(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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Lars! posted:Power cycle theory says that countries start wars when they are either a growing power or a shrinking power and their leaders perceive other countries as not giving them their due respect.The biggest critique I can think of is that growing or declining powers don't always start wars with other perceived peers, but it's a convenient, hand-wavey explanation for why several wars have started, including WWI, WWII, and the current Russian war in Ukraine. As a handwave it seems to make more sense than "realism," which at least in its current incarnation seems to manifest as a general theory of "Russia is gonna do poo poo, so everyone else has to let them," an argument that seems to fall apart once it's pointed out that the same logic can then be applied to America / NATO and to a greater extent, so maybe Russia needs to just let NATO do what it wants. e.g.,  As a political theory -- that is, a reductio ad absurdum that betrays the speaker doesn't actually understand much of what actually drives great power politics, because "Realism" in this context is getting used to mean either simply a post-hoc justification for whatever just happened (because whatever just happened was "realistic") or else it's of limited predictive use (because nations are led by individuals who are of limited knowledge and limited rationality and who often act in their own individual self-interest, not that of the State collectively). It's possible to argue that the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine made sense in a rational, "realistic" analysis of great power politics -- Russia defending its "sphere of influence", etc. But once the war was clearly lost -- as happened after the first few weeks -- it's just been a year long excercise in Russia throwing away it's national strength in service of Putin's personal grip on power. Whatever's driving this hasn't been "realism" since some time in April or May of last year.
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Jul 3, 2023 14:55
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fatherboxx posted:Try operating on reality and a set of facts instead of pushing the narrative that has been discredited by observable events Sounds hard, can't I just blame some nefarious conspiracy for everything?
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Jul 3, 2023 15:07
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There are too many variables and too much information unavailable or unsynthesized by anyone in this thread, or possibly anywhere, for a framework to apply to real world goings-on such as this. Frameworks are useful for your pattern seeking brain, they don’t (and can’t) serve as a guide for why things are actually happening.
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Jul 3, 2023 15:14
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If your framework seems to generate reasons that align perfect with Authoritarian Propaganda you might need to re-evaluate how "realistic" it is.
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Jul 3, 2023 15:22
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Ynglaur posted:He's an American volunteer who fought with the Kurds against ISIS and fought as a volunteer with Ukraine in early/mid-2022. He's not a member of the Ukraine Foreign Legion, and has been very transparent about his status. He left Ukraine sometime late 2022 and returned a few months ago (maybe in very late 2022?) to serve as an instructor at a non-profit run training camp. The training seems to mostly be individual soldier skills (marksmanship, first aid, etc.). He fundraises fairly hard for medical care for other non-Ukrainians he fought with and were injured. Thank you! Always good to know a bit more before I, say, send that around to others
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Jul 3, 2023 15:31
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Fair warning: I seem to recall CivDiv being involved in some brouhaha a while ago where he was accused of covering up war crimes committed by some international legion buddies of his. I don’t know how substantiated those allegations were however
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Jul 3, 2023 15:46
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:"Russia is gonna do poo poo, so everyone else has to let them," an argument that seems to fall apart once it's pointed out that the same logic can then be applied to America / NATO and to a greater extent, so maybe Russia needs to just let NATO do what it wants. This has been addressed multiple times by now going back to the first iteration of this thread. The position advanced since the SU fell was that eastward expansion of a certain military alliance will produce pushback. Either don't do it or get ready to deal with the pushback and an adversarial Russia. It has never been about 'letting Russia do poo poo'. i am a moron posted:There are too many variables and too much information unavailable or unsynthesized by anyone in this thread, or possibly anywhere, for a framework to apply to real world goings-on such as this. Frameworks are useful for your pattern seeking brain, they don’t (and can’t) serve as a guide for why things are actually happening. As with any other social science, the fact that we have human beings are variables in these systems means that any predictive model or framework in any field cannot account for all outcomes. But some goons just like to strawman Mearsheimer as the entire IR Realist field and pretend that any failure means the framework is junk. Not to mention that the war isn't actually over so the "Russia has lost" narrative the previous quoted poster threw out there has not yet come to pass. System Metternich posted:Fair warning: I seem to recall CivDiv being involved in some brouhaha a while ago where he was accused of covering up war crimes committed by some international legion buddies of his. I don’t know how substantiated those allegations were however The allegation is that the footage posted in that scenario involved either a botched attempt at inducing a surrender from Russian SOF units in the house or an outright lie to where IL soldiers deliberately murdered a Russian trying to surrender and the rest of the Russian unit in the house fired back and necessitated the fight seen in the footage. I have not come across definitive proof of it either way. But it seems unlikely that the casualties sustained by the IL was the result of artillery as claimed by Civ Div. MikeC fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 15:48
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MikeC posted:... That's the one where Rory Mason (an Irish volunteer) and another man got killed, forgotten the details from when it all came out but if was very fishy.
