Tooze's article here is by far the worst of those I have read recently - reality for Putin is damned if he did, damned if he didn't. More specifically, Measheimer is only one of numerous famous strategic thinkers/diplomats who pinpointed blame on NATO expansion and predicted the exact mess today. They include George Kennan, Kissinger, Jack Matlock (who literally is the horse's mouth), William Perry, Bill Burns, Malcolm Fraser, Paul Keating, Bob Gates, Pat Buchanan, etc. etc. and I have not included even a single "leftie/Ruskie"! See list including reference compiled here: https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592
Tooze's thesis also damns Measheimer without offering any sensible cogent solution Putin might have employed whatsoever - after all, Putin did try peaceful means for no less than 8 years - what exactly could he have done to turn the tide in the face of US/NATO encirclement, sponsored coup in 2014/regime change/colour revolution/arab spring, and proxy war in Donbas etc.? Just more waiting hoping US woke up one day regretting their disastrous, deadly "mission for democracy" around the world?
Why is Ukraine joining NATO and the EU something that Putin needed to "do something" about, unless it has a birthright to rule imperialistically over its neighbors? None of the other Eastern European countries feel like NATO encirclement was an existential threat, because they're not led by an irredentist, kleptocratic dictator seeking to restore his empire.
The answer to your question is the same as why Kennedy embargoed Cuba, and why he nearly triggered WW3 during the Cuban missile crisis. Also ask yourself the question, what would US have done if, for the sake of argument, Putin managed to turn Venezuela, Mexico etc. into military allies with missiles pointing at US, or copying what US is doing to China today by sailing warships around US coasts on a monthly basis? If you haven't heard about it before, I would suggest you do some research on the Monroe Doctrine, and how US had applied it consistently for decades giving rise to numerous wars, regime changes, deaths and destruction in their backyard.
So the US was right to overthrow Allende/Sandinistas etc? I don't understand.
I would also argue that a Russian alliance of irredentist dictatorships next to the US would in fact be a threat, while the EU/NATO is not. I think it's what they call a false equivalence!
You've watched to much RT dude, Putin doesn't care about NATOs military "closing in", if he's not truly crazy, for god's sake Latvia is already pretty much as close to Moscow as Ukraine. NATO could place nukes there now but they won't since that would be an actual new "Cuba crisis" which a possible Ukraine NATO membership CEARLY IS NOT. Russia has 6000k nukes NATO is not gonna invade. Putin didn't want to loose soft power over Ukraine and the possibility of military inavsion, it's that simple.
How, in anyway, is Russia surrounded? Russias western border with FSU now Nato states is a tiny percentage of its total border with foreign countries. Additionally, you didn’t even address his question. Your argument takes all agency away from independent states and infantilizes their ability to make decisions. Plus, your examples are absolutely ridiculous. “What if this…what if that…”, unless the US becomes a northern neighbor that wishes to incorporate Mexico by force into a NA empire, when would that ever happen? In what reality does Mexico or Canada align with Russia militarily? You are arguing in bad faith. It’s called freedom of navigation. A provision most sane countries are quite fine with. You are the one that is uninformed. Russia regularly, and blatantly, sends military spy vessels to scout US territory. Oh, and here we go, on and on about 200 years of American wrong doings because you can’t engaged with question directly.
Your comment is out of the context thus dishonest. The work on NATO enlargement took place right after E. Europe became capitalist, right around 1990s , way before Putin took power in Russia. As I have read Wikileaks about it, the major rationale was given not as defense against Russia (at the time) but as alliance to foster security and increase sales of NATO grade weapons (thus the US make) to the region. That's the historical fact. Russia also wanted to become a part of NATO under Yeltsin but they were refused by Clinton. Clinton actually made a NATO enlargement a domestic political issue ( he brought this point during electioneering here in Illinois trying to appeal to Polish diaspora here).
I don't think you can say "that's the fact" about NATO expansion at all. In fact it seems extraordinarily reductive. I encourage you to view the first five minutes of a discussion with the authority on this subject Mary Sarotte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUvXrCm90Bk.
I think it is the fact as internal cables have brought it up and you are talking about the cooks in the kitchen here vs writer/analysts writing about what the kitchen business is about. It always amazes me that wherever anyone opines on foreign policy issues they rather refer to the facts that fit their argument but not vice versa. I am familiar with Sarotte's argument and I agree that nothing is monocausal however the issue of the NATO enlargement is pivotal when it comes to the situation where we are here right now, especially taking into account NATO actions since early 1990s. Yes we can have the conversation about what if, until the pro-verbial cows come home (I think this is Sarotte's argument environ) however we are right here and right now in situation where we are in. If the NATO enlargement would have included Russia ( highly doubtful considering the US military industrial complex opposition to the idea) things would definitely be different. That said Putin was made possible because of Yeltsin and policies that actually helped Putin to gain power. Also if I can suggest something to you it would be this: be very careful of people who are considered "authorities" on anything. Listen to the validity of argument and then check sources and historical context to get to the right point. That's not to say that Sarotte's doesn't have valid points but I only wish that any attempt to dismantle Mearsheimer argument met his own on the merit and quality of the discourse. So far, none have.
Sure, I'd like to think I'm a discriminating reader thanks very much :) I agree that including Russia in a collective security agreement or NATO would have been and continues to be a smart move. In your view why would this be anathema to the powers that be? Bad for buisness?
This won't happen for two reasons: 1) Russia to be admitted to NATO would have to be reformulated into something what Brzezinski wrote in his insane wet dream vision for the country. 2) If you look at the US domestic political class set up that actually decides what the NATO is, it would have to be revamped into something that compliments our financial industrial military complex rather than competes with it. Yes business and $ is part of this equation here but not all. There would have to be a generational change as well at play and to be honest I don't see it in the US. I see it in Russia/China but I don't necessarily think what comes out of this at the end of the process is good either.
Of course USA and others wanted to sell guns and get some soft power through NATO. However nations joined knowing they would probably have very good protection if the slumbering bear in the east ever woke up, or do you think they just liked buying guns?
Peaceful means for 8 years wtf, Putin practically started the civil war in donbas and supported it with russian troops, anexed Crimea which already was an autonomous republic, sigh.
This is pretty fuzzy, no? I mean it is hard to see Putin’s takeover of the Crimea and his use of Russian military forces in Donbas as “peaceful.” And one can respect what Kaplan and others call the geographical imperative (The Revenge of Geography) as meaningful and still recognize that Putin’s moves have been a major cause of the growth of opposition in Ukraine, and even a generator (or at least motivator) of Ukraine’s growing nationalism. Mearsheimer’s New Yorker interview with Isaac Chotiner suggests that he doesn’t think that Putin’s threat of complete takeover of Ukraine is “real,” rather than just a bargaining point. Look, Putin has agency driven by geographical imperatives and other historical fantasies, apparently. Ukraine has agency driven by the Russian existential threat that has increasingly unified most of the country.
this article is horrible. It reeks of academic posturing and competition for status. claiming mearsheimer is an apologist is a disgusting smear. tooze seems hell bent on erasing any culpability on the part of the states and nato - gross.
No one forced Russia to do anything. Eastern bloc countries joined Nato because they saw Russia as a future threat, and the EU as a better option for economic opportunities. Is it really so hard to admit that countries just didn’t want what Russia was selling? You completely take any type of agency in making decisions away from independent states in your assessment.
Well not so fast! I spent few years in one of the new member countries back then and the way this whole NATO shebang has been sold is far from the reality. Yes they wanted to join as positive reinforcement ( better standard of living) but not as negative ( defense against evil Russia). That said nobody believed at the time that Russia would ever threaten anyone as Russia was also perceived as potential NATO member by the same elites that joined NATO back then. Obviously they were naive on both ends but so was the Russian leadership which is understandable with Yeltsin being drunk most of the time.
> whole NATO shebang has been sold is far from the reality. Yes they wanted to join as positive reinforcement ( better standard of living) but not as negative ( defense against evil Russia)
Are you sure that you are not confusing NATO and EU?
of course no one forced him. but he, a super power like the u.s., feels it's his right to demand security and wage war if he doesn''t get it. who forced the u.s. to invade iraq? i personally feel the reasons for that were even less reasonable than putin's. and just remember the world's reaction. nothing. acceptance. anyway, read the article by stephen cohen explaining the euromaidan coup. it's not so easy as you keep saying.
Firstly, the Russian Federation is not and has not been a super power since the fall of the Soviet Union. It has been a (functionally) single party autocratic state that has poor techno-socio-economic standing in the international system, whose perceived power is predicated only on its nuclear arsenal and relative geographic size. Second, the US’s Iraq debacle and Putins Invasion of Ukraine are incomparable, and even suggesting so shows your misunderstanding of geopolitical history. If you want to make an apt comparison, try Saddam's spurious invasion of Kuwait. While not justifiable, the US took over a year in garnering international support for the Iraq invasion. Maybe you’re too young to remember that Saddam was also in violation of UN charters regarding Nuclear weapon development that was instated nearly a decade prior to 2003. Plus, being an idiot, Saddam, internationally, admitted to developing nuclear weapons in secret—what a moron! Look, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on lies, and GWB in a just world would be on trial for war crimes. And to be truthfully honest with you, people didn't care because Iraq was a pariah state with a recent history of bad behavior. Iraq was valuable to no one. It’s regional neighbors considered it a huge geopolitical headache. Lastly, 1999-2003 was the height of Americas hegemonic unipolar power. Countries were going to standup to the USA for the sake of Iraq? Lol!!!
wow, what are they called? mental gymnastics? yes...that's what you're doing to absolve the u.s. good luck, dnt pull yr brain muscles too hard... luckily there are actually historians out there, good ones, who have spoken out...
While Mr. Mearsheimer might be a bit crude in its assertions, he is not that far from the warning the Athenian negotiators gave to the Melians, some 2500 years ago.
Mr. Tooze is definitely not inured with military literature and theories as might appear in War on the Rocks, or the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. But the present outcome in Ukraine was in fact pushed for by the US decades ago:
"The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield," said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The CIA's Beebe follows with this almost unbelievable line:
"And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail."
The fact that Russia chose war to create its buffer zone in its west, with Ukraine as a no man land is not considered by Mr. Tooze as imperative shows that he never engaged with a military man.
While money men tried to position themselves with optic cables such that the instant trades could be performed by the thousands, cutting the time by microseconds, military men consider that positioning first strike capabilities as close as possible to Russia would make a nuclear war winnable. And 2014 coup makes that wet dream of US military planners a very serious possibility.
This very simple arithmetic of existential threat and pressure would be logically followed by a Russia that would acquiesce to the American hegemony. With all the perks for the victor. Maybe this time around wouldn't come to the same level of pillage that followed 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, but a big party for the Wall Street would definitely ensue.
I think that Russia's freedom of choice in the matter of Ukraine is a mere illusion in Mr. Tooze's head. After all, the first shots of this war have been reverberating around the world since US bombed Belgrade in 1999 with all the blather from Clinton that globalization will be done, whether people like it or not.
While the Russian economy might take a beating, I wonder what price Mr. Tooze puts on sovereignty, independence, dignity, and security? As far as I know, the US spends more than the next 10 countries combined in its offensive military posture. So as long as Russians feel safe and their lives are made maybe more secured, a little dent in their material comforts will be regarded as a cost of doing business.
The question I have is what the US and EU posture will be after some agreement between Russia and Ukraine is reached to Russia's satisfaction and papers are signed? Will US / EU continue with the sanctions? My bet is yes, showing that all this show of force is the West's constant position that Russia is not to be treated as an equal partner (the past 8 years of failed diplomacy in Ukraine, and failure of the West to force Ukraine to implement the internationally approved Minsk agreements, ability that the west amply had, given the great mobilization showed in the first hours of Russian invasion). It is the position of the US government that Russia, in its present form (a nuclear superpower) is an existential danger to the the US and must be annihilated. The US cannot breath at the idea that Russia has the ability to physically destroy the United States and there is many a paranoid in the US military planning that cannot sleep at night because of that.
I do think this assertion of mine is credible, given the insistence of US/Israel on the limitation of Iran's conventional missile program, which is the shield that Iran has built against foreign aggression. Iran cannot be coerced by the US via military means. No gunboat diplomacy with respect to Iran, same as no gunboat diplomacy with Russia, or China. The technological genie is out of the bottle. we are primitive men with sophisticated tools, and Mr. Tooze fails to understand this by looking at too many charts and to many prices.
Are you so sure? Kouros argument paints Russia as a brave, virtuous victim of the US led Western-Order, standing up for its people's dignity and sovereignty. Is this true? Especially now? Seems to me that unless your a hard-right cultural conservative who also happens to enjoy police torture and cultural repression that the Western led order, despite its faults, is incomparably preferable to the alliance of crony-capitalist, authoritarian "people's democracies" that Russia has attempted to assemble as a counterweight.
Well at this point I actually don't know if you are describing the West or Russia? Bailouts, police brutality, Neoliberalism running amok, militarism is the feature of both systems and although the freedom of speech is better here ( unless you are in Canada as recent convoy experience shows) is it really that different? That I think depends on where one sits and that often determines the point of view. I do not agree with a limited binary view ( either/or) as this argument is just too shallow and too unsophisticated for its own good. Or to quote someone on this thread "too reductionist." I actually like that word.
One thing. When people inscribe virtuosity to one place vs the other it often shows that they don't know the places they are talking about. I actually know both scenarios you are referring to quite well and to be honest I prefer southern coast of Mexico (Oaxaca) with a margarita in hand. I would not have Molotov serve me one unless its the band but that's a completely different story (for another time).
To Kouroi it looks that the description he made reflects reality. You obviously do not live and have not lived in any Eastern block country ever, including Russia, in the past 30 or more years to see that what you describe never existed, or at least not since the original turn to socialism. The US and the west stand only for their own aggrandizement an domination of the rest of the world. Crony capitalism has won long time ago in the US, which has been long ago labelled by academics in the field a Plutocratic Republic which maintains the democratic processes for the purpose of maintaining the aura of legitimacy only, while the results always favor the Plutocratic class.
While the Russian economy might take a beating, I wonder what price Mr. Tooze puts on sovereignty, independence, dignity, and security?
