I asked Carlo if he would consider writing a guest post on Ukraine, and he graciously agreed to do so. Lucky us!
Russia and Ukraine
by Carlo GrazianiIntroduction
I need to say this, at least once: I’ve never had this kind of platform, or audience. I’m more of the good-conversation-around-a-beer sort of person, although I have benefited from some really good conversations with some very well-informed people. I often want to tell people what I believe, so I am very grateful for the opportunity to talk to the very well-informed BJ crowd.
I am also particularly grateful to Adam Silverman for bringing the highest signal-to-noise condensation of Ukraine war information to us as a routinely scheduled gig, every evening, at a personal cost in Twitter-crap-filtering, to say nothing of his mass-processing of enraging, depressing, or just plain saddening information that I cannot imagine enduring myself on a nightly basis.
In addition, I want to acknowledge that Adam’s warnings of what was to come in Ukraine were spot-on, at a time when it was easy to regard such warnings as slightly histrionic. Not very many public intellectuals were right about Russian intentions during the build-up. It is easy to forget that now, but I don’t want to. Knowing one can be wrong in principle is different from acknowledging that one was actually wrong. The humility derived from the second condition is a valuable, necessary corrective, when trying to figure out what ought to happen next. Which is what this thing is about.
The Argument Over NATO in Ukraine
There isn’t much debate in the US, or in the West, about whether we should be supporting Ukraine militarily. There is a great deal of debate over what form that support should take. The Biden administration has taken an approach that strikes some people as too cautious, because it appears to preclude explicit military intervention by NATO forces for media-popularized purposes such as “no-fly zones”, either over the entire national territory of Ukraine or merely for establishing and guaranteeing “humanitarian corridors”.
There is no question that the US is providing considerable military support to Ukraine, in the form of arms supplies and intelligence support. In addition, it seems to me also very likely, based on historical precedent, that other, covert activities such as actual US military advisors and deniable US military and CIA activity are currently supporting the Ukrainian resistance effort. But there is a clear threshold separating what the Biden administration is and is not prepared to do. That threshold was captured pithily by Biden himself, discussing intervention by NATO forces in the conflict: “That’s called World War III”.
The paraphrased argument is: “Remember the US-USSR Balance of Terror? We strained every fiber to avoid a war in Europe, because we knew that such an event would likely burn the world to ashes.”
(break here so we can put the rest of this post under the fold)
So far as I can tell, the most serious counter-argument (I’m going to ignore the unserious ones) is based on a critical analysis of the current Russian nuclear strategic posture. That posture was described in 2020 in an official Russian government decree, and analyzed cogently here.
One of its features is a “purposeful ambiguity”, thought to have been deliberately built in to the policy to enhance its effectiveness. The policy decree declines to distinguish between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, and has a concomitant lack of clarity regarding deterrence of conventional or nuclear conflict, creating uncertainty about where the exact trigger points for nuclear response are in case of a conflict. The analysis at the link points out that the Russian concept of “nuclear deterrence“ that frames the decree is distinct from launching nuclear missiles, and encompasses “…a complex, multi-layered set of measures, such as declarations, exercises, demonstrative deployments, and a number of other steps which fall short of actually firing a nuclear missile, but may already have the desired deterring effect.“
Western advocates for muscular NATO intervention in Ukraine believe that this posture is not credible: they assert that it is certainly a ruse designed to create doubt in the mind of NATO should it be necessary for Russia to fight NATO. In this view, it is madness to accept Russian threats of nuclear escalation, because those threats amount to so much shadow-puppetry, deployable at will to mess with our minds while cashing in on their conventional military adventures.
I believe that the Biden administration has struck the right balance, for two logically separate reasons. The first is almost obvious—many others are currently pointing it out—and is concerned with the world’s (or at least Ukraine’s, and a good part of Europe’s) chances of not being plunged into an immediate and easily-foreseeable thermonuclear catastrophe. The second is a longer-term concern, and not one that I have seen articulated publicly: it has to do with whether Ukraine or NATO is perceived to have “won” the war, in the event (likely, in my opinion) that Russia is defeated. I believe that the distinction is extremely consequential for the kind of world that we will inhabit when the war is concluded.
Here are those two reasons.
Cold-War Versus Hot-War Escalation
It seems to me that too often debates on nuclear strategy tend to use the sorts of tools created in the 1960’s by people like Herman Kahn (“Thinking the Unthinkable”). Judging from some of the debates that Russian strategists have been having, leading to concepts such as “ambiguity”, the Russians appear to have absorbed the same intellectual tendency to view the choice to initiate a nuclear exchange as something that can be deliberated, and reserved to government leadership as an option of national strategy.
In my opinion, it is important to understand that this is a view that might have been defensible during the Cold War—during, say, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Berlin Airlift, or the Able Archer ’84 exercise, when it was imaginable that national leaders would be given time, and notice, to make the kinds of consequential choices associated with thermonuclear warfare.
When we discuss a NATO intervention in Ukraine, however PR-ed up as “humanitarian”, we should not bullshit ourselves about what the immediate consequence would be: conventional military engagements with the Russian Armed forces are unavoidable. A hot war, not a cold one. That really changes the context in which decisions are made, the command level at which they are made, and the timescale on which they are made. All these changes can drop the safety margins from nuclear exchange thresholds to zero, with essentially no notice to national leaders.
It is easy to illustrate the principle in the case of the “no-fly zone”. The Ukrainians have been pleading for NATO to clear their skies of Russian air threats, invoking the model that NATO has used repeatedly (Yugoslavia, Iraq), and one cannot blame them for asking, given the dire threat that they face. But Russia is not Serbia, or Iraq. The Russian Air Force is ranked the third most powerful in the world after the US Air Force and the US Navy, and it would certainly fight back. It is backed by deep infrastructure, including AWACS-type aircraft and electronic jamming aircraft, and many relatively near-by airfields.
All of these would have to be attacked by the NATO air forces to clear the skies over Ukraine, or even over a limited portion of its territory. This would have to be done in the teeth of capable long-range SAM systems, controlled by ground-based radar, which would also have to be attacked. There would certainly be serious losses to NATO aircrew. All of this would be essential — NATO aircraft would be nothing but targets in Ukrainian airspace, otherwise. And as if this is already not sounding like the kind of easy cat-and-mouse game the US public is accustomed to having its military play against hapless third-rate powers (and call by bloodless PR names like “no-fly zone enforcement”) it actually gets much worse.
Because at this point, not only would NATO be pouring ordnance into Russian territory, but it would also be cutting holes in Russian air-defense radar coverage and damaging other Russian air-defense assets. Try to imagine what that looks like from the Russian side in the middle of a hot war on its border. We might feel sure that NATO would never exploit a radar gap to run nuclear-armed bombers up to Moscow. Do you think the Russians would believe it? Any Russian Air Force Chief of Staff who even suggested such a thing to his Minister of Defense would probably wind up in a prison cell within minutes. He wouldn’t even try, because he wouldn’t believe it himself. I don’t want to spin out the rest of this scenario, because I don’t want to write a bad novel. The point is that very plausibly, the pressures of war would, by this point, result in release authority for nuclear weapons use devolving to lower-echelon commanders, because perceived first-strike risk is now higher than it was at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.
Note also that the 2020 Russian nuclear posture document asserts explicitly that a trigger condition for Russia to launch a nuclear strike is in the case in which an enemy “…were to target those elements of Russia’s military infrastructure in a way that would endanger Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities.” Where is “ambiguity” now?
I have no more privileged access to National Security Council discussions than any other opinion-haver on a blog, but for all that I feel pretty sure that these are the sorts of considerations that have informed the Biden Administration’s decision-making process in Ukraine. This is what Biden was saying, with “That’s called World War III”. No reasoning person would accept that kind of risk.
