(Image by NEIVANMADE)
The Russians opened up on Lviv overnight.
The overnight attack on Lviv was the most devastating one on the city since the beginning of the full-scale war.
The youngest victim killed by the missile strikes was 32, the oldest 62.
📷 @HromadskeUA @radiosvoboda pic.twitter.com/BClE0aH4p2— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 6, 2023
Last night, russians attacked Lviv with Kalibr cruise missiles.
Ukraine's air defenders shot down 7 of 10 missiles.
At least four civilians were killed, and 32 were injured.Ukraine needs F-16s to strengthen its air defense and save lives! pic.twitter.com/FRlhauYiCk
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 6, 2023
There will definitely be a response to the enemy. pic.twitter.com/DSDa8MVnad
— Ukrainian Air Force (@KpsZSU) July 6, 2023
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump. This is a speech, unlike his usual address to Ukrainians, to the Bulgarian officials he met with with today. His remarks begin around the 8:30 mark.
Defense support means saving freedom – speech by the President of Ukraine at the meeting with representatives of Bulgarian political circles, civil society and media
6 July 2023 – 19:59
Mr. Prime Minister!
Dear Deputy Prime Minister!
Dear participants! Dear friends!
I’m sure we have a lot of friends here and it is tangible, so let me address you in this way.
First of all, I really want to apologize for our delay – it’s a fact, all of our conversations here today, all of our conversations in Bulgaria are so important, so meaningful that there is simply not enough time to keep up with this schedule… But I hope that our conversation will also be as meaningful as possible. I know that you have questions and I will be happy, all of us will be happy to answer them.
But first, I want to thank everyone in Bulgaria, I want to thank each and every one of you for your respect and support for our people – it is very important – who, after the outbreak of a full-scale war, found refuge in your cities, among you, in your communities. In total, more than one hundred and forty thousand of our people have found protection in Bulgaria since then, and I am very grateful for that. You applauded me and I want you to applaud yourselves for everything you have done for our people.
We are trying to do our best to ensure that our people can return home to Ukraine as soon as possible. We want Ukraine to finally become safe, and we feel that this is possible not in the long term, but quite soon… Ukraine’s victory is real. And we need it very much.
It all depends on one factor, namely, the amount and power of the important support we use for defense – first of all, armed support. But it also depends on support through sanctions against Russia for terror, financial support for our social stability in a time like this, a time of war, and, last but not least, motivation for our people. People need to see and feel that the world sees and feels the pain that Ukrainians are going through in order to protect for themselves and their children exactly the same values that every free nation enjoys. It is absolutely fair.
You know, among all the disinformation about this war, whether it’s Russian disinformation or simply narratives that favor Russia, there are some particularly absurd, dangerous claims. And among them is the claim that helping Ukraine, in particular with weapons or sanctions, allegedly makes this war longer and allegedly does not help restore security.
You may have heard such absurd statements. It is always important to refute them, because war is a time when any disregard for reality is disheartening and prevents the war from ending.
The reality speaks for itself, namely that we were able to significantly reduce the scale of this war. First of all, thanks to the weapons we receive.
Our warriors have already liberated about one thousand nine hundred towns and villages on Ukrainian soil since February 24 last year. Indeed, we still have a very, very difficult path to go to liberate our entire territory from occupation, but let’s not forget how it all began, how it all started, and what Ukrainians have been able to accomplish.
We have repelled Russian attacks on our northern regions and the capital of Ukraine. We have liberated large areas of the east and south of our country. We have begun to create a powerful sky shield that can become the basis of a pan-European sky shield, and we have already proven that Russia has no missiles that cannot be shot down. We have destroyed the entire, and I emphasize this, the entire most combat-ready part of the Russian army in battles. Putin is now forced to humiliate himself in front of regimes like Iran to get weapons to continue his terror. Terror against Ukraine. Russia, which claimed to be the second most powerful country in the world, is looking for help from exiles…
And this Russian ruler is already so weak that he is unable to protect even Russian regions from his own militants. And if one day someone like Prigozhin or Kadyrov, for example, marches directly to the Kremlin, we should not be surprised. All the remnants of the Russian armed forces are in the occupied areas of our country, and those who are supposed to guarantee the security of this regime in Russia have no motivation to actually fight for a weak and inadequate tsar.
So now we have to increase our joint pressure. The more aid, ammunition, and weapons we receive, the more modern they are, the clearer the contours of our victory are, that is, the more the scale of the war on our land is reduced, because we are pushing the occupiers out. Defense support really means saving freedom, it increases the space of freedom and normal life for our people. And I am grateful to you, I am grateful to Bulgaria for being on the bright side of history, particularly in defense cooperation.
The greater our political unity is, particularly in the area of European and Euro-Atlantic integration, the more the Russian dictator’s entourage will fall apart and the weaker he will become. None of his ambitions have been realized. And we have to confirm at every stage of our path that the ambitions of the Russian regime will not be realized. Vilnius is now one of the key stages. It is there that we can and must prove that Russian regimes – whatever they may be – will no longer have a “veto” over the free choice of the European nations to determine their future. Ukraine is choosing the Alliance, NATO’s door is open, so it is time for an invitation to enter. When Ukraine chooses its future independently, and our choice really works, it means that the whole of Europe chooses and will always choose its future without external coercion. The current Russian regime is the last enslaver of nations in Europe. And this is also a fact. And this regime must lose, both on the battlefield and in politics, so that all people in Europe can win.
And the third aspect is unity. This is very important.
Modern Europe cannot afford the luxury of internal confrontations and internal divisions. Today is exactly one month since a new government has been in office in Bulgaria, and I sincerely wish this government a solid foundation of social unity, and therefore the opportunity to increase your strength, your influence, and the benefits for Bulgaria – in Europe and around the world. You always have to fight for the future of your people, and to gain it, you need unity, on which you rely.
May you succeed! Ukraine will always support you. And it will always be grateful to you for helping our defense.
I thank you for your attention! Thank you, beautiful Sofia, and thank you for hosting our delegation, for treating our people as if they were your own, your own family and friends. It’s so important, it keeps you going. And I am grateful to you for that.
Glory to Ukraine!
He also met with Czech President Petr Pavel today. Here’s the video of their joint press conference.
Ukraine was able to get a large number of POWs back today.
45 soldiers of Armed Forces, National Guard, DPSU and two civilians returned to Ukraine from Russian captivity.
Among them – a civilian employee of "Azovstal" and a member of territorial defense from Kherson.https://t.co/ZsVSUt8hyg pic.twitter.com/0znvLCsnES— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 6, 2023
/3. The moment of meeting a mother, a combat medic, with her children, who were in Russian captivity. Children and mother did not see each other for 1.5 years. pic.twitter.com/r1ldVA9ufV
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 6, 2023
Lviv:
Lviv….our most European-looking city.
And now this, Russian Kalibr missiles. This is what European cities would look like if we went on "not provoking Putin" and "calling on both sides to de-escalate" instead of confronting the aggressor. pic.twitter.com/g1byvt0cQ9— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 6, 2023
Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, was considered one of the safest places in Ukraine, but Russia hit it with missiles tonight, killing 4 people and injuring at least 32.
Some people are still trapped under the rubble of a destroyed residential building. pic.twitter.com/aIDrSz1lFE
— Daryna Antoniuk (@daryna_antoniuk) July 6, 2023
In the wake of last night’s bombardment of Lviv, The Kyiv Independent‘s Illia Ponomarenko is channeling a lot of frustration and despair with this question.