I see that whatever we might say about Mearsheimer you clearly take a normative position, that is, that Putin's war is justified. In any case I might ask, why not ask the same questions of Ukraine? I assume they have to submit to vassal status on behalf of the dignified Russians? Anyways, in real life Russian's peoples actual security is clearly now in the red now that they can be thrown in jail for 15 years for "discrediting the military" and their economy is destroyed. Not so great.
The request from Russia that Ukraine adopts a neutral military posture does not make Ukraine a vassal state to Russia. Finland became neutral after WWII as well as Austria. Furthermore, as a condition of having its independence recognized, the newly minted Republic of Ireland had to enact a law making it a neutral country that forswore any alliance with enemies of the United Kingdom.
How that looks to you? Is Ireland a vassal of the UK? Or was Austria or Finland anyone's vassal?
In the end that may be where Ukraine ends up. But Finland is still in the EU, and now wants to join NATO themselves. Somehow I don’t think just military neutrality will be enough for Putin but we shall see
This piece is really shallow on the history and lost in academic weeds ... We are only a few blunders away from WWIII and Tooze has it out for Mearsheimer. Who really cares? The real question is whether the West really did provoke and trigger this whole situation. And Tooze really provides next to no evidence to disprove the claim that the West is principally at fault for the grave crisis in Ukraine. There is ample historical evidence that the West provoked Russia in Eastern Europe, by expanding NATO when it promised that it never would (after the dissolution of the Soviet Union). Quite a number of prominent US geo-strategists and government officials warned, all the way back in the 90's, against the dangers of expanding NATO and unnecessarily provoking Russia.
And then there was yet more provocation when the US pushed for Ukraine to be a member of NATO, backed the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014, promised them NATO membership, and then sent them bunches of weapons to fight Russian separatists ... The more one digs and looks at actual recent, historical evidence and the more the picture emerges that in fact the US was deeply involved in provoking Russia, and actually fighting it by proxy starting with the overthrow of the government in Ukraine in 2014 ... But these are facts that just don't fit with the current wave of shallow journalism one sees everywhere in western countries.
Here are some more serious academic and journalistic pieces on the real origins of the Ukraine crisis and now war, and one sincerely hopes that Adam Tooze might present a more rigorous and balanced presentation of the evidence if he treats this question again (which he is obviously more than capable of doing, given his prodigious talents):
Let's leave philosophical fluff aside for a while and review the facts:
2002 - US abandons ABM (Anti-ballistic missile treaty)
2019 - US abandons INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty
2020 - US withdraws from Open Skies treaty
2021 - Indication Ukraine is readying for NATO membership
With Ukraine in NATO, tactical nuclear missiles could be positioned in Ukraine, along with anti-ballistic missiles, and with no possibility to verify which base / launcher / container has which. Tactical nuke so close to Moscow effectively becomes a strategic weapon, and powerful ABM radar and capability so close (covering everything west of Urals) would mean Russian strategic land-based missile capability would be much compromised. It would be a strategic check-mate, or how Putin called it "knife under the throat of Russia", and there is no rational way to look at it differently. In such situation any launch of any missile from Ukraine - due to no reaction time - would be interpreted as decapitation attack against Russia triggering full retaliation across all targets (Europe and US).
When they sold the idea of the missiles to Poland the PR machinery told them that they are against .................IRAN. Iran of all countries has had a very good relations with Poland going back hundreds of years to the point of having hosting and taking care of Polish cemetery in Tehran. So here is the solution in search of the problem while the real enemy was Moscow.
Damn you're brainwashed by Russian proganda. Why the fuck would NATO wanna cause a new Cuba crisis. Also they can already do it and have been able to do it for many years since Latvia is a member.
To perpetuate its existence. NATO needs a major war every 10 years or so to show it is relevant and needed (and they do come as clockwork, bombing of Serbia/Montenegro in 1998, bombing of Libya 2011, and now proxy war with Russia in Ukraine 2022). After 20+ years of "war on terror" the fatigue has set in and the return of investment there is getting lower and lower - you can't really force Germany to spend 2% of GDP in order to chase Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan, but you can with "Russian threat". Old armament stockpiles will be shipped to Ukraine and new expensive arms bought, mostly from US defense sector. Germany just announced 100 billion Euros increase annually, out of which 20%+ will go to new gear, meaning that shareholders of EADS, LM, NG, Raytheon etc. will get that much in profits. https://www.firstpost.com/world/from-germany-to-china-how-russia-ukraine-conflict-is-forcing-the-world-to-ramp-up-defence-budgets-10440251.html
How can you be so blind Russia is what perpetuates NATOs existence. All of what you mention is just Western/US hegemony doing stuff they wanted and could do with or without NATO, they used NATO for some of it simple because it was easier to do it that way. Also Germany hasn't spent 2% for ages and most certainly would continue not doing it had not Russia invaded. This whole thing has never and was never NATO's fault it's Putins and his enablers. Well NATO could have tried more to get Ukraine in many years before than this idiocy wouldn't have happened so I guess in that way they are culpable.
That may be true but then why his objection to Ukraine joining the EU? Would it really not be possible to have a discussion about weapons deployment separately? And of course, if Putin had his way and Uk was under it's umbrella it would have similar strategic implications, just in the other direction.
Because the EU club membership often goes with NATO membership ( buy one get one free) unless you are a very wealthy country ( Norge) that can afford to pay for your own security outside of it or by outsourcing it (SE, FIN) etc. When it comes to EU membership , Ukraine actually has a stop coming from the EU side as there are many budgetary and political criteria that it would have to fulfill. UA would have to completely revamp its political and social system to be even allowed into a waiting room. That said Putin is a long distance runner and he understands this game more than anyone in the EU club does especially when the real grown up around , just retired.
Even if UA did that revamp (good luck with that, we have seen that even peace negotiators get bullets in the head), it would never join EU:
- it would drain billions of Euros currently going to eastern members that would need to be redirected to UA (political elites in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Croatia etc. thrive only because they can bring "pork" home from Bruxelles)
- country of 40+ million would upset the decision making powers that today lie with Germany + France
- it would gradually remove wage differential (read: cheap Ukrainian labor) that is fueling lot of economic development of Poland especially
It really boils down that EU simply does not have funds to absorb such big country, esp. in the world after Brexit, after Covid (350 billions of Euro loans need to be repaid), and as German economy becomes much less profitable due to loss of cheap reliable energy and increased "defense" spending.
You may be right, we do live in a world in which at this point all bets are off... However, not any time soon (<10 year line of sight). Just take example of Turkey - 2nd most important NATO member with big economy and geostrategic location and for various reasons EU membership went nowhere. After this war is over Ukraine will have severely destroyed infrastructure, industry ground to halt due to energy and raw materials dependency on Russia severed, emigration and employment problems etc. EU will focus on rebuilding energy infrastructure (nuclear power will be back, as well as some renewables) which will be massive investment, there won't be money to rebuild Ukraine, except some humanitarian help and loans here and there.
When Yanukovych was planning to sign the association agreement Russian started a trade-war to prevent it. Also, their current negotiating conditions include a constitutional amendment precluding involvement in any "Blocs" including the EU (can find on google).
That's true for the US but not for Western/Central Europe Article 5 signatories, which would indeed be under threat from deployment of Russian missiles on UK.
There was definitely pressure from Russia to keep Ukraine in the "Eurasian Union", but also there was a realization by Yanukovich at the time that accepting EU conditions would mean incalculable economic cost to Ukraine as its economy at the time (esp. industrial parts in the east) was deeply integrated with Russia. But that ship has sailed a long time ago - Ukraine lost Donbas, severed ties to Russia and became completely dependent on EU and IMF handouts. In Putin's effective declaration of war statement, EU was not on the list just NATO.
The fact that US pulled out from INF knowing that Russia can now re-arm with intermediary range nuclear missiles that can cover all Europe tells us exactly how much they care about European security.
Well having a van blasting a speech out is an overkill, straight from the book of the Japanese nationalists and their black buses. That's said Tooze piece just doesn't have the weight and logic of Mearsheimer as it is not backed up by historical analysis of the E. Europe and the world since 1989. I think Mearsheimer thesis is spot on and that's why gets the following and Tooze doesn't. Perhaps there is a simple professional jealousy at play here? I would love to read a factual and argumentative take down of Mearsheimer points however Tooze doesn't offer any. And all of the Neocons that try often fail (Applebaum being one of the most pathetic examples out there).
In a way I almost feel like Tooze is being Mearsheimer's Mearsheimer here. A well credentialled and widely respected intellectual trying to explain shittiness in a way that ultimately creates room for and justifies it. Tooze, I love your writing, but sometimes it feels like the mass of analysis smothers plain truth. Mearsheimer is an asshole supporting a literal terrorist state, and quite plainly too. Sometimes you have to say to hell with the academic politeness and take a damn stand, recognize that sometimes the average person gets it right, that what is going on is beyond the space for thought piecing and dissection it is just brutal and ugly evil.
I don't think being a realist is an asshole as long as you explain the alternatives. I wouldn't like to live in Russia under Putin but he has a Russian zeitgeist under his fingers just like Trump does in the red America. Why that is , is a platform of wider conversation on our society and the postmodernism that dominated our political and economic discourse. Unfortunately what we now have is the outcome of it and it didn't start with Zbig Brzezinski recipe what to do with Russia.
Putin gains this power you impart to him not a small amount from the constant excusing and rationalizing that goes on in ivory towers like this one. It clearly bothers some people to call out a man who wears a suit and hits the lecture circuit, but when they are fascist apologists that is the time to do so and do so forcefully. Terror bombing a nearly pacified smaller state into submission in a war of aggression built on lies and years of propaganda is about as clear a moral wrong as I can think, but here we have nothing but people without blushing trying to find justification, "Why the west is to blame," who live in a childish delusion where such statements aren't aide to a dictator but some sort of intellectual exercise where the chief concern is decorum.
You can wear all the suits you want and spout all the fine phrases you want, but that is wrong, that is evil, and I and a growing portion of the population without their head's in their asses are livid about it.
Look I have worked in Ukraine and I know the reality on the ground intimately. Yes morally speaking you are absolutely correct and it shows your heart is in the right place. However as decision maker let's see if you ever have to be faced with this dilemma: start the war with Putin and as he's losing he orders a nuclear strike. Do you want to be on a high horse of moral indignation and fortitude while a billions people die if not the civilization as we know it? Personally I am not going to be blamed for a justification of this as I do not form or execute the US foreign policy that effectively led into this situation. But I tell you this , along with Putin I will put the blame for this on all US admins since George H Bush as accessories. Good enough for you? For the record, Putin is a war criminal and deserves to be held accountable but just not at the expense of many who have nothing to do with it.
Putin is far from a war criminal, even as judged by international law. As TP Wilkinson explains: "A major source of confusion in the debate about Ukraine and Russia’s incursion is the question of Ukrainian sovereignty, on which a wide range of people oppose Russia’s actions because it should not attack a sovereign state (naively drawing on the prohibitions of the UN Charter). Moreover, the claim that Russia should not have violated Ukrainian sovereignty is based on the erroneous belief that Ukraine was invaded. This assertion is based on ignorance. Quite aside from the international-law issues posed by the sovereign claims of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), and hence whether they could exert sovereign rights to conclude treaties and hence invite military aid, there is the long-standing original threat and active aggression of NATO in and through Ukraine’s governments. The recognition of sovereignty does not outweigh the right of self-defense.5 The fact that the Russian Federation has not engaged in military retaliation for multiple violations of its territory does not mean that it has waived or forfeited those territorial rights. 6
That is the ultimate premise upon which most of the critique and attack on Russian military action has been based. There is a principle of English common law by which the convention of traversing private property can create a prescriptive easement – a right of way – which the titular owner of the property can no longer obstruct.7 Title must be actively and conspicuously asserted to remain enforceable. This is augmented by the concept of adverse possession whereby a party may assert title to land occupied for a given period and have that title sustained against the original owner by virtue of that owner’s failure or neglect to challenge the possession. In other words, there is no such thing as absolute title: it must always be effectively asserted.
Common law, while not necessarily enshrined in statutes, can be seen as an expression of the underlying social and psychological conventions prevailing in a regime. Although a nation-state would not appear comparable with a private home or farm, the material beliefs held and practiced in daily life do shape the prejudices of those who debate politics and political concepts. That is what makes this kind of law “common” – as opposed to the details of statutes or treaties.
The Anglo-American view of sovereignty is implemented by people for whom such fluid ideas of property, title and boundaries are conventional. This can be seen throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in every aspect of international-law practice. Even the so-called international judiciary has been formed or deformed by such assumptions, with some contradictory concessions to continental jurisprudence. The extremes to which disputes in Britain and the US lead to litigation are also an indication of the operational instability of legal conventions and norms – and of the level of aggression in everyday violation of whatever norms may be created by statute or courts.
NATO often appears absurd because its continental European bureaucrats utter pronouncements wholly at odds with their own cultural and legal traditions in order to articulate the policies generated by their Anglo-American principals. On the other hand this is part of the Anglo-American sleight of hand: framing their imperial designs in the alien terms of continental European politics. No amount of fealty or obsequy can conceal the fact that neither Stoltenberg nor Von der Leyen are natural “common law” politicians.8 That is one reason their insincerity is so blatant. They both try to present essentially Anglo-American imperial objectives as if they were continental peninsular. Their statements are incredulous and can be dismissed on their face. The real issue — which they are employed to conceal — is the anti-Russian policy of the Anglo-American Empire. To rectify the name of this policy and the actions derived from it would openly deny any pretense of sovereignty in occupied Germany and the vassal monarchies that comprise the core of NATO."
