The reason to take difficult & dangerous steps to stop Putin today is simple. It will get more difficult and more dangerous tomorrow
The Russian commanders think Putin is crazy but he keeps being right, keeps winning without resistance. So they follow. It’s 1938-39 again.
The most dangerous element is Putin & his followers’ sense of invincibility. The longer they go unopposed the harder will be to stop them.
Obama & EU kept looking for easy & safe ways to fight Putin. They refused to make tough decisions and the price always keeps going up.
Putin is probably trying to calculate what’s the most he can take consistent with keeping the probability of a major war with the United States below some level. If the U.S. is unwilling to fight, Putin will take all of the territory of the Soviet Empire + perhaps Finland, a country that used to belong to Russia.
Putin probably knows he might have a limited time to act because the U.S. might get a hawkish President (Hillary Clinton, any Republican but Rand Paul) or Germany might re-militarize.
Putin is probably trying to calculate what’s the most he can take consistent with keeping the probability of a major war with the United States below some level. If the U.S. is unwilling to fight, Putin will take all of the territory of the Soviet Empire + perhaps Finland, a country that used to belong to Russia.
Currently, he only seems interested in territories inhabited by ethnic Russians, who are happy to be (re-)annexed to the country they consider they homeland. I doubt he is much interested in taking, say, the Baltic republics or cis-Dniestr Moldova, as he would have to rule there with an iron fist on an uncooperative population.
Well, they are certainly Russophone. Whether they do indeed have a preference for being annexed to Russia, I can’t say for sure, but it seems plausible, at least given the evidence available on Western media:
The Crimean status referendum showed overwhelming support for joining Russia, but this referendum occurred under military occupation and there are credible allegations of fraud, thus it is not very strong evidence. Less controversially, the former president Viktor Yanukovych, who had a pro-Russian platform and whose removal sparked Russian intervention, had his electoral base in the Donetsk oblast, where he previously served as governor.
Love that broad brush you have.
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But whether the locals do or do not prefer to be annexed is besides the point, isn’t it. Unless you think it should be a new standard in international relations that 50%+1 preference for annexation is a valid casus belli. What a beautiful world that would be to live in.
From your link (sans references):
However, there are far more self-identified nations than there are existing states and there is no legal process to redraw state boundaries according to the will of these peoples.[43] According to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, the UN, ICJ and international law experts, there is no contradiction between the principles of self-determination and territorial integrity, with the latter taking precedence.
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But again, that’s not even my point. My point is a Kantian point: do you want to live in a world where self-determination of [group] in [country] is sufficient grounds for boots on the ground? This is not even a question about what the US or Russia had been or is doing, but about our preferences.
I’m saying we live in a world where a right to self-determination has been recognized for something like a century now, even if it does not come with an automatic invasion authorization from the UN Security Council. So far, I’m not sure if it’s been all that bad although as an American, I cannot sympathize with those who might want to exercise said right inasmuch as there is no other country to which people like me might want to form.
The right to self-determination seems to me to have been “recognized” as propaganda, but practically never practiced.
It was used post WW1, but only because there were two big multi-ethnic empires to be broken up. No-one proposed treating the victors similarly; their constituent nations which wanted independence had to fight for it, like Ireland did in 1920-1922.
Very few significant new nations have claimed statehood in the century since then on the basis of this principle without armed struggle. And when there’s a civil war or rebellion and one side wins independence by military and political means, I don’t give much credence to abstract principles.
Using Wikipedia’s list of sovereign states by date of independence for the last century, the only states in the first half of the list (from 1973 to the present) that were established peacefully along ethnic lines are Czech and Slovak republics in the post-USSR breakup of Czechoslovakia. Most other Soviet states became nations despite being multi-ethnic, or fought bloody civil wars as in Yugoslavia. So did almost all African and Asian colonies post decolonization.
I admit I didn’t have the patience to read all the linked articles on that list, and its older half (1914-1972), but at least its first half doesn’t contain a single example of a part of sovereign nation breaking away on the basis of self determination without a major war. The older half probably might have some examples, but I expect them to be very few.
Very few significant new nations have claimed statehood in the century since then on the basis of this principle without armed struggle.
A lot of former colonies are now self-governed and a lot of them became independent without armed struggle. That was what the principle of self-determination was about. The British lost their empire over the principle.
It wasn’t really about giving the Scottish or the Basques a right to hold a referendum to get independence.
On the other hand the principle of immutability of borders as written down in the Hague Conventions isn’t that well respect either. The borders of Ukraine changed frequently since the Hague Conventions was made and I don’t see a real reason why they should now be immutable when a majority of Crimeans doesn’t want to belong to Ukraine.
The Soviet states also did became nations in a way that did violate the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union without a war.
A lot of former colonies are now self-governed and a lot of them became independent without armed struggle. That was what the principle of self-determination was about. The British lost their empire over the principle.
Those colonies became independent states with borders decided by the accidents of previous colonial conquest, or drawn arbitrarily post-conquest without regard to local interests or ethnic, economic and cultural divisions (e.g. India and Pakistan).
Similarly, in the British-administrated post-WW1 mandate territories (which they divested during the same general political era when they lost their empire), they drew arbitrary borders and deliberately installed rulers who were foreign to the local population or represented minorities, because they knew these rulers would have to oppress the locals and so would depend on foreign support (e.g. Jordan, Iraq).
Local people were not consulted by a referendum or plebiscite, and in no case that I’m aware of did previously multi-ethnic or multi-cultural states peacefully divide into nation states. There is certainly a principle of decolonization and de-imperialization, but I’m not seeing any self-determination.
The borders of Ukraine changed frequently since the Hague Conventions was made
When the Hague Conventions were signed, Ukraine didn’t exist as a sovereign state and hadn’t done so since the 17th century. Its borders changed a lot after that, but always as a result of war and conquest, apart from Russia’s gift of Crimea in 1954. It was partitioned and partially annexed many times over the 20th century by its more powerful neighbors. This history did not follow self-determination at any point.
I don’t see a real reason why they should now be immutable when a majority of Crimeans doesn’t want to belong to Ukraine.
Even if you accept it as a valid moral principle, the devil is in the details. How large a majority do you require before supporting separatism against a minority’s wishes? How much gerrymandering in the geographical boundaries do you allow? What is the minimum size of a group that may secede (since no-one will recognize family or tribe-sized states in practice)? If people who secede take their privately-owned land with them to form their new state, what happens when the owners of the mine or oil field providing 10% of your GDP secede and then sell their resources back to you at a 500% markup? If the richest and best-educated 10% of your population all happen to live in the same few cities, and they secede to stop wealth redistribution to the other 90%, is that alright? If a group of people wants to secede and implement an fundamentalist state with no freedom for women, gays, or atheists, do you try to stop them as you would non-state actors in your country, or do you shrug and say “eh, we don’t declare war on Saudi Arabia, either”?
The Soviet states also did became nations in a way that did violate the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union without a war.
The USSR (and the Warsaw Pact) was a union of separate republics to begin with; it chose to dissolve itself and they resumed their sovereignity. More importantly, I don’t think anyone would argue that a state has no right to break itself up if a large majority of its citizens agree. It’s a different matter if only the citizens in a particular region want to break away, and the rest want them to stay.
Local people were not consulted by a referendum or plebiscite, and in no case that I’m aware of did previously multi-ethnic or multi-cultural states peacefully divide into nation states.
The notion of self-determination is not primarily about referendums and plebiscites. A government that’s backed by a home grown military coup doesn’t violate the principle.
What is the minimum size of a group that may secede (since no-one will recognize family or tribe-sized states in practice)?
Not every group of people is an ethnic group with the corresponding rights.
In this case you have a majority of Crimeas who speak Russian. You had the the government in Kiev who came to power as the president fled the city because armed Ukrainian nationals took power over the city. They continued to destroy buildings of communist party. Then they passed laws to remove the status of minority languages.
In that climate Crimeans have a valid interest to secede.
How much gerrymandering in the geographical boundaries do you allow?
That a question about who sets the boundaries. In the case of Crimea the natural boundaries work quite well. In the case of Scotland the boundaries are also obvious.
In the case of the Basque country or Padania I’m sure that you could find a way to set reasonable boundaries.
The notion of self-determination is not primarily about referendums and plebiscites. A government that’s backed by a home grown military coup doesn’t violate the principle.
Then I’m confused. If the government of a breakaway region isn’t backed by its population but relies on military force, is it self-determination? If nation A conquers half of nation B and sets up a state where a minority rules by force, is that self-determination? I thought the answer was clearly no in both cases, but if a government backed only by a military coup (i.e. force majeure) counts as “self-determination” then I’m totally confused as to what you mean by those words.
Not every group of people is an ethnic group with the corresponding rights.
In this case you have a majority of Crimeas who speak Russian. You had the the government in Kiev who came to power as the president fled the city because armed Ukrainian nationals took power over the city. They continued to destroy buildings of communist party. Then they passed laws to remove the status of minority languages.
In that climate Crimeans have a valid interest to secede.
(Your comment doesn’t seem to be a response to my question about minimum size)
Since their “referendum” passed under Russian commando control I have no idea what percentage of the population might be opposed to independence, let alone opposed to Russian rule. 58.5% of the population of Crimea are Russians, but 24% are Ukrainians and 10.2% are Crimean Tatars many of whom only recently returned from a decades-long exile originally imposed by Stalin. No matter how this plays out there is going to be a severely oppressed minority maybe as large as 34%. (Do you think Ukrainian is going to have minority language status in Russian-occupied Crimea?)
That a question about who sets the boundaries. In the case of Crimea the natural boundaries work quite well. In the case of Scotland the boundaries are also obvious.
For Crimea and Scotland this may be true. I was talking about generalizing the principle of self-determination.
If the government of a breakaway region isn’t backed by its population but relies on military force, is it self-determination?
The notion of self determination is that every people can govern themselves. It’s a group right. Not one of individual persons.
Party of self-determination means that a country can’t remove a king of another country even if 60% of the population dislikes the king and would prefer another kind of political system then monarchy.
(Do you think Ukrainian is going to have minority language status in Russian-occupied Crimea?)
That depends very much about how the conflict plays out. I do believe that if things go according to Putins plan, that’s the outcome. Neither the EU nor Russia wants to wage war against each other, so sooner or later they have to negotiate a settlement. Russia wants a settlement that gives Crimea international recognition and is probably willing to give the Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea minority rights in exchange.
Putin makes moves so that he will have a settlement which is overall beneficial for Russia. Winter is coming and the EU needs gas. As long as the West doesn’t want to settle Putin is going to take more territory in Ukraine. I don’t completely understand what game plan Obama follows and what his goal happens to be in the conflict.
(Your comment doesn’t seem to be a response to my question about minimum size)
A bunch of smaller groups of native Americans got some form of autonomy that allowed them to start casinos in the desert and do a bunch of things that are otherwise illegal in the US. I’m okay with handling it like that.
The notion of self determination is that every people can govern themselves. It’s a group right. Not one of individual persons.
I don’t see how to reconcile this with your statement that:
The notion of self-determination is not primarily about referendums and plebiscites. A government that’s backed by a home grown military coup doesn’t violate the principle.
If a government doesn’t have popular majority support, and so it would not win a referendum, but keeps power anyway through military force, how does this uphold a group right for self-governance? Wouldn’t the group right argue in favor of anyone who doesn’t support the government being self-governing and uncoerced by their military powre?
Party of self-determination means that a country can’t remove a king of another country even if 60% of the population dislikes the king and would prefer another kind of political system then monarchy.
On that view, Russia was wrong in supporting Crimean separatism.
A bunch of smaller groups of native Americans got some form of autonomy that allowed them to start casinos in the desert and do a bunch of things that are otherwise illegal in the US. I’m okay with handling it like that.
I don’t know anything about Native American rights and politics in the USA, but I expect that this autonomy is granted because the majority feels guilty over past conquest and oppression and is trying to make amends. A different group of comparable size (say, people of Chinese descend) would not be allowed to “do a bunch of things that are otherwise illegal” merely because they had a minority ethnic status and wanted self-determination.
If a government doesn’t have popular majority support, and so it would not win a referendum, but keeps power anyway through military force, how does this uphold a group right for self-governance?
The will of government is the will of the group. After Egypt had their revolution the new government still had to pay the debts of the old dictator because they old dictator was recognised to be able to make contracts in the name of the nation. How a dictator comes to power isn’t that important for determining whether he’s accepted as representing a group.
On that view, Russia was wrong in supporting Crimean separatism.
The democratically elected government of Crimea went through separating on their own. Russia claimed that it acted according to the new principle of “responsibility to protect (R2P)” which means that it’s okay to use military to prevent violence against a minority. Without the Russian soliders Kiev likely would have used violence to stop the Crimean government from holding a referendum.
Kiev also didn’t go through the impeachment process to remove the status of the old president so it’s not clear why a dejure president shouldn’t be allowed to ask an outside country for military assistance.
Russia also argues that without Western interference the protest movement wouldn’t have managed to make the president flee Kiev.
A different group of comparable size (say, people of Chinese descend) would not be allowed to “do a bunch of things that are otherwise illegal” merely because they had a minority ethnic status and wanted self-determination.
Chinese people in the US don’t have a claim to land in the same way that native Americans, Basque, Scottish or the various people in Crimea have.
