Why will the Baltics be different? Do you think that the dead hand of the past (in the form of the NATO treaty) will compel Obama to act to protect nations that most Americans have never heard of? If yes keep this in mind
By 1996, Ukraine voluntarily gave up all of its nuclear arms and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In exchange for making the world a safer place, it received security assurances from Britain, the United States and Russia in the form of the Budapest Memorandum, signed by Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, and John Major, with pledges to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and the “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”
Do Baltic members spend lots of time and money building their political support among American politicians like Israel and Taiwan do? If not why will these politicians care if Russia retakes the Baltics?
If NATO doesn’t react to the Russian invasion, it will be clearly and very publicly dead. And that would radically change the power equation in Europe and may e.g. lead to Western Europe rearming itself.
I am not saying that if Putin, say, starts grabbing chunks of Estonia, NATO will necessarily intervene. It might decide to die instead. But the odds are very different from the Ukraine case.
And, of course, NATO’s original purpose and whole reason for existence is precisely to contain the Russian/Soviet expansion to the west.
And, of course, NATO’s original purpose and whole reason for existence is precisely to contain the Russian/Soviet expansion to the west.
I don’t think the reasons for forming NATO in 1949 are, or should be, relevant today. Upholding treaties is a legitimate concern, but what people cared about two generations ago when they formed them isn’t.
East Europeans wanted into NATO for protection both from Communism and from Russian domination simpliciter. The latter consideration has not fundamentally changed.
the United States and Russia in the form of the Budapest Memorandum, signed by Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, and John Major, with pledges to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and the “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”
Memorandums are non-binding and do not, for example, pass Congress, and certainly are not the ‘supreme law of the land’ like treaties with mutual self-defense clauses. That memorandum bound the US to nothing and whatever it meant expired with the president who signed it. It is no more surprising that the USA has not invaded Russia over its violation of the memorandum than it is surprising that the USA did not invade Japan in 1905 or 1910 for colonizing Korea despite the letters of assurance to the Korean king and (some interpretations of) the previous treaty. With NATO, everyone understands that an attack on a NATO country will involve American reprisals; in contrast, I’ve never even heard of this memorandum until the past year where suddenly everyone is invoking it as an example of how hollow American treaties are.
Memorandums have less prominence than treaties so the public relations cost to ignoring them is indeed smaller.
With NATO, everyone understands that an attack on a NATO country will involve American reprisals
Only if President Obama wanted to initiate reprisals, and does everyone know that he would? Yes, he would certainly do something symbolic, but would he take military action against Russia if Russia, say, decided to take back Estonia? I would give it less than a 50% chance. If Ukraine were a NATO member and Russia still did what she did, do you think that the U.S. would have taken military action against Russia?
Memorandums have less prominence than treaties so the public relations cost to ignoring them is indeed smaller.
When something doesn’t oblige one to do something, and everyone understands that well in advance, then yes, the PR hit from not doing that something is indeed small… You gain a reputation as a promise-breaker by breaking promises.
Yes, he would certainly do something symbolic, but would he take military action against Russia if Russia, say, decided to take back Estonia?
He has to, or else the US empire collapses worldwide: the US holds very few territories outright, it depends on host countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea, who generally have defense clauses just like NATO and allow & subsidize the US bases in part to benefit from mutual defense clauses. If a NATO country is invaded without a real defense, then America’s credibility goes up in smoke. The day after the invasion, just in East Asia: SK restarts its nuke program, NK begins extorting more from SK under the threat of invasion, Japan begins a covert nuke program and begins the process of expelling the US from Okinawa (a long-running sore in their domestic politics justifiable only as part of the US nuclear umbrella, and a solution which costs the US much of its capabilities against China), and so on and so forth.
If Ukraine were a NATO member and Russia still did what she did, do you think that the U.S. would have taken military action against Russia?
Oh yes. And that’s in part why Ukraine was never allowed to join NATO: too close to Russia.
He has to, or else the US empire collapses worldwide:
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse. We don’t know Obama’s opinion on the topic because he would be smart enough to hide any such anti-patriotic views.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.
You are right that Russia taking Estonia would cause lots of countries to acquire nuclear weapons. No doubt high tech countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea have plans in place to very quickly get them.
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse. We don’t know Obama’s opinion on the topic because he would be smart enough to hide any such anti-patriotic views.
We may judge him by his actions: infuriating many left-wing intellectuals by now-6 years of straight-line continuation and expansion of Bush-era policies with regard to national security and empire-building.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.