As much as one can on personal level sympathize with your argument , the justified defense mechanism applies only to the clear and imminent danger in case of the LPR and DNR. They have been involved in conflict with Ukraine military since 2014 so this doesn't apply. The fact is that under the current set of the international laws as practiced by the ICC ( Milosevic case) clearly states that if Putin was put under their jurisdiction he would be found guilty as charged and in my humble opinion justifiably so. Your argument has a bit of the "sovereign citizen" flavor to it but even in the US state courts this particular way of legal interpretation has been deemed invalid in at least two cases involving the IRS, if my memory serves me right. You also involve the idea of foreign policy prerogative as foundation of the legal argument. I think this way of approaching the issue has mixed result (speaking from a personal legal experience using an Alien Claims Tort Act of 1789 to litigate civil cases in the Illinois court). Anyway the laws do not come to fore out of the vacuum and there is always a context to it. However your argument would have absolutely no traction in the current set of laws and even if it did (hypothetically speaking) there is no enforcement mechanism. You cannot litigate war responsibility out of existence although many countries have tried. The only way something like you have stated could probably prevail as valid defense is if the leaders of VietNam were indicted on war crimes during the 1978 invasion of Cambodia to stop the genocidal Pol Pot regime. Other conflicts? don't think so.
In an interview in the WSJ, Robert Service called the 11/1021 Charter Agreement between the US and Ukraine one of two "immense strategic blunders." There's a whole section in the Charter entitled "Security and Countering Russian Aggression" and it contains the following sentence: "The United States supports Ukraine’s efforts to maximize its status as a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner to promote interoperability."
The other immense strategic blunder that Service cites was of course Putin's decision to invade.
Too little has been made, I think, about Putin's show of force by massing his forces on Ukraine's borders. That was the precedent blunder for his eventual invasion blunder. I believe Putin was convinced that, seeing the magnitude of his forces, the West would negotiate Ukraine's right to join NATO. When we stood firm, he found himself in a position where he either had to withdraw his forces or use them. He left himself no flexibility, no way to back out without losing all credibility.
I'm convinced this was a war no one wanted. And I don't think it was inevitable.
Putin wanted this he's not an idiot no chance NATO would ever agree to the demands Ukraine and many other countries never getting to join NATO, and pulling back weapons and the very few troops stationed in the balltics. His demands were just charades for the Russian people, "look i reasoned with them thery were unreasonable and want to put nukes in Ukraine"
It is not a blunder but an intentional vagueness that leaves the beauty for the eye of the beholder. In a real life if you want something but do not want to be precise in case of being called a liar, you insinuate. I think Putin is crazy like a fox and contrary to the commentariat out there, it is not over until it's over. For example, since Visa and MC pulled out of the Russia market , the Chinese UnionPay started issuing Russian bankcards yesterday. The changeover and implementation of the payment system takes months to figure out at the shortest schedule so I find it really hard to believe that the Chinese/Russians were not preparing for this eventuality. Obviously they did. And when it comes to sanctions it is a double edge sword as we are now in Illinois finding out ( $4.30 a gallon in my local station).
I also have had trouble with Mearsheimer. As someone who has studied the Russian state, the role of the Mafia, the role of the siloviki and post-soviet survival of the KGB and other security services etc, it is hard to look at Russian interests in Ukraine other than in an Imperial lens, and one wrapped up in personal power and the dynamics of kleptocracy. Putin may claim to speak for "Russia's Interests", yet we rarely afford other dictatorial kleptocrats in Africa, central Asia, or anywhere else, the dignity of taking such claims seriously. The bank balances and offshore wealth tend to rub up the wrong way against claims of representing the "national interest". Any analysis that stops short of these facts is going to be a bit lacking, however elegant and simplistic the models may seem.
Why is it different with Putin compared to Idi Amin, or the Kazakh dictators, or Turkmenbashi et al? Well partly presumably because of the feared Russian military's power projection abilities, and partly because of the 3000 or so usable nuclear warheads. These are real (although the former has suffered a blow to its reputation in Ukraine), but they don't really change the calculus that Putin is one of the richest men in the world, without having invented Facebook or Amazon or Tesla. When your childhood friends are billionaires, your foreign minister's mistress's daughter has somehow accumulated several million USD, your former deputy PM has a £19million apartment in the heart of London, it's just silly to talk about these people having Russia's best interests at heart.
When you come to Ukraine, you come to the topics of energy transhipment, corruption, Dimitry Firtash, Semion Mogilevich, and pure corruption, as well as traditional and non traditional (pipeline) geopolitics.
When you take this kleptocracy angle further, you end up looking at how Putin might feel threatened at home by another large former soviet republic next door doing well...with Russian speakers in. This is not about Russian interests, it is about Putin and his elite's interests. For an ethnographic-nationalist like Putin, this is simply unacceptable and is an existential threat to his kleptocratic regime.
Does anyone actually imagine that Russia led by Navalny, Nemtsov, or Kasparov would be locked into the kind of geopolitical battle that is given as an explanatory reason for Russia's 8-year war in Ukraine? Further, if Nemtsov had taken over instead of Putin (as Yeltsin was apparently considering at one point), do you imagine that the Baltics and Ukraine / Georgia would have been so keen to join NATO? It's possible, but it seems unlikely.
And it's also possible that the Balts, and E Europe, and former USSR states such as Ukraine and Georgia, might have had good reason to worry about Putin even back in the early 2000s when he himself was regularly using the term "defensive alliance" to describe NATO. When he met with Schroder in 2004, and explicitly said that NATO expansion is not a security threat to Russia (the article is still on the Kremlin Website ...now down by DDOS attack...here if anyone is interested: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/30679), even then the Balts and UKR and Georgia may have been suspicious.
Why? Well because they have more understanding of what Putin's past career meant for his mindset. They knew the kind of people who did the kind of jobs he did in the KGB, and the way those kind of people were trained and how they operate. They knew this because many of them suffered under the yolk of the KGB or its sister organisations in the former Warsaw Pact countries. They also probably had a much more nuanced and detailed understanding of what had gone on in St Petersburg during the 1990s, and would have recognised "KGB" tactics in Putin's operations there. They may also have recognised KGB tactics in the apartment bombings in Russia, including when the local police caught FSB agents planting explosives and arrested them, only to be told it was an exercise that the local police for some reason hadn't been told about. And they probably by 2004 would have seen the destruction of Grozny, and thought...well there but for the grace of a few years go we. A good question to ask, is what would a realist advisor such as Mearsheimer have advised the governments of Eastern Europe as they made their strategic decisions back then? Submit to Russian hegemony and influence? Or seek an outside power to balance Russia and offer protection?
Back to those alarming events in Chechnya: The USA of course was encouraged to view the Chechen Wars as part of the GWOT. And was happy to do so as Russia was working alongside NATO (not threatened by it then apparently) to facilitate operations in Afghanistan.
The idea that Eastern European states and former USSR states have their own people, sovereignty, and more importantly, foreign policy is obviously beyond the realm of some realist thought to include. I do love Adam's term:
"If we take Mearsheimer’s account seriously, Russia, rather than being a sentient strategic actor, is reduced to something akin to a resentful robot."
This is where i find the hubris and parochialism of some US analysis so ridiculous. The idea that Putin's Russia, shaped by the disaster of the 1990s (again, Russia was not forced at gunpoint into the economic reforms, however badly they did), the survival of the KGB after 1991 as a powerful entity, the memory of the attempted hardline coup that hung over the 1990s like a shadow, the survival and flourishing of the Russian mafia, the eventual merger of the Russian Mafia and the remnants of the KGB with the Russian state, first in St Petersburg, then in the whole country; Putin's personal nature, the emergent kleptocracy that Putin did not crush but instead co-opted when he took power, and a host of other factors, were not more important that NATO's Eastwood expansion in explaining Russia's policies is ridiculous.
Then you get to Putin's own words. His essay last summer "On the historic...." blah blah blah, absolutely nonsense, but no more nonsense than the claim that he suddenly felt threatened by NATO in 2007 and 2014 when he hadn't for the previous years. Could the trouble around his "re-election" in 2011/12 have been influential? Could it be that what he wasn't afraid of in the Maidan was NATO flags (there were none), but EU flags, of which there were plenty.
A popular uprising occurred not because Putin's fellow kleptocratic puppet in Ukraine turned his back on NATO, but because he turned his back on an agreement with the EU, in favour of one Putin had hurriedly put together. Another thought experiment to end:
Does anyone imagine that Putin could accept a sovereign, intact Ukraine (or even one without Crimea and the pre-war Donbas zones), that forswore any future bid to join NATO, but that was accepted quickly into the EU, with its rule of law, democracy, and civil protections?
If you answer no, which I think is the only realistic answer, then the NATO question is moot. It is already moot of course, because Putin knew quite well that Ukraine was "pre-Article V" since 2014 anyway. The frozen conflicts in Donbas, and the state fo Crimea meant that even if Germany, Hungary et al would not have blocked Ukrainian membership in NATO (and they would), but that Ukraine joining was impossible. As Putin well knew on both counts.
It is also moot because the war is being prosecuted to destroy the Ukrainian state under the guise of an argument that the state doesn't exist. Putin is very influenced by Carl Schmitt, as Adam knows, especially his text back in the 1930s about non-interventionism and reichs. (I mean the one that was originally published, not the one that Schmitt later tried to clean up having avoided Nuremberg.)
I agree with a lot of what you say, especially the premise that a kleptocrat is not looking out for the country’s interests.
I was also thinking about whether there is a real distinction between, say, Stalin’s view (and the views of his successors) and Putin. I think at some level communists were sincere in pursuit of their ideology (in a way that Putin is probably not). But their value system did not have any room for human rights either. So is there a real distinction between Putin subjugating Russia’s neighbors and communists doing so? Because if there is not (or T least not one that is readily apparent), that might explain why Russia’s general public accepts Putin’s views on NATO.
Agreed. I think one of post-soviet Russia's main problems is that they didn't come to terms with (through legal cases, truth and reconciliation, proper rectification) their Soviet past, and abuses both inside and outside Russia itself. The Ukraine Famine (see Anne Applebaum's Red Famine), the crushing of Eastern Europe after WWII, the invasion of Finland, the crimes of the Gulag (Anne Applebaum "Gulag" again...i don't work for her I promise).
The main problem I think was that the KGB held such a position of power that they survived and thrived through the collapse of the USSR. I think they had known much earlier than others that the sham was soon to be over. They had experience working with and through the Russian mafia that had started to exfiltrate via Israel (See Craig Ungers House of Putin, House of Trump) under the USSR. They were ideological still, not in their commitment to defunct communism, but to their hatred of the West. And they remained in control enough to greatly assist Putin in his rise to power.
I think on your question of Stalin versus Putin...the difference is really in ideology and kleptocracy. Stalin had both been a leader in the Russian civil war in Ukraine, and then later deliberately imposed famine on Ukraine. He was far more murderous than Putin (although Putin is catching up through Grozny, Syria, and now Ukraine), but he didn't have mega-yachts and millionaire daughters, and he certainly wouldn't have allowed his judo partner to steal a billion, or his foreign minister to channel millions of state money to his mistress's daughter.
those things are bad, as are PPE corruption in the UK during the pandemic. Senator Purdue in the USA trading stocks on pandemic inside information, nancy pelosi getting very rich while in government, or Mitch McConnell doing the same.
It's different though because most of these people could be feasibly voted out, and it's also different because they don't murder journalists or their political opponents (such as Boris Nemtsov), or attempt to poison them (Navalny, Anna P) who talk about insider trading. People can go and stand outside their offices and protest if they want (sadly they don't seem to want to so much) without being arrested and imprisoned (Kasparov). Lawyers can bring cases that implicate them without being arrested and beaten to death (Magnitsky)
And it's also different because of the scale of the theft. Insider trading of course is unfair use of information to make money at the expense of (mostly) private entities in the stock market. In Russia, officials / the mafia steal whole companies with the backing of the courts, they also channel state funds directly to their cronies (See the Sochi Olympics etc), funnel money out of state owned industries etc etc.
I'd recommend Bernie Sanders' recent Tweet thread on the inequality of wealth ownership in Russia. If you want to see "the difference".
Or books such as:
Putin's People by Catherine Belton (try and get the first edition before the oligarch lawyers got it changed)
Kleptopia by Tom Burgis (just won a court case brought by oligarchs involved)
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev
Red Notice by Bill Browder
Any of the books by Anna Politkovskaia (journalist murdered on Putin's birthday as a little birthday gift)
The Long Hangover by Shaun Walker
Russia and the Western Far Right by Anton Shekhovtsov
Also your comment on the US political system is very out of touch. People like Pelosi , Perdue or Schumer cannot be easily voted out as the money and political machinery clout is behind them. In this way our politics remind me of United Russia or Ukraine Party of Regions (Yanukovich) where the personal fiefdom is as important as the political messaging.
Well Purdue lost in 2021 run off and was indeed voted out, and his opponent raised his insider trading repeatedly. And Pelosi and McConnell have both been in the minority in their careers (if personally still in office). The Presidency changes hands between actual opponents, as does congress, and the Supreme Court a bit more slowly. But i don't disagree in principle would certainly support term limits for congress. The disaster of Citizen's United and the gerrymandering of safe districts really doesn't help...but still, a different level than Ukraine under Yanukovych, and a different game altogether than Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and the other kleptocracies.
Well I don't want to go into the rabbit hole of US politics but I think you relate to the personalities rather than looking at the systemic dysfunction of our system which cannot be fixed. This would require taking the money out of our politics and that's just not going to happen. The game is different in the mechanism and process but the outcome is actually quite similar. We also have oligarchs here in the US but they are just called different names and our corporations actually now are controlling the govt and not vice versa.
Well you have a very impressive library but judging from the title and authors they all shoot in one direction. I think the reality on the ground is more nuanced but I do agree that Russia is a kleptocratic set up that works in a very "mysterious" ways. It is my impression that many who write on Russia in a very negative terms have had a professional relationship that went sour and then they go on crusade ( Pomerantsev, Browder etc) so they are not very well balanced or objective. From that category I recommend Mark Ames of the Xiled magazine who was kicked out of Russia for a really biting journalism activity but was able to retain his sanity and healthy judgment. Look I am not saying that all of the allegations you are making are not true but I am a little bit suspicious of your motive. There is a great Polish proverb that says: "pound the table and the scissors will make the sound " and it definitely applies in this category. My experience with Russia is that it is also a Neoliberal state with very political characteristics and some tactics are very similar what we have here in Illinois that has been a one party state for over 40 years now. We also have had people suicided in local govt and that included judges. Going back to Mearsheimer I suggest you refer to my earlier comment that explains why I think many go on the moral tangent instead of looking at hard cold facts that led to the tragedy of the current war crime that Russia-UA invasion is. That said Ukraine is not a clear cut victim here (its people are for sure) to present it as good vs evil story.
