As I understand it, Russia still perceives itself as a superpower in a decades-long cold war against USA. The fall of Soviet Union was a temporary setback, but now they are back in the game.
From Russian perspective, there are currently only two (or maybe three—I have no idea how Russia perceives China) agents on this planet. Everyone else is an NPC. Some states are “NPCs owned by USA”. Some states are “NPCs owned by Russia”. Other NPCs are neutral and passive. But there are only two (or three, if also China) player characters who have actual agency, and everything that happens on this planet should be interpreted as a military move made by one of them. Any other interpretation means falling for someone’s propaganda, hook, line, and sinker. From Russian perspective, explaining things from any other perspective makes you either a liar (which is a good thing, considering the alternative), or an idiot (if you actually believe what you say).
If you do not grok this perspective, you simply do not understand what Russians actually mean by the things they are saying, e.g. when Putin makes a speech to the Russian public. I am not commenting here on what Putin actually believes—I have no idea about that; I am not a mind reader. I am commenting on the model of reality that his audience has; that most of his audience spent their entire lives surrounded by, so they take it as obvious, as an assumption they do not question.
If you grew up in Eastern Europe, as I did, this perspective is simply “how the pro-Russian people from the older generations see the world”. If you grew up further towards the West, it probably requires an explicit explanation (and probably still remains hard to believe). Which is what I am trying to do here.
(I feel a bit weird about calling it the “Russian perspective”, because some years ago, I would probably strongly argue that it is a “Soviet perspective”, unrelated to any specific nation. And yet, somehow, Soviet Union is gone, but the perspective remains, as strong as ever.)
Ok, so how does this apply to current events? From Russian perspective, there is no fundamental difference between “people in Ukraine overthrow their government and decide to move towards EU and NATO” and “Russia organizes a sham referendum in occupied parts of Ukraine where people vote at gunpoint and the votes are probably not even really counted because the results are already known in advance”. If you say that there is a difference, you are merely parroting American propaganda. The proper response is to say Russian propaganda, where the people of the sovereign Donetsk and Luhansk republics expressed their free will and their deepest desires; as opposed to the Maidan Revolution, which was merely a revolt staged by CIA agents.
Note that the person who is telling you this does not necessarily believe that this is a factual description of reality! From their perspective, they are merely responding to your propaganda by their propaganda, which is what internet was made for. (Yes, they are lying, but so what, you started first!) The factual reality, from Russian perspective, is that Ukraine is an NPC. Talking about what “Ukrainians want” does not correspond to anything in the territory; these are just meaningless soundbites used in propaganda. What actually happened is that Player USA moved some pieces on the chessboard, and then Player Russia moved some pieces on the chessboard. Each side insisting that the pieces “have moved themselves”, which is of course patently absurd to anyone who is not an idiot, but it is a thing the players traditionally say when they are moving the pieces.
I am saying this to explain that if you talk to a person who has adopted the Russian perspective, it is utterly futile to use arguments such as “look, doesn’t it just make sense that many Ukrainians have compared the quality of life in EU countries versus the quality of life in Russia (especially outside its major cities), plus they had some resentment about the Holodomor, so they decided to join the former rather than be gradually reconquered by the latter?”. From their perspective, it makes about as much sense as saying “look, I did not capture your knight in the chess game we played, your knight simply decided to retire; that makes a lot of sense from the perspective of the chess knight, doesn’t it?”. Like, of course, people in Ukraine, or anywhere else, may have their opinions and feelings, but it is naive to assume that this might somehow translate to real-world actions. Ordinary humans are not capable of that! Only the masterminds in Kremlin and Pentagon can actually make things happen, using the ordinary people as their pawns. Even the feelings of the ordinary people are mostly a result of the propaganda they were exposed to, so we might as well disregard them and focus on the primary cause instead.
(Related LW concept: Double-Crux. You can’t change someone’s mind without addressing the underlying different assumptions first. The same statements will be interpreted differently in different perspectives.)
*
Now, to address the article directly:
Putin has a track record of escalating apparently (this needs more data) and Russia seems to be planning for escalation until the war is won.
Please correct me if I am mistaken, but as far as I know, Putin has a track record of escalating against weaker opponents. It is a weak evidence that he might escalate against a stronger opponent (I mean, it certainly is an evidence that he is not a pacifist), but it is not a strong evidence. Fighting against a stronger opponent is qualitatively quite different from fighting against a weaker opponent.
Putin has called for a ceasefire.
Strong connotational objection! Russia promised not to attack Ukraine in 1994 (Budapest memorandum), then attacked anyway, then negotiated a ceasefire in 2014 (Minsk agreements), then attacked again. Considering this history, I don’t see how Putin’s ceasefire could mean anything other than “please give me some time to rebuild my army, then I will attack again”.
In before someone points out the technicalities that Russia uses as an excuse why Budapest memorandum and Minsk agreements do not matter: yes, you have a point! And my point is that whatever agreement would be signed now, Russia would find a similar technicality in the future. Can you honestly believe they would not? (According to the Russian perspective described above, any action against Russia made by anyone is an evidence that Player USA is violating the agreement, which gives Player Russia the right to violate it, too.)
I will put it more strongly: do we have any evidence about Russia being able to live in peace with any of its neighbors, unless said neighbor is backed by the West (i.e. a NATO or EU member) or China (i.e. Mongolia)? Heck, Lukashenka is their puppet, and Putin is talking about annexing Belarus anyway.
Ukraine has “accelerated” its application to join NATO.
As far as I know, only Zelenskyy is talking about “acceleration”. As far as I know, NATO is not taking new members while they are having an active military conflict. I have not heard any NATO representative say that they consider changing that rule.
Ukraine will keep attacking the annexed territories in order to take them back until Russia uses a tactical nuke out of desperation
Objection against “out of desperation”. How is it desperation to lose something that you didn’t own yesterday, just tried to take from someone and failed. (Yes, I am sure that Russia will spin it as desperation, but it is not.)
Conclusion:
Yes, I see a significant risk that Russia will be a sore loser and drop a nuke on Ukraine after losing the war.
(In my model, this happens for a completely different reason. In my model, which of course may be wrong, Russian strategy is simply a precommitment to make any resistance to them as costly as possible, giving their opponents an incentive to give up when attacked. Essentially: “you have two possible futures: either you lose or you win, and we will do everything we can to make sure that the latter option is more painful to you”. This model explains many things that otherwise would not make much sense, for example why Russians torture and execute so many civilians right before they are going to lose some territory. It does not bring them much positive utility, but it decreases the opponent’s utility from winning. Similarly, dropping a nuke on Ukraine right after Ukraine wins would not help them in current situation. But it would send a strong message to countries invaded by Russia in future to think twice about resisting: you lose even if you win!)
Problem is, I am not sure that the alternative is better. The alternative means setting a precedent that whenever Russia makes a suprise attack and organizes a sham referendum the moment they stop gaining territory, everyone must stop fighting and accept that the territory conquered so far is now a part of Russia, forever, under the threat of nuclear holocaust. Consider the incentives this creates for Russia: any attack on any of its non-NATO neighbors has a limited downside and permanent gain. -- The only strategy the neighbors can use against this is to develop their own nukes, or to join NATO as soon as possible. But Russia knows this, so it has an incentive to attack them as soon as possible.