‘But I doubt that letting Russia take the Ukraine would cause any collapse of US credibility abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.’
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse. We don’t know Obama’s opinion on the topic because he would be smart enough to hide any such anti-patriotic views.
I like your posts and comments a lot more when you refrain from the unfortunate rhetoric. It also would be nice to step away from the politics proper and get back to the topic of calibrating one’s certainties.
I like your posts and comments a lot more when you refrain from the unfortunate rhetoric.
Our estimate of Putin’s estimate of Obama’s view on the U.S. empire is critical to calibrating our beliefs. Lots of leftwing intellectuals really, really do think that the U.S. empire is an evil, imperialist force (do you doubt that they believe this?). To calibrate our beliefs we need to figure out with what probability Putin thinks Obama has this view.
I, and presumably shminux as well, though that you were claiming that there’s actually a good chance that Obama actually does want to see the American ‘empire’ collapse, not that Putin thought that he would.
To calibrate our beliefs we need to figure out with what probability Putin thinks Obama has this view.
Yes, assuming it’s one of the many issues Putin pays any attention to. What are the odds of Putin even considering the possibility that Obama might be a hidden left-wing anti-patriotic conspirator whose main agenda is to break the evil US empire? This is an easy question to answer. Presumably Putin is to the left of the “left-wing intellectuals” with his views on the evilness of the US empire, right? And actual US “anti-patriotic” left-wingers certainly don’t consider Obama one of them, judging by the amount of criticism they fling at him. So Putin almost surely sees Obama as the current symbol of US imperialism trying to prevent Russia from exercising its rights to protect Russian citizens in formerly Russian territories. He may well think that he is weak and try to take advantage of it, but he certainly does not think that Obama is secretly anti-american, no more than he thinks that Obama is secretly Kenyan. My guess is that you think this is an option worth considering because of your own political views, which are obviously anti-Obama. This leads to a selection bias where you exaggerate the likelihood of negligible-probability alternatives related to the views you disagree with.
Obama clearly wants to pull the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, which under Bush were big parts of the U.S. empire. Lots of Republicans think that Obama wants to greatly reduce U.S. military power, so why is it silly to think that Putin might think that Obama wants to do so?
but he certainly does not think that Obama is secretly anti-american,
I take it you don’t have much experience talking with leftwing college professors. It’s far from implausible to think that deep down Obama believes that U.S. military power has, with the exception of WWII, been a force for evil.
Putin is former KGB and the KGB had a long history of getting leftwing intellectuals to spy for them because the intellectuals disliked the West. (I do not believe that Obama is or ever has been a spy.)
Obama clearly wants to pull the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, which under Bush were big parts of the U.S. empire.
Clearly. And for a good reason, given how Afghanistan has always been resistant to external aggression and Iraq was Bush and Cheney’s pet project, unrelated to 9/11.
Lots of Republicans think that Obama wants to greatly reduce U.S. military power
What do they think his motivation would be, other than possibly financial?
I take it you don’t have much experience talking with leftwing college professors.
Some. The ex-hippie Berkeley types are rather annoying. Krugman is annoying. But to me any ideologically-motivated argument is annoying, because of its anti-rationality.
It’s far from implausible to think that deep down Obama believes that U.S. military power has, with the exception of WWII, been a force for evil.
Eh, I don’t see the connection. The leftwingers rarely hide their views. Obama has never expressed anything close to what you are describing and hasn’t worked for any radical leftwing organizations (beyond a tenants’ rights organization during his college years). He certainly supported left-leaning causes, like healthcare and welfare reforms, in the past, but he still does so, pretty openly. I grant you that his expressed views and actions have shifted rightward, and his actual views might be closer to what he held 15 years ago, but still solidly within the spectrum of DNC views. The odds of him considering the US military power being (a force for evil), given that he never expressed views like that, are pretty slim. Not that I personally approve of his policies and actions, the man has been a disappointment in terms of his competence level. But inept does not mean malicious.
Obama clearly wants to pull the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, which under Bush were big parts of the U.S. empire.
If Iraq was ever part of the U.S. empire, we might have done what it took to govern it, and would be getting cheap oil from Iraq, which I thought was just a fantasy of the left. Maybe you’d like the U.S. to act as an old fashioned Empire, but nobody except maybe Dick Cheney wants to do that. It might work but I doubt it, but most important it has no chance of happening and if part of your critique of Obama is that he’s not an old fashioned imperialist, I think Teddy Roosevelt might have been the last American one.