Who Will Own The Victory?
The second reason to keep NATO from direct intervention has to do with raising our sights to the world we hope will be brought into being when the war ends. As of this writing, enough is known to be cautiously optimistic about the final outcome of the war, despite its certain fearsome costs. Suppose for a moment that we take for granted Russia’s eventual defeat, and Ukraine’s eventual liberation. Nobody really seems to be asking a question that seems to me to be absolutely crucial to the aftermath of the war: Who will get credit for that victory, Ukraine, or NATO?
This may sound like silly, schoolyard bragging rights, but it’s not. It is a vitally important question to the kind of Russia that we deal with after the war. And it is essential that we should deal with a changed Russia after this war is over. We need to be done with Putinism.
There are two distinct narratives about the war that could emerge in its aftermath.
If NATO limits itself to supplying arms, intelligence assistance and covert aid, while the Ukrainian Army does all the fighting—and, let’s not mince words, all the dying—then the post-war narrative will unquestionably be that this smaller independent country rallied a courageous national defense against impossible odds to repel an invasion by its overbearing, larger and more powerful neighbor, led by its indomitable and charismatic leader. Even Russians would get this, eventually, from their own war veterans, and filtering through their long-standing cultural ties to Ukraine. This narrative, together with the catastrophic consequences of the war to Russia, would likely be lethal to Putinism as a political idea, and could create political space for political alternatives in Russia, which the West could engage positively and constructively.
On the other hand, if NATO were to intervene directly in the conflict and defeat the Russian military invasion (without somehow burning down the world), then a different, more toxic, Putinist-friendly narrative would likely gain traction in Russia: Russia was thwarted in its effort to bring back its unjustly-separated province of Russophilic people yearning to rejoin the Motherland by the usual Western cabal of Russia-hating nations controlled from Washington, acting through NATO. Even if Putin himself does not survive the war, such a narrative would ensure a healthy crop of worthy Putinist heirs, as well as continued pathological Russian political development.
There are plenty of “if only” examples of hindsight posing as lack of foresight when it comes to how wars end. If only the victorious WWI Allies had been magnanimous rather than punitive towards Germany. If only the US had recognized the danger of the Islamism it was encouraging to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. If only Roosevelt had been less naive about Stalin’s intentions. If only the US had refrained from using nuclear weapons against Japan. If only the West had managed relations with Russia in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse more adeptly. If only, if only, if only.
Many—if not all—of those counterfactuals are nonsense, in my opinion, because they presuppose nonexistent knowledge, impossible understanding, and a preposterous political context for the people actually making the decisions at the time. In the present case, on the other hand, we may have been presented with a rare opportunity. Because of the peculiar circumstances of this war we can actually make a pretty clear choice with pretty clear consequences that are pretty clearly aligned with possible Russian post-war political contexts. By choosing whether or not to refrain from direct NATO intervention in Ukraine, in effect we also choose whether to undermine Putinism, or feed it.
I think it very possible that Putin has doomed himself by his reckless gamble. The “normal” Russian constitutional succession process—which is essentially a coup, not infrequently facilitated by the military—could easily relieve him of power one way or another very soon, because of the incredible sudden immiserating pressure on Russian life produced by international sanctions, because of the obvious dangerous international situation in which his idiotic decision has unnecessarily placed Russia, and because of the subterranean effects of the horror and self-loathing that we know Russian military personnel of all ranks are experiencing in Ukraine, in response to their orders in this fratricidal war. The one thing that the West could do to shore up Putin’s position is to appear to justify his rhetoric by intervening directly in the war. Even worse, such an action would certainly secure his political legacy in Russia for the foreseeable future.
prostratedragon
Will read it later, but must tender compliments on the cartoon. Let it be so.
Baud
I still haven’t heard a theory by which a No Fly Zone would not lead to direct ground combat with Russia.
WaterGirl
@prostratedragon: Cartoon sent to me by Subaru Diane! I saved it for just the right post, and this was the one.
WaterGirl
Carlo, can you let us know when you get here? That way people will know that you’re here if they want to engage with you in the comments.
Another Scott
Thanks for this. You make a great case.
I notice Vlad Davidzon said on his Twitter feed yesterday that just about as many generals have been killed on each side (6 each). While we’re hearing lots of “good” news about the conduct of the war and Ukraine’s successes, we have to remember that we’re not getting the whole picture. I have to think that, like the rest of life and politics, a “cut and cut cleanly” result is unlikely. There will be large factions with very different views on what the war has meant and what should come after. Even if Ukraine “wins” (and I too suspect that Ukraine will not be defeated), the damage will take years (maybe decades) to recover from. Too many countries and institutions will want to move on and not do what it takes to rebuild, leaving instability in the wake. As you remind us, history tells us that an impoverished Russia that has to pay gigantic reparations invites future issues as well.
We need to see that Putinism is defeated as quickly and sensibly as possible. But we have to think very carefully about what comes after as well.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty
I think the analysis is very good. Well done.
Comrade Bukharin
The ‘radar gap’ danger from the Russian perspective is a brilliant point I haven’t run across before.
Another Scott
Being in the military can be dangerous business, even before engagement in hostilities…
Ospreys are amazing, but have had more than their share of mechanical problems over the decades. :-(
https://twitter.com/iimefmarines – search and rescue is underway.
:-(
(via Oryx…)
Cheers,
Scott.
Wapiti
@Baud: Let me try: if we implemented a no-fly zone, including attacking Russian air defense assets inside Russia, this would blind the Russian nuclear forces to a possible nuclear attack by us. So they launch what they expect might be a retaliatory strike, with everything they have left.
Which is everything, because they’re blind and we haven’t launched. So *then* we launch.
There is never any NATO ground force involvement because both sides are dead.
Martin
Looks like we lost an Osprey over Norway. What a great platform that has turned out to be. Hopefully everyone is okay.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
I had not heard that. That’s disheartening.
O. Felix Culpa
It is very hard not to want to go in with guns blazing when you see the horrors inflicted on the Ukrainians. I think you make a good case as to why succumbing to that understandable desire would be disastrous. I don’t envy our leaders, who have to make coldly rational decisions to allow some suffering to avert the likelihood of worse outcomes, i.e., as you suggest, nuclear war and/or the reinforcement of Putinism.
Dan B
It occurred to me that a nuclear exchange in Ukraine would lead to poisoned crops and famine in the middle east and Ukraine. Thinking about how to win the peace is vital. Trying to blunt Russian imperial ambitions is daunting. Will Putin just claim that NATO marched into Ukraine and Belarus? He is adept at propaganda in Russia and the big lie is fine with the government.
featheredsprite
Thank you so much for this analysis, I’ll read it again in the morning, when I’m not tired. They say that knowledge is power. So is understanding.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
I’m not at all sure you are right on this piece. Just looking at all the countries who are participating in sanctions, sending weapons, taking a public stand on against Putin on this war… I see a lot of recognition that Ukraine is the front line in the war for the survival of democracies in the world, and I don’t think countries will soon forget what Ukraine is sacrificing. For their country, and for all of us.
WaterGirl
@Martin:
What do you mean by that? Sarcasm, I assume?
Martin
The problem with Russia’s doctrine is that it’s self-fulfilling. It permits limitless aggression on their borders because the moment you try and stop it it triggers a nuclear response.
Which begs the question – how does NATO ever expect to invoke article V without immediately going nuclear?
WaterGirl
@O. Felix Culpa: Every day I find myself thinking that we have to do more. We just have to find ways to do that without getting directly into the hot war.
It’s heartbreaking.
