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Comment by jolux | Hacker News Reader

I respect the difference of opinion but it's hard not to think Mearsheimer has been proven wrong about Putin's motivations by this invasion. It's basically inconceivable that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is really in Russia's best interests. At this point it's liable to destroy their economy and encourage the remaining non-NATO states that border them to join NATO. It has solidified and reinvigorated opposition to Russian interests in the West. As of now it looks like a blunder.

edit: to say nothing as well of the anti-war protests that are happening in the streets of Moscow and across Russia. If they continue and grow they will pose a risk to regime stability.

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>Mearsheimer has been proven wrong

Everything that Mearsheimer stated would happen to Ukraine has now come to pass. He predicted it perfectly 7 years ago. He was not wrong. Neocons and Liberal Imperialists, as he calls the "war party", have now sacrificed Ukraine and left them to be massacred by advancing Russians. If you want to debate any of his arguments, please do so.

I think one of the central theses of his argument is that NATO is actively expanding to antagonize Russia, rather than a passive expansion due to the Baltic states falling out of the post-Soviet sphere of influence taking advantage of NATO's open door policy: this is not a far-fetched assumption, given the relative prosperity of Western European countries compared to their Eastern European counterparts.

If you accept the latter rather than the former, I think it's hard to lay the blame on the West for simply having a defense alliance that sovereign states chose to join -- unless you would argue that NATO should simply not exist.

NATO is a defensive alliance against Russia. What the invasion of Ukraine has done is proved that the states that chose to join NATO in the decades since the end of the Cold War made the right decision.

> NATO is a defensive alliance against Russia.

Strictly speaking that isn't true.

NATO was founded as a defensive alliance against the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation is recognised as the Soviet Union’s legal successor.

That doesn’t justify Russia’s action - you aren’t justified in invading your neighbour over the mere inchoate possibility they might join a potentially hostile military alliance. (Ukraine still hasn’t joined NATO, and there is no evidence they were likely to be accepted as a NATO member in the near future.)

NATO has as its interests the security of the member states, it is as simple as that.

This is technically true and also 100% bullshit. It is phrased that way, but I have never heard anyone actually believe that NATO is anything except the US promising to use its military and its nuclear weapons to defend weaker European states that didn't have the ability to credibly defend themselves from the USSR.

You must be the only person then that slept through Yugoslavia, 9/11, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Libya and others.

NATO didn’t authorize the Iraq War.

You have your parties mixed up I think. You probably meant to write 'UN'. NATO does not 'authorize wars'. Even so, in fact the 'alliance' contained many nations not in NATO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing

The really bad part is that they were acting during the 'first installment' against people that weren't part of the attack on the United States to begin with (it was essentially a pretext), and the second time they outright lied about the intelligence regarding the WMDs (of which there already was conflicting data collected by the UN weapons inspectors).

Oh yes, I almost forgot the "Coalition of the Willing" against the "Axis of Evil". Still sounds like straight of a Marvel movie. Including the Mission Accomplished speak on a carrier, also that part is more like Michael Bay.

NATO does “authorize” military operations - the NATO ambassadors meet and agree to take military action, which means that NATO assets and staff can be used to help plan and support the action. NATO never authorised the invasion of Iraq, so NATO’s own assets and facilities could not be used. By contrast, Libya and Kosovo were NATO authorised operations, so NATO resources could be used.

NATO’s own resources are essentially office buildings, computer and communication systems, bureaucrats, and seconded military planners. The US didn’t need them for the Iraq War, although it would have liked to have had them involved, because of what that would have meant politically/diplomatically/symbolically.

Despite claiming a broad “coalition”, only three countries actually contributed fighting assets to the initial US invasion - the UK, Poland, and Australia - only the first two are NATO members, and Poland at the time had only recently joined (only 4 years prior). 3 more NATO members (Netherlands, Italy and Spain) provided non-combatant support. I don’t see in what meaningful sense it could be said to be something NATO did.

More NATO members joined in the occupation forces after the initial invasion. But that was never an official NATO operation because those require unanimous approval, and certain member states (most notably France) were always opposed to that.

NATO eventually did become involved in Iraq - training the new Iraqi government’s military. But no fighting ever happened in NATO’s name.

> By contrast, Libya and Kosovo were NATO authorised operations, so NATO resources could be used.

