From a Greek cartoonist pic.twitter.com/Hyuzj7CUxW
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) March 10, 2022
I’m going to start a bit differently, order wise, tonight. Specifically I’m going to attempt to answer Redshift’s question from late last night/early this morning in the comments. Though this is going to blend into the update proper fairly quickly.
I have people I love in Ukraine (safe so far, thank god) and I would love to have the Western alliance come riding to the rescue and end this war. But I feel like what you’re advocating for in this post is a big shift from many of your previous ones, and I don’t quite grasp the rationale for the shift. I get that the things the Russian army is doing are horrible, but they’re largely things you were predicting, so I’d like to know how the balance of risks has changed.
Not pushing back on him as strongly as possibly only encourages him.
No disagreement, but that doesn’t prove that pushing back on him more strongly will discourage him. And “as strongly as possible” is pretty open-ended. I don’t want Ukraine reduced to rubble, but I don’t want it to get nuked either, and if Putin’s mindset is really “either I get it or no one does,” then what are the chances of that happening if we decide to get more directly involved? (Leaving aside for the moment the question of wider nuclear threats, which tend to be used to end the argument.)
I’m honestly hoping you can convince me. I would be happy to start making calls to my representatives if I feel confident of the odds of it leading to a better outcome.
I think the source of Redshift’s question and many of your comments about what I wrote last night is that I’ve failed to clearly articulate my position. So let me try to do that, which should also mark some beliefs to market. Or make things clear as mud…
Putin has been running this same basic playbook since at least 2008. I would argue he’s actually been running it since 2004 in the immediate aftermath of the Beslan Massacre. The playbook is to either seize on a crisis or threat that originates outside of Russia, but that can be framed as targeting the Russian state, Russian society, and Russians themselves (either Russians in Russia, ethnic Russians, or native non-ethnic Russian speakers in other states), and use it to justify military operations in the name of protecting Russia, Russian culture and society, and Russians or create one to do those things. He’s done it in Chechnya, in eastern Georgia, and in Ukraine. In each of these conflicts the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions they’re rooted in, and any form of professional military ethics went right out the window very quickly in how the Russians prosecuted the war. When Putin has decided to aid a foreign ally like Assad or advance his interests in places like Africa, he sends small compliments of actual in uniform on the books Russian military personnel accompanying much larger amounts of Wagner mercenaries. And in these conflicts too the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions, and any form of professional military ethic are completely ignored. In between these conflicts, or when they are ongoing but not getting a lot of news coverage in the US, Britain, and the EU states, he tries to get the US and the EU to engage with him as if he’s just a normal leader of a normal country, while reminding everyone that Russia is the successor to the Soviet Union and should be treated as such. Very often we do engage. We have tried a variety of diplomatic resets. We’ve decided we can hold our noses when we need something, such as help with reconstituting the JCPOA, which the Russians may have blown up today. We try for detente over and over and over. Each and every time we fail. Each and every time Putin then gets more aggressive. We don’t really push back that hard, when we do we almost never maintain the pushback, and Putin learns that he can continue to do what he’s doing. Or, worse, that he can escalate.