Putin is former KGB and the KGB had a long history of getting leftwing intellectuals to spy for them because the intellectuals disliked the West.
Today’s “left wing” intellectuals are blatherers. Postmodernism is anti-Enlightenment and views Marxism as an unfortunate result of the Enlightenment the same as capitalism. Noam Chomsky calls himself an anarchist. They tend to be anti-everything when it comes to actually doing something. And Obama is certainly nothing like that crowd. There is no international Communist movement, and there’s been virtually none since Brezhnev, though the USSR ran around trying to buy a lot of countries. If you want a clear picture of the era of “Red Intellectuals”, read Witness by Whittaker Chambers, and then I suggest Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America by Ted Morgan (despite the subtitle, McCarthyism is less than half of what the book covers). Chambers was the star witness for Nixon’s “pumpkin papers” trial. Both cover a lot of just how deep the international Communist movement got into America, and Chambers writes beautifully and helps you to see why that was. He also speaks for the many who became deeply disillusioned by the Hitler-Stalin pact. I used to think that was odd because in my view it was a very natural reaction to Chamberlain’s Munich, but the Communists really did put up a very good show of defining and opposing the Fascists (I say “a good show” for a reason but it’s too complicated to say more), and for as long as that was true, a lot of people put a halo on them for that, then many of them because naively heartbroken.
Our estimate of Putin’s estimate of Obama’s view on the U.S. empire is critical to calibrating our beliefs.
That is true, and how much of Putin’s estimate of Obama is due to relentless right-wing propaganda saying he’s weak on everything?
I’m not convinced he’s failed to do anything useful that say GWB would have done (or any up and coming GOP leader). I think a big problem we have now is we’re in umpteen situations in which there’s hardly any clear cut winning move.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power
In Eastern Europe, the pro-Russian people would be like: “See? The West is toothless; Russia will regain her former sphere of influence soon (which includes us).” And people have an instinct to side with the winner, so the people who don’t have strong political opinions would be likely to join what seems like a winning side.
The map drawn at Yalta Conference was a Schelling point for decades. People still remember it.
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse.
I don’t think their views on the subject are terribly coherent. The calls to stop being the world’s policeman are intertwined with calls to intervene for “appropriate” humanitarian causes. Hard isolationism is a rarity nowadays, I think.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.
If Russia takes a NATO country and the US doesn’t intervene then US troops obviously don’t act as tripwires. This implies that the US is an unreliable ally, which would prompt the other NATO members to say a big “fuck you” to the US and take defense on their own hands, which would include turning Europe into the Fourth Reich, rebuilding the Japanese Empire, some countries preemptively siding with Russia, and so on.
Consider two reasons the U.S. has for protecting a country from Russia or China. (1) Because of some document signed a long time ago. (2) Because we would lose a lot if that country fell under the control of Russia or China.
(2) has always been a lot more important than (1). The dead hand of the past is a lot weaker than it seems in international relations.
Having the Germans and Japanese spend more money on their military would benefit the United States. If I were Putin I would consider the main downside of taking Estonia being that German would respond by militarizing.
Part of the EU constitution is about mutual self defense. The EU almost certainly would defend their own territory. Staying out of the conflict wouldn’t be only a betrayal of Estonia but a betrayal of every EU country.
If Ukraine were a NATO member and Russia still did what she did, do you think that the U.S. would have taken military action against Russia?
If Ukraine would be in NATO game then attacking the “rebels” in Ukraine would be fair game just as the US attacks ISIS via airstrikes in Iraq.
Even without the US the EU has more than double the defense budget of Russia. European willingness to defend one of the countries of the EU is by a magnitude higher than the willingness to defend Ukraine or Georgia.
There are open borders in the EU and that means people from the baltic states are free to travel around. As a result many EU citizens have interacted with people from the baltic states
Latvia has a per capita GDP (PPP) of 20,000 while Ukraine has one of 7,500. Latvia has a functioning democracy and is not ruled by a bunch of oligarchs. It’s from an European perspective worth protecting in a way that Ukraine simply isn’t. Or Moldova, Georgia, Belarus or Azerbaijan for that matter.
I would also expect that Latvia gives it’s minorities certain rights because it’s legally obliged to do so under EU law that Ukraine didn’t.
The contract that you linked to doesn’t specify that the US has a legal duty to protect the Ukraine.
