that war, but if it had to happen…)
Siding with the Shia turned out to be necessary to create an Iraq that would not tolerate Al-Quaeda (or ISIS) operating in its territory. Baathism was living on borrowed time by 2001 (it was originally a product of the Cold War) and even if you could have found a more compliant Baathist strongman to replace Saddam, the US lacked the skills to do so. The only other Sunni-aligned political faction that was able and willing to violently suppress the Shia were the jihadis.
The fundamental strategic stupidity of the Iraq war was that there were three anti-American factions in the Middle East (Baathism, Salafi jihadism, and the Shia fundamentalism of Iran). But they weren't an Axis of Evil - they hated (and still hate) each other more than they hated America (but not as much as they hated Israel). Invading Iraq involved taking on all three simultaneously instead of defeating them in detail.
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The idea that this would have been some great injustice towards the Iraqis and Afghans doesn't make sense. There is no moral superiority in not annexing territory and granting citizenship.
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In this context, "justifications" work to some extent just by being restricted. It is in fact possible to have ambitions which are neither in line with international norms nor unlimited conquest, and thats what hes arguing.
Russian goals from here may be achieved by instating a puppet government in Ukraine that they support against enemies internal and external. I think this wouldnt make an important difference, and hasnt been raised as an option largely because everyone agrees with me. In fact, Russia only annexed the northern parts of their defacto 2014 conquest sometime into 2022 - which seems to me like they calculated better odds of keeping it from doing so at that point.
There is a difference between that and Iraq, which can be seen from how quickly the US let their client collapse again among other things, but Afghanistan seems like its getting there. Whats the difference between indefinite occupation and annexation, especially for a non-democratic state?
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What was NATO defending when they attacked Serbia? I believe the answer that is usually given is "the Albanians of Kosovo", so it seems to be defensive only in a sense that includes non-state entities that are not part of NATO itself. This is a basically meaningless condition, which is moreover also met by Russia's "defensive" campaign in Ukraine.
Conversely, in what way was Cuba pursuing "offensive capabilities" against the US? I'll quote directly from the Wikipedia article:
It's also worth taking into account that Clinton actually made suggestive noises to draw parallels between Kosovo (which NATO "defended") and Chechnya, and that NATO is deploying nuclear bombs and missile defense systems in countries that are as close to Russia as Cuba is to the US, but unlike Cuba during the crisis are not regularly being attacked by the respective adversary.
Underappreciated in the narratives about the Cuban missile crisis is, as I recall, that the Soviets only withdrew their missiles after the US pulled comparable missiles from Turkey.
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I mean, if the aliens are here to have sex with us, then I'd be fine with a vegan diet. Are they attractive?
This is a crude metaphor for Americans supporting homosexuality around the globe(and notably, the U.S. occupational governments in Iraq and Afghanistan were not pro-gay), not for war rape(which, for all the US military’s faults, it did not do in those wars).
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I think by "bestiality" I think RandomRanger meant the aliens genuinely have some inscrutable moral code that makes them want to force us to have sex with ordinary Earth animals, not with the aliens.
So nothing will change in the remote shepherding areas of the world.
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More attractive than anything we can imagine. But their version of kink looks like Event Horizon and the Kama Sutra if it was written by the Dark Eldar.
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