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Jul 3, 2023 15:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:As a handwave it seems to make more sense than "realism," which at least in its current incarnation seems to manifest as a general theory of "Russia is gonna do poo poo, so everyone else has to let them," an argument that seems to fall apart once it's pointed out that the same logic can then be applied to America / NATO and to a greater extent, so maybe Russia needs to just let NATO do what it wants. America does do all kinds of poo poo, and the rest of the world does let us.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:08
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MikeC posted:But some goons just like to strawman Mearsheimer as the entire IR Realist field and pretend that any failure means the framework is junk. The problem with realism is Individuals can matter a great deal and can change history. And that ideals of hidden civic religions can also cause nations to act as much as national interests. Realism can be useful but it has its limits, similar to the way a cynical strict class analysis has its limits. It also can be abused in the same manner.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:09
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tractor fanatic posted:America does do all kinds of poo poo, and the rest of the world does let us. Right, but if (as Mearsheimer and others present their case) such "realism" is all the justification Russia needs, and other countries should therefore just let Russia do what it wants, expecting such as the price of "realism" ... then the same can be said in turn about America, and it would be similarly impossible to criticize America for similar actions . .. . and in the specific case of Ukraine, such analysis would mean that Russia should just withdraw and let NATO do what it wants. It's circular reasoning that doesn't complete the circle. There's no way to justify or excuse Russia's actions in Ukraine under a rubric of "Realism" that doesn't inevitably also destroy that justification once it is proven that Russia is not the biggest kid in the international playground any more, but rather one of the smallest. If we're being "realistic," then rather than other nations bowing to Russia, Russia "should" simply roll over and expose its soft belly meat, and be happy that NATO is not being any more aggressive than it is. A system of international analysis that intends to posit "shoulds" needs something more than just "the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must." You can be descriptive with that kind of analysis but you can't be usefully prescriptive. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 16:21
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MikeC posted:This has been addressed multiple times by now going back to the first iteration of this thread. The position advanced since the SU fell was that eastward expansion of a certain military alliance will produce pushback. Either don't do it or get ready to deal with the pushback and an adversarial Russia. It has never been about 'letting Russia do poo poo'. As someone who has a perpetual grudge against West Germany and the term 'finlandization', meant to evoke overt friendliness and even bending over to Soviet demands, how exactly does this logic play out? If nation states are meant to be rational actors, did it not make perfect sense for e.g. Estonia to seek a military alliance away from Russia after the SU fell? If by "pushback" we mean Russia wanting to restore the imperial borders, which by their own propaganda seems to be the idea with the genocidal war in Ukraine, then is it not rational for smaller actors to pursue friendship elsewhere? And, not to put a too fine point to it, but rationally acting Finland joined NATO after about 70 years of playing buddy with Russia for practical reasons (our president J.K. Paasikivi, who was a very angry man, once exclaimed "Go home and look at a map" when someone questioned his logic about being nice with Russia), so Russia defending their sphere of influence seems to have failed miserably, not only in Ukraine but with your alluded-to military alliance approaching eastward. I don't mean to be crude here, but the entire theory of rationally behaving, self-serving nation states seems to fall apart when we observe modern Russian behaviour. When they were content with spiking teas with polonium and other such acts of criminal behaviour, it maybe was marginally believable that they were playing elaborate 12D chess with their "sphere of influence", but as Europe (and the US) evidenced over the past year, launching a genocide against a neighbouring, smaller state was deemed as bad and definitely not good, and gently caress you Putin. The "pushback" produced the literal opposite of everything that a rational actor would want to happen to their state, Russia. To dredge back the horrible comparison, of course the Versailles peace treaty seemed unfair to Germany, and Germany as a nation would have acted to thwart it eventually, Adolf Hitler or no, but it was Adolf Hitler specifically who wanted to plunge his nation into a disastrous war that murdered tens of millions of people, and that's before we count in the Holocaust. The "West" made a mistake in thinking Russia could be integrated into a peaceful, maybe neo-liberal world order where trade and smiles rule (hence the gas pipe projects and their vehement proponents etc.), because Russia as it stands under Putin is a mobster state and cannot be reasoned with. Rappaport fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 16:21