Martin
@WaterGirl: Oh, much sarcasm.
ha ha tilt rotor go brrrr *crashes*
Baud
@Wapiti:
That is a theory. Thanks.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl:
It’s from this couple of tweets:
Davidzon was filmed burning his Russian passport in front of the Russian embassy in Paris today.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@featheredsprite: I hope you’ll come back and comment again tomorrow after you’ve read it again. It was hard to decide on the best time to put this up for maximum exposure.
I think Carlo put together some important thinking here and I hope everyone gets a chance to see it.
WaterGirl
@Martin: Putin needs to be booted out of Interpol, booted out of the UN, and any country that so obviously engages in an uncalled for attack on a sovereign nation needs to be booted out of the organization, whether that’s NATO or the UN or anything else.
Russia should not get to veto anything that they are directly involved in. And that goes for every country.
Carlo Graziani
I have to step away for a couple of hours, but I’ll engage as soon as I get back, promise!
John Revolta
Good stuff. Thanks Carlo, and thanks Balloon Juice for the consistently great Ukraine coverage.
ETA: Halliburton announced today it was shutting down operations in Russia. This is very bad news for Russia’s oil industry, which produces 60% of Russian exports.
Sanjeevs
@Another Scott: I don’t know who Davidzon is, but from his Twitter he thinks Glem was right on Russiagate.
Omnes Omnibus
Carlo, thanks for this (and thank you as well to WaterGirl). I think that this very fairly puts the case for a an active but restrained NATO response in Ukraine. It also coincides very closely with my take on the situation. My impulse to intervene has always been coupled with the knowledge that we cannot always fix a situation by throwing soldiers at it. When we can, we should, but this is not one of those situations.
Sanjeevs
@Carlo Graziani: Very good analysis
Gin & Tonic
It is not fratricide. Russians and Ukrainians are not brothers and have not been for centuries. It is genocide.
WaterGirl
Okay, let’s see if we can manage some group decision-making on a Friday evening. it turns out that Carlo Graziani has an unexpected conflict tonight, which we only discovered after the post went up.
Should I pull the post and re-up the post tomorrow when he can engage in discussion? Leave it up and re-up the post tomorrow when he can engage in discussion? Does anyone have some other idea for an option I haven’t thought of?
Another Scott
@Sanjeevs: I saw that. Yeah, disappointing.
I’ve only been reading his tweets since DPRK_news recommended him a few weeks ago. He lives/d in Ukraine, wrote a book on Odessa, and is a Fellow with the Atlantic Council. I think he knows Ukraine very well. I don’t think he knows US politics, etc., all that well at all.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: It doesn’t permit limitless aggression. Their aggression is currently being opposed, by Ukraine, by NATO support of Ukraine, and by world wide sanctions.
Edited
Ksmiami
@Omnes Omnibus: instead of lawyers, guns and money ; Nato et al can send guns, food, medicine and money.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: I vote keep it up. It will let west coasters and night owls have a greater impact.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ksmiami: They are.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Do you mean “prevent” or “permit”?
CaseyL
Thank you, Carlo! I knew a clear official US/NATO presence in Ukraine would lead to a nuclear war, but did not know it could/would be triggered even by an effective attack on their aerial recon capabilities.
We’re very lucky that the people running our FP and military do know, and understand, exactly all those factors.
Sanjeevs
@Another Scott: History will view US politics 2014-2022 as a minor battle in the Great Ukraine-Russian war.
Anyway I kind of doubt what he is saying because General Hertling is noting the Russian General toll as significant. I think he would be aware of losses of Ukranian brass since he spent years working with them.
Raoul Paste
@Martin: I really hope that it’s not the case that the Russian artillery right inside their border can continue to operate with impunity
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl:
I done fixified it myownself.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Perfect!
bbleh
Cogently and persuasively done, without resorting to euphemisms for ugly realities.
It should be required reading for MSM editors. But alas, even then, I think they’d continue to cheerlead for glorious, video-friendly war and nice, clean, unrealistic concepts like “no-fly zones.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Raoul Paste:
Ukraine has every right to take out those weapons. It is NATO doing it that would be problematic.
O. Felix Culpa
@WaterGirl:
Yes, it is.
Ksmiami
@Omnes Omnibus: Moar faster plz- lawyers can come at the end… to settle Putin’s bill
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
One of the things people have been talking about is using the money taken from Russian oligarchs to fund rebuilding in Ukraine. This is money that’s already been taken out of Russia, so seizing it won’t directly hurt the Russian people. I’m not 100% sure I buy that, but it would certainly be better than forcing the Russian government to pay reparations. If there’s enough money, and if the current government is replaced by a fragile democratic one, we could talk about giving some of that money back to the new Russian government to help it get started in the right direction. It would certainly be easier to support a democratic government in Russia than to clean up after another war in a generation or two.
steve g
Just excellent. The critical summary line:
brendancalling
@Gin & Tonic: I know I’ve brought up my ex the Ukrainian immigrant a few times but this. This right here. They’re not the same.
And even if they were, the Holodomor shut the door on whatever shared past they had.
Another Scott
@Sanjeevs: I dunno. He says it’s from a government site, apparently this one (which Cloudflare doesn’t let me reach at the moment) – according to Wikipedia.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
Clear-minded analysis. Many thanks for your coherent voice describing a sampling of some risks of direct NATO military involvement. (I agree with the political analysis as well; the end of Putinism is at least in play.)
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
Seconded. Remove Putin. It’s the only way.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: I think he’s talking about the same thing that Arnold was saying – not that the countries or the people are the same, but that there has been intermarriage, immigration, etc., so that Ukrainians aren’t strangers.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: But per the stated doctrine, if NATO borders Russia and NATO needs to invoke Article V then NATO will inherently trigger Russia nuclear doctrine. The only way to avoid this per Russian doctrine is for there to be a non-NATO buffer around Russia which NATO cannot respond to.
If NATO is not allowed to no-fly in any state that borders Russia without triggering nukes, then NATO cannot border Russia. Russia can exploit this difference in doctrine with NATO to be constantly aggressive.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: I don’t know if Davidzon doesn’t know how to read, or what. I have spent the last 10 minutes reviewing the announcements on the website of the Presidential Administration and cannot find a single posthumous medal being awarded to a General. I have not gone back to the beginning of the war, but have gone back 10 days
ETA: Here’s the site if anyone wants to check my work.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Or possibly even some other non-nuclear power like Finland.
That’s why I think Poland could have given the MiGs but the US could not. I mean, Russia wouldn’t have liked it, but it’s a different escalation.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: Ok, thanks.
Maybe he doesn’t know as much about Ukraine as I’ve assumed…
Appreciated.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Martin: I’m sure there must be a reason the US and other countries are being so vocal in announcing what they are giving to Ukraine. I suspect there is a push-pull to it all, announce as a way of supporting Ukraine and possibly deterring Russia from doing worse.
But I am hoping there are a lot of weapons and aid going to Ukraine – not being publicly announced.
I don’t understand why the MiG deal couldn’t have been done on the down low. But this is so not my area of expertise. I’m sure there was a reason. It’s nice to be able to trust that the administration knows what they are doing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: @Martin: I would suggest that the lengths to which NATO will go are different for member nations.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: Saying “fratricide” plays completely into Russian framing. To Russians, Ukrainians are the dumb little brother. To Ukrainians, Russians are the enemy. Period.
Brachiator
How could anyone know what Russia would do? And a wrong guess might result in catastrophe for everyone.
What would a Russian defeat look like? Does this mean that they pull back entirely from Ukraine, or continue to occupy parts of it? What would a long ongoing struggle in Ukraine mean? Years? Decades?
Does defeat mean the end of Putin’s rule?
One obvious conclusion here is that the world should accept the military operations of any nuclear power against lesser opponents in order to avoid a catastrophic conflict. This effectively neuters NATO should Russia decide to invade Poland or any other former Soviet Republic. Or if they decide to gobble up Germany or France. The same applies to the US or China or India or Pakistan operating against any nation.