I would also expect that Latvia gives it’s minorities certain rights because it’s legally obliged to do so under EU law that Ukraine didn’t.
This isn’t directly relevant to the discussion, but if Russia were ever to attack Latvia, their excuse would probably precisely be the treatment of ethnic Russians. It is, in fact, a recurring theme in Russian media.
The reason for this is that in order to be eligible for a full citizenship one is required to pass Latvian language competency and Latvian history exams. What is more, Latvia allows dual citizenship, but only if the other citizenship is of a country that belongs to the list that is specified by a law. Russia is not on the list.
Citizens of the former USSR who possess neither Latvian nor other citizenship who live in Latvia are eligible for a non-citizen passport. They are allowed to naturalize provided they pass the aforementioned exams. However, for various reasons many are unwilling (few are unable) to do so. For example, traveling to Russia is easier for a non-citizen than a citizen of Latvia. However, it is easier to work and travel in the Schengen Area if one is a non-citizen of Latvia than a citizen of Russia. Thus some people might find it disadvantageous to choose one citizenship (in their day-to-day lives traveling is more important than having the right to vote).
Peter Van Elsuwege, a scholar in European law at Ghent University, states that the Latvian law is grounded upon the established legal principle that persons who settle under the rule of an occupying power gain no automatic right to nationality. A number of historic precedents support this, according to Van Elsuwege, most notably the case of Alsace-Lorraine when the French on recovering the territory in 1918 did not grant citizenship to German settlers despite Germany having annexed the territory 47 years earlier in 1871.
However, as you can imagine, the fact that these non-citizens (mostly Russians) do not have voting rights is a target of outrage in Russian media. Furthermore, many ethnic Russians in Latvia watch a lot of it and this results in them having different opinions (about e.g. situation in Ukraine) than ethnic Latvians. However, it is not clear whether they would actually support Russia in the case of armed conflict.
Please note that I’m neither Latvian, nor an expert on Latvian law, therefore the story above may contain some inaccuracies. Still, LW readers might find it helpful for their probability estimates of potential wars and/or other events.
Thank you. I’d wondered about whether ethnic Russians were actually being mistreated, though this doesn’t answer the question of whether they were being mistreated in Ukraine.
The next question is whether they’ve being treated differently now that Russia is doing some invading.
Russian language seems to have high informal status, since, according to wikipedia
A 2012 study showed that:
on the radio, 3.4% of songs are in Ukrainian while 60% are in Russian
over 60% of newspapers, 83% of journals and 87% of books are in Russian
28% of TV programs are in Ukrainian, even on state-owned channels.
and business affairs are still mainly dealt with in Russian. Some people even claim that
“There is an established Russian-speaking environment in big cities and it exerts pressure on people,” she claims. “They think that they will not belong to it if they speak Ukrainian.”
and, according to the same article
Sociological surveys show a huge gap between the number of those who speak Ukrainian at home and those who also use it at work and in public. For Kyiv, this is about 50% and 20% accordingly.
At the same time, according to the Constitution, the state language of Ukraine is the Ukrainian language.
However, in 2012 the new law gave Russian status of regional language and approved its use in courts and other government institutions in areas where the percentage of Russians exceeds 10%.
As you can see, we can observe the gap between formal status and informal status of Russian in Ukraine. Thus for any language related event there are at least two different interpretations. For example, on February 2014, the new Ukrainian government tried to repeal 2012 language law. While many Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians saw it as an attempt to finally curtail Russification (in the informal sphere), many Russian speakers “saw the move as more evidence that the antigovernment protests in Kiev that toppled Yanukovich’s government were intent on pressing for a nationalistic agenda.”
Obviously, back in 2012 it was Ukrainian speakers who saw the new law as unfairly “narrowing the sphere of use of Ukrainian language” and on February 2014 they thought that it was their chance to reverse it. However, they were far too much in haste, and, even though the acting president vetoed the bill, a backlash among Russian speakers probably made Russia’s military takeover of Crimea much easier.
Although the language isn’t everything, but, according to an opinion poll
among respondents who support Ukraine’s entry into the Customs Union, the vast majority (72%) speak in favor of granting Russian the status of the state language. However, among respondents who support the signing of the free trade zone agreement with the EU, the vast majority (72%) are against bilingualism
Another point made by the same poll shows that it is, at least partially, a matter of personal identity beyond language:
Despite the fact that Ukrainian is mostly spoken by elderly people, young people oppose bilingualism more.
