The more the war goes on, the starker the contrast between Western moral defeatism and Ukrainian resolve becomes. The buzzword in much of the Western discussion is ‘realism’. On both sides of the discussion – among both those who support Ukraine’s fightback and those who obsess to the point of sympathy with Russia’s ‘security concerns’ – there’s a belief that ‘realism’ must now prevail. Over everything. Even over Ukraine’s sovereignty. As a pro-Ukraine writer for the New Republic puts it, ‘God bless the Ukrainians’ but ‘Russia will probably overpower Ukraine’. No wonder Mr Scherba is flustered, when even Ukraine’s supposed allies are essentially saying ‘Get real’. It is clear now that ‘realism’ is a euphemism for conceding, for surrender even. Whether it’s the ‘realists’ who admire the resistance but think it is hopeless, or the ‘realists’ of international-relations theory who believe Russia’s security concerns must trump the Ukrainian longing for freedom, there’s a palpable defeatism in the discourse. Only it dare not speak its name. It calls itself ‘realism’ instead.
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Is nothing worth a war?March 14th, 2022 |
 37 comments to Is nothing worth a war? |
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Isn’t “defeatism” simply a calculation that something costs more than we’re willing to pay?
Usually, the use of that word means that someone is mad that I’m not willing to pay the costs to achieve what they want.
It’s a meta-argument. Don’t berate for lack of commitment or resolve. Explain why the commitment or resolve are warranted.
“We” are being asked to provide weapons to the people actually willing to pay the cost in blood. Perhaps “defeatism-by-proxy” would be a better term.
But if the last two years have shown me anything, it is that a big chunk of people everywhere are very bad at risk assessment (I am being polite, what I really think is rather less flattering), so hardly surprising they can not comprehend large numbers of people in Ukraine are willing to risk death by standing up to Russia in a real war.
I can only think of the late Captain Coverley Kennedy* RN, who aged 60, was recalled in WW2 to serve as captain of the armed merchant cruiser (gunned up ocean liner) HMS Rawalpindi, and encountered, somewhere between the Faroes and Iceland, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. He may have mistaken them for two other powerful German warships, but his options were run (and perish), surrender or stand and fight (and perish). His reported last words were something like ‘We shall stand and fight them both, and we shall be sunk, and that will be that. Goodbye!‘. They did and they were, but they bought time for other forces to join the hunt.
A month ago, what did most British people think about if you mentioned the Ukraine? Chernobyl, Chicken Kiev and ‘they are a bit like Russia but not quite the same.‘? If so, not any more I would say.
As their neighbours used to say ‘Poland is not yet lost‘.
*His son was the noted British broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy.
I’m lucky. Over a few years, I’ve been able to gather some second-hand information about the justness of the Ukraine cause by reading the words of several people here who have personal connections to the situation, and who have over those few years demonstrated intellects and moral stances that give them credence in my mind, foremost among them being you.
But most people in the world lack even that fact-thin second-hand knowledge of the area, and instead are presented with cheerleading. I count O’Neil’s “defeatism” as more cheerleading. It would be far more effective to spend time on why the Ukrainians are the good guys. The simple fact that Russia – Putin – is attacking them doesn’t automatically make them the good guys.
I think that O’Neil, like many here, overestimate peoples’ knowledge of Russia and Putin and Ukraine, and so what strikes him as a self-evident moral position isn’t general. For all that most Americans know, he might be arguing that we ought to be helping those plucky Mexican cartels, that defeatism is all that’s stopping them.
I’m not arguing with you about what we ought to be doing. I’m comfortable accepting your personal-knowledge-based analysis of the moral situation. But the vast majority of people whom O’Neil is trying to cheerlead lack any of that basis for such a judgment, and so are paralyzed. (Or, worse, they’re herd animals and merely accept what the herd thinks, which usually follows ideology and not fact.) His time might be better spent spreading that sort of factual knowledge.
The issue is not Ukrainian sovereignty. It is Russian security and NATO’s threat to it. This war was started by the US sponsored coup in 2014. It was necessary after the US flat refused to even listen to Russia’s concern.
The events of 2014 are of course, an internal matter for the Ukrainians. And there have been elections there since, leading to the current government. The Ukraine belonged to the UN before Russia ever did, Russia joined the UN on the basis of respecting the principles of non-interference in others’ internal affairs.