There are few things to deal with though, a lot confused and used but perhaps not relevant, and some just completely airbrushed from the record in some arguments. Here are a few:
- There was never any promise about NATO not expanding. Baker and USSR's Gorbachev did agree that no NATO banner troops from outside Germany would be stationed in the former E German territory. Of course this doesn't mean that NATO expansion was not in some way provocative, but this "betrayal" line that comes up so much in Kremlin propaganda is nonsense.
- Russia and NATO founding agreement was signed after the USSR broke up. In it, NATO expansion was implied, for it specifically mentioned NATO not stationing NATO banner troops on new member territory, and also had both sides commit to no military border changes. NATO didn't station permanent troops beyond these limits until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, alongside arguments that Ukraine (and therefore the Balts) were not really real countries. Putin summarised these long held thoughts, dating back throughout his entire presidency / prime ministership, in a rambling and incoherent essay last summer.
- After and as the USSR broke up 1990-1992, Russia became violently involved in the independence of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, and Moldova. In the last two cases, Russia armed separatists and in Moldova permanently stationed troops in its own little statelet. These countries well remember this, as well as knowing that the KGB was reemerging in Russia. Putin in 1999 /2000 specifically said at a FSB event that they have fulfilled the first directive of seizing control.
- Putin himself referred to NATO as a "defensive alliance" on multiple occasions throughout the early 2000s even as expansion to the new members (including former USSR republics in the Balts) was underway.
- In 2004 Putin specifically stated (to Shroeder) that NATO expansion was not a security threat to Russia. The link is on the now crippled Kremlin website still.
All this argument about NATO though implicitly accepts the Putin / PRC framing that big countries have a sphere of influence and that they have extraordinary rights within that sphere of influence. We all know why Nazi-turned "i wasn't really a Nazi" Carl Schmitt has seen a revival of interest in authoritarian China. And why the PRC is delighted with Mearsheimer's view. We should also be aware that the realist view here implies the end of the model of the UN Charter. If some states have limited sovereignty (only an issue of course if they also have a malign predatory great power in their region), then the UN charter doesn't hold.
Realist thought often accepts this, but then becomes confused when it comes to the sovereign states within those spheres? What would a realist advisor have advised the governments of the Baltics in the 1990s? Submit to Russia and give up sovereignty, or hedge with an external power (such as the EU and the USA...)? Why would we assume that realist thought is a decent model if it tells contradictory things to different countries? How is it that realist thought is only really useful for big countries?
What would a realist advisor have advised the USA to do in 1990? Help Russia (a potential future great power rival) to recover and regain its sphere of influence over Eastern Europe? Or push for the further break up of the Russian federation? Seems to me the realist critique of NATO expansion doesn't take these questions into account. If it was a mistake to expand NATO, was it not a bigger mistake to open markets and international organisations such as Bretton Woods ones, and G7 to a rival great power?
All moot though. Ukraine in 2021 was pre-article V. With no hope of joining NATO. Putin wasn't worried about NATO, as he understood this. He was worried about his kleptocracy looking dreadful. 20% of Russian households are still not connected to plumbing, in 2022. Yet we are to believe that billionaire Putin and his billionaire cronies, many of whom weren't billionaires when he came to power, have the interests of Russians at heart. It's a joke, but it is no longer really funny.
And moot because the way the war is being carried out, and the repeated justifications (that may not be true) suggest that NATO membership was nowhere near the top of the list of concerns. I still think failing kleptocracy is the crucial lens. Other methods may provide a decent backdrop / rationale, but if you are not talking about stolen wealth from a backward country, you are missing the biggest part of the picture.
Paul, you are definitely entitled to your opinion but not to your own facts. George Schultz admitted in an interview to some German newspaper that yes indeed the promise was given to the Soviets not to expand East. Gorbachev wrote this as well before Putin was even in power and Baker also concurred it but he said it was an idea but it was not put in writing. Yes , the Soviets were stupid and naive to not get this in writing as they should have. That's the simple fact. Some creative legal experts are now coming out of the woodwork saying that this never happened and unfortunately you are recycling deceptive talking points. I even met with the fellow at the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung that has intimate knowledge of this during one conference and he also concurred it. So please don't BS people on this point as it really undermines your credibility and obvious bias.
Also your point from the US State Dept of "no permanent" base is ridiculous. No NATO "banner" troops? What kind of fake category is this?, Either there are NATO troops or no NATO troops. Poland joined NATO in 1997 so the Polish troops became automatically NATO , period and that is east of the Oder river which is the current border between BRD and the East. Talking about no permanent bases, our Guantanamo Base for prisoners, "the gulag" is also not a permanent base as we pay Cuban Govt $2000 lease check every year but they don't cash it.
NATO has lost all of its credibility when it got involved in the war on Serbia in 1999 and this was the pivotal time for the alliance as from that time on it became a tool of US Foreign Policy. It has changed its lost its rationale as defensive mechanism and it became offensive as its actions shown in Libya has shown. Looking after Russia's national interest Putin is absolutely at the right to demand its own sphere of influence ( the buffer) although it obviously flies in the face of international law and international order. We do the same as much overthrowing govts left and right ( well, mostly left that don't serve our interests) so your argument is based on someone who was simply born yesterday and doesn't understand it. Also your allegation that Schmitt was a NAZI is ridiculous. He was first and foremost a very clever conformist and careerist and a brilliant one at that. He first devised a legal coup for Hindenburg so the Nazis couldn't take the power and when they did he served them well with on demand legal theory. So to bring this really circular argument to close I will tell you this: Yes, Putin is a war criminal and he should be put on trial. But in my humble opinion he should be in the new and improved Nuremberg Trial 2.0 on the same stage with Madeleine Albright, George W. Bush, both Clintons, Obama and Biden with the prosecuting authority bringing up the same charges in the same time. You are attacking Mearsheimer for being a cold realist and trying to dismantle his arguments. I cannot help but notice this is somewhat personal for you as the logic is only following your own chosen path of arguments and not actual facts. Well good luck to that as you can fool some people some time but you cannot fool everyone all the time.
Afraid not! No relation. Nor am I related to Thomas Harding, the Martyr. Or the failed US President from a while back. nor the Paul Harding who won the Pulitzer Prize for "Tinkers". Are you the Monroe from the "Monroe Doctrine???" ;)
"... until recently we imagined ourselves no longer under the shadow of nuclear deterrence." What? Really? Who is "we" here? Why would anyone think this? China and Russia both have nuclear weapons on a large scale. The possession of large nuclear arsenals by the major powers is the foundation of the current world order. American predominance in nuclear weapons is the fundamental fact of international politics. Who ever believed anything else? What possible reason could there be for anyone thinking anything else? Playing some kind of make-believe game with these weapons lying around is suicidal. They are unpleasant to think about, but there is no excuse for not thinking about them.
I never thought I will ever say this but I think this needs to be said: the way the UA/Russia war is being covered by the US/West Media and the current situation with the Polish MIGs (transfer) looks like the worst Soviet Propaganda from the depths of the Cold War ringing truth!
As dispassionate as one may be about the theoretical reasons to "explain" Putin or not, clearly a lot of Russia Today-style fellow travelers need this particular output of Realism to be true, otherwise they have been living a lie, a lie namely that Russia under Putin is a rational actor and a benign counterweight to US imperialism. Ironically what many anti-imperialists and leftists do not appreciate about Mearsheimer's brand of Realism (as Adam rightly points out) is that it "predicts" (implicitly justifies) military containment of China without escalation guardrails. Taken normatively it would suggest cordial US-Russia relations, not for the sake of peace, but for the sake of a greater crazy Gotterdammerung later on in the South China Sea. (How did this go viral in China huh?)
Leaving that aside, the NATO expansion hypothesis is still one of two serious explanatory hypothesis about the crisis. The second is what I would call the Russian irredentism vs EU integration hypothesis. The truth definitely lies somewhere in between: and where it lies also dictates in what proportion Putin's war crimes are exculpated as attempts to ensure a strategic buffer zone on the one hand, and on the other to recreate the quasi feudal imperialism that's been the default recourse of Kremlin politics since... forever.
What exactly does a "buffer zone" mean in the ICBM age? Subjugating a nation of 40 million to avoid some remote possibility of the reduction in the warning time of a nuclear first strike by like, 2 minutes (launchers in Ukraine vs Poland) - is this a serious explanation for Putin's actions? No, but it's the one he wants to talk about exclusively, because its the only one in which he can emphasize potential Russian vulnerability and victimhood. We shouldn't shy away from psychology and bat away that stupid canard about "demonizing Putin." Putin is a palpable psychopath and as such he is a master of manipulation.
I personally think true "realism" would have opposed NATO expansion not on the victim blaming rubric of "provoking Russia" but rather on the basis that creating a weak eastern flank, especially in the Baltics, over-extended the alliance and creates the potential for crisis. NATO expansion was a mistake and it was done for largely cynical reasons (selling more kit and getting more auxiliaries for Afghanistan). It did aggravate Great Russian chauvinism. But that chauvinism is only a means for Putin to shore up his regime by ensuring that a core area of the FSU does not become a functioning liberal democracy. For this he is committing war crimes and will likely commit genocide, but I'm sure the "anti-war" left and liberterian right will keep finding excuses for Russia. They always have and always will, since they are entirely motivated by grievance against the Western establishment and too myopic to see any other international reality.
Once again the name calling and unsolicited psychiatric advice/diagnosis , that seems to be a constant refrain of the US mainstream media. And when that gets tired you can always depend on old and tired moral argument. Both these tactics are becoming an intellectual firing squad of the basement-based geo-strategists who actually never been to Ukraine or Russia , know the language or culture but sure as hell are apparently "experts" in the field.
1950 -1953, North Korea invaded south Korea after Kim went to Stalin two or three times to request permission to do so (See Stalin cables to East Europe at eh Woodrow Wilson centre for Cold War History. The UN authorised an intervention (right then the USSR UN seat was being boycotted by the USSR, and China's seat was held by Taiwan) against the attack of one sovereign UN state (North Korea) on another (South Korea), so no crime there. Literally action was approved by international law. Akin probably to Kuwait invasion by Iraq and international response in 1991. China fought against UN forces in North Korea. If you go to the 军事博物馆 in Beijing though, the "history" reads a little different, but the rest of the world knows what happened.
1953 -- yes crime i'd say.
1961 -- yes crime i'd say.
1963 -- murky, as South Vietnam was a fully sovereign state and invited US military support. The bombing of Cambodia and Laos was crime (Kissinger and Nixon) if you want to find an incident here.
1965 -- not sure what "supported" means, but take the point
1983 -- dodgy at least
1989 -- dodgy at least.
2003 - Iraq....you missed out?
But what you are saying is that you equate these crimes to the Russian action, so you are not really disagreeing. You are just pointing out that other crimes have been committed by others before. You could also mentioned China's attack on Vietnam in 1979 for example. Or various other incidents. It's nice to have context, but doesn't change the facts for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its military actions since.
What I have against Realist IR theory generally is that it is not very realistic. It has two flaws that an economist might call "Lucas critique" and "lack of microfoundations" respectively.
Lucas critique: the writing of Realists is predicated on the assumption that only America has agency, standing outside the mechanism of historical processes and having the opportunity to bend them to its will. All other parties lack agency, and must blindly follow the dictates of the model.
Microfoundations: Realism operates at the level of stylized facts. I've got nothing against that per se, but you can't explain what you have assumed. Evo-devo type frameworks (c.f. Azar Gat) explain everything that Realism gets right, but don't always predict the things it gets wrong. On top of that, it is a more fundamental and thus parsimonious theory.
Tooze's article here is by far the worst of those I have read recently - reality for Putin is damned if he did, damned if he didn't. More specifically, Measheimer is only one of numerous famous strategic thinkers/diplomats who pinpointed blame on NATO expansion and predicted the exact mess today. They include George Kennan, Kissinger, Jack Matlock (who literally is the horse's mouth), William Perry, Bill Burns, Malcolm Fraser, Paul Keating, Bob Gates, Pat Buchanan, etc. etc. and I have not included even a single "leftie/Ruskie"! See list including reference compiled here: https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592
Tooze's thesis also damns Measheimer without offering any sensible cogent solution Putin might have employed whatsoever - after all, Putin did try peaceful means for no less than 8 years - what exactly could he have done to turn the tide in the face of US/NATO encirclement, sponsored coup in 2014/regime change/colour revolution/arab spring, and proxy war in Donbas etc.? Just more waiting hoping US woke up one day regretting their disastrous, deadly "mission for democracy" around the world?
Why is Ukraine joining NATO and the EU something that Putin needed to "do something" about, unless it has a birthright to rule imperialistically over its neighbors? None of the other Eastern European countries feel like NATO encirclement was an existential threat, because they're not led by an irredentist, kleptocratic dictator seeking to restore his empire.
The answer to your question is the same as why Kennedy embargoed Cuba, and why he nearly triggered WW3 during the Cuban missile crisis. Also ask yourself the question, what would US have done if, for the sake of argument, Putin managed to turn Venezuela, Mexico etc. into military allies with missiles pointing at US, or copying what US is doing to China today by sailing warships around US coasts on a monthly basis? If you haven't heard about it before, I would suggest you do some research on the Monroe Doctrine, and how US had applied it consistently for decades giving rise to numerous wars, regime changes, deaths and destruction in their backyard.
So the US was right to overthrow Allende/Sandinistas etc? I don't understand.
I would also argue that a Russian alliance of irredentist dictatorships next to the US would in fact be a threat, while the EU/NATO is not. I think it's what they call a false equivalence!
You've watched to much RT dude, Putin doesn't care about NATOs military "closing in", if he's not truly crazy, for god's sake Latvia is already pretty much as close to Moscow as Ukraine. NATO could place nukes there now but they won't since that would be an actual new "Cuba crisis" which a possible Ukraine NATO membership CEARLY IS NOT. Russia has 6000k nukes NATO is not gonna invade. Putin didn't want to loose soft power over Ukraine and the possibility of military inavsion, it's that simple.