In Germany our native Sorbic minority gets minority rights that we don’t give to Turkish immigrants. YOu can’t immigrate and then claim that you then should get the land into with you immigrated.
The will of government is the will of the group. After Egypt had their revolution the new government still had to pay the debts of the old dictator because they old dictator was recognised to be able to make contracts in the name of the nation. How a dictator comes to power isn’t that important for determining whether he’s accepted as representing a group.
You seem to be saying it’s OK for there to be military dictators as long as sub-groups of the country can secede. But no military dictator ever lets anyone secede. I am confused by your position.
The democratically elected government of Crimea went through separating on their own.
The government of Crimea was not democratically elected; it was put in place by the occupying Russian army who didn’t leave the locals much freedom to vote.
Russia claimed that it acted according to the new principle of “responsibility to protect (R2P)” which means that it’s okay to use military to prevent violence against a minority. Without the Russian soliders Kiev likely would have used violence to stop the Crimean government from holding a referendum.
Preventing a referendum hardly rises to the level of violence that should justify an invasion. Is holding a referendum a legally assured right?
Kiev also didn’t go through the impeachment process to remove the status of the old president so it’s not clear why a dejure president shouldn’t be allowed to ask an outside country for military assistance.
Russia also argues that without Western interference the protest movement wouldn’t have managed to make the president flee Kiev.
That seems true.
YOu can’t immigrate and then claim that you then should get the land into with you immigrated.
By that logic, nobody except Native Americans should have any land rights in the USA. In practice nobody follows that rule after a successful conquest. Making exceptions like those for Native Americans is done on a guilt / recompense basis, but it’s not a general legal principle because you could never get it to apply outside a very few minor cases.
Without the Russian soliders Kiev likely would have used violence to stop the Crimean government from holding a referendum.
Did they have any right to hold such a referendum? If they do, how come the Basques don’t?
Kiev also didn’t go through the impeachment process to remove the status of the old president so it’s not clear why a dejure president shouldn’t be allowed to ask an outside country for military assistance.
Whose law? Can the government of Taiwan authorize an invasion of China? Can Franz, Duke of Bavaria authorize an invasion of the UK? If I declare that under the lmmian constitution I am and always have been ruler of the US, does that grant me the right to invade?
I don’t think the concept of a de jure president is coherent—the only way a constitution got written in the first place is when the de facto rulers chose so.
Did they have any right to hold such a referendum? If they do, how come the Basques don’t?
As far as I’m concerned the Basque should have the right to hold a referendum.
I don’t think the concept of a de jure president is coherent—the only way a constitution got written in the first place is when the de facto rulers chose so.
In what sense do you consider the Kiev government the de facto rulers of the whole of Ukraine including Crimea? The government got control over Kiev through the thread of using violence. It might have also got control of Crimea through the threat of violence if Russia wouldn’t have protected the Crimean government from being violently coerced to follow the dictates of Kiev.
I don’t see that when I president loses control over the capital because of threats of violence but that president still controls other parts of the country he automatically stops being president.
Protecting a minority in a country from being violently coerced is what responsibility to protect is about.
Whose law?
The new government in Kiev didn’t change the part of the constitution that declares that you need an impeachment process to impeach a president and they didn’t go through the process of impeaching the president that’s outlined in the Ukrainian constitution.
Can the government of Taiwan authorize an invasion of China?
The Taiwanese government can certainly allow Chinese soldiers to do whatever they want within the borders of Taiwan.
Can Franz, Duke of Bavaria authorize an invasion of the UK?
The ruler of Bavaria had never authority over the UK and according to the German constitution he doesn’t have any authority over Bavaria either.
The president of the Ukraine on the other hand has authority over the territory of the Ukraine and at the time of the Crimea referendum he wasn’t impeached via the the legal process of impeachment that’s described in the Ukrainian constitution.
If you treating a coup on the capital on a country and the president leaves the capital I don’t think that means that the president “resigned” or loses his claim on being the president.
A more fitting comparison would be if the Dalai Lama can authorize military actions of foreign troops within the territory of Tibet. But the Dalai Lama doesn’t control any of the territory in Tibet while the Ukrainian president still had some backing in parts of the country, so the Dalai Lama has a weaker claim.
Let’s say you would have a few US military generals who threaten a coup if Obama doesn’t resign. Then Obama leaves Washington and a majority of the US congress makes a vote that John Boehner is the new president. Do you think that would mean that Obama loses his claim to being the president of the US?
The Taiwanese government can certainly allow Chinese soldiers to do whatever they want within the borders of Taiwan.
There are no de jure borders of Taiwan. Both the PRC (which currently governs mainland China) and the RoC (which currently governs Taiwan) (officially) claim that both mainland China and Taiwan are part of one nation and each (officially) claims to be the sole legitimate government of the whole nation. Also, the RoC used to control mainland China and was expelled from it in a way (IIUC) not completely unlike the former Ukrainian government or Obama in your hypothetical.
As far as my hypothetical goes, I think Taiwan has the right to ask the US to have US military stationed within Taiwanese borders and that the US can accept such a request from Taiwan.
I don’t think that would violate Chinese self-determination in a meaningful extend.
In what sense do you consider the Kiev government the de facto rulers of the whole of Ukraine including Crimea? The government got control over Kiev through the thread of using violence. It might have also got control of Crimea through the threat of violence if Russia wouldn’t have protected the Crimean government from being violently coerced to follow the dictates of Kiev.
The uprising in Kiev was of course violent, but it was a popular one; the President had lost whatever legitimacy he once had (and given the allegations of electoral fraud, I’m not sure how much that is). Government is by the consent of the governed.
If you consider it legitimate for the popular ruler of a subset of a country to invite a foreign invasion then surely that makes the notion of self-determination meaningless. Any country X wanting to invade country Y can simply find the small region of country Y that supports them and get them to ask for an invasion.
(FWIW I don’t think the new government in Kiev would have had the authority to invite a foreign intervention either, unless and until said government was widely recognized across the country. I would have argued for a UN peacekeeping force or similar international coalition, and referenda when people were secure enough to make it a free vote. But I think the Russian incursion makes it reasonable for Kiev to respond in kind)
Protecting a minority in a country from being violently coerced is what responsibility to protect is about.
But R2P is a novel theory with no basis in international law, right? Again, I suspect that in any case where country X wants to invade country Y they could find some reasonable-sounding principle that supports that invasion.
The ruler of Bavaria had never authority over the UK and according to the German constitution he doesn’t have any authority over Bavaria either.
My point was that the Republic of China government claims legal authority over all of China. And that, although he renounces any claim to it, Duke Franz is the rightful heir to the British throne.
Let’s say you would have a few US military generals who threaten a coup if Obama doesn’t resign. Then Obama leaves Washington and a majority of the US congress makes a vote that John Boehner is the new president. Do you think that would mean that Obama loses his claim to being the president of the US?
I think it means Obama isn’t ruler of the US until the two sides sort this mess out. And I think it means neither side has the right to invite foreign troops into the US. Again, isn’t that the whole point of self-determination?
The uprising in Kiev was of course violent, but it was a popular one; the President had lost whatever legitimacy he once had
A lot of the parties agreed to a compromise before they pressured the president to flee. I don’t think that if you don’t like a compromise that was negotiated and with was accepted by most stakeholder you have legitimacy in removing the president via the thread of a coup.
They also didn’t just pressured the president to flee but also destroyed infrastructure of the communist party via force. That’s no good basis for peaceful democracy.
The uprising wasn’t completely self-determined either. The extend isn’t quite clear but over the years the US invested 5 billion into producing pro-Western thought in Ukraine. Feeding a bunch of protesters to stay at a central place is expensive.
But R2P is a novel theory with no basis in international law, right?
People came up with R2P after pure self-determination didn’t work that well in Rwanda. Then the Kosovo conflict was fought on the basis of R2P. Kosovo sets a precedent.
I would have argued for a UN peacekeeping force or similar international coalition, and referenda when people were secure enough to make it a free vote.
That’s not possible because the UK and the US would have certainly vetoed such an UN resolution. France probably as well. If Putin could have a UN recognised voted that gives a Crimean referendum authority he would have gone for that choice. Putin wants that when the conflict is over the world recognises Crimea as part of Russia and a UN backed referendum would have been a good way to get there.
And that, although he renounces any claim to it, Duke Franz is the rightful heir to the British throne.
Renouncing a claim means that you lose a right.
I think it means Obama isn’t ruler of the US until the two sides sort this mess out.
Do you think that for similar reasons the US has no business helping the Iraqi government or the Kurdish to push back ISIS?
Not to forget that the US used military in the last decade for worse reasons.
The right to self-determination seems to me to have been “recognized” as propaganda, but practically never practiced.
If it has not been practiced, then it cannot be harmful as Ilya claims. So which is it: do international abstractions have no force and no consequences, in which case it doesn’t matter at all, Kantian or otherwise, which abstractions are mouthed? Or do they matter at least a little bit? In which case you don’t seem to have demonstrated any harm from the abstraction—fighting bloody civil wars is not a new phenomenon.
It hasn’t been practiced. If it starts being practiced, however, it may be as harmful as Ilya claims, so his argument deserves a response. But saying:
I’m saying we live in a world where a right to self-determination has been recognized for something like a century now, even if it does not come with an automatic invasion authorization from the UN Security Council. So far, I’m not sure if it’s been all that bad
Is not evidence because it hasn’t been really practiced so far.
Also:
do international abstractions have no force and no consequences
I’m not claiming anything about other abstractions, some of which definitely have force, just this one.
One also hears the claim that Ukraine has the right to determine whom it wants to ally with and the Russians have no right to prevent Kiev from joining the West. This is a dangerous way for Ukraine to think about its foreign policy choices. The sad truth is that might often makes right when great-power politics are at play. Abstract rights such as self-determination are largely meaningless when powerful states get into brawls with weaker states. Did Cuba have the right to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union during the Cold War? The United States certainly did not think so, and the Russians think the same way about Ukraine joining the West.
Unless you think it should be a new standard in international relations that 50%+1 preference for annexation is a valid casus belli. What a beautiful world that would be to live in.
We live in a world where might makes right. This said, I was mentioning the fact that the annexed populations are ethnic Russians presumibly willing to join Russia as evidence for the hypothesis that Putin is probably not going to try and reconquer former Soviet Union.
Yes, I know that Hitler also started by annexing Germanophones and then went for a full scale conquest of all Europe, but I think that Putin is unlikely to pull something like that: Should Russia attack a NATO/EU country, it would at the very least be financially crippled by loss of trade with Western European countries, the conflict would likely excalate to a full scale conventional war with the US, which would have a very real chance of further excalating to a nuclear war. Putin may not be exactly a nice guy, but, unlike Hitler, he doesn’t seem to be crazy. Also, even if he was crazy, Russia, while not being exactly a paragon of democracy, is not a dictatorship. The people who keep him in power would depose him if they saw him as a threat to their material interests and safety.
> evidence for the hypothesis that Putin is probably not going to
Well, that’s a load off my mind! For a second there I thought he was rebuilding an empire using completely transparent Soviet-era pretexts in small enough steps that the West is unable to overcome its paralysis.
Look, it’s very simple. Putin is a predator, and Europe would rather have warm homes in winter than stand on principle. That is their right of course, but let us call a spade a spade.
> is not a dictatorship
If Putin’s Russia is not a dictatorship, there are no dictatorships on Earth.
Well, that’s a load off my mind! For a second there I thought he was rebuilding an empire using completely transparent Soviet-era pretexts in small enough steps that the West is unable to overcome its paralysis.
Does he want to annex another Chechnya or two?
Look, it’s very simple. Putin is a predator, and Europe would rather have warm homes in winter than stand on principle.
What principle? Why should Europeans give up their warm homes and cheap electricity to defend the territorial integrity of countries which aren’t even part of the EU or the NATO?
The principle that we should not be moral cowards, and defend shelling points even if they do not involve us directly yet, encapsulated in the famous “First they came for...” poem.
Hitler has started by annexing Germanophones, but I think he is unlikely to then go for a full scale conquest of all Europe.
Should Germany attack a country formally allied with the major powers of France and Britain, like Czechoslovakia, it would at the very least be financially crippled by loss of trade with Western European countries, the conflict would likely excalate to a full scale conventional war with the US. Hitler may not be exactly a nice guy, but in 1938 he certainly doesn’t seem crazy.
Also, even if he was crazy, Germany, while not being exactly a paragon of democracy, is not a dictatorship. The people who keep him in power would depose him if they saw him as a threat to their material interests and safety.
Parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland were parts of what had been Germany and populated by German-speaking people. Britain (and later the US) declared war on Germany, not the other way around; my understanding is that Germany at that time did not want war with Britain and had not expected the declaration.
Given Hitler’s views on the slavic peoples, Nazi Germany was always going to go to war with the USSR and Yugoslavia sooner or later, but I don’t find it implausible that Western Europe (and the US) could have stayed out of that war, had that been how we wanted to play it.
Technically Germany declared war on the US, not the other way around.
As for war with Britain (and France), they had formally committed to it in the event that Germany invaded Poland. In retrospect it was odd that Hitler seriously thought they might not attack him; it looks more like hope than rational expectation.
it would at the very least be financially crippled by loss of trade with Western European countries
Maintaining trade relationships with other European countries wasn’t really much beneficial for 1938-era Germany, and in fact it could be argued that it was actively harmful, given the huge foreign debt from WW1 reparations.
the conflict would likely excalate to a full scale conventional war with the US
The US wasn’t that much interested in European affairs back then. Certainly there wasn’t anything comparable to the NATO. Also, nuclear weapons didn’t exist in 1938.