What principle of international law are you relying on for the proposition you make, effectively that one state is entitled to invade another on the basis of ‘concern’ at not being listened to by a third state? Can you point us to any precedents or published papers in the area to this end? If not, why not?
If any state has concerns over its security, it is The Ukraine, it is the one that has been attacked, as have, over time, Mongolia, Persia, Poland, Georgia, Armenia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Romania. Anyone seeing a pattern here?
Still waiting for a coherent proposition from you, sir.
I want to help Ukraine, but at what point does that help result in people in underground silos twisting keys and pressing buttons?
@bob
Incorrect. This is about Putin trying to reestablish a Soviet Union style Russian Empire. How do I know? Putin has said it. Many times over the years. And at length. In his last outing three weeks ago he said there was no such thing as Ukraine. Or Ukrainians. And was going to erase them from history. Its all in the transcript on his .ru site.
Aint got nothing to do with NATO.
I have been watching lots of Channel One RU over the last few months. for the first time since the early 1990’s. Watching it regressing to 1980’s Soviet style TV propaganda. Last nights main news broadcast, Yremya, was pure 1983 style brutal and primitive Soviet style propaganda. Terrifying stuff.
This is all about Putin and his megalomaniac psychopathology. And nothing to do with what anyone else might have done or not done over the decades. This nightmare will end when he is dead. Not before.
Then the Russian people will pay the terrible price for his reckless folly.
Of all the voices that maintain that Russia has some kind of right to mount an intervention in Ukraine due to their own security concerns about the latter’s flirtation with the possibility of joining NATO, I wonder how many have noticed the parallel (political if not yet actually military) with the European Union, which feels it too has some kind of right to override the sovereignty of a neighbour, due to their concerns about whether an unauthorised sausage from the British mainland might be sold in the wrong part of Ireland?
Russia and the European Union would both seem to be entities that have the self-serving belief that their sovereignty should somehow not end at their actual borders, and that they should be entitled to exercise a degree of sovereignty-violating control over those equally-sovereign neighbours they persist in regarding as their ‘near abroad.’
Ukraine and the United Kingdom are those neighbours who reject that idea.
Russia demands that Ukraine yields up Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk; an EU functionary was on record as saying that Northern Ireland would be the price that the United Kingdom paid for Brexit.
Where the analogy breaks down, of course, is in leadership: Ukraine has a President whose attitude was ‘I need ammunition, not a ride,’ whereas the United Kingdom has a Prime Minister who daren’t risk triggering Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol despite his Government admitting that the threshold to justify such a move has been surpassed.
As Claire Berlinski aptly remarked:
Do you think that American mass media has been any more accurate and ideology-free? I yearn for news delivery that I can believe.
where’s your red line?
Well, it’s not along some arbitrarily drawn internal Soviet borders, that’s for sure. Nor is it in hoisting the NATO flag over areas primarily inhabited by ethnic Russians.
Pro tip – if you’re trying to expand the EU and NATO to historical Russian empire lands that are still inhabited by predominantly Russian-speaking people it is YOU who is trying to expand a modern empire.
NATO was envisioned as a defensive alliance, not an expansionist empire. It has lost sense of its mission.
It should be remembered that this war is NOT over the Crimea or over other areas Mr Putin took in 2014 – Mr Putin has invaded all of Ukraine. So offering him what he took in 2014 is not going to solve anything.
And Russian speaking Ukrainians are now as hostile to Mr Putin as Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians are – he has made everyone his enemy.
Some things are complicated and some things are NOT – Mr Putin must go.
Yes, it is.
Nope. The NATO nations would much rather spend their money on wind farms, transgender awareness schooling & other assorted bullshit. It is a testament to Russian geopolitical ineptitude that they have managed to rally NATO from its torpor.
Pure distilled Russian propaganda. You know nothing about the events leading up to 2014 other than the crap you heard on Russia Today & similar. You are a “useful idiot” (Russian technical term for people like you). As Tim Newman pithily put it, “The populist right has shit the bed”.
He is talking about people like you.
Mr Putin has now, de facto, made Russia a colony of the People’s Republic of China – of the Communist Party dictatorship of Xi.
Mr Putin is a traitor to Russia, he is a traitor to the Russian people. He must go.