Yup
Well here is a classic chicken or the egg argument. Ни бэ, ни мэ, ни кукаре́ку
Ex RT reporter 🤣🤣🤣🤣 go away bootlicker or give a counter argument instead of calling me dumb.
How, in anyway, is Russia surrounded? Russias western border with FSU now Nato states is a tiny percentage of its total border with foreign countries. Additionally, you didn’t even address his question. Your argument takes all agency away from independent states and infantilizes their ability to make decisions. Plus, your examples are absolutely ridiculous. “What if this…what if that…”, unless the US becomes a northern neighbor that wishes to incorporate Mexico by force into a NA empire, when would that ever happen? In what reality does Mexico or Canada align with Russia militarily? You are arguing in bad faith. It’s called freedom of navigation. A provision most sane countries are quite fine with. You are the one that is uninformed. Russia regularly, and blatantly, sends military spy vessels to scout US territory. Oh, and here we go, on and on about 200 years of American wrong doings because you can’t engaged with question directly.
Your comment is out of the context thus dishonest. The work on NATO enlargement took place right after E. Europe became capitalist, right around 1990s , way before Putin took power in Russia. As I have read Wikileaks about it, the major rationale was given not as defense against Russia (at the time) but as alliance to foster security and increase sales of NATO grade weapons (thus the US make) to the region. That's the historical fact. Russia also wanted to become a part of NATO under Yeltsin but they were refused by Clinton. Clinton actually made a NATO enlargement a domestic political issue ( he brought this point during electioneering here in Illinois trying to appeal to Polish diaspora here).
I don't think you can say "that's the fact" about NATO expansion at all. In fact it seems extraordinarily reductive. I encourage you to view the first five minutes of a discussion with the authority on this subject Mary Sarotte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUvXrCm90Bk.
I think it is the fact as internal cables have brought it up and you are talking about the cooks in the kitchen here vs writer/analysts writing about what the kitchen business is about. It always amazes me that wherever anyone opines on foreign policy issues they rather refer to the facts that fit their argument but not vice versa. I am familiar with Sarotte's argument and I agree that nothing is monocausal however the issue of the NATO enlargement is pivotal when it comes to the situation where we are here right now, especially taking into account NATO actions since early 1990s. Yes we can have the conversation about what if, until the pro-verbial cows come home (I think this is Sarotte's argument environ) however we are right here and right now in situation where we are in. If the NATO enlargement would have included Russia ( highly doubtful considering the US military industrial complex opposition to the idea) things would definitely be different. That said Putin was made possible because of Yeltsin and policies that actually helped Putin to gain power. Also if I can suggest something to you it would be this: be very careful of people who are considered "authorities" on anything. Listen to the validity of argument and then check sources and historical context to get to the right point. That's not to say that Sarotte's doesn't have valid points but I only wish that any attempt to dismantle Mearsheimer argument met his own on the merit and quality of the discourse. So far, none have.
Sure, I'd like to think I'm a discriminating reader thanks very much :) I agree that including Russia in a collective security agreement or NATO would have been and continues to be a smart move. In your view why would this be anathema to the powers that be? Bad for buisness?
This won't happen for two reasons: 1) Russia to be admitted to NATO would have to be reformulated into something what Brzezinski wrote in his insane wet dream vision for the country. 2) If you look at the US domestic political class set up that actually decides what the NATO is, it would have to be revamped into something that compliments our financial industrial military complex rather than competes with it. Yes business and $ is part of this equation here but not all. There would have to be a generational change as well at play and to be honest I don't see it in the US. I see it in Russia/China but I don't necessarily think what comes out of this at the end of the process is good either.
Of course USA and others wanted to sell guns and get some soft power through NATO. However nations joined knowing they would probably have very good protection if the slumbering bear in the east ever woke up, or do you think they just liked buying guns?
The US either occupied or controlled most of the nations that joined NATO. It wasn't a choice.
Sure dude 🤣
"Peaceful means"? This is just absurd. Putin has notoriously already invaded Eastern Ukraine by proxy.
Peaceful means for 8 years wtf, Putin practically started the civil war in donbas and supported it with russian troops, anexed Crimea which already was an autonomous republic, sigh.
This is pretty fuzzy, no? I mean it is hard to see Putin’s takeover of the Crimea and his use of Russian military forces in Donbas as “peaceful.” And one can respect what Kaplan and others call the geographical imperative (The Revenge of Geography) as meaningful and still recognize that Putin’s moves have been a major cause of the growth of opposition in Ukraine, and even a generator (or at least motivator) of Ukraine’s growing nationalism. Mearsheimer’s New Yorker interview with Isaac Chotiner suggests that he doesn’t think that Putin’s threat of complete takeover of Ukraine is “real,” rather than just a bargaining point. Look, Putin has agency driven by geographical imperatives and other historical fantasies, apparently. Ukraine has agency driven by the Russian existential threat that has increasingly unified most of the country.
Agreed. Tooze has offered up a rather damp word salad.
> what exactly could he have done
Reform Russia from being mafia state run for Putin's benefit, become more attractive alternative. (Though that is the entire goal of Putin!)
Rather than invade Ukraine in 2014.
this article is horrible. It reeks of academic posturing and competition for status. claiming mearsheimer is an apologist is a disgusting smear. tooze seems hell bent on erasing any culpability on the part of the states and nato - gross.
No one forced Russia to do anything. Eastern bloc countries joined Nato because they saw Russia as a future threat, and the EU as a better option for economic opportunities. Is it really so hard to admit that countries just didn’t want what Russia was selling? You completely take any type of agency in making decisions away from independent states in your assessment.
Well not so fast! I spent few years in one of the new member countries back then and the way this whole NATO shebang has been sold is far from the reality. Yes they wanted to join as positive reinforcement ( better standard of living) but not as negative ( defense against evil Russia). That said nobody believed at the time that Russia would ever threaten anyone as Russia was also perceived as potential NATO member by the same elites that joined NATO back then. Obviously they were naive on both ends but so was the Russian leadership which is understandable with Yeltsin being drunk most of the time.
> nobody believed at the time that Russia would ever threaten anyone
blatantly untrue, Poland joined NATO to get as away from Russia as possible
> Russia was also perceived as potential NATO member
there was some worry that NATO will become defunct, luckily this has not happened
> whole NATO shebang has been sold is far from the reality. Yes they wanted to join as positive reinforcement ( better standard of living) but not as negative ( defense against evil Russia)
Are you sure that you are not confusing NATO and EU?
I'm pretty sure they joined for defence (thinking long term)
of course no one forced him. but he, a super power like the u.s., feels it's his right to demand security and wage war if he doesn''t get it. who forced the u.s. to invade iraq? i personally feel the reasons for that were even less reasonable than putin's. and just remember the world's reaction. nothing. acceptance. anyway, read the article by stephen cohen explaining the euromaidan coup. it's not so easy as you keep saying.
Firstly, the Russian Federation is not and has not been a super power since the fall of the Soviet Union. It has been a (functionally) single party autocratic state that has poor techno-socio-economic standing in the international system, whose perceived power is predicated only on its nuclear arsenal and relative geographic size. Second, the US’s Iraq debacle and Putins Invasion of Ukraine are incomparable, and even suggesting so shows your misunderstanding of geopolitical history. If you want to make an apt comparison, try Saddam's spurious invasion of Kuwait. While not justifiable, the US took over a year in garnering international support for the Iraq invasion. Maybe you’re too young to remember that Saddam was also in violation of UN charters regarding Nuclear weapon development that was instated nearly a decade prior to 2003. Plus, being an idiot, Saddam, internationally, admitted to developing nuclear weapons in secret—what a moron! Look, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on lies, and GWB in a just world would be on trial for war crimes. And to be truthfully honest with you, people didn't care because Iraq was a pariah state with a recent history of bad behavior. Iraq was valuable to no one. It’s regional neighbors considered it a huge geopolitical headache. Lastly, 1999-2003 was the height of Americas hegemonic unipolar power. Countries were going to standup to the USA for the sake of Iraq? Lol!!!
wow, what are they called? mental gymnastics? yes...that's what you're doing to absolve the u.s. good luck, dnt pull yr brain muscles too hard... luckily there are actually historians out there, good ones, who have spoken out...
Alright, obviously a troll. Have fun.
indeed, everyone who disagrees is a troll and putin apologist. u r a rep from brave new world"
My thoughts as well.
While Mr. Mearsheimer might be a bit crude in its assertions, he is not that far from the warning the Athenian negotiators gave to the Melians, some 2500 years ago.
Mr. Tooze is definitely not inured with military literature and theories as might appear in War on the Rocks, or the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. But the present outcome in Ukraine was in fact pushed for by the US decades ago:
"The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield," said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The CIA's Beebe follows with this almost unbelievable line:
"And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail."
The fact that Russia chose war to create its buffer zone in its west, with Ukraine as a no man land is not considered by Mr. Tooze as imperative shows that he never engaged with a military man.
While money men tried to position themselves with optic cables such that the instant trades could be performed by the thousands, cutting the time by microseconds, military men consider that positioning first strike capabilities as close as possible to Russia would make a nuclear war winnable. And 2014 coup makes that wet dream of US military planners a very serious possibility.
This very simple arithmetic of existential threat and pressure would be logically followed by a Russia that would acquiesce to the American hegemony. With all the perks for the victor. Maybe this time around wouldn't come to the same level of pillage that followed 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, but a big party for the Wall Street would definitely ensue.
I think that Russia's freedom of choice in the matter of Ukraine is a mere illusion in Mr. Tooze's head. After all, the first shots of this war have been reverberating around the world since US bombed Belgrade in 1999 with all the blather from Clinton that globalization will be done, whether people like it or not.
While the Russian economy might take a beating, I wonder what price Mr. Tooze puts on sovereignty, independence, dignity, and security? As far as I know, the US spends more than the next 10 countries combined in its offensive military posture. So as long as Russians feel safe and their lives are made maybe more secured, a little dent in their material comforts will be regarded as a cost of doing business.
The question I have is what the US and EU posture will be after some agreement between Russia and Ukraine is reached to Russia's satisfaction and papers are signed? Will US / EU continue with the sanctions? My bet is yes, showing that all this show of force is the West's constant position that Russia is not to be treated as an equal partner (the past 8 years of failed diplomacy in Ukraine, and failure of the West to force Ukraine to implement the internationally approved Minsk agreements, ability that the west amply had, given the great mobilization showed in the first hours of Russian invasion). It is the position of the US government that Russia, in its present form (a nuclear superpower) is an existential danger to the the US and must be annihilated. The US cannot breath at the idea that Russia has the ability to physically destroy the United States and there is many a paranoid in the US military planning that cannot sleep at night because of that.
I do think this assertion of mine is credible, given the insistence of US/Israel on the limitation of Iran's conventional missile program, which is the shield that Iran has built against foreign aggression. Iran cannot be coerced by the US via military means. No gunboat diplomacy with respect to Iran, same as no gunboat diplomacy with Russia, or China. The technological genie is out of the bottle. we are primitive men with sophisticated tools, and Mr. Tooze fails to understand this by looking at too many charts and to many prices.
I think this is probably the best argument on this thread. Hands down!
Are you so sure? Kouros argument paints Russia as a brave, virtuous victim of the US led Western-Order, standing up for its people's dignity and sovereignty. Is this true? Especially now? Seems to me that unless your a hard-right cultural conservative who also happens to enjoy police torture and cultural repression that the Western led order, despite its faults, is incomparably preferable to the alliance of crony-capitalist, authoritarian "people's democracies" that Russia has attempted to assemble as a counterweight.
Well at this point I actually don't know if you are describing the West or Russia? Bailouts, police brutality, Neoliberalism running amok, militarism is the feature of both systems and although the freedom of speech is better here ( unless you are in Canada as recent convoy experience shows) is it really that different? That I think depends on where one sits and that often determines the point of view. I do not agree with a limited binary view ( either/or) as this argument is just too shallow and too unsophisticated for its own good. Or to quote someone on this thread "too reductionist." I actually like that word.
One thing. When people inscribe virtuosity to one place vs the other it often shows that they don't know the places they are talking about. I actually know both scenarios you are referring to quite well and to be honest I prefer southern coast of Mexico (Oaxaca) with a margarita in hand. I would not have Molotov serve me one unless its the band but that's a completely different story (for another time).
I believe I said "extraordinarily reductionist."
Well nobody's perfect!
To Kouroi it looks that the description he made reflects reality. You obviously do not live and have not lived in any Eastern block country ever, including Russia, in the past 30 or more years to see that what you describe never existed, or at least not since the original turn to socialism. The US and the west stand only for their own aggrandizement an domination of the rest of the world. Crony capitalism has won long time ago in the US, which has been long ago labelled by academics in the field a Plutocratic Republic which maintains the democratic processes for the purpose of maintaining the aura of legitimacy only, while the results always favor the Plutocratic class.
That's a very fair characterization. And since our system of Plutonomy has to continue to expand at the expense of the normal people like you and me we are now encroaching onto a new field of socio-economic experience. I personally can call it a High Tech Feudalism as the vision presented to us by Klaus Schwab and his ilk. https://www.wispolitics.com/2021/derek-monroe-the-new-left-is-actually-the-new-alt-right-producing-ideology-for-effective-militarism-and-regime-change/
While the Russian economy might take a beating, I wonder what price Mr. Tooze puts on sovereignty, independence, dignity, and security?
I see that whatever we might say about Mearsheimer you clearly take a normative position, that is, that Putin's war is justified. In any case I might ask, why not ask the same questions of Ukraine? I assume they have to submit to vassal status on behalf of the dignified Russians? Anyways, in real life Russian's peoples actual security is clearly now in the red now that they can be thrown in jail for 15 years for "discrediting the military" and their economy is destroyed. Not so great.
The request from Russia that Ukraine adopts a neutral military posture does not make Ukraine a vassal state to Russia. Finland became neutral after WWII as well as Austria. Furthermore, as a condition of having its independence recognized, the newly minted Republic of Ireland had to enact a law making it a neutral country that forswore any alliance with enemies of the United Kingdom.