But I also assume that nations think about this, and plan for it, just never talk about it.
Caphilldcne
@Martin: I think you’re reading this wrong. If Russia has an unsuccessful war with Ukraine it puts them in a bad position with carrying out operations elsewhere. Whereas if NATO intervenes and Russia loses they get a nice-stabbed-in-the-back story to tell. If they win in Ukraine with no NATO interference their reward will be a permanent low level war like Afghanistan that eventually caused them to leave. If they win in Ukraine and against NATO they resume their world power status with lots of new buddies and greatly undermine democracy throughout the world.
Another Scott
Well done.
(via BettyBowers)
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
@Brachiator:
The ones with governments run by sane, intelligent people do think about this. Rather, they used to think about this. All the time.
Confronting the USSR over a non-NATO country was simply not worth triggering a global nuclear war. Ever. Cf, Hungary in 1956 and Prague in 1968.
Contrast that with what happened in 1962, when the USSR tried to site nuclear weapons in Cuba. At that point, it was considered a direct confrontation with the US: and, thus, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
MAD is why the US and USSR spent the decades from the 1950s to the 1990s fighting “proxy wars” all over the goddamned world. Wreaking ruin and misery everywhere.
It’s amazing to me how much that constant consciousness of possible nuclear war has… vanished, since 1991. It’s horrifying to have to think in those terms again.
Ruckus
Carlo Graziani
I believe that the button has been hit.
My belief is that what you wrote is the situation. It’s not the best situation for sure but it is the reality. There really is no good situation with war. It is sometimes necessary, it has been throughout history more often not necessary. And as often as not many people die in a war. War is never good but as I said it is sometimes necessary, almost always caused by one man. Why should this time be any different? Other than it never should have happened in the first place. But that’s not some men and it’s not history, current or past. This war is the fault of one man and one man alone. And the world is doing pretty much what needs to be done, isolate that one man and his country. The ruble is worthless for all intents, his country is mostly cut off from the world, and his autocrats are being squeezed hard. They may find the balls to actually do the right thing. I’m not holding my breath. But it is what there is.
Omnes Omnibus
One thing people should understand about the US military and doctrine is that doctrine is fine until acting against doctrine will get a better result. Yes, violating doctrine where warranted is actually part of doctrine.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, absolutely. But at the same time, member nations are constrained by what they can do by who they are. There are a lot of things only the US can do by virtue of being a nuclear power, and a lot of things only the US can’t do for the same reason.
Caphilldcne
@Brachiator: but that’s the line. Poland, Germany and France are all NATO members. NATO reacts when a NATO member is attacked. Yes, we could all end up as little radioactive crisps.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Then what is your point?
raven
Stacey Abrams and Sen Warnock are flooding the basketball tourney with ads!
SW
Agreed
Dangerman
I vote leave it up if that remains a question.
No question, the primary costs of this thing will be staggering (to Russia as well as Ukraine)…
…but the secondary effects need to be considered as well. Top one being, I think, if I’m Iran, I’m balls to the wall after a nuke. Which Israel will never let them have of course.
HumboldtBlue
Extraordinary, and I haven’t finished reading yet.
This is why we read this blog.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Excellent.
Caphilldcne
@Dangerman: I mean don’t they know this already? And sorry but Israel is just going to have to learn to live with it. I’m tired of the US fighting wars on their behalf. Especially when it’s because of a bunch of end times evangelicals.
Gin & Tonic
This is good:
WaterGirl
@HumboldtBlue: It’s a pleasure to read something so well thought out, with great writing as an added bonus.
Sebastian
This was a treat. Thank you thank you. You should do this more often.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
(2:22 video)
As she says, “if true” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. One of the first things we heard after the (re-)invasion was that men age 18-60 cannot leave Ukraine, so…
Cheers,
Scott.
Dangerman
@Caphilldcne: I haven’t kept current on whatever is going on with a new Nuke deal. Although I guess the old deal is still in place with everyone but the US.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: That really is good. I grew up in Chicago and did not realize that Chicago is a sister city to Kyiv.
Good for Bush and Clinton. The last two presidents before a black president laid racism bare and the Republican party lost its mind.
WaterGirl
@Sebastian: Don’t forget that I invited you to do a guest post on Ukraine also!
Lyrebird
@Baud: I was reading too fast and missed the “not” in “would not lead” at first, whoops!
Martin
@Caphilldcne: Oh, no I get that. Articulated it last night in Adam’s thread. What I’m saying is that if Russias posture is as stated, then NATO is set up for failure. They can’t possibly defend any NATO ally without tripping Russias nuclear trigger.
I’m saying that Russia’s policy here is incompatible with NATO. So whatever we’re trying to protect here is just kicking the can down the road to Russia’s next adventure. That’s all.
I’m definitely of two minds here. I get the strategic benefits of NATO staying out. At the same time, sooner or later we’re going to have to end this shit.
mvr
Thank you for this. I appreciate the feeling of we must do more on this blog and elsewhere, but I am happy to see some serious and systematic consideration of how some ways of doing more would likely lead to worse results, even when that is unjust and maddening. I don’t like the situation (and I’m for doing a good bit) but it frightens me when people confidently push to go to the edge of nuclear war without (it seems to me) considering how bad that would be (and when we don’t know where the edge is).
Villago Delenda Est
Nice analysis, Carlo. On the nukes: I’ve raised this before, and it’s a possibility that Russia’s nuclear deterrent is as hollowed out as the conventional army has been by oligarchs embezzling the funds for the modernizations. We can’t proceed as if this were fact, because at this point it’s speculation. But I’d urge Biden and his team to look into it.
On the litany of counter factuals that you’ve dismissed: they are not unlike the idiotic glibertarian assumptions about the free market, in that they assume (make an ass out of you and me) that consumers have perfect information to make their purchasing decisions. This is claptrap of the first order, which is why one can dismiss glibertarians with the back of one’s hand, preferably across their stupid faces.
debbie
My local PBS station is running an hourlong documentary, Zelenskyy: The Man Who Took on Putin.
ETA: Sorry, half hour.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: What you are assuming is that the stated policy is static and that nothing can change it. And attack on a NATO country, an attack on another border country, use of chemical weapons, etc., all could change NATO’s response.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: Ukrainians aged 18-60. They can’t stop you from leaving if you have an EU or US passport. I personally know at least four men aged 18-60 with US passports who left UA with no issues.
Wapiti
@WaterGirl: My crazy pie-in-the-sky dream is that nations with nuclear forces must gain permission from the UN before attacking another country.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Also, too, Putin lusts after the Baltics, which did not hesitate to apply for NATO membership nanoseconds after they were free of the Soviet yoke, as they’ve got long histories of dealing with Russian imperialism.
Another Scott
@Martin:
Herbert Stein would like a word.
We’ve not had a nuclear war in nearly 77 years. There are lots of benefits in not having one at all, and no reason at all to hurry to get one over with.
Putin’s Russia is hurting. A lot. There is nothing inevitable about him deciding to start a war with NATO. And he will not be around forever. There are Kremlinologists who have speculated for years that he has a variety of health issues.
NATO has kept the peace for decades. I’m sure they’ve thought long and hard about what Article 5 really means, in excruciating detail. As well as the implications of admitting any new members.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
HumboldtBlue
@WaterGirl:
Indeed. So much good writing here, so much cleverness and knowledge.
Martin
@Another Scott: Yeah, apparently twitter has a fair number of stories of people that went over and are unaccustomed to not having air cover. Even US vets are experiencing something new there.
HumboldtBlue
@raven:
Stacey Abrams was just in a Star Trek episode as President of Earth
WaterGirl
@debbie: Please let us know how it is.
raven
@HumboldtBlue: I saw that. . . maybe here?