As for the election of 2019 – I would have voted for the losing candidate. But the Ukrainian people overwhelmingly choose the current President.
People who can not even get the date of the election correct (who think the current government came into office in “2014” not 2019) are irritating.
You should not be giving pro-tips as you clearly are not a pro. Zelenskyy would not have been elected without a lot of votes from “Russian-speaking people”. Get this through your head, most Russian-speakers in Ukraine identify as Ukrainian. Why do you think solidly Russian-speaking Kharkiv greeted the Russian troops trying to take the city with NLAW/Javelin ambushes rather throwing flowers at their liberators? With all due respect, you do not know nearly as much about Ukraine as you think you do.
Also with respect, I’d say the Ukraine nationalists and their western cheerleaders would benefit from listening more seriously to those who have cautioned them about the dangers of the path they’ve been on. So far they have lost Crimea, triggered an 8 year long civil war in the east and now have a substantial presence of the Russian army in their eastern territories and surrounding their capital. This is not what a successful development path looks like and the biggest loser in the end is Ukraine.
And yes, I am well aware that many people in Ukraine have complicated identities. There are Russian speaking Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian speaking people who value the Russian ties. It’s complicated, and a government that is openly hostile to Russia unleashes very dangerous forces as we’ve seen for at least the last ten years.
Also, a realistic assessment of what is militarily possible yields better decision making. Ukraine is not capable of militarily expelling the Russian forces from their territory. The settlement will need to be negotiated. Those who predicted an imminent collapse of the Russian forces have been doing no one any favours.
Do you ever ask yourself *why* the Ukrainian government is openly hostile to Russia, whose leader has stated there is no separate Ukrainian identity & Ukraine is a ‘historical mistake’?
You are acting as if wise pragmatic pro-Russian policies by the government of Ukraine could possibly have resulted in something that could have satisfied Putin & also allowed Ukraine to exist as a meaningfully independent nation. That is very wishful thinking. The last time a Putin-friendly Ukrainian government was in power, it imprisoned, poisoned & killed protestors and opposition politicians (which is what caused Maidan, not the CIA), but did having a tame Putin supplicant in power in Kyiv at least stop Russia backing the faux-grassroots separatists in Luhansk & Donbas? LOL.
What you seem to want the government in Kyiv to do is ‘sensible’ and ‘realistic’ in the same way Neville Chamberlain’s views were ‘sensible’ and ‘realistic’ in 1938.
Czechoslovakia was small & indefensible. Ukraine is neither small nor indefensible.
Indeed. But that will not happen until Russia has been brutally attritted at great cost in Ukrainian lives & the Russian economy beggared to the point Russia cannot demand more than what it was already in de-facto occupation of. It will be a narrow Russian tactical victory but a massive strategic geopolitical defeat.
I’m not defeatist, I just don’t care what the flag in Kiev looks like. Nor do most people in the West, in any practical way. Just because there’s a fight doesn’t mean it’s our fight.
“Hello, Mrs. Smith? Sorry you missed out on that Democracy in Iraq opportunity, but don’t worry- we just traded your son’s face and eyes for Ukranian sovereignty! There’s a little brain damage and he has to eat through a tube, but Zelensky remains president! We’ll provide long term care for the rest of his life, so he doesn’t really need to remember who you are. That will teach Putin, eh?”
All the people complaining that not enough American or British money and soldiers are going to Ukraine are welcome to take their own cash and a$$ over there and join in. Stop trying to make me participate.
You can look at it the other way. Putin took the Crimea. Putin promoted the break-away republics. Without him, they would not have happened.
In all the similar cases, the common theme is Putin. He did the same to Georgia as he is to Ukraine. He did the same to Moldova, with Trans-Dniestr.
Were all those governments also reckless? Or were they just unfortunate enough to border Russia?
Putin has been consistently threatening to the Baltic states too. He even sponsored cyber attacks on Estonia. Now it is a long bow to draw that they have been reckless.
No. Putin is the common theme. Nothing Ukraine did, short of bowing to his every wish, would have stopped him. They have not been reckless. They have been desperately trying to deal with a homicidal maniac over the border.
Your argument reminds me of telling battered spouses that they should be more careful, rather than pointing the finger at the violent thug doing the violent things.