How that looks to you? Is Ireland a vassal of the UK? Or was Austria or Finland anyone's vassal?
In the end that may be where Ukraine ends up. But Finland is still in the EU, and now wants to join NATO themselves. Somehow I don’t think just military neutrality will be enough for Putin but we shall see
Like Canada to the US?
This piece is really shallow on the history and lost in academic weeds ... We are only a few blunders away from WWIII and Tooze has it out for Mearsheimer. Who really cares? The real question is whether the West really did provoke and trigger this whole situation. And Tooze really provides next to no evidence to disprove the claim that the West is principally at fault for the grave crisis in Ukraine. There is ample historical evidence that the West provoked Russia in Eastern Europe, by expanding NATO when it promised that it never would (after the dissolution of the Soviet Union). Quite a number of prominent US geo-strategists and government officials warned, all the way back in the 90's, against the dangers of expanding NATO and unnecessarily provoking Russia.
And then there was yet more provocation when the US pushed for Ukraine to be a member of NATO, backed the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014, promised them NATO membership, and then sent them bunches of weapons to fight Russian separatists ... The more one digs and looks at actual recent, historical evidence and the more the picture emerges that in fact the US was deeply involved in provoking Russia, and actually fighting it by proxy starting with the overthrow of the government in Ukraine in 2014 ... But these are facts that just don't fit with the current wave of shallow journalism one sees everywhere in western countries.
Here are some more serious academic and journalistic pieces on the real origins of the Ukraine crisis and now war, and one sincerely hopes that Adam Tooze might present a more rigorous and balanced presentation of the evidence if he treats this question again (which he is obviously more than capable of doing, given his prodigious talents):
- https://scheerpost.com/2022/03/06/calling-russias-attack-unprovoked-lets-u-s-off-the-hook/
- https://tomdispatch.com/how-did-we-get-here/
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict
- https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/24/not-one-inch-eastward-how-the-war-in-ukraine-could-have-been-prevented-decades-ago/
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/04/demonisation-russia-risks-paving-way-for-war
- On the US backed coup in Ukraine:
https://mate.substack.com/p/by-using-ukraine-to-fight-russia?s=r
Agree with one thing: we are only a few blunders away from WWIII. As Hillel said, the rest is commentary.
Well you are correct. I also covered the mess in Kiev in 2014 when they overthrew the govt there and I was told that I was one of the first people on the ground there to call it a coup d'etat: https://truthout.org/articles/euro-maidan-2014-the-ruptured-rebellion-of-incoherent-revolution/
Thanks for sharing your article - will definitely read it.
You are welcome! D
Let's leave philosophical fluff aside for a while and review the facts:
2002 - US abandons ABM (Anti-ballistic missile treaty)
2019 - US abandons INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty
2020 - US withdraws from Open Skies treaty
2021 - Indication Ukraine is readying for NATO membership
With Ukraine in NATO, tactical nuclear missiles could be positioned in Ukraine, along with anti-ballistic missiles, and with no possibility to verify which base / launcher / container has which. Tactical nuke so close to Moscow effectively becomes a strategic weapon, and powerful ABM radar and capability so close (covering everything west of Urals) would mean Russian strategic land-based missile capability would be much compromised. It would be a strategic check-mate, or how Putin called it "knife under the throat of Russia", and there is no rational way to look at it differently. In such situation any launch of any missile from Ukraine - due to no reaction time - would be interpreted as decapitation attack against Russia triggering full retaliation across all targets (Europe and US).
When they sold the idea of the missiles to Poland the PR machinery told them that they are against .................IRAN. Iran of all countries has had a very good relations with Poland going back hundreds of years to the point of having hosting and taking care of Polish cemetery in Tehran. So here is the solution in search of the problem while the real enemy was Moscow.
Damn you're brainwashed by Russian proganda. Why the fuck would NATO wanna cause a new Cuba crisis. Also they can already do it and have been able to do it for many years since Latvia is a member.
To perpetuate its existence. NATO needs a major war every 10 years or so to show it is relevant and needed (and they do come as clockwork, bombing of Serbia/Montenegro in 1998, bombing of Libya 2011, and now proxy war with Russia in Ukraine 2022). After 20+ years of "war on terror" the fatigue has set in and the return of investment there is getting lower and lower - you can't really force Germany to spend 2% of GDP in order to chase Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan, but you can with "Russian threat". Old armament stockpiles will be shipped to Ukraine and new expensive arms bought, mostly from US defense sector. Germany just announced 100 billion Euros increase annually, out of which 20%+ will go to new gear, meaning that shareholders of EADS, LM, NG, Raytheon etc. will get that much in profits. https://www.firstpost.com/world/from-germany-to-china-how-russia-ukraine-conflict-is-forcing-the-world-to-ramp-up-defence-budgets-10440251.html
How can you be so blind Russia is what perpetuates NATOs existence. All of what you mention is just Western/US hegemony doing stuff they wanted and could do with or without NATO, they used NATO for some of it simple because it was easier to do it that way. Also Germany hasn't spent 2% for ages and most certainly would continue not doing it had not Russia invaded. This whole thing has never and was never NATO's fault it's Putins and his enablers. Well NATO could have tried more to get Ukraine in many years before than this idiocy wouldn't have happened so I guess in that way they are culpable.
That may be true but then why his objection to Ukraine joining the EU? Would it really not be possible to have a discussion about weapons deployment separately? And of course, if Putin had his way and Uk was under it's umbrella it would have similar strategic implications, just in the other direction.
I have not seen any objections of Ukraine joining EU, can you please find source for that? (there is 0% chance of that happening anyways).
It is not the same, because Russia cannot target any US city with a tactical nuclear missile.
Because the EU club membership often goes with NATO membership ( buy one get one free) unless you are a very wealthy country ( Norge) that can afford to pay for your own security outside of it or by outsourcing it (SE, FIN) etc. When it comes to EU membership , Ukraine actually has a stop coming from the EU side as there are many budgetary and political criteria that it would have to fulfill. UA would have to completely revamp its political and social system to be even allowed into a waiting room. That said Putin is a long distance runner and he understands this game more than anyone in the EU club does especially when the real grown up around , just retired.
Even if UA did that revamp (good luck with that, we have seen that even peace negotiators get bullets in the head), it would never join EU:
- it would drain billions of Euros currently going to eastern members that would need to be redirected to UA (political elites in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Croatia etc. thrive only because they can bring "pork" home from Bruxelles)
- country of 40+ million would upset the decision making powers that today lie with Germany + France
- bringing in such agricultural powerhouse would completely change the viability of agricultural subsidies in France in particular (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/resources/library/images/20211122PHT17814/20211122PHT17814_original.jpg)
- it would gradually remove wage differential (read: cheap Ukrainian labor) that is fueling lot of economic development of Poland especially
It really boils down that EU simply does not have funds to absorb such big country, esp. in the world after Brexit, after Covid (350 billions of Euro loans need to be repaid), and as German economy becomes much less profitable due to loss of cheap reliable energy and increased "defense" spending.
One thing I have learnt covering US and EU politics, never say never!
You may be right, we do live in a world in which at this point all bets are off... However, not any time soon (<10 year line of sight). Just take example of Turkey - 2nd most important NATO member with big economy and geostrategic location and for various reasons EU membership went nowhere. After this war is over Ukraine will have severely destroyed infrastructure, industry ground to halt due to energy and raw materials dependency on Russia severed, emigration and employment problems etc. EU will focus on rebuilding energy infrastructure (nuclear power will be back, as well as some renewables) which will be massive investment, there won't be money to rebuild Ukraine, except some humanitarian help and loans here and there.
https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/ukraines-employers-federation-russias-customs-service-halts-all-ukrainian-imports-328360.html
When Yanukovych was planning to sign the association agreement Russian started a trade-war to prevent it. Also, their current negotiating conditions include a constitutional amendment precluding involvement in any "Blocs" including the EU (can find on google).
That's true for the US but not for Western/Central Europe Article 5 signatories, which would indeed be under threat from deployment of Russian missiles on UK.
There was definitely pressure from Russia to keep Ukraine in the "Eurasian Union", but also there was a realization by Yanukovich at the time that accepting EU conditions would mean incalculable economic cost to Ukraine as its economy at the time (esp. industrial parts in the east) was deeply integrated with Russia. But that ship has sailed a long time ago - Ukraine lost Donbas, severed ties to Russia and became completely dependent on EU and IMF handouts. In Putin's effective declaration of war statement, EU was not on the list just NATO.
The fact that US pulled out from INF knowing that Russia can now re-arm with intermediary range nuclear missiles that can cover all Europe tells us exactly how much they care about European security.
Well having a van blasting a speech out is an overkill, straight from the book of the Japanese nationalists and their black buses. That's said Tooze piece just doesn't have the weight and logic of Mearsheimer as it is not backed up by historical analysis of the E. Europe and the world since 1989. I think Mearsheimer thesis is spot on and that's why gets the following and Tooze doesn't. Perhaps there is a simple professional jealousy at play here? I would love to read a factual and argumentative take down of Mearsheimer points however Tooze doesn't offer any. And all of the Neocons that try often fail (Applebaum being one of the most pathetic examples out there).
In a way I almost feel like Tooze is being Mearsheimer's Mearsheimer here. A well credentialled and widely respected intellectual trying to explain shittiness in a way that ultimately creates room for and justifies it. Tooze, I love your writing, but sometimes it feels like the mass of analysis smothers plain truth. Mearsheimer is an asshole supporting a literal terrorist state, and quite plainly too. Sometimes you have to say to hell with the academic politeness and take a damn stand, recognize that sometimes the average person gets it right, that what is going on is beyond the space for thought piecing and dissection it is just brutal and ugly evil.
I don't think being a realist is an asshole as long as you explain the alternatives. I wouldn't like to live in Russia under Putin but he has a Russian zeitgeist under his fingers just like Trump does in the red America. Why that is , is a platform of wider conversation on our society and the postmodernism that dominated our political and economic discourse. Unfortunately what we now have is the outcome of it and it didn't start with Zbig Brzezinski recipe what to do with Russia.
Putin gains this power you impart to him not a small amount from the constant excusing and rationalizing that goes on in ivory towers like this one. It clearly bothers some people to call out a man who wears a suit and hits the lecture circuit, but when they are fascist apologists that is the time to do so and do so forcefully. Terror bombing a nearly pacified smaller state into submission in a war of aggression built on lies and years of propaganda is about as clear a moral wrong as I can think, but here we have nothing but people without blushing trying to find justification, "Why the west is to blame," who live in a childish delusion where such statements aren't aide to a dictator but some sort of intellectual exercise where the chief concern is decorum.
You can wear all the suits you want and spout all the fine phrases you want, but that is wrong, that is evil, and I and a growing portion of the population without their head's in their asses are livid about it.
Look I have worked in Ukraine and I know the reality on the ground intimately. Yes morally speaking you are absolutely correct and it shows your heart is in the right place. However as decision maker let's see if you ever have to be faced with this dilemma: start the war with Putin and as he's losing he orders a nuclear strike. Do you want to be on a high horse of moral indignation and fortitude while a billions people die if not the civilization as we know it? Personally I am not going to be blamed for a justification of this as I do not form or execute the US foreign policy that effectively led into this situation. But I tell you this , along with Putin I will put the blame for this on all US admins since George H Bush as accessories. Good enough for you? For the record, Putin is a war criminal and deserves to be held accountable but just not at the expense of many who have nothing to do with it.
Putin is far from a war criminal, even as judged by international law. As TP Wilkinson explains: "A major source of confusion in the debate about Ukraine and Russia’s incursion is the question of Ukrainian sovereignty, on which a wide range of people oppose Russia’s actions because it should not attack a sovereign state (naively drawing on the prohibitions of the UN Charter). Moreover, the claim that Russia should not have violated Ukrainian sovereignty is based on the erroneous belief that Ukraine was invaded. This assertion is based on ignorance. Quite aside from the international-law issues posed by the sovereign claims of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), and hence whether they could exert sovereign rights to conclude treaties and hence invite military aid, there is the long-standing original threat and active aggression of NATO in and through Ukraine’s governments. The recognition of sovereignty does not outweigh the right of self-defense.5 The fact that the Russian Federation has not engaged in military retaliation for multiple violations of its territory does not mean that it has waived or forfeited those territorial rights. 6
That is the ultimate premise upon which most of the critique and attack on Russian military action has been based. There is a principle of English common law by which the convention of traversing private property can create a prescriptive easement – a right of way – which the titular owner of the property can no longer obstruct.7 Title must be actively and conspicuously asserted to remain enforceable. This is augmented by the concept of adverse possession whereby a party may assert title to land occupied for a given period and have that title sustained against the original owner by virtue of that owner’s failure or neglect to challenge the possession. In other words, there is no such thing as absolute title: it must always be effectively asserted.
Common law, while not necessarily enshrined in statutes, can be seen as an expression of the underlying social and psychological conventions prevailing in a regime. Although a nation-state would not appear comparable with a private home or farm, the material beliefs held and practiced in daily life do shape the prejudices of those who debate politics and political concepts. That is what makes this kind of law “common” – as opposed to the details of statutes or treaties.
The Anglo-American view of sovereignty is implemented by people for whom such fluid ideas of property, title and boundaries are conventional. This can be seen throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in every aspect of international-law practice. Even the so-called international judiciary has been formed or deformed by such assumptions, with some contradictory concessions to continental jurisprudence. The extremes to which disputes in Britain and the US lead to litigation are also an indication of the operational instability of legal conventions and norms – and of the level of aggression in everyday violation of whatever norms may be created by statute or courts.
NATO often appears absurd because its continental European bureaucrats utter pronouncements wholly at odds with their own cultural and legal traditions in order to articulate the policies generated by their Anglo-American principals. On the other hand this is part of the Anglo-American sleight of hand: framing their imperial designs in the alien terms of continental European politics. No amount of fealty or obsequy can conceal the fact that neither Stoltenberg nor Von der Leyen are natural “common law” politicians.8 That is one reason their insincerity is so blatant. They both try to present essentially Anglo-American imperial objectives as if they were continental peninsular. Their statements are incredulous and can be dismissed on their face. The real issue — which they are employed to conceal — is the anti-Russian policy of the Anglo-American Empire. To rectify the name of this policy and the actions derived from it would openly deny any pretense of sovereignty in occupied Germany and the vassal monarchies that comprise the core of NATO."