WaterGirl
@Wapiti: My rule is that if you attack a sovereign nation for no reason or for a made-up reason then you get booted out of every alliance. Permanently, no take-backs.
If a country is so bad that they must be stopped, the alliance does it together.
I’m sure there are a hundred flaws in my plan.
WaterGirl
@raven: Yes, I believe it was in a tweet on an Anne Laurie post this morning
edit: in the photo, she looked believable in that role.
Kalakal
Carlo, firstly thank you for this, I believe you have clearly and accurately depicted the current situation. I heartily agree with your reading of the reasons why NATO should not be directly involved in the fighting despite the awful costs to the people of Ukraine.
I believe there is a third source of pressure on Putin to add to the miserable military performance of his army and the effect of sanctions on his economy. That is effect on the ex Soviet states that are within Russia’s direct orbit. Many of them have puppet governments, propped up by either the presence of Russian troops or the potential of Russian military intervention. As Ukraine sucks in more and more of the Russian military, as the Russian economy collapses, the possibilty of civil unrest and even the overthrow of these puppet governments grow while Putins ability to respond successfully shrinks.
Far from being the conquering hero rebuilding the Soviet Union by bringing Ukraine back into the fold, Putin could be the fool that wrecked Russias military and economy whilst losing control of the Central Asian Republics and the Caucasus. It is difficult to imagine how Putin could personally survive such an outcome
WaterGirl
@Kalakal: From your lips to god’s ears.
Martin
@Another Scott: Oh yeah, I get the strategy. I don’t disagree with it. But emotionally, I see what’s happening and I just want the US to roll in with all of it and make it stop.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: I like the Ukrainian UN Ambassador demanding to see the Secretary General’s files about how Russia got the USSR’s seat. There was lots of reasons for Russia to be seen as the successor to the USSR, but …
MSNBC (annoying autoplay video):
Brown notes that mainland China had to go through a process to get the seat from Taiwan.
More at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
Yeah, the rest of us are just cool with what’s going on. Sure.
zhena gogolia
@Another Scott: I feel as if this is too much like the platinum coin. But great if they can make it work.
Calouste
@WaterGirl:
The Dutch PM said as much last week after an EU meeting. And he added that there was no point in making clear to Russia what Ukraine was in need of.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Emotionally we all want to make the war, the pain, the death, the loss, the sorrow in Ukraine stop. At the same time we admire their fierce love of country and their bravery in the face of hell on earth.
Truly heartbreaking. So we do everything we can without making it worse.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I think it’s doable in a bureaucracy that surely follows Roberts rules of order, or something similar. Doable in a way that the platinum coin is not.
It seems like a clever and elegant solution. I have no idea if it can work in practice, but I love it.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: Maybe if it had been tried on day one. Not now.
Sebastian
@WaterGirl:
I have not forgotten! I had to deal with some personal issues this week but I believe my fellow jackals would like to read something about the finer nuances and dynamics of “brother” people in Slavic countries, namely the petri dish of this conflict, the Serbo-Croatian War.
If I were to put a pin on a place and time where all this started to grow into the cataclysm it is today, it would be Slobodan Milošević’ “You shall not be beaten!” spoken on April 24th, 1987 in Kosovo Polje, the Blackbirds’ Field, where the Ottomans defeated the Serbs 600 years prior.
People tend to forget, if they ever knew, that there were three traumatic historic points of Islam expansion:
The Fall of Constantinople – the defeat of the Eastern Roman Empire against the Turks
The Battle of Kosovo Polje – the defeat of the Slavs against the Turks in 1389
The Sieges of Vienna – twice the Ottomans attempted to take Catholic Vienna, in 1529 and 1683, when they were beaten and driven back.
The Serbs under Turkish rule and the Rus under Mongolian rule share many many similarities. As a Croatian who grew up in Austria, another country close to a bigger, more dominant “brother” culture, I’d like to put down some observations.
No promises, though. ?
WaterGirl
@Calouste: Jen Psaki made a similar point in her press briefing from yesterday, that I just watched today. I am a couple of days behind.
The idiot press asking the same questions over and over, mingled with questions that even a child would know could not be answered.
I want her to make some giant flash cards. When the 10th “press” person asks why planes are a problem and stingers etc are not, I want her to hold up a giant card that has an image of plane with the word “offensive weapon”, and an image of all the other things we are sending with “defensive weapons”.
I think she would need less than a dozen cards, maybe only 7 cards to answer all their fucking questions.
WaterGirl
@Sebastian: Yes, I absolutely remember what you have had going on this week. That was just my way of letting folks know I have invited you to do a guest post too. Something to look forward to.
SamIAm
Hmm, I would argue there’s never been a time past mid-1950s when both sides had capable ICBMs and later submarine launched missiles that any nation’s leader had any time to deliberate beyond 15 minutes about the appropriate course of action if a nuclear attack was possible
Secondly, there are two former Supreme Commanders of NATO don’t agree with Carlo Graziani’s assessment either;
Former Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove said a no-fly zone over Ukraine “must be on the table”
And former Supreme Commander James Stavridis isn’t too worried about nuclear war;
From here: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084310587/former-nato-commander-says-a-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine-must-be-on-the-table
And here: https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/transcript-rachel-maddow-show-3-14-22-n1292021
Jay
Thank you Carlo, very well thought out and argued,
Thank you Watergirl, for keeping it up.
I have a mechanical/technical/tactical mind, not so great at the strategic/political.
thank you both.
J R in WV
There has never been an actual nuclear war — we nuked Japan after firebombing them into the stone age with conventional weapons, my uncle Bill was part of that mission and had nightmares the rest of his life from the PTSD. Japan had no way of retaliating against us. This is no longer the case with so many nations… Britain, France, China, Pakistan, India, Israel and the DPRK all are openly nuclear nations, along with the US and Russia.
We do not know how many other high-tech nations may have nuclear weapons either already available or able to be finished in short order. Nations like S Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, Finland, Sweden at least, off the top of my head. I would be amazed if many of those nations aren’t ready to defend themselves with home-made nukes, any PhD nuclear physicist has the chops to build something that will work.
A neighbor came by today, we sat on the back porch to work on a computer problem, and after that was over we talked about geopolitics, the plague, etc. Neither of us expected to face a potential nuclear war again.
I was 11, nearly 12 for the Cuban Missile Crisis, and attempted to dig a shelter in my parents crawl space, which had a door from the garage downstairs. I managed about a small wheelbarrow of broken hard rock after dinner each day, and didn’t understand why dad didn’t pitch in to help. Now I know he thought that surviving a nuclear exchange would be worse than being killed right off. After I left home many years later, he used the space I started for room for a new furnace, the plumber had a compressor and jackhammer and still took a week to remove enough rock — HARD cap rock on a ridge top.
There is an old civil defense book by Cresson H. Kearny, an engineer who worked at Oak Ridge National Lab, called “Nuclear War Survival Skills” — it describes how to build back yard fallout shelters from stuff we nearly all have in our homes, a shovel, a saw, a shower curtain for waterproofing the overhead, etc. Lots of real research, and interesting concepts. Google is your friend, it’s available for free download from a lot of places. A family of four was what he expected people to work with. Fascinating material, written back when they expected a nuclear exchange any time now.
It doesn’t take 100% exclusion of fallout to survive, just a majority… good luck, I have decided I’m with my late father, better not to survive. We’re downwind of a whole lot of strategic Air Force bases out in the mid-west. Not to mention all those missile silos in the far northern plains…
I’m with the people of Ukraine, don’t mistake my rambling thoughts. Putinsky is a dangerous madman, a criminal long before he was able tomove his nation into open warfare with so many neighbors. We can only hope someone in his inner circle decides to take decisive action to end the war, and end Putinsky. That would save the world once again, and who ever does it would be recognized as a hero everywhere. So proud of the Ukrainian spirit!!
