31Comments

1. 1.

   Anoniminous

   March 31, 2023 at 7:14 pm

   Joint Direct Attack Munitions and targeting drones a a lethal combination to artillery.

2. 2.

   Alison Rose

   March 31, 2023 at 7:21 pm

   The Bucha video from Zelenskyy’s tweet…even so long after, it’s still hard to wrap my head around the depths of depravity on display there, and all throughout the war, by the orcs. I can’t imagine that the images will ever leave his mind, or any of the soldiers or other leaders who were there. And what’s also disturbing is knowing that the people who committed these acts — maybe not all, but certainly some of them — aren’t haunted by it in the least. Sociopathy backed by a powerful dictatorial puppet master.

   Maybe we can sic this cranky Ukrainian goose on putin.

   Thank you as always, Adam.

3. 3.

   Benw

   March 31, 2023 at 7:36 pm

   Sometimes you end up with a big boy, even if that wasn’t the plan

4. 4.

   Carlo Graziani

   March 31, 2023 at 8:01 pm

   @Anoniminous: I wonder whether those are the JDAM-ERs that they are supposed to be getting (72 km range instead of 28 km). I’ve been waiting eagerly to see how the UAF uses those.

5. 5.

   Jay

   March 31, 2023 at 8:02 pm

   Perun has a new you tube up,

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRboVa5zyUk

6. 6.

   Uncle Cosmo

   March 31, 2023 at 8:34 pm

   In #46 of 3/30’s Ukraine thread, Ruckus posted:

   @West of the Rockies: I’d love to know what the long-term impact of Putin’s folly will be.

   You can be guaranteed that it won’t be good for anyone.

   I firmly support Ukraine and hope for their complete victory over Putin and his orcs, but I too have great difficulty imagining how even that could turn out “good for anyone.” I decided to post my thoughts on the matter in hopes someone might find them thought-provoking.

   For many years I’ve had a very amateur historian’s fascination with the Great War[1] including the runup thereto and rundown therefrom. Considering in particular the peace settlements of 1919 – how the best (and worst) intentions of the treaty-drafters failed to resolve a panoply of festering issues[2] – which led Europe shambling toward an even more devastating do-over[3] twenty years later – I am TBH deeply disturbed by the many parallels with the Russo-Ukraine war, in particular the possible shapes of the dénouement: Too many of them, even the best of them, bid fair to leave a whole shitpile of issues badly resolved or unresolved and pointing toward a renewed worldwide conflict in 10 or 20 years.[4]

   I think most of us here would consider the best achievable end to the current conflict something on the order of:

   1. RF forces expelled from pre-2014 Ukrainian territory, all of which including Crimea returns to Ukraine;
   2. All Ukrainians forcibly removed from that territory by RF to be repatriated;
   3. RF military excluded from a demilitarized zone bordering Ukraine;
   4. RF NBC and long-range bombardment capabilities removed and their redevelopment prohibited;
   5. RF personnel accused of war crimes and/or crimes against humanity to be delivered to the ICC for trial;
   6. RF to pay for rebuilding destroyed Ukraine infrastructure via extraction and sale of resources restored and restarted under international supervision[5]

   This doesn’t even address future Russian political (d)evolution. But consider that most of these ideas (or equivalents) were tried after 11/11/1918. [6] For example, point 6: Germany had occupied the French coal and iron ore fields for four years, and the Reichsheer made a point of destroying everything they could as it retreated before the final Allied assault. By way of compensation, the Versailles treaty gave the League of Nations control of the Saar coal region of Germany and the French were allowed to operate its mines, with a plebiscite after 15 years on whether the region wished to join France or remain German, This does not seem unreasonable…until one factors in 15 years of passive resistance by the inhabitants, over 90% of whom opted for Germany in the 1935 vote.

   Can anyone imagine any significantly different outcome if Siberian oil and natural gas are restored to production with most of the income dedicated to rebuilding (and otherwise compensating) Ukraine? I sure as hell cannot.

   Add to all this the likelihood a victorious Ukraine will most likely simply push the RF forces out of their pre-2014 territory without pursuing them into Russia proper.[7] And that the NATO-led sanctions that are (one hopes) strangling the Russian economy will be kept in place and maybe even tightened to enforce compliance with the peace terms.[8] And that the Russian population has been convinced of (i.e., conned into) illiberal and revanchist attitudes of cultural superiority, “historic destiny,” and autocratic obedience after a brief flirtation with democracy (sabotaged by oligarchic kleptocracy) in the 1990s.