For more than a year, Russian Z-patriots can’t decide between two mutually contradicting narratives they all push for simultaneously:
– NATO & the West have been preparing a grand war on Russia for decades, so they will eagerly provide Ukraine with the whole of its military and…
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 6, 2023
Here’s the full text:
For more than a year, Russian Z-patriots can’t decide between two mutually contradicting narratives they all push for simultaneously:
– NATO & the West have been preparing a grand war on Russia for decades, so they will eagerly provide Ukraine with the whole of its military and industrial might to destroy, partition, and enslave Russia.
– NATO & the West are so weak, undetermined, and unprepared for a grand war with Russia that their defense assistance supplies to Ukraine are way too slow, insufficient, and prolonged that Ukraine is essentially doomed, which is good for Russia.So why is it that Ukraine has to beg for weapons and supplies for months and years and get a drop at a time, why doesn’t the West just give Ukraine absolutely everything, from artillery to F-16s, right away, just like that, since this war was prepared for decades and they want to see Russia destroyed?
Because they’re all Satanists and evil, and they want as many Slavic men dead as possible, for whatever reason.
I know that a new US military aid package will be announced tomorrow, and we’ll cover it then, but you need to listen to the message that Illia Ponomarenko is sending to us in the US and to our allies. This isn’t a message of ingratitude, it is a message of despair and anguish.
Bucha:
Gods of thunder are having a gig right now in Bucha ⛈️⚡️ pic.twitter.com/d01cmwUlMu
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 6, 2023
Ugh!
U.S. will continue to provide weaponry to Kyiv so that Ukrainian officials can negotiate from a position of strength when they think the time is right, per DoS Spox #StandWithUkraine
— Alex Raufoglu (@ralakbar) July 6, 2023
Of course its Richard Haas who runs the Council on Foreign Relations! NBC News has the details:
LONDON — A group of former senior U.S. national security officials have held secret talks with prominent Russians believed to be close to the Kremlin — and, in at least one case, with the country’s top diplomat — with the aim of laying the groundwork for potential negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, half a dozen people briefed on the discussions told NBC News.
In a high-level example of the back-channel diplomacy taking place behind the scenes, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with members of the group for several hours in April in New York, four former officials and two current officials told NBC News.
On the agenda of the April meeting were some of the thorniest issues in the war in Ukraine, like the fate of Russian-held territory that Ukraine may never be able to liberate, and the search for an elusive diplomatic off-ramp that could be tolerable to both sides.
Sitting down with Lavrov were Richard Haass, a former diplomat and the outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations, current and former officials said. The group was joined by Europe expert Charles Kupchan and Russia expert Thomas Graham, both former White House and State Department officials who are Council on Foreign Relations fellows.
The former U.S. officials involved either did not respond to requests for comment from NBC News or declined to comment on the record. All of the sources declined to be named in order to confirm talks that were intended to be kept confidential.
Among the goals, they said, is to keep channels of communication with Russia open where possible and to feel out where there might be room for future negotiation, compromise and diplomacy over ending the war.
The discussions have taken place with the knowledge of the Biden administration, but not at its direction, with the former officials involved in the Lavrov meeting briefing the White House National Security Council afterward about what transpired, two of the sources said.
The discussions are known in diplomatic parlance as “Track Two diplomacy,” a form of unofficial engagement involving private citizens not currently in government — or in the case of the Lavrov meeting, “Track 1.5,” meaning current officials are involved on one end of the conversation. They come as formal, high-level diplomatic engagements between the U.S. and Russian governments over Ukraine have been few and far between.
It is not clear how frequently the backchannel discussions have taken place, nor whether they’re part of a single, organized effort.
But on the American side, the discussions have involved some former Pentagon officials, including Mary Beth Long, a former U.S. assistant defense secretary with deep experience in NATO issues, according to two people briefed on the talks.
So NBC, based on what they’ve been told by these former political appointees, is reporting the Biden administration knows about what is going on and this is an official Track 2/backchannel. The Biden State Department contradicts that. Graham was last a political appointee, let alone a career Foreign Service officer, in the first George W Bush administration. Kupchan’s last political appointment was in the second Obama administration. Haas, like Graham, was a political appointee during the first George W. Bush administration. Long served as a political appointee in the second George W. Bush administration.
Someone here is lying. Unfortunately, even if it is these useless idiots, Russia wins as a result. Especially because the Ukrainian news is reporting this sourced to NBC and with NBC’s framing that these are official Track 2/backchannel negotiations with Lavrov. Interestingly, the spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denounced the reporting as fake:
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has dismissed thereport as fake.
This is going to be demoralizing. The official State Department correction is not going to be read, seen, and/or heard by the average Ukrainian. This is going to be pushed and pulled hither and yon throughout social media. I cannot tell you how stupid this is if it is just these four schmucks freelancing. If it eventually comes out someone in the Biden administration blessed off on this, it is going to be monumentally bad.
I see that accusations of Russia using chemical weapons are circling around social media again. They last time people were claiming that K-51 tear gas (chemical irritant) grenades were chloropicrin grenades. They’re not. Here’s a long thread from Dan Kaszeta with all the details from SEP 2022.
OK. Here's what I have to say about the alleged "chloropicrin grenade" attack in Ukraine. There's a lot of holes in this story and I think some misunderstanding is going on.
(Thread)
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
Many accounts go on to name the device as a "K-51 chloropicrin grenade"
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
Chloropicrin isn't going to work in this sort of grenade. The K-51 works by igniting a burning filler, in which granulated/powdered CS is mixed in with the burning filling material.
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
Now, that CS grenade will get pretty hot. I don't know how hot the K-51 gets, but many CS grenades get to temperatures in 400-700 deg C range.
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
Chloropicrin is not combustible. But it has a decomposition temperature around 112 deg C, way cooler than any burning-type CS grenade.
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
Chloropicrin could be mistaken for CS and vice versa. Which is one of the many reasons why all tear gases are banned in warfare by the Chemical Weapons Convention. pic.twitter.com/SxtjU8zd1A
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
Chloropicrin is way more toxic than CS tear gas, but it is genuinely difficult to kill anyone with it in open air.
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
Now, one of you is bound to jump the gun and claim I'm being Pro-Russian. I couldn't be further from that. Here's the thing: claiming that Russian weapons are more lethal than they really are is the pro-Russian approach on this subject and I'm fighting that.
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
But also, it's perfectly possible that something was misidentified in good faith and passed up the chain of command. But that also points out the very good reasons for the ban
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
I should note that merely doing a Google image search for a chloropicrin grenade gets you images that are not actually chloropicrin grenades. You need to dig deeper
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 24, 2022
Also, a bit of an update. There's a bit of an urban legend going around that chloropicrin is a "mask breaker" that will defeat military protective masks/respirators. This might have been the case decades ago, but not with the filters on modern military respiratory protection
— Dan "Blacklisted" Kaszeta 🇱🇹 🇺🇦 (@DanKaszeta) September 25, 2022
Last night in the comments, Anonymous at Work asked:
Adam,
About the proving grounds bit, any sense or word that UA having access to the latest and best with good training will prepare US for when a SE Asian power decides to invade a small breakaway island neighbor? That the US needs to learn MORE from what weapons can/do work than this “SE Asian power” does from what Russia does (or rather learns what not to do)?