OT: Wife is in the hospital again, pneumonia this time, also still neurological problems, at least partly from cervical stenosis… the technical term, her disk is pressing on the spinal cord, lack of spinal fluid, etc. She is easily confused and sleeps a lot. I spent the afternoon and evening with her in her ER room, where she waits for an actual room upstairs. Hospitals are a zoo right now, I don’t know if you’ve heard. /s I’m just glad I’m allowed to be with her, to hold her hand for a few hours. The hospital is great, but overwhelmed…
You all take care, I’m off to bed.
WaterGirl
@SamIAm: When assessing risk, you have to weigh not only the likelihood of X happening, but also how bad the consequences of X happening would be.
That’s where I believe your argument fails.
Putin is a madman. He would surely kill/destroy his own child to keep another person from having it.
Marc
I could get behind a rule like that. That does means the US would be unable do things like, say, attacking Iraq, without being booted out of the UN and NATO. No Democratic or Republican led government would agree to a treaty like that. The US reserves the right to be the aggressor when it sees fit, at least as long as it continues to have nuclear weapons.
WaterGirl
@Jay: As my dad used to say, that’s what makes the world go round. We all have our strengths and we make the contributions we can make.
Of course, there are people like President Obama and President Zelenskyy. They both seem to be great at everything. Except bowling, Obama sucked at bowling. I can think of worse flaws.
J R in WV
@SamIAm:
former Supreme Commanders of NATO:
This guy is deluded, has to be in order to sleep at night. I hope he is correct, would not bet $50 hard cash on it.
HumboldtBlue
@raven:
I… I’m not sure, now I feel like Chris Kamara
SamIAm
@WaterGirl:
I know that and don’t you think two Supreme Commanders of NATO would be familiar with that as well?
There was a chance that the Hadron collider could have created a mini black hole which would have destroyed the Earth. So 9 billion dead but the probability was so low it was not a risk.
I think these two know quite well how likely a nuclear attack from Russia is. They’ve been working with that nightmare for decades as part of their jobs. I know that isn’t true for Mr. Graziani
debbie
@J R in WV:
I’m hoping for the best for your wife.
WaterGirl
@SamIAm: I just don’t think the probably is as low as you and the two people you quoted think it is.
None of us can predict the future. We just have to do our best not to fuck it too badly as we try to do our best.
Sebastian
@Kalakal:
Milošević was said to have been cursed by a Balkan Pollyanna (I’ll have to look it up):
All his dreams of a Velika Srbija (Great Serbia) will end with him owning only the Beogradski Javašluk.
It is difficult to convey how truly savage this prophecy was but I will try: Javašluk derives from Turkish and Arabic and is derogatory for trash, chaos, backyard, things to do or fix tomorrow (or never): the shit behind the house!
In other words, he was cursed to see his empire shrink to a septic pond at the outskirts of Belgrade!
In this spirit, may Putin’s Great Russia end in an Moscow outhouse!
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: Oh, JR I am sorry to hear you are back there again, physically and metaphorically. So hard.
Good thoughts for both of you.
Kalakal
@J R in WV: So sorry to hear about your wife. Hoping for the best for you both
Hoodie
@Martin: so what if you do the flip of no fly, e.g., offensive retaliatory raids against Russian military assets in Ukraine from platforms in international waters outside of Ukraine or from drones in Ukrainian airspace? This is somewhat like Israeli practice. I wonder if we could get away with a response whereby if Russia attacks a civilian target, a Russian artillery brigade or armored column in Ukraine gets a nasty visit from a cruise missile launched from a B1 loitering over the Black Sea or a CIA predator drone over Mariupol. The Russians have no legal status for being in Ukraine, we’re not attacking Russia proper, the US can deny that the attack even happened or say the Ukrainians did it. If the Russians want to make nonsensical claims, we can reciprocate. They’re going to start a nuclear war over that?
SamIAm
BTW, I’m no longer in favor of a no fly zone because I think the Biden administration is rightfully trying to ensure that Ukraine wins this war themselves and deny Putin the opportunity of casting this as a Russia vs. NATO war.
P. S. World War III has already begun. It began when Russia invaded in February. So it’s too late to stop what’s already in progress.
Sebastian
@Hoodie:
That’s the scenario I am rooting for. Put 3M wrap yellow blue on all those Tomahawks and then just gaslight the shit out of Putin.
“Those are Ukrainian cruise missiles!”
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Best to you and your wife.
When I was 10-12 yrs old knew a girl that had a bomb shelter in their front yard. It might have survived a hit a hundred miles away but we lived about 25 miles from downtown LA so I’m betting that going early would be better than running out of food and water even if they did live through it.
SamIAm
@WaterGirl:
They’re not just two randos spouting off in a bar. They’re experts who spent their careers dealing with military threats from Russia. I don’t think you can get more expert opinion.
But yes, they could be very wrong about all of this. But when people worried about the Hadron collider creating a mini black hole you went to physicists to get a realistic assessment of the real chance it could happen. They too could have been wrong since the probability was non-zero. But they weren’t.
Anyway there are other good reasons not to involve NATO forces as I mentioned above. And with the new weaponry being shipped I think Russia’s heinous civilian attacks will be over whether they want or not.
WaterGirl
@SamIAm:
I surely hope you are right!
By the way, I wasn’t suggesting they were two randos. It’s just that there are surely people just as expert who have a different opinion, and that’s who President Biden is listening to.
If only we had crystal balls.
Omnes Omnibus
@SamIAm: Generals can be a bit nuts. Not as crazy as Admirals, but then who is?
HumboldtBlue
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, there’s always the Marine Corps.
Kalakal
Something to bear in mind is that NATO and other countries have already ignored a lot of Putin’s sabre rattling both conventional and nuclear. Shortly before his invasion he announced his nukes were on ‘high alert’ presumably to cow western responses, instead it had the opposite effect, sanctions were imposed, arms flooded in.
On Feb 25th he warned Finland & Sweden not to join NATO – popular opinion in both countries swelled in favour of joining NATO – on March 12th he repeated the warning – both countries have responded by saying that’s their decision not his
On March 5th he declared “Sanctions were akin to an act of war” – sanctions increased and more countries imposed them.
March 12th – western supplies of arms would be targeted – the supply of arms increased, none have been targetted
NATO and the EU are certainly avoiding direct conflict, what they are not doing is backing down in the face of Putin’s bluster
Another Scott
@SamIAm: I heard the Breedlove interview at the time. I’m not sure that he’s really that far away from NATO:
The table settings always change with the circumstances.
Before 2001 people would have thought that NATO being involved in military action in Afghanistan was insane. But it happened. Similarly with airlifting 120,000 people from airports in Afghanistan in 17 days. But it happened.
SWIFT was on the table when there was unanimity among the relevant parties that it needed to be done (and even then it wasn’t universal for Russian banks – it takes time to figure out the exceptions and the details).
I’m sure there have been all kinds of conversations about no-fly zones behind the scenes because military leaders have to be prepared to quickly implement decisions from political leaders. It would be irresponsible, though, to officially talk about such things when the planning hasn’t been done invites all kinds of problems.
Given the way things are, I agree with the general that even an “humanitarian” no-fly-zone is unlikely. Here’s hoping that Ukraine finds a way to greatly reduce the threat from missiles and artillery and makes a NFZ less relevant.
My $0.02.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tehanu
Carlo has actually given me some hope that maybe, maybe, the end result of this might be, well, not disastrous. A tiny bit of hope — way better than none. Thanks.
Kelly
Cards seem a bit clumsy. Maybe a PowerPoint slide with a numbered list. “The answer to your question is 3”
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Wasn’t suggesting you were. I know everyone feels the same way. We’re all struggling to square our wishes with what’s realistic.