NATO was very careful to obtain requests from the UN in both cases, resolutions 1244 and 1973.

NATO has never said they have to get UN approval to engage in non-defensive military operations. Consider the NATO intervention in Kosovo: NATO member states sought UN Security Council approval for the intervention; when it became clear China and Russia would veto it, NATO went ahead and intervened anyway in the absence of any UN authorisation. NATO still reserves the right to engage in non-defensive military operations without UN authorisation, whenever its member states can unanimously agree that is appropriate.

Yes, and for your and my sake I hope they won't ever have to act upon that reserved right. Because when and if they do I give the world as we know it another 20 minutes or so.

Given Rusdia’s attack on Ukraine, I can easily imagine circumstances in which not acting on that reserved right might lead to the end of the world as we know it.

Yes, unfortunately there are no easy solutions to all this. It will most probably get a lot worse before it will get better again, how much worse I shudder to contemplate.

> Yes, unfortunately there are no easy solutions to all this.

How is Putin ceasing to throw Russia's unwilling and unwitting armed forces onto Ukraine not easy?

When other countries join US adventures, it's not because of the NATO defense pact.

Again, NATO isn't a defense pact, and in some of those adventures NATO took a leading role.

I suggest that you read about the history of NATO in detail. It was originally created as a way to defend Western Europe from a possible future aggression from the Soviet Union. Wikipedia even says [1]:

"The treaty was created with an armed attack by the Soviet Union against Western Europe in mind, but the mutual self-defense clause was never invoked during the Cold War."

After WW2, it became clear that a new world order had emerged around what would be called "First World" (US-led countries members of NATO) and "Second World" (Soviet Union-led communist countries members of the Warsaw Pact). The "Third World" were non-aligned countries, often confused with "poor countries".

The roots of the current crisis trace back to these power structures. The fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of China could be seen as the beginning of new alignment, but so far, we haven't seen it fully taking shape (China is certainly working on it). Russia, while nowhere near its Soviet Union peak, remains a military superpower and the owner of vast natural resources.

Russia's current role in the world is unstable - there is a dissonance between its hard power and its actual influence in world matters. It doesn't accept being relegated to a weak geopolitical player, and the invasion of Ukraine is part of an attempt to assert its position in the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty

Yes, things change, I'm aware of that.

And they just changed again.

jacquesm is repeatedly being annoyingly coy, but his point is that the NATO institution itself (not just members) has acted in many non-Russia conflicts and crises, under its own banner. http://nato.int

This is a hard argument to make. "Strictly speaking"--based on only the arguments and references made here--"NATO is a defensive alliance against Russia" seems to only be false in that the USSR is not Russia (though I wonder if Putin even believes that?)... that it can do other things seems irrelevant, and origin stories matter deeply.

> the USSR is not Russia (though I wonder if Putin even believes that?)

Putin believes that the "Soviet Union" is simply another name for Russia, the name of a particular phase of Russian history.

In his mind, the ex-Soviet states were all part of Russia, and their people were Russian–Ukrainians and Lithuanians and Georgians are not neighbouring foreign nationalities, they are Russians, traditional Russian ethnic minorities just like Chechens or Tatars or Tuvans. He views their independence in the breakup of the USSR as a historical mistake, for which he blames the Communist leadership.

He wishes the Communists had never introduced the idea of a "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" because he believes it planted the seeds for the breakup of Russia–yes, Russia, since to him the Soviet Union was just another name for Russia–in 1991, and his current invasion of Ukraine is an attempt to partially reverse that breakup – even though he probably doesn't plan to annex the whole of Ukraine in the near-to-medium term, installing a puppet government in Ukraine which will promote Russophilia and Russification would bring Ukraine back into the Russian fold, and might even eventually lead to full annexation further down the line.

Thanks: this is along the lines of what I was thinking and the clarification on the mental model of "Russia" vs. the origin and issue with "USSR" was very valuable!

https://www.economist.com/international/2022/02/12/how-russi...

> Since then, however, NATO has revived admirably. Under President Joe Biden America sounded the alarm about Russia’s build-up and co-ordinated the Western response. “Putin has single-handedly given NATO a vitamin injection,” says Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, an annual transatlantic talkfest that begins on February 18th. NATO’s three decades of angst about its role after the end of the cold war has been dispelled. Having performed “out of area” operations in the Balkans and counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, it is going back to basics: the territorial defence of allies. The theological rivalry between institutions in Brussels over whether the EU should have an autonomous defence capability has for the moment been stilled.