(And then, when Russia finally runs out of non-NATO, non-China-friendly, non-nuke-owning neighbors, what happens next? Eternal peace? Or a nuclear war anyway, with Russia stronger than now?)
We got lucky once with Soviet Union—it collapsed internally, without a nuclear war. Maybe one day we will get similarly lucky with Russian Federation, too. But if not, and if Russia never stops expanding (and so far, I think the evidence points towards Russia keeping expanding), at one moment a conflict will happen. Maybe one nuke dropped now, and then a conventional attack reducing Moscow to a pile of rubble, is the better branch. Or maybe not. Predicting future is difficult, unexpected things may happen, a superintelligent AI may make this all irrelevant soon.
Unfortunately, I do not include “Putin is an old guy, may die any moment from natural causes” to the list of unexpected things that might make the problem go away. Putin is not the problem, it is the organization (called various names, including Cheka, KGB, FSB) that created him, and will create similar Russian leaders in the future.
EDIT:
Another connotational objection: Why the big NATO logo? (Instead of e.g. Putin’s face.)
I would like to comment on Budapest Memorandum technicality. You probably already know this since you conceded Russia has a point, but other readers may not. The following is trying to be a neutral summary.
In 1994, in return for Belarus and Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons and joining NPT, US promised to “refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind”.
In 2013, US sanctioned Belarus. Belarus notified US that US broke Budapest Memorandum. US replied it didn’t (what?), because sanctions are for human rights, and not designed to subordinate etc.
In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.
I am not sure what US was thinking in 2013. If US thought Budapest Memorandum was at all valuable, they should have paused and thought twice about it. Given their frankly absurd reply, I think they didn’t consider it valuable.
I live in South Korea, so my specialty (I am not at all special in South Korea, but that immediately makes me an expert in the global internet) is North Korea. US and North Korea reached an agreement called Agreed Framework (done in Geneva, so better known as Geneva Agreement in South Korea) in 1994. (See the pattern? 1994 was an important year.)
In return for North Korea dismantling nuclear reactors in Nyongbyon and remaining in NPT, US promised to deliver 500,000 tons of heavy oil every year to North Korea for energy production, until non-proliferating nuclear power plant is completed, since North Korea insisted nuclear reactors were for energy production, and there was even some truth to it. North Korea was severely deficient in electricity.
US didn’t deliver heavy oil because Congress didn’t fund it. What were they thinking?! To North Korea, non-proliferation promise was directly linked to delivery of heavy oil.
In 2002, president Bush declared North Korea an Axis of Evil, and the agreement formally broke down.
I see a pattern here. I consider US-Iran relation to be similar. When US makes a deal with another country to join or to remain in NPT, they are willing to promise a lot. Once the deal is done, US does not keep its promise. It’s almost as if US thinks it does not need to keep its promise, since another country should have remained in NPT anyway! US seems to think, why should I pay for it? I must scream now: US must pay for it, because US agreed to. In faith whereof the undersigned plenipotentiaries etc.
I have a recommendation to US. Keep your words. Do not sanction if you promised not to sanction. Do deliver heavy oil if you promised to deliver heavy oil. It’s not that difficult. Thank you.
I agree. I wouldn’t trust USA to keep their promises after something disappears from the news headlines.
I have no idea—is this a specifically American problem, or a problem of democracies in general? Because in democracy, the person expected to fulfill the promise is often not the person who made the promise; often it is actually their opponent. Solving a problem by making a promise gives you political points, keeping a promise made by your opponent does not. Do other democracies have a better track record?
I vaguely remember a BuzzFeed series “inside the secret international court that …” or something. One of the things I picked up from it is that this is a problem democratic regimes can face when taking over from horrifying dictators. The sequence (according to my memory of what the articles said) is something like:
Horrifying dictator signs agreement with Western company to build him a ridiculous vanity project costing significant amount of country’s GDP.
Gets overthrown.
New regime decides that the vanity project won’t be needed after all.
Company is like, but you (as a country) made a deal with us. We’ve committed funds to this vanity project. (I don’t remember but wouldn’t be surprised at: if you rescind now you’ll trigger a bunch of break clauses, that no sane regime would have agreed to in the first place but horrifying dictators maybe don’t even bother to read.)
There’s a court that gets to enforce things like this, at penalty of exclusion from significant parts of the international monetary system, or something.
Court treats new regime as continuous with old regime, enforces agreements signed by horrifying dictator.
You don’t even need a horrifying dictator. Suppose that Trump decides to build a huge wall on the border with Mexico, and signs (in the name of the government) a 20 years project with some construction company to build that wall. Then Biden wins… but he is still required to keep paying the money to the construction company. Hypothetically, imagine that the contract is so expensive that it does not leave Biden enough money to pay for his programs—the things that people who elected him want.
In some sense, a “long-term contract” and “democracy” are in contradiction. Democracy assumes that every 4 years you can change the government. Long-term contracts mean that despite doing that, in certain aspects you remain de facto governed by the old government (or pay the penalties specified in the contract, which may be insanely big).
Not sure what this all means… You can’t have democracy without breaking promises?
Or maybe we need a new mechanism for long-term promises? For example, you can create a fund, as a legal entity separate from the government, put some amount of money there, and provide an algorithm such as “every year, if the condition X is met, send Y of this fund’s money to South Korea, otherwise return all the money to US government and disband this fund”. But you cannot contractually make the future governments put more money into this fund. So it is clear to everyone that the fund operates with a limited budget. (And maybe, if the future governments decide so, they can put more money into the fund. But they are in no way required to do so.)
In 2013, US sanctioned Belarus. Belarus notified US that US broke Budapest Memorandum. US replied it didn’t (what?), because sanctions are for human rights, and not designed to subordinate etc.
The US claim is that it did not sanction Belarus in order to secure its own advantage. At face value that claim looks plausible: it seems like they have a plausible case that Belarus leadership is suppressing dissent and running fraudulent elections, this does seem to be a major motivation for US conduct, and sanctions do look like they were targeted at offending officials. If that claim is true it seems like US behavior is compatible with the text of the memorandum (at least the parts quoted here).
I feel like I’d have to dig into this more to have an actual view because it’s very easy for people to have a plausible story even if they are behaving quite badly. But this comment didn’t help me see why this should be considered an absurd reply.
US didn’t deliver heavy oil because Congress didn’t fund it. What were they thinking?! To North Korea, non-proliferation promise was directly linked to delivery of heavy oil.
I wasn’t able to quickly substantiate this claim; I’d be interested in a link to some kind of discussion of the background. E.g. what was the actual content of the promise and then what happened? Your description of this situation is different from my understanding, but my understanding is super rough and comes from US sources (which focus on late deliveries of oil, e.g. delivering the last of the 2017 oil in December instead of October, though my sense is that the first year was rougher than that) and so I’d be quite interested in checking out a clear and reasonably-substantiated account of the bad behavior.
That’s astonishing, if the text of the Budapest Memorandum actually reads
refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind
then the US sanctioning Belarus in 2013 really was violating it first. ‘secure advantages of any kind’ leaves no wiggle room for even a ‘human rights’ argument. Especially since it wasn’t even cleared through the UN first.
I don’t understand why “secure advantages of any kind” leaves no wiggle room for a human rights argument. I think I may just not be understanding what you are saying.
