The Terrible Ukraine Situation, With No Good Solution
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Good Talks journalist @EricMGarcia helps turn down the noise regarding Latinos when it comes to demographics, diversity, politics, & culture, plus how congress is covered
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As this is a constantly evolving scenario, by the time this article gets published, the facts on the ground will almost surely have shifted. Based on unconfirmed reports, the Ukrainian military has already downed several Russian aerial vehicles. How much stock we want to put into anything beyond Putin’s declaration of war, which, according to the metadata on the site it was posted on, was filmed a couple of days ago, I don’t know. “I don’t know” is the most acceptable answer right now. But let me pontificate about the issues surrounding what could be Georgia 3.0, Crimea 2.0, World War III, and/or Cold War 2.0. May you live in interesting times.
Everyone acts in their own self-interest, not what you think their self-interest is. Why is Putin doing this?1 This isn’t hard to understand, brophalom. Putin is evil. Liberals and progressives (think Sociology 101) have spent the last several decades attempting to convince people that evil doesn’t really exist in order to excuse horrible regimes the world over. And then blame America for why they just had to massacre thousands and/or millions of innocents. Usually, this meant communist regimes with a, shall we say, spotty history on human rights, to put it very mildly. Which is all communist regimes, but whatever. But Pinochet! This same argument would be trotted out to excuse Isamo-fascist terrorism and bad Muslim theocratic nations in the Middle East before, during, and after 9/11. And then anti-Semites blamed Israel. As they are wont to do.
Central Europe holds a lot of the blame for this one. They could have, at any time, stopped buying oil from a country run by a psychotic former KGB operative. I mean, they did nothing after Georgia in 2008 and effectively nothing after he annexed Crimea in 2014. To say nothing of our response. But without the powers of Central Europe in our corner, acting against Russia outside of sanctions would likely be folly. Sanctions do relatively little anyway. Without putting someone important in shackles or the ground, nothing changes. Too little, too late in cancelling the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Germany…
The UN is worse than worthless. The entire theatrical production last night was pointless outside of Ukraine’s strong words, for posterity. Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, meaning it has a “no questions asked” veto on any resolution passed by the council that Russia doesn’t like. China has to be licking its chops over the prospect of doing the same thing to Taiwan. Japan can’t possibly like that.
Putin is an evil psychopath with nuclear weapons who has already threatened to use them against any country that tries to stop this. He’s either suicidal or he knows he’ll get away with it. But he is not stupid. I have little optimism he’s miscalculated about the world’s apathy, especially Central Europe’s, surrounding the possibility of another world war. Such things are why communist regimes got away with such awful things for so long, especially since they mostly massacred their own people. What Eddie Izzard called Hitler’s biggest mistake: Killing people outside his borders. But I have a feeling even that won’t get Central Europe truly off its collective ass.
The awful takes littered over Twitter overnight were legendarily bad. From basically all sides of the political spectrum. Hard to pick the worst. Everyone from tankies to conservative grifters to cable news hosts to horror authors. Well, one horror author that I saw: Stephen King. Insert WarGames quote here.
Just know that this is truly a terrible situation that will not likely have a good resolution, even if Ukraine wins. The puppet government in Belarus has already joined in on Russia’s side, as anyone with even a quarter of a brain could have seen coming. Already skyrocketing gas prices will likely soar ever higher. Inflation will get worse. Stock and currency markets around the world are already crashing down. And the hyper negative partisanship of American politics will only reach new heights. Unity just doesn’t exist anymore. Pray for the people of Ukraine.
Yup, no good solution.
What in the french fried fork is this
“Liberals and progressives (think Sociology 101) have spent the last several decades attempting to convince people that evil doesn’t really exist in order to excuse horrible regimes the world over.” LOL. Pro tip: talk radio rambling is not that great a guide to what liberals actually think.Report
There was after all that time George W Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his soul.Report
Having one guy run a country for decades seems inherently a problem. This hits the radar as a human problem rather than “this one guy”. My expectation is when GWB knew him he was a lot saner by our standards than he is now.