(indeed, it seems that for many Ukrainians this whole EU vs.Customs Union dilemma is more about identity than economics).
But I digress. In short, it seems to me that if Russians were actually being mistreated, their language would not have such a high informal status in Ukraine, which is disproportionate to the share of actual ethnic Russians in Ukrainian population. However, due to the differences between formal, informal public and informal private spheres certain actions (e.g. by the government) can be perceived as unfair by a certain segment of population.
(Disclaimer: I am not a Ukrainian; the story above may contain some inaccuracies. In addition, an actual Ukrainian would be able to tell what exactly are prevailing sentiments now)
That’s interesting. I would have estimated more pressure from the EU on that issue. From a quick googling it seemed that nobody sued in the European Court of Human Rights about the issue.
I understand it’s something the EU does criticise them for. I suspect we don’t see that kind of lawsuit because the people who care most about the issue also don’t want to legitimise EU power in Latvia.
The Baltics would also be different because of their access to Northern Europe and the strategic value militarily. These countries are also democratic and EU/Nato members which also factor in of course.
Why will the Baltics be different? Do you think that the dead hand of the past (in the form of the NATO treaty) will compel Obama to act to protect nations that most Americans have never heard of? If yes keep this in mind
Do Baltic members spend lots of time and money building their political support among American politicians like Israel and Taiwan do? If not why will these politicians care if Russia retakes the Baltics?
Because they are members of NATO.
If NATO doesn’t react to the Russian invasion, it will be clearly and very publicly dead. And that would radically change the power equation in Europe and may e.g. lead to Western Europe rearming itself.
I am not saying that if Putin, say, starts grabbing chunks of Estonia, NATO will necessarily intervene. It might decide to die instead. But the odds are very different from the Ukraine case.
And, of course, NATO’s original purpose and whole reason for existence is precisely to contain the Russian/Soviet expansion to the west.
I don’t think the reasons for forming NATO in 1949 are, or should be, relevant today. Upholding treaties is a legitimate concern, but what people cared about two generations ago when they formed them isn’t.
East Europeans wanted into NATO for protection both from Communism and from Russian domination simpliciter. The latter consideration has not fundamentally changed.
Memorandums are non-binding and do not, for example, pass Congress, and certainly are not the ‘supreme law of the land’ like treaties with mutual self-defense clauses. That memorandum bound the US to nothing and whatever it meant expired with the president who signed it. It is no more surprising that the USA has not invaded Russia over its violation of the memorandum than it is surprising that the USA did not invade Japan in 1905 or 1910 for colonizing Korea despite the letters of assurance to the Korean king and (some interpretations of) the previous treaty. With NATO, everyone understands that an attack on a NATO country will involve American reprisals; in contrast, I’ve never even heard of this memorandum until the past year where suddenly everyone is invoking it as an example of how hollow American treaties are.
Memorandums have less prominence than treaties so the public relations cost to ignoring them is indeed smaller.
Only if President Obama wanted to initiate reprisals, and does everyone know that he would? Yes, he would certainly do something symbolic, but would he take military action against Russia if Russia, say, decided to take back Estonia? I would give it less than a 50% chance. If Ukraine were a NATO member and Russia still did what she did, do you think that the U.S. would have taken military action against Russia?
When something doesn’t oblige one to do something, and everyone understands that well in advance, then yes, the PR hit from not doing that something is indeed small… You gain a reputation as a promise-breaker by breaking promises.
He has to, or else the US empire collapses worldwide: the US holds very few territories outright, it depends on host countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea, who generally have defense clauses just like NATO and allow & subsidize the US bases in part to benefit from mutual defense clauses. If a NATO country is invaded without a real defense, then America’s credibility goes up in smoke. The day after the invasion, just in East Asia: SK restarts its nuke program, NK begins extorting more from SK under the threat of invasion, Japan begins a covert nuke program and begins the process of expelling the US from Okinawa (a long-running sore in their domestic politics justifiable only as part of the US nuclear umbrella, and a solution which costs the US much of its capabilities against China), and so on and so forth.
Oh yes. And that’s in part why Ukraine was never allowed to join NATO: too close to Russia.
Lots of leftwing intellectuals would love to see the U.S. empire collapse. We don’t know Obama’s opinion on the topic because he would be smart enough to hide any such anti-patriotic views.
But I doubt that letting Russia take a small NATO country would cause the collapse of U.S. power abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.