The answer is yes and no. Having actual real world data about how these weapons and weapons systems work in a conventional interstate war is important. So that will help. However, I am not sure given the differences in the actual physical geography, as well as the human (people, places, things, and how they interact in time and space), political (how governments are structured, staffed, run, and decisions are made), and military (how the military is structured, staffed, run, and decisions are made) geography means that a lot of what people would like to be the lessons learned from Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s genocidal re-invasion aren’t going to be. Leaving aside the cottage industry of think tank and scholarly reports over the past year and a half – some coming out just weeks into the war – claiming to provide lessons learned from the Ukrainian-Russian War of 2022, quite frankly we really do not know what the real key take aways are. I’m not sure we’ll know for years after the war ends. And the attempts to glean tactical lessons learned and then assert them as anything more than a snapshot in time is arrogant foolishness. There’s so much we do not know yet. So much information, despite the amount of information that has come out, that has not come out or that we think means X now, but may mean Y when it is all over, that I’m not sure we can make any sort of even general extrapolations for what we might or might not need to learn in the scenario you’ve described. However, the one lesson the Taiwanese damn well better be learning right now is to get as much as they can in terms of material now and stockpile it. Because regardless of how loudly majorities in Congress are banging the drum in your favor or how supportive the statements are coming out of the administration, the reality is you’re going to get what you’re going to get when the US decides to send it to you based on both the understanding of the national interest of whomever is President at that time and his senior advisor and their fears of what providing support might lead to. Which ties back into Illia Ponomarenko’s expression of frustration and despair.
That’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
There are no new Patron tweets or videos tonight. So here is Murchik the cat from Sumy!
When you break down after another violent Russian attack, suddenly there is something that makes you smile. Sumy. 4th day of rescue work. Murchik the cat found alive. pic.twitter.com/FDFFUcOcEC
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) July 6, 2023
Open thread!
Gin & Tonic
My google-fu is failing me, because I can’t seem to find the name(s) of the Ukrainian representative(s) at these “secret” talks. Surely these muckety-mucks wouldn’t “[lay] the groundwork for potential negotiations” without the active involvement of the country that is being attacked, would they?
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: They haven’t. This is direct with Lavrov and a bunch of Russian academics and think tankers and Ministry of Foreign Affairs folks. No Ukrainians involved.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, gee, did I forget the sarcasm tag?
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: I got you were being sarcastic, but given that not everyone would, I wanted to make it clear.
Alison Rose
Louder for the people in the back. It’s maddening that this needs to be explained (not to anyone here, but to idiots out there *gestures randomly toward the window*), and even more so that a lot of them will still only hear it as greedy whining. Especially since some of them are the types to wanna go to Starbucks and the movies and their dermatologist appointment armed to the teeth.
I really really really want to believe the Biden admin when they say they had nothing to do with these stupid “talks”. I also really really really want all the parties involved with them to be forced to dance a barefoot jig on a pile of legos.
I just saw a few minutes ago a notification from the NYT that Biden is “on the verge of providing cluster munitions” to Ukraine. I know nothing (as per usual) but I know these are banned by many countries. I’d be interested to hear informed takes from Adam and the jackals. (Band name.)
Also good Lord, that video of the mother being reunited with her kids made me a weepy mess.
Thank you as always, Adam.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Got it. Not trying to be a dick here.
Freemark
@Alison Rose: Neither the US or Ukraine are signatories to the treaty that make cluster munitions illegal. I believe the only thing legally stopping the US from supplying cluster munitions is a law about supplying cluster munitions to foreign governments that have a dud rate greater than 1%. I’m not clear if that is an actual fixed law or can be overridden by the President if he deems it ‘necessary’. The cluster munitions the US can supply have a dud rate of 3% to 5%. Still much better than the cluster munitions that Ukraine and Russia are currently using that have a dud rate as high as 40%.
jackmac
What an emotional video of the mom reunited with her children after they were held by Russia for 1 1/2 years!
Tears of happiness flowed freely with them and for them. May there be many more such reunions.
Adam L Silverman
@Alison Rose: Not sure why Ukraine wants them, but apparently they’ve been asking for them. Here’s the reporting.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-expected-provide-cluster-munitions-ukraine-nyt-2023-07-06/
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: I know. No worries. I’m as pissed about this as you are.
japa21
@jackmac: Got very dusty here.
Regarding the talks (or whatever they were) it is possible the Biden administration knew about them but did not sanction them and in fact may have tried to stop them. The question is, who benefits from this being leaked? Not the administration and not Ukraine. So despite the Russian denial, one(being me) wonders if the leak may have been from that side of the fence. And for some reason I really doubt, if Biden wanted to do these kind of talks (which I don’t believe he does) that he would have chosen these numbskulls.
Chetan Murthy
@Alison Rose: Alison, (I suspect, like you) I think the right answer is: it’s their country, their struggle for survival, we don’t have a right to tell them how to do it. Sure, we have a right to ask them to not incite worldwide nuclear catastrophe, but that’s it. That’s where it ends.
I’ve read about various things they want to do with those cluster munitions, but really, I don’t care exactly what, and I trust them to do the militarily most effective thing.
Again, in this I suspect I’m like you.
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: Haas. He’s an attention hound. And the Russians benefit. It allows them to use this to demoralize the Ukrainians, as well as promote it as another example of why the US cannot be trusted as an ally and/or patron.
Chetan Murthy
I muse from time-to-time about Taiwan, and I wonder if there’s something we and Taiwan’s government can do, to educate Taiwan’s population about how to resist, how to organize, how to save their nation.
I imagine some sort of exchange program between Taiwan and Ukraine, whereby Taiwan can help Ukraine now, and Ukraine can help Taiwan to learn how to resist. One could imagine that the Baltics could also be involved in this.
As a fat and complacent American, I don’t actually know anything about this, so I could be completely wrong.
Chetan Murthy
This is interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts4JS2NVtqs
“Armies don’t fight wars: nations fight wars, armies just do the shooting”
He’s a little “all over the place”, but I think he’s trying to explain something really important.
Adam L Silverman
@Chetan Murthy: Armies conduct campaigns. Nation-states wage war.
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
They were asking for them as early as December 2022, and by March 2023 they were even talking about adapting (some of) the submunitions for drone use (right before the counteroffensive, so coyness was in order); anyway, use for trench-clearing is now one of the narratives on mil-twitter and probably elsewhere.
Ukraine seeks U.S. cluster bombs to adapt for drone use, lawmakers say (JONATHAN LANDAY, PUBLISHED MARCH 7, 2023)
Presumably Ukraine (military, government) believes that the residual risk over time from unexploded (US-origin) cluster bomb submunitions on Ukrainian territory is dwarfed by the risks from continuing Russian occupation, and from Russian cluster bombing (much higher dud rate), and from indiscriminate massive deployment of mines by Russia, and etc.
Geminid
President Zelensky is visiting neighbors this week. Today it was Bulgaria and Czechia, and tomorrow it will be Turkiye’s turn.
Howard Altman of The Drive reported that talks with Bulgarian officials were tense. As the Ukrainia delegation sat “stone faced” across the table from their Bulgarian counterparts, Zelensky delivered his opinion about Bulgaria’s minimal support to Bulgarian President Rumen Radov in blunt terms.
The talks in Czechia were presumably much more convivial.
Martin
Guessing the GOP is up to their usual ratfucking here, especially as Russia is more than happy to help that along.
Alison Rose
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah, I’m generally in the “give them what they ask for” camp. But since I’ve often seen people and organizations and governments denouncing the use of these weapons, I was a bit surprised by the request and the possible agreement. But at this point, I mean…I look at the orcs and I just want to say, don’t start none, won’t be none, you know? Especially since we know Ukraine has treated their POWs far far better than russia has.
Alison Rose
These photos are lovely: Zelenskyy meeting with a 14-year-old boy from Lviv named Anton, who has been undergoing treatments in Czechia (I assume for cancer).
lee
I can think of 2 major lessons from the war so far.
1) Don’t let your Generals steal your military budget
2) Don’t skip maintenence of your equipment.
