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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   8793 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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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.

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.

"I deserve this territory because our leader founded the cities"

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.

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".

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.

Who made the rule that 'annexing territory is uniquely bad'?

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).

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 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.

The exact same people were bitching before Russia annexed those people's republics and after, they'd just find different words.

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.

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.

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.

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.

armies and those of our client states controlled essentially the whole world except China (which was a failed state).

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.

You do not want to reopen all the historical grievances over European borders.

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.

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.

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…)

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.

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.

This principle has been foundational to post-WW2 order.

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.

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.

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?

The Cuban Missile Crisis comparison falls apart because Ukraine wasn't pursuing offensive capabilities against Russia. NATO membership is defensive.

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:

In December 1959, under the Eisenhower administration and less than twelve months after the Cuban Revolution, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) developed a plan for paramilitary action against Cuba. The CIA recruited operatives on the island to carry out terrorism and sabotage, kill civilians, and cause economic damage.

(...)

In February 1962, the US launched an embargo against Cuba,[26] and Lansdale presented a 26-page, top-secret timetable for implementation of the overthrow of the Cuban government, mandating guerrilla operations to begin in August and September. "Open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime" was hoped by the planners to occur in the first two weeks of October.[15]

The terrorism campaign and the threat of invasion were crucial factors in the Soviet decision to place nuclear missiles on Cuba, and in the Cuban government's decision to accept.[31] The US government was aware at the time, as reported to the president in a National Intelligence Estimate, that the invasion threat was a key reason for Cuban acceptance of the missiles.

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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