I’m really impressed with what Biden is doing. I wish there was a path that would make it stop. It’s not his fault there isn’t one.
Ruckus
@SamIAm:
If vlad is sane and in good health then it might be possible that he would not be thinking nuclear weapons. If as a number of observers believe, the about stark raving bit, then any and all rational bets are off. And I don’t think he’s acting rational, not even for him. He’s looked like crap for a while now and if he actually is he may be going for the history books, which he thinks will look upon him as a genius, when nothing is farther from the truth. He looks like the madman. He looks and acts like he’s running out of time. His country seems only to approve under force and most of the rest of the world really, really does not agree with him one bit. It is a never an easy task to take on some insane madman with a substantial military, even it it isn’t up to the task, it can do a lot of damage in the meanwhile. But none of this is rational in any way. Not him, not his goals, not his methods, and that leads me to conclude that he’s not got long for the world. Likely long enough to do a hell of a lot of damage but his side could fix that. I doubt they will till it gets a lot worse.
This is the conundrum of nuclear weapons. At some point the world is going to want this to end and that point is about 3 weeks ago. Because there is way, way too much to lose and way, way to little to gain. And that he doesn’t see this is why I say he’s gone off the deep end. He’s playing this out as despots have for human history. Just with more and bigger weapons. He tried it with the least of his troops, the lowest cost to him. When that didn’t work well he’s gone all in and that’s not rational. The gain is not anywhere near enough for the downside.
SamIAm
@Ruckus:
I understand your point. Read Adam’s new post that Putin’s thinking is rational in the context of the twisted history and mythology he rambled about a couple of days ago.
I’m not sure if a rational sociopath operating from a twisted view of history is any better than a raving lunatic but I think Adam is correct.
PJ
@Martin: Fatal accidents were happening with the Osprey from the time they were first tested, and yet somebody thought it was worth all those lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_V-22_Osprey
phdesmond
@Gin & Tonic:
maybe he got in confused from Zelenskyy’s of a week and a half ago or two, where at the end he was heard giving posthumous awards to five named noncommissioned officers and such.
they’ve become paladins and Bishop Turpin too.’
like the game of telephone.
PJ
@SamIAm: For these purposes, those NATO commanders are randos. I don’t know when they served, but Putin does not give a flying fuck about the Russian people. He was happy to blow up hundreds of them as pretext for a war in Chechnya (which also killed tens of thousands of Russian citizens). He has no problem arresting, torturing, and assasinating Russian citizens. If they think Putin is concerned about the Russian people, they are out to lunch.
phdesmond
@Gin & Tonic:
looked up the opening word:
ukase (n.)
“decree issued by a Russian emperor,” 1729, from Russian ukaz “edict,” back-formation from ukazat’ “to show, decree, to order,” from Old Church Slavonic ukazati, from u- “away,” perhaps here an intensive prefix, from PIE *au- (2) “off, away” + kazati “to show, order,” from Slavic *kaz- (related to the first element of Casimir), from PIE root *kwek- “to appear, show.”– etymonline
PJ
@Sanjeevs:
@Another Scott:
@Another Scott: From reading his tweets, Davidzon is/was an immigrant from the FSU to the US who doesn’t really get the US at all, thinks Trump would be a better President than Biden (whom he despises), and who has a lot of insecurity regarding his masculinity. So, aside from being an immigrant who is pro-Ukraine, he is kind of the typical MAGA supporter.
Bill Arnold
@SamIAm:
Breedlove apparently (from that excerpt) does not understand the costs of thermonuclear war.
Stavridis apparently (from that excerpt) does not think with probabilities – a 1 percent chance of nuclear war is 10-20 million humans, on average.
Pair of (six-sided) dice. Snake eyes, you die. Most of your extended family dies. Most of the people you care about personally die. Another 2 billion humans die. Any other roll, 100000 humans don’t die, who would die if you don’t roll the dice.
Do you roll the dice? (Fuck no. Are you a psychopath?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemic_humility
Why No Mushroom Clouds? (Michael Krepon, December 16, 2019)
Ancient Atheist
So here’s the deal. One party in this worldwide conflict behaves as if nuclear war is a deterrent… a shackle on one’s actions if you will. The other side of this inevitable conflict does not see nuclear war as a deterrent. The threat of nuclear war has become Putin’s cudgel. Eventually he will use these weapons in Ukraine as if to normalize them. Expecting Putin to act as a rational human is just dumb.
Sebastian
@Bill Arnold:
The quality of articles shared by the community keeps astonishing me. You, Bill, are a repeat offender.
Carlo Graziani
I apologize for ghosting on you guys. It was a brain cramp on my part – I forgot that I had tickets to go hear live music (The Bad Plus — if you like avant-garde jazz, these guys are the bomb), and it didn’t occur to me to tell WG, or that it meant that I wouldn’t get a chance to engage with this conversation in real time. My loss.
Carlo Graziani
@Gin & Tonic:
Perhaps “familial” would have been better usage than “fratricidal”, but I don’t really agree that it’s that damaging a framing.
The relation between the two nations is undoubtedly very close, perhaps as close as between Americans and Canadians, if more fraught. The implication of that closeness is certainly not the irredentist nonsense that Putin babbles on about. There has been a good deal written about the degree of intermarriage between Russians and Ukrainians, the large number of Russian families who have Ukrainian relations, and the degree of interpenetration between the two national cultures.
The fact that Putin attempts to weaponize this relationship for his own purposes does not mean that it can’t also trip him up.
Sebastian
@Carlo Graziani:
It’s all good, Carlo. Mille Grazie!
This was a rough week for everyone.
SectionH
Thank you WG for front paging this. Pace Adam, that is the single best essay re international politics, including shooting wars, for consumer consumption I’ve read recently, and possibly ever.
lowtechcyclist
AFAICT, the no-fly zone debate was settled weeks ago, except for those who either (a) didn’t want to listen, or (b) were comfortable with a nontrivial risk of global thermonuclear war.
A more ongoing debate is why it’s OK to give Ukraine these weapons but not those weapons. It’s never been clear of where the line is, why the U.S. government sees it as being where it is, or what the justifications are. For instance, on the question of the MiG-29s, the two main justifications I’ve heard are diametrically opposed to one another: on the one hand, for us to give them would be a big escalation on our part, and on the other hand, Ukraine already has plenty of MiG-29s*, so they wouldn’t make a difference.
I realize that *where* they come from might make a difference in how Russia sees it. I can understand why Poland wouldn’t want to give the MiGs directly; it’s not been that long since they were under Russia’s thumb, and they’re uncomfortably near by. And I can understand that the MiGs coming from the U.S. would be closer to that U.S.-Russia conflict we don’t want. So OK, route them through Italy or Belgium or somewhere, if that’s the problem.
But if the problem is the MiGs coming from anywhere in NATO, then we’re back to why resupplying Ukraine with this weapon is OK but resupplying them with that one isn’t. And again, that’s where I’ve yet to see a comprehensible argument.
*I don’t know this is a true fact, but this is the argument I’ve seen.
WaterGirl
@Kelly: I thought cards because that would be treating them like the
childrenmorons they are. More humiliating.But I would accept a whiteboard with the 7 answers written on it. Each answer could be numbered as well as written in a different color. So she could say “that’s answer #5, that’s the blue one if you don’t know your numbers yet”.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: Here’s my takeaway from listening to Jen Psaki answering this about 2 dozen times in her press briefings.
There are multiple prongs to her answer, but I really think there is one answer and the ret are just to prop up the decision because they don’t feel they can totally say the real reason out loud.
The US military sees the MiGs as OFFENSIVE WEAPONS. Everything else we are sending is DEFENSIVE.