Anoniminous
@Chetan Murthy:
Not a chance in hell China is going to invade Taiwan any time soon. People’s Liberation Army Navy capability.
Martin
@Bill Arnold: I had read that they might be useful to clear minefields which Ukraine is struggling with. Seems like a somewhat unreliable way to clear a minefield, though.
Regarding the frustration with the request for these things, that’s perfectly valid. It’s hard for leaders to make decisions around these things and tend to wait until the cost of making the decision is already realized. You make the decision to save lives after the lives are already lost. It’s a lot harder to look at the moment, recognize that you’re going to send cluster munitions or F-16s or Abrams once a certain line is crossed, and then recognize that line will unavoidably be crossed, and step up and send that stuff immediately and then get out and defend in on those grounds.
This was the problem when Covid broke out. The difficult decision to mandate masks or close institutions wasn’t going to be made until the virus was observed in the wild, which was the whole point of the mandate and closing the institutions – to avoid it from showing up in the wild. That was my hardest task – convincing leadership that they were going to close at some point and to just do it today rather than wait for the first person to die, because in closing today you might prevent that person from dying. And their job at leader is making that decision and then getting everyone on board with it.
Chetan Murthy
@Anoniminous: That’s as may be. But from an interview with a well-connected Taiwanese politician I listened to on Dmitri Alperovitch’s “Geopol Decanted” podcast, it seems clear that the Taiwanese population is nowhere near as …. coherently committed to their nationhood, as the Ukrainians were in 2021. That’s a problem.
Geminid
Al Monitor has a good article previewing President Zelenkyy’s visit to Turkiye tomorrow. A one-to-one meeting with President Erdogan plus delegation level talks will be followed by joint presser with the two Presidents.
Topics to be discussed include the Ukrainian war, bilateral relations between Kyiv and Ankara, and the Black Sea Grain Deal which expires July 17. Shipments under the deal have ground almost to a halt.
Other sources say that Zelenskyy will also urge Erdogan to assent to Sweden’s NATO membership. Talks on the matter today in Brussels, between the Foreign Ministers of Sweden, Finland and Turkiye as well as NATO Secretary Stoltenberg, were inconclusive. This was to be expected, as Erdogan will make the final decision for Turkiye.
Stoltenberg will hold one more meeting Monday in Vilnius, Latvia on the eve of the NATO Summit. This one will be between Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson, with Stoltenberg mediating.
Another Scott
A short and interesting article* on the various international laws regarding cluster munitions and how they apply to Ukraine and russia.
(Note the article has dark blue links buried in grey text, so is needlessly more difficult to read than it should be.)
I’m in the “give Ukraine what it needs, as quickly and as completely as circumstances allow” camp too. Having the war and the aftermath drag out for years does not help anyone except those who want to break the international peace and security order.
* – “Air Commodore William H. Boothby retired as Deputy Director of Royal Air Force Legal Services in July 2011. He is Honorary Professor at the Australian National University and also teaches at the University of Southern Denmark and at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.”
Slava Ukraini!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Carlo Graziani
@Alison Rose:
Happy to sing backup in that band.
One benefit of cluster munitions is that they are area weapons, which work well against dispersed targets. A truck park, or a railyard, would be excellent examples of good candidates for such a warhead, since a standard high-explosive (HE) munition would produce blast damage that decreases very rapidly from the detonation point.
As to the moral questions, they have to do with post-conflict cleanup. If the Ukrainians are happy to have them used on their own territory, we may assume that they will take responsibility for safing unexploded bomblets after their territory is liberated, so it’s really their own business whether and how they use them.
Andrya
For anyone who knows the law: aren’t the unauthorized negotiators violating the Logan Act? Isn’t that why Oliver North shredded documents and misled congress- to avoid a Logan Act prosecution? Every time one of these amoral idiots shows up in public, they should be asked, that if they achieved a negotiated settlement, exactly how did they plan to prevent the russians from coming back in a few years for another bite?
The link for Thomas Graham shows that he works for Kissinger Associates. It figures.
Captain C
While this sort of unofficial negotiation is annoying as hell,
probablydefinitely counterproductive, and means nothing (and is insulting) without Ukrainians present, perhaps it’s useful for State and the various intelligence agencies to know which specific lies and bullshit Lavrov is currently pushing? Kind of like how if ’70s Pravda published a spate of stories on American industrial accidents astute readers would know that a chemical factory or suchlike had blown up in Sverdlovsk or Magnitogorsk.In the Sten series (a military sci fi octet with enjoyable yarns, good recipes, at least one shaggy dog story per novel, and a hilarious disregard for any sort of realistic scientific scale of time, distance, speed, and so forth), one of the sides is preparing a planetary invasion. The commanding marshal looks at the ammunition stockpile and orders it doubled. Then he orders it doubled again, to the horror of the comptrollers.
And let me add many, many thanks to you Adam for keeping on doing this series, and so well; it’s one of my main go-to sources for info on this war.
Roberto el oso
“Former” is the operative word, and designates the entire group as fundamentally impotent. Since they’re presumably not rogue agents they would have informed Biden administration staff of their intentions to meet with Russian officials, and this would have been out of simple courtesy as former employees, and may not even be anything more substantial than one of them passing the news along to a former colleague who remains employed by the State Department or wherever. The fact that the Biden administration knows about this is simply that — they ‘know’ about it. It doesn’t in any way imply that they approve or are somehow secretly backing it. At least that’s my take. The wording of the article is lazy but may be because the journalist doesn’t want to appear to be dissing the impotent folks involved (don’t spit on the hand that feeds you sort of thing).
Carlo Graziani
@Andrya: For what it’s worth: I very much doubt that this particular group would have met with the Russians without tacit assent from the Administration. Whatever their histories they are experienced diplomats, and none of them would likely engage in this kind of dialog if there were not an informal channel open to what they learn at the US political/diplomatic/military end.
I would respectfully dissent from Adam’s catastrophistic take on such an exercise. It is always worth engaging an enemy, whom one understands to be an enemy, to gain information on that enemy’s parameters and to communicate one’s own. More disasters occur through miscommunication than through communication. And the fact that such a communication occurred is very far from the inference that Ukraine is somehow being sold out
ETA: If there is a naive aspect to the exercise, it is imagining that it would be kept secret.
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani:
I want to challenge this interpretation of the meetings. The American folks who took these meetings were almost certainly not “communicating our parameters”. Instead, they were almost-certainly communicating a set of appeasement proposals that were counter to our national foreign policy. In that context, what’s the *use*?
I remember when I was interviewing for jobs on Wall Street (which I never took), I would follow the standard advice of “never tell them your salary expectation; let them make the first offer”. Because you don’t want to communicate that you’re willing to work for less than they were willing to offer. But, it turns out, at some point, it actually makes *sense* to communicate your salary expectation, b/c a lotta these fuckers aren’t willing to pay enough, and you might as well cut short those conversations.
Having Americans talk to Lavrov, who convey the mistaken impression that we can be bought cheap, isn’t helpful for our foreign policy.
Andrya
Atlantic Monthly is currently running a heartbreaking article about kidnapped Ukrainian children being forced to publicly thank their russian captors as part of russian propaganda- even being required to hug their kidnappers. (“The Children Russia Kidnapped”, 7/1/23)
I actually think that brainwashing traumatized children, and then publicly exploiting them, is worse than murder.
Another Scott
@Bill Arnold: The story I heard on NPR today speculated that they wanted them to clear the various hundreds of miles of trenches. On the other hand, the Wikipedia article has a pointer to an article at TheDrive (from March):
That usage would seemingly mitigate the concern about duds (since any bomb dropped from a drone could be a dud).