I have no idea if the US argument was right, but it seems completely legitimate to argue that sanctions against government officials who are perceived to run fraudulent elections and suppress dissent are intended to protect the people of the country rather than to “secure an advantage” for the US. That feels like it has to come down to actual empirical claims about what happened rather than definitional moves. (For example, I don’t know whether sanctions were in fact mostly targeted at officials, though that seems to be the US story, and I don’t know how credible the case against Belarus was, but it doesn’t seem like anyone in this thread has addressed any of that and at face value the US case is plausible.)
A charitable (for Russia) interpretation is that USA judges human rights abuses unfairly—looking the other way when the dictator is pro-American, using sanctions when he is not. This provides an incentive for dictators to be pro-American. From that perspective, (selectively) applying sanctions against human rights abuses is just another way to increase American power.
I can totally see an objection along these lines and think that there might very well be something to it. But I don’t see why you’d call this response absurd, or think that there is “no wiggle room.”
A moral victory, or at least one side publicly claiming they have the moral high ground, is still an advantage of some kind.
If you think that implies ‘advantages of any kind’ covers an incredibly broad swath of actions, then yes, that’s the point. This is incredibly broad language for a serious document.
The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the united States of America reaffirm their commitment to the Republic of Belarus, in accordance with the Principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate their own interest the exercise by the Republic of Belarus of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus secure advantages of any kind.
VI. Non-intervention in internal affairs The participating States will refrain from any intervention, direct or indirect, individual or collective, in the internal or external affairs falling within the domestic jurisdiction of another participating State, regardless of their mutual relations.
They will accordingly refrain from any form of armed intervention or threat of such intervention against another participating State.
They will likewise in all circumstances refrain from any other act of military, or of political, economic or other coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by another participating State of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Accordingly, they will, inter alia, refrain from direct or indirect assistance to terrorist activities, or to subversive or other activities directed towards the violent overthrow of the regime of another participating State.
You should think about making this a top-level post. Having talked to a few of my pro-Russian friends/acquaintances (mostly Russians and Serbians), I cannot stress how on point this analysis is. I experienced what you describe here very well, the fact that they “breathe” a different model of the world.
I also noticed that they all fall prey to the same failure mode (related to the Fallacy of Grey):
Everyone knows that Russian news is bullshit and we don’t believe them ourselves
But everyone also knows that “All” news is bullshit, including your Western propaganda.
Given that all news is bullshit, it is impossible to know what is right or wrong, so I prefer to continue believing whatever is more convenient for me
However, I will respect the social norm of not posting political content, because I think that it is a good norm in general. It may be tempting to make an exception for a good cause, but it rarely stops with one exception, and I would rather not contribute to making LW a place where political content is posted regularly. The quality of the political content would inevitably decrease, because at first people would be aware that they are breaking a norm, so they would try hard and be careful, but later they would be not. Also, it would attract new people who only come here for the political debate, and that would be bad.
(I posted this here as a response to an already existing article, and as an answer to tailcalled’s question: “does Putin not consider Germany part of ‘The West’? If not Germany, then who, beyond the US?”)
If anyone wants to have a political debate at some other place, like ACX or DSL or whatever, feel free to copy or reference my comment, I don’t mind.
Politics is generally a huge Grey area. No one is flawless. That doesn’t make everything the same. But it provides enough arguments for all sides. Also, different people are differently impacted. For example, from my selfish perspective, living in Eastern Europe, this makes USA the force of good. But I suppose if I lived in Latin America instead, my perspective might be the opposite. When some African countries decide that Western Europe is evil, so they rather take side of Russia, I kinda see their point, too. Not that I agree, of course. There is such a thing as Western propaganda, and I wonder myself how many things I believe that are not true. I realize that my opponents feel the same certainty (actually, probably way more) than I do, and they also believe that they have carefully analyzed the arguments of both sides. When I vote in elections, no party represents my opinions and values perfectly. Realistically, I am trying to choose the lesser evil, and I see how the people who suffer from that evil part may resent me for that. It would be nice if we could all talk together, and arrive at some consensus. Unfortunately, what typically happens is that a bubble is created, and the people who disagree go and make their own bubbles elsewhere.
I do not post on other platforms (besides a very infrequent blog on Java game development). My commenting online is mostly Less Wrong and ACX, occasionally Hacker News.
I actually do not think I have much useful to say on the topic other than what I already wrote here; this was a dump of everything that was on my mind. Could generate some more text about what pro-Russian people in my country actually believe (a mixture of Putin admiration and conspiracy theories about our local politicians), but at the end you would see that this comment was the 20% of the text that provided 80% of the value.
One more thing that comes to my mind is this: Imagine how a paranoid antisemitic person thinks about Jews. Remove the religious things like circumcision or cooking matzos from blood of Christian children, and only keep the non-religious ones like ruling the world from shadows, only caring about profit, manipulating the world’s finance, being untrustworthy and generally immoral. Replace the world “Jew” with “American”. Add an army, used exclusively to kill innocent people across the world, especially recently in former Yugoslavia; motivated by greed, power, oil. -- The result is a good approximation of how pro-Russian people in my country think and talk about Americans. Generally, pro-Russian mindset and conspiracy mindset are very close to each other.
I am getting most of my information about the war on Ukraine from r/ukraine. Yes, it is obviously biased in favor of Ukraine. Sometimes they post animated maps.
I have procrastinated for years on reading The Gulag Archipelago, because it is such a long book. Then I have read it, and now I think it should be a mandatory reading for everyone who wants to discuss Soviet Union or Russia. Some people say it is exaggerated, I believe it is the other way round: as a religious patriot, Solzhenitsyn was making excuses for Russian nation and Russian Orthodox Church, trying to put all the blame exclusively on communism. (Which is nonsense, because the typical Russian disregard for human life predates the communism by centuries.)
The war in Ukraine made me update towards the suspicion that pretty much all nations that are currently part of Russian Federation were conquered in a similar way. I now suspect that the “terrorists” in Chechnya were about as real as the “Nazis” in Ukraine. People from ex-Soviet republics say that their referendums to join Soviet Union were of the same kind as the referendum in Crimea.
It is hard to find a balance between believing that your enemies are innately evil, and a typical-mind fallacy. Some situations are correctly described my mistake theory, others by conflict theory. I think that people overestimate differences related to race, gender, language, but underestimate the difference of psychopaths and bullies. (If someone seems different and speaks a different language, we are likely to conclude “this person must have very different thoughts and feelings”, when in fact they may be saying exactly the same things as you are saying. On the other hand, people keep making endless excuses for bullies, refusing to consider seriously the possibility that some individuals simply enjoy hurting others.) Somewhere in the middle are the cultural differences, which on one hand are real and won’t disappear overnight; on the other hand are not universal and might change after decades, though probably not spontaneously. -- Russia insists that Russia and Ukraine are pretty much the same. I predict that if Ukraine wins this war, especially if it joins EU, it will become another member of the “Western civilization” (maybe not perfectly so, but not less than an average Eastern European country), while Russia will… remain the Russia as we know it, sadly.
...thus conclude political ramblings of the guy who promised not to discuss politics on LW. :D
Okay, seriously. Enough. No more. Thanks for all the karma, though, I really appreciate it!
(The best place to discuss politics with rationalists are probably the ACX open threads. However, ACX is open to everyone, including people who are clearly not rationalists.)