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MikeC posted:This has been addressed multiple times by now going back to the first iteration of this thread. The position advanced since the SU fell was that eastward expansion of a certain military alliance will produce pushback. Either don't do it or get ready to deal with the pushback and an adversarial Russia. It has never been about 'letting Russia do poo poo'. "Don't do it" here is addressed to whom exactly? NATO didn't decide to expand eastward; rather a whole bunch of eastern European nations decided to apply for NATO membership. Sure one can be pedantic about NATO needing to then approve that, which could have been unilaterally denied by the USA, but is that really what you mean? loving hell it gets old listening to Americans go on and on about NATO deciding to encroach on Russia, getting too close to Russia or whatever the gently caress. Other nations exist and they have their own will.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Right, but if (as Mearsheimer and others present their case) such "realism" is all the justification Russia needs, and other countries should therefore just let Russia do what it wants, expecting such as the price of "realism" ... then the same can be said in turn about America, and it would be similarly impossible to criticize America for similar actions . .. . and in the specific case of Ukraine, such analysis would mean that Russia should just withdraw and let NATO do what it wants. The "shoulds" here come with a perspective, and the realist argument is that confrontation with Russia does not serve American interests. America "should" make peace with Russia so that it can concentrate all its resources and alliances towards its long term confrontation with China.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:32
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MikeC posted:This has been addressed multiple times by now going back to the first iteration of this thread. The position advanced since the SU fell was that eastward expansion of a certain military alliance will produce pushback. Either don't do it or get ready to deal with the pushback and an adversarial Russia. It has never been about 'letting Russia do poo poo'. Rappaport posted:. . . . If by "pushback" we mean Russia wanting to restore the imperial borders, which by their own propaganda seems to be the idea with the genocidal war in Ukraine, then is it not rational for smaller actors to pursue friendship elsewhere? And, not to put a too fine point to it, but rationally acting Finland joined NATO after about 70 years of playing buddy with Russia for practical reasons (our president J.K. Paasikivi, who was a very angry man, once exclaimed "Go home and look at a map" when someone questioned his logic about being nice with Russia), so Russia defending their sphere of influence seems to have failed miserably, not only in Ukraine but with your alluded-to military alliance approaching eastward. Yeah, exactly -- it's pretty clear at this point that "Adversarial Russia" was going to happen either way regardless; Russia's been assassinating people in foreign countries, interfering with foreign elections, etc. etc. etc., rolling all the way forward into invading sovereign states and trying to replace their governments. Maybe Russia should have thought about the potential pushback from everyone else before it started poo poo. Yet somehow in this "realistic" analysis "pushback" is always something other countries just have to expect from Russia but never something Russia should itself fear.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:36
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tractor fanatic posted:The "shoulds" here come with a perspective, and the realist argument is that confrontation with Russia does not serve American interests. America "should" make peace with Russia so that it can concentrate all its resources and alliances towards its long term confrontation with China. The problem with this analysis is that America has a lot more invested in its partnership with Europe and the EU than it does with any ally who is in any sort of direct or indirect conflict with China, Taiwan included. The long term conflict with China is theoretical while the current conflict with Russia is actual. Maybe Russia *should* have tried to make peace with America, NATO, and the EU so that it didn't end up becoming a Chinese vassal state. But, here we are. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 16:42