A YouTube video on them said that Human Rights Watch estimated in 2005 that the US had 14.5M of them, so we can probably spare a few.
Cheers,
Scott.
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: Like I wrote, I don’t believe for a moment that these people went rogue. They may not have had a brief, but they almost certainly had a blessing.
Keep in mind what our information sources on the event are likely to be, and the fact that leakers always have agendas. Some day we may have a nuanced historical account on what this caper was about. The NBC report is certainly not that.
Carlo Graziani
@Andrya: it’s Nuremberg trial-grade material.
Anoniminous
Various reports the US will announce tomorrow we will be sending cluster munitions to Ukraine.
Note: this is good because they are an effective counter-battery weapon
Roberto el oso
@Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani
These are interesting takes. But for the moment I’m sticking with my take that the impetus for the meetings came from Haas and the others, and there was no formal assent from the Biden administration.
I am also certain that whatever information comes out of the meetings will be shared privately with both the Biden and the Zelensky administrations, neither of which can or should acknowledge this.
Gin & Tonic
@Carlo Graziani: I, for one, fervently hope that Haass & Co did not have a “blessing” from the Biden admin. At this point, a year and a half in, any whiff of negotiation excluding Ukraine would be, as my mother would say, beneath criticism.
Carlo Graziani
Zelenskyy’s meeting with Pavel is great NATO politics. Pavel is a well-respected general who was Chairman of the NATO Military Committee—the military advisory committee to the Atlantic Council—from 2015 to 2018. He is a popular (not poplulist) politician, with a good deal of influence on European military affairs, and a great advocate within NATO. That’s a good guy to be en rapport with.
Andrya
@Carlo Graziani: Reasonable people of good will can disagree about this, but I endorse Chetan Murthy’s reply (#33). We still have diplomatic relations with russia, we still have a hotline, so we do have communications that the official US government controls. It sure sounds to me like the unofficial negotiators are proposing compromises where the russians get something out of the deal.
I highly recommend Anders Puck Nielsen’s YouTube channel. Nielsen is an active duty Danish naval officer, and a professor at the Danish defense college. He recently did a YouTube video “Peace is not an option for Ukraine” (link) in which he argued that far from compromising over seized land, the russians would, at a minimum, demand all of the territory that they have formally annexed- including territory that they do not control. This video (just 8 minutes long) is well worth a listen.
Chetan Murthy
@Andrya: If we’re going to have informal negotations with the bastards, the way to do it is to have Haas set it up, but then have …. idunno, Nancy Pelosi come in for the actual meeting and read fucking Lavrov the riot act, make sure he knows we know where his FUCKING DAUGHTER AND GRANDCHILDREN ARE, make sure he knows we know where all his money is, and he needs to make nicey-nicey or we’ll terminate ’em all. Unofficial, eh? Then let’s use it, ffs.
Fucker needs to leave the meeting with a brown stain on his crotch.
Carlo Graziani
@Gin & Tonic: I agree with you that for this group (or any other not including senior representatives from Ukraine), “negotiation” would be beneath contempt. But “communication” is not, in my view.
Really, we’re basing reactions on what a leaker told NBC, and on how NBC chose to spin the story. There are at least two agendas in play that deserve consideration here.
And I stand by my view that none of the NatSec/diplomatic professionals named in the story would even dream of making such contacts without a tacit blessing from the Administration. Again, the naive element here is the presumption of secrecy, given how many people must have known about it.
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani: The question is, what are we “communicating”? It is not useful to communicate that we’ll take 10, when in fact, we need 100 to even *consider* agreeing. That’s not useful at all.
Andrya
@Chetan Murthy: I am assuming that the Biden administration is not negotiating a peace deal behind Ukraine’s back, but is communicating things like the following to russia:
“Do not even think about using tactical nukes, or you will really regret it.”
“Bombing the Ukrainian supply lines in Poland will trigger NATO article 5.”
Chetan Murthy
@Andrya: Except that that’s not the sort of thing that Haas publishes in his columns, is it? Sure, I’d like to believe that he’ll follow instructions, but …. why would the Biden Admin use a guy like that? It’s like they use Mearsheimer to deliver their message, yes? I simply don’t believe it. What I believe, is that Haas delivers the message he believes, which is “I’ll eat Putin’s fresh warm shit for a keynote invite to the next St. Pete Economic Forum!”
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: Perhaps my own powers of communication are failing me. I’m trying to say, largely “consider the sources, and their agendas.”
We don’t really know what was discussed. We know that the contact occurred, and that a leaker conspired with NBC to produce a story about it. We may also infer, I believe, that the contact was unofficial, but not disapproved.
That’s about it. To infer that a negotiation occurred is pushing things pretty far. Many contacts between parties with fraught relations are not negotiations at all. They are exchanges of views. And as far as I am concerned, such exchanges at all levels, formal and informal, can be useful.
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani:
Restated in the language of salary negotations, if I tell a prospective employer that I’ll take $100k/yr when in fact I need $300k/yr to even consider the job, I’m not helping the negotiation, and I’m not actually *communicating*. Haas is an appeaser, and I am skeptical that he actually communicated the *real* views of our administration.
P.S. I don’t need to know anything more than “Haas met Lavrov” to know that it’s bad news and Haas needs to be hung by his ballsack from a lamppost.
Another Scott
State.gov (from 6/28):
I haven’t watched the video or read the whole transcript.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Andrya
@Chetan Murthy: Sorry, I wrote badly and wasn’t clear. The messages I think the Biden administration has communicated to russia (in my comment #46) would be communicated by official channels- Biden to putin, Sec State Blinken to Lavrov or the russian ambassador to the US, Sec Def Austin to the russian ambassador to the US. I can’t see any reason to use unofficial channels for those messages- the russians would be skeptical that we were serious if it wasn’t official. I think the unofficial negotiators have gone rogue.
wombat probability cloud
@Carlo Graziani: Good discussion of cluster munitions here. And, thank you, Carlo, for your very informative posts.
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: Perhaps this is an unbridgeable difference. I happen to believe that the professionalism of these ex-NatSec professionals would not allow them to let their personal views on preferred outcomes outrun what they know are the parameters set by the administration. That whatever we may think about their beliefs, they would regard their own conduct as unprofessional if they transcended the boundaries of what the Administration expected of them, because this is their training. They may be assholes, but none of them are traitors, and certainly none of them wants to appear to his peers as having transgressed professional propriety.
YY_Sima Qian
Adam is quite right that the lesson for Taiwan is to stockpile as much munitions (especially anti-air, anti-shipping & anti-vehicle missiles) as possible before war is imminent, because once fighting starts there is little prospect of continuing to resupply the island, unlike w/ Ukraine, even if the US is willing. The lesson for the US is also to stockpile long range precision munitions that are more difficult to intercept (such as the stealthy LRASMs) before war is imminent, because they will be consumed very quickly in any kind of conflict w/ China, especially one that involves striking targets on the mainland. We have seen how vulnerable sub-sonic non-stealthy missiles are to interception by even halfway decent AD systems.
Every war-game held in the US show the conflict devolving into a race to see if the USAF/USN run out of LRASMs or the PLARF runs out of DF series ballistic missiles 1st. The US side tends to run out of LRASMs w/in days.
