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fatherboxx)
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MikeC posted: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. I think the fundamental question for me is the question is IR a descriptive or prescriptive framework? My understanding is that the thesis for IR is that you can abstract nation state actions into the actions of a rational actor for its security interests. It might only apply to "Great Power" nations, however those are defined. In a descriptive context, that implies that when applied to NATO expansion, since it is a past event: Individual Eastern European states weighed the pros/cons of joining NATO vs being subject to Russian influence and decided that joining NATO is the better choice. This implies they believed that NATO is able and willing to provide security and on the opposite being outside of NATO threatened their security. The members of NATO decided that on the other hand, it was also willing and able to provide security against any imagined Russian counter response. If you are arguing that there was a deviation from what the ideal nation under IR would have done, then that becomes a prescriptive context. But if you use it in a prescriptive context, there is an implicit contradiction. If a nation you are examining does not act as how an actor "should" under IR, why would any other entity act as they "should?" You can argue at that point that nations can act outside their own self interests, but you kind of give up all the predictive power of the IR framework when you make that claim, and the whole thing becomes hollow.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:28
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BillsPhoenix posted:Russia is the aggressor here and not acting in good faith. They're murdering, committing war crimes. Nobody who launched this war in the way russia did gets to be considered rational, straight up They could have "won" the war in three days and still it wouldn't have turned out good for them. And they lost out on any chance they might have had to "win" through sheer corruption and incompetence, an army you can't audit the actual capacity of and leadership which can't be functional because it is purposely divided and put at odds with itself to not challenge a paranoid strongman
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Jul 3, 2023 18:35
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tractor fanatic posted:Isn't this exactly what has happened? There is conflict in Ukraine because neither side was willing to back down No thats not how it should ever be described. One side "backing down" means loss of national sovereignty, becoming a vassal state of its neighbor. What "rational" state would say yes to that?
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Jul 3, 2023 18:38
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Staluigi posted:Nobody who launched this war in the way russia did gets to be considered rational, straight up If Russia had managed to annex Ukraine within 3 days, it would have gained 40 million people, a massive amount of productive land, and addressed one of their lingering security concerns. How is that irrational? Obviously, that didn’t happen, but had it worked out, any Western sanctions or diplomatic consequences would have been totally worth it.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:39
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A realistic assessment of Russia also has to account for the fact of its military and intelligence lying to themselves, each other, and Putin about their and their enemy's capabilities.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:41
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It’s definitely not rational to expect the side with existential stakes in the conflict to back down voluntarily.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:41
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Quixzlizx posted: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. This was not unilaterally agreed and it's a weird claim to make given how recently the Soviet Union existed. I don't think continuing the war can be dismissed as irrational at the nation state level either. The majority of wars are prolonged affairs, the initial blitz failing had lead to improved ties with India & China. Europe is still, to this day, purchasing Russian oil & gas - the sanctions aren't that damning. Some Russian tech has been shown to be inferior, while others (attack helos) are superior. I'm all for Russia ending this war of aggression. I just don't see how that's the obvious logical choice from their perspective.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:41
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BillsPhoenix posted:This was not unilaterally agreed and it's a weird claim to make given how recently the Soviet Union existed. Since you're the one who brought up that the West agreed that Ukraine would fall quickly, thus rationalizing Putin's actions, can you also mention the Western decision-makers who thought that the Ukrainians would welcome the Russians as liberators, making Ukraine economically productive from the outset?