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's possible to argue that the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine made sense in a rational, "realistic" analysis of great power politics -- Russia defending its "sphere of influence", etc. But once the war was clearly lost -- as happened after the first few weeks -- it's just been a year long excercise in Russia throwing away it's national strength in service of Putin's personal grip on power. Whatever's driving this hasn't been "realism" since some time in April or May of last year. Complete speculation of course, but the decision to invade Ukraine looks a lot different if you presume a Trump victory in 2020, and that's how I think the war was planned. Somehow Putin and the Russian leadership convinced themselves that the plan would still work with Biden; either Biden would be too weak to rally support in Congress, too indecisive, or they could complete the 'decapitation' strike quickly enough that there wouldn't be time to react. Plans that are based on this vs. that individual and how they'll act/react doesn't sound like what "realism" even attempts to account for though.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:55
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
As people smarter than me pointed out, the "strong" in that quote's original usage got their comeuppance shortly after.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:55
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Rappaport posted:I don't mean to be crude here, but the entire theory of rationally behaving, self-serving nation states seems to fall apart when we observe modern Russian behaviour. When they were content with spiking teas with polonium and other such acts of criminal behaviour, it maybe was marginally believable that they were playing elaborate 12D chess with their "sphere of influence", but as Europe (and the US) evidenced over the past year, launching a genocide against a neighbouring, smaller state was deemed as bad and definitely not good, and gently caress you Putin. The "pushback" produced the literal opposite of everything that a rational actor would want to happen to their state, Russia. To dredge back the horrible comparison, of course the Versailles peace treaty seemed unfair to Germany, and Germany as a nation would have acted to thwart it eventually, Adolf Hitler or no, but it was Adolf Hitler specifically who wanted to plunge his nation into a disastrous war that murdered tens of millions of people, and that's before we count in the Holocaust. The "West" made a mistake in thinking Russia could be integrated into a peaceful, maybe neo-liberal world order where trade and smiles rule (hence the gas pipe projects and their vehement proponents etc.), because Russia as it stands under Putin is a mobster state and cannot be reasoned with. Russia is the aggressor here and not acting in good faith. They're murdering, committing war crimes. But its ridiculous to claim they're irrational. The majority of western think tanks, and public facing NATO brass, agreed with Russia's pre war assessment that Kiev would fall in a couple weeks at most. Hindsight doesn't make the original assessment irrational. Russia had economic and strategic value via Crimea. Taking that isn't irrational. Russia is now moving economic ties from western actors to India & China to ensure travelers, arms, food, and support. This is very rational. Evil, murdering, even culturally genocidal. But not irrational.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:16
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BillsPhoenix posted:Russia had economic and strategic value via Crimea. Taking that isn't irrational. Crimea required billions of investment into it and mostly resulted in internal political consolidation. Not sure how that was worth over losing influence in Eastern Europe, getting cut off from military imports and taking a hit to long term foreign investments. Current invasion was never going to be a repeat of Georgia except in the most optimistic FSB predictions which should have been thrown into a bin by anyone in touch with reality.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:26
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BillsPhoenix posted:Russia is the aggressor here and not acting in good faith. They're murdering, committing war crimes. They (Russia) messed up all their soft influence, and possibilities for polonium teas, for what? A blitzkrieg that didn't work? It is irrational to ruin one's chances of integrating into a larger economic system just for the sake of
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Jul 3, 2023 17:27
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Right, but if (as Mearsheimer and others present their case) such "realism" is all the justification Russia needs.... Emphasis mine. Anyone thinking Realism is about justification of actions is either trolling or posting in bad faith at this point. It has been explained many times, that Realism specifically strips out justification of actions. Realism does not condone actions on the moral plane. Bar Ran Dun posted:The problem with realism is Individuals can matter a great deal and can change history. And that ideals of hidden civic religions can also cause nations to act as much as national interests. As is any other framework used in the social sciences. Rappaport posted:As someone who has a perpetual grudge against West Germany and the term 'finlandization', meant to evoke overt friendliness and even bending over to Soviet demands, how exactly does this logic play out? If nation states are meant to be rational actors, did it not make perfect sense for e.g. Estonia to seek a military alliance away from Russia after the SU fell? If by "pushback" we mean Russia wanting to restore the imperial borders, which by their own propaganda seems to be the idea with the genocidal war in Ukraine, then is it