The good new is that Taiwan has indigenous capabilities to develop & field anti-air/shipping/tank missiles, w/ decent performance, so it is not entirely reliant upon purchases from the US (thus easier to expand its already huge stockpile). TW also has far stronger Air Force and IADS than Ukraine. The bad news is that, unlike Ukraine, TW does not have defensive depth. It is a relatively thin island situated close to the Mainland, most of its land area is dominated by a tall & rugged mountain range down its spine. The vast majority of its population centers, economic potential, infrastructure, military assets, & logistical access points (ports & airports) are concentrated on the western side of the mountain range, along the coast facing the Mainland. TW Strait represents a huge moat between the island & the mainland, but TW being an island also makes resupply virtually impossible once hostilities commence. Further bad news is that the PLAAF & the PLAN are much strong larger & stronger than their Russian counterparts, are expected to be able to generate far greater volume of fire against TW & potentially US & allied (meaning Japanese) bases along the 1st & 2nd Island Chains, & China’s far greater industrial capacity means it will be able to sustain high volumes of fire & make up for huge consumption rates. All of these stand in stark contrast to Russia.
One also could not count on incompetence & corruption to affect PLA performance to the degree that it has affected the Russian military. Analysts w/ deep expertise on the the PLA (John Culver & Lyle Goldstein are 2 I highly recommend) assess that it has consistently demonstrated itself being a learning organization through its nearly century long history, & Xi’s anticorruption campaign has alleviated the worst effects of corrupt decay seen in the ’90s & ’00s.
Any kind of TW scenario will primarily be a naval & air fight, as opposed to land fight in Ukraine. Most US planners assess that TW’s strong Air Force will be be grounded w/in the 1st 24 – 48 hrs of conflict, as the air bases are pulverized by PLA rockets & missiles. The ROCAF (TWese AF) also no longer enjoys technological superiority over the PLAAF, something it took for granted until the early ’10s. TW could probably learn from Ukrainian use of surface suicide drones to against PLA landslips & transports. There are a lot it could learn when it comes to land warfare, but by the time the war shifts to a land campaign on TW, it is probably a lost cause already.
There are a lot of unknowns, of course. The PLA has not fought any high intensity battles since the 80s (a proper war since ’79), & the PLAAF/PLAN for 2 decades longer. The ROCN/ROCAF have not fought any battles for just as long, & the ROCA not since the Kinmen Crises of the ’50s. The JSDF has not fought since WW II, & the USN/USAF have not fought high intensity conflicts against credible opponents since Vietnam, & not against technological/industrial peers since WW II. As we have seen in Ukraine, just because the Russian military seemed to have done well achieving Russia’s objectives against inferior opponents in Georgia & the Syrian rebels, does not mean they can perform well in a near peer conflict.
The PLA does not have a strong NCO corps, not part of its tradition. By the token, neither does the ROCA, which also has Leninist roots from its earlier life as the KMT’s Party army. The ROCA has seen a great deal of decay in the past 2 decades (the ROCN/ROCAF to lesser extents), suffering from inadequate staffing, poor morale, poor maintenance, obsolescent/obsolete equipment, & antiquated (& insufficient at that) training. The reserves system in TW is also in shambles. The TWese government is trying to start addressing some of these glaring issues, under US pressure, but to what effect remains to be seen. TWese military brass still favors purchasing expensive big ticket items from the US, such as large displacement surface warships, new generation fighters, heavy main battle tanks, etc. The ROCA is still organized & trained to fight strictly conventional campaigns.
At the end of the day, any Battle for TW will be decided in the air & on the seas, not on land. TW is not self-sufficient in energy: its LNG reserves can only last 2 weeks of normal peace time use, < 10 days in the summer. One can bet LNG storage tanks & power transmission infrastructure will be among the 1st targeted by the PLA. (TW is in the process of shutting down its nuclear power plants.)
Depending on what the CCP leadership is trying to achieve, the PLA does not need to attempt to invade the island at all. It can effectively enforce a blockade simply by persistently lobbing relatively cheap long range rockets at TWese ports & airports on the west coast (can also remotely deploy mines this way). Those few on the east coast will require the more expensive cruise & ballistic missiles.
Chetan Murthy
@Andrya: Yes, this is what I believe also.
lashonharangue
Here is what Haas recently wrote. He doesn’t believe Ukraine can win the war. He envisions a frozen conflict after this counter offensive with “security guarantees” but not NATO membership. He thinks the cost of as long as it takes is not worth it.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russia-richard-haass-west-battlefield-negotiations
Carlo Graziani
@wombat probability cloud: As Adam frequently and justifiably says, thanks for your kind words.
And Adam, well, you know. You provide a home for us, and an irreplaceable service.
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: I dearly hope we never see any of this play out for real.
Geoduck
@Chetan Murthy: You really think we should be “unofficially” threatening to assassinate young children?
Chetan Murthy
@Geoduck: I have no concern for the offspring of Lavrov, Putin, or any of those oligarchs. Send ’em all back to Russia. Send ’em on an Aeroflot plane.
trollhattan
@lashonharangue:
Is Article 5 retroactive?
patrick II
@Chetan Murthy:
The problem with any negotiations without Ukraine’s invo!vement is that it gives Russians hope and therefore pro!ongs the war.
lashonharangue
@trollhattan: I have no idea. However we accepted West Germany into NATO before its eastern border was resolved by treaty.
Chetan Murthy
@patrick II: Yes, *this*. So the only thing we should ever “communicate” in conversations with RU that don’t include Ukraine is “we will never forget this bullshit, and you and your great-grandchildren will regret that you fucked with us and our friends.”
Betsy
These Russian fuxkwits. How long can this go on? son of a bitch! that this can happen in Europe in 2023.
Does anyone think we are giving Ukraine cluster bombs in order to cause a mass defection / breakdown of Russian troops when the word gets around? Because with the mercenary sections all fed up last week and the public in Russia maybe a bit more on the lookout for the truth about the war after all that marching on Moscow, it sure seems like an opportune time to just give a bit of leverage if there is perhaps a tipping point to be had …
Betsy
@Andrya: I’m for having the kidnappers whipped publicly. Then imprisoned forever. I hope Russia burns to the ground. It’s a culture and a country not worth saving. Sorry but haven’t we seen enough? In hundreds of years there’s never been a polity worth a fig, not once.
The Moar You Know
It won’t change how I vote, but I gotta call this like I see it. The Biden administration’s response to Ukraine is unacceptable. They can and must do far better.
So is most of Europe’s for that matter, and boy you’d think a lot of them would be having the “we could be next” feels. Poland sure is.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: The degree of popular support for continued war in TW & Mainland China (or the US & Japan for that matter) will greatly depend on the specific events that led up to war, which are unknowable. If the PLA struck US & Japanese bases 1st, there will be cries of “Pearl Harbor!” & popular support for conflict w/ the PRC could last longer (until risk of escalation to nuclear war becomes clear). If the US & Japan had struck Chinese military assets 1st to defend TW, how solid popular support remain in either country will likely depend on the course of the war. At the outset, I think we can expect strong popular support on the Mainland for war to “liberate” TW, as long as the CCP regime can make a convincing argument domestically (which does not necessarily take that much) that it is acting in response to TWese “provocations”. Whether that support will continue will also depend on the course of the war.
When asking TWese if they are willing to defend their freedom & independence, one has to specify what kind of “freedom & independence”. While I am sure most of TWese will opt for de jure independence if the PRC has not been hanging the prospect of war over their heads for such a choice, consistently strong majorities of TWese have concluded that the current status quo of de facto independence is an acceptable if dissatisfactory state of affairs, even if perpetuated indefinitely. Few TWese are willing to fight & shed blood to achieve de jure independence.