As much as one can on personal level sympathize with your argument , the justified defense mechanism applies only to the clear and imminent danger in case of the LPR and DNR. They have been involved in conflict with Ukraine military since 2014 so this doesn't apply. The fact is that under the current set of the international laws as practiced by the ICC ( Milosevic case) clearly states that if Putin was put under their jurisdiction he would be found guilty as charged and in my humble opinion justifiably so. Your argument has a bit of the "sovereign citizen" flavor to it but even in the US state courts this particular way of legal interpretation has been deemed invalid in at least two cases involving the IRS, if my memory serves me right. You also involve the idea of foreign policy prerogative as foundation of the legal argument. I think this way of approaching the issue has mixed result (speaking from a personal legal experience using an Alien Claims Tort Act of 1789 to litigate civil cases in the Illinois court). Anyway the laws do not come to fore out of the vacuum and there is always a context to it. However your argument would have absolutely no traction in the current set of laws and even if it did (hypothetically speaking) there is no enforcement mechanism. You cannot litigate war responsibility out of existence although many countries have tried. The only way something like you have stated could probably prevail as valid defense is if the leaders of VietNam were indicted on war crimes during the 1978 invasion of Cambodia to stop the genocidal Pol Pot regime. Other conflicts? don't think so.
In line with NATO's justification of its Yugoslavia invasion, has a responsibility to protect people in the Donbas from Ukraine's genocidal forces.
Having exhausted all diplomatic avenues, Russia did the right thing, in law and in NATO-blessed custom.
In an interview in the WSJ, Robert Service called the 11/1021 Charter Agreement between the US and Ukraine one of two "immense strategic blunders." There's a whole section in the Charter entitled "Security and Countering Russian Aggression" and it contains the following sentence: "The United States supports Ukraine’s efforts to maximize its status as a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner to promote interoperability."
The other immense strategic blunder that Service cites was of course Putin's decision to invade.
Too little has been made, I think, about Putin's show of force by massing his forces on Ukraine's borders. That was the precedent blunder for his eventual invasion blunder. I believe Putin was convinced that, seeing the magnitude of his forces, the West would negotiate Ukraine's right to join NATO. When we stood firm, he found himself in a position where he either had to withdraw his forces or use them. He left himself no flexibility, no way to back out without losing all credibility.
I'm convinced this was a war no one wanted. And I don't think it was inevitable.
Putin wanted this he's not an idiot no chance NATO would ever agree to the demands Ukraine and many other countries never getting to join NATO, and pulling back weapons and the very few troops stationed in the balltics. His demands were just charades for the Russian people, "look i reasoned with them thery were unreasonable and want to put nukes in Ukraine"
It is not a blunder but an intentional vagueness that leaves the beauty for the eye of the beholder. In a real life if you want something but do not want to be precise in case of being called a liar, you insinuate. I think Putin is crazy like a fox and contrary to the commentariat out there, it is not over until it's over. For example, since Visa and MC pulled out of the Russia market , the Chinese UnionPay started issuing Russian bankcards yesterday. The changeover and implementation of the payment system takes months to figure out at the shortest schedule so I find it really hard to believe that the Chinese/Russians were not preparing for this eventuality. Obviously they did. And when it comes to sanctions it is a double edge sword as we are now in Illinois finding out ( $4.30 a gallon in my local station).
I also have had trouble with Mearsheimer. As someone who has studied the Russian state, the role of the Mafia, the role of the siloviki and post-soviet survival of the KGB and other security services etc, it is hard to look at Russian interests in Ukraine other than in an Imperial lens, and one wrapped up in personal power and the dynamics of kleptocracy. Putin may claim to speak for "Russia's Interests", yet we rarely afford other dictatorial kleptocrats in Africa, central Asia, or anywhere else, the dignity of taking such claims seriously. The bank balances and offshore wealth tend to rub up the wrong way against claims of representing the "national interest". Any analysis that stops short of these facts is going to be a bit lacking, however elegant and simplistic the models may seem.
Why is it different with Putin compared to Idi Amin, or the Kazakh dictators, or Turkmenbashi et al? Well partly presumably because of the feared Russian military's power projection abilities, and partly because of the 3000 or so usable nuclear warheads. These are real (although the former has suffered a blow to its reputation in Ukraine), but they don't really change the calculus that Putin is one of the richest men in the world, without having invented Facebook or Amazon or Tesla. When your childhood friends are billionaires, your foreign minister's mistress's daughter has somehow accumulated several million USD, your former deputy PM has a £19million apartment in the heart of London, it's just silly to talk about these people having Russia's best interests at heart.
When you come to Ukraine, you come to the topics of energy transhipment, corruption, Dimitry Firtash, Semion Mogilevich, and pure corruption, as well as traditional and non traditional (pipeline) geopolitics.
When you take this kleptocracy angle further, you end up looking at how Putin might feel threatened at home by another large former soviet republic next door doing well...with Russian speakers in. This is not about Russian interests, it is about Putin and his elite's interests. For an ethnographic-nationalist like Putin, this is simply unacceptable and is an existential threat to his kleptocratic regime.
Does anyone actually imagine that Russia led by Navalny, Nemtsov, or Kasparov would be locked into the kind of geopolitical battle that is given as an explanatory reason for Russia's 8-year war in Ukraine? Further, if Nemtsov had taken over instead of Putin (as Yeltsin was apparently considering at one point), do you imagine that the Baltics and Ukraine / Georgia would have been so keen to join NATO? It's possible, but it seems unlikely.
And it's also possible that the Balts, and E Europe, and former USSR states such as Ukraine and Georgia, might have had good reason to worry about Putin even back in the early 2000s when he himself was regularly using the term "defensive alliance" to describe NATO. When he met with Schroder in 2004, and explicitly said that NATO expansion is not a security threat to Russia (the article is still on the Kremlin Website ...now down by DDOS attack...here if anyone is interested: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/30679), even then the Balts and UKR and Georgia may have been suspicious.
Why? Well because they have more understanding of what Putin's past career meant for his mindset. They knew the kind of people who did the kind of jobs he did in the KGB, and the way those kind of people were trained and how they operate. They knew this because many of them suffered under the yolk of the KGB or its sister organisations in the former Warsaw Pact countries. They also probably had a much more nuanced and detailed understanding of what had gone on in St Petersburg during the 1990s, and would have recognised "KGB" tactics in Putin's operations there. They may also have recognised KGB tactics in the apartment bombings in Russia, including when the local police caught FSB agents planting explosives and arrested them, only to be told it was an exercise that the local police for some reason hadn't been told about. And they probably by 2004 would have seen the destruction of Grozny, and thought...well there but for the grace of a few years go we. A good question to ask, is what would a realist advisor such as Mearsheimer have advised the governments of Eastern Europe as they made their strategic decisions back then? Submit to Russian hegemony and influence? Or seek an outside power to balance Russia and offer protection?
Back to those alarming events in Chechnya: The USA of course was encouraged to view the Chechen Wars as part of the GWOT. And was happy to do so as Russia was working alongside NATO (not threatened by it then apparently) to facilitate operations in Afghanistan.
The idea that Eastern European states and former USSR states have their own people, sovereignty, and more importantly, foreign policy is obviously beyond the realm of some realist thought to include. I do love Adam's term:
"If we take Mearsheimer’s account seriously, Russia, rather than being a sentient strategic actor, is reduced to something akin to a resentful robot."
This is where i find the hubris and parochialism of some US analysis so ridiculous. The idea that Putin's Russia, shaped by the disaster of the 1990s (again, Russia was not forced at gunpoint into the economic reforms, however badly they did), the survival of the KGB after 1991 as a powerful entity, the memory of the attempted hardline coup that hung over the 1990s like a shadow, the survival and flourishing of the Russian mafia, the eventual merger of the Russian Mafia and the remnants of the KGB with the Russian state, first in St Petersburg, then in the whole country; Putin's personal nature, the emergent kleptocracy that Putin did not crush but instead co-opted when he took power, and a host of other factors, were not more important that NATO's Eastwood expansion in explaining Russia's policies is ridiculous.
Then you get to Putin's own words. His essay last summer "On the historic...." blah blah blah, absolutely nonsense, but no more nonsense than the claim that he suddenly felt threatened by NATO in 2007 and 2014 when he hadn't for the previous years. Could the trouble around his "re-election" in 2011/12 have been influential? Could it be that what he wasn't afraid of in the Maidan was NATO flags (there were none), but EU flags, of which there were plenty.
A popular uprising occurred not because Putin's fellow kleptocratic puppet in Ukraine turned his back on NATO, but because he turned his back on an agreement with the EU, in favour of one Putin had hurriedly put together. Another thought experiment to end:
Does anyone imagine that Putin could accept a sovereign, intact Ukraine (or even one without Crimea and the pre-war Donbas zones), that forswore any future bid to join NATO, but that was accepted quickly into the EU, with its rule of law, democracy, and civil protections?
If you answer no, which I think is the only realistic answer, then the NATO question is moot. It is already moot of course, because Putin knew quite well that Ukraine was "pre-Article V" since 2014 anyway. The frozen conflicts in Donbas, and the state fo Crimea meant that even if Germany, Hungary et al would not have blocked Ukrainian membership in NATO (and they would), but that Ukraine joining was impossible. As Putin well knew on both counts.
It is also moot because the war is being prosecuted to destroy the Ukrainian state under the guise of an argument that the state doesn't exist. Putin is very influenced by Carl Schmitt, as Adam knows, especially his text back in the 1930s about non-interventionism and reichs. (I mean the one that was originally published, not the one that Schmitt later tried to clean up having avoided Nuremberg.)
I agree with a lot of what you say, especially the premise that a kleptocrat is not looking out for the country’s interests.
I was also thinking about whether there is a real distinction between, say, Stalin’s view (and the views of his successors) and Putin. I think at some level communists were sincere in pursuit of their ideology (in a way that Putin is probably not). But their value system did not have any room for human rights either. So is there a real distinction between Putin subjugating Russia’s neighbors and communists doing so? Because if there is not (or T least not one that is readily apparent), that might explain why Russia’s general public accepts Putin’s views on NATO.
Agreed. I think one of post-soviet Russia's main problems is that they didn't come to terms with (through legal cases, truth and reconciliation, proper rectification) their Soviet past, and abuses both inside and outside Russia itself. The Ukraine Famine (see Anne Applebaum's Red Famine), the crushing of Eastern Europe after WWII, the invasion of Finland, the crimes of the Gulag (Anne Applebaum "Gulag" again...i don't work for her I promise).
The main problem I think was that the KGB held such a position of power that they survived and thrived through the collapse of the USSR. I think they had known much earlier than others that the sham was soon to be over. They had experience working with and through the Russian mafia that had started to exfiltrate via Israel (See Craig Ungers House of Putin, House of Trump) under the USSR. They were ideological still, not in their commitment to defunct communism, but to their hatred of the West. And they remained in control enough to greatly assist Putin in his rise to power.
Not just through the government, but even through religion (https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/20/putin-solzhenitsyn-kirill-russia-opinions-contributors_orthodox_church.html?sh=5378b33c3bf9) Patriarch Kirill is a champion of Putin's war, stating it is against homosexuality (a common theme of Putin's fascism) and god supports Putin. Kirill's background in the KGB as an agent (not asset) might explain this? the schism between the ROC and Ukrainian Orthodox Church recently is also a factor here.
I think on your question of Stalin versus Putin...the difference is really in ideology and kleptocracy. Stalin had both been a leader in the Russian civil war in Ukraine, and then later deliberately imposed famine on Ukraine. He was far more murderous than Putin (although Putin is catching up through Grozny, Syria, and now Ukraine), but he didn't have mega-yachts and millionaire daughters, and he certainly wouldn't have allowed his judo partner to steal a billion, or his foreign minister to channel millions of state money to his mistress's daughter.
About the kleptocracy, how is it any different than any US member of Congress benefiting from insider trading?
those things are bad, as are PPE corruption in the UK during the pandemic. Senator Purdue in the USA trading stocks on pandemic inside information, nancy pelosi getting very rich while in government, or Mitch McConnell doing the same.
It's different though because most of these people could be feasibly voted out, and it's also different because they don't murder journalists or their political opponents (such as Boris Nemtsov), or attempt to poison them (Navalny, Anna P) who talk about insider trading. People can go and stand outside their offices and protest if they want (sadly they don't seem to want to so much) without being arrested and imprisoned (Kasparov). Lawyers can bring cases that implicate them without being arrested and beaten to death (Magnitsky)
And it's also different because of the scale of the theft. Insider trading of course is unfair use of information to make money at the expense of (mostly) private entities in the stock market. In Russia, officials / the mafia steal whole companies with the backing of the courts, they also channel state funds directly to their cronies (See the Sochi Olympics etc), funnel money out of state owned industries etc etc.
I'd recommend Bernie Sanders' recent Tweet thread on the inequality of wealth ownership in Russia. If you want to see "the difference".
Or books such as:
Putin's People by Catherine Belton (try and get the first edition before the oligarch lawyers got it changed)
Kleptopia by Tom Burgis (just won a court case brought by oligarchs involved)
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev
Red Notice by Bill Browder
Any of the books by Anna Politkovskaia (journalist murdered on Putin's birthday as a little birthday gift)
The Long Hangover by Shaun Walker
Russia and the Western Far Right by Anton Shekhovtsov
Also your comment on the US political system is very out of touch. People like Pelosi , Perdue or Schumer cannot be easily voted out as the money and political machinery clout is behind them. In this way our politics remind me of United Russia or Ukraine Party of Regions (Yanukovich) where the personal fiefdom is as important as the political messaging.