   Can anyone seriously believe that, short of complete occupation of Russian territory and disenfranchisement of its constituent peoples for at least a generation – which NATO has neither the stomach nor the troops for – Putin or his successors would try again to re-extend itself to or beyond the former imperial borders? This time with absolutely nothing off the table?[9]

   Notes:
   [1] Better known as World War I.

   [2] And created new ones like the irredentist conflicts between states created or restored per Wilson’s simplistic push for “self-determination” when in fact the ethnicities of Central and Eastern Europe were inextricably intermingled. (I recall a map in the 1955 edition of R.R. Palmer’s History of the Modern World showing a lozenge-shaped area from southern Poland well into Romania and what was once Yugoslavia as a zone of “maximum ethnic mixing.”) People forget (if they ever knew) how, e.g, resurrected Poland and the new Czecho-Slovakia squabbled over Teschen/Cieszyn/Český Těšín in the 1920s. And how the Nazis held out the bait of “territorial adjustments” to entice smaller nations into their orbit.

   [3] Some maintain that the 20th century World Wars constitute a single 30-year war  with two decades of increasingly-armed mostly-truce in the middle, i.e., World War II = Great War 1.1 (or 2.0). In fact, other than a very few innovations (A-bomb, radar/sonar, proximity fuze), the 1939-45 dustup was fought with technology not qualitatively different from those present in embryonic form on 11/11/1918 but quantitatively even more horrific, leading to 50-60 million dead in the European theatre alone.

   [4] Think Great War 3.0 (or 3.1 or 4.0) in 2039 with thermonuclear weapons, cyberplagues, engineered bioweapons and intercontinental delivery systems on every side…& try to have a decent night’s sleep.

   [5] “You may say I’m a dreamer/ But I’m not the only one…” < eyeroll >

   [6] One that wasn’t tried in 1919 was breaking up Germany into many smaller states, perhaps in a return to pre-1871 or even pre-Napoleon borders. (I seem to recall reading that Clémenceau said he loved Germany so much he wanted there to be many of them, though I can’t dig up a source.) But how long did it take Hitler to collect the German speakers on Germany’s borders into the Reich? Less than 3 years. (Less than one not counting the remilitarization of the Rhineland.) How long would it take a multi-ethnic balkanized Mother Russia to reunite its scattered pieces, by force if necessary?

   [7] Not one Allied soldier had set foot on the soil of Wilhelmine Germany as of the Armistice. The Reichsheer was allowed to retreat within its borders in mostly good order, and the Kaiserliche Marine to its home ports (before proceeding to Scapa Flow and scuttling itself), without molestation by the Entente forces. This led to the widespread belief among German civilians that their forces had not been defeated in battle, rather “stabbed in the back” by politicians at home, particularly the Social Democrats and Communists and most particularly the Jews believed to be instigating those movements. This Dolchstoßlegende underlay the far-right agitation and violence that eventually propelled the Nazis to power and led to World War II.
   

   [8] The British naval blockade imposed in 1914 inhibited the transfer of foodstuffs and stopped their importation, to the point where there was serious privation and indeed civilian starvation in the Central Powers by 1918 (cf. the “turnip winter” of 1916-17). The blockade was continued after the Armistice to compel the Germans and Austrians to comply with treaty provisions – and more civilians died of hunger. Yet another source of bitterness toward the victors.

   [9] FWIW: Peter Zeihan, a glibertarian geopolitical analyst that I follow with some interest, some skepticism and some amusement – he’s quite entertaining – argues that Putin aims to seize all of Ukraine to continue reclaiming “choke points” to the tank-playground-flat Russian space and eventually garrison them with minimal forces to defend itself against invasion. (And that he’d eventually need to take NATO territory to complete the process. In which case nukes will fly.) Zeihan claims ongoing demographic collapse of the ethnically Russian population makes this the last war it will be able to fight, but that it’s still “Russia’s war to lose.” I have serious doubts about any of this, but IMO it’s a take worth mulling over .
   

7. 7.