Russia currently occupies the USSR’s seat on the UN Security Council and concerns about Russian aggression have persisted have persisted since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s not literally true that it’s a defense against the legal entity known as the Russian Federation but insofar as Russia has failed to shed its image as an aggressor it’s true.

I think Russia just confirmed its image as an aggressor in a way that leaves no doubt.

Using that argument, would the US also be considered "an aggressor"?

Russia did not even attempt to build a coalition for defending the separatist regions of Ukraine because, as this article clearly lays out, his justification is bullshit that no country has bought. (At best, China is looking the other way.) It's a clear case of invasion.

More whataboutism.

I don't think I was clear in my question. I'm not excusing it, and perfectly willing to call it aggression since that is how I see it. I'm just asking if the standard we apply to foreign aggression is consistent.

In other words, I feel like some people have a consistent standard on what constitutes acceptable aggression depending on who the aggressor is.

It’s a matter of the level of provocation. The first Iraq war was unambiguously a response to blatant Iraqi aggression. The second war is more arguable, depending on whether you see it as a continuation of the first. The invasion of Afghanistan was a response to its complicity in the 9/11 attacks. So in those cases there were clear direct assaults on the US or it’s allies it was responding to. There are examples, sure, but the US is rarely the side that starts the shooting.

> The invasion of Afghanistan was a response to its complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

This kinda borders on the radio station justification - a rogue terrorist attack does not justify an invasion, and most of the attackers were Saudi, so its not even consistent.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that because they were Saudi, that the operated from Saudi Arabia. If you look into it, you will find that their organisation, which planned and coordinated the attacks, was actually based in Afghanistan. It was supported, trained and sponsored by the Taliban in Afghanistan and their associates, and was a multi national group. It was this hosting, support and sponsorship in Afghanistan that lead to the invasion.

Are you conflating the Taliban with al-Qaeda?

No the organisation they belonged to, Al Qaeda, was supported trained and sponsored by the Taliban. In reality personnel, resources and information flowed freely between the two groups.

I am aware that the Taliban provided safe harbor for al-Qaeda in the late 90's early 00's, but they are very different groups with different ideologies. For instance, the Taliban did not finance, nor carry out 9/11.

How many countries were bombed by NATO?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

That was a really eye-opening moment for many people, I felt the same as now about Ukraine.

> What the invasion of Ukraine has done is proved that the states that chose to join NATO in the decades since the end of the Cold War made the right decision.

Honestly, that is going to be tested when Russia attacks one of them. How eager the rest of NATO will be to support or abandon them.

Seems like it might be the opposite?

Joining NATO won’t protect you and will just antagonize Russia. Maybe next time they’ll just try and remain neutral?

I may be wrong, but if I understand correctly what you just wrote, you believe that Ukraine is part of NATO. To clarify: it isn't. Putin claims that it might some day join NATO, and that this somehow justifies a pre-emptive invasion, but that's very different.

Fair point, I should have left it at “NATO or the West” won’t help you.

My understanding is the Ukraine was “up” for consideration of NATO membership at some unspecified date in the future?

Country that has unregulated territorial dispute cannot be a member of NATO by it's rules. So to give up on Crimea was the only way for Ukraine to join. It was unfeasible, any politician discussing this would be a political dead.

No, it was left in an ambiguous position after the Bucharest Summit in 2008 as Germany and France opposed its membership. As of now it can’t join because of the territorial dispute in Crimea, which is probably one of the reasons Russia invaded Crimea back in 2014. It’s not hard to imagine a similar fate awaits Finland if it continues to remain neutral.

Crimea is an essential port for Russia's long term interests.

Ukraine as a sovereign state has to build a relation with its neighbor. To join a defensive pact with most of former enemies of Russia is a provocation. That does in no circumstance justify an invasion, but it does serve as an excuse. Nato did show signs of expansion by giving (false) hope to Georgia and Ukraine.

On the other hand, around 20 years ago Putin said he could imagine joining Nato one day...

Of course the west is ultimately not to blame for Russia to invade. There were bad choices...