Perry,
NATO expansion when it said it wouldn’t doesn’t actually count as torpor…it counts as empire building. Kennan was right as to the result of this, as he was on containment.
And Chamberlain was indeed a realist. He knew perfectly well that a war would bankrupt Britain, which it duly did. The outcome did Eastern Europe no favours either. The Polish Guarantee was a huge mistake.
“The whole eastern question isn’t worth the healthy bones of a pomeranian grenadier”
How many Russian or Ukrainian grenadiers it’s worth is up to them.
I think people need to look back to the 1970s and early 80s. The West suffered defeat after defeat, the UK was in a malaise, then along came Thatcher who stood firm and the West’s whole attitude turned around. Zelensky could be that man.
[…] ‘Chester Draws’ taking to task a commenter who accused the Ukrainian government of having brought this upon […]
To the original question, the answer is almost yes.
staghounds and Kevin Jaeger – you are do not seem to understand that you are not just harming yourselves, you are harming every other Conservative. “Guilt by association” is wrong, but it is also very common – and if people deny that some Conservatives are pro Putin then comments such as yours can be presented by the left – and they will be (with horrible glee). You do not seem to grasp that you are making the case of the left for them – you are in a hole, yet you keep digging. And, due to guilt by association, we are to-some-extent stuck in that hole (the hole you have dug) with you – you are harming other people (not just yourselves). Even before the invasion of Ukraine it was very clear that Mr Putin needed to be condemned – no “ifs”, “buts”, no “howevers”, just condemned.
mickc.
Well at least you are open – you own words show that you do not condemn Prime Minister Chamberlain for not standing against Hitler and the Nazis EARLIER (if he had done so even as late 1938 it is quite possible that the German armed forces would have overthrown Mr Hitler – as the German armed forces were not ready for war in early 1938, they needed the Czech factories). It is quite clear from your own words that you oppose standing against the Nazis at all – even in September 1939.
You are condemned by your own words, no further discussion is needed in relation to you – or relation to people like you.
As a devoted reader of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli (not to mention the Sagas of Icelanders), i am all for realism.
I am convinced, however, that, in this case, realism means, for Ukrainians, to fight to the last bullet. And for the rest of us, to keep sending ammo to the Ukrainians.
BTW the earliest historical comparisons that come to mind are the Persian wars and the second Punic war.
bobby b’s point (March 14, 2022 at 8:46 pm), that we underestimate how much ignorance there is of the Ukraine, is true enough. But that interacts complicatedly with the defeatism that is not calculation but cowardice and/or selfishness telling a lie about the calculation.
That said, his advice to assume the audience may know less than you think, and so tell more, is valid (even as it also gives problems in a world of finite attention spans). Poland, despite being erased as a nation for over a century, then after 20 years erased again as an independent one for decades, nevertheless exists as a nation in the world’s mind today (not least thanks to WWII). The Ukraine was likewise sat on by powerful neighbours and its periods of avowed and genuine emergence as a self-determining nation were a lot shorter, so it has a harder time. As with defeatism-is-not-realism, so with Ukraine-is-a-nation, one rationally suspects a lot of Putin stooges and others among those who doubt its existence, but bobby is right that plenty of ignorance is there too.
I quite see where bobby is coming from in a later comment when he asks whether US media is any better than the regressing-to-full-soviet Russian TV. The very sad reply is, yes, they are:
Many Jan 6th protestors are still locked up, and another was driven to suicide recently, but I think Putin is ahead when it comes to narrative-maintaining vehmic murders.
I am very much with Ed and others as regards the Rawalpindi, etc. The Ukrainians prove their existence by fighting, and, as Perry remarks, the far easier question for us is how much to help. We know we live in an absurdly risk-averse time so it is rational to assume our society’s evaluation of this is over-cautious.
Still waiting for Eric Sykes, sorry bob sykes, to set out his position in response to my query. Seems like he has no position, perhaps he is a bot?
All true in your comment. But this one point – isn’t this new debate (in the US) the same sort of conversation that went on as we debated entering WW2? Didn’t we have that debate primarily because we as a nation tend to be insular and thus rather ignorant of the rest of the world?
But after we had that conversation, we did act. We needed to be brought up to speed in our national awareness of other parts of the world first, though.
Here we are again. I think that, if back before we entered WW2 the populace had been better educated by people who knew the situation, we would have gone in earlier.