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Jul 3, 2023 18:46
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Quixzlizx posted:Since you're the one who brought up that the West agreed that Ukraine would fall quickly, thus rationalizing Putin's actions, can you also mention the Western decision-makers who thought that the Ukrainians would welcome the Russians as liberators, making Ukraine economically productive from the outset? I have only heard this argument from pro Russian aggressors. Most western voices that I saw supporting a short war thought there would be significant diffulties in occupation - or just a straight up genocide. If that argument existed, I missed it.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:51
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Snipee posted:If Russia had managed to annex Ukraine within 3 days, it would have gained 40 million people, a massive amount of productive land, and addressed one of their lingering security concerns. How is that irrational? That's where this slowly turns into asking "if the plan that couldn't work could work, it would have worked, so how is that irrational" There's a big difference between really annexing a big ol slab of land like russia thought they could and what russia would have actually gotten, a contentious insurrectionary region they would just have to keep genociding to try to pacify because they didn't have enough going for them to be able to really occupy the whole place They would have been unable to do what they thought they could do in an occupation, for the same reason they were also unable to actually win the war in days, or at all Going all in on poo poo you can't do because your entire nation is consumed with corruption and leadership issues that negate any chance of even understanding your operational limits doesn't get to be called rational
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Jul 3, 2023 18:53
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BillsPhoenix posted:This was not unilaterally agreed and it's a weird claim to make given how recently the Soviet Union existed. It's not. They have lost all trust, good will and any political progress with countries that wanted/thought that were forced to to do peaceful business with them and will appear weak and inefficient to anyone looking for any less-peaceful business. Imagine some new perspective comes for new gas sources for the Baltic countries. Who wouldn't jump on it? Before there was no reason to do even look for such answer, but now the first source that proves a reliable alternative will be making money hand over fist, even more than Russia ever did. I seriously believe the Polish "small nuclear reactor in every town" program that is currently getting off the ground is a direct response to energy security. But back to Russia - additionally to the international outlook, if Putin decided to fold, it's political suicide. And given who he is, it might even be actual suicide. Shame, because I think that his knowledge and leverage are the only things keeping the current mafia/warlord structure of the government together. If he goes, all bets are off the table. ...but it's the only option I see where Russia doesn't just grind itself into dust. So, just like the original war goal stated - a regime change is what will end the war. Just not in Ukraine  Throwing my hat into the "realist" discussion - it loving sucks, but from my perspective, the worst crime people who claim to be realists do is take away agency from countries because only the biggest boys in the sandbox have any "real" power. loving assholes.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:56
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Staluigi posted:Nobody who launched this war in the way russia did gets to be considered rational, straight up Unfortunately this is one of the big holes in "rational actor" theory generally: a rational idiot is still an idiot and most people, objectively speaking, are some kind or other of idiot some or all of the time. See, e.g., Ben Carson's opinions on everything other than neurosurgery. Same issue arises in economics, law, etc., pretty much anywhere the adjective "rational" rears its head and spouts a theory.
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Jul 3, 2023 19:08
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"Friend Ben"
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Jul 3, 2023 19:10
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Before the full-scale invasion, there was pretty clearly no will in the West to arm Ukraine to the point where it can roll back Russian gains since 2014. Now, there is, although Western core interests have not been threatened. One can blame liberal idealism in the West, of course. But there's been plenty of essayists pointing out that applying Mearsheimer's offensive realism to the West as seen from Russia seem to suggest that Russia should just roll over and accept that the West will keep prodding at its immediate periphery - being that small countries on the periphery of large countries universally seek distant allies, in that only-too-realist sense - and should therefore write off Ukraine as a loss and seek instead of cultivate anti-Atlanticism in Western Europe. Therefore the invasion was doomed from the start &c, what foolish idealists inhabit the Kremlin who fantasize about unrealistic home-by-Christmas missions of global anti-fascism and civilizational salvation &c &c. Oddly enough the rhetoric is only flung one way! But I think really the largest anti-realist point is the Ukrainian government's conduct; there is (I daresay) only a too imaginable counterfactual where a different leader is leading Kyiv at the critical moment and decides to
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Jul 3, 2023 19:12
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Kikas posted:
ahh come on, as an Australian I chortled when China tried to punish us for our PM supporting an investigation into the origin of Covid. Xi refused to let Aussie coal be unloaded (hundred billion dollar industry to Australia) but in the end, Aussie coal was sold to other buyers and China threw its own population into the dark and rolling brownouts (it didn't help China that Indonesia also had massive production issues at the same time due to weather). Now the whole reason we were asking for the investigation was to white ant China at the behest of the US - it was (in the opinion of the brains trust of Australian govt or maybe Captain Morrison himself but I doubt it) in our interests to do as we were told by the US (and the reason we sent war crime parties to Afghanistan etc). So as a little player, Australia does work in its interests (like robbing East Timor of a few cheeky billion dollars of oil by eavesdropping their negotiating teams and driving a super hard bargain as a result) but can't float a Carrier Battle Group off the coast in support of those interests like the biggest dog can.
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Jul 3, 2023 19:17
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Can I clarify Mearsheimer is just one branch of realism, and that while he's influential in us politics, he's not actually posting itt?
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Jul 3, 2023 19:17
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ronya posted:Before the full-scale invasion, there was pretty clearly no will in the West to arm Ukraine to the point where it can roll back Russian gains since 2014. That is an interesting thought, because I'm sure there are a lot of people who support that notion fully and those who are only paying it lip service as a negotiation tactic. The recent post on possible negotiations this year after Ukrainians take Meliotopol I see as copium for the war weary. I guess I'm not sure how much will there is for 2014 borders vs just ending the war with Ukraine in as strong a bargaining position as possible.