“Objection against “out of desperation”. How is it desperation to lose something that you didn’t own yesterday, just tried to take from someone and failed. (Yes, I am sure that Russia will spin it as desperation, but it is not.)”
I would make a comment here:
Losing a couple of provinces in Ukraine that just become part of the Russian Federation recently should not make “Russia” desperate. However, I believe we have a principal-agent problem here: Russia can afford to lose this war, but the current Russian leadership does not. I think they believe there is a good chance that they would be removed by a coup or a revolution if they loose face due to military defeat.
I think the past 6 months of the conflict supports this view: The Russian Armed Forces have been inefficiently throwing hard-to replace weaponry and manpower trying to conquer the rest of Donbass, while pretending this was the plan all along. It is a relatively worthless region(large portion of the population having fled, majority of industrial infrastructure having been/would be destroyed), and replacing lost equipment and professional personnel (especially officers and special operation units) will take many years, making Russian conventional forces severely weaker. This seems to make as much strategic sense as trading your queen for a pawn. That is, if you are using the POV of Russia. However, if you are considering the decision is made by the political leadership, hoping to hide that they screwed-up, it makes a lot more sense.
Is it about having enough nukes to ruin the world? Or taking up a lot of territory? Or do they just never question the assumption that they are a superpower?
I suppose the Russian answer would be something like: we had the first man in space (and the first woman in space), we have nukes, look at these beautiful photos of Moscow, have you ever heard about Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky, Mendeleev, Kolmogorov… (continues for 10 minutes)
Neither can I, but it is hard to distinguish whether this is a fact about Russia or about my knowledge. I mostly know the famous people from textbooks, and it takes some time to get into a textbook, and I am no longer a student so I probably wouldn’t know anyway.
Russian military might. They have been hearing it all their lives: learning about historical victories, watching movies about it on the TV, seeing the victory parade every 8th of May...
And they can point to the map, and show that Russia being the largest country by territory is proof enough. Hell, even most of the world believed it until March.
Oh, I just realized I was answering a different question: why might someone with my knowledge consider Russia a superpower. But the question was about why Russians would...
That makes it much easier. I assume that an average Russian does not know many things. Such as, what is it like to live in EU or USA. Or the fact that Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany in WW2 only because it received a lot of help from the West. (Quite likely, they never heard about Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.)
I tried to find information how many Russians speak English (as a proxy for “can talk to foreigners online”) but everyone gives a different number. I assume that most of them get some introductory lesson at school, but only a few achieve fluency. Notice how Russia has their own search engine (Yandex), and social network (VKontakte). I suspect that communication with foreigners is probably quite rare for most Russians.
So, I guess, if you spend all your life in Russia, and if your information about Russia and its relative position in the world mostly comes from government-approved TV channels and news… then it is quite easy to assume that Russia is a superpower in all possible dimensions! Only its military is merely the second strongest in the world, otherwise you couldn’t explain why you still haven’t defeated USA.
I think this is false. It’s more likely that average arguing-in-Internet Russian tells you that Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was lesser evil after Munich Agreement.
I assume that most of them get some introductory lesson at school, but only a few achieve fluency.
English is a mandatory subject for all 11 years in all schools, but yes, fluency is uncommon.
I suspect that communication with foreigners is probably quite rare for most Russians.
True.
So, I guess, if you spend all your life in Russia, and if your information about Russia and its relative position in the world mostly comes from government-approved TV channels and news… then it is quite easy to assume that Russia is a superpower in all possible dimensions! Only its military is merely the second strongest in the world, otherwise you couldn’t explain why you still haven’t defeated USA.
Does the version taught at schools say that Soviet Union came to help Poland after it was attacked by the Nazis? If I remember correctly, that used to be the official version during communism.
(Like “yes, we had the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but it doesn’t mean what you think it means; we never intended to attack anyone together, we just tried to dissuade Hitler from attacking us”.)
Does the version taught at schools say that Soviet Union came to help Poland after it was attacked by the Nazis?
No.
we never intended to attack anyone together, we just tried to dissuade Hitler from attacking us
Sort of? It’s like “Stalin knew that there will be war against Germany, so he had to choose either an earlier war with an initial front further east or a later war with an initial front further west”.
Is it some mix of the size of the economy and the population size? Is that a good proxy for military strength? It’s not quite solely about economy yet.
I just realized that I have never taken the expression “superpower” literally, to only be about military strength. I have always just assumed the it also involve cultural and technological influence, and in general “how much do you contribute to the world”. This is probably because I started from the assumption that the US was the only superpower, and then I extrapolated from that.
If you take superpower to just mean the amount of military pressure you can put on other countries, it does make a bit more sense.
In before someone points out the technicalities that Russia uses as an excuse why Budapest memorandum and Minsk agreements do not matter: yes, you have a point! And my point is that whatever agreement would be signed now, Russia would find a similar technicality in the future.
The fact that the USA and Europe broke the Budapest memorandum before Russia broke it with Belarus, seems to me a bit more like a technicality.
Ok, so how does this apply to current events? From Russian perspective, there is no fundamental difference between “people in Ukraine overthrow their government and decide to move towards EU and NATO” and “Russia organizes a sham referendum in occupied parts of Ukraine where people vote at gunpoint and the votes are probably not even really counted because the results are already known in advance”.
People in Russia don’t believe it’s a sham referendum but that the population in Donetsk and Luhansk actually wants to be part of Russia. The absence of any reporting of opinion polls about what the real election results would be in Western media suggests that Western media outlets also believe that the referendum would come out as being pro-Russian if done fair and square.
I did talk with one Russian friend who lives in Berlin for five years and have an idea of the Russian perspective from that. She isn’t pro-war and did volunteer to help Ukrainian refugees. Still she believes, that Ukraine killed Russian-speaking inhabitants within Donetsk and Luhansk during the civil war in an amount that required Russian intervention. She believes that Ukraine destroyed houses without military necessity because a relative of a good friend reported observing that on the ground.
I think you are wrong if you model Russian opinion as being mainly derived from what their media says. You likely have a lot of “friend of a friend” who lives in Donetsk and Luhansk and wants it to be part of Russia. Of course, that filters for the opinion of Russian-speaking Ukrainians with ties to Russia and not the average Ukrainian but it’s still part of what drives the support for the war among the Russian population.
What I don’t get is how can Russians still see it as a civil war? The truth came out by now: Strelkov, Motorola were Russians. The separatists were led and supplied by Russia. It was a war between Russia and Ukraine from the start. I once argued with a Russian man about it, I told him about fresh graves of Russian soldiers that Lev Schlosberg found in Pskov in 2014. He asked me: “If there are Russian troops in Ukraine, why didn’t BBC write about it?”. I didn’t know, so I checked as soon as I had internet access, and BBC did write about it... So I don’t see how can anyone sincerely believe that this was ever a Ukrainian internal conflict. Egor Holmogorov said: “For our sacred mission, the whole country should lie [about our soldiers fighting in Donbas]”. And I get the feeling that’s what exactly what people do.
Still she believes, that Ukraine killed Russian-speaking inhabitants within Donetsk and Luhansk during the civil war in an amount that required Russian intervention.
According to Wikipedia, Russia had (unmarked) soldiers in Ukraine since February 27th 2014.
Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence in April 2014.
(The “crucified boy” hoax was published in July 2014. The pro-Russian people in my bubble first denied the presence of Russian soldiers, and later used this as a justification for their presence.)
