I think it would take a spy to do that… don’t you? That said, I’m pretty sure that such a route certainly be contained within this tiny circle.
Wow! Only 1,100 miles!
The more important thing for many Americans right now I suspect is will Israel preemptively strike Iran and will that lead to a stock market crash.
Yes, a US or NATO response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine would risk WWIII. The damned thing is, though, a lack of response would also risk WWIII, because if we don’t act to stop Putin here, he’s going to keep on taking more and more territory until we do. The only good options here, for pretty much anyone, are the ones Putin is actively taking off of the table.
Short of war, the most aggressive option for the west is to give the Ukrainians a shit-load of weapons - which will probably eventually find their way to Putin’s Ukrainian separatists.
I’d be inclined to not get too invested in the future of Ukraine. I think we just find ways to keep hurting Putin if he escalates there. Just like hurting the Soviet Union during the Cold War, no individual thing we do is going to hurt that much, if it did, it would risk real war. But we need to shore up multilateral institutions that can isolate, exclude, and harm the Russian economy and its ability to engage in global business. Trump did quite a lot to undermine relationships and mutlilateral entities that could have helped with this.
Putin might go on an excursion into Ukraine. It is not likely he will attempt to conquer all of Ukraine. The country is simply too big with too many people. It would be like another Afghanistan invasion (which bankrupted the Soviets), or like America’s Vietnam. But in both cases the comparisons underestimate the scale of it, relative to the size of Russia, its military and economy, trying to “digest” Ukraine would be an order of magnitude a worse bet than the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan or the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Committing to trying to annex all of Ukraine likely would lead to large scale generational decline of Russia as a viable world power.
I’ve seen no evidence Putin is stupid about this aspect of the world, and thus why I think at most he’s going to do some excursions into territory mostly populated with Russians where the anti-Ukraine insurgency mostly holds power at this time. Putin dreams of a day when all the pieces of the Soviet Empire are back in Russia’s control, but he lacks the mechanisms to make this possible. His messing around with countries like Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine seem largely to be about “entangling” those countries in sticky situations that makes it hard for those countries to join permanent, multilateral relationships with other spheres of influence. Putin doesn’t so much think he can actually annex back all these countries, he’s hoping that by stopping them from drifting out of Russia’s orbit, at some point in the future Russia could be in a position to retake them (this is wishful thinking.) If you actually look at Russia it’s on a very different trajectory than China.
China is a genuine ascending power. Russia is a stagnating power, and lots of stuff people think Putin is a genius on, actually hurt Russia and make Russia less able to adapt and be part of the modern world. China is actually the much more capably ran country, they are very good at finding ways of slowly getting their geopolitical goals met but without it fucking up the domestic economy or most of their international business relationships.
I think part of it is the Chinese Communist Party is more professional and bigger than any one man (even though Xi has the most power of any Chinese leader since Deng.) Putinism is really based around Putin himself, and I think Putin also believes he’s a Frederick the Great type of figure, I think he genuinely doesn’t expect there exists a successor that can capably continue his projects, so he feels he has to get as much done in his lifetime as possible. The Chinese have a much longer view on things and plan much longer term.
I don’t think these examples are remotely comparable. Unlike Afghanistan or Vietnam, Ukraine has a very long history of being part of Russia, a large percentage of the population speaks Russian as a first language, and most of the rest as a second language. The idea of reabsorbing Ukraine back into Russia is a much more appealing one and also a much more practical one than either the Afghanistan or Vietnam aims.
Which is not to say Putin has this in mind, at least at this exact time. If I had to guess, I would think that if he makes an incursion into ethnic-Russian dominated territory, then it would depend on how that goes. If it’s accomplished swiftly and cleanly, then pause to absorb the new circumstances, and let future events dictate how to approach the rest of the Ukraine. But if a serious all-out war breaks out, then go for broke and get it over and done with. Of course, this is all pure speculation.