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Jul 3, 2023 19:26
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In my experience if you want a fairly accurate guess of what a state or states will do in a given situation, ask a historian not an international relations scholar.
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Jul 3, 2023 19:33
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The debate on whether Russia is acting rationally really hits at the problem with approaches like Realism that treat nations as though they're single entities that make decisions based on their wants and needs, rather than a collection of individuals with often very different wants and needs. To take the example of the Iraq War: if the US was a single entity then we would be forced to conclude it was either insane or functionally incompetent for engaging in the war, given any reasonable cost/benefit analysis and based on knowledge of the actual intelligence. However, if we treat the US government as being made up of multiple decision makers and engaged vested interests, then you can see how it was a very rational choice for most of those with actual decision making power (especially those tied to defence contractors). I'd argue that the only way to make sense of Russia's decision making is to look at those involved and what their aims and interests are, rather than the what "Russia's interests" are (whatever that means). e: ronya posted:If it is serially necessary to 'pierce through the veil' to analyze national behaviour then the nation-state-as-actor is methodologically inapt, something else must be invoked for the real explanatory work, and that's really the core of the problem. This puts it better than I did. Daduzi fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 19:50
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Quixzlizx posted: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. Yep, even if you check this thread series' early period for that month or so most people are expecting it to become Iraq for Russia or something along those lines. Maybe a quick capture of the government, but then an insurgency hell from there out. There were no rosy predictions for Russia, just different scales of bad.
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Jul 3, 2023 19:57
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BillsPhoenix posted:Can I clarify Mearsheimer is just one branch of realism, and that while he's influential in us politics, he's not actually posting itt? You can't be sure of that.
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Jul 3, 2023 20:02
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“The inferiority of the morality of groups to that of individuals is due in part to the difficulty of establishing a rational social force which is powerful enough to cope with the natural impulses by which society achieves its cohesion; but in part it is merely the revelation of a collective egoism, compounded of the egoistic impulses of individuals, which achieve a more vivid expression and a more cumulative effect when they are united in a common impulse than when they express themselves separately and discreetly.” Seem way more explanative to me: than nations act in their own self interest.
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Jul 3, 2023 20:02
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BillsPhoenix posted:This was not unilaterally agreed and it's a weird claim to make given how recently the Soviet Union existed. One of the main reasons the Soviet Union died was reawakened nationalism among/in the republics, which led to multiple bloody conflicts in that area since 1991. -Chechnya/Ingushetia/Dagestan -Tajikistan -Transnistria -Abkhazia -South Ossetia -Artsakh -Russian invasion of Georgia -Fergana Valley ethnic violence across Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Tajik border areas -and uh... Ukraine in 2014 onward lol And some of those were insanely intensely horrifying in terms of brutality and fervor of combatants. Many of the early ones involved politicians and military leaders who had been together as part of the Soviet government and army as well, not rando nationalist maniacs popping up out of the woodwork. There's audio from the first Chechen war from right before a vicious slaughter of Russian troops of a Chechen commander radioing the Russian commander, both of them former Soviet military coworkers or something, with the Chechen guy saying "bro seriously, don't move your dudes into the town center, we will loving kill you, I mean it  ". And then they y'know, killed the poo poo out of them when the Russians did indeed move in.The person who just said "ask historians rather than theorists" hit the nail on the head because.... *gestures to list* Also just saying "But Soviet!" is refusing to read the Soviet Union as an iteration of the Russian empire. For many it would be like saying "Y'know, I'm not really sure the Irish would fight back if the British tried taking it back, they were once one country y'know." Which doesn't get any more logical (worse honestly) if you move the statement to 22 years after 1920. Grape fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 20:09
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It's not "fight back". It's simply "Ukraine under Russian control is conceivable" - because it was under their control recently.
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Jul 3, 2023 20:23
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A significant amount of the population is too young to remember/pine for those days, though. Hell, I barely remember the Soviet Union and I'm rapidly approaching 40. (Although I did think for a long time that Gorbachev was US president before Bill Clinton because he was on a magazine cover and I asked who he was and my dad said "he used to be like the president.")