You are right that Russia taking Estonia would cause lots of countries to acquire nuclear weapons. No doubt high tech countries like Japan, Germany, and South Korea have plans in place to very quickly get them.
We may judge him by his actions: infuriating many left-wing intellectuals by now-6 years of straight-line continuation and expansion of Bush-era policies with regard to national security and empire-building.
‘But I doubt that letting Russia take the Ukraine would cause any collapse of US credibility abroad. Paradoxically, it might increase our power as nations put more effort into pleasing us and begging us to station troops on their soil to act as tripwires.’
I think the last paragraph is true, although I recognize that you probably do not.
I like your posts and comments a lot more when you refrain from the unfortunate rhetoric. It also would be nice to step away from the politics proper and get back to the topic of calibrating one’s certainties.
Our estimate of Putin’s estimate of Obama’s view on the U.S. empire is critical to calibrating our beliefs. Lots of leftwing intellectuals really, really do think that the U.S. empire is an evil, imperialist force (do you doubt that they believe this?). To calibrate our beliefs we need to figure out with what probability Putin thinks Obama has this view.
I, and presumably shminux as well, though that you were claiming that there’s actually a good chance that Obama actually does want to see the American ‘empire’ collapse, not that Putin thought that he would.
Yes, assuming it’s one of the many issues Putin pays any attention to. What are the odds of Putin even considering the possibility that Obama might be a hidden left-wing anti-patriotic conspirator whose main agenda is to break the evil US empire? This is an easy question to answer. Presumably Putin is to the left of the “left-wing intellectuals” with his views on the evilness of the US empire, right? And actual US “anti-patriotic” left-wingers certainly don’t consider Obama one of them, judging by the amount of criticism they fling at him. So Putin almost surely sees Obama as the current symbol of US imperialism trying to prevent Russia from exercising its rights to protect Russian citizens in formerly Russian territories. He may well think that he is weak and try to take advantage of it, but he certainly does not think that Obama is secretly anti-american, no more than he thinks that Obama is secretly Kenyan. My guess is that you think this is an option worth considering because of your own political views, which are obviously anti-Obama. This leads to a selection bias where you exaggerate the likelihood of negligible-probability alternatives related to the views you disagree with.
Obama clearly wants to pull the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, which under Bush were big parts of the U.S. empire. Lots of Republicans think that Obama wants to greatly reduce U.S. military power, so why is it silly to think that Putin might think that Obama wants to do so?
I take it you don’t have much experience talking with leftwing college professors. It’s far from implausible to think that deep down Obama believes that U.S. military power has, with the exception of WWII, been a force for evil.
Putin is former KGB and the KGB had a long history of getting leftwing intellectuals to spy for them because the intellectuals disliked the West. (I do not believe that Obama is or ever has been a spy.)
Clearly. And for a good reason, given how Afghanistan has always been resistant to external aggression and Iraq was Bush and Cheney’s pet project, unrelated to 9/11.
What do they think his motivation would be, other than possibly financial?
Some. The ex-hippie Berkeley types are rather annoying. Krugman is annoying. But to me any ideologically-motivated argument is annoying, because of its anti-rationality.
Eh, I don’t see the connection. The leftwingers rarely hide their views. Obama has never expressed anything close to what you are describing and hasn’t worked for any radical leftwing organizations (beyond a tenants’ rights organization during his college years). He certainly supported left-leaning causes, like healthcare and welfare reforms, in the past, but he still does so, pretty openly. I grant you that his expressed views and actions have shifted rightward, and his actual views might be closer to what he held 15 years ago, but still solidly within the spectrum of DNC views. The odds of him considering the US military power being (a force for evil), given that he never expressed views like that, are pretty slim. Not that I personally approve of his policies and actions, the man has been a disappointment in terms of his competence level. But inept does not mean malicious.
If Iraq was ever part of the U.S. empire, we might have done what it took to govern it, and would be getting cheap oil from Iraq, which I thought was just a fantasy of the left. Maybe you’d like the U.S. to act as an old fashioned Empire, but nobody except maybe Dick Cheney wants to do that. It might work but I doubt it, but most important it has no chance of happening and if part of your critique of Obama is that he’s not an old fashioned imperialist, I think Teddy Roosevelt might have been the last American one.