NATO has shown at least some willingness to fight wars of aggression. It's hard to paint the intervention in Yugoslavia in the 1990s as defence of an alliance member, however justified it might have been by humanitarian concerns.

NATO isn't a defensive alliance, period. It is a mutual security pact.

Here is the actual treaty:

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.ht...

Article 4 is quite deliberately vaguely worded. And the treaty also explains why NATO only got involved in Libya after the UN requested it to.

I can’t tell if you’re being pedantic here or if you actually substantially disagree with the characterization that it is primarily about the security of Europe against Russian aggression.

That may have been what it was about a long time ago, and I think in light of the current developments that probably will be what it is about again in the present, but in the intermediary that was less strongly a factor than that it was 'The affluent West' against 'the rest'.

Even the Yugoslavian war did not - though it almost happened - ended up pitting NATO against Russia, and I believe that if Russia had followed through on the reforms instead of turning into a Dictatorship/kleptocracy that they just might have joined NATO at some point.

Putin did ask to join NATO in early 2000s, was laughed out of the room.

Rightly so. Dictatorships have no place in modern NATO.

Except it wasn't a dictatorship back then. https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/russia/16293

Yeltsin named Putin as his successor, the writing was on the wall for much longer, besides little details such as the Chechen war.

Putin was overall very open to the West early on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ

"ask" is quite overstating the case. There were some informal conversations between individuals.

That's completely fair, as well as intervention in Libya in 2011. I think though, for the intents of the states wanting to accede to it now, it serves as a form of defense for them.

Whether or not NATOs expension is to antagonise Russia is less important than the question how Russian leadership sees it. And Putin's answer was pretty clear.

He does not say that NATO expands to antagonize Russia, just that Russia will inevitably see it that way, and if the situation was reversed, where China has a military alliance at US border it would be seen the same way from the United States too.

Moreover he explicitly says that NATO/US does not want to expand to Ukraine as it is not a vital strategic interest to the United States, instead US will have to focus on Asian alliances to counter China.

USA has a military alliance with Taiwan (while also claiming Taiwan is part of China).

You can blame the US all you want, at the end of the day they invaded Ukraine for no discernible reason (it's been nearly eight years since Crimea, with no moves towards NATO from Ukraine and no moves towards Ukraine from NATO) and it's costing them dearly. If you see that as a vindication of his position, so be it, but it clearly makes no sense.

I don't think the parent wanted to justify the invasion or blame it completely on the US. I myself despise the invasion, but the responsibility that the US bears on this conflict cannot be underestimated, and it is totally absent (or at least severely under-reported) from Western sources.

What responsibility is that? Should the US have vetoed the NATO membership of all the Warsaw Pact countries that wanted to join?

That was not an unpopular position at the time, with predictable backlash now made manifest. Also on topic US should also not have made NATO an offensive alliance with Kosovo... a "humanitarian" invasion outside UN security council authorization. Or set precedence of unilateral secession to balkanize countries for US interests, which RU rationalized for Abkhazia / South Ossetia in Georgian war. This is exactly the same playbook/justification RU is using to "rescue" Ukraine, for much more valid security considerations. Everything RU is doing has been normalized by previous US interventions, of which there has been too many, with a host of lawyers trying to legitimize them under the liberal international order.

> US should also not have made NATO an offensive alliance with Kosovo... a "humanitarian" invasion outside UN security council authorization.

UN security council is how things like Srebrenica happen. In my eyes, disregarding it is justifiable if there is a high enough likelihood of something like that repeating.

It's actually required, under one of the UN treaties.

Yeah except the difference is that loads of innocent people were being raped and murdered and ethnically cleansed in Kosovo whereas Russia made their reasons for this invasion quite clear Monday and it’s a desire to reconstitute the Russian Empire.

It’s fine to have a principle of non-intervention but the situations are not really comparable outside of both being interventions. The Iraq War is a better comparison, and the US should have been sanctioned for it.

>raped and murdered and ethnically cleansed in Kosovo

And that has exactly nothing to do with defensive NATO core mission.