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Jul 3, 2023 20:29
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Anything is conceivable with enough terror. USA could annex Canada and Mexico and just systematically take anyone unhappy with the new management to re-education camps for a few decades. That doesn't mean that it would make any actual real world sense. Just like culturally genociding the Uighurs is an insane undertaking from China, and they have never been independent.
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Jul 3, 2023 20:38
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Ukraine being a part of Russia is recent history. It could happen again as a result of this conflict. I don't support it, but it's weird to act like that's an impossible unlikely result.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:08
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Only if you consider 1917 "recent".
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Jul 3, 2023 21:10
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Nenonen posted:Anything is conceivable with enough terror. USA could annex Canada and Mexico and just systematically take anyone unhappy with the new management to re-education camps for a few decades. That doesn't mean that it would make any actual real world sense. Just like culturally genociding the Uighurs is an insane undertaking from China, and they have never been independent. drat big shade thrown at the East Turkestan Republics itt
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Jul 3, 2023 21:12
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BillsPhoenix posted:Ukraine being a part of Russia is recent history. Russia could also become a part of Ukraine by the same logic, have you considered that?
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Jul 3, 2023 21:23
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OddObserver posted:Only if you consider 1917 "recent". I honestly don't know what you're referring to in 1917. I'm referring to 1991 - which on the context of international relations, I think is recent.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:23
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Nenonen posted:Russia could also become a part of Ukraine by the same logic, have you considered that? I don't follow this at all. Step by step, how is this the same logic? Russia has not been a part of Ukraine in recent history. Ukraine has not been an imperial power. Ukraine did not start a war of aggression.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:25
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BillsPhoenix posted:Ukraine has not been an imperial power. Kievan Rus' would beg to differ.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:27
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BillsPhoenix posted:I'm referring to 1991 - which on the context of international relations, I think is recent. It's really not. e: the time between JFK's assassination and the fall of the Soviet Union is less than the time between the fall of the Soviet Union and today. Moon Slayer fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 21:28
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Family Values posted: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. That speculation doesn’t really fit with what we know. Russia expected it to be a three day stroll into Kyiv and for the rest of the country to collapse. They did not have contingencies or care about who was in the White House because it was going to turn out like Crimea in 2014, where Obama also didn’t do anything. The Russian leadership was not bothering with any differences in administration, and even if they were it was nearly a year and a half between the US election and the invasion of Kyiv, so the timeline also doesn’t fit.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:31
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BillsPhoenix posted:I don't follow this at all. Step by step, how is this the same logic? Ukraine was not a part of Russia during Soviet Union. Both Russia and Ukraine were Soviet Republics that formed the USSR. Ukraine even held a seat in the United Nations.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:41
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The funnier implication of that chain of reasoning is that Sweden should just annex Norway and Finland since Sweden has been an imperial power.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:43
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IR fails to clear the very first hurdle of a legit theoretical framework by considering only states as relevant actors. Any time you ask an IR scholar about the European Union and how the Commission's interests may differ from its Member States, they cough and choke on their glass of water and avoid the question. Any time you ask an IR scholar about sub-state entities, they handwave them away. Wallonia single-handedly sinking CETA with a veto (because the Walloon Region is controlled by a socialist party under the leadership of a guy who is principally opposed to free trade deals and wanted to make a big political statement) is impossible to explain under the IR framework: it recognizes neither the EU nor Wallonia as relevant actors in international relations, nor can it explain the ideological struggle underpinning the Commission's foreign policy to push for CETA versus Wallonia's veto. From an IR perspective, Belgium acted in Belgium's interest to sign a free trade deal via the EU Commission until Belgium realized it was no longer in Belgium's interest and blew up the whole thing. So no, I don't think the IR model is really useful at explaining anything at all except maybe the AI of non-player-controlled countries in Paradox games
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Jul 3, 2023 21:47
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I'm saying the result of this war very well could be Russia occupying and controlling Ukraine. If you find that impossible or that it's equally likely the war ends with Ukraine occupying Russia, I have no counters, your world view is starkly at odds with mine. If you want to say that Russia didn't control Ukraine during the Soviet Union - we also won't agree.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:47
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Grape posted:Yep, even if you check this thread series' early period for that month or so most people are expecting it to become Iraq for Russia or something along those lines. Maybe a quick capture of the government, but then an insurgency hell from there out. Which rolls it around to my favorite part where under rational actor theories this became the basis for so many people and countries predicting russia wouldn't actually do the dumb doomed thing, because why would they do that, it's clearly not in their rational self interest???
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Jul 3, 2023 21:47
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