   Anonymous At Work

   March 31, 2023 at 8:41 pm

   130 fire missions in 24 hours when other places have to hold back munitions. Is Ukraine trying to open Kherson line for an offensive?  Destroy the Zoopark (I saw somewhere that UA was claiming 6 Zooparks from the strikes) system to move artillery into closer range, and cross the river in a race to Crimea’s neck?

8. 8.

   Carlo Graziani

   March 31, 2023 at 8:47 pm

   From The Moscow Times:

   President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed an order allowing Russia’s Defense Ministry to enlist 147,000 men for their compulsory military service in the upcoming spring call-up.

   The number of draftees to be called up this year marks an increase of 12,500 compared to last year’s recruitment figures, The Defense Ministry will kick off the conscription campaign on Saturday, drafting eligible men between the ages of 18 and 27. The recruitment drive is scheduled to wrap up on July 15.

   Enlistment officers will likely crack down on draft dodgers in order to meet Putin’s ambitious 147,000 target, according to experts quoted by the independent news outlet Agentstvo.

   So an 8.5% increase, YoY. That’s after the impromptu meat collection–er, mobilization–from last fall. No word on training resources that I can find, after Russia sent everything to the front, leaving no way to teach 12,500 young men how to be soldiers.

   Russia’s General Staff said Friday that none of the soldiers conscripted in the latest recruitment campaign would be sent to fight in Ukraine. The biannual draft allows conscripts to be sent to fight abroad after just four months of military training.

   HAHAHAHAHAAA. They’ll be lucky to get a month of “training” before deployment. When the mud dries (late April–early May), Russian Ground forces is going to face another All-Hands-On-Deck emergency. “I’m a 3-month conscript!” is not going to cut it as an excuse no to be sent into the meat grinder.

   Roughly 400,000 contract soldiers are currently serving in Russia’s armed forces.

   Now, that is interesting. The Russian army was designed to have twice as many contract soldiers as draftees, and to have the former in fighting roles with the latter in support. Now, however, given an active-duty force of 830,000, contract soldiers are the minority. They’ve re-jiggered their force on-the-fly, in the middle of a large-scale shooting war, with nothing but desperate, madcap improvisation standing in as “planning” to guide the effort. Not only is this not the war they planned to fight, this is not the force they planned to fight it with.

9. 9.

   Alison Rose

   March 31, 2023 at 8:49 pm

   @Uncle Cosmo: I mean…Ukraine’s complete victory would certainly be good for the Ukrainians being bombed on a daily basis, and the children spending days and weeks and months living in underground shelters, and the elderly and disabled folks who can’t leave their homes near the front lines, and so on. No one thinks that putin will just throw up his hands and say “okay, you won, I’ll be nice now”, but I guess I’m unclear as to what you think ought to happen instead? If Ukraine’s victory doesn’t mean that russia will never do a bad thing again — which obviously it doesn’t — then what is your counter argument?

10. 10.

    CaseyL

    March 31, 2023 at 8:54 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: A good and cogent analysis.  I had been thinking that – when, please Gods, Ukraine wins the war – leaving Russia entire would be a bad idea, but didn’t make the same connections you did to post-WWI Germany.

    It’s a real risk – not least because, of course,  Russian leadership will tell their people the only reason Russia lost was because “we were really fighting NATO.”  Thus setting a stage for Russia to re-arm* and try again, just as Germany did.

    (*Russia may not have the capacity to re-arm itself with its degraded industrial base, but it will be able to re-arm by buying what it needs from countries like Iran, Hungary, and India.)

11. 11.

    Lyrebird

    March 31, 2023 at 8:56 pm

    @Alison Rose: I’m not sure, but I didn’t read any request for a counter argument in the post from

    @Uncle Cosmo: but instead for thoughts on how to make the end of the war after Ukraine’s victory last longer.

12. 12.

    Another Scott

    March 31, 2023 at 9:06 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: Thanks for your thoughts and summary.  Lots to think about.

    I would assume that, given all the issues you raise, and history of US attempts at occupation and regime change and all the rest since the 1950s, that the only realistic post-war path is Containment. Continued economic sanctions, especially, as long as VVP’s government is on the same path.

    I don’t see attempts at trying to force reparations or disarmament or changing the RF’s borders.  I do see transfer of already seized assets to Ukraine (after some sort of additional legal process).

