An after the invaders are repelled and some sort of cease-fire is signed, the only way to ensure that the whole thing doesn’t happen again is NATO deployment in Ukraine - not for combat, but for deterrence. So far, Russia has been very careful not to harm NATO troops. I don’t think they will initiate a war with NATO.
For clarification, I mean American B-2 strikes on Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory - Crimea, Donbass, Bakhmut, etc. Not Russia itself.
Although, honestly, I wouldn’t mind that either, though it might get a bit dicey.
Your desire for a wider war really is foolish – there’s a clear path to a humbled Russia and a victorious Ukraine, and it’s the united West keeping Ukraine supplied with weapons (and I recognize more should be done sooner, including fighter jets and such)… a larger war could lead to all kinds of unintended and unforeseen consequences, some of which could be absolutely catastrophic. And not only does this clear path I mention above lead to a humbled Russia and victorious Ukraine (which would then join NATO, all but ensuring Russia won’t try again), it would also greatly dissuade China from threatening Taiwan, as Taiwan would be an even harder nut to crack than Ukraine, plus the West will have proven it has the capability and staying power to stay united in supplying and supporting an allied country under attack from a larger aggressor.
The geography for supplying Taiwan is rather different from Ukraine.
You’re assuming that Russia will be capable of paying reparations. What if this war and the aftermath leave their country in shambles?
I keep hearing talk of reparations, but that’s actually a vanishingly rare thing to happen.
So is the geography for invading it.
The former path seems much clearer than the latter. Russia’s leadership has managed what might turn out to be one of the great self-pwns in history. It’s unfortunate that so many people who were in no way involved in the decision to invade will suffer the most because of it, but then it only takes one bad decision by leadership to fuck things up for everyone.
I do not see any path for a victorious Ukraine, i.e., one that returns control of all Russian-seized territory to Ukraine and removes all invading troops (to say nothing of ICC trials for the war criminals behind them). Foremost, the West does not seem to want the war to end. Restrictions on weapons deliveries (timing and type) and the total absence of (public) U.S.-led peace efforts suggest the West’s primary goal is not a “victorious Ukraine” or an end to the conflict, but rather to prolong the war to weaken Russia as much as possible. As for the “OP” - practicalities aside - putting NATO troops in Ukraine in any capacity is at odds with that goal.
Based on the lengthy history of Russian warmongering, trying to ensure Russia is weakened over the long term – making it less likely to threaten its neighbors or anyone else - is certainly a worthy strategic objective, but among the costs are a great deal more suffering in the present and increased risk of the conflict spreading in the nearer-term future.
And how does that avoid further disaster?
Giving them a winning position in the war instead is even worse.
At this point, I think that even if all support from NATO were cut off entirely, Ukraine would eventually win. It’d just be an incredibly long, brutal, and painful win. NATO aid won’t change the ultimate outcome of the war, but it will drastically decrease the amount of suffering before that point.
This is entirely appropriate. The U.S. should be offering to broker peace only when Ukraine is willing to consider negotiating for peace. As the aggrieved (i.e. invaded) party only they should be making that call. The U.S. unilaterally injecting themselves in the process could be seen as tacitly encouraging Ukraine to settle, which is something they shouldn’t publicly do. If and when Ukraine decides to settle for less than the whole enchilada, then they can invite the U.S. into the process if they so choose. Until then the U.S.'s public stance should be roughly “we condemn Russia and here Ukraine, have some more guns.”
Starting from a point that Crimea is a done deal is probably bad negotiating 101. Frankly I have my own concerns with Crimea as I’ve noted before. But it is very important strategically and I question whether ceding Russia it’s Sudetenland is sound policy.
Appeasement because “nukes!” doesn’t sit well with me. It’s a question of how much risk you’re willing to accept, I suppose. After all people (especially Putin 
) have also been saying even arming Ukraine at all is an existential threat.
The best way to weaken Russia is to help Ukraine expel them from their territory as fast as can be achieved. I think we should be providing more weapons, but I see no evidence that the West wants a prolonged conflict versus a quicker Ukraine victory.
I won’t ask you for a cite for the first sentence as it appears to be speculative. Equally – if oppositely – speculative, I’m inclined to believe that absent military aid from the West (and elsewhere), Ukraine would have fallen to the Russians months ago. Given the amount and frequency of such aid thus far, I do not see how you can believe that Ukraine would eventually win “an incredibly long, brutal and painful” conflict without being resupplied militarily, multiple times.