Hitler may not be exactly a nice guy, but in 1938 he certainly doesn’t seem crazy.
Except that he had written a book detailing his deranged political plan that he had then been following to the letter.
Maintaining trade relationships with other European countries wasn’t really much beneficial for 1938-era Germany, and in fact it could be argued that it was actively harmful, given the huge foreign debt from WW1 reparations.
All remaining German WW1 reparations were cancelled in 1932, and were under moratorium since before then. They had nothing to do with the beginning of the war in 1938.
The German economy through the 1930s was suffering from a foreign trade imbalance—it relied on crucial imports while not having enough exports to earn the trade balance to pay for them. This remained true even after the annexation of Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. If Germany had not conquered such a large territory in 1938-1940, if the war had merely become another stalemate with trenches and mostly stable fronts (as many military thinkers predicted), Germany would have run out of supplies in less than half a year and collapse. (This was why much of the German army leadership quietly opposed Hitler’s plans until the Battle of France.)
Expanding trade and avoiding a French-British blockade and a US embargo seemed to be top economic priorities for Germany in 1938-1939. It turned out that making war was a bigger one.
The US wasn’t that much interested in European affairs back then. Certainly there wasn’t anything comparable to the NATO.
The US withdrew from European affairs during the Great Depression. But by 1938 it was back and it was clear that in another European war, while it may not participate, it would supply Britain and France with arms, loans and everything else it could, if only to make sure they could repay their remaining loans from WW1.
I agree it was less clear that the US would enter the war. In fact Hitler declared war on the US for a reason that looks laughably trivial in retrospect. Then again, he believed war with the US was inevitable anyway; I don’t remember right now what his reasons were for believing that.
Also, nuclear weapons didn’t exist in 1938.
I don’t think that makes such a big difference. Today several actors have nuclear weapons, which balances things out. In 1938 nobody did, but the US still had the biggest economy in the world (although it would take a few years to get up to speed for war) and could decisively tilt the balance in any war it intervened in at full capacity.
Except that he had written a book detailing his deranged political plan that he had then been following to the letter.
Could you point out what was deranged about it, exactly? (Parenthetically: It’s hard to have a discussion when you use an emotionally charged term like deranged without making any actual descriptive statements.)
All remaining German WW1 reparations were cancelled in 1932, and were under moratorium since before then.
Didn’t know that, thanks.
Could you point out what was deranged about it, exactly?
“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all.” “the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” ”For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? …Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas… it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith.”
“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all.”
Strip away the slightly overblown rhetoric, and you’re left with Social Darwinism: the idea that desirable traits, or “fitness”, is strongly heritable on the individual and therefore also the societal level. And racism: the idea that humans can be grouped into discrete categories the differences between which are much greater than the differences between individuals within each group.
Hitler and other Nazi thinkers made a lot of factual errors: mixing genetic/biological and memetic/cultural evolution together and even declaring them inseparable, greatly overstating the discreteness of races, and going against psychometric facts in declaring Jews to be vastly intellectually inferior. But scientific errors, which were not all that glaring given the 1920s state of knowledge and its popularization, and committed by a poorly educated non-scientist, do not make one “deranged” (i.e. crazy in some sense). And very many people in all nations in the 1920s, including some very smart ones, would have agreed with most of his statements, if not necessarily with the specific racial hierarchy he proposed.
The elevation of social Darwinism and racism into an ethical code was also not really unique and certainly I wouldn’t call it “deranged”, when contrasted with some other popular ideologies and ethical theories of the time (e.g. Communism through revolution, or Anarchism by Propaganda of the Deed, or even the divine right of kings, which only really died in Europe in WW1).
“the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”
I don’t know whether to call it “deranged” or not. We would need to taboo the word. I do know it is far from original and was a common sentiment among many Christians.
“For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? …Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas… it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith.”
I really don’t see what’s wrong here; it’s a sound instrumental prescription. Is the entire Catholic Church “deranged” for following this rule?
Strip away the slightly overblown rhetoric, and you’re left with Social Darwinism: the idea that desirable traits, or “fitness”, is strongly heritable on the individual and therefore also the societal level. And racism: the idea that humans can be grouped into discrete categories the differences between which are much greater than the differences between individuals within each group.
The factual claims are empirically falsifiable, at least in principle. The most contentious point is deriving ought from is.
The elevation of social Darwinism and racism into an ethical code was also not really unique and certainly I wouldn’t call it “deranged”, when contrasted with some other popular ideologies and ethical theories of the time (e.g. Communism through revolution, or Anarchism by Propaganda of the Deed, or even the divine right of kings, which only really died in Europe in WW1).
There was also classical liberal democracy, but I concede that early 20th century Europe had lots of ideologies which we would consider weird by modern standards. In this cultural environment, Hitler may not have looked as weird as he does now, but I’m under the impression that he was a loose cannon even by the standards of his time.
I don’t know whether to call it “deranged” or not. We would need to taboo the word. I do know it is far from original and was a common sentiment among many Christians.
Historically, yes. But the 20th centuries it was unusual to publicily express these opinions, especially for a politician. Jews were well integrated in Western Europe. There were Jewish academics, politicians, judges, etc., though obviously there was an antisemitic undercurrent that Hitler pandered to.
I think I should concede that the word “deranged” was not very appropriate. My point is that Hitler had an unusually aggressive ideology. One could have been tempted to write it off as rethorics, as many people of that time indeed did, but by 1938 it should have been fairly clear that he was interested in implementing it for real.
Historically, yes. But the 20th centuries it was unusual to publicily express these opinions, especially for a politician. Jews were well integrated in Western Europe. There were Jewish academics, politicians, judges, etc., though obviously there was an antisemitic undercurrent that Hitler pandered to.
Maybe. My impression was that antisemitism was alive and well among the non-highly-educated majority of the population. But I’m not very sure about it. (In countries other than Germany, like Poland, Ukraine and Russia, antisemitism was definitely as bad as Hitler’s.)
Your observation and V_V’s don’t actually contradict each other: for example in parts of the present-day western world homophobia is alive and well among the non-highly-educated majority of the population but it’s unusual to publicily express these opinions.
Strip away the slightly overblown rhetoric, and you’re left with Social Darwinism: the idea that desirable traits, or “fitness”, is strongly heritable on the individual and therefore also the societal level.
There’s at least one more error—the idea that you can tell in advance what “fitness” is going to be, so that you can select among human traits to optimize for the future.
> Except that he had written a book detailing his deranged political plan that he had then been
> following to the letter.
“Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.”—the famous 2005 speech.
Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory.
Without condoning, I think I understand his point: Soviet Union was a multi-ethinic country dominated by a Russian ethnic majority (partially due to deliberate ethnic cleansing and genocide). When Soviet Union collapsed, it was precipitously broken up along administrative or historical internal borders, without giving much thought to the ethnic compositions of the countries that were formed. Russians who found themselves cut off from Russia went overnight from being the dominant ethnicity to being an ethnical minority. I guess they didn’t like it.
Putin has a platform based on Russian nationalism, hence catering to the plight of the “co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory” is natural to him. It panders to his electorate and, should he indeed succeed to annex them, he could probably count them as his supporters.
All of this seems consistent with Putin wanting to annex Russophones, as I said in my comment upthread. He certainly isn’t ranting about a divine mission to destroy “the Jew” and reclaim the Lebensraum for a Thousand-Year Empire.
When Soviet Union collapsed, it was precipitously broken up along administrative or historical internal borders, without giving much thought to the ethnic compositions of the countries that were formed. Russians who found themselves cut off from Russia went overnight from being the dominant ethnicity to being an ethnical minority. I guess they didn’t like it.
Replace “Soviet Union” with “Austro-Hungarian Empire” and “Russians” with “Germans” and you have a decent description of the ethnic situation before WWII.
Ok, but his platform then logically includes taking the former Baltic republics, probably big chunks out of central asian republics, and depending on the reading parts of Brooklyn also.
There are lots of Han Chinese in all sorts of places.
There are lots of mexicans in California.
> I guess they didn’t like it.
You treat the local opinion as monolithic, your analysis is superficial.
Ok, but his platform then logically includes taking the former Baltic republics, probably big chunks out of central asian republics, and depending on the reading parts of Brooklyn also.
So what? He certaily can’t take parts of Brooklyn, most likely he can’t take even parts of the Baltic republics, which are members of the NATO, EU, Schengen Area, Eurozone, etc. Taking them would cause much greater disruption to Western European and American interests than taking Crimea or Donetsk.
He may indeed take parts of the central asian republics, if China lets him.
There are lots of Han Chinese in all sorts of places.
Which makes this an issue between Russia and China, not Western Europe.
There are lots of mexicans in California.
I’m not exactly expecting columns of Mexican tanks rolling into California any time soon, do you?
You treat the local opinion as monolithic, your analysis is superficial.
It’s a first-order approximation. Do the Scottish people want independence from the UK? Well some do and some don’t, no true Scotsman in its literal form. And yet, they will soon have a referendum and if the majority votes for indepdendence, Scotland will be an independent country.
Currently, he only seems interested in territories inhabited by ethnic Russians
Currently that is all he is openly or semi-openly taking action on. As for what he is interested in, he is on record as calling the collapse of the Soviet Union “a major geopolitical disaster of the century”. It seems clear that he wants to restore all of that territory. All else is tactics.
I doubt he is much interested in taking, say, the Baltic republics or cis-Dniestr Moldova, as he would have to rule there with an iron fist on an uncooperative population.
Ruling with an iron fist on an “uncooperative” population (if they don’t actively fight, what will their “uncooperation” get them?) is what Russia does. It did that through the years of the Soviet Union, and before that under the Tsars, when it was described (by the Soviets, no less) as “the prison of nations”. Plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose.
Prediction: within five years, there will be separatist unrest in all of the places you mentioned, fanned (but not openly) by Putin.
Putin probably knows he might have a limited time to act because the U.S. might get a hawkish President (Hillary Clinton, any Republican but Rand Paul) or Germany might re-militarize.
In this conflict Germany wants negotiate a deal that accepts a Russian Crimea in exchange for Ukrainian control of the rest of Russia and the US oppose such a deal.
Germany has a stronger interest in keeping the Russian gas pipelines active than it has in whether or not Russia controls Crimea.
Defending an EU country like Finland would have a completely different priority.
I doubt that Germany would have a huge problem with Russia taking over Belarus either. Minsk is anyway badly governed.
Bismark might be a better comparison then 1938-39.
I don’t think the key problem is US unwillingness to fight but the unwillingness to engage in diplomacy make a deal that gives Russia officially Crimea in exchange for keeping the rest of Ukraine under the control of Kiev.
Yup, should have erected a fence vs misbehavior early. The West did not because the West cannot coordinate. Oh and Obama is sadly an empty suit, and didn’t lead at all. I don’t have a particular axe to grind vs Obama, I really wish he wasn’t what he turned out to be.
Yup, should have erected a fence vs misbehavior early. The West did not because the West cannot coordinate.
No. Bluffing is a key part of US foreign policy. If you frequently bluff than you don’t have fences.
Obama also gets something from the conflict. EU nations who are angry at the US for NSA spying don’t act on that anger because the have to show strength in the conflict with Russia and an EU US conflict would produce weakness.
It increases the chances of getting an EU-US free trade agreement.
The Cold War ended with economical victory of the West, and memetic victory of the Soviets. The economical defeat led to collapse of the Soviet empire. The memetic defeat results in the lack of will we see today.
It was a huge strategic mistake after the fall of communism not to use the opportunity to expose the crimes of the regime, and to remove the important people from power, just like it was done with Nazis. For example in Slovakia, the communists still have the power; they have to compete for it in democratic election and sometimes they lose, but they still have the advantage of decades of unopposed brainwashing on their side, and the skills and contacts of the former secret service. These days, Slovakia is technically a member of EU, but our government is communist, the prime minister is openly pro-Russian, the majority catholic church focuses on fighting homosexuality and liberalism, and some of my “friends” on facebook still insist that Ukrainians are attacking themselves, Russians are only trying to protect the innocent victims, and the evil Americans are spreading propaganda to start the war because that’s all those evil mercenaries ever do, unlike us, peaceful Slavic brothers. So… this is one EU country, which happens to share a border with Ukraine. We will not be helpful, because we are already conquered memetically.
It was a huge strategic mistake after the fall of communism not to use the opportunity to expose the crimes of the regime, and to remove the important people from power, just like it was done with Nazis.
You can’t just go in an remove important people from power.
That would have needed a military invasion at a time where it wasn’t clear who controls which nuclear weapons.
The Cold War ended with economical victory of the West, and memetic victory of the Soviets.
I think you overstate that case. A lot of former Soviet countries like Poland aren’t pro-Russian. Poland has 38 million citizens while Slovakia has 5.5.
I’m aware of Slovakia’s origin, having visited Czechoslovakia. I’m not sure where I implied anything different.
Sorry for being pedantic.
(why the downvote, whoever? Was it belief I was lying about visiting Czechoslovakia? Believe it or not, the country did exist under that name during my lifetime. Was it suspicion of my being sarcastic in my apology? I was not.)