Sectarian violence happens all around the world, except NATO chose to invade Kosovo under the pretext of ethnic cleansing / "genocide", again current RU excuse, which later investigation pointed out to be unfounded. The real cynical reason was for NATO to rationalize its existence post USSR collapses by reinventing itself as an offensive alliance for LIO/US geopolitical interests, which is how it has been wielded since causing untold deaths in various interventions. NATO is a hegemonic instrument disguised as a humanitarian one. RU sees through the "defensive" narrative. Ultimately, the point is US opened pandora box of bad norms in terms of prosecuting wars and upsetting balance of power. It won't get sanctioned for it, instead wielding sanctions to deter geopolitical adversaries from pursuing more pertinent self interests. Until the sanctions stop working, and US adversaries use US playbook for their own interventions.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/26/china-sees-strategi...

What is the relevance of this?

It's worth mentioning that initial expansion into Warsaw Pact countries was actually frowned upon by NATO: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Future_of_NATO/U0DKEhe7...

Mearsheimer points the finger at an enthusiastic expansion of NATO here and draws a line from it to the West being at fault, but I don't think it was really the case.

Not a single one of the Warsaw Pact countries wanted to be in it (except Russia, maybe Cuba - no idea). As soon as Russia’s occupation of half of Europe was over, all these countries couldn’t run away from Russia and WP fast enough, and joined NATO.

So it wasn’t independent peoples joining a defensive pact, but Russia dislocating its arms onto stolen territory.

Only exceptions are Belarus, which effectively remains under Russian thumb, and Ukraine which didn’t make it (and had, now dead, significant pro Russian sentiment).

I think Serbia rates a mention, though I don't know in what capacity.

Serbia was part of Yugoslavia, which was non-aligned.

> the responsibility that the US bears on this conflict cannot be underestimated, and it is totally absent (or at least severely under-reported) from Western sources.

Either we agree that countries have sovereignty and can enter whatever pacts they so please or we do not. You can't have it both ways. NATO is an alliance that Baltic nations joined of their own accord. The US doesn't even enter the picture here.

> Either we agree that countries have sovereignty and can enter whatever pacts they so please or we do not.

I completely agree. The problem is that for the past 70 years or more, this has not been like the US has behaved. They set the historical precedent that it's ok to respect other countries sovereignty if and only if said country aligns with your own interests. When that's not the case, it's fine to overthrow the government to make it more "democratic".

Do countries have sovereignty to develop Nuclear weapon? No, because big boys club sees it as a threat and it is understandable. If some power sees actions of another country as a threat, sovereignty becomes more nuanced.

Nuclear weapons are a special case because they threaten the survival of the human race (you can probably throw certain chemical/biological weapons in here too). Joining NATO--not that the Ukraine was even doing that--does not. There's a material difference here.

Smallish country developing nuclear warhead wont threaten survival of the human race. It wont have neither enough warheads nor sufficient delivery capabilities, yet no country is allowed to enter nuclear club, because existing members sees it as threat and have means to enforce their will. Ukraine joining NATO is same in principle: a threat to someone who is willing to act on it.

> Joining NATO--not that the Ukraine was even doing that

Ukraine was actively seeking NATO membership since 2014, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations

And even before that, in 2008, at the Bucharest NATO meeting there were talks about including Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.

The US clearly enters the picture here if they are willing to supply weapons to the Ukrainians. That is a justified security concern from Russia's perspective

So there is no Munroe doctrine in place? Cuba has the right to station nuclear weapons? The hypocrisy of any great power is mind boggling and it’s sad to see individuals buy into that.

> but the responsibility that the US bears on this conflict cannot be underestimated, and it is totally absent (or at least severely under-reported) from Western sources.

I find it completely overestimated. The makes it US responsibility to prevent Ukraine from considering to enter defensive act. And when US does not shut it, somehow US is responsible for Russia invading Ukraine.

US is not responsible for making sure Russia can take over Ukraine whenever they please. US is not responsible for making Russian emprire to happen.

Setting aside the USA for a second, can you acknowledge that Putin spent the last several months building up almost 200k troops on 3 sides of Ukraine and then invaded despite claiming he had no such intentions even days before his invasion.

Setting aside other countries for a moment, the actions of a country is ultimately decided by its leader and the leader of Russia went to war. We can debate how other countries influenced the leader, but before that, are you in agreement that Putin premeditated a troop build up around ukraine and then invaded despite no immediate threat to russian soil?