Would TWese fight for their de facto independence? I think the answer is yes when the war is still fought in the air & on the seas, even as the PLA is raining missiles & bombs on the island. Would they still fight if the was has shift onto TW itself? That is a tough ask. Think about the scenario where the TWese will have to fight as the Ukrainians have. It means the PLA has gained a secure beachhead on the island. That implies there is no direct intervention from the US or Japan, or it means the intervention has been defeated or stalemated by the PLA. It means that the PLA (especially the PLAN/PLAAF) have suffered grievous losses, but it also means that the ROCN/ROCAF have been largely annihilated, TWese IADS effectively suppressed, & the USN/USAF/JSDF have themselves suffered high losses & probably have run out of the long range munitions to effectively affect the battle on TW & in the TW Strait.
It is going to be extremely challenging (certainly at this moment) for the PLA to reach that position (still need to beef up amphibious landing and transport assets), but at that point further determined resistance is just delaying the inevitable. Unlike Ukraine, TW does not have a land border for equipment, munitions & volunteers to stream through. No one in the US or anywhere else is discussing sending the USMC to retake the island from the PLA, or reduce the PLA beachhead.
The dilemma facing TW (& the US to an extent) is that the military balance across the TW Strait & w/in the 1st Island Chain has shifted so much that there is little prospect of TW defeating a PRC invasion by itself, the US & possible allies (principally Japan) can no longer be certain that they can quickly defeat the PLA in that specific theater. Therefore, the logical path to increase deterrence is to build up TW’s capabilities to wage war on land, to greatly increase the cost to the PLA to conquer the island, via emulating what Ukraine has done so successfully. That is the direction the US has been pressuring TW to go. OTOH, TWese politicians & population can reasonably conclude that the cause is essentially lost if the invasion ever gets to that point, so why make the investment & changes that will affect society & crowd out other domestic spending priorities, if they will not change the ultimate outcome?
Furthermore, TWese politicians & population do not feel war is an imminent danger, & they are correct in this assessment. Despite dangerously loose talk from certain quarters in the DOD & US military, no one believes that the CCP regime has decided on a timeline to recover TW, or that they have decided to use military force to meet the timeline. Xi & the CCP leadership have asked the PLA to achieve the ability to win a war over TW by 2027 (that does not necessarily mean the ability to physically conquer the island, but more likely the ability to defeat or stalemate US/Japanese intervention & coerce TW into suing for terms), but that does not mean a decision has been made.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: Absolutely not, there will be no winners (except Russia & India?) from a war over TW, even if it stays conventional. Its is actually difficult to see how it would not escalate to nukes if China & the US are directly engaged in high intensity warfare, w/ the US bombing the Chinese Mainland (as well as cyber attacks), & China striking US holdings in the Pacific (as well as cyber attacks on the US Mainland), something studiously avoided on both sides of the Pacific amongst all the war talk.
This will be like WW I, that leaves all of the participants ruined or exhausted, leaving opportunistic powers (such as Japan post-WW I) to fill the regional vacuum. & however the war ends, TW will certainly be in tatters. That is if it stays conventional.
Jay
Perun on the Ukraine counter offensive so far, 11 days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olH2-_Gtczw
Ishiyama
The only arguments against the Independence of Taiwan are rooted in force or the threat of force, which is how the Mainland gained “sovereignty” over the indigenous inhabitants, in the first place. Seeking to re-conquer a lost province would be short-sighted, given the unpredictable results of a failed attempt.
Alison Rose
@YY_Sima Qian: Whenever I read about Taiwan’s independence and China’s, let’s say, disinterest in said independence, in my head I just hear “Chinese fucking Taipei”, thank you Freddy Lim.
YY_Sima Qian
@Ishiyama: Taiwan was not independent post-WW II because the US acceded to the ROC’s demand of “righting the historic wrong of the seizure of TW by Imperial Japan through force of arms”. The Ryukyus did not regain its independence for similar reasons.
At the time, sentiments for independence was not nearly as strong back then, & more concentrated among the parts of the TWese population more fond of Japanese colonial rule, there were many others who yearned for return to Chinese rule (only to quickly sour on the KMT due to its incompetence, corruption & brutality, ironically just like people on the Mainland). Chinese nationalism & TWese nativism, not to mention nativism of the Polynesian aboriginal population, were all brutally suppressed during Japanese colonial rule, through forced colonial education & a great deal of bloodletting in the 1910s & 1920s.
Personally, I see TWese nationalism as more of an allergic reaction to past KMT authoritarianism & current CCP authoritarianism/aggressiveness. Since both the old KMT & the current CCP regimes fairly convincingly wrapped themselves in the mantle of Chinese nationalism, & had worked hard to suppress alternative expressions of Chinese identity their authoritarian rules (lest their legitimacies be challenged), in TW (& Hong Kong post-hand over) anti-authoritarian (or more precisely, anti-KMT/CCP regime) sentiments became intertwined w/ nativist sentiments. The current brand of TWese identity are more defined by what it is not than what it is (just like in Hong Kong).
That is not to say TWese identity/nationalism cannot eventually evolve into something more coherent. Nations, after all, are imagined communities, born w/ heavy doses of mythmaking.
I agree that realizing “China’s national rejuvenation” (new slogan under Xi) does not require integrating TW under Chinese rule, & any war waged to achieve such end entail great risk to the entire enterprise. The CCP leadership understands the immense risks, which is why they are under no hurry to use force. Evan Feigenbaum of Carnegie Endowment has correctly characterized that, “for Xi, TW is a crisis to be avoided, rather than an opportunity to be seized”. Unfortunately, for Chinese nationalists, whether the CCP leadership or among the population, recovering TW has become an overriding long term objective that simply can not be abandoned.
There are only 2 paths for TW to achieve de jure independence: defeat the PRC in war, or convince the PRC not to wage war. For the past 2 decades, both DPP & KMT governments have largely failed to invest adequately or efficiently in defense, & defeating the PRC in war is an increasingly distant prospect for TW to achieve alone. At the same time, the DPP governments in particular has done little to try to slowly influence Mainland popular opinions to be more empathetic & sympathetic toward TW, so that support to wage war is less strong on the Mainland. Instead, the DPP has preferred to play the nativist card for electoral gains, raising tensions w/ Beijing & alienating popular opinion on the Mainland, while failing to invest in defense(!).
YY_Sima Qian
@Alison Rose: “Chinese Taipei” is one of those ridiculous Cold War era compromises forced on TW (aka the ROC) to help keep the peace across the TW Strait, so the PRC & the US could get on w/ their éntente to face the Soviet threat.
Nonetheless, keeping the peace across the TW Strait requires a modus vivendi that will be highly unsatisfactory to all parties involved: for the PRC, it means reunification being a distant prospect but low risk of de jure independence for TW; for TW, it means de jure independence being a distant prospect but low threat to its de facto independence. Officially, the US is agnostic as to how people across the TW Strait settle their differences, as long as it is done peacefully. However, plenty of US geopolitical thinkers have transparently shown in their writings that they consider TW a strategic asset to be denied from China, or a chess piece in the Great Power Competition w/ China, giving no thought to TWese agency.
As things stand, all three parties (the PRC, TW & the US), being dissatisfied w/ the past modus vivendi & fearful of developing trends (increasing Chinese military prowess for the US, increasing PRC aggressiveness for TW, solidifying pro-independence sentiments for the PRC), are salami slicing away at the status quo. At the same time, none of the three parties are willing to acknowledge their own contribution to the deteriorating situation. One can certainly argue the relatively weight of each party’s contribution, but all have agency, & all at different times have behaved irresponsibly.
It will take a lot of wisdom & fortitude (against the grain of domestic politics) to reach a new modus vivendi to keep the peace, & kick the can another few decades down the road. Unfortunately, I do not seem much wisdom in Beijing, DC or Taipei these days, & the domestic politics on this matter are highly charged & highly toxic in all three capitals. Therein lie the danger.