Today’s “left wing” intellectuals are blatherers. Postmodernism is anti-Enlightenment and views Marxism as an unfortunate result of the Enlightenment the same as capitalism. Noam Chomsky calls himself an anarchist. They tend to be anti-everything when it comes to actually doing something. And Obama is certainly nothing like that crowd. There is no international Communist movement, and there’s been virtually none since Brezhnev, though the USSR ran around trying to buy a lot of countries. If you want a clear picture of the era of “Red Intellectuals”, read Witness by Whittaker Chambers, and then I suggest Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America by Ted Morgan (despite the subtitle, McCarthyism is less than half of what the book covers). Chambers was the star witness for Nixon’s “pumpkin papers” trial. Both cover a lot of just how deep the international Communist movement got into America, and Chambers writes beautifully and helps you to see why that was. He also speaks for the many who became deeply disillusioned by the Hitler-Stalin pact. I used to think that was odd because in my view it was a very natural reaction to Chamberlain’s Munich, but the Communists really did put up a very good show of defining and opposing the Fascists (I say “a good show” for a reason but it’s too complicated to say more), and for as long as that was true, a lot of people put a halo on them for that, then many of them because naively heartbroken.
That is true, and how much of Putin’s estimate of Obama is due to relentless right-wing propaganda saying he’s weak on everything?
I’m not convinced he’s failed to do anything useful that say GWB would have done (or any up and coming GOP leader). I think a big problem we have now is we’re in umpteen situations in which there’s hardly any clear cut winning move.
In Eastern Europe, the pro-Russian people would be like: “See? The West is toothless; Russia will regain her former sphere of influence soon (which includes us).” And people have an instinct to side with the winner, so the people who don’t have strong political opinions would be likely to join what seems like a winning side.
The map drawn at Yalta Conference was a Schelling point for decades. People still remember it.
I don’t think their views on the subject are terribly coherent. The calls to stop being the world’s policeman are intertwined with calls to intervene for “appropriate” humanitarian causes. Hard isolationism is a rarity nowadays, I think.
If Russia takes a NATO country and the US doesn’t intervene then US troops obviously don’t act as tripwires. This implies that the US is an unreliable ally, which would prompt the other NATO members to say a big “fuck you” to the US and take defense on their own hands, which would include turning Europe into the Fourth Reich, rebuilding the Japanese Empire, some countries preemptively siding with Russia, and so on.
Consider two reasons the U.S. has for protecting a country from Russia or China. (1) Because of some document signed a long time ago. (2) Because we would lose a lot if that country fell under the control of Russia or China.
(2) has always been a lot more important than (1). The dead hand of the past is a lot weaker than it seems in international relations.
Having the Germans and Japanese spend more money on their military would benefit the United States. If I were Putin I would consider the main downside of taking Estonia being that German would respond by militarizing.
Part of the EU constitution is about mutual self defense. The EU almost certainly would defend their own territory. Staying out of the conflict wouldn’t be only a betrayal of Estonia but a betrayal of every EU country.
If Ukraine would be in NATO game then attacking the “rebels” in Ukraine would be fair game just as the US attacks ISIS via airstrikes in Iraq.
Even without the US the EU has more than double the defense budget of Russia. European willingness to defend one of the countries of the EU is by a magnitude higher than the willingness to defend Ukraine or Georgia.
There are open borders in the EU and that means people from the baltic states are free to travel around. As a result many EU citizens have interacted with people from the baltic states
Latvia has a per capita GDP (PPP) of 20,000 while Ukraine has one of 7,500. Latvia has a functioning democracy and is not ruled by a bunch of oligarchs. It’s from an European perspective worth protecting in a way that Ukraine simply isn’t. Or Moldova, Georgia, Belarus or Azerbaijan for that matter.
I would also expect that Latvia gives it’s minorities certain rights because it’s legally obliged to do so under EU law that Ukraine didn’t.
The contract that you linked to doesn’t specify that the US has a legal duty to protect the Ukraine.
This isn’t directly relevant to the discussion, but if Russia were ever to attack Latvia, their excuse would probably precisely be the treatment of ethnic Russians. It is, in fact, a recurring theme in Russian media.
The reason for this is that in order to be eligible for a full citizenship one is required to pass Latvian language competency and Latvian history exams. What is more, Latvia allows dual citizenship, but only if the other citizenship is of a country that belongs to the list that is specified by a law. Russia is not on the list.
