[quote MagicFox]A long read but this is a transcript with Emma Ashford about US foreign policy using a 'realist perspective'. Thought a lot of this made sense and seemed very balanced, getting to the heart of a lot of the complexities. @shreddednips @RedToothBrush you might have views on this take:
www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-emma-ashford.html[/quote]
I think I have probably pretty much ticked the 'realist' box for a long long time on a fair number of political issues.
Anyway, yes I think that is a VERY VERY good piece (perhaps unsurprisingly). Though I am not sure I agree with all of it - particularly the part about NATO/EU moving Eastward.
I think this para:
And you say that Putin maybe is thinking about America’s interventions and how we got bogged down. I would wonder if he doesn’t also have on his mind the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which you know, happened when he was a young man, ended up costing the lives of many young Soviet men, and was, again, an utter debacle for that country. And so he knows the costs of occupation. And Ukraine is incredibly important to Russia, to Putin personally. He may believe that the cost will be worth it. But if he is offered a relatively attractive settlement, it might be enough to overcome that inclination. And so again, this is a deal with the devil. And this is why nobody likes realists. But what I’m saying is that in the grand scheme of things, this will be better for everybody than long-term sanctions that end up eviscerating Russia while Russia destroys Ukraine.
Is the one that stands out to me.
Why? Cos it does make me wonder in terms of realism whether Putin is now realising the cost it would take to esculate again in the future if there is a settlement in the next couple of months. As in, this war does contain him.
Just how closely has he been paying attention and does he think he is at risk of the same mistakes as the US or is he arrogant to think Russia is better and can overcome those problems.
Given I'm also concerned about the radicalisation internally of Russia and whether sanctions add to the problem / limit the problem its asking the right questions for me. I don't know the answer to it, nor am I sure about whether we should lift sanctions if somewhere is going full on fascist, but the question should be one thats central...
and
The states that have made it under the NATO umbrella, they’re in a better place than they would have been otherwise. But states like Ukraine — and this could also apply to Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, right, all of those states that are kind of caught between Russia and the West and have been placed in this position where it’s kind of a zero sum choice, whether you move towards the West or whether you retain your historical ties to Russia, to me, that is what has provoked this crisis at a large level.
And so for some liberal internationals to turn around and say, well, this is what we warned about all along, that Russia was a bad actor, and so we’ve been proven right, to me, rather, ignores the concerns about security that Russia has been expressing for 30 years. And again, it doesn’t, in any way, justify the Russian invasion, but they have been expressing the same concerns since the 1990s about NATO expansion, about the future trajectory of Ukraine and other states, and about the fact that Russia has been effectively excluded from the European security environment. And to me, what the current crisis shows is what a state that has been excluded from the security environment in any legitimate sense, what they end up doing as a result of that. And that’s a very realist approach to this crisis. But I think the evidence bears it out.
EZRA KLEIN: One critique I sometimes hear of that argument is that it robs countries like Ukraine, Poland, or others, of their own agency, and that they have wanted to become more Western. They have wanted to come under a different umbrella, or at least, balance the powers threatening them against each other. You can make a very similar argument about countries that are near to China and that are thinking about how to balance the pressures of a rising China and the various American stratagems to balance China’s rise.
And on the other hand, there is this concern that America is putting a lot of countries into this weird no man’s land, where, on the one hand, we are encouraging them and giving them opportunities to westernize and come closer to us, but we are not committed enough to them to defend them against the consequences of a Russia, a China, or others, becoming aggravated and deciding enough is enough. How do you balance those out?
I think this is another key argument I've really not got my head around, because as another posted pointed out, we've got a bunch of countries who are now vulnerable for being the battle ground of a bunch of proxy wars. I don't really have an answer for this, but I do very much feel uncomfortable with how Ukraine has effectively done everything right but then it isn't enough because of who their neighbours are.
I am also minded to think of Serbia in the midst of this. Simply because when I was there is was utterly striking how torn the country was between the West and Russia. In terms of self determination, you are going to end up with problems there because of how its split and how high feelings run on the subject. It was surreal walking around and seeing visual signs of support for every 'anti-western' figure you could think of (I went when the Libyan war was on) and there were cardboard cutouts of Gadhafi in the main high street of one place we visited. And yet we were more welcomed than anywhere I've ever been because they were so pleased we'd come to visit their country. Its a real headfuck and paradox. But then you have to process how NATO bombed Belgrade and stuff and how that affected views. On the one hand they LOVE the UK but on the other they saw the UK as their enemy but were proud of their country and wanted to show it and their culture off. I can really see a lot of double think going on in Russia too, in part because of propaganda but also because they don't quite get why they, the public, are being punished too. They want Western Lifestyles but their own cultural values rather than having them imposed from outside.
So I can foresee there being fallout in Serbia because of this almost forced pressure being exerted on Russia and there being something of a backlash because of self determination.
Serbia is one example, but Wheat is the other factor thats definitely one that I'm seeing online in non-western focused discussions.
