Putin Invades

God help us all. I don’t think we in the west realise the impact of this on the world. It’s a sad day. And the beginning of a new dawn of the global super powers- Russia, China and Iran. Pray.

Years of seeing presidents conduct missile strikes on other countries and then explain how “this isn’t really a war” has eroded my ability to be shocked by Russia’s actions.

I didn’t say that I thought that Russia’s actions were justified or that they wouldn’t escalate. I simply said that I’m hardly shocked.

A big factor of this is getting into long conversations regarding Obama’s bombing campaign in Libya. Even those who opposed assured me that it was not really a military action. But at least dozens of civilians and perhaps hundreds of them were killed, and that’s not getting into the intended targets. As a country we’ve long dismissed such actions as “not really war” despite their obvious military intent and damage.

Am I then surprised that Putin uses the exact same sort of rationale to defend his actions?

I would much prefer peace and do not support Russia’s actions. But I don’t see today as the end of a peaceful era. The “peace” that people thought existed was a lie.

You missed the whole major power part didn’t you Quotermeister?

Ukraine is a major power?

1956 Hungarian Revolution, 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, 1992–1994 Croat–Bosniak War, 1998–1999 Kosovo War, 2008 Russo–Georgian war

The last time we had this discussion, your excuse for Russian policy was ‘the relentless eastern advance of NATO’. Geography isn’t your strong suit and neither is analogy. The only countries added to NATO since 2004 have been small states along the Adriatic, which does not run east-to-west; the countries in question were Albania (which withdrew from the Warsaw Pact de jure in 1968 and de facto in 1961) and fragments of the former Yugoslavia, which had never been a member of the Warsaw Pact. The actual eastward expansion of NATO was limited to the years running from 1997 to 2004 and occurred in two installments. Three states accounting for 60% of the set’s productive capacity were added in 1999 and seven accounting for the other 40% were added in 2004. And of course, their interest in entering NATO was perfectly sensible. Every last one of them had been stomped by the Red Army at some point between 1939 and 1968 and politically subjugated thereafter.Two of them had seen mass importation of Russian colonists. Among the more recent diplomatic demands issued by Putin’s foreign minister is that all 10 countries be expelled from NATO. There’s a reason Sweden and Finland are now considering NATO membership.

Turkey, Cyprus and Georgia are in the Near East, not Europe. In Georgia’s case, the area in dispute has a population of about 55,000 and is populated with Ossetes, not Georgians. The Bosnian War was an intramural communal dispute conducted over an area with a population of about five million. The Kosovo War was to head off an ethnic cleansing extravaganza in an area with a population of about two million. The ambitious exterior power in was Serbia, which is a fairly impecunious country with a population of about seven million. It was all part of the messy dissolution of an unwieldy multi-ethnic state in which scores had been accumulating for eighty years.

No matter how many silly columns Steve Sailer writes trying to justify this according to some potted conception of raison d’etat, there’s only two reasons the Russia government is doing this: (1) they can and (2) they want to. There isn’t anything compelling about the Ukraine’s current activities and if you were concerned about some contingency involving NATO or the EU you could have tried catching your flies with honey, but the Russian political class is composed of people too brutal to try that approach. So, for the last eight years, they’ve been the Ukraine’s creepy stalker ex-boyfriend.

Note, attempting to swallow a neighboring country whole a propos of nothing in particular has been attempted just twice since 1945, and in both cases you had two rival governments operating in the field of one nation.

You’ll live to eat your words.

Waal, if you’re expecting Russia to be making amphibious assaults on American allies in Africa or the Americas in the next 25 years, maybe you be right. That’s assuming I have an ordinary life expectancy. (My brother is the longest lived of our male line of the last eight generations or so, so I woudn’t wager that. He’s rather healthier than I am as regards his diet and exercise regimen and he’s been blindsided multiple times in the last decade by odd things).

Am I then surprised that Putin uses the exact same sort of rationale to defend his actions?

There is no insurrection in the Ukraine, whose government is as legitimate as any. The Ukraine also has no history of training and arming assassins to make the world worse for its political rivals.

Russia has demonstrated it is self-sufficient when it comes to natural resources and it is an energy superpower. It has close to 30% of the worlds natural resource reserves. It is the second biggest military super power after the US. It has the worlds largest tank fleet, the second largest aircraft fleet, the third largest submarine fleet in the world. It’s military strategy has international outreach ie. Syria. It exports $30bill in grain to US alone. It exports close to $110billion of its energy, giving it 35% of the total energy market of Europe. It exports $45 billion in arms (second biggest in the world). It has decades of strategic nuclear and conventional military might. China does not come anywhere near this and has relied on Russia to flex its muscles on the International stage except for North Korea and South China Sea where China is alone in its strategic activism.

You’re confused. Russia is a middle-income country whose foreign exchange earnings derive from the most part from fuel and mineral exports. Fuel, minerals, and foodstuffs predominate in Australia’s export mix as well. That’s not a sign of strength, just an indicator of what sort of tradeable goods and services you produce which can be marketed abroad.

There is no such thing as ‘an energy superpower’, or a ‘superpower’ in any discrete market for fuel or minerals. Quite a number of attempts were made in the 1970s to set up commodity cartels, and they all failed in short order bar one: oil. The oil cartel went under after about 15 years and might have imploded a earlier had the U.S. government made some smart policy choices. (Jimmy Carter had to lobby the Congress hard just to be able to partially dismantle controls on natural gas prices). Russia accounts for 11% of the export trade in oil as we speak. They’re not in a position to blackmail any party of consequence.

There is no such thing as ‘30% of the worlds resources’. There can be 30% of the world’s proven resources in a given commodity. The proven resources are not all resources, just the resources parties have been willing and able to locate to date.

And a country’s wealth comes not from its natural resources, which bring contingent benefits and everyday problems, but from its human capital. Russia isn’t doing badly in that respect, but they’re well behind western Europe and not far ahead of China.

There are two countries right now which have some prospect of being able to project power globally, and Russia is not on the list.

There are two countries right now which have some prospect of being able to project power globally, and Russia is not on the list.

China don’t have the strategic military experience and have predominantly relied/rely on Russia. Russia has the second largest army after the US. Under the current Biden administration the US have proven itself to have a weak military strategy. With a weak, confused leader. Russia is capitalising on that and you think it’s temporary.

So no.

China and US are not the only two nations able to project power globally.

By the way, Australia could cripple China tomorrow with iron ore sanctions. Stop their industry. Halt it. But they can’t. Why? Because Australia don’t have the military capability to match China’s. And allied by Russia. Forget it.

Some Americans have a near-erotic reaction to foreign strongmen–Castro, Mao, assorted African tinpots and now Putin.

I recall PJ O’Rourke commenting on the phenomenon back in the era of Gorbachev:

“It’s like America has some kind of perpetual kinky personals ad: ‘Naughy, naughty nation seeking foreign tyrant for stern discipline. No gays. Send photo.'”

“Snort”?

Classy Art.

Part of why I am observing this from a state of almost uninterested detachment is that I don’t know of any way to find accurate information about what is happening.

Not only has the media been blatantly disinterested in truth for decades now (with things somehow becoming an order of magnitude worse in the last five years) but they’ve been very clearly signaling that they will use the war in Ukraine for political purposes.

I can know the very broad facts, such as Russia having troops in Ukraine, and I can find official statements like those from Putin. Beyond that it is tricky to make much of anything out of what is happening.