Citizens of the former USSR who possess neither Latvian nor other citizenship who live in Latvia are eligible for a non-citizen passport. They are allowed to naturalize provided they pass the aforementioned exams. However, for various reasons many are unwilling (few are unable) to do so. For example, traveling to Russia is easier for a non-citizen than a citizen of Latvia. However, it is easier to work and travel in the Schengen Area if one is a non-citizen of Latvia than a citizen of Russia. Thus some people might find it disadvantageous to choose one citizenship (in their day-to-day lives traveling is more important than having the right to vote).
How such an unusual situation came into existence? If I understand correctly, in early 1990s Latvia desperately tried to avoid breakaway regions, because in 1989 only 49% of the non-Latvian population supported the idea of the independence of Latvia (the number of Latvians supporting the idea made up 93%). It should be noted that, according to wikipedia, such situation is not without a precedent:
However, as you can imagine, the fact that these non-citizens (mostly Russians) do not have voting rights is a target of outrage in Russian media. Furthermore, many ethnic Russians in Latvia watch a lot of it and this results in them having different opinions (about e.g. situation in Ukraine) than ethnic Latvians. However, it is not clear whether they would actually support Russia in the case of armed conflict.
Please note that I’m neither Latvian, nor an expert on Latvian law, therefore the story above may contain some inaccuracies. Still, LW readers might find it helpful for their probability estimates of potential wars and/or other events.
Thank you. I’d wondered about whether ethnic Russians were actually being mistreated, though this doesn’t answer the question of whether they were being mistreated in Ukraine.
The next question is whether they’ve being treated differently now that Russia is doing some invading.
It seems unlikely. In a poll held by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in May 2009 in Ukraine, 96% of respondents were positive about Russians as an ethnic group, 93% respected the Russian Federation and 76% respected the Russian establishment..
In the 2001 Ukrainian census 17.3% of the population of Ukraine identied as ethnic Russians (58.3% in Crimea) while 77.8% as Ukrainians. However, in 2012, only 50% of respondents consider Ukrainian their native language, 29% - Russian. Moreover, 20% consider both Ukrainian and Russian their mother tongue and 45% usually speak Ukrainian at home, 39% - Russian and 15% - both Ukrainian and Russian (equally).
Russian language seems to have high informal status, since, according to wikipedia
and business affairs are still mainly dealt with in Russian. Some people even claim that
and, according to the same article
At the same time, according to the Constitution, the state language of Ukraine is the Ukrainian language. However, in 2012 the new law gave Russian status of regional language and approved its use in courts and other government institutions in areas where the percentage of Russians exceeds 10%.
As you can see, we can observe the gap between formal status and informal status of Russian in Ukraine. Thus for any language related event there are at least two different interpretations. For example, on February 2014, the new Ukrainian government tried to repeal 2012 language law. While many Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians saw it as an attempt to finally curtail Russification (in the informal sphere), many Russian speakers “saw the move as more evidence that the antigovernment protests in Kiev that toppled Yanukovich’s government were intent on pressing for a nationalistic agenda.” Obviously, back in 2012 it was Ukrainian speakers who saw the new law as unfairly “narrowing the sphere of use of Ukrainian language” and on February 2014 they thought that it was their chance to reverse it. However, they were far too much in haste, and, even though the acting president vetoed the bill, a backlash among Russian speakers probably made Russia’s military takeover of Crimea much easier.
Although the language isn’t everything, but, according to an opinion poll
Another point made by the same poll shows that it is, at least partially, a matter of personal identity beyond language:
(indeed, it seems that for many Ukrainians this whole EU vs.Customs Union dilemma is more about identity than economics).
But I digress. In short, it seems to me that if Russians were actually being mistreated, their language would not have such a high informal status in Ukraine, which is disproportionate to the share of actual ethnic Russians in Ukrainian population. However, due to the differences between formal, informal public and informal private spheres certain actions (e.g. by the government) can be perceived as unfair by a certain segment of population.
(Disclaimer: I am not a Ukrainian; the story above may contain some inaccuracies. In addition, an actual Ukrainian would be able to tell what exactly are prevailing sentiments now)
That’s interesting. I would have estimated more pressure from the EU on that issue. From a quick googling it seemed that nobody sued in the European Court of Human Rights about the issue.
I understand it’s something the EU does criticise them for. I suspect we don’t see that kind of lawsuit because the people who care most about the issue also don’t want to legitimise EU power in Latvia.
The Baltics would also be different because of their access to Northern Europe and the strategic value militarily. These countries are also democratic and EU/Nato members which also factor in of course.