EDIT:
What people want may change over years and decades, but in the 1991 referendum most people votes Yes for independent Ukraine. I assume that if you want your region to remain in Russia, you would not vote for independence of a piece of land that includes your region.
(According to the Russian perspective described above, any action against Russia made by anyone is an evidence that Player USA is violating the agreement, which gives Player Russia the right to violate it, too.)
Perhaps I am reading more into your post than merited but I would think that should be stated ”...any event contrary to Russia’s perceived relative power...”?
To which one might think the only possible response to Putin’s war might be an overwhelming military response supporting the Ukrainian government on Russian forces in the internationally recognized boarders of Ukraine. Then stopping and not putting NATO troops anywhere in Ukraine. (Though I would hope, and like to think, we have some better alternatives.)
As I understand it, Russia still perceives itself as a superpower in a decades-long cold war against USA. The fall of Soviet Union was a temporary setback, but now they are back in the game.
From Russian perspective, there are currently only two (or maybe three—I have no idea how Russia perceives China) agents on this planet. Everyone else is an NPC. Some states are “NPCs owned by USA”. Some states are “NPCs owned by Russia”. Other NPCs are neutral and passive. But there are only two (or three, if also China) player characters who have actual agency, and everything that happens on this planet should be interpreted as a military move made by one of them. Any other interpretation means falling for someone’s propaganda, hook, line, and sinker. From Russian perspective, explaining things from any other perspective makes you either a liar (which is a good thing, considering the alternative), or an idiot (if you actually believe what you say).
If you do not grok this perspective, you simply do not understand what Russians actually mean by the things they are saying, e.g. when Putin makes a speech to the Russian public. I am not commenting here on what Putin actually believes—I have no idea about that; I am not a mind reader. I am commenting on the model of reality that his audience has; that most of his audience spent their entire lives surrounded by, so they take it as obvious, as an assumption they do not question.
If you grew up in Eastern Europe, as I did, this perspective is simply “how the pro-Russian people from the older generations see the world”. If you grew up further towards the West, it probably requires an explicit explanation (and probably still remains hard to believe). Which is what I am trying to do here.
(I feel a bit weird about calling it the “Russian perspective”, because some years ago, I would probably strongly argue that it is a “Soviet perspective”, unrelated to any specific nation. And yet, somehow, Soviet Union is gone, but the perspective remains, as strong as ever.)
Ok, so how does this apply to current events? From Russian perspective, there is no fundamental difference between “people in Ukraine overthrow their government and decide to move towards EU and NATO” and “Russia organizes a sham referendum in occupied parts of Ukraine where people vote at gunpoint and the votes are probably not even really counted because the results are already known in advance”. If you say that there is a difference, you are merely parroting American propaganda. The proper response is to say Russian propaganda, where the people of the sovereign Donetsk and Luhansk republics expressed their free will and their deepest desires; as opposed to the Maidan Revolution, which was merely a revolt staged by CIA agents.
Note that the person who is telling you this does not necessarily believe that this is a factual description of reality! From their perspective, they are merely responding to your propaganda by their propaganda, which is what internet was made for. (Yes, they are lying, but so what, you started first!) The factual reality, from Russian perspective, is that Ukraine is an NPC. Talking about what “Ukrainians want” does not correspond to anything in the territory; these are just meaningless soundbites used in propaganda. What actually happened is that Player USA moved some pieces on the chessboard, and then Player Russia moved some pieces on the chessboard. Each side insisting that the pieces “have moved themselves”, which is of course patently absurd to anyone who is not an idiot, but it is a thing the players traditionally say when they are moving the pieces.
I am saying this to explain that if you talk to a person who has adopted the Russian perspective, it is utterly futile to use arguments such as “look, doesn’t it just make sense that many Ukrainians have compared the quality of life in EU countries versus the quality of life in Russia (especially outside its major cities), plus they had some resentment about the Holodomor, so they decided to join the former rather than be gradually reconquered by the latter?”. From their perspective, it makes about as much sense as saying “look, I did not capture your knight in the chess game we played, your knight simply decided to retire; that makes a lot of sense from the perspective of the chess knight, doesn’t it?”. Like, of course, people in Ukraine, or anywhere else, may have their opinions and feelings, but it is naive to assume that this might somehow translate to real-world actions. Ordinary humans are not capable of that! Only the masterminds in Kremlin and Pentagon can actually make things happen, using the ordinary people as their pawns. Even the feelings of the ordinary people are mostly a result of the propaganda they were exposed to, so we might as well disregard them and focus on the primary cause instead.
(Related LW concept: Double-Crux. You can’t change someone’s mind without addressing the underlying different assumptions first. The same statements will be interpreted differently in different perspectives.)
*
Now, to address the article directly:
Please correct me if I am mistaken, but as far as I know, Putin has a track record of escalating against weaker opponents. It is a weak evidence that he might escalate against a stronger opponent (I mean, it certainly is an evidence that he is not a pacifist), but it is not a strong evidence. Fighting against a stronger opponent is qualitatively quite different from fighting against a weaker opponent.
Strong connotational objection! Russia promised not to attack Ukraine in 1994 (Budapest memorandum), then attacked anyway, then negotiated a ceasefire in 2014 (Minsk agreements), then attacked again. Considering this history, I don’t see how Putin’s ceasefire could mean anything other than “please give me some time to rebuild my army, then I will attack again”.
In before someone points out the technicalities that Russia uses as an excuse why Budapest memorandum and Minsk agreements do not matter: yes, you have a point! And my point is that whatever agreement would be signed now, Russia would find a similar technicality in the future. Can you honestly believe they would not? (According to the Russian perspective described above, any action against Russia made by anyone is an evidence that Player USA is violating the agreement, which gives Player Russia the right to violate it, too.)
I will put it more strongly: do we have any evidence about Russia being able to live in peace with any of its neighbors, unless said neighbor is backed by the West (i.e. a NATO or EU member) or China (i.e. Mongolia)? Heck, Lukashenka is their puppet, and Putin is talking about annexing Belarus anyway.
As far as I know, only Zelenskyy is talking about “acceleration”. As far as I know, NATO is not taking new members while they are having an active military conflict. I have not heard any NATO representative say that they consider changing that rule.
Objection against “out of desperation”. How is it desperation to lose something that you didn’t own yesterday, just tried to take from someone and failed. (Yes, I am sure that Russia will spin it as desperation, but it is not.)
Conclusion:
Yes, I see a significant risk that Russia will be a sore loser and drop a nuke on Ukraine after losing the war.
(In my model, this happens for a completely different reason. In my model, which of course may be wrong, Russian strategy is simply a precommitment to make any resistance to them as costly as possible, giving their opponents an incentive to give up when attacked. Essentially: “you have two possible futures: either you lose or you win, and we will do everything we can to make sure that the latter option is more painful to you”. This model explains many things that otherwise would not make much sense, for example why Russians torture and execute so many civilians right before they are going to lose some territory. It does not bring them much positive utility, but it decreases the opponent’s utility from winning. Similarly, dropping a nuke on Ukraine right after Ukraine wins would not help them in current situation. But it would send a strong message to countries invaded by Russia in future to think twice about resisting: you lose even if you win!)