Reluctant as I am to see Ukraine “repatriated” with the greater Russian confederation of republics, I can’t justify any action on behalf of NATO countries getting into a hot war with Russia over it. There is a long shared cultural history between Russians and Ukrainians, and while their languages differ, they are more similar than not. Most Ukrainians speak Russian fluently. It would not be an insurmountably difficult challenge for Ukrainians to re-integrate with their once and again Russian overlords. Many would even welcome it. If comparisons can be made, this would be more like Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
I mean I disagree. The Russian Empire was a lot more powerful relative to the rest of the world when it subjugated Ukraine and the USSR was much more powerful when it attempted to invade Afghanistan. Most of Ukraine’s history under the Russian Empire was in the “pre-nationalist” world, when, due to very different cultural / legal / political norms, it was not at all uncommon for large Empires to rule over multiethnic people. But it’s laughable to suggest that just because that was the case it’d be easy to reimplement. Imagine Austria attempting to re-establish its Empire or Turkey attempting to re-establish the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism made powers like that almost entirely ungovernable and it changed the world (this is pretty basic history fwiw.)
Ukraine was going through its own nationalist movement at the end of WWI, and the only thing that kept it in Russia’s orbit was the history altering Communist revolution. By promotion of an ideology that was more internationalist in nature, and appealed to working people everywhere, it built up a lot of support in Ukraine for Soviet ideas. There was a civil war in Ukraine after the collapse of the Russian Empire with lots of different factions, but pro-Soviet ideology was common and eventually the USSR fully absorbed it. But in the interwar years there was lots of nationalist violence and trouble in Ukraine. Then WWII occurred which eventually saw the Soviets become a super power with a huge, huge military, which is what it utilized to keep its empire together for 60 years after that. It was not sustainable, it literally lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia today is much weaker in terms of its military power relative to its neighbors than it was back when these historical events would occur, I actually think the USSR had a better chance of annexing Afghanistan than Russia of today does of annexing Ukraine.
The key is not a matter of relative military stength but how much internal resistance there would be to integration with Russia. Not to say there wouldn’t be any, of course, but the history and language issues would make it a lot easier than the other examples you’re citing.
Well, they kicked a pro-Russian government out of office (through mass protest, not the ballot box) and are currently in a civil war over the matter so I really don’t see why you think integration would be simple.
I don’t think it would be simple. I’ve not said anywhere that it would be simple.
What I do think is that it would be a lot simpler than Russians occupying Afghanistan or the US occupying Vietnam, which is the comparison I was responding to.
Worth noting that Yanukovych had significant support, albeit not a majority.
And the thing to remember here is that we’re not discussing what will actually happen if Putin tries to conquer and reintegrate Ukraine. What we’re discussing is what Putin’s intentions are, and what’s relevant in that context is what Putin thinks will happen if he conquers and reintegrates Ukraine. To the extent that reintegration is not a completely ridiculous notion, then it’s reasonable to assume that Putin might be willing to give it a shot.
I should also add that at one point, Chechnya was thought to be the next Russian Afghanistan. Putin went scorched earth on them, and you don’t hear much about Chechnya these days.
Bottom line, I think there’s reason to think he would not be intimidated by the notion of retaking Ukraine.
I’m rather certain that Ukraine’s population, size and location make it rather incomparable to Chechnya. But sure, maybe it’s not completely ridiculous that Putin might take a shot at it. Maybe.
I’m not convinced anybody (except Ukraine itself) would act to stop him.
I doubt that Putin has interest in annexing territory that doesn’t have a significant Russian populace and/or offer something very useful geographically. For instance, even though Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania are vulnerable to invasion, there is little to gain and much to lose for Russia by trying to conquer them, so it’s not likely he’d do that. Putin may very well try to annex Belarus and get some more of the Ukraine, but it’s not like he’s trying to Hitler Europe.
Financial reality would stop him. How much money would it cost? How long would the costs last? What income would this annexation bring?
And on the home front, how popular would a such a war be?
Russia has a very weak economy. The only way that Putin can effectively project power is through regional belligerence. He does not mind pushing his military strength around and there is sufficient support based on nostalgia for the former Greater Russia (USSR) that an attempt to grab territory populated by former Russian nationals (Eastern Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) will be well received by his supporters. Also, Putin doesn’t care about democracy, so he doesn’t need majority support. Though I believe he’ll likely have it.
Putin needs majority support amongst his oligarch alliance and the oligarchs probably like that they don’t really have to fix elections at the moment. So I don’t think a useless, expensive and unpopular war is risk free for Putin, as badass as he is.
I think that Russian oligarchs are beholden to Putin, not the other way around. They’ll do as he pleases, even if they don’t like it.