Tag Archives: ukraine

a pacifist perspective on the Russia-Ukraine war

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Here is one perspective from “The North American Peace Movement” on the Ukraine war.

Initially, there was less clarity regarding the events in Ukraine of February 24, 2022. With research and reflection, most of the movement came to understand the conflict did not begin that day. The supposedly “unprovoked” Russian intervention in Ukraine was sparked by NATO moving closer and closer to the Russian border, the 2014 Maidan coup, the sabotage of the Minsk agreements, etc.

A consensus is maturing in the antiwar movement that Ukraine is a proxy war by the US and its NATO allies to weaken Russia. Even key corporate press and government officials now recognize the conflict as a “full proxy war” by the US designed to use the Ukrainian people to mortally disable Russia.

Dissident Voice

I can see a perspective that the Ukraine war really started with the Russian invasion of Crimea (aka Ukraine) in 2014 and the Russian-supported independence declarations of two other provinces in the east of the country. It was really a military conflict between sovereign countries at that point, and you can see the 2022 invasion as a new campaign within that war. The “Maidan coup” was the 2014 ouster of a pro-Russian government through a parliamentary process, and the election of an arguably anti-Russian government through an election with a lot of international observers that was generally deemed free and fair. I wouldn’t doubt for a second that the CIA interfered in that election at least through financial and propaganda support for its preferred side, and I wouldn’t doubt for a second that Russia and many other governments’ intelligence agencies did too. I can see the point of view that the Russian governing class has felt threatened by the U.S. and NATO going all the way back to the Balkan war in the 1990s and feels they are making a stand. And I don’t doubt that U.S. and NATO leaders encouraged Ukraine not to accept its initial loss of territory after 2014 (“the Minsk agreement”) in return for promises of military support.

Russia never respected Ukraine’s status as a sovereign nation state. This is the single greatest issue to me – Ukraine is a recognized sovereign nation with a seat at the UN, and all other UN nation states need to stand up for any nation state whose established territory is violated. This just has to be a bedrock principle that everyone (ESPECIALLY the U.S. following its adventure in Iraq) needs to recommit to.

What is Obama up to?

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According to this rambling article, he has houses in Hawaii (Oahu), Hyde Park (I’m assuming Chicago, not New York or London?), Martha’s Vineyard, and the Kalorama development inside Washington D.C. The latter is popular with current and ex-government types, celebrities, diplomats, and captains of industry. Some conspiracists believe he is running a “shadow government” from this location, and for this the offer two points of evidence: (1) He is a retired career politician who still lives in Washington, D.C. at least some times and (2) higher ups in the current administration are sometimes spotted at his house. This seems pretty weak to me. His house seems like a convenient place to have an offsite meeting where you would already have the maximum possible security presence and you might get some free advice from the former leader of the free world in the bargain. Giving take-it-or-leave-it advice would not be “running a shadow government”. Doing some fundraising and persuading at the request of the current party leadership would not be “running a shadow government”. So I don’t know but it seems unlikely.

There’s also some gobbledygook about Ukraine in the article. The only real data points we have on that are that (1) Obama instinctively opposed Hillary Clinton’s push for more or less unprovoked war on Libya (although he gave in), (2) he offered Ukraine only non-lethal aid following the invasion of Crimea, and (3) he supported the Minsk peace accord. We can only speculate now whether Russia would have invaded Ukraine under a Hillary Clinton administration, although I think they were scared enough of her that it may have motivated them to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election (after the U.S. almost certainly interfered in the 2014 Ukraine election, at least in terms of propaganda.) If they had, we can only speculate whether she would have responded with a no-fly zone or some other Cuban Missile Crisis level gamble. I think she might have. Now we need to look ahead and consider whether a second Trump administration will just give up the farm and allow Ukraine to be partitioned or conquered outright.

yes, the CIA mucks about in other countries’ elections

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The CIA has always mucked around in other countries’ elections. This is from Monthly Review, a self-described Marxist magazine based in New York, so you be the judge of its credibility. But anyway, this is about Mexico around the late 1970s or so.

The documents, most of which are related to a CIA probe into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, contains a memo from a meeting of CIA agents held on November 29, 1976. In said meeting, U.S. intelligence official Bill Sturbitts said to his colleagues that “Mexico will soon have a new president, a man who has had control of Liaison for a number of years…”

López Portillo was not the only former president of Mexico to have been on the payroll of the CIA. Three other presidents who preceded him, namely, Adolfo López Mateos (1958-1964), Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970), and Luis Echeverría (1970-1976) were also revealed to be CIA assets in earlier declassification of official U.S. documents. All these former presidents committed acts of grave human rights violations and crimes against humanity against the people of their own country, but that did not stop the United States, the self-proclaimed champion of “human rights,” from cultivating close relations with them.

Cultivating national leaders was not the only interventionist act that the CIA did in Mexico. Declassified documents over the years have revealed a range of illegal activities of U.S. intelligence in Mexico, including spying on Soviet and Chinese embassies in Mexico City; financing extreme right groups; supporting and coordinating the Mexican armed forces; and infiltrating and subverting left-wing students’ organizations and social movements all over Mexico, in COINTELPRO style, often with fatal consequences for the Mexican people.

