Europe at War

[BasilValentine]

Well said, and it's exactly what my physician friend from Poland said;  he lived under Soviet domination for the first 40 years of his life.  He said about the Russian people,"they can't help it - that's how they are".

Lest anybody becomes misty-eyed and dreamy about Marxism and Communism.....not like the numb-nuts who appeared before HUAC!!  Body bags were being filled outside America and these dim-wits frolicked with communism in the arts.  You couldn't make it up!! And then they bawled because their arses were hauled before the American people.  Armchair revolutionaries.

How nice! Someone nostalgic for the McCarthy era. Oh ... and they did make a lot of it up before they (HUAC) were dragged off the stage and consigned to the cesspool of history.

[Florestan]

     I don't think NATO will recede from significance to Europeans, or that German leadership will be unwelcome. Risk is relative, and for Russia to be less of a threat than a well integrated democratic Germany a great deal would have to change first. From the US perspective both the Atlantic and Pacific side of the alliance system should be secure as can be. There's no point in absolute binary thinking about this. The significance of Taiwan, S. Korea, and Japan doesn't go down because Europe goes up, or vice versa.

     Alliances that protect member states are less provocative than weak states on the border of an aggressor state. The absence of NATO is more dangerous than the presence. Putin disagrees, as do anti-anti-Putinists. What do Russians think? As far as I can tell, the majority agree with me. Ukraine doesn't threaten them. They live with NATO states on the border just fine.

Agreed on all counts. There can be no secure Europe without US, there can be no secure US without Europe. There is no alternative to NATO other than complete chaos worldwide. Talks about an European defense force outside NATO are extremely naive and play directly into the hands of Russia.

[Todd]

There is no alternative to NATO other than complete chaos worldwide.

A classic false dichotomy. 

[drogulus]

Agreed on all counts. There can be no secure Europe without US, there can be no secure US without Europe. There is no alternative to NATO other than complete chaos worldwide. Talks about an European defense force outside NATO are extremely naive and play directly into the hands of Russia.

     What motive would induce NATO to disengage from the US? I have already addressed the issue that motivates the US, which is that the strength of the alliance system can't be argued out of by implying that defense motivates aggressors more than lack of defense does. But, people do argue like that, of course. Putin does, for example. Maybe we should believes his words more than his actions. I don't. The cooperator nations will continue to cooperate against the defectors for reasons that make sense at the pragmatic level. Alliances are stronger than the separate parts alone.

[drogulus]

     'Yes, He Would': Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes

[drogulus]

"NATO is not going to be part of the conflict," Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. "So NATO is not going to send troops into Ukraine or move planes into Ukrainian airspace."

     

     To be crystal clear, the planes NATO absolutely will not move are Mig-29s, which by coincidence Ukes know how to fly, and the country with unmovable-by-NATO jets is notorious for kielbasa.

     Now I read the deal may not go through, or not immediately. It involves third parties and politics, and the complexities of air defense by countries that don't have huge air forces.

[Mandryka]

St. Jeremy Corbyn

https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1498629995572441098

[Karl Henning]

     'Yes, He Would': Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes

The journalism is yellowing.

[drogulus]

The journalism is yellowing.

     I thought it was an interesting interview with someone who knows Putin and Russia very well. I don't think Putin will order a tactical nuke launch, and I doubt the military would obey such an order.

[Karl Henning]

     I thought it was an interesting interview with someone who knows Putin and Russia very well. I don't think Putin will order a tactical nuke launch, and I doubt the military would obey such an order.

I don't doubt the interest. "Yes, he would" is an icon for the irresponsibility rampant among today's journos.

[amw]

Not that anyone cares in particular what I have to say, but in reviewing the evidence for the theory that Putin and the West are operating in one another's mutual interest here, I have to say it's fairly convincing.

For example:
- in 2021 Jens Stoltenberg reiterated an offer for Ukraine to begin its process of accession to NATO, which had already been made at previous NATO summits. The delays in joining NATO were almost entirely due to Ukrainian inaction. They evidently didn't see a need to join the organisation.
- in general, the relevance of NATO has been perceived to be in decline; people in many Western countries openly question the necessity of remaining part of the alliance, and of course, as Trump famously complained, member states do not contribute sufficiently.
- due to this perceived irrelevance of NATO, the Russian-led "counter-bloc" CSTO has also been considered largely irrelevant, and to an even greater degree.
- both the USA and Russia are perceived as declining powers, although Russia more so; it is now perfectly normal for numerous countries to have no formal alliances with, or economic dependence upon, either one

Yet as a result of this war, regardless of the outcome:
- NATO suddenly regains its relevance. An existential threat to the existing order of things is now present, and therefore countries that previously had only a mild interest in joining the alliance or allying with it may now feel pressured into doing so
- CSTO also suddenly regains its relevance. NATO cannot be allowed to dictate world policy, and therefore countries that had previously displayed only mild friendliness towards Russia may now feel pressured into allying with it
- Regardless of whether Russia is victorious or not, high casualty counts and the resulting refugee crisis cement it as being still a military power of great importance, which can maintain a qualitative military edge over its neighbours. Regardless of whether Ukraine is victorious or not, Western countries can cement themselves as also being military powers by proxy (esp those that usually don't participate in wars: Germany, Sweden, etc) through shipping massive amounts of advanced weapons into the country and then claiming either that the Ukrainian victory was due to these weapons, or that the Ukrainian defeat would have been even more severe without these weapons.
- Images of mass destruction of infrastructure and military equipment can be claimed by both sides as proof that their weapons are more effective, seeing as no proof can be satisfactorily obtained indicating which side committed which atrocity.
- The effects of the economic warfare have largely ended up helping Russian, European and American oligarchs in the short term, and probably the long term, as the main result was an increase in oil prices.