The Cold War ended with economical victory of the West, and memetic victory of the Soviets
Which memetic victory? Marxism/communism/Soviet ideology pretty much imploded after the fall of the USSR. Look at what China did. I think it was a total memetic loss for the Soviets.
It was a huge strategic mistake after the fall of communism not to use the opportunity to expose the crimes of the regime, and to remove the important people from power
First, whose mistake and who would have been doing the removing?
Second, it depends on the country. I think that in Russia the old Soviet “important people” were effectively removed. The new political elite is not the old political elite.
First, whose mistake and who would have been doing the removing?
In my country, our mistake, of course. People were too idealistic during the “Velvet Revolution”. We thought that just publicly ending the evil regime is enough, that we can just forgive everyone and have a fresh start. And that the bad guys will be happy for being forgiven (instead of e.g. executed for their crimes) and they will live peacefully.
Yeah… they just waited for a year or two to make sure there is no will to punish them… and then they returned to the power. Since most of the judges or policemen or people in any position of influence except for parliament (because all our attention was focused there) were former communists, it wasn’t even difficult. They just had to wait for hedonic adaptation, and blame all the problems on lack of socialism, and then win one election. Then they removed all their opponents from the public media and used the media for propaganda. And used the loyal secret service against political opponents.
I think that in Russia the old Soviet “important people” were effectively removed. The new political elite is not the old political elite.
I don’t know about situation in Russia. Just saying that it’s not enough to remove the visible people in parliament. It is also important to remove communists from the justice and secret service. Otherwise, you get new faces, connected to the old less visible people.
many of the former soviet republics are full of old communists
First, I explicitly said “Russia”, not USSR.
Second, of course there are a lot of old communists. In the Soviet era if you wanted to make any kind of a career you had to be one. LOTS of people were communists. What do you think happened to the rank and file of the CPSU? Answer: nothing, they’re still around and still ambitious.
Second, of course there are a lot of old communists. In the Soviet era if you wanted to make any kind of a career you had to be one. LOTS of people were communists. What do you think happened to the rank and file of the CPSU?
What happened to the rank and file members of the Nazi party after WWII?
What happened to the rank and file members of the Nazi party after WWII?
Nothing much, I think. Of course, a lot were killed during the war, but those who survived went through denazificaton and remained normal members of the German society.
Which memetic victory? Marxism/communism/Soviet ideology pretty much imploded after the fall of the USSR. Look at what China did. I think it was a total memetic loss for the Soviets.
And yet the current head of the EU is a not-quite-repentant former Soviet apologist.
Samuel Huntington would be cheering if he were alive because he predicted that this is what would happen. We would have a multi-polar world and that a great deal of that polarity would be based on ethnicity and he used the Slavic countries as a prime example. The downside is he predicted a lot of small scale conflict under this system which we are seeing.
Absolutely, not only is there a Will problem you have a classic war weariness quotient in the US and UK and the EU to be perfectly blunt as we showed in Libya no longer has the resources to meaningfully put up a fight in a large scale and meaningful way. How the EU continues to actually make its NATO commitments is interesting because all in all Europe needs to re-arm itself to a certain degree and I think that program needs to happen right away. Not only is Austerity a terrible disaster but so is the EU military situation. One might also notice the silence from Ban-Ki Moon on this.
But perhaps it really is always 1939. Or, to be even more glib, what you are saying sounds to me much like:
Every time we see icebergs on the horizon, you steer around them, but the ship never actually sinks. And every time I say we should forget about icebergs, you bring up the Titanic. You paranoiacs really need to get a new routine, people aren’t falling for it anymore.
OK, let’s be serious. Let’s say that “being Hitler” means going on an ever-increasing campaign of conquest against neighbouring countries that results in a very damaging war. We could note that this kind of behaviour was very common prior to the Napoleonic Wars (Napoleon, Frederick the Great, Charles XII, Louis XIV, Wallenstein, Philip II, Suleiman I, etc etc). Since the Napoleonic Wars, there have been a number of international frameworks more-or-less explicitly devoted to prevent “Hitlers,” and which have had some success. However, IR is basically anarchy, which means that when actors fail to abide by the rules of those international framework, forcing them in line means war.
There haven’t been a lot of “Hitlers” in recent years. But at least part of the reason that the people you call “warmongers” nipped the likes of Saddam, Milosevic, Galtieri, etc in the bud. For example, Saddam was definitely on the Hitler path in 1991, and what stopped him was western military intervention. And not only did this intervention stop him, but it acted as a warning to other leaders who might be considering more bellicose action, and helped reinforce the rules and norms of our peaceful international framework.
But this commitment is forever being tested, because leaders get glory through war. Consider that the fame and popularity of American Presidents has been shown to be higher the more Americans who die in military combat in their term in office (!) and then multiply that for more bellicose societies such as Russia. A peaceful world requires constant vigilance.
In the current case, it’s clear that Putin is engaged in an aggressive campaign of conquest against his neighbours (not merely in Ukraine). It’s not clear where this will stop. It’s clear that every victory strengthens Putin’s domestic position and emboldens him for the next step. This is the classic “Hitlerian” path, and everyone from Hillary Clinton to Prince Charles has noted it. That doesn’t mean the West should necessarily intervene (maybe the costs are greater than the benefits) but it’s pretty obvious why the comparison is so widely made. I’d say the ‘routine’ that no-one is falling for is the Panglossian one that Putin isn’t a predator—with each new Russian outrage, it becomes harder and harder to sustain.
I haven’t heard the (potential) interventions against Qaddafi and Assad justified on the same grounds. There, the justification is usually a combination of (1) humanitarian and (2) preventing failed states, which is rather different.
Let’s say that “being Hitler” means going on an ever-increasing campaign of conquest against neighbouring countries that results in a very damaging war.
...AND end up on the losing side of history.
That’s an important addendum because sometimes you go on an ever-increasing campaign of conquest against neighbouring countries that results in many damaging wars, establish a successful empire, impose a Pax Romana, and, basically live happily ever after. People who succeed at this aren’t usually called Hitlers.
But you also have to remember that there is not the history between the US and these other regimes the way it is between the US and Russia. Putin is an old communist and he remembers the old days, he remembers them very well and he wants them back. Putin and his cronies chafed in the 90′s under Pax Americana and now they have their chance to shake up the international order rather than conform to the American lead way of doing things and I think he is of the opinion that if it doesn’t happen now there won’t be another chance for a generation.
1938: “Just give him the parts of Czechoslovakia he wants. Yeah, annexing a part of other country is wrong, but a minority speaking his language lives there, so, uhm, he kinda has a good reason. More importantly, we have a good reason to believe he will stop there. Just let’s not be the bad guys who fight over nothing. Everything will be fine when he gets what he wants, he is a reasonable guy.”
2014: “Just give him the parts of Ukraine he wants. Yeah, annexing a part of other country is wrong, but a minority speaking his language lives there, so, uhm, he kinda has a good reason. More importantly, we have a good reason to believe he will stop there. Just let’s not be the bad guys who fight over nothing. Everything will be fine when he gets what he wants, he is a reasonable guy.”
The analogies are much deeper here than merely “he is a guy we don’t like, therefore Hitler”. Things that happen inside Russia are also very disturbing—I am trying to ignore politics, and I usually don’t care about what happens in Russia, but some news still get to me—Putin’s supporters are openly nationalist, racist, homophobic, pretty much everything you associate with fascism, he has a strong support of the Orthodox Church, journalists who criticize him are assassinated. (Someone living in Russia would be more qualified to write about this.) The only way he could lose an election would be against someone who is even more like this. Winning a symbolic war against the West will only make him more popular.
To test how strong is this analogy, we should make bets like: Conditional on Putin successfully annexing a part of territory of Ukraine, what is the probability of Russia attacking another country within 1, 3, 5, 10 years? Which country will it be?
The analogies are much deeper here than merely “he is a guy we don’t like, therefore Hitler”. Things that happen inside Russia are also very disturbing—I am trying to ignore politics, and I usually don’t care about what happens in Russia, but some news still get to me—Putin’s supporters are openly nationalist, racist, homophobic, pretty much everything you associate with fascism, he has a strong support of the Orthodox Church, journalists who criticize him are assassinated.
All of these things also apply to the other examples I mentioned, and many other countries besides. People said the same things about Saddam, Qaddafi, Assad, etc. Putin is of course saying similar things about his Ukrainian enemies to what you are saying about him. (Admittedly, they make it easy for him.)
There is no shortage of historical examples of historical revanchism, yet the “Hitler in 1939” analogy utterly dominates. So why rely 100% on one analogy. Why insist on using the example that is the closest stand-in for “evil psychopath who cannot be reasoned with, but must be destroyed utterly?”
Probably because you’re in the midst of a media driven two-minutes hate. History begins and ends with Hitler, 1939!
(Seriously, your standard for being Hitleresque is being racist, homophobic, and nationalistic? It might be a fun exercise for you to write down a list of 100 historical leaders, determine how many were/were not racist, homophobic, or nationalistic. This will give you your Hitler/non-Hitler ratio. Do you think the ratios of Hitlers : non-Hitlers is greater or less than 1?)
Probably because you’re in the midst of a media driven two-minutes hate.
This situation is optimized for media, but exactly in the opposite way. The whole attack is divided into many incremental steps. Each small step is not enough to evoke a military response from the West. Then there is a pause, until media stop paying attention and find something else to care about. Then another small step.
(Remember the first step? Russian soldiers without uniforms in Ukraine territory, not yet openly fighting anyone, just carrying weapons and looking intimidating. So, what are you going to do about it? First, there is no war yet, and second, they even deny being Russian. Calm down, everyone, calm down, nothing to see here. -- A few steps later it’s obvious there are Russian troops there, but we already kinda knew it for months, so why the sudden overreaction today? Calm down, everyone, calm down, nothing new is happening here.)
This is how you overcome the Schelling point—by doing a calculated very small step, and then calling your opponent irrational if he wants to react.
This situation is optimized for media, but exactly in the opposite way. The whole attack is divided into many incremental steps.
Dividing something in many incremental steps that each are newsworthy generally means that the whole things gets more media attention than if you do everything at once.
Wikileaks for example didn’t release all the cables at once but purposefully spread them out over a time to give them more media attention.
I would guess that more than half of all rulers in history took others’ territory, or tried to and failed. And being nationalistic goes without saying ever since the invention of nationalism.
The specific tactic of nibbling on your neighbors one bit at a time, varying your speed depending on international reactions, was used by Hitler but also by many others. Calling a common behavior Hitleresque isn’t useful.
There are good reasons for comparing Germany in 1938 with Russia in 2014, but I don’t think these are among them.
I would guess that more than half of all rulers in history took others’ territory, or tried to and failed. And being nationalistic goes without saying ever since the invention of nationalism.
And more than half of all the rulers in history would find themselves really really out of place in the modern world if they tried to do the same things they did in their historical contexts, and we would rather not have to deal with them.
I don’t think Hitler was very unusual among rulers of, say, the post-Napoleonic epoch of 1814-1945. He was just first unusually successful (making many enemies) and then unusually thoroughly defeated and occupied (allowing those enemies to make his name particularly infamous).
But Russia still has a “democratic” political structure, everyone off course knows that it’s not like this in reality and only one party exists. But soon in 2018 there’ll be new president elections and that’s last term for Putin. Uncertainty that’s what we will get for sure
I’m living in Russia however I don’t watch TV and read newspapers, but I can say for sure, that Russian Invaders are proclaimed heroes, and NATO guys as Evil. And It’s not a surprise for me that on the other side of the Globe opinion is exactly the contrary. My personal view of the problem is that Putin and Obama are both worth each other, they are strong leaders and will they never stop if there is a chance to gain more power. Situation in Ukraine is imho this—Ukranian side completely entangled in their own problems, and they thought that it was Russia who they must blame and gone comletely nuts, then West gave them weapons and so on
To test how strong is this analogy, we should make bets like: Conditional on Putin successfully annexing a part of territory of Ukraine, what is the probability of Russia attacking another country within 1, 3, 5, 10 years? Which country will it be?
Too much globalization (russialization in this case) is hard to contol, Russia has enormous territory, we already got Crimea which is a port, and got unfriendly response from the world. I expect things to calm down for next 4 years I assume probability of 5% of the invasion to any other country
My personal view of the problem is that Putin and Obama are both worth each other, they are strong leaders and will they never stop if there is a chance to gain more power.
As someone in America, I can tell you the idea of calling Obama a “strong leader” sounds hilarious.
Putin’s supporters are openly nationalist, racist, homophobic,
Would you mind tabooing what you mean by “racist” (and possibly also “nationalist” and “homophobic”) and why your definition is bad, there is currently a long debate in another thread on this very subject.
Yes, there is the irony that Nashi is officially an “anti-fascist” movement. To understand this, it is necessary to know the connotations these words have in the former communist countries, as propaganda shaped them for decades. Shortly: anything associated with former Soviet Union and her satellites is “socialist”, and anything associated with West is “fascist”. It’s like yin and yang for everything; e.g. collectivism is “socialist” and entrepreneurship is “fascist”, but also being ethinically Russian or at least Slavic is more central to the concept of “socialist”, and the idea of human rights (other than the right to live happily and obediently under a socialist government) is kinda “fascist”, because it goes against the power of the collective.