Too much pro-Ukraine argument has now consisted of Democrat-like berating instead. “If you knew what I know . . .”; “You’re stupid not to see . . . “; Don’t think, truth doesn’t matter, just don’t give the liberals something to crow about . . .”. These aren’t convincing at all, and do a disservice to Ukraine, I think.
Education would help Ukraine much more than partisanship. That’s usually true of any just cause.
Paul Marks,
Yes, I am certainly open that I do not condemn Chamberlain. He was totally realistic about the situation.
I would be interested to know what you mean by “standing against Hitler”. How, and what with, and with what popular support from the British electorate (who most certainly did not want war).
I am surprised you seem to have accepted the nonsense that is “The Guilty Men”, a fine piece of Michael Foot propaganda. Happily you seem not to have accepted anything else he promoted.
Indeed it IS possible the German armed forces could have overthrown Hitler…but highly unlikely. The German Junker class were every bit as imperialist, and unpleasant as the Nazis, including the much praised Stauffenberg.
Finally a Guarantee is only valid if it can be effectively called on. Britain had no way whatsoever to prevent a German invasion of Poland. The only possibility was an alliance with the USSR, which Poland would not accept.
The state which accepts, and relies on a Guarantee which is effectively meaningless runs huge risks by doing so. As De Gaulle said, which US President will risk New York for Lyons?
The Guarantee was a piece of political theatre, a deterrent backed by nothing but hope. The West’s assurances to the Ukraine have been similar.
There would have been a confrontation with Hitler’s Germany undoubtedly. September 1939, over Poland was not the time or the place to do it.
The German economy could not sustain the cost of its military ambition and would eventually have collapsed, as did the USSR, while the British Empire and its economy was strengthening.
So, yes indeed, Chamberlain has my admiration. He was an excellent Chancellor, a Conservative social reformer and a realist about the international situation. If that deserves condemnation, I am happy to be condemned.
The false premise is that bobby’s question is a straight yes/no question.
I submit that it isn’t.
Sometimes US establishment media is better than Russian establishment media, but that does not mean that it is always better.
Remember: Goebbels was more trustworthy than the NY Times wrt the Holodomor.
Thinking about this, our news might in effect be worse than Russian news.
Russian news has been presented as being consistently anti-factual. American news is sometimes factual, sometimes anti-factual.
At least with Russian news, I can watch and then (somewhat safely) assume the opposite of what they say. With American news, never knowing in which mode they’re operating, I can make no such assumptions.
Thus, I can extract some information from consistent lying, but none from a random system.
😉
I am reminded of an intensive course in the Dutch language that i took.
The oldest person in our class, a Spanish lady, remarked that she got it 100% wrong in an exercise in distinguishing between long and short vowels.
What she did not realize is that it was extremely easy for her to get it right: just give the answer opposite to what you think is right.
When it comes to “news”, however, i think the safest course is what i recommended in a comment about a week ago:
A. Look for internal inconsistencies.
B. Look for inconsistencies with hard-to-deny facts, such as the trajectory of the price of gas over the last year.
mickc
“I would be interested to hear what you mean by standing against the Nazis”.
Sir – may God have mercy upon your soul.
Paul Marks,
Regrettably, and I must say disappointingly, no actual answer as to what you mean by “standing against the Nazis”, (merely a hope that my soul receive mercy).
By “standing against” do you mean words, or actions?
Words there were aplenty, but as ever talk is cheap; it costs nothing and usually achieves nothing. But certainly it was “standing against the Nazis”…at the cost of other people’s lives.
As for actions, yes the British Empire declared war on Germany and achieved nothing much by doing so, because it couldn’t, although the “blockade” had some effect, much diluted by the Soviet aid under the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet Union wanted payment in hard currency or gold…Germany had little of either, and the (later) Occupied Countries gold was in London…and loaned to Britain, which needed it. So Britain could not do much immediately in the way of “actions”.
As I have stated, my view is that Chamberlain handled the situation realistically, and well in the circumstances, up to the Polish Guarantee.
What do YOU think should have been done differently by Chamberlain?
I doubt you have any sensible answer, or even that you will give one.
But one thing is clear…the outcome of the war which started in 1939 was catastrophic for all participants except the USA. It need not have started in 1939, and need not have been so catastrophic.