But probably most saliently:
- Two weeks ago, the world economy was on the threshold of recession, caused primarily by fiscal policy, along with the continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which various world governments had all collectively decided was "over" and "not worth paying attention to anymore". These causes for recession would normally be guaranteed to turn people against their own governments. Now, since the world's entire attention is focused on the war, once the recession does begin, the Russians will be able to blame America & the EU, and the Americans and Europeans will be able to blame Russia.

I don't imagine Putin, Biden and Stoltenberg were hanging out in a smoke-filled room making a deal to arrange a war for economic and political purposes. I imagine Putin (or more likely whatever set of advisors and government officials are truly responsible for this) planned out a complicated version of what has, for some reason, been named the Batman Gambit. Everything here was planned on the assumption that NATO (et al.) wanted war in Ukraine for various reasons, and would decide that the economic and political advantages were worth sacrificing millions of Ukrainians, and that assumption has been correct so far.

If this seems completely irrational, note that Putin's approval rating in Russia has shot up by at least ten percentage points relative to before the war. I expect European leaders will see similar increases. General Smedley Butler had a similar hypothesis about a century ago.

Am I entirely convinced? Not sure. I don't know nearly enough about the economic side of things, whether a recession really was inevitable etc. But it's notable that if this is accurate, the failure condition for Putin, Biden and Stoltenberg (and most of the various other world leaders involved in this) is an immediate ceasefire and a political solution to the conflict that doesn't require any NATO involvement, and that's what has felt like the best possible outcome from the beginning.

[JBS]

I have to disagree vehemently with that.
Putin went to war in the belief that he would get as little blowback as he had for usurping the Crimea or backing Assad. The Europeans were jolted into action because they had persuaded themselves the age of armed invasion was over and were suprised to find it wasn't.

Blaming oligarchs and arms manufacturing for wars is much too simplistic and reductionist (a common problem in Leftist discourse). Putin seems to quite sincerely want a revived Russian Empire, with himself in charge, something a simple analysis who gets paid for what leaves out.

[BasilValentine]

The journalism is yellowing.

I wouldn't discount what Hill is saying. Putin and the Russian military have gamed out the use of nuclear weapons in various scenarios and if things get sticky in the Ukraine campaign a tactical nuke strike is in the playbook. 

[amw]

Putin seems to quite sincerely want a revived Russian Empire, with himself in charge, something a simple analysis who gets paid for what leaves out.

Assuming that's true, that goal is completely consistent with the interests of an expanded, more powerful American empire (NATO). Without NATO, Russia becomes a country in decline, practically irrelevant even to its neighbours, with China and the EU gradually taking over its entire sphere of influence. With a strong NATO Russia can convince its various satellite states/former Soviet republics/etc that it's in their interests to join or ally with a renewed Russian empire (CSTO), lest they be the ones facing sanctions and economic warfare in the near future.

Essentially, one could view the whole thing as an attempt to rebalance things in favour of a "Russia vs. America axis" of political power, rather than the "China vs. Everyone Else axis" that has been gradually developing over the last three decades.

[Karl Henning]

I wouldn't discount what Hill is saying. Putin and the Russian military have gamed out the use of nuclear weapons in various scenarios and if things get sticky in the Ukraine campaign a tactical nuke strike is in the playbook. 

I see that. I also see that Putin has played US journos before. Someone's pulling strings, and it's not Hill.

[drogulus]

      NATO does not seek the relevance it has. Left alone, its relevance would tend to decline almost as much as certain detractors would like. Democracies are slow to react to danger. One can consult history, a real thing.

     Putin's horror of NATO and democratic states on the Russian border is not consistent with the theory that he wants NATO as an excuse for his actions. He doesn't need an excuse to invade a prosperous democratic Ukraine, which is itself a threat to his rule and his ambition to restore Russian imperial glory.

[Que]

Not that anyone cares in particular what I have to say, but in reviewing the evidence for the theory that Putin and the West are operating in one another's mutual interest here, I have to say it's fairly convincing.

I'm very curious where you get these theories from?

[drogulus]

I'm very curious where you get these theories from?

     We are all pawns of hidden forces with plans so devious and malevolent that only crankish wingnuts can figure them out. The mainstream media won't tell you this, which proves it's true.

[Karl Henning]

     We are all pawns of hidden forces with plans so devious and malevolent that only crankish wingnuts can figure them out. The mainstream media won't tell you this, which proves it's true.

Dang! I knew it!

[Mirror Image]

"We stand united with Ukraine!"