    It’s a sticky problem, and the problem will fester as long as VVP and Putinism exists, but I don’t see any way for outsiders to change that dynamic.

    All of this assumes that he doesn’t attack NATO and doesn’t use NBC weapons in Ukraine.  If either of those things happen, it gets even more complicated and dangerous.

    Thanks again.

    Slava Ukraini!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

13. 13.

    dm

    March 31, 2023 at 9:07 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: I’ve been thinking the same thing since the war started, with the wrinkle that China will be involved to the extent of propping up Putin in exchange for increased access to the Siberian resources to its immediate north. The territory east of the Urals is amazingly empty — I remember calculating it to be maybe 14 million people. Imagine the Belt and Road aimed north.

    Add in the effects of climate change.

14. 14.

    Roger Moore

    March 31, 2023 at 9:12 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    One that wasn’t tried in 1919 was breaking up Germany into many smaller states, perhaps in a return to pre-1871 or even pre-Napoleon borders. (I seem to recall reading that Clémenceau said he loved Germany so much he wanted there to be many of them, though I can’t dig up a source.) But how long did it take Hitler to collect the German speakers on Germany’s borders into the Reich? Less than 3 years. (Less than one not counting the remilitarization of the Rhineland.) How long would it take a multi-ethnic balkanized Mother Russia to reunite its scattered pieces, by force if necessary?

    There’s a big difference between breaking up Russia today and breaking up Germany in 1919.  As you note, Germany was fairly ethnically homogeneous.  Germany had been broken up into several separate states within living memory, but there had been a strong nationalist desire to merge into a single German state, and that desire could reasonably have been expected to continue if Germany were broken up.

    In contrast, Russia is absolutely not ethnically homogeneous.  It’s only about 70% ethnic Russian, and many of the other ethnicities within Russia would be just as happy having their own countries.  Chechnya is only the most obvious example of this.  So there’s a built-in reason that Russia might not be as prone to reassembling if it were broken up.

    And, of course, we have some lessons of history that might encourage us to do things differently if we were in a position to break Russia up.  It would only make sense to try to break Russia up if we were willing to make serious promises to defend the territorial integrity of the post-Russian states against Russian attempts to reassemble its empire.  This isn’t completely unreasonable; that’s exactly what we were doing by accepting former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO.

    To me, the big thing is the existence of large ethnic Russian populations outside the border of Russia today; breaking up Russia would only increase the number.  Russia has been more than happy to use the existence of those ethnic Russians as an excuse to throw its weight around.  Any attempt to break up Russia would probably have to include the same kind of ethnic transfers that happened after WWII, i.e. making the ethnic boundaries align with the political boundaries by relocating people to “their ethnic homeland” by force.

    In practice, I expect this to be nothing but a thought exercise.  There’s no realistic chance of any foreign power being in position to break Russia up.

15. 15.

    livewyre

    March 31, 2023 at 9:25 pm

    @Alison Rose: I’m eyeing the clause “short of complete occupation of Russian territory and disenfranchisement of its constituent peoples for at least a generation” with some disquiet.

    It’s qualified as out of the reach and stomach of the ones most likely to be charged with implementing it, but even if we could, an excess of enfranchisement doesn’t strike me as the seat of the problem. Instead I’d draw a line between what must be done (everything on the numbered list, for instance) and how it may be done. The latter of which is left to the constituency, in order to demonstrate on all scales of society that decisions are both available and better off being made according to popular consensus.

    I see no way forward other than putting the principle of democracy that we claim to uphold to its truest test. If we can prove that making decisions collectively is both possible and preferable, the idea is to vaccinate against autocracy by laying it bare as an inferior alternative. In ourselves, too.

16. 16.

    Carlo Graziani

    March 31, 2023 at 9:28 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: Good prompt.

    In my opinion, your desiderata 1,2, and 5 are possible-to-likely. 3 and 4 are very unlikely, as they would require NATO direct intervention, at huge risk that is difficult to imagine the alliance accepting. 6 is impossible for the same reason, but a variant—seizure of Russian Central Bank frozen assets, and those of careless oligarchs—could stand in for it.

    In the end, however, in my view The Great War doesn’t offer a great model for understanding management of a defeated-yet-still-unchastened nuclear power. Ukraine and the West are simply not going to march in, 1918-style, and seize control of the Russian state. Russia’s future political dynamics will still be in the control of Russians. The issue is which Russians, and how is the Russia that emerges from its likely coming debacle is to be managed by the West.