not rational for smaller actors to pursue friendship elsewhere? And, not to put a too fine point to it, but rationally acting Finland joined NATO after about 70 years of playing buddy with Russia for practical reasons (our president J.K. Paasikivi, who was a very angry man, once exclaimed "Go home and look at a map" when someone questioned his logic about being nice with Russia), so Russia defending their sphere of influence seems to have failed miserably, not only in Ukraine but with your alluded-to military alliance approaching eastward. The logical question in this scenario for Estonia to ask is whether seeking a military protection from the west (lets be honest protection since Estonia doesn't provide much) is the best path forward to maintaining Estonia's security because NATO comes with a nuclear guarantee. An alliance is a two-way street. Estonia can ask NATO sign a piece of paper that says NATO will defend Estonia to the hilt up to and including nuclear weapons but the US (NATO) must think that Estonia is worth defending up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. Some posters might respond that Eastern European nations have self agency, they do, but so does the US (NATO). The Realist camp at time the SU was falling apart essentially was asking the question....wait - is Estonia (or Eastern Europe) really worth a potential WW3 if Russia decides this is unacceptable to it? Because that's what that piece of paper is saying. And if we aren't serious about this we shouldn't be sending signals that NATO is open to expansion or people might get hosed and make a bad choice. In the case of the Baltics, they got through and now the piece of paper means that even "insane Putin" is unlikely to test them. There was a time in the late aughts that Putin just came out and said this is enough and 2008 Georgia and 2014 Ukraine is the result of this pushback. See Georgia 2008. NATO makes noises about welcoming them in. Russia says nope and the Georgians paid the price while NATO sorta stood around pretending not to notice what was happening. That's Realism in action right there for you. I am being short here because I have covered this ground so many times before and can find them in the previous iterations of this thread if you are actually interested. This circular debate has occurred at least 3 times since this war started and no one is changing their minds. VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV That's why all economists are in total agreement about what proper policy should be at all times right? MikeC fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 17:30
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“Rational” in this context has no boundary conditions; it’s a just-so story, a post-hoc rationalization.MikeC posted:As is any other framework used in the social sciences. No. Scientific theories can be disproven. This is also applicable to the social sciences.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:30
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fatherboxx posted:Crimea required billions of investment into it and mostly resulted in internal political consolidation. Not sure how that was worth over losing influence in Eastern Europe, getting cut off from military imports and taking a hit to long term foreign investments. Plus they had Crimea anyway. Not recognized, yes, but it made little practical difference, with the sanctions often ignored.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:31
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Well, to be fair, they do consider themselves the Third Roman Empire, so conquering is definitely worth it against that backdrop... And weren't the expectations among Russian ruling class that after their (wildly unrealistic) attack succeeds, European powers and the US will grumble for a while, and then forgive them in the spirit of not disrupting business and severing existing economic ties. They were delusional, but rational within their own framework. Edit: Sorry, this was in response to BillsPhoenix->Fatherboxx->Rapapaport Paranoea fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 17:33
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MikeC posted:The logical question in this scenario for Estonia to ask is whether seeking a military protection from the west (lets be honest protection since Estonia doesn't provide much) is the best path forward to maintaining Estonia's security because NATO comes with a nuclear guarantee. An alliance is a two-way street. Estonia can ask NATO sign a piece of paper that says NATO will defend Estonia to the hilt up to and including nuclear weapons but the US (NATO) must think that Estonia is worth defending up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. Some posters might respond that Eastern European nations have self agency, they do, but so does the US (NATO). The Realist camp at time the SU was falling apart essentially was asking the question....wait - is Estonia (or Eastern Europe) really worth a potential WW3 if Russia decides this is unacceptable to it? Because that's what that piece of paper is saying. And if we aren't serious about this we shouldn't be sending signals that NATO is open to expansion or people might get hosed and make a bad choice. In the case of the Baltics, they got through and now the piece of paper means that even "insane