Your last sentence is far too speculative to make debating it meaningful.
Granted and good point.
I guess I made a distinction in my head between efforts to “broker peace” and talking – just talking - publicly about ending hostilities without setting any conditions. In the world of realpolitik, such a distinction is clearly wrongheaded.
While Ukraine has set preconditions for peace talks, the U.S. gov’t (AFAICT) does not repeat them as part of their official pronouncements about the war; they only say it’s up to Ukraine to decide when and if to pursue negotiations. This is a diplomatic nuance which may or may not be revealing in terms of what the U.S. actually wants.
I believe a quick(er) Ukrainian victory would be preferable for the West (and the world), but according to U.S. (and other) estimates, it’s simply not in the realm of possibility at this point or at any time since the war began. There has been a reluctance on the part of the West to provide the munitions/tech Ukraine says it needs, as well as pointless – and costly in terms of life - delays in approving some of the military aid they did receive. Given that the West certainly has tech which could accelerate the expulsion of Russian troops, I take these facts as prima facie evidence that the West does not want to enable Ukraine to expel Russian troops “as fast as can be achieved.”
The US can’t be the peace broker. The US is firmly on one side of the conflict.
Sure, negotiating strategy is different. I’d start netgotiations from the position that Russia has to get completely out of Ukraine, including the Donbas and Crimea, AND pay for all the damage they did in Ukraine. From that point forward, negotiations begin.
Normally, I’m right there with you. I thought Russia should yave been punished much more severely for South Ossetia and Crimea. I took a lot of flak on this board for being a military hawk with respect to Russia and China.
But here’s the thing - this kind of deterrant is necessary against a peer who you want to discourage from trying the same thing again. But if your enemy is incapable of doing the same kind of thing again anyway, the need for that kind of deterrance is not as great.
For example, we let the Japanese Emperor stay in power, because by the time we got to that decision Japan’s Navy was ruined and they could no longer project power without their ships being sunk. It was better to ‘win the peace’ with the people than to punish them further and remove their divine leader.
Just what are we worried Russia will do in the future other than use its nukes? Russia doesn’t have the military budget or the industrial infrastructure to make advanced weaponry in quantity. Nor does it have trained soldiers to use the stuff any more.
Russia’s military budget was $61.9 billion in 2021. The US’s is $778 billion. China is $252 billion. India is $72 billion. The UK is $59 billion. Saudi Arabia, Germany and France are right behind at around $57 billion. Even Poland is doubling its military budget to about $30 billion. The EU overall spent about $221 billion last year.
Without its cold war arsenal, Russia is a middling military power at best, They will be outspent collectively by their neighbors.Their soldiers are terrible, their equipment obsolete, and the stuff they are trying to build new is being built in very small quantities.
Take their new T-14 Armata tank, which made big news when it appeared on the battlefield. Russia claimed it would have 2300 of them in service by 2022. But busgetary problems ensued, and they’ve delivered something like 12-14 of the things.
The other big new Russian weapons system is the Sukhoi SU-57. The Russian military was supposed to get 60 of them between 2015 and 2020. But that was scaled back to just 12 aircraft, and even those didn’t materialize. Russia has to date produced a total of five of the things, and further production is on hold for financial reasons.
A further problem for Russia is that they exposed their hardware as rather poor, and the war in Ukraine caused a lot of their military hardware customers to abandon them and go for western equipment after giving their old Soviet stuff to Ukraine. Russia could only afford to build advanced weaponry if they could sell it for export, and that’s going to be a much tougher market for them in the future.
Russia makes lots of claims about their superweapons and the thousands of aircraft and tanks it plans to produce. Most of its claims are now pure blister. $61 billion dollars does not build, supply and maintain a world class military capable of invading its neighbors.
Once the old Soviet hardware is expended, Russia will have a permanently smaller military, without the quality of training and organization of the west. And even before they expended themselves in Ukraine it’s clear that they only maintained the force size they had by skimping on everything from salaries to training to equipment. They just can’t keep up, and the Ukraine war made everything worse for Russia’s military.
We don’t need to deter them, we just need to break all their toys and let them go cry in the corner for their lost power and status.
That “and elsewhere” carries a lot of weight, though. The number 1 supplier of material to Ukraine has been Russia. Not intentionally, of course, but Ukraine is actually capturing more tanks from Russia than they’re losing.