Can you please state that ultimately the buck stops with putin russia freely chose to do this war, and then we can get into the debate of how other countries may have pushed him that way only once that clear acknowledgment has been made without any digressions that may come off as unintentional prevarications.

Ukraine ammended the constitution in 2019 to facilitate EU and NATO membership (source: wikipedia on NATO Ukraine relations).

It takes two.

There is German saying "beware the beginning", also " a good defense is agood offense" might apply.

> Everything that Mearsheimer stated would happen to Ukraine has now come to pass.

In the video, around 23:30, he says putin is too smart to invade ukraine and that an invasion will not happen...

> It's basically inconceivable that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is really in Russia's best interests.

That’s exactly what Mearsheimer has been saying. He has said that it would be a terrible mistake for Russia to invade Ukraine.

In that case I’m not sure how that’s consistent with believing Putin is a rational actor.

Why do you assume he's a rational actor? Any system that assumes rational actors is doomed to fail because humanity is not rational.

That’s one of the main tenets of the realist school of IR theory that Mearsheimer is a major proponent of. States act in their own rational self-interest.

He’s also said that America shouldn’t have gotten involved in as many wars as they have. So clearly both the US and Russia have acted irrationally according to him.

Maybe he was overconfident. Surely he is more risk prone than his western counterparts which are extremely risk averse but that does not make A less rational than B, it's a different dimension

With the information we have at hand this invasion is nonsensical and a fiasco but Russia and China are information black boxes. The world is slowly opening eyes to China and Russia tyranny and now that the US left Iraq/Afghanistan and the West defeated Covid, the future is not so favorably for those that are cultural antagonists (democracy enemies). US economy is facing high inflation but there are rumors of China economy collapsing. It might be that Putin and Xi decided to escalate and show hands sooner than later.

I wouldn't be surprised by China invading Taiwan in the next weeks. Specially after NATO committing assets to deal with an ongoing humanitarian crisis far from the Pacific. As the Fallout franchise summarize: war never changes.

He’s acting rationally in his own interests. Not those of Russia. He intends this war to consolidate his control and that of his faction over Russia.

Did you know Navalny’s court case has started? It should be front page news, but now it’s barely mentioned. That’s not directly why the invasion happened, the court case is probably timed by the invasion not the other way around, but there is a connection. Now anyone protesting against Putin will be anti war and therefore traitors. Sanctions will also consolidate his factions grip over the domestic economy, and provide an excuse to do away with the already flimsy rule of law in the economic arena.

Putin will install a pro Russian client government, like that in Belarus, and make allowing Ukraine to become ‘independent’ in name alone conditional on easing sanctions on Russia. The west will play along because there are no votes in not doing so.

May just be he's getting bad advice. He wouldn't be the first leader to end up surrounded by yes-men nodding in vehement agreement with everything he proposes. The usefulness of rationality depends a lot on your ability to see things as they are.

If he believes he will win this war, he may either do so on grounds of something we do not know, possibly bad intel.

If he does not believe he will win this war, he may think he must on grounds of something we do not know, possibly bad intel. It could also be he doesn't want to win the war, for some reason we do not know.

Putin is unlikely to be trying to occupy all of Ukraine. The sheer cost of getting bogged down in an insurgency he couldnt possibly win suggests he's going to take an option which plays to his strengths instead.

More likely he will try to cleave off strategically important territory with Russian majorities (forming a land bridge to crimea, maybe all the way to transnistria) and leave Kyiv having extracted a promise to remain unarmed, "neutral" and providing no aid to insurgencies or face another bloody assault.

I'm not sure why you would think they would leave Kyiv alone when they're fighting there right at this very moment. It's pretty clear Putin aims to replace the government in Ukraine with his own puppet regime and then go along his way similar to how Belarus is, it remains unclear what will happen with western Ukraine, whether they invade "pacify" it and or just split Ukraine into two.

They're obviously not leaving Kyiv alone but that doesnt mean that they want to occupy it and root out a protracted insurgency.

Well what would happen when they leave? I doubt the Ukrainians there (who are very much pro western) are just going to sit on their hands and twiddle their thumbs.

I'm assuming they'll leave after negotiating a very one sided deal with a panicked government on the verge of total collapse.

Theyre already offering to negotiate, but now theyre demanding total demilitarization.