    If Putinist or Neo-Putinist control retains power, the best historical model is probably Cold War-Style containment, in my view. This will be aided by the fact that Russian military power and geopolitical influence will be vastly diminished by the war, and the Russians will be very busy keeping their empire in-being for years, especially if sanctions persist.

    A political evolution should be the goal, and the possibility should not be entirely dismissed. I would strongly push back on the folks who appear to believe that a Navalny or Navalnyist presidency would constitute no progress over Putinism. Such views seem to me to stem from the notion that a “true” Russian democratic leader should be ideologically recognizable as a Western-style politician. This is an absurdity, given the profound difference in Russian political culture from ours. It would be a tragedy, in my opinion, if such an anti-Putinist political force were to gain momentum in Russia, only to be undercut by Western disdain for political rhetroric not congruent to Western political norms. Such a current could constitute an evolution towards a modern outlook, and would in any event be vastly less threatening to the West, and even to Russia’s neighbors, than Putinism. If you are going to wield a stick, you better have a clear and realistic picture of when it will be approprate to whip out the carrot.

    Ultimately, however, Russians will determine Russia’s destiny. It is fashionable to be fatalistic about such matters, pointing to Centuries of imperialist continuity. I would point instead to the irresistible attraction that modernity, for all its faults, exerts on people everywhere, and claim that to expect that Russia will make an exception of itself in perpetuity is like expecting exceptions to the pull of gravity. It may take a while, but even Wile E. Coyote can’t stand on a cloud forever.

17. 17.

    Chetan Murthy

    March 31, 2023 at 9:33 pm

    @Carlo Graziani: It’s possible that Navalny will be an improvement *for Russians in Muscovy*.  But what many Europeans I’ve read fear, is that he’s a Russian Imperialist, just as most of Russian liberals are (or at least, *were*), and as such, he’ll eventually return to the same policies of exerting Russian influence over their “near-abroad”.

    Now, he’s made noises of late about giving up Crimea, and supporting Ukraine.  And that’s great.  Does he mean them?  Hard to tell, and that’s why lots of people are skeptical.  It bears noting that many, many, *many* of the noisy Putinist voices these days were, once upon a time, “liberal, democratizing” Russians back in the 1990s: guys like Solovyov.  Or at least, that’s what I’ve read from otherwise-reliable commentators.  So there’s reason to be concerned about what even liberal Russians will do.

18. 18.

    Alison Rose

    March 31, 2023 at 9:36 pm

    @Lyrebird: No I meant like…not a counter argument, but rather…I don’t know, what is the alternative? What path would have a chance of achieving what UC lays out and avoiding the negatives?

19. 19.

    Gin & Tonic

    March 31, 2023 at 9:52 pm

    @Carlo Graziani: Our commenter gogol’s wife had it right in the last Navalny-bashing thread – none of this matters because he will never be president.

    Ask yourself: why is Nemtsov dead and Navalny alive?

20. 20.

    kalakal

    March 31, 2023 at 10:10 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: Good analysis

    re  

    [7] Not one Allied soldier had set foot on the soil of Wilhelmine Germany as of the Armistice. The Reichsheer was allowed to retreat within its borders in mostly good order 

    There’s a bitter historians joke that the only 100% successful operation of the Great German General Staff in WW1 was blaming someone else for losing it.

    Militarily they’d had it but got Erzberger and others to be the ones with their names on the armistice.

    One thing that is absolutely vital is that a Russian Dolchstoßlegende doesn’t rise from the wreckage of Putin’s murderous folly.

21. 21.

    Andrya

    March 31, 2023 at 10:12 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo:  Numbers 4, 5, and 6 are not going to happen (except for reparations from seized assets controlled abroad).

    It’s critical to end the war so that russia doesn’t simply regroup and come back for more in a few years.  Since there seems no realistic way for anyone on the outside to replace the russian regime, the only way (as far as I can see) to end the war successfully is to have a ferocious sanctions regime ready at all times:  “Russia, take one step over the border, and full up, make-you-bankrupt sanctions go into force immediately”.  Much though I’d like to make russia pay through oil sales, I think we need a carrot-and-stick approach, not just a stick, to make sure they don’t have another go.