So a person who doesn’t think about this too deeply (you know, most of the population) can identify themselves as “anti-fascist” and mean: “I hate entrepreneurs, homosexuals; and everyone who is not ethnically Russian/Slav should go away from this country”. Having read a few articles about the Nashi, this is more or less the meaning they use.
(This is a point I would like to emphasise as often as possible—though usually I don’t, respecting the LW’s attitude to politics—that the ideas of “left” or “socialism” in former Soviet countries are so completely unlike their versions in the West. It is just a result of successful propaganda and suppressing the flow of information that makes most leftists in the West believe otherwise. If you take a typical Nazi, reduce his hate of Jews by 80%, and convert him using the chronophone to a post-Soviet culture, this is what passes as “left” here.)
Looking at the article, I don’t see what specifically you’re considering “racist”. It would help if you stated your definition. Ok, it would help even more if you didn’t through around words commonly used by SJW’s to mean “anyone I disagree with”.
and laws against LGBT people.
You mean like the laws every country had until maybe a couple decades ago?
If you take a typical Nazi, reduce his hate of Jews by 80%, and convert him using the chronophone to a post-Soviet culture, this is what passes as “left” here.
To taboo the SJW-like words, here is what I mean: worship of physical power, enthusiasm about war, emphasis on reproduction of purebloods, agression against people different from the norm.
Except that in this case the police and social workers weren’t willing to enforce the law for fear of being called “racist”. More generally, the law is only as strong as the will and ability of people to enforce it.
Genghis Khan was Hitler, Julius Caesar was Hitler, Hernán Cortés was Hitler. Adverse selection in the political process often favors leaders who really enjoy taking other peoples’ stuff. Also, comparing some aspects of Putin to Hitler (as Kasparov did) doesn’t mean you think Putin=Hitler. Putin, thankfully, doesn’t seem to enjoy killing for its own sake.
Putin, thankfully, doesn’t seem to enjoy killing for its own sake.
Neither did Hitler. He always had extrinsic goals to be achieved by killing. Often those were quite admirable goals if you accepted extreme partisanship for the German people at the expense of everyone else. (Not always; he suppressed domestic opposition ruthlessly, but it was nothing in comparison to his treatment of non-Germans and no different from most other states at the time.)
I hesitate to make 1938-1939 comparisons because the world situation is far different now than then especially because of globalization. I do however agree with Kasparov the longer Putin gets away with this the more emboldened both the Kremlin and his troops will be. The problem here is two fold: The US is war weary after 10 years of doing Iraq and Afghanistan and Obama going to the country to put boots on the ground is a dicey decision and economically now isn’t a great time to do that.
However, I think there are some deterrents you could do:
If I were President Cowan I would have already moved 30K troops into German for a little german vacation. I would also move some assets into place in the Gulf of Alaska. You know just routine troop movements and it would look very threatening and it might make Putin start thinking twice. The best way to get an enemy to stop doing something is to get them worried because then their own fear will either make them do something stupid that you can exploit or they will cease and desist. I might also start an economic war by asking the FED to dump a few billion Rubles into the world economy just to see what happens. Frankly, its time to get Machiavellian.
Do you really think that if your two problems were absent—if the US were not war-weary and if the economy were doing great—then the US would be ready to put boots on the ground in Russia?
To quote a fellow named Vizzini, You fell victim to one of the classic blunders—The most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” X-D
and it would look very threatening
I think it would look pretty silly and would give Putin a mighty political gift. He’d point a finger at your troops and yell that the American warmongers are preparing to invade Mother Russia—and that’s all he would need to really unite all the population behind him.
by asking the FED to dump a few billion Rubles into the world economy just to see what happens
I don’t think the Fed has a few billion Rubles. And my guess as to what would happen is that Putin will close the taps on the oil and gas flowing into Europe, Germany in particular. Frau Merkel would be most displeased, I would think.
Yes I think in a different scenario the US would be more hawkish on Russia without War weariness and better economic conditions. This is basic war theory.
You are right, Putin could certain point at increased troops in Germany as the West getting ready for war and it might lead to mobilization, however, as Putin is in no mood and Russia is in no economic condition for a protracted war with the West I think it would have the correct provocative effect. I don’t think Putin would slow down but it would make everyone at the Kremlin think twice. I would keep them there for about 3 months and then send them home.
The Fed has a few billion rubles because all global trade accounts must balance and the Federal Reserves keeps vast quantities of every trading partners currency so that trade accounts will balance, they can re-buy American debt in local currency, and for stability of global markets. So yes, you could dump a few billion rubles by re-buying certain amounts of American debt from China and paying for it in Rubles.
The Fed has a few billion rubles because all global trade accounts must balance and the Federal Reserves keeps vast quantities of every trading partners currency so that trade accounts will balance, they can re-buy American debt in local currency, and for stability of global markets.
Basically, the Fed as apart of the global central banking system keeps various currencies on hand for global trade purposes. Ergo you could dump those back in the market.
I cannot say/find information on what exactly they keep on hand these days. However, the currency swap lines can be created literally at will which they did during the 2008 crisis. Also, if you look at the case of Leo Wanta, who armed with 2.7 Trillion dollars destabilized the Soviet economy with FX swaps in Brussels between 1989 and 1991.
the currency swap lines can be created literally at will
Yes, but when you have an FX swap line, you don’t own the foreign currency, you only have a facility to get some in exchange for yours. In your example, for the Fed to attempt to devalue the ruble it would have to get it first from someone (likely, the Central Bank of Russia), effectively buying it for dollars—thus defeating the entire point of the exercise.
You can trade American debt for Rubles from a Russian trading partner like the EU. Also, I would google more general information about Leo Wanta. Your reference doesn’t actually talk about what he did.
Garry Kasparov has made the following Tweets:
Putin is probably trying to calculate what’s the most he can take consistent with keeping the probability of a major war with the United States below some level. If the U.S. is unwilling to fight, Putin will take all of the territory of the Soviet Empire + perhaps Finland, a country that used to belong to Russia.
Putin probably knows he might have a limited time to act because the U.S. might get a hawkish President (Hillary Clinton, any Republican but Rand Paul) or Germany might re-militarize.
Currently, he only seems interested in territories inhabited by ethnic Russians, who are happy to be (re-)annexed to the country they consider they homeland.
I doubt he is much interested in taking, say, the Baltic republics or cis-Dniestr Moldova, as he would have to rule there with an iron fist on an uncooperative population.
Are they, or is this a part of military propaganda? (I ask seriously, I don’t know.)
Well, they are certainly Russophone. Whether they do indeed have a preference for being annexed to Russia, I can’t say for sure, but it seems plausible, at least given the evidence available on Western media:
The Crimean status referendum showed overwhelming support for joining Russia, but this referendum occurred under military occupation and there are credible allegations of fraud, thus it is not very strong evidence.
Less controversially, the former president Viktor Yanukovych, who had a pro-Russian platform and whose removal sparked Russian intervention, had his electoral base in the Donetsk oblast, where he previously served as governor.
The population in question is not homogenous. Some would like to be annexed, some would not, some care much, some little.
Seems like a correct, though absolutely useless remark.
Love that broad brush you have. --- But whether the locals do or do not prefer to be annexed is besides the point, isn’t it. Unless you think it should be a new standard in international relations that 50%+1 preference for annexation is a valid casus belli. What a beautiful world that would be to live in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination
From your link (sans references): However, there are far more self-identified nations than there are existing states and there is no legal process to redraw state boundaries according to the will of these peoples.[43] According to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, the UN, ICJ and international law experts, there is no contradiction between the principles of self-determination and territorial integrity, with the latter taking precedence. --- But again, that’s not even my point. My point is a Kantian point: do you want to live in a world where self-determination of [group] in [country] is sufficient grounds for boots on the ground? This is not even a question about what the US or Russia had been or is doing, but about our preferences.
I’m saying we live in a world where a right to self-determination has been recognized for something like a century now, even if it does not come with an automatic invasion authorization from the UN Security Council. So far, I’m not sure if it’s been all that bad although as an American, I cannot sympathize with those who might want to exercise said right inasmuch as there is no other country to which people like me might want to form.
The right to self-determination seems to me to have been “recognized” as propaganda, but practically never practiced.
It was used post WW1, but only because there were two big multi-ethnic empires to be broken up. No-one proposed treating the victors similarly; their constituent nations which wanted independence had to fight for it, like Ireland did in 1920-1922.
Very few significant new nations have claimed statehood in the century since then on the basis of this principle without armed struggle. And when there’s a civil war or rebellion and one side wins independence by military and political means, I don’t give much credence to abstract principles.
Using Wikipedia’s list of sovereign states by date of independence for the last century, the only states in the first half of the list (from 1973 to the present) that were established peacefully along ethnic lines are Czech and Slovak republics in the post-USSR breakup of Czechoslovakia. Most other Soviet states became nations despite being multi-ethnic, or fought bloody civil wars as in Yugoslavia. So did almost all African and Asian colonies post decolonization.
I admit I didn’t have the patience to read all the linked articles on that list, and its older half (1914-1972), but at least its first half doesn’t contain a single example of a part of sovereign nation breaking away on the basis of self determination without a major war. The older half probably might have some examples, but I expect them to be very few.
?!
You’re right. I don’t know what came over me :-( Amended, and thanks.
A lot of former colonies are now self-governed and a lot of them became independent without armed struggle. That was what the principle of self-determination was about. The British lost their empire over the principle.
It wasn’t really about giving the Scottish or the Basques a right to hold a referendum to get independence.
On the other hand the principle of immutability of borders as written down in the Hague Conventions isn’t that well respect either. The borders of Ukraine changed frequently since the Hague Conventions was made and I don’t see a real reason why they should now be immutable when a majority of Crimeans doesn’t want to belong to Ukraine.
The Soviet states also did became nations in a way that did violate the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union without a war.
Those colonies became independent states with borders decided by the accidents of previous colonial conquest, or drawn arbitrarily post-conquest without regard to local interests or ethnic, economic and cultural divisions (e.g. India and Pakistan).
Similarly, in the British-administrated post-WW1 mandate territories (which they divested during the same general political era when they lost their empire), they drew arbitrary borders and deliberately installed rulers who were foreign to the local population or represented minorities, because they knew these rulers would have to oppress the locals and so would depend on foreign support (e.g. Jordan, Iraq).
Local people were not consulted by a referendum or plebiscite, and in no case that I’m aware of did previously multi-ethnic or multi-cultural states peacefully divide into nation states. There is certainly a principle of decolonization and de-imperialization, but I’m not seeing any self-determination.
When the Hague Conventions were signed, Ukraine didn’t exist as a sovereign state and hadn’t done so since the 17th century. Its borders changed a lot after that, but always as a result of war and conquest, apart from Russia’s gift of Crimea in 1954. It was partitioned and partially annexed many times over the 20th century by its more powerful neighbors. This history did not follow self-determination at any point.
Even if you accept it as a valid moral principle, the devil is in the details. How large a majority do you require before supporting separatism against a minority’s wishes? How much gerrymandering in the geographical boundaries do you allow? What is the minimum size of a group that may secede (since no-one will recognize family or tribe-sized states in practice)? If people who secede take their privately-owned land with them to form their new state, what happens when the owners of the mine or oil field providing 10% of your GDP secede and then sell their resources back to you at a 500% markup? If the richest and best-educated 10% of your population all happen to live in the same few cities, and they secede to stop wealth redistribution to the other 90%, is that alright? If a group of people wants to secede and implement an fundamentalist state with no freedom for women, gays, or atheists, do you try to stop them as you would non-state actors in your country, or do you shrug and say “eh, we don’t declare war on Saudi Arabia, either”?
The USSR (and the Warsaw Pact) was a union of separate republics to begin with; it chose to dissolve itself and they resumed their sovereignity. More importantly, I don’t think anyone would argue that a state has no right to break itself up if a large majority of its citizens agree. It’s a different matter if only the citizens in a particular region want to break away, and the rest want them to stay.
The notion of self-determination is not primarily about referendums and plebiscites. A government that’s backed by a home grown military coup doesn’t violate the principle.
Not every group of people is an ethnic group with the corresponding rights.
In this case you have a majority of Crimeas who speak Russian. You had the the government in Kiev who came to power as the president fled the city because armed Ukrainian nationals took power over the city. They continued to destroy buildings of communist party. Then they passed laws to remove the status of minority languages.
In that climate Crimeans have a valid interest to secede.
That a question about who sets the boundaries. In the case of Crimea the natural boundaries work quite well. In the case of Scotland the boundaries are also obvious.
In the case of the Basque country or Padania I’m sure that you could find a way to set reasonable boundaries.
Then I’m confused. If the government of a breakaway region isn’t backed by its population but relies on military force, is it self-determination? If nation A conquers half of nation B and sets up a state where a minority rules by force, is that self-determination? I thought the answer was clearly no in both cases, but if a government backed only by a military coup (i.e. force majeure) counts as “self-determination” then I’m totally confused as to what you mean by those words.
(Your comment doesn’t seem to be a response to my question about minimum size)
Since their “referendum” passed under Russian commando control I have no idea what percentage of the population might be opposed to independence, let alone opposed to Russian rule. 58.5% of the population of Crimea are Russians, but 24% are Ukrainians and 10.2% are Crimean Tatars many of whom only recently returned from a decades-long exile originally imposed by Stalin. No matter how this plays out there is going to be a severely oppressed minority maybe as large as 34%. (Do you think Ukrainian is going to have minority language status in Russian-occupied Crimea?)