Well Purdue lost in 2021 run off and was indeed voted out, and his opponent raised his insider trading repeatedly. And Pelosi and McConnell have both been in the minority in their careers (if personally still in office). The Presidency changes hands between actual opponents, as does congress, and the Supreme Court a bit more slowly. But i don't disagree in principle would certainly support term limits for congress. The disaster of Citizen's United and the gerrymandering of safe districts really doesn't help...but still, a different level than Ukraine under Yanukovych, and a different game altogether than Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and the other kleptocracies.
Well I don't want to go into the rabbit hole of US politics but I think you relate to the personalities rather than looking at the systemic dysfunction of our system which cannot be fixed. This would require taking the money out of our politics and that's just not going to happen. The game is different in the mechanism and process but the outcome is actually quite similar. We also have oligarchs here in the US but they are just called different names and our corporations actually now are controlling the govt and not vice versa.
Well you have a very impressive library but judging from the title and authors they all shoot in one direction. I think the reality on the ground is more nuanced but I do agree that Russia is a kleptocratic set up that works in a very "mysterious" ways. It is my impression that many who write on Russia in a very negative terms have had a professional relationship that went sour and then they go on crusade ( Pomerantsev, Browder etc) so they are not very well balanced or objective. From that category I recommend Mark Ames of the Xiled magazine who was kicked out of Russia for a really biting journalism activity but was able to retain his sanity and healthy judgment. Look I am not saying that all of the allegations you are making are not true but I am a little bit suspicious of your motive. There is a great Polish proverb that says: "pound the table and the scissors will make the sound " and it definitely applies in this category. My experience with Russia is that it is also a Neoliberal state with very political characteristics and some tactics are very similar what we have here in Illinois that has been a one party state for over 40 years now. We also have had people suicided in local govt and that included judges. Going back to Mearsheimer I suggest you refer to my earlier comment that explains why I think many go on the moral tangent instead of looking at hard cold facts that led to the tragedy of the current war crime that Russia-UA invasion is. That said Ukraine is not a clear cut victim here (its people are for sure) to present it as good vs evil story.
There are few things to deal with though, a lot confused and used but perhaps not relevant, and some just completely airbrushed from the record in some arguments. Here are a few:
- There was never any promise about NATO not expanding. Baker and USSR's Gorbachev did agree that no NATO banner troops from outside Germany would be stationed in the former E German territory. Of course this doesn't mean that NATO expansion was not in some way provocative, but this "betrayal" line that comes up so much in Kremlin propaganda is nonsense.
- Russia and NATO founding agreement was signed after the USSR broke up. In it, NATO expansion was implied, for it specifically mentioned NATO not stationing NATO banner troops on new member territory, and also had both sides commit to no military border changes. NATO didn't station permanent troops beyond these limits until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, alongside arguments that Ukraine (and therefore the Balts) were not really real countries. Putin summarised these long held thoughts, dating back throughout his entire presidency / prime ministership, in a rambling and incoherent essay last summer.
- After and as the USSR broke up 1990-1992, Russia became violently involved in the independence of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, and Moldova. In the last two cases, Russia armed separatists and in Moldova permanently stationed troops in its own little statelet. These countries well remember this, as well as knowing that the KGB was reemerging in Russia. Putin in 1999 /2000 specifically said at a FSB event that they have fulfilled the first directive of seizing control.
- Putin himself referred to NATO as a "defensive alliance" on multiple occasions throughout the early 2000s even as expansion to the new members (including former USSR republics in the Balts) was underway.
- In 2004 Putin specifically stated (to Shroeder) that NATO expansion was not a security threat to Russia. The link is on the now crippled Kremlin website still.
All this argument about NATO though implicitly accepts the Putin / PRC framing that big countries have a sphere of influence and that they have extraordinary rights within that sphere of influence. We all know why Nazi-turned "i wasn't really a Nazi" Carl Schmitt has seen a revival of interest in authoritarian China. And why the PRC is delighted with Mearsheimer's view. We should also be aware that the realist view here implies the end of the model of the UN Charter. If some states have limited sovereignty (only an issue of course if they also have a malign predatory great power in their region), then the UN charter doesn't hold.
Realist thought often accepts this, but then becomes confused when it comes to the sovereign states within those spheres? What would a realist advisor have advised the governments of the Baltics in the 1990s? Submit to Russia and give up sovereignty, or hedge with an external power (such as the EU and the USA...)? Why would we assume that realist thought is a decent model if it tells contradictory things to different countries? How is it that realist thought is only really useful for big countries?
What would a realist advisor have advised the USA to do in 1990? Help Russia (a potential future great power rival) to recover and regain its sphere of influence over Eastern Europe? Or push for the further break up of the Russian federation? Seems to me the realist critique of NATO expansion doesn't take these questions into account. If it was a mistake to expand NATO, was it not a bigger mistake to open markets and international organisations such as Bretton Woods ones, and G7 to a rival great power?
All moot though. Ukraine in 2021 was pre-article V. With no hope of joining NATO. Putin wasn't worried about NATO, as he understood this. He was worried about his kleptocracy looking dreadful. 20% of Russian households are still not connected to plumbing, in 2022. Yet we are to believe that billionaire Putin and his billionaire cronies, many of whom weren't billionaires when he came to power, have the interests of Russians at heart. It's a joke, but it is no longer really funny.
And moot because the way the war is being carried out, and the repeated justifications (that may not be true) suggest that NATO membership was nowhere near the top of the list of concerns. I still think failing kleptocracy is the crucial lens. Other methods may provide a decent backdrop / rationale, but if you are not talking about stolen wealth from a backward country, you are missing the biggest part of the picture.
Paul, you are definitely entitled to your opinion but not to your own facts. George Schultz admitted in an interview to some German newspaper that yes indeed the promise was given to the Soviets not to expand East. Gorbachev wrote this as well before Putin was even in power and Baker also concurred it but he said it was an idea but it was not put in writing. Yes , the Soviets were stupid and naive to not get this in writing as they should have. That's the simple fact. Some creative legal experts are now coming out of the woodwork saying that this never happened and unfortunately you are recycling deceptive talking points. I even met with the fellow at the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung that has intimate knowledge of this during one conference and he also concurred it. So please don't BS people on this point as it really undermines your credibility and obvious bias.
Also your point from the US State Dept of "no permanent" base is ridiculous. No NATO "banner" troops? What kind of fake category is this?, Either there are NATO troops or no NATO troops. Poland joined NATO in 1997 so the Polish troops became automatically NATO , period and that is east of the Oder river which is the current border between BRD and the East. Talking about no permanent bases, our Guantanamo Base for prisoners, "the gulag" is also not a permanent base as we pay Cuban Govt $2000 lease check every year but they don't cash it.
NATO has lost all of its credibility when it got involved in the war on Serbia in 1999 and this was the pivotal time for the alliance as from that time on it became a tool of US Foreign Policy. It has changed its lost its rationale as defensive mechanism and it became offensive as its actions shown in Libya has shown. Looking after Russia's national interest Putin is absolutely at the right to demand its own sphere of influence ( the buffer) although it obviously flies in the face of international law and international order. We do the same as much overthrowing govts left and right ( well, mostly left that don't serve our interests) so your argument is based on someone who was simply born yesterday and doesn't understand it. Also your allegation that Schmitt was a NAZI is ridiculous. He was first and foremost a very clever conformist and careerist and a brilliant one at that. He first devised a legal coup for Hindenburg so the Nazis couldn't take the power and when they did he served them well with on demand legal theory. So to bring this really circular argument to close I will tell you this: Yes, Putin is a war criminal and he should be put on trial. But in my humble opinion he should be in the new and improved Nuremberg Trial 2.0 on the same stage with Madeleine Albright, George W. Bush, both Clintons, Obama and Biden with the prosecuting authority bringing up the same charges in the same time. You are attacking Mearsheimer for being a cold realist and trying to dismantle his arguments. I cannot help but notice this is somewhat personal for you as the logic is only following your own chosen path of arguments and not actual facts. Well good luck to that as you can fool some people some time but you cannot fool everyone all the time.
That awfully looks like the Harding that's in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ikf1uZli4g
Afraid not! No relation. Nor am I related to Thomas Harding, the Martyr. Or the failed US President from a while back. nor the Paul Harding who won the Pulitzer Prize for "Tinkers". Are you the Monroe from the "Monroe Doctrine???" ;)
I actually never reported for RT only had my text published there. But I do stand by my comment, товарищ!
To simplify the distinction between explanation and justification: “You made me angry, so I shot you.”
"... until recently we imagined ourselves no longer under the shadow of nuclear deterrence." What? Really? Who is "we" here? Why would anyone think this? China and Russia both have nuclear weapons on a large scale. The possession of large nuclear arsenals by the major powers is the foundation of the current world order. American predominance in nuclear weapons is the fundamental fact of international politics. Who ever believed anything else? What possible reason could there be for anyone thinking anything else? Playing some kind of make-believe game with these weapons lying around is suicidal. They are unpleasant to think about, but there is no excuse for not thinking about them.
I never thought I will ever say this but I think this needs to be said: the way the UA/Russia war is being covered by the US/West Media and the current situation with the Polish MIGs (transfer) looks like the worst Soviet Propaganda from the depths of the Cold War ringing truth!
As dispassionate as one may be about the theoretical reasons to "explain" Putin or not, clearly a lot of Russia Today-style fellow travelers need this particular output of Realism to be true, otherwise they have been living a lie, a lie namely that Russia under Putin is a rational actor and a benign counterweight to US imperialism. Ironically what many anti-imperialists and leftists do not appreciate about Mearsheimer's brand of Realism (as Adam rightly points out) is that it "predicts" (implicitly justifies) military containment of China without escalation guardrails. Taken normatively it would suggest cordial US-Russia relations, not for the sake of peace, but for the sake of a greater crazy Gotterdammerung later on in the South China Sea. (How did this go viral in China huh?)
Leaving that aside, the NATO expansion hypothesis is still one of two serious explanatory hypothesis about the crisis. The second is what I would call the Russian irredentism vs EU integration hypothesis. The truth definitely lies somewhere in between: and where it lies also dictates in what proportion Putin's war crimes are exculpated as attempts to ensure a strategic buffer zone on the one hand, and on the other to recreate the quasi feudal imperialism that's been the default recourse of Kremlin politics since... forever.
What exactly does a "buffer zone" mean in the ICBM age? Subjugating a nation of 40 million to avoid some remote possibility of the reduction in the warning time of a nuclear first strike by like, 2 minutes (launchers in Ukraine vs Poland) - is this a serious explanation for Putin's actions? No, but it's the one he wants to talk about exclusively, because its the only one in which he can emphasize potential Russian vulnerability and victimhood. We shouldn't shy away from psychology and bat away that stupid canard about "demonizing Putin." Putin is a palpable psychopath and as such he is a master of manipulation.
I personally think true "realism" would have opposed NATO expansion not on the victim blaming rubric of "provoking Russia" but rather on the basis that creating a weak eastern flank, especially in the Baltics, over-extended the alliance and creates the potential for crisis. NATO expansion was a mistake and it was done for largely cynical reasons (selling more kit and getting more auxiliaries for Afghanistan). It did aggravate Great Russian chauvinism. But that chauvinism is only a means for Putin to shore up his regime by ensuring that a core area of the FSU does not become a functioning liberal democracy. For this he is committing war crimes and will likely commit genocide, but I'm sure the "anti-war" left and liberterian right will keep finding excuses for Russia. They always have and always will, since they are entirely motivated by grievance against the Western establishment and too myopic to see any other international reality.
Once again the name calling and unsolicited psychiatric advice/diagnosis , that seems to be a constant refrain of the US mainstream media. And when that gets tired you can always depend on old and tired moral argument. Both these tactics are becoming an intellectual firing squad of the basement-based geo-strategists who actually never been to Ukraine or Russia , know the language or culture but sure as hell are apparently "experts" in the field.
"Putin has not only committing a crime against international law.. "??
Did the US commit a crime against international law in 1921, when we invaded the USSR?
In 1950-1953: when we invaded Korea?
In 1953, when we stages the Iranian coup to overthrow its elected government?
In 1961, when we launched the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba?
In 1963, when we invaded Vietnam?
In 1965, when ww supported the massacre of 500,000 Indonesians?
In 1983, when we invaded Grenada?
In 1989, when we Invaded Panama?
I rest my case.
1950 -1953, North Korea invaded south Korea after Kim went to Stalin two or three times to request permission to do so (See Stalin cables to East Europe at eh Woodrow Wilson centre for Cold War History. The UN authorised an intervention (right then the USSR UN seat was being boycotted by the USSR, and China's seat was held by Taiwan) against the attack of one sovereign UN state (North Korea) on another (South Korea), so no crime there. Literally action was approved by international law. Akin probably to Kuwait invasion by Iraq and international response in 1991. China fought against UN forces in North Korea. If you go to the 军事博物馆 in Beijing though, the "history" reads a little different, but the rest of the world knows what happened.
1953 -- yes crime i'd say.
1961 -- yes crime i'd say.
1963 -- murky, as South Vietnam was a fully sovereign state and invited US military support. The bombing of Cambodia and Laos was crime (Kissinger and Nixon) if you want to find an incident here.
1965 -- not sure what "supported" means, but take the point
1983 -- dodgy at least
1989 -- dodgy at least.
2003 - Iraq....you missed out?
But what you are saying is that you equate these crimes to the Russian action, so you are not really disagreeing. You are just pointing out that other crimes have been committed by others before. You could also mentioned China's attack on Vietnam in 1979 for example. Or various other incidents. It's nice to have context, but doesn't change the facts for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its military actions since.
What I have against Realist IR theory generally is that it is not very realistic. It has two flaws that an economist might call "Lucas critique" and "lack of microfoundations" respectively.
Lucas critique: the writing of Realists is predicated on the assumption that only America has agency, standing outside the mechanism of historical processes and having the opportunity to bend them to its will. All other parties lack agency, and must blindly follow the dictates of the model.
Microfoundations: Realism operates at the level of stylized facts. I've got nothing against that per se, but you can't explain what you have assumed. Evo-devo type frameworks (c.f. Azar Gat) explain everything that Realism gets right, but don't always predict the things it gets wrong. On top of that, it is a more fundamental and thus parsimonious theory.