Now Saddam seems to have been a charming sociopath even before he took power so I might be totally off base and it could just be people like that are just attracted to those positions.Report
At the time I think people were just glad the Secret Service wasn’t finding him outside in his underwear drunk off his ass and looking for a pizza on official state visits.Report
There is evil in the world. There is evil in the US. Liberals have called it our for decades. Conservatives used to, until they looked at demographics and concluded they’d stop winning elections unless they made homegrown liberals evil too.
Here’s a safe bet – if every Republican on Capitol Hill said “We’re behind the President no matter what” liberals would applaud and tut tut about how its great to see them coming back to their senses.
Here’s another safe bet – any Republican Congressman or Senator who does that without also impugning Biden’s mental abilities or he greenlighting of Putin, or his handling of Afghanistan will be primaried from the Right and loose reelection.
Both sides are not in fact like the other here.Report
Perhaps Republicans and non-partisans could fully support the President if they knew what it was they were supporting.Report
Seems to me he’s been quite up front so far.Report
Seems like Biden is supporting Ukraine here. It’s not all that complicated.Report
Biden is still holding back on sanctions and told us today it’s going to take a month for the ones he did levy to have an impact. These were the damaging consequences the administration promised if Putin invaded?
Meanwhile, Kiev will fall before the end of the weekend.
No one is actually supporting Ukraine right now. If it’s “support” it’s the foreign relations version of sending thoughts and prayers over Twitter.
The West is all talk and Putin knows this. The guy invades another country and we – collectively – can’t even muster a half measure.Report
I’d go with max sanctions now but we need the support of all the other rich countries. If they dont’ go along we are limited. Japan, Taiwan and Singapore have announced sanctions. Sanctions are never going to have an immediate critical effect. Never do. So far we have banking and tech sanctions which will hurt russia. That is actually stuff. Other steps will need more support and may also be held back to ramp up measures to pressure putin.
I’d bet significant money we are supplying Ukraine with intell of all sorts.Report
Max sanctions should have been yesterday – and agree this is a failure of resolve of the NATO countries. Biden can do all the bad Clint Eastwood impressions he wants, but until EU (mainly Germany) is ready to bite the bullet on some unpleasantness, Putin is going to be laughing at us all the way to the Polish border.Report
Taiwan is going to sanction the russians. That is a serious hit for tech/computer sectors. Lots of critical comp parts come from Taiwan.
Sanctions are never a fast tool. Never. But short of planes/troops that is what we can do and are doing.Report
I imagine part of Putin’s calculus is that he will have what he wants before the sanctions begin to really hurt.
I also have to believe he has arrangements with China designed to offset the longer term ramifications.Report
Half of me wonders whether this would be a good time for China to make a move.
The other half wonders if Xi isn’t laughing his rear end off between telling whomever is within earshot that “today is my lucky day!”Report
Arms are flowing:
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-receives-second-batch-us-weapons-russian-stand-off-2022-01-23/
Sanctions are growing:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/24/sanctions-against-russia-at-a-glance-people-organisations-uk-us-eu
He’s also repositioning US troops in NATO countries to shore up allied defense. And yes it will take time for sanctions to work – that’s the thing of them. Short of a ground war what exactly were you expecting would happen?Report
Deploying US troops to NATO countries isn’t supporting Ukraine. It’s the right move, and necessary for when Ukraine is conquered, but has no bearing on the crisis at hand.
As I said, all of the sanctions should have been executed as soon as the invasion started. At least whatever we could issue unilaterally. The time to keep dry powder on sanctions is over.
I hope whatever addition arms we can get Ukraine inflict pain on the invaders, but there aren’t enough STA to offset Russia’s air superiority, and frankly, it will likely inflict just as much additional carnage to innocent Ukrainians by dragging out the inevitable.
Short of conventional US military intervention (which I do not advocate), I think we should be hurting them w cyber. I know people fear retaliation, but I think people underestimate our capabilities. Putin is assuming we wouldn’t dare. He’s prepared for max sanctions. But is he prepared to deal w cyber attacks on mother Russia?Report
“Putin is evil. ”
Lazy thinking. Even sociopaths have wants and needs and goals.