Problem is, I am not sure that the alternative is better. The alternative means setting a precedent that whenever Russia makes a suprise attack and organizes a sham referendum the moment they stop gaining territory, everyone must stop fighting and accept that the territory conquered so far is now a part of Russia, forever, under the threat of nuclear holocaust. Consider the incentives this creates for Russia: any attack on any of its non-NATO neighbors has a limited downside and permanent gain. -- The only strategy the neighbors can use against this is to develop their own nukes, or to join NATO as soon as possible. But Russia knows this, so it has an incentive to attack them as soon as possible.
(And then, when Russia finally runs out of non-NATO, non-China-friendly, non-nuke-owning neighbors, what happens next? Eternal peace? Or a nuclear war anyway, with Russia stronger than now?)
We got lucky once with Soviet Union—it collapsed internally, without a nuclear war. Maybe one day we will get similarly lucky with Russian Federation, too. But if not, and if Russia never stops expanding (and so far, I think the evidence points towards Russia keeping expanding), at one moment a conflict will happen. Maybe one nuke dropped now, and then a conventional attack reducing Moscow to a pile of rubble, is the better branch. Or maybe not. Predicting future is difficult, unexpected things may happen, a superintelligent AI may make this all irrelevant soon.
Unfortunately, I do not include “Putin is an old guy, may die any moment from natural causes” to the list of unexpected things that might make the problem go away. Putin is not the problem, it is the organization (called various names, including Cheka, KGB, FSB) that created him, and will create similar Russian leaders in the future.
EDIT:
Another connotational objection: Why the big NATO logo? (Instead of e.g. Putin’s face.)
I would like to comment on Budapest Memorandum technicality. You probably already know this since you conceded Russia has a point, but other readers may not. The following is trying to be a neutral summary.
In 1994, in return for Belarus and Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons and joining NPT, US promised to “refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind”.
In 2013, US sanctioned Belarus. Belarus notified US that US broke Budapest Memorandum. US replied it didn’t (what?), because sanctions are for human rights, and not designed to subordinate etc.
In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.
I am not sure what US was thinking in 2013. If US thought Budapest Memorandum was at all valuable, they should have paused and thought twice about it. Given their frankly absurd reply, I think they didn’t consider it valuable.
I live in South Korea, so my specialty (I am not at all special in South Korea, but that immediately makes me an expert in the global internet) is North Korea. US and North Korea reached an agreement called Agreed Framework (done in Geneva, so better known as Geneva Agreement in South Korea) in 1994. (See the pattern? 1994 was an important year.)
In return for North Korea dismantling nuclear reactors in Nyongbyon and remaining in NPT, US promised to deliver 500,000 tons of heavy oil every year to North Korea for energy production, until non-proliferating nuclear power plant is completed, since North Korea insisted nuclear reactors were for energy production, and there was even some truth to it. North Korea was severely deficient in electricity.
US didn’t deliver heavy oil because Congress didn’t fund it. What were they thinking?! To North Korea, non-proliferation promise was directly linked to delivery of heavy oil.
In 2002, president Bush declared North Korea an Axis of Evil, and the agreement formally broke down.
I see a pattern here. I consider US-Iran relation to be similar. When US makes a deal with another country to join or to remain in NPT, they are willing to promise a lot. Once the deal is done, US does not keep its promise. It’s almost as if US thinks it does not need to keep its promise, since another country should have remained in NPT anyway! US seems to think, why should I pay for it? I must scream now: US must pay for it, because US agreed to. In faith whereof the undersigned plenipotentiaries etc.
I have a recommendation to US. Keep your words. Do not sanction if you promised not to sanction. Do deliver heavy oil if you promised to deliver heavy oil. It’s not that difficult. Thank you.
I agree. I wouldn’t trust USA to keep their promises after something disappears from the news headlines.
I have no idea—is this a specifically American problem, or a problem of democracies in general? Because in democracy, the person expected to fulfill the promise is often not the person who made the promise; often it is actually their opponent. Solving a problem by making a promise gives you political points, keeping a promise made by your opponent does not. Do other democracies have a better track record?
I vaguely remember a BuzzFeed series “inside the secret international court that …” or something. One of the things I picked up from it is that this is a problem democratic regimes can face when taking over from horrifying dictators. The sequence (according to my memory of what the articles said) is something like:
Horrifying dictator signs agreement with Western company to build him a ridiculous vanity project costing significant amount of country’s GDP.
Gets overthrown.
New regime decides that the vanity project won’t be needed after all.
Company is like, but you (as a country) made a deal with us. We’ve committed funds to this vanity project. (I don’t remember but wouldn’t be surprised at: if you rescind now you’ll trigger a bunch of break clauses, that no sane regime would have agreed to in the first place but horrifying dictators maybe don’t even bother to read.)
There’s a court that gets to enforce things like this, at penalty of exclusion from significant parts of the international monetary system, or something.
Court treats new regime as continuous with old regime, enforces agreements signed by horrifying dictator.
You don’t even need a horrifying dictator. Suppose that Trump decides to build a huge wall on the border with Mexico, and signs (in the name of the government) a 20 years project with some construction company to build that wall. Then Biden wins… but he is still required to keep paying the money to the construction company. Hypothetically, imagine that the contract is so expensive that it does not leave Biden enough money to pay for his programs—the things that people who elected him want.
In some sense, a “long-term contract” and “democracy” are in contradiction. Democracy assumes that every 4 years you can change the government. Long-term contracts mean that despite doing that, in certain aspects you remain de facto governed by the old government (or pay the penalties specified in the contract, which may be insanely big).
Not sure what this all means… You can’t have democracy without breaking promises?
Or maybe we need a new mechanism for long-term promises? For example, you can create a fund, as a legal entity separate from the government, put some amount of money there, and provide an algorithm such as “every year, if the condition X is met, send Y of this fund’s money to South Korea, otherwise return all the money to US government and disband this fund”. But you cannot contractually make the future governments put more money into this fund. So it is clear to everyone that the fund operates with a limited budget. (And maybe, if the future governments decide so, they can put more money into the fund. But they are in no way required to do so.)
The US claim is that it did not sanction Belarus in order to secure its own advantage. At face value that claim looks plausible: it seems like they have a plausible case that Belarus leadership is suppressing dissent and running fraudulent elections, this does seem to be a major motivation for US conduct, and sanctions do look like they were targeted at offending officials. If that claim is true it seems like US behavior is compatible with the text of the memorandum (at least the parts quoted here).
I feel like I’d have to dig into this more to have an actual view because it’s very easy for people to have a plausible story even if they are behaving quite badly. But this comment didn’t help me see why this should be considered an absurd reply.
I wasn’t able to quickly substantiate this claim; I’d be interested in a link to some kind of discussion of the background. E.g. what was the actual content of the promise and then what happened? Your description of this situation is different from my understanding, but my understanding is super rough and comes from US sources (which focus on late deliveries of oil, e.g. delivering the last of the 2017 oil in December instead of October, though my sense is that the first year was rougher than that) and so I’d be quite interested in checking out a clear and reasonably-substantiated account of the bad behavior.
That’s astonishing, if the text of the Budapest Memorandum actually reads
then the US sanctioning Belarus in 2013 really was violating it first. ‘secure advantages of any kind’ leaves no wiggle room for even a ‘human rights’ argument. Especially since it wasn’t even cleared through the UN first.
I don’t understand why “secure advantages of any kind” leaves no wiggle room for a human rights argument. I think I may just not be understanding what you are saying.