(sorry this point is a big of a messy group of thoughts I've got going on atm)
and
EZRA KLEIN: There’s a lot of fear right now about nuclear weapons being the endpoint of escalation. But at the moment, I think something we’re under-rating and which you gestured at earlier is massive cyber attacks. And this is something that every security expert I’ve spoken to for years says we are nowhere near prepared for. We don’t really know how we’d respond to them. We know we have huge vulnerabilities and all kinds of critical infrastructure and financial infrastructure. They are not hardened at this point. We know Russia’s been looking at these vulnerabilities for a long time.
So if Russia wanted to begin striking back at the U.S. and Europe in, more or less, the terms we’ve struck at them, that might be how they go about it. Can you talk a bit about the risks of cyber attacks here and what might be the potential lines that get crossed leading them to happen?
EMMA ASHFORD: Yeah, so I mean, I’m going to start by saying here that I’m not a cyber expert, so I’m mostly telling you what others have told me. But I think there’s two interesting things that pop out in this crisis on the cyber front. One is that we have seen remarkably little use of those techniques by the Russians. They took down some government websites and servers in the first days of this intervention, but they’ve really not engaged in any large scale use of it at all.
And the most likely explanation appears to be that despite all the hype over the years, cyber network exploitation is actually not as useful for battlefield use as many people think. So that one’s interesting. And I think the cyber scholars are watching that. And it will be interesting to see, going forward, if Russia steps up its use of that over time.
The other area where I have been hearing a number of calls for the U.S. to engage in cyber attacks. And I think it’s interesting that the White House clearly views that as far more escalatory than some of the other steps we’ve taken — the arms, the sanctions, et cetera. Because the calls to use cyber techniques to strike directly at Russian infrastructure, stop Russian trains, make it hard for Russia to fight the war in Ukraine, those seem to be viewed pretty clearly as making the U.S. an actual party to this conflict.
And so I find that interesting. And I also wonder if that is part of what is, at least at present, constraining Russia on that front, that they are worried that a direct cyber attack would imply that they consider the U.S. a full party to this conflict and that the U.S. might enter in a conventional military sense. So the story of cyber in this conflict is really interesting in that it just hasn’t been as relevant as we might think. So I’m more concerned these days about the sort of conventional escalation risks, rather than the cyber ones.
I also noted this paragraph because certainly this is one of my worries as I don't think we are anywhere near well enough prepared and I don't think we have enough people with the relevant skills to be at that level.
And I DO think it interesting this hasn't materialised. I wonder if problems going forward with getting hold of technology under sanctions might well put some of it to bed, but that of course assumes that sanctions hold and that Russia doesn't start being able to get stuff from China.
Overall I agree the article does get to the heart of the complexities. Notably for me, it largely passes over the nuke threat as not being the biggest and probably over stated but still present (which is probably about where I am). But again it refers back to the idea of personality and how they are more unpredictable especially if given bad information and are in a bunker mentality and therefore are unable to make 'good decisions' in the absence of good information. But instead make rational decisions based on what the think the situation actually is (and this is where I have the wobbles).
Again looking at what Medvedev has said about Poland today and how unhinged they are in terms of not being able to comprehend the idea of self determination because they don't think it exists as a concept, it really does emphasis why the US is probably trying to stay at arms length. Not because of domestic political concerns but because of how it might feed the problem.
I would note in this sense, that the UK has had a long history of a particular mindset and liberalism so perhaps we are viewed slightly differently to many other European countries. If Putin and Co are in this WWII timewarp that ironically inflates the UK to a status above where we perhaps are in reality these days. We have a pass to be more independently minded and not necessarily under the US's thumb either though we share values closely (If that makes sense). Poland on the other hand 'owes' the Soviet Union and should be grateful and should do as its told and is definitely significantly below Russia in the country's hierachy of thought.
Its an article which is well worth reading (Its taken me the best part of an hour to read, process and comment which probably reflects what I think of it particularly as I have a shedload to do this afternoon)
I think its also perhaps too level headed because it doesn't really touch on how emotions are going to run high and that might realistically lead to real flash points.
I think my head is leaning towards the possibility of some sort of ceasefire. But not a political settlement. That would be tricky re sanctions, but not force a 'backing down' either on other things. The problem is that it also means Russia hasn't made peace either. That could just mean an infinate limbo which everyone kind of bumbles along with the odd outbreak of problems but no one loses face either (a imperfect fudge if you will - the UK has had a lot of these lately). I don't believe there will be a peace. And as I say I really do worry about the radicalisation going on and how that can't be contained because by definition it starts to become more and more irrational and reality starts to become irrelevant (at which point strange things start to happen and you are more likely to get high risk 'madman' type actions actually occurring).
I think every day that passes and we DON'T see chemical weapons (and nukes) is a relief, but I also think the point in the article about forgetting how dreadful conventional warfare in the early 20th Century was and how utterly devoid of humanity that can be in own right is an issue. There are far too many people focusing on the nukes and not the issues that are actually happening, because stopping the nukes trumps everything. We don't need nukes to have a real compelling problem and we certainly don't need them to still have genocide. Good old fashioned bullets work well enough.
(sorry rambling)