Kent
Yep, they are going to have to de-mine every square inch of the place anyway. Must as well kill Russians in a more efficient manner and get this all over with faster.
Feathers
@YY_Sima Qian: Thanks for all of these posts. Writing about this issue tends to either be uselessly broad or so attached to a certain viewpoint as to be useless. I had never considered that there would be no way to resupply the island.
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian: the war in Ukraine has a lesson for Taiwan: get nukes and a delivery system to send them to beijing. That’s your only real guarantee of being left alone by the PRC: mutual assured destruction.
Kent
He really ought to be in the Hague for Iraq War war crimes along with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice. He was one of the architects of the Iraq War and disastrous occupation. OK, Rumsfeld is dead now, but with the rest of them.
Kent
He really ought to be in the Hague for Iraq War war crimes along with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice. He was one of the architects of the Iraq War and disastrous occupation. OK, Rumsfeld is dead now, but with the rest of them.
Kent
He really ought to be in the Hague for Iraq War war crimes along with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice. He was one of the architects of the Iraq War and disastrous occupation. OK, Rumsfeld is dead now, but with the rest of them.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: The PRC will employ military force before TW gets nukes. Historically, the US has sabotaged TWese nuclear weapons programs, & will likely continue to sabotage such a program to forestall war. In fact, a key rational of the US’ alliance system in Asia is to prevent Japan & South Korea from turning nuclear. It is not in any of the great powers’ interest for nukes to proliferate widely, although their historical actions have in fact weakened nuclear non-proliferation.
Eolirin
@Chetan Murthy: I dunno. I think the whole nuclear assured destruction thing is kind of bullshit, except in the face of an attempted genocide. But that’s usually not what’s on offer; the dissolution of a nation by force of arms is not the same as the destruction of it’s people, and the use of nukes is a guarantee of said destruction.
Do you pull the trigger just to keep your borders if the other side decides to launch a conventional military assault? Or do you just surrender when you can’t win? If the other side is planning a genocide it’s a bit easier to make that call, I think, but short of that, I think it’s bluster. And I think eventually someone is going to call that bluff, and we’re going to get into a hot conventional war between nuclear powers and we’re going to find that the threat of nukes is going to mostly come off the table.
There won’t be a line that can get crossed that’ll result in their use other than the other side using nukes themselves, so no one will fire them off.
I don’t think this will be a positive development. Everyone’s concern about a potential nuclear escalation limits how much conventional fighting goes on in the world, and direct conflict between the great powers would only lead to massive loss of life. But I don’t think any of them will ever end up using their nukes regardless of circumstance, and eventually they’ll all realize that and it’ll stop working as a deterrent.
Chetan Murthy
@Eolirin:
A small country like Taiwan, with no strategic depth? If the PRC manages to land a sizable force on the island, that’s it – – taiwan is sunk. So yes, at that point they launch their nukes to take out Beijing. That’s the doctrine and that’s what prevents the PRC from invading in the first place.
lee
Two somewhat interesting tidbits about the cluster bombs that I read last night:
1) Cluster munitions are already being used in Ukraine by both sides but the dud rate for US cluster bombs is significantly lower than what is currently being used. Which helps post-war Ukraine.
2) Supposedly the US bomblets are ridiculously easy to convert into drone use.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: I agree w/ you that we should not foreclose possibilities of Track II dialogue w/ Russia for hypothetical discussions of potential parameters for a potential negotiated settlement. I agree w/ the others that this should not happen w/o Ukraine in the room.
YY_Sima Qian
@Anoniminous: Ukraine should be able to decide what kind of weapons they can use in defense of itself. If that means cluster munitions, then so be it, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are well aware of the long terms draw backs of such weapons on its own territory.
The US & NATO can impose a restriction that Ukraine should not use cluster munitions in sovereign Russian territory.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: That would conform to the general restrictions NATO countries (with the exception of Turkiye) impose on weapon systems they supply Ukraine.
Speaking of Turkiye, President Zelenskyy is visiting Turkiye today. A joint press conference with him and Turkish President Erdogan is scheduled for 1800 GMT.
Geminid
@Chetan Murthy: When you say “get nukes” you make it sound much easier than it would be. It would take years for Taiwan to develop a nuclear weapon, using facilities difficult to hide and vulnerable to an onslaught of conventionally armed missiles.
A nuclear weapons program would also bring economic sanctions from other countries that Taiwan cannot afford. Iran has been able to work around sanctions for its nuclear program, but they have resources and geographical advantages that Taiwan does not.
And even Iran has held back from enriching its uranium to bomb-grade, because of the threat of further sanctions from the EU as well as the prospect of kinetic military action by Israel.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Yes, a TWese nuclear program would be seen as highly destabilizing & irresponsible by the region & most of the world, given long standing PRC red line here. There will be a lot less sympathy or material support to TW in face of PRC military action aimed to thwart such a program.
It will probably never get to that point, since the US & the PRC will likely find out early & both will pressure TW to desist.
Geminid
@Geminid: President Zelenskyy is visiting Slovakia first today, then will continue on the Isranbul for afternoon meetings.
Gin & Tonic
@YY_Sima Qian: It is instructive to see how many purported “anti-imperialists” seem to be perfectly OK with the fate of this (existential for Ukraine) war being debated in secret by two imperial powers.
If this is Haass & Co working on their own, then it is odious. If they are doing it with the “blessing” of Blinken and/or Biden, then that is diplomatic malpractice of the highest order and will accomplish nothing but poisoning UA/US relations.
Gin & Tonic
Ad in today’s print WaPo:
Eolirin
@Chetan Murthy: Everyone doesn’t die just because Taiwan is “sunk”; they’d become part of China and they’d have the possibility of resistance. Everyone does die if Taiwan fires nukes. It only works as a deterrent if China isn’t willing to call the bluff; it isn’t actually a move they can take if China were to land on their shores or even start firing missiles at their ports to starve them out unless they’re ready to all die rather than just be conquered. So far everyone’s been playing by those rules, but eventually someone is going to break them, and the consequence is unlikely to be nuclear retaliation to conventional attacks, so if that happens once the deterrent value of nukes goes away, mostly.
They’d only be useful that way for minor powers with unstable leadership/strong authoritarian rule (like North Korea), because the threat of action is more credible and more limited than global annihilation, with fewer checks on use. You have to come across as suicidally insane for the threat to hold weight.
I get why no one is rushing out to test this theory, and they’re sane not to, but this is, in my opinion, the most likely way this goes. And Russia may end up being the test case of it. The threat of nuclear retaliation is mostly an illusion, one that all the major powers are willing to abide by out of fear and because it reduces direct conflict, which is in the best interests of all of the nuclear powers even if the proxy wars that result aren’t in the best interests of a lot of other countries, but I don’t think it’s one that will stand up to the reality of conflict actually breaking out. Hopefully we never need to find out. Conventional war between major powers would be devastating as it is.
strange visitor (from another planet)
kinda think it would be a lot easier for taiwan to go nuclear than iran. also, i would imagine instead of using atomics on beijing, taiwan would nuke the invasion force in transit or the ports where that force was mustering.
Geminid
@strange visitor (from another planet): Iran has a well educated population of over 80 million people, with plenty of trained engineers, scientists and a decent industrial base. Despite sanctions they sell a lot of oil to finance their weapons programs. Plus, they have a well-established program for sanctions evasion and plenty of avenues for smuggling.
I’m not saying they are in a superior position than Taiwan (although they might be), just that they are likely on a par for capabilities in this area. Their theocratic dictatorship is an advantage in this respect.