They believe that our sending the MiGs would be seen by Putin as OFFENSIVE weapons because they could be used to attack Russia on Russian soil.
The US military advisors seem to believe that as long as we do not cross that line, we are keeping Putin from having the FIG LEAF he so desperately wants/needs in order to call this a war with NATO so he can pull his country together after being “attacked” by NATO.
Over and over we see Putin doing various things in order to bait the US and NATO into engaging in a hot war.
Nuclear threats? We didn’t bite. Hospitals? We didn’t bite. Maternity and children’s hospitals? We didn’t bite.
He wants us – NATO generally but the US specifically – in this fight, so by definition not giving that to him is important.
The other piece in the Jen Psaki answer are 1) that Ukraine already has fighter planes, so sending more doesn’t actually make a difference in Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.
So it’s high risk, low reward.
I think the DEFENSIVE / OFFENSIVE part of the answer is totally defensible.
Adding the rest always feels awkward to me. My grandmother died and the dog ate my homework. I cringe a little each time because that part of the answer is lame.
My personal opinion is that they can’t state our loud that they won’t do it because that would be giving Putin the fig leaf that he so desperately needs.
I think all the extra words and extra reasons are the equivalent of Mary Tyler Moore covering up the run in her stocking – so Lou Grant won’t see it (maybe at her interview?) so she covers it with her hands and her purse and something else.
mvr
Best wishes to you and your wife in what I know is a hard time.
lowtechcyclist
ETA: You posted comment #155 while I was writing #157. I’ll read that and see whether it answers my points here.@WaterGirl:
First, I’m glad to hear that Psaki has answered this question. It keeps getting asked on Twitter, and the two answers I’ve cited – it wouldn’t make any difference, and it would be a major escalation – are the only two answers I’ve seen. So a link to her answer would be much appreciated.
However, from my decidedly unexpert vantage point, I find the distinction between defensive and offensive weapons to be artificial. ISTM that most weapons can be either defensive or offensive, depending on where and how they’re used. It’s true that in this context, the Stingers and Javelins are defensive, but only because the Ukrainians aren’t likely to be near enough to the Russian border to attack targets in Russia with them.
But the same is largely true with the MiGs: they’re fighter jets, which means their main value is in shooting down other planes. Theoretically, they could shoot down planes in Russian or Belarusian airspace, but right now, their priority targets would be Russian bombers operating in Ukrainian airspace and dropping bombs on Ukraine’s cities.
They’d really be a defensive weapon unless and until Ukraine was on the verge of pushing the Russians back out of their country, and at that point, it’s safe to say the Ukrainians will just want to be left alone.
ETA: Other than the following, your answer mostly makes sense to me:
Yeah, that’s one of the two contradictory explanations. But Zelensky’s been hollering loudly for the MiGs since the invasion began. I have a hard time believing that he’d have been pressing this hard for them, just for show. Maybe the MiGs they have need a lot of maintenance between flights, maybe they have more pilots than they can put into the air at one time, who knows? But I can’t believe he doesn’t have a real need and use for them.
Madeleine
I’ve appreciated your comments in Adam’s posts and am especially grateful for this explanation and analysis of both Russian and US/NATO thinking.
Edit to add NATO
Rileys Enabler
Thank you, Carlo- fantastic and thoughtful read. As a lurker, I’m hit or miss on regular reading, but since Adam started his series I’ve been here more than during the terrible days of TFG. Sterling commentary from so many jackals has gotten me through many a heartbroken moment.
Sebastian- can we get a collection up for the Balkan Pollyanna to place another curse? I’m in for it.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: I am two days behind on the Jen Psaki press briefings and I have no doubt that she will be asked the same question a total of 10 times in those two briefings.
I will try to remember to note one of the time stamps when she gets asked the question.
It’s just my opinion, but I believe that some of the back-and-forth between Zelenskyy and Biden is choreographed. Before Feb 24, it was Biden saying Putin may attack at any time and Zelenskyy disagreeing with Biden.
Now it’s Zelenskyy saying they need some particular thing and Biden saying they don’t need that and we won’t give it to them.
For all we know, some planes may be silently on their way to Ukraine while they are having this public display of Biden not giving Zelenskyy what he’s asking for. It puts daylight between Biden and Zelenskyy. No one can say that Zelenskyy is Biden’s puppet.
Now maybe that particular thing is happening, or maybe it’s not, but you can bet that not everything we and other nations are sending is being publicly announced.
Carlo Graziani
@lowtechcyclist:
I have a take on this that is not unrelated to what I wrote in the piece up there.
The thing that I’ve come to realize about controlling air space from studying a few conflicts (including a few that were a bit more balanced than the ones that the US has fought in recent decades) is that it’s a lot cheaper to do it from the ground than from the air. If you have limited resources and you want to close the skies to your opponent, your next dollar — or service person — is better spent on a SAM than on a high-performance jet.
The nations that can afford to use their air forces to obtain air supremacy over a weaker opponent do so in virtue of a colossal advantage in investment in air force resources over a very long period of time, that has given them an completely insurmountable edge. They have the means to do sophisticated air-based radar direction, electronic warfare, electronic surveillance, a wide spectrum of platforms and munitions for attacking all detected or suspected enemy targets, and so on. The USAF is of course unsurpassed at this kind of exercise. But really, all that is required for success is a massive asymmetry in air power. This is precisely the situation that exists between Russia and Ukraine today.
A donation of 28 MIG-29s would clearly not alter that balance by the slightest amount. Their role in Ukrainian airspace would be “targets”, that’s all. If the Ukrainians really were to attempt to use them to defend themselves, they would almost certainly lose them. This is, in my opinion, the reason that they aren’t using the jets that they have now.
As to the politics of the thing: Zelenskyy is a statesman. The more he asks for, the more he gets, and this is true irrespective of whether what he’s asking for makes sense. This goes for MIG-29s just as much as for no-fly zones. In his place, I would do exactly the same thing.
As far as the Biden administration is concerned, the MIG-29 debate were a distraction, but the politics of trotting out a USAF briefer to explain what a bad idea this was might have been so embarrassing to Ukrainians and allies, and divisive among people obviously trying to help that perhaps (I’m just guessing) they felt it was best to let the idea sink like the stone rowboat that it so obviously was.
The more cost-effective way to get a “no-fly zone” is to flood Ukraine with SAMs of various types. This appears to be happening now. I hope we will see more of a practical impact soon.
Another Scott
@Sanjeevs: I see he recently retweeted Bari Weiss, so his choices in reading material aren’t the best. :-/ Twitter is horrible for conversation, and “retweet = agreement or scorn” is common, and it can be hard to tell the difference there, but still.
His pieces at Tablet (the two I’ve read) are interesting, but there’s little more there than local flavor. It’s important to have that, but it’s not thoughtful analysis, it’s gut reactions.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Carlo Graziani:
My reply comes a day late and a dollar short, but I wanted to say that your explanation of why the MiGs woudn’t be much of a help makes sense.
I share your hope that those SAMs will start making a difference soon. The Russians have been using more bombers lately to drop bombs on Ukraine’s cities (rumor has it they may be running low on the guided missiles they’ve mostly been using so far), and it just seemed to me that more fighter jets would make it a lot riskier to fly Russian bombers over Ukraine. If lots of SAMs can do that job, then that’s big.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: If I am remembering the time correctly, Jen Psaki answers the MiG question for the thousandth time in this video, and the question starts at 1:24.
Mokurai
@Another Scott: The West cannot impose reparations on Russia in more money than there is. That is how we got the two-century old Haitian disaster and theNazi disaster. I suggest that we have Russia send its young men and women and a lot of its resources to rebuild Ukraine, while learning Ukrainian, and that Ukraine allow those successful with the rebuilding and the language be offered Ukrainian citizenship. I could make more suggestions, but not in this space.