Putin" is unlikely to test them. There was a time in the late aughts that Putin just came out and said this is enough and 2008 Georgia and 2014 Ukraine is the result of this pushback. I think posting friend Koos Group has stated that conversations, so long as they are 'educational', are worthwhile. Your thesis posits that Estonia holds no real value for NATO, and NATO is essentially just being nice guys with their nuclear deterrence. Never mind all the intelligence work the CIA did in Finland and I imagine the Baltics back in the day, but by your own reasoning, that bordering Russia with a military alliance is an inherent reason for Russia to go ape-poo poo, surely the countries operating reasonably and rationally within said military alliance are also thinking it is worthwhile? If Estonia thinks it is worthwhile to be allied with the United States, and the United States, in their infinite grace and charity, choose to grant such an agreement, and the idea is that Russia finds this a casus belli, then which actor here is being irrational? No one, by the realist reasoning. Except now we are forced to accept the idea that the US is merely pretending, and NATO is a sham, because it's not rational to pursue a global thermo-nuclear war. Which it isn't, but this reasoning did not exist through the Cold War; need I point out how the absurdist comedy Doctor Strangelove raised the ire of actual government officials due to it being too close to the truth? Is Ukraine not rational right now wanting more ties with the EU and NATO?
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Jul 3, 2023 17:40
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The other end of the coin is that it is actually incredibly "Rational" for western powers to support Ukraine. It is relevant to our economic interests that the country's grain exports return to normal, and the possibility of Russia continuing to advance westward into Poland is a security concern that cannot be ignored.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:42
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MikeC posted:It has been explained many times, that Realism specifically strips out justification of actions. Realism does not condone actions on the moral plane. This is either impossible or circular to the point of futility. On the one hand, the statement "realistically, Russia was going to push back against Ukrainian independence, and that's just the price Ukraine had to expect for trying to leave the Russian sphere of influence" is going to be construed by anyone who hears it as moral justification for Russia's actions -- that is, the "Ukraine just got what they should have expected for being uppity" defense -- or, if it's just an a-moral statement of logic, it's a useless statement because it's just as easily reversible -- "Russia should have expected NATO to push against its sphere of influence and maybe learned to accept that it isn't a major power any more and can't throw its weight around without getting pushback." Either the "shoulds" are trying to draw a moral equivalence (which is invalid for reasons explained above) or they're just logical terms that cancel each other and drop out and we're left with "Russia is weak and NATO is strong, deal with it" which somehow never seems to be the argument Mearsheimer and his like are making.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:42
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Rappaport posted:They (Russia) messed up all their soft influence, and possibilities for polonium teas, for what? A blitzkrieg that didn't work? It is irrational to ruin one's chances of integrating into a larger economic system just for the sake of NATO even thought the Russian invasion would work pre war. Hindsight doesn't impact the rational at the time. It's very western to assume Russia's only rational end game was integration into a global economic system. I doubt that was or is their goal, something about 1993.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:45
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jaete posted:"Don't do it" here is addressed to whom exactly? NATO didn't decide to expand eastward; rather a whole bunch of eastern European nations decided to apply for NATO membership. Sure one can be pedantic about NATO needing to then approve that, which could have been unilaterally denied by the USA, but is that really what you mean? This. Poland in 1999 and the three Baltic States in 2004 were the big "Eastward expansion" of NATO; Latvia and Estonia have a border with Russia so presumably those two countries are the ones being complained about the most. Anyone who knows the history of the region from 1939-1945 knows exactly why all four would be keenly interested in joining a defensive alliance against a country run from Moscow by Russians.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:45
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BillsPhoenix posted:NATO even thought the Russian invasion would work pre war. I was pleasantly surprised by the joint European response too, but that isn't really the point. Starting a full-scale land war in Europe has to seem insane to anyone not larping out their Hearts of Iron game.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:48