I have no idea if the US argument was right, but it seems completely legitimate to argue that sanctions against government officials who are perceived to run fraudulent elections and suppress dissent are intended to protect the people of the country rather than to “secure an advantage” for the US. That feels like it has to come down to actual empirical claims about what happened rather than definitional moves. (For example, I don’t know whether sanctions were in fact mostly targeted at officials, though that seems to be the US story, and I don’t know how credible the case against Belarus was, but it doesn’t seem like anyone in this thread has addressed any of that and at face value the US case is plausible.)
A charitable (for Russia) interpretation is that USA judges human rights abuses unfairly—looking the other way when the dictator is pro-American, using sanctions when he is not. This provides an incentive for dictators to be pro-American. From that perspective, (selectively) applying sanctions against human rights abuses is just another way to increase American power.
I can totally see an objection along these lines and think that there might very well be something to it. But I don’t see why you’d call this response absurd, or think that there is “no wiggle room.”
A moral victory, or at least one side publicly claiming they have the moral high ground, is still an advantage of some kind.
If you think that implies ‘advantages of any kind’ covers an incredibly broad swath of actions, then yes, that’s the point. This is incredibly broad language for a serious document.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180822045920/https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%202866/Part/volume-2866-I-50069.pdf gives you the original text:
The CSCE final act says:
You should think about making this a top-level post. Having talked to a few of my pro-Russian friends/acquaintances (mostly Russians and Serbians), I cannot stress how on point this analysis is. I experienced what you describe here very well, the fact that they “breathe” a different model of the world.
I also noticed that they all fall prey to the same failure mode (related to the Fallacy of Grey):
Everyone knows that Russian news is bullshit and we don’t believe them ourselves
But everyone also knows that “All” news is bullshit, including your Western propaganda.
Given that all news is bullshit, it is impossible to know what is right or wrong, so I prefer to continue believing whatever is more convenient for me
Thank you for your kind words!
However, I will respect the social norm of not posting political content, because I think that it is a good norm in general. It may be tempting to make an exception for a good cause, but it rarely stops with one exception, and I would rather not contribute to making LW a place where political content is posted regularly. The quality of the political content would inevitably decrease, because at first people would be aware that they are breaking a norm, so they would try hard and be careful, but later they would be not. Also, it would attract new people who only come here for the political debate, and that would be bad.
(I posted this here as a response to an already existing article, and as an answer to tailcalled’s question: “does Putin not consider Germany part of ‘The West’? If not Germany, then who, beyond the US?”)
If anyone wants to have a political debate at some other place, like ACX or DSL or whatever, feel free to copy or reference my comment, I don’t mind.
Politics is generally a huge Grey area. No one is flawless. That doesn’t make everything the same. But it provides enough arguments for all sides. Also, different people are differently impacted. For example, from my selfish perspective, living in Eastern Europe, this makes USA the force of good. But I suppose if I lived in Latin America instead, my perspective might be the opposite. When some African countries decide that Western Europe is evil, so they rather take side of Russia, I kinda see their point, too. Not that I agree, of course. There is such a thing as Western propaganda, and I wonder myself how many things I believe that are not true. I realize that my opponents feel the same certainty (actually, probably way more) than I do, and they also believe that they have carefully analyzed the arguments of both sides. When I vote in elections, no party represents my opinions and values perfectly. Realistically, I am trying to choose the lesser evil, and I see how the people who suffer from that evil part may resent me for that. It would be nice if we could all talk together, and arrive at some consensus. Unfortunately, what typically happens is that a bubble is created, and the people who disagree go and make their own bubbles elsewhere.
Also agree about not promoting political content on LW but would love to read your writings on some other platform if possible.
I do not post on other platforms (besides a very infrequent blog on Java game development). My commenting online is mostly Less Wrong and ACX, occasionally Hacker News.
I actually do not think I have much useful to say on the topic other than what I already wrote here; this was a dump of everything that was on my mind. Could generate some more text about what pro-Russian people in my country actually believe (a mixture of Putin admiration and conspiracy theories about our local politicians), but at the end you would see that this comment was the 20% of the text that provided 80% of the value.
One more thing that comes to my mind is this: Imagine how a paranoid antisemitic person thinks about Jews. Remove the religious things like circumcision or cooking matzos from blood of Christian children, and only keep the non-religious ones like ruling the world from shadows, only caring about profit, manipulating the world’s finance, being untrustworthy and generally immoral. Replace the world “Jew” with “American”. Add an army, used exclusively to kill innocent people across the world, especially recently in former Yugoslavia; motivated by greed, power, oil. -- The result is a good approximation of how pro-Russian people in my country think and talk about Americans. Generally, pro-Russian mindset and conspiracy mindset are very close to each other.
I am getting most of my information about the war on Ukraine from r/ukraine. Yes, it is obviously biased in favor of Ukraine. Sometimes they post animated maps.
I have procrastinated for years on reading The Gulag Archipelago, because it is such a long book. Then I have read it, and now I think it should be a mandatory reading for everyone who wants to discuss Soviet Union or Russia. Some people say it is exaggerated, I believe it is the other way round: as a religious patriot, Solzhenitsyn was making excuses for Russian nation and Russian Orthodox Church, trying to put all the blame exclusively on communism. (Which is nonsense, because the typical Russian disregard for human life predates the communism by centuries.)
A different author wrote on Less Wrong: Anti-social Punishment.
The war in Ukraine made me update towards the suspicion that pretty much all nations that are currently part of Russian Federation were conquered in a similar way. I now suspect that the “terrorists” in Chechnya were about as real as the “Nazis” in Ukraine. People from ex-Soviet republics say that their referendums to join Soviet Union were of the same kind as the referendum in Crimea.
It is hard to find a balance between believing that your enemies are innately evil, and a typical-mind fallacy. Some situations are correctly described my mistake theory, others by conflict theory. I think that people overestimate differences related to race, gender, language, but underestimate the difference of psychopaths and bullies. (If someone seems different and speaks a different language, we are likely to conclude “this person must have very different thoughts and feelings”, when in fact they may be saying exactly the same things as you are saying. On the other hand, people keep making endless excuses for bullies, refusing to consider seriously the possibility that some individuals simply enjoy hurting others.) Somewhere in the middle are the cultural differences, which on one hand are real and won’t disappear overnight; on the other hand are not universal and might change after decades, though probably not spontaneously. -- Russia insists that Russia and Ukraine are pretty much the same. I predict that if Ukraine wins this war, especially if it joins EU, it will become another member of the “Western civilization” (maybe not perfectly so, but not less than an average Eastern European country), while Russia will… remain the Russia as we know it, sadly.
...thus conclude political ramblings of the guy who promised not to discuss politics on LW. :D
Okay, seriously. Enough. No more. Thanks for all the karma, though, I really appreciate it!
(The best place to discuss politics with rationalists are probably the ACX open threads. However, ACX is open to everyone, including people who are clearly not rationalists.)
Ok, nothing else to add. I do agree in fact, let’s not make LW about politics
“Objection against “out of desperation”. How is it desperation to lose something that you didn’t own yesterday, just tried to take from someone and failed. (Yes, I am sure that Russia will spin it as desperation, but it is not.)”