For Crimea and Scotland this may be true. I was talking about generalizing the principle of self-determination.
The notion of self determination is that every people can govern themselves. It’s a group right. Not one of individual persons. Party of self-determination means that a country can’t remove a king of another country even if 60% of the population dislikes the king and would prefer another kind of political system then monarchy.
That depends very much about how the conflict plays out. I do believe that if things go according to Putins plan, that’s the outcome. Neither the EU nor Russia wants to wage war against each other, so sooner or later they have to negotiate a settlement. Russia wants a settlement that gives Crimea international recognition and is probably willing to give the Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea minority rights in exchange.
Putin makes moves so that he will have a settlement which is overall beneficial for Russia. Winter is coming and the EU needs gas. As long as the West doesn’t want to settle Putin is going to take more territory in Ukraine. I don’t completely understand what game plan Obama follows and what his goal happens to be in the conflict.
A bunch of smaller groups of native Americans got some form of autonomy that allowed them to start casinos in the desert and do a bunch of things that are otherwise illegal in the US. I’m okay with handling it like that.
I don’t see how to reconcile this with your statement that:
If a government doesn’t have popular majority support, and so it would not win a referendum, but keeps power anyway through military force, how does this uphold a group right for self-governance? Wouldn’t the group right argue in favor of anyone who doesn’t support the government being self-governing and uncoerced by their military powre?
On that view, Russia was wrong in supporting Crimean separatism.
I don’t know anything about Native American rights and politics in the USA, but I expect that this autonomy is granted because the majority feels guilty over past conquest and oppression and is trying to make amends. A different group of comparable size (say, people of Chinese descend) would not be allowed to “do a bunch of things that are otherwise illegal” merely because they had a minority ethnic status and wanted self-determination.
The will of government is the will of the group. After Egypt had their revolution the new government still had to pay the debts of the old dictator because they old dictator was recognised to be able to make contracts in the name of the nation. How a dictator comes to power isn’t that important for determining whether he’s accepted as representing a group.
The democratically elected government of Crimea went through separating on their own. Russia claimed that it acted according to the new principle of “responsibility to protect (R2P)” which means that it’s okay to use military to prevent violence against a minority. Without the Russian soliders Kiev likely would have used violence to stop the Crimean government from holding a referendum.
Kiev also didn’t go through the impeachment process to remove the status of the old president so it’s not clear why a dejure president shouldn’t be allowed to ask an outside country for military assistance.
Russia also argues that without Western interference the protest movement wouldn’t have managed to make the president flee Kiev.
Chinese people in the US don’t have a claim to land in the same way that native Americans, Basque, Scottish or the various people in Crimea have.
In Germany our native Sorbic minority gets minority rights that we don’t give to Turkish immigrants. YOu can’t immigrate and then claim that you then should get the land into with you immigrated.
You seem to be saying it’s OK for there to be military dictators as long as sub-groups of the country can secede. But no military dictator ever lets anyone secede. I am confused by your position.
The government of Crimea was not democratically elected; it was put in place by the occupying Russian army who didn’t leave the locals much freedom to vote.
Preventing a referendum hardly rises to the level of violence that should justify an invasion. Is holding a referendum a legally assured right?
That seems true.
By that logic, nobody except Native Americans should have any land rights in the USA. In practice nobody follows that rule after a successful conquest. Making exceptions like those for Native Americans is done on a guilt / recompense basis, but it’s not a general legal principle because you could never get it to apply outside a very few minor cases.
Did they have any right to hold such a referendum? If they do, how come the Basques don’t?
Whose law? Can the government of Taiwan authorize an invasion of China? Can Franz, Duke of Bavaria authorize an invasion of the UK? If I declare that under the lmmian constitution I am and always have been ruler of the US, does that grant me the right to invade?
I don’t think the concept of a de jure president is coherent—the only way a constitution got written in the first place is when the de facto rulers chose so.
As far as I’m concerned the Basque should have the right to hold a referendum.
In what sense do you consider the Kiev government the de facto rulers of the whole of Ukraine including Crimea? The government got control over Kiev through the thread of using violence. It might have also got control of Crimea through the threat of violence if Russia wouldn’t have protected the Crimean government from being violently coerced to follow the dictates of Kiev.
I don’t see that when I president loses control over the capital because of threats of violence but that president still controls other parts of the country he automatically stops being president.
Protecting a minority in a country from being violently coerced is what responsibility to protect is about.
The new government in Kiev didn’t change the part of the constitution that declares that you need an impeachment process to impeach a president and they didn’t go through the process of impeaching the president that’s outlined in the Ukrainian constitution.
The Taiwanese government can certainly allow Chinese soldiers to do whatever they want within the borders of Taiwan.
The ruler of Bavaria had never authority over the UK and according to the German constitution he doesn’t have any authority over Bavaria either. The president of the Ukraine on the other hand has authority over the territory of the Ukraine and at the time of the Crimea referendum he wasn’t impeached via the the legal process of impeachment that’s described in the Ukrainian constitution.
If you treating a coup on the capital on a country and the president leaves the capital I don’t think that means that the president “resigned” or loses his claim on being the president.
A more fitting comparison would be if the Dalai Lama can authorize military actions of foreign troops within the territory of Tibet. But the Dalai Lama doesn’t control any of the territory in Tibet while the Ukrainian president still had some backing in parts of the country, so the Dalai Lama has a weaker claim.
Let’s say you would have a few US military generals who threaten a coup if Obama doesn’t resign. Then Obama leaves Washington and a majority of the US congress makes a vote that John Boehner is the new president. Do you think that would mean that Obama loses his claim to being the president of the US?
There are no de jure borders of Taiwan. Both the PRC (which currently governs mainland China) and the RoC (which currently governs Taiwan) (officially) claim that both mainland China and Taiwan are part of one nation and each (officially) claims to be the sole legitimate government of the whole nation. Also, the RoC used to control mainland China and was expelled from it in a way (IIUC) not completely unlike the former Ukrainian government or Obama in your hypothetical.
As far as my hypothetical goes, I think Taiwan has the right to ask the US to have US military stationed within Taiwanese borders and that the US can accept such a request from Taiwan.
I don’t think that would violate Chinese self-determination in a meaningful extend.
The uprising in Kiev was of course violent, but it was a popular one; the President had lost whatever legitimacy he once had (and given the allegations of electoral fraud, I’m not sure how much that is). Government is by the consent of the governed.
If you consider it legitimate for the popular ruler of a subset of a country to invite a foreign invasion then surely that makes the notion of self-determination meaningless. Any country X wanting to invade country Y can simply find the small region of country Y that supports them and get them to ask for an invasion.
(FWIW I don’t think the new government in Kiev would have had the authority to invite a foreign intervention either, unless and until said government was widely recognized across the country. I would have argued for a UN peacekeeping force or similar international coalition, and referenda when people were secure enough to make it a free vote. But I think the Russian incursion makes it reasonable for Kiev to respond in kind)
But R2P is a novel theory with no basis in international law, right? Again, I suspect that in any case where country X wants to invade country Y they could find some reasonable-sounding principle that supports that invasion.
My point was that the Republic of China government claims legal authority over all of China. And that, although he renounces any claim to it, Duke Franz is the rightful heir to the British throne.
I think it means Obama isn’t ruler of the US until the two sides sort this mess out. And I think it means neither side has the right to invite foreign troops into the US. Again, isn’t that the whole point of self-determination?
A lot of the parties agreed to a compromise before they pressured the president to flee. I don’t think that if you don’t like a compromise that was negotiated and with was accepted by most stakeholder you have legitimacy in removing the president via the thread of a coup.
They also didn’t just pressured the president to flee but also destroyed infrastructure of the communist party via force. That’s no good basis for peaceful democracy.
The uprising wasn’t completely self-determined either. The extend isn’t quite clear but over the years the US invested 5 billion into producing pro-Western thought in Ukraine. Feeding a bunch of protesters to stay at a central place is expensive.
People came up with R2P after pure self-determination didn’t work that well in Rwanda. Then the Kosovo conflict was fought on the basis of R2P. Kosovo sets a precedent.
That’s not possible because the UK and the US would have certainly vetoed such an UN resolution. France probably as well. If Putin could have a UN recognised voted that gives a Crimean referendum authority he would have gone for that choice. Putin wants that when the conflict is over the world recognises Crimea as part of Russia and a UN backed referendum would have been a good way to get there.
Renouncing a claim means that you lose a right.
Do you think that for similar reasons the US has no business helping the Iraqi government or the Kurdish to push back ISIS?
Not to forget that the US used military in the last decade for worse reasons.
If it has not been practiced, then it cannot be harmful as Ilya claims. So which is it: do international abstractions have no force and no consequences, in which case it doesn’t matter at all, Kantian or otherwise, which abstractions are mouthed? Or do they matter at least a little bit? In which case you don’t seem to have demonstrated any harm from the abstraction—fighting bloody civil wars is not a new phenomenon.
It hasn’t been practiced. If it starts being practiced, however, it may be as harmful as Ilya claims, so his argument deserves a response. But saying:
Is not evidence because it hasn’t been really practiced so far.
Also:
I’m not claiming anything about other abstractions, some of which definitely have force, just this one.
Source.
We live in a world where might makes right. This said, I was mentioning the fact that the annexed populations are ethnic Russians presumibly willing to join Russia as evidence for the hypothesis that Putin is probably not going to try and reconquer former Soviet Union.
Yes, I know that Hitler also started by annexing Germanophones and then went for a full scale conquest of all Europe, but I think that Putin is unlikely to pull something like that:
Should Russia attack a NATO/EU country, it would at the very least be financially crippled by loss of trade with Western European countries, the conflict would likely excalate to a full scale conventional war with the US, which would have a very real chance of further excalating to a nuclear war. Putin may not be exactly a nice guy, but, unlike Hitler, he doesn’t seem to be crazy.
Also, even if he was crazy, Russia, while not being exactly a paragon of democracy, is not a dictatorship. The people who keep him in power would depose him if they saw him as a threat to their material interests and safety.
> evidence for the hypothesis that Putin is probably not going to Well, that’s a load off my mind! For a second there I thought he was rebuilding an empire using completely transparent Soviet-era pretexts in small enough steps that the West is unable to overcome its paralysis. Look, it’s very simple. Putin is a predator, and Europe would rather have warm homes in winter than stand on principle. That is their right of course, but let us call a spade a spade. > is not a dictatorship If Putin’s Russia is not a dictatorship, there are no dictatorships on Earth.
Does he want to annex another Chechnya or two?
What principle? Why should Europeans give up their warm homes and cheap electricity to defend the territorial integrity of countries which aren’t even part of the EU or the NATO?
The principle that we should not be moral cowards, and defend shelling points even if they do not involve us directly yet, encapsulated in the famous “First they came for...” poem.
I don’t see this as a moral issue.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slopes/ You are quite right, there is a slippery slope here! --- > I don’t see this as a moral issue. Indeed, you demonstrated that quite clearly.
Compare with this statement made in 1938:
Parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland were parts of what had been Germany and populated by German-speaking people. Britain (and later the US) declared war on Germany, not the other way around; my understanding is that Germany at that time did not want war with Britain and had not expected the declaration.
Given Hitler’s views on the slavic peoples, Nazi Germany was always going to go to war with the USSR and Yugoslavia sooner or later, but I don’t find it implausible that Western Europe (and the US) could have stayed out of that war, had that been how we wanted to play it.
Technically Germany declared war on the US, not the other way around.
As for war with Britain (and France), they had formally committed to it in the event that Germany invaded Poland. In retrospect it was odd that Hitler seriously thought they might not attack him; it looks more like hope than rational expectation.
Human precommitment is pretty weak, and national precommitment more so (cf Budapest Memorandum elsewhere in the thread).
Maintaining trade relationships with other European countries wasn’t really much beneficial for 1938-era Germany, and in fact it could be argued that it was actively harmful, given the huge foreign debt from WW1 reparations.
The US wasn’t that much interested in European affairs back then. Certainly there wasn’t anything comparable to the NATO.
Also, nuclear weapons didn’t exist in 1938.
Except that he had written a book detailing his deranged political plan that he had then been following to the letter.
All remaining German WW1 reparations were cancelled in 1932, and were under moratorium since before then. They had nothing to do with the beginning of the war in 1938.
The German economy through the 1930s was suffering from a foreign trade imbalance—it relied on crucial imports while not having enough exports to earn the trade balance to pay for them. This remained true even after the annexation of Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. If Germany had not conquered such a large territory in 1938-1940, if the war had merely become another stalemate with trenches and mostly stable fronts (as many military thinkers predicted), Germany would have run out of supplies in less than half a year and collapse. (This was why much of the German army leadership quietly opposed Hitler’s plans until the Battle of France.)
Expanding trade and avoiding a French-British blockade and a US embargo seemed to be top economic priorities for Germany in 1938-1939. It turned out that making war was a bigger one.
My source: The Wages Of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, Adam Tooze.
The US withdrew from European affairs during the Great Depression. But by 1938 it was back and it was clear that in another European war, while it may not participate, it would supply Britain and France with arms, loans and everything else it could, if only to make sure they could repay their remaining loans from WW1.