    Minor point on the Versailles Conference:  one of my favorite historians is Margaret MacMillian of the Univ of Oxford.  One of her lectures, posted on YouTube, is about the Versailles Conference that ended WW1.  She said a Vietnamese restaurant worker, living in Paris under the name Nguyen Ai Quoc, petitioned the Conference with the following argument:  since the Conference believes all people should have self-determination, how about self determination for the Vietnamese?  He was basically told (albeit not this crudely) “no, no, that’s just for white people”.   Nguyen Ai Quoc was later known as Ho Chi Minh.  If his petition had been successful, it would probably have saved over a million Vietnamese lives, and 55,000 American lives.  Too bad that Woodrow Wilson was a thoroughgoing racist.

22. 22.

    Carlo Graziani

    March 31, 2023 at 10:22 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m not sure what you mean by that question. The difference between Navalny’s and Nemtsov’s fates is obviously due to luck, not convictions. Navalny survived two attacks, a blinding aerosol attack in 2017 and a determined assassination attempt with Novichok in 2020.

    In any event, I wrote “Navalny or Navalnyist” because while there’s a good chance that Navalny himself will die in prison, he has started a genuine movement which could become a credible force in Russian politics in the event of a Putinist implosion. And in any event (pace, Zhena) it may be that he’s sufficiently tough and ornery — and, let’s have the grace to admit it, courageous — to survive the imprisonment that he deliberately walked into.

    My point is that whatever the strength of his nationalism, the very fact of a hypothetical accession to power by Navalny (or an heir) overturning a Putinist regime in consequence of the catastrophic outcome of an imperial adventure would represent an earthquake in Russian politics. It would be madness not to be ready to greet such an (admittedly remote) contingency as an opportunity for engagement.

23. 23.

    Gin & Tonic

    March 31, 2023 at 10:31 pm

    @Carlo Graziani: If Putin felt Navalny were a real threat to his power, he’d be long dead like Nemtsov. And there is no “Navalnyism.”

24. 24.

    Another Scott

    March 31, 2023 at 10:44 pm

    Relatedly, … Grain of salt, caveat emptor, etc., but today’s ISW assessment:

    Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a new Russian Foreign Policy Concept on March 31 that likely aims to support the Kremlin’s attempts to promote a potential anti-Western coalition. The new Foreign Policy Concept paints the West as an anti-Russian and internationally destabilizing force to a far greater extent than Russia’s previous 2016 Foreign Policy Concept and explicitly states that the US and its “satellites” have unleashed a hybrid war aimed at weakening Russia.[1] The new document also heavily stresses Russia’s goal of creating a multipolar world order and subordinates under that goal Russia’s broad foreign policy objectives, which include ending the United States’ supposed dominance in world affairs.[2] The document asserts that most of humanity is interested in constructive relations with Russia and that a desired multi-polar world will give opportunities to non-Western world powers and regional leading countries.[3] Putin previously used meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on March 20 through 22 to increase attempts to rhetorically rally the rest of the world against the West, and the new document likely aims to support the Kremlin’s attempts to intensify proposals to non-aligned countries to form a more coherent anti-Western bloc.[4] ISW assessed that Putin’s proposal to form an anti-Western bloc during Xi’s visit to Moscow was not positively received as Xi refused to align China with Putin’s envisioned geopolitical conflict with the West.[5] Russia’s declining economic power and degraded military effort in Ukraine continue to offer little incentive to countries to express serious interest in the proposal. The Kremlin likely decided to release the new Foreign Policy Concept on the eve of assuming the presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in order to set informational conditions for future rhetorical efforts at the UN aimed at forming an anti-Western coalition.[6] ISW previously assessed that Russia will likely weaponize its presidency of the UNSC as a method of Russian power projection.[7]

    Doesn’t sound like VVP is interested in putting Putinism on a new path. I hope folks are thinking about ways of preventing him from (continuing) using western political structures for his own benefit at the expense of those structures.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

25. 25.

    Ruckus

    April 1, 2023 at 12:21 am

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    The only thing I might suggest is that vald has been said to be rather sick, physically. I thought I read something about cancer a while back but that could be BS.