They can negotiate deals all they want but the moment the Russians leave the insurgency will start again, and given that aside from eastern Ukraine most of the population is pro-west, I can imagine it will have plenty of popular support.

I do wonder why they captured Chernobyl and are fighting their way to Kyiv as we speak, then.

Leverage, I think. He can extract a lot of concessions in exchange for Kiev. I suspect Russia would trade it happily for the Ukrainian coast, which is strategically more valuable and has a plurality of ethnic Russians.

Also they probably want to destroy/capture military central command.

I think he thinks he has nothing to lose at this point. The EU is looking for alternate suppliers for gas, and when that's in place the sanctions noose will be fully tightened. The only thing he can do to the EU is triggering a huge refugee crisis by terrorising the local population. Excluding Crimea/Luhansk/Donetsk 38 million people live in Ukraine. The cost to the EU would be huge.

Easy target near the border, and a symbolic target that people know about.

I assume that both parts would want Chernobyl out of this war and remaining stable.

In principle.

Kyiv was originally the capital of the Russia. They want it back. Chernobyl was just along the path to Kyiv.

Ukraine might very well be split in East and West Ukraine along the river. This war feels way too ambitious for just the separatists' land claims.

His plan is to basically topple the Ukraine government and replace it with something Russian leaning, leaving the Ukraine a zombie state

Direct occupation would be dumb. We live in a century of illusions

>His plan is to basically topple the Ukraine government and replace it with something Russian leaning

Essentially undoing the 2013 coup (or whatever we call it in the US)?

What this is doing is permanently aligning Russia with China. This is Putin’s guarantee to China that they’re their forever trading partner and will never look West, at least any time soon.

Not to pile in, but I also found the video (via YT recommendations), and certainly think it holds up given present events.

No amount of winter Olympics are going to tear label of warmonger of Russia for years to come.

Putin is not a moron, he is not impulsive. If anything he is ruthless in his cold calculations. The only logical reason for this is desperation. Putin's popularity is dwindling and more and more people are vocal about it.

Invasion of Ukraine is last ditch attempt to rally support from ussr sentiment of global power people. But this is quickly backfiring, in terms of PR it a disaster. Common people in Europe support Ukraine and the politicians probably will have easier time imposing restrictions as their own people will be ok paying the price. Remember that Putin's hope is that divided europe will not come together and will fail to react.

It would have been not viable for Russia if it could expect further economic sanctions, but most of those were already in place and there was less incentive to not invade. They might install a new government and will be in a more influential position. Dependency on Russia will cause other states to continue cooperation.

>It's basically inconceivable ......

Reminds me of; Putin will not insist on outrighouts terms, he will know his own weakness......

WHEN will the lesson be learned. WHEN will be the lesson be learned.

How many more dictators must be wooed, appeased - good God, given immense privileges - before we learn?

You cannot reason with a tiger, when your head is in its mouth!

- Winston Churchill ( Gary Oldman ) in Darkest Hour

I empathize with Churchill, but, unfortunately, nukes changed everything. A "game over" button completely alters the calculus.

I think we are getting to a place where the use of nukes is so unthinkable that the deterrent effect is reduced. At which point maybe conventional war becomes more possible.

I'm entering my middle age, and I now expect a nuclear bombing to occur in my lifetime. I don't expect that it will evoke a scorched earth response, I expect it will happen to a country like Ukraine that nobody will stick up for. Politicians will tut and prevaricate and keep doomscrolling along with the rest of us. Unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there will be no great reckoning. Economists will continue to play their chips to favorable positions, the Bad Boys League will continue to support eachothers' dictatorships, and trade will continue to diffuse through whatever palatable sanctions are instituted.

Watched the video and came to the same conclusion - Mearsheimer argues that Putin would be "too smart", "rational" and "strategic" to invade Ukraine.

He seems to be right in many other points, so go watch the video.

he argues that constant confrontation with west would push Putin to embrace alliance with China. this seems to be happening now. and since China became big customer for russian gas, he can be more agressive with Ukraine, without risking all of his revenues. And, btw, all the announced sanctions, even personal against Putin, did not dare to touch gas pipe from Russia to Germany. It is also telling, that this gaspipe is kept working despite all military activity surrounding it.

This is Putin saying, look what happens when you say no to me.

Mostly addressed to his own subjects.

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