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There is literally an infinite amount of perfectly rational and 'rational' decisions that can fit under the umbrella of acting in your country's interest. There is almost zero predictive power to realism as it's laid out in the thread, and more importantly, it's completely unfalsifiable. There is no action, successful or otherwise, any actor can take that can't be in one way or another explained by state interest. Here's my innovative framework: all governments are in possession of a manatee that controls their actions via random sequences of balls with words on them. When it appears like there are direct consequences to any action, it's nothing more than a case of political pareidolia in the face of manatee-enforced randomness. Based on this framework (and the balls my own manatee produces), I predict that Russia will randomly attack Mongolia in five years. If that doesn't happen, well, it's all random, so there's always a chance Russia attacks Mongolia.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:54
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Rappaport posted:I was pleasantly surprised by the joint European response too, but that isn't really the point. Starting a full-scale land war in Europe has to seem insane to anyone not larping out their Hearts of Iron game. If Russia doesn't care about joining the western economy - and there is a lot of evidence for this - why is the invasion insane? Calling Putin Hitler is fair and all from a they're both evil standpoint, but it sidesteps the question imo.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:56
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BillsPhoenix posted:If Russia doesn't care about joining the western economy - and there is a lot of evidence for this - why is the invasion insane? It wasn't insane initially. Continuing it appears irrational from the point of view of a hypothesized "Russian State" but from the POV of Putin individually any number of potential rationales exist. As others have said, 'rational" analysis is sort of useless here except in a post-hoc descriptive sense.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:59
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BillsPhoenix posted:If Russia doesn't care about joining the western economy - and there is a lot of evidence for this - why is the invasion insane? But it does as evidenced by the gas contracts and construction of pipelines into Europe.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:05
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Russia benefits from access to European markets. They will certainly make less money selling products to India and Brazil who cannot afford to pay higher prices like Europe. IMO Russia has decided that they are willing to lose out on those higher prices to some end.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This is either impossible or circular to the point of futility. On the one hand, the statement "realistically, Russia was going to push back against Ukrainian independence, and that's just the price Ukraine had to expect for trying to leave the Russian sphere of influence" is going to be construed by anyone who hears it as moral justification for Russia's actions -- that is, the "Ukraine just got what they should have expected for being uppity" defense -- or, if it's just an a-moral statement of logic, it's a useless statement because it's just as easily reversible -- "Russia should have expected NATO to push against its sphere of influence and maybe learned to accept that it isn't a major power any more and can't throw its weight around without getting pushback." Isn't this exactly what has happened? There is conflict in Ukraine because neither side was willing to back down
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Jul 3, 2023 18:16
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One big hole for the "rational" or " realist" analysis is explaining why Russia is continuing to attack civilian and cultural targets. See, e.g., https://twitter.com/ngumenyuk/status/1675624998973714433?s=20
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Jul 3, 2023 18:18
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MikeC posted:As is any other framework used in the social sciences. Right but the other Realism (Eg. Niebuhr) considers those things and adds the idea that nations can and do act ironically (in the literature sense of irony). And irony is particularly relevant here. Look at all the stated Russian interests. The action Russia took to achieve those interests is producing the opposite outcomes of those interests. Looks like realist thinking really hosed up for them, maybe we should be extremely skeptical of it and its ability to be predictive and generative of what choices should be made internationally.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:20
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BillsPhoenix posted:Russia is the aggressor here and not acting in good faith. They're murdering, committing war crimes. Even the Western analysts/governments who thought that Ukraine would lose the conventional war quickly also claimed that Russia would never be able to pacify an entire country with Ukraine's land area and population and would be drawn into an unproductive, never-ending quagmire.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:27
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