Saying “X is doing Y because they are evil” is stupid and shortsighted, because it prevents analysis of those motivations, those goals and desires. And if you don’t know THOSE, you cannot predict what they’ll do — or how to stop them.
“He’s doing it because he’s evil” is the sort of facile, useless analysis I’d expect of a stoned teenager who doesn’t want to do the assignment.
You might as well tell Newton “Rocks fall because God Wills It” and then wonder why, in that world, nobody ever stepped foot on the Moon.Report
Putin is evil. He’s also cold blooded and calculating. He’s highly trained in destabilizing and repressing governments. And he craves power. None of these things is mutually exclusive.Report
I endorse this. “evil” has very little value as an explainer. That’s not to say I don’t think Putin is evil, it’s just that “evil” is not a motivation, and he has motivations just like everyone else.Report
Fair criticism if that was all the article said.
“Putin is an evil psychopath with nuclear weapons who has already threatened to use them against any country that tries to stop this. He’s either suicidal or he knows he’ll get away with it. But he is not stupid.”Report
Putin’s personal attributes are largely irrelevant to the nuke question. The potential to use them in the event of fighting close to home against a peer enemy is longstanding NATO and Russian/Soviet doctrine. Which is why everyone knows NATO putting bodies on the line is off the table and the Ukrainians don’t expect that kind of help from us.Report
Too little, too late in cancelling the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Germany…
I’ll be interested to see if that holds up anyway. Let’s see… Ukrainian transit pipeline network becomes “collateral damage.” Belarus transit pipeline has “technical difficulties.” Austria, Italy, and some of the others are looking down into a very deep recession and begin screaming at Germany to issue the certification and start Nord Stream 2. Gazprom has said they can begin delivering gas through it the day after Germany delivers the certification.Report
Germany made the decision to begin closing their nuclear plants (and thus shift to other power generation sources) in 2002. An great many allegedly deep thinkers have opined since then that buying Russia’s natural gas had a stabilizing effect because so many of the oligarchs made their fortunes off it that shutting down by this very sort of military action would not be allowed.Report
Related to my comment below, who blinks first? The oligarchs, or the major economies of Western Europe? If I had to bet, I’d bet that Germany takes its role as big dog in the EU more seriously than its much smaller role in NATO and gets the gas and oil flowing again, even if it pisses off Biden (and the Ukrainians).Report
If you’re right the Putin is probably going to pull it off. If Germany doesn’t seriously sanction gas imports then Russia will be fine.Report
and if that happens I m sure it will somehow all be Biden’s fault.Report
It would only be Bidens fault if he commits troops to Ukraine. As far as I can see he isn’t planning to so however Ukraine turns out the Old Man has done his job tolerably well. This is, fundamentally, a test of the Europeans. Biden can’t pass or fail it for them; no American president can.Report
Trying to remember the name of famous org of hackers that claimed they could get into all sorts of secret gov intertoobs. They worked with wikileaks and strenuously denied they were russian puppets. Boy it would be just nifty if a powerful group of hackers with white hats were at this minute f**king with the russian mil and gov. They could really help Ukraine right now.Report
The minute they accomplish anything significant, Russia calls it an act of war, and a war crime (if it targeted civilian infrastructure), and closes the oil and natural gas spigots to Western Europe. Probably oil to the US as well. The US may be oil independent (or nearly so) on a net basis, but there’s still a lot of importing and exporting because not all of our oil is well suited to our refineries. Nor is our refineries’ output necessarily well matched to our demand for refined products. There’s a lot of diesel-for-gasoline trade between the US and the EU, for example.
Wags used to say that suffering through deprivation was the Russian national hobby. Once that sort of economic war starts, I’m not sure I’d bet on them folding before a number of EU states do. Something that’s been pointed out a lot today, that has me realizing how little I know, is that Germany is the big dog in the EU, but not in NATO, and may value it’s EU role more than it’s NATO role.Report
That’s a good bet that this is happening on some level. The Russians are, of course, doing their best to mess up the Ukraine this way as well.
We’re unlikely to hear about it for a while, though, I expect.Report