    My point is that as I’ve said here before Russia and whatever it was called over the last couple hundred years or more really hasn’t changed. There is now enough money spread around a bit better than it was not all that long ago, that it may be possible, if vlad and his rabid supporters could be “controlled,” that Russia could have a what we used to call a come to Jesus moment. Hundreds of thousands of their men have been slaughtered/wounded, I’d bet most of their government is rather useless as a government, or will be soon, and the douchebags that “own/run” the place may find themselves rather unwelcome. vlad has so far overstepped and had murdered what, over 1/4 of the men sent to “liberate” Ukraine, I’d venture to say that he just might not be all that well liked any more. Not that he seemed to be prior to this shit show.

    Now I could be full of it, it’s quite possible that there will be no change whatsoever, but this seems to me to be about as big a pivot point as a country gets.

26. 26.

    Ruckus

    April 1, 2023 at 12:32 am

    @Carlo Graziani:

    @Gin & Tonic:

    You two know a hell of a lot more about all of this than I have even a clue about, so I have a question, one that likely has no real answer.

    Do you think Russia can continue along this path if vlad is gone?

    Do you think any change is possible in Russia?

    If you think change is possible, do you think it can create an actual country seemingly run by, at least, someone not having to prove their masculinity on a regular basis as the leaders of the place have done for, well, centuries? Or is humanity just stuck with this?

27. 27.

    way2blue

    April 1, 2023 at 12:54 am

    Why is Russia’s ‘assuming the presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)’ not being blocked?  Seems insane.  What am I missing?

28. 28.

    Another Scott

    April 1, 2023 at 9:32 am

    @way2blue: It rotates among the members of the security council every month.  I don’t think there’s any mechanism to prevent russia from taking the chair.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

29. 29.

    Uncle Cosmo

    April 1, 2023 at 11:16 am

    Howdy, folks, I took an hour away from BJ to watch the video linked by Jay in #5. (Perun’s videos on the Ukraine war are always well thought out and worth watching.)
    After which, unfortunately, my Net access locked up and I was unable to restore it before the following morning. I appreciate all your comments and will now engage with them as I’m able, and I’ll put a notice in tomorrow night’s Adam thread and (if I can figure out how) a link to this post.

    @Alison Rose: ​”…I’m unclear as to what you think ought to happen instead.”

    There is no substitute for a Ukrainian victory: the killing and the occupation must end. At the same time, there is no “instead” short of the sheerest fantasy that won’t leave a whole lot of difficulty and instability in the international order, ready to cause more trouble – just as after the decisive Allied victory in the Great War. My main point is that the forces of liberal democracy need to be aware that whatever row is chosen will not be an easy one to hoe, prepared to do whatever’s prudent to preserve the peace for as long as possible, and resolved to forcefully oppose the forces of chaos if and when it’s no longer possible (h/t to Lyrebird in #11 above for prompting me to clarify that).
    @Another Scott: ​Agree that containment a la George Kennan’s long telegram of 1946 is probably the best way to handle an expansionist Russia. Once Ukraine is restored and at peace, Cold War 2.0 is preferable to most of the other alternatives.
    @livewyre: ​”I’m eyeing the clause ‘short of complete occupation of Russian territory and disenfranchisement of its constituent peoples for at least a generation’ with some disquiet.”
    Probably about as much disquiet as I had conceiving or typing it. Conventional whizzdumb is that a force occupying a restive conquered nation needs at least 1 occupier per 20 inhabitants to keep the lid on – which is at the limit of what might be possible for the Russkies if they should manage (bite my tongue!) to overwhelm Ukraine, with nothing left over to continue to the next choke points; and quite outside that limit for NATO occupying Russia. The problem is, how else to secure the peace other than defanging the RF? Do we trust a possible terminally-ill mental case neo-Tsar not to order multiple launches? Do we trust the RF strategic rocket forces to refuse to obey? All of them? Particulary when Dolt45 in Helsinki probably handed Vova TeenyWeenie a list of our contacts therein?? One Sarmat/Satan 10-warhead ICBM lobbed with malice aforethought bids fair to murder as many people as did 4 years of the Great War.** The alternative…is the long patient game of containment: Cold War 2.0.
    ** I exclude the air- and sea-launched nukes – we can probably slap down any of Vova’s Tu-95s, and our hunter-killer subs are likely poised to send his boomers to Davy Jones before they rise toward launch depth.
    @Carlo Graziani: ​FTR I threw in points 4 and 5 as nice-to-haves precisely because (as you are well aware) they were both tried in 1919: The Allies occupied the west bank of the Rhine and selected enclaves across the river until mid-1930 (point 4), and Germany was restricted to a laughably small army of 100,000 and forbidden airplanes, submarines, and naval vessels over 10,000 tons (point 5). Didn’t take Hitler long to tear up those clauses, did it?