I agree it was less clear that the US would enter the war. In fact Hitler declared war on the US for a reason that looks laughably trivial in retrospect. Then again, he believed war with the US was inevitable anyway; I don’t remember right now what his reasons were for believing that.
I don’t think that makes such a big difference. Today several actors have nuclear weapons, which balances things out. In 1938 nobody did, but the US still had the biggest economy in the world (although it would take a few years to get up to speed for war) and could decisively tilt the balance in any war it intervened in at full capacity.
Could you point out what was deranged about it, exactly? (Parenthetically: It’s hard to have a discussion when you use an emotionally charged term like deranged without making any actual descriptive statements.)
Didn’t know that, thanks.
“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all.”
“the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”
”For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? …Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas… it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith.”
And so on.
Strip away the slightly overblown rhetoric, and you’re left with Social Darwinism: the idea that desirable traits, or “fitness”, is strongly heritable on the individual and therefore also the societal level. And racism: the idea that humans can be grouped into discrete categories the differences between which are much greater than the differences between individuals within each group.
Hitler and other Nazi thinkers made a lot of factual errors: mixing genetic/biological and memetic/cultural evolution together and even declaring them inseparable, greatly overstating the discreteness of races, and going against psychometric facts in declaring Jews to be vastly intellectually inferior. But scientific errors, which were not all that glaring given the 1920s state of knowledge and its popularization, and committed by a poorly educated non-scientist, do not make one “deranged” (i.e. crazy in some sense). And very many people in all nations in the 1920s, including some very smart ones, would have agreed with most of his statements, if not necessarily with the specific racial hierarchy he proposed.
The elevation of social Darwinism and racism into an ethical code was also not really unique and certainly I wouldn’t call it “deranged”, when contrasted with some other popular ideologies and ethical theories of the time (e.g. Communism through revolution, or Anarchism by Propaganda of the Deed, or even the divine right of kings, which only really died in Europe in WW1).
I don’t know whether to call it “deranged” or not. We would need to taboo the word. I do know it is far from original and was a common sentiment among many Christians.
I really don’t see what’s wrong here; it’s a sound instrumental prescription. Is the entire Catholic Church “deranged” for following this rule?
The factual claims are empirically falsifiable, at least in principle. The most contentious point is deriving ought from is.
There was also classical liberal democracy, but I concede that early 20th century Europe had lots of ideologies which we would consider weird by modern standards. In this cultural environment, Hitler may not have looked as weird as he does now, but I’m under the impression that he was a loose cannon even by the standards of his time.
Historically, yes. But the 20th centuries it was unusual to publicily express these opinions, especially for a politician. Jews were well integrated in Western Europe. There were Jewish academics, politicians, judges, etc., though obviously there was an antisemitic undercurrent that Hitler pandered to.
I think I should concede that the word “deranged” was not very appropriate. My point is that Hitler had an unusually aggressive ideology. One could have been tempted to write it off as rethorics, as many people of that time indeed did, but by 1938 it should have been fairly clear that he was interested in implementing it for real.
Maybe. My impression was that antisemitism was alive and well among the non-highly-educated majority of the population. But I’m not very sure about it. (In countries other than Germany, like Poland, Ukraine and Russia, antisemitism was definitely as bad as Hitler’s.)
Your observation and V_V’s don’t actually contradict each other: for example in parts of the present-day western world homophobia is alive and well among the non-highly-educated majority of the population but it’s unusual to publicily express these opinions.
There’s at least one more error—the idea that you can tell in advance what “fitness” is going to be, so that you can select among human traits to optimize for the future.
> Except that he had written a book detailing his deranged political plan that he had then been > following to the letter. “Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.”—the famous 2005 speech.
Without condoning, I think I understand his point: Soviet Union was a multi-ethinic country dominated by a Russian ethnic majority (partially due to deliberate ethnic cleansing and genocide).
When Soviet Union collapsed, it was precipitously broken up along administrative or historical internal borders, without giving much thought to the ethnic compositions of the countries that were formed. Russians who found themselves cut off from Russia went overnight from being the dominant ethnicity to being an ethnical minority. I guess they didn’t like it.
Putin has a platform based on Russian nationalism, hence catering to the plight of the “co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory” is natural to him. It panders to his electorate and, should he indeed succeed to annex them, he could probably count them as his supporters.
All of this seems consistent with Putin wanting to annex Russophones, as I said in my comment upthread. He certainly isn’t ranting about a divine mission to destroy “the Jew” and reclaim the Lebensraum for a Thousand-Year Empire.
Replace “Soviet Union” with “Austro-Hungarian Empire” and “Russians” with “Germans” and you have a decent description of the ethnic situation before WWII.
Ok, but his platform then logically includes taking the former Baltic republics, probably big chunks out of central asian republics, and depending on the reading parts of Brooklyn also. There are lots of Han Chinese in all sorts of places. There are lots of mexicans in California. > I guess they didn’t like it. You treat the local opinion as monolithic, your analysis is superficial.
So what? He certaily can’t take parts of Brooklyn, most likely he can’t take even parts of the Baltic republics, which are members of the NATO, EU, Schengen Area, Eurozone, etc. Taking them would cause much greater disruption to Western European and American interests than taking Crimea or Donetsk.
He may indeed take parts of the central asian republics, if China lets him.
Which makes this an issue between Russia and China, not Western Europe.
I’m not exactly expecting columns of Mexican tanks rolling into California any time soon, do you?
It’s a first-order approximation. Do the Scottish people want independence from the UK? Well some do and some don’t, no true Scotsman in its literal form. And yet, they will soon have a referendum and if the majority votes for indepdendence, Scotland will be an independent country.
Currently that is all he is openly or semi-openly taking action on. As for what he is interested in, he is on record as calling the collapse of the Soviet Union “a major geopolitical disaster of the century”. It seems clear that he wants to restore all of that territory. All else is tactics.
Ruling with an iron fist on an “uncooperative” population (if they don’t actively fight, what will their “uncooperation” get them?) is what Russia does. It did that through the years of the Soviet Union, and before that under the Tsars, when it was described (by the Soviets, no less) as “the prison of nations”. Plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose.
Prediction: within five years, there will be separatist unrest in all of the places you mentioned, fanned (but not openly) by Putin.
I find the opposing interpretation to be more credible, good write-up of it here.
In this conflict Germany wants negotiate a deal that accepts a Russian Crimea in exchange for Ukrainian control of the rest of Russia and the US oppose such a deal. Germany has a stronger interest in keeping the Russian gas pipelines active than it has in whether or not Russia controls Crimea.
Defending an EU country like Finland would have a completely different priority. I doubt that Germany would have a huge problem with Russia taking over Belarus either. Minsk is anyway badly governed.
Bismark might be a better comparison then 1938-39.
I don’t think the key problem is US unwillingness to fight but the unwillingness to engage in diplomacy make a deal that gives Russia officially Crimea in exchange for keeping the rest of Ukraine under the control of Kiev.
No. Bluffing is a key part of US foreign policy. If you frequently bluff than you don’t have fences.
Obama also gets something from the conflict. EU nations who are angry at the US for NSA spying don’t act on that anger because the have to show strength in the conflict with Russia and an EU US conflict would produce weakness. It increases the chances of getting an EU-US free trade agreement.
I really don’t think it’s a coordination problem. I think it’s a will problem.
The Cold War ended with economical victory of the West, and memetic victory of the Soviets. The economical defeat led to collapse of the Soviet empire. The memetic defeat results in the lack of will we see today.
It was a huge strategic mistake after the fall of communism not to use the opportunity to expose the crimes of the regime, and to remove the important people from power, just like it was done with Nazis. For example in Slovakia, the communists still have the power; they have to compete for it in democratic election and sometimes they lose, but they still have the advantage of decades of unopposed brainwashing on their side, and the skills and contacts of the former secret service. These days, Slovakia is technically a member of EU, but our government is communist, the prime minister is openly pro-Russian, the majority catholic church focuses on fighting homosexuality and liberalism, and some of my “friends” on facebook still insist that Ukrainians are attacking themselves, Russians are only trying to protect the innocent victims, and the evil Americans are spreading propaganda to start the war because that’s all those evil mercenaries ever do, unlike us, peaceful Slavic brothers. So… this is one EU country, which happens to share a border with Ukraine. We will not be helpful, because we are already conquered memetically.
You can’t just go in an remove important people from power. That would have needed a military invasion at a time where it wasn’t clear who controls which nuclear weapons.
I think you overstate that case. A lot of former Soviet countries like Poland aren’t pro-Russian. Poland has 38 million citizens while Slovakia has 5.5.
Given Russian/Polish history, if communist propaganda were strong enough to make Poland pro-Russia, the communists would have taken over the world.
Poland was Eastern-bloc, yes. It was not a part of the Soviet Union since WW2 wound down.
The same is true of Slovakia. It was part of Czechoslovakia.
I use Soviet country to mean, a country which political structure is build on Soviets as opposed to a representative democracy.
I’m aware of Slovakia’s origin, having visited Czechoslovakia. I’m not sure where I implied anything different.
Sorry for being pedantic.
(why the downvote, whoever? Was it belief I was lying about visiting Czechoslovakia? Believe it or not, the country did exist under that name during my lifetime. Was it suspicion of my being sarcastic in my apology? I was not.)
Which memetic victory? Marxism/communism/Soviet ideology pretty much imploded after the fall of the USSR. Look at what China did. I think it was a total memetic loss for the Soviets.
First, whose mistake and who would have been doing the removing?
Second, it depends on the country. I think that in Russia the old Soviet “important people” were effectively removed. The new political elite is not the old political elite.
In my country, our mistake, of course. People were too idealistic during the “Velvet Revolution”. We thought that just publicly ending the evil regime is enough, that we can just forgive everyone and have a fresh start. And that the bad guys will be happy for being forgiven (instead of e.g. executed for their crimes) and they will live peacefully.
Yeah… they just waited for a year or two to make sure there is no will to punish them… and then they returned to the power. Since most of the judges or policemen or people in any position of influence except for parliament (because all our attention was focused there) were former communists, it wasn’t even difficult. They just had to wait for hedonic adaptation, and blame all the problems on lack of socialism, and then win one election. Then they removed all their opponents from the public media and used the media for propaganda. And used the loyal secret service against political opponents.
I don’t know about situation in Russia. Just saying that it’s not enough to remove the visible people in parliament. It is also important to remove communists from the justice and secret service. Otherwise, you get new faces, connected to the old less visible people.
I would disagree, many of the former soviet republics are full of old communists or those who were ascending the party ranks right at the end.
First, I explicitly said “Russia”, not USSR.
Second, of course there are a lot of old communists. In the Soviet era if you wanted to make any kind of a career you had to be one. LOTS of people were communists. What do you think happened to the rank and file of the CPSU? Answer: nothing, they’re still around and still ambitious.
What happened to the rank and file members of the Nazi party after WWII?
Nothing much, I think. Of course, a lot were killed during the war, but those who survived went through denazificaton and remained normal members of the German society.
Thank you for proving my point.
And yet the current head of the EU is a not-quite-repentant former Soviet apologist.
Samuel Huntington would be cheering if he were alive because he predicted that this is what would happen. We would have a multi-polar world and that a great deal of that polarity would be based on ethnicity and he used the Slavic countries as a prime example. The downside is he predicted a lot of small scale conflict under this system which we are seeing.
Absolutely, not only is there a Will problem you have a classic war weariness quotient in the US and UK and the EU to be perfectly blunt as we showed in Libya no longer has the resources to meaningfully put up a fight in a large scale and meaningful way. How the EU continues to actually make its NATO commitments is interesting because all in all Europe needs to re-arm itself to a certain degree and I think that program needs to happen right away. Not only is Austerity a terrible disaster but so is the EU military situation. One might also notice the silence from Ban-Ki Moon on this.
Yeah, yeah. It’s always 1939, the bad guy du jour is always Hitler. Assad is Hitler, Putin is Hitler, Saddam was Hitler, Qaddafi was Hitler.
The warmongers really need to get a new routine, people aren’t falling for it anymore.
But perhaps it really is always 1939. Or, to be even more glib, what you are saying sounds to me much like:
OK, let’s be serious. Let’s say that “being Hitler” means going on an ever-increasing campaign of conquest against neighbouring countries that results in a very damaging war. We could note that this kind of behaviour was very common prior to the Napoleonic Wars (Napoleon, Frederick the Great, Charles XII, Louis XIV, Wallenstein, Philip II, Suleiman I, etc etc). Since the Napoleonic Wars, there have been a number of international frameworks more-or-less explicitly devoted to prevent “Hitlers,” and which have had some success. However, IR is basically anarchy, which means that when actors fail to abide by the rules of those international framework, forcing them in line means war.
There haven’t been a lot of “Hitlers” in recent years. But at least part of the reason that the people you call “warmongers” nipped the likes of Saddam, Milosevic, Galtieri, etc in the bud. For example, Saddam was definitely on the Hitler path in 1991, and what stopped him was western military intervention. And not only did this intervention stop him, but it acted as a warning to other leaders who might be considering more bellicose action, and helped reinforce the rules and norms of our peaceful international framework.
But this commitment is forever being tested, because leaders get glory through war. Consider that the fame and popularity of American Presidents has been shown to be higher the more Americans who die in military combat in their term in office (!) and then multiply that for more bellicose societies such as Russia. A peaceful world requires constant vigilance.