I would make a comment here:
Losing a couple of provinces in Ukraine that just become part of the Russian Federation recently should not make “Russia” desperate. However, I believe we have a principal-agent problem here:
Russia can afford to lose this war, but the current Russian leadership does not. I think they believe there is a good chance that they would be removed by a coup or a revolution if they loose face due to military defeat.
I think the past 6 months of the conflict supports this view:
The Russian Armed Forces have been inefficiently throwing hard-to replace weaponry and manpower trying to conquer the rest of Donbass, while pretending this was the plan all along. It is a relatively worthless region(large portion of the population having fled, majority of industrial infrastructure having been/would be destroyed), and replacing lost equipment and professional personnel (especially officers and special operation units) will take many years, making Russian conventional forces severely weaker.
This seems to make as much strategic sense as trading your queen for a pawn.
That is, if you are using the POV of Russia. However, if you are considering the decision is made by the political leadership, hoping to hide that they screwed-up, it makes a lot more sense.
What do Russians think it takes to be a superpower?!
Their economy is below South Korea and Italy and is not even in the world top 10. https://www.worlddata.info/largest-economies.php
Their best university is number 78 on a world ranking. Their second best is 242. In comparison, the US have 5 universities on top 10. https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2022
Is it about having enough nukes to ruin the world? Or taking up a lot of territory? Or do they just never question the assumption that they are a superpower?
Edit: Added later: Their population size is only the 9th largest, below e.g. Bangladesh and Nigeria. https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries
I suppose the Russian answer would be something like: we had the first man in space (and the first woman in space), we have nukes, look at these beautiful photos of Moscow, have you ever heard about Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky, Mendeleev, Kolmogorov… (continues for 10 minutes)
Sure, Russia used to be technological and cultural superpower. I just can’t think of any similar examples from Putin’s time.
Neither can I, but it is hard to distinguish whether this is a fact about Russia or about my knowledge. I mostly know the famous people from textbooks, and it takes some time to get into a textbook, and I am no longer a student so I probably wouldn’t know anyway.
If “Putin’s time” means “after 2000″, according to Wikipedia this gives us: superconducting nanowire single-photon detector, moscovium, Nginx web server, graphene, orbitrap, oganesson, discovery of Denisovans, Chatroulette, tennessine—for science. (Evaluating culture would be more subjective.) Trying to guess what will feel important a few decades later, probably the graphene and Denisovans.
Russian military might. They have been hearing it all their lives:
learning about historical victories, watching movies about it on the TV, seeing the victory parade every 8th of May...
And they can point to the map, and show that Russia being the largest country by territory is proof enough.
Hell, even most of the world believed it until March.
Oh, I just realized I was answering a different question: why might someone with my knowledge consider Russia a superpower. But the question was about why Russians would...
That makes it much easier. I assume that an average Russian does not know many things. Such as, what is it like to live in EU or USA. Or the fact that Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany in WW2 only because it received a lot of help from the West. (Quite likely, they never heard about Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.)
I tried to find information how many Russians speak English (as a proxy for “can talk to foreigners online”) but everyone gives a different number. I assume that most of them get some introductory lesson at school, but only a few achieve fluency. Notice how Russia has their own search engine (Yandex), and social network (VKontakte). I suspect that communication with foreigners is probably quite rare for most Russians.
So, I guess, if you spend all your life in Russia, and if your information about Russia and its relative position in the world mostly comes from government-approved TV channels and news… then it is quite easy to assume that Russia is a superpower in all possible dimensions! Only its military is merely the second strongest in the world, otherwise you couldn’t explain why you still haven’t defeated USA.
(I’m Russian)
I think this is false. It’s more likely that average arguing-in-Internet Russian tells you that Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was lesser evil after Munich Agreement.
English is a mandatory subject for all 11 years in all schools, but yes, fluency is uncommon.
True.
Mostly true, I think.
Does the version taught at schools say that Soviet Union came to help Poland after it was attacked by the Nazis? If I remember correctly, that used to be the official version during communism.
(Like “yes, we had the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but it doesn’t mean what you think it means; we never intended to attack anyone together, we just tried to dissuade Hitler from attacking us”.)
(Just checked)
No.
Sort of? It’s like “Stalin knew that there will be war against Germany, so he had to choose either an earlier war with an initial front further east or a later war with an initial front further west”.
Is it some mix of the size of the economy and the population size? Is that a good proxy for military strength? It’s not quite solely about economy yet.
I just realized that I have never taken the expression “superpower” literally, to only be about military strength. I have always just assumed the it also involve cultural and technological influence, and in general “how much do you contribute to the world”. This is probably because I started from the assumption that the US was the only superpower, and then I extrapolated from that.
If you take superpower to just mean the amount of military pressure you can put on other countries, it does make a bit more sense.
The fact that the USA and Europe broke the Budapest memorandum before Russia broke it with Belarus, seems to me a bit more like a technicality.
People in Russia don’t believe it’s a sham referendum but that the population in Donetsk and Luhansk actually wants to be part of Russia. The absence of any reporting of opinion polls about what the real election results would be in Western media suggests that Western media outlets also believe that the referendum would come out as being pro-Russian if done fair and square.
I did talk with one Russian friend who lives in Berlin for five years and have an idea of the Russian perspective from that. She isn’t pro-war and did volunteer to help Ukrainian refugees. Still she believes, that Ukraine killed Russian-speaking inhabitants within Donetsk and Luhansk during the civil war in an amount that required Russian intervention. She believes that Ukraine destroyed houses without military necessity because a relative of a good friend reported observing that on the ground.
I think you are wrong if you model Russian opinion as being mainly derived from what their media says. You likely have a lot of “friend of a friend” who lives in Donetsk and Luhansk and wants it to be part of Russia. Of course, that filters for the opinion of Russian-speaking Ukrainians with ties to Russia and not the average Ukrainian but it’s still part of what drives the support for the war among the Russian population.
What I don’t get is how can Russians still see it as a civil war? The truth came out by now: Strelkov, Motorola were Russians. The separatists were led and supplied by Russia. It was a war between Russia and Ukraine from the start. I once argued with a Russian man about it, I told him about fresh graves of Russian soldiers that Lev Schlosberg found in Pskov in 2014. He asked me: “If there are Russian troops in Ukraine, why didn’t BBC write about it?”. I didn’t know, so I checked as soon as I had internet access, and BBC did write about it...
So I don’t see how can anyone sincerely believe that this was ever a Ukrainian internal conflict. Egor Holmogorov said: “For our sacred mission, the whole country should lie [about our soldiers fighting in Donbas]”. And I get the feeling that’s what exactly what people do.
According to Wikipedia, Russia had (unmarked) soldiers in Ukraine since February 27th 2014.
Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence in April 2014.
(The “crucified boy” hoax was published in July 2014. The pro-Russian people in my bubble first denied the presence of Russian soldiers, and later used this as a justification for their presence.)
EDIT:
What people want may change over years and decades, but in the 1991 referendum most people votes Yes for independent Ukraine. I assume that if you want your region to remain in Russia, you would not vote for independence of a piece of land that includes your region.
Perhaps I am reading more into your post than merited but I would think that should be stated ”...any event contrary to Russia’s perceived relative power...”?
To which one might think the only possible response to Putin’s war might be an overwhelming military response supporting the Ukrainian government on Russian forces in the internationally recognized boarders of Ukraine. Then stopping and not putting NATO troops anywhere in Ukraine. (Though I would hope, and like to think, we have some better alternatives.)