Of course, that’s not completely definitive, because Western aid has (among other things) contributed to their ability to capture those tanks. But I still think it would probably be enough.
And of course, even if all that Western aid is doing is decreasing the amount of suffering before the end, well, that’s easily a good enough reason to do it.
I’ve been wondering about this, as the idea that the West is somehow willing to allow prolonged suffering of the Ukrainian population in order to gradually weaken Russia seems rather callous.
My impression though, is that the West has been ‘treading carefully’ by only incrementally supplying more and better military equipment and weapons to Ukraine - precisely because any ‘sudden move’ (like sending fighter jets from Day 1) might have precipitated the only escalation Putin can still manage: nukes.
So it’s in effect mirroring Russia’s previous actions. They invaded Crimea, then infiltrated parts of Ukraine, then started military ‘exercises’ close to the border. All the while taking note of the response from the rest of the world. “Will they react if we do… this?”
The trade-off between many people definitely suffering right now, against precipitating a nuclear war, is a horrendous calculation to have to make, but I can (sort of) see the rationale for ‘feeling our way slowly’ towards helping Ukraine regain its country and secure its borders.
I keep asking: What if Russia is left unable to pay reparations? Haven’t heard a reply yet.
The first priority should be securing Ukraine’s border. Second is rebuilding Ukraine. Third, if not more distant, is enacting economic revenge on Russia because I think Russia’s economy will be yet another casualty of this war.
Not sure about other nations, but if I recall the US did not extract reparations from either Germany or Japan despite their unconditional surrender in part because the countries were so wrecked there was nothing left to extract. Actually, after WWII both Germany and Japan needed help to feed their people, much less rebuild their own wrecked nations and by doing so I believe we secured a long-lasting peace and recovery.
It may sound heretical at this point, and it would very much depend on the circumstances at the end of the war, but it may be that after this is over Russia will be as much in need of rebuilding as Ukraine, although probably needing different forms of aid. Rebuilding Ukraine while leaving the common Russians to starve in the cold and dark is not going to secure a lasting, multi-generational peace. Although it may be more appropriate/expedient to let China fund the rebuilding of Russia and the West the rebuilding of Ukraine.
That’s all a ways off, and speculation on my part. The actual best course of action will be heavily dependent on factors that we just don’t know yet.
All the suffering endured up to now in this misbegotten war would be less than a stubbed toe if a nuclear exchange occurred. That alone is reason to be cautious. I agree with those who say Putin using nukes is unlikely but it is still possible. Since the consequences of even a limited nuclear exchange would be horrific we really should try to avoid one.
Another other nuclear alternative would be the deliberate creation of a major nuclear accident at a power plant, which I think (purely my opinion) is a more likely thing to happen, and still potentially horrific.
Then you get into things like dirty bombs which would be laughably easy for a nuclear power to construct, and the like. We are, after all, talking about a regime that has spiked tea with polonium and painted nerve agents on doorknobs - these are not nice people and they do not play by our rules. And I say a regime that not only permitted but ordered its troops to dig trenches and live in them in the Red Forest doesn’t care if doing such things would result on casualties on their side. The current regime under Putin has demonstrated it doesn’t care about human life in general. Judging by the recent outbreak of defenestration they don’t even care that much about the life of the elites.
In another thread I mentioned one possible scenario, although in a different far more speculative context. Assuming a Ukrainian victory and Russian collapse, the “reparations” should be of the same type that West Germany and Japan faced after WWII. Russia should be forced to become a modern western nation the way Germany and Japan were forced to do so. Yes, that means Ukraine doesn’t get Russian money. Their rebuilding funds would have to come from the west. But in the end having a Russia that is a western democracy would be far more valuable than even a few trillion dollars for rebuilding. The fact that this is actually a reward rather than a punishment also shouldn’t matter. It would mean a true end to the war, since the relationship between Russia and Ukraine (and the west at large) would no longer be adversarial. It would be more like the current day relationship between Spain and Portugal (example picked based on the similarities of the two languages).
That’s true. But the US (along with others) was occupying both of those countries. I suppose if Russia were willing to have their country occupied and controlled by the US and/or Ukraine and other allies supporting UKR that we (all of the previous) might be willing to forego financial reparations. After all, RUS’s vast resources would then be “ours” to control.
(We have used actual nuclear weapons)