In the current case, it’s clear that Putin is engaged in an aggressive campaign of conquest against his neighbours (not merely in Ukraine). It’s not clear where this will stop. It’s clear that every victory strengthens Putin’s domestic position and emboldens him for the next step. This is the classic “Hitlerian” path, and everyone from Hillary Clinton to Prince Charles has noted it. That doesn’t mean the West should necessarily intervene (maybe the costs are greater than the benefits) but it’s pretty obvious why the comparison is so widely made. I’d say the ‘routine’ that no-one is falling for is the Panglossian one that Putin isn’t a predator—with each new Russian outrage, it becomes harder and harder to sustain.
I haven’t heard the (potential) interventions against Qaddafi and Assad justified on the same grounds. There, the justification is usually a combination of (1) humanitarian and (2) preventing failed states, which is rather different.
...AND end up on the losing side of history.
That’s an important addendum because sometimes you go on an ever-increasing campaign of conquest against neighbouring countries that results in many damaging wars, establish a successful empire, impose a Pax Romana, and, basically live happily ever after. People who succeed at this aren’t usually called Hitlers.
Okay… that has also declined a lot recently. I don’t see the result being any different.
But you also have to remember that there is not the history between the US and these other regimes the way it is between the US and Russia. Putin is an old communist and he remembers the old days, he remembers them very well and he wants them back. Putin and his cronies chafed in the 90′s under Pax Americana and now they have their chance to shake up the international order rather than conform to the American lead way of doing things and I think he is of the opinion that if it doesn’t happen now there won’t be another chance for a generation.
1938: “Just give him the parts of Czechoslovakia he wants. Yeah, annexing a part of other country is wrong, but a minority speaking his language lives there, so, uhm, he kinda has a good reason. More importantly, we have a good reason to believe he will stop there. Just let’s not be the bad guys who fight over nothing. Everything will be fine when he gets what he wants, he is a reasonable guy.”
2014: “Just give him the parts of Ukraine he wants. Yeah, annexing a part of other country is wrong, but a minority speaking his language lives there, so, uhm, he kinda has a good reason. More importantly, we have a good reason to believe he will stop there. Just let’s not be the bad guys who fight over nothing. Everything will be fine when he gets what he wants, he is a reasonable guy.”
The analogies are much deeper here than merely “he is a guy we don’t like, therefore Hitler”. Things that happen inside Russia are also very disturbing—I am trying to ignore politics, and I usually don’t care about what happens in Russia, but some news still get to me—Putin’s supporters are openly nationalist, racist, homophobic, pretty much everything you associate with fascism, he has a strong support of the Orthodox Church, journalists who criticize him are assassinated. (Someone living in Russia would be more qualified to write about this.) The only way he could lose an election would be against someone who is even more like this. Winning a symbolic war against the West will only make him more popular.
To test how strong is this analogy, we should make bets like: Conditional on Putin successfully annexing a part of territory of Ukraine, what is the probability of Russia attacking another country within 1, 3, 5, 10 years? Which country will it be?
All of these things also apply to the other examples I mentioned, and many other countries besides. People said the same things about Saddam, Qaddafi, Assad, etc. Putin is of course saying similar things about his Ukrainian enemies to what you are saying about him. (Admittedly, they make it easy for him.)
There is no shortage of historical examples of historical revanchism, yet the “Hitler in 1939” analogy utterly dominates. So why rely 100% on one analogy. Why insist on using the example that is the closest stand-in for “evil psychopath who cannot be reasoned with, but must be destroyed utterly?”
Probably because you’re in the midst of a media driven two-minutes hate. History begins and ends with Hitler, 1939!
(Seriously, your standard for being Hitleresque is being racist, homophobic, and nationalistic? It might be a fun exercise for you to write down a list of 100 historical leaders, determine how many were/were not racist, homophobic, or nationalistic. This will give you your Hitler/non-Hitler ratio. Do you think the ratios of Hitlers : non-Hitlers is greater or less than 1?)
This situation is optimized for media, but exactly in the opposite way. The whole attack is divided into many incremental steps. Each small step is not enough to evoke a military response from the West. Then there is a pause, until media stop paying attention and find something else to care about. Then another small step.
(Remember the first step? Russian soldiers without uniforms in Ukraine territory, not yet openly fighting anyone, just carrying weapons and looking intimidating. So, what are you going to do about it? First, there is no war yet, and second, they even deny being Russian. Calm down, everyone, calm down, nothing to see here. -- A few steps later it’s obvious there are Russian troops there, but we already kinda knew it for months, so why the sudden overreaction today? Calm down, everyone, calm down, nothing new is happening here.)
This is how you overcome the Schelling point—by doing a calculated very small step, and then calling your opponent irrational if he wants to react.
Dividing something in many incremental steps that each are newsworthy generally means that the whole things gets more media attention than if you do everything at once.
Wikileaks for example didn’t release all the cables at once but purposefully spread them out over a time to give them more media attention.
This Yes, Prime Minster video is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX_d_vMKswE
Not just being nationalistic, not just being expansionist, but actually taking territory.
I would guess that more than half of all rulers in history took others’ territory, or tried to and failed. And being nationalistic goes without saying ever since the invention of nationalism.
The specific tactic of nibbling on your neighbors one bit at a time, varying your speed depending on international reactions, was used by Hitler but also by many others. Calling a common behavior Hitleresque isn’t useful.
There are good reasons for comparing Germany in 1938 with Russia in 2014, but I don’t think these are among them.
And more than half of all the rulers in history would find themselves really really out of place in the modern world if they tried to do the same things they did in their historical contexts, and we would rather not have to deal with them.
A rather low bar to get over, there.
I don’t think Hitler was very unusual among rulers of, say, the post-Napoleonic epoch of 1814-1945. He was just first unusually successful (making many enemies) and then unusually thoroughly defeated and occupied (allowing those enemies to make his name particularly infamous).
But Russia still has a “democratic” political structure, everyone off course knows that it’s not like this in reality and only one party exists. But soon in 2018 there’ll be new president elections and that’s last term for Putin. Uncertainty that’s what we will get for sure
I’m living in Russia however I don’t watch TV and read newspapers, but I can say for sure, that Russian Invaders are proclaimed heroes, and NATO guys as Evil. And It’s not a surprise for me that on the other side of the Globe opinion is exactly the contrary. My personal view of the problem is that Putin and Obama are both worth each other, they are strong leaders and will they never stop if there is a chance to gain more power. Situation in Ukraine is imho this—Ukranian side completely entangled in their own problems, and they thought that it was Russia who they must blame and gone comletely nuts, then West gave them weapons and so on
Too much globalization (russialization in this case) is hard to contol, Russia has enormous territory, we already got Crimea which is a port, and got unfriendly response from the world. I expect things to calm down for next 4 years I assume probability of 5% of the invasion to any other country
As someone in America, I can tell you the idea of calling Obama a “strong leader” sounds hilarious.
Would you mind tabooing what you mean by “racist” (and possibly also “nationalist” and “homophobic”) and why your definition is bad, there is currently a long debate in another thread on this very subject.
Things like the Nashi movement, and laws against LGBT people.
Yes, there is the irony that Nashi is officially an “anti-fascist” movement. To understand this, it is necessary to know the connotations these words have in the former communist countries, as propaganda shaped them for decades. Shortly: anything associated with former Soviet Union and her satellites is “socialist”, and anything associated with West is “fascist”. It’s like yin and yang for everything; e.g. collectivism is “socialist” and entrepreneurship is “fascist”, but also being ethinically Russian or at least Slavic is more central to the concept of “socialist”, and the idea of human rights (other than the right to live happily and obediently under a socialist government) is kinda “fascist”, because it goes against the power of the collective.
So a person who doesn’t think about this too deeply (you know, most of the population) can identify themselves as “anti-fascist” and mean: “I hate entrepreneurs, homosexuals; and everyone who is not ethnically Russian/Slav should go away from this country”. Having read a few articles about the Nashi, this is more or less the meaning they use.
(This is a point I would like to emphasise as often as possible—though usually I don’t, respecting the LW’s attitude to politics—that the ideas of “left” or “socialism” in former Soviet countries are so completely unlike their versions in the West. It is just a result of successful propaganda and suppressing the flow of information that makes most leftists in the West believe otherwise. If you take a typical Nazi, reduce his hate of Jews by 80%, and convert him using the chronophone to a post-Soviet culture, this is what passes as “left” here.)
Looking at the article, I don’t see what specifically you’re considering “racist”. It would help if you stated your definition. Ok, it would help even more if you didn’t through around words commonly used by SJW’s to mean “anyone I disagree with”.
You mean like the laws every country had until maybe a couple decades ago?
So are the Russian creating an overarching recreational organization and bringing all private clubs under its control?
Better.
To taboo the SJW-like words, here is what I mean: worship of physical power, enthusiasm about war, emphasis on reproduction of purebloods, agression against people different from the norm.
Yes, Nashi is impressively scary. Kudos for reading up on them.
Britain tried embracing foreigners even ones who had no interest in assimilating. This was the result.
Those are just two different ways of judging people by their ethnicity instead of by their individual actions.
My idea would be something like: Do whatever you want as long as you follow the law. When you break the law, go to jail.
Except that in this case the police and social workers weren’t willing to enforce the law for fear of being called “racist”. More generally, the law is only as strong as the will and ability of people to enforce it.
Genghis Khan was Hitler, Julius Caesar was Hitler, Hernán Cortés was Hitler. Adverse selection in the political process often favors leaders who really enjoy taking other peoples’ stuff. Also, comparing some aspects of Putin to Hitler (as Kasparov did) doesn’t mean you think Putin=Hitler. Putin, thankfully, doesn’t seem to enjoy killing for its own sake.
Neither did Hitler. He always had extrinsic goals to be achieved by killing. Often those were quite admirable goals if you accepted extreme partisanship for the German people at the expense of everyone else. (Not always; he suppressed domestic opposition ruthlessly, but it was nothing in comparison to his treatment of non-Germans and no different from most other states at the time.)
I hesitate to make 1938-1939 comparisons because the world situation is far different now than then especially because of globalization. I do however agree with Kasparov the longer Putin gets away with this the more emboldened both the Kremlin and his troops will be. The problem here is two fold: The US is war weary after 10 years of doing Iraq and Afghanistan and Obama going to the country to put boots on the ground is a dicey decision and economically now isn’t a great time to do that.
However, I think there are some deterrents you could do:
If I were President Cowan I would have already moved 30K troops into German for a little german vacation. I would also move some assets into place in the Gulf of Alaska. You know just routine troop movements and it would look very threatening and it might make Putin start thinking twice. The best way to get an enemy to stop doing something is to get them worried because then their own fear will either make them do something stupid that you can exploit or they will cease and desist. I might also start an economic war by asking the FED to dump a few billion Rubles into the world economy just to see what happens. Frankly, its time to get Machiavellian.
Do you really think that if your two problems were absent—if the US were not war-weary and if the economy were doing great—then the US would be ready to put boots on the ground in Russia?
To quote a fellow named Vizzini, You fell victim to one of the classic blunders—The most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” X-D
I think it would look pretty silly and would give Putin a mighty political gift. He’d point a finger at your troops and yell that the American warmongers are preparing to invade Mother Russia—and that’s all he would need to really unite all the population behind him.
I don’t think the Fed has a few billion Rubles. And my guess as to what would happen is that Putin will close the taps on the oil and gas flowing into Europe, Germany in particular. Frau Merkel would be most displeased, I would think.
Yes I think in a different scenario the US would be more hawkish on Russia without War weariness and better economic conditions. This is basic war theory.
You are right, Putin could certain point at increased troops in Germany as the West getting ready for war and it might lead to mobilization, however, as Putin is in no mood and Russia is in no economic condition for a protracted war with the West I think it would have the correct provocative effect. I don’t think Putin would slow down but it would make everyone at the Kremlin think twice. I would keep them there for about 3 months and then send them home.
The Fed has a few billion rubles because all global trade accounts must balance and the Federal Reserves keeps vast quantities of every trading partners currency so that trade accounts will balance, they can re-buy American debt in local currency, and for stability of global markets. So yes, you could dump a few billion rubles by re-buying certain amounts of American debt from China and paying for it in Rubles.
What is this I don’t even
Basically, the Fed as apart of the global central banking system keeps various currencies on hand for global trade purposes. Ergo you could dump those back in the market.
Does it, now? Actually keeps “currencies on hand”? Or maybe we’re talking about FX swap lines?
Can you provide a like to e.g. a Fed balance sheet that shows “a few billion rubles”?
I cannot say/find information on what exactly they keep on hand these days. However, the currency swap lines can be created literally at will which they did during the 2008 crisis. Also, if you look at the case of Leo Wanta, who armed with 2.7 Trillion dollars destabilized the Soviet economy with FX swaps in Brussels between 1989 and 1991.
Yes, but when you have an FX swap line, you don’t own the foreign currency, you only have a facility to get some in exchange for yours. In your example, for the Fed to attempt to devalue the ruble it would have to get it first from someone (likely, the Central Bank of Russia), effectively buying it for dollars—thus defeating the entire point of the exercise.
The case of Leo Wanta doesn’t seem to support your claims.
You can trade American debt for Rubles from a Russian trading partner like the EU. Also, I would google more general information about Leo Wanta. Your reference doesn’t actually talk about what he did.