    @Andrya: FWIW I have read Margaret MacMillan’s book Paris 1919 with some appreciation. Were you aware she is the great-granddaughter of Lloyd George?

    Your comment re Nguyen ai Quoc/Ho Chi Minh is somewhat accurate but entirely irrelevant. While freedom for Indochina might have avoided the eventual Vietnamese tragedy, that was never a serious prospect at Versailles. “Self-determination” per the Fourteen Points, as interpreted by the European Allies, was restricted to subject peoples of the defeated Central Powers and that quitter Russia, not to their own imperial possessions or irredentist designs. Sauce for the cooked geese was most assuredly not sauce for the triumphantly-honking imperial ganders – a fact noted by the Japanese when a racial-equality clause was dropped from the final treaty. It is no accident that when Germany was stripped of its overseas colonies, and the Ottoman Empire of its possessions outside Anatolia, they were simply transferred (often via League of Nation “mandates”) to the victorious Allies or their dominions (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa). Wilson may have been “a thoroughgoing racist” but he appears not to have encouraged the territorial transfers (NB the USA’s lately-acquired small empire was unaffected by the treaty, and it declined all mandates, e.g., in the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire). He acquiesced in them less (IMO) due to the color of the colonial populations than the preservation or expansion of existing empires.

    …So, containment and Cold War 2.0 appears to be the best response to an unappetizing collection of possible outcomes. Thanks again to all.

30. 30.

    YY_Sima Qian

    April 1, 2023 at 1:03 pm

    A few comments on containment:

    1. Containment as outlined in Kennan’s Long Telegram was rather different from containment as practiced by the US in the 50s & 60s, the latter being far more confrontational & less concerned w/ risk & escalation.
    2. Drawing parallel to containing the fUSSR in the Cold War may not be apt, since Russia will not able to establish a block to bolster its position
    3. The parallel for containing a post-defeat Putinist Russia may actually be containment of Saddam’s Iraq pre-2003: chastened, weakened, friendless; the problem here is that Russia is unlikely to be nearly as isolated, we have already seen that few countries outside of the West are willing to ostracize Russia in words & deeds in light of the latter’s naked aggression, it will be even less achievable after its defeat in Ukraine
    4. To isolate & contain Russia in the same way as Saddam’s Iraq, China & India 1st & foremost have to be on board, then the rest of the Global South may follow; that requires convincing India to abandon a central pillar to its strategic autonomy that it so cherishes, & requires a dramatic change in the organizing principle in the US’ relationship w/ China, neither is happening
    5. IMHO, the best way to restrain the ambitions of a post-defeat Putinist Russia is to reach an understanding w/ China & (to a lesser extent) India, so that the latter 2 are willing to exercise their leverage over Russia to head off any aggression; such an understanding is probably possible w/ India, though its leverage over even a chastened Russia is likely to be limited; the Sino-US relations is far too disfunction to each such a modus vivendi
    6. Alternatively, the West can try to contain Russia & China as a block, but short of much more aggressive action by China (such as an unprovoked attack against Taiwan) there is little appetite anywhere outside of the US for containing China
31. 31.

    Another Scott

    April 1, 2023 at 1:29 pm

    @YY_Sima Qian: Good points about India and China.

    I do not see the west treating VVP’s russia and China as a block that needs to be uniformly contained.  Even with all the “Tiktok is a menace” / “War with the CCP is inevitable” hawks, everyone recognizes there are too many commonalities of interests regarding China (e.g. climate change) that have little or nothing to do with VVP’s russia.

    I think that India and China will do their own thing with regards to Containing VVP’s russia – their national interests will not align with the west in all things, and we have to accept that.  We should press our case, but accept that they have their own views.  But the west has to do what is in its interests as well, and the fact that India and China (and others) are not fully on-board should not change that.

    Half a loaf is a lot.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.