Monthly Review

That was quite awhile ago, but fast forward to Russia claiming that the 2014 election in Ukraine was a “coup” orchestrated by the United States. It is certainly not implausible to ask if politicians in Ukraine were CIA “assets” at the time (I am not making claims or claiming to have evidence about specific people), if the CIA was spying on say the Russian and Chinese embassies, financing Ukrainian-nationalist anti-Russian groups without asking too many questions about their politics, training and supporting the armed forces (completely in the open on this one). These are dirty tricks, and Russia is certainly not above engaging in any of these dirty tricks itself. I am not claiming any of these dirty tricks would justify Russia invading its sovereign neighbor, but I can put myself in Russian shoes and consider why they might feel a bit paranoid.

civilian victimization

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I think it is clear that Russia felt threatened by NATO expansion since the 1990s and this played a role in the decision to invade Ukraine. This does not excuse their actions, but perhaps if different decisions had been made in the 1990s and 2000s we would not be here. Given that we are here, the question is how much to support Ukraine and oppose Russia militarily. Some are suggesting that pumping in as many deadly weapons as possible will shorten the war and ultimately reduce civilian suffering. Some scholars, for example the ones quoted in this Atlantic article, are citing evidence for the opposite. My hunch has always been that there may be a rational case for war to achieve geopolitical objectives at times, but I doubt that it ever reduces civilian suffering.

Alex Downes has conducted methodologically rigorous research on the causes of civilian victimization, a wartime strategy that targets and kills noncombatants. To this end, he compiled a data set of every country in the world that participated in “interstate wars between 1816 and 2003, which produced a list of 100 wars, 323 belligerent countries, and 52 cases of civilian victimization.” He found that states are significantly more likely to escalate against the population as they become more desperate from higher battlefield fatalities, longer war duration, or the transition of the conflict to a war of attrition.

Whether civilian victimization pays remains contested, but the strategic logic is not—to sap the morale of an adversary’s population or undermine the enemy’s ability to resist. Empirical research by other scholars with different samples likewise finds that “as a conflict actor weakens relative to its adversary, it employs increasingly violent tactics toward the civilian population as a means of reshaping the strategic landscape to its benefit.” Contrary to the conventional wisdom, scholarship suggests that Ukrainian citizens may paradoxically benefit from us supporting them less.

Atlantic

November 2022 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Asteroids could be used as a weapon.

Most hopeful story: A review of Limits to Growth suggests our civilization may be on a path to stagnation rather than collapse. Or, we may be on the cusp of a fantastic science ficition future of abundance brought to us by solar energy, asteroid mining (there are those asteroids again!), and biotechnology.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I tried to put myself in Russia’s shoes and explain the Ukraine conflict, mostly to myself.

what happened in Ukraine?

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I’ve been puzzled by the seeming irrationality of the Russian invasion ever since it happened. We are being buffeted by propaganda from both sides, so it is hard to tell what is true, but we can probably assume the truth lies somewhere in between the two extremes. I can’t independently verify the information in this Courthouse News Service (which I had never heard of before…) article, but it at least tells a story that passes the logic test for me. Here’s my attempt to summarize their story:

  • Ukraine had a really rough time in the 1990s and early 2000s following the end of the Soviet Union. It was ruled mostly by ex-Soviet cronies – the economy was in freefall, corruption and assassinations of politicians, journalists and activists were rampant, and they lost a big chunk of their population as many people who could move elsewhere in Europe or Russia chose to do so. Some people went so far as to call it a failed state.
  • There were major protests (the “Orange Revolution”) against corruption and political violence in 2004. Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian politician, was elected shortly afterward in an election widely believed by international observers to be rigged and interfered with by Russia. This is also when his opponent, pro-EU and anti-Russian Viktor Yushchenko, was poisoned, most likely by Russian or pro-Russian agents. Courts ordered a run-off election and Yushchenko was elected. [Part of the problem is these names sound very similar to western ears. Imagine a U.S. election where the candidates were named something like Thomas and Thompson.]
  • Russians and pro-Russian elements in Ukraine saw these events as U.S. interference in their political affairs, and feared that the same tactics could be tried in Russia itself. [I can’t argue pro or con, but the U.S. certainly doesn’t refrain from openly lobbying to try to influence other country’s elections, and we do know that the CIA has repeatedly tried to interfere in elections around the world in the past, typically in developing and middle income countries.]
  • Yushchenko turned out not to be all that anti-corruption or pro-western, at least not effectively so. In 2010, he ran against an even more anti-Russian and Ukrainian-nationalist politician, Yulia Tymoshenko. In this election, Yanukovych was re-elected in an election that international observers deemed fair.
  • The economy was extremely poor during this period, and Yanukovych accepted a bailout from Russia in exchange for abandoning plans to deepen trade and travel ties with the EU.
  • This caused public protests and street violence to break out again, with a neo-Nazi element in evidence. The presidential palace was stormed (this is sometimes called an “insurrection”), Yanukovych fled to Russia, and an anti-Russian, Ukrainian nationalist element took over.
  • The Russian government (“Putin”, “the Kremlin”) saw this as a coup orchestrated by the U.S. They believed this justified a military takeover of Crimea, which the largely pro-Russian population of Crimea seemed to support. This was an invasion and occupation in all but name – un-uniformed Russian soldiers basically fanned out from their bases already in Crimea and took over the government more or less opposed unopposed. A referendum was held in which the people voted to leave Ukraine and become part of Russia.
  • Pro-Russian elements then launched an armed rebellion in other eastern provinces of Ukraine.
  • Partly because Crimea and rebel-held areas of Ukraine did not participate in elections, an anti-Russian president (Poroshenko) was elected next. Russia believed U.S. interference was involved again. Ugly communist and fascist symbols and language was used by both sides, such as “decommunization” and “denazification”.
  • Ugly warfare between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian eastern rebels continued. Russia may have believed U.S. and “western” forces were involved in this warfare and that Ukraine was becoming increasingly likely to join NATO and/or the EU. [and who knows? some or all of this may be true.]
  • The current president, Zelenskyy, was elected in 2019 on a platform of negotiating a peaceful agreement to end the fighting. He used to play the president on TV. [This is exactly why the U.S. Democrats should have run either Harrison Ford or that guy who played the President in the first couple seasons of 24.]
  • The “Minsk Accords” were an attempt to end the warfare with a political solution, most likely some form of partial autonomy for the eastern provinces while remaining part of Ukraine. This was not successful. Zelenskyy became more hard-line anti-Russia and pro-resistance as the conflict dragged on.
  • Russia chose to invade in 2022. In my view, this was still a sovereign UN member state choosing to invade another sovereign member state’s recognized international borders, with the intention to occupy it indefinitely. I do not think there is any excuse for this. I do however think it is a useful exercise to try to put myself in the Russian shoes and try to understand what the thought process may have been. And when I do that, I can see a plausible case that they thought the U.S. and NATO were actively interfering in Ukrainian elections and supporting the Ukrainian military in suppression and atrocities against ethnic Russian civilians. They may have also thought the loss of Ukraine to NATO and the EU was only a matter of time until the U.S. was able to get a compliant regime in place that would allow it.

It seems like a move toward some form of autonomy for the eastern provinces and Crimea is the logical outcome here, under nominal Ukrainian rule within its original borders except that some big chunk of Crimea can just be considered a big Russian military base (like Guantanomo Bay). It could be demilitarized with a beefy UN peacekeeping force for an agreed period of time, and Ukraine could agree not to be eligible even for consideration to join the EU or NATO for some agreed period of time.

more on tactical nukes

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A New Yorker article lays out situations under which Russia might consider using tactical nuclear weapons.

Four scenarios may lead Russia to use a nuclear weapon, according to Kimball of the Arms Control Association. To coerce Kyiv or its nato allies to back down, Putin could carry out a “demonstration” bombing in the atmosphere above the Arctic Ocean or the Baltic Sea—not for killing, but “to remind everyone that Russia has nuclear weapons.” Russia could also use tactical weapons to change the military balance on the ground with Ukraine. If the war expands, and nato gets drawn into the fight, Russia could further escalate the conflict with the use of short-range nuclear weapons. “Both U.S. and Russian policy leave open the possibility of using nuclear weapons in response to an extreme non-nuclear threat,” Kimball said. Finally, if Putin believes that the Russian state (or leadership) is at risk, he might use a tactical nuclear weapon to “save Russia from a major military defeat.” Russia has lost some twenty-five per cent of its combat power in the last two months, a Pentagon official estimated this week. Moscow’s military doctrine reserves the right to use nuclear weapons “in response to the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction” against Russia or its allies, and also in response to aggression via conventional weapons “when the very existence of the state is threatened.” In military jargon, the country’s policy is “to escalate to de-escalate,” Richard Burt, the lead negotiator on the original start accord, which was signed by Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush in 1991, told me. “The idea is to so shock the adversary that a nuclear weapon has been used, to demonstrate your resolve that you’re willing to use a nuclear weapon, that you paralyze your adversary.”

New Yorker

Nuclear weapons are a cheap way to make a big bang, or at least threaten to do so. Cheap compared to maintaining a huge, capable conventional military force anyway. Russia seems particularly dangerous right now because it is a relatively poor, backwards country whose leadership has successfully used limited military aggression to appear strong and strategic to a domestic audience. The Ukraine war seems to have changed that, with Russia’s conventional military looking weak, ineffective, and the leadership lacking in strategery. Nuclear brinksmanship or even the recklessness of some kind of limited nuclear attack could be seen as a way to regain the upper hand. Let’s hope not.

Thinking a little about what might induce the Russian leadership to call off this attack, new nuclear agreements with the U.S., like reducing the arsenal overall, removing weapons from Europe, or a no-first-use pledge, seem like they should be on the table and would benefit everybody.