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I agree with what you have said here, but I don't know if the US is in a position to turn the war around in 2024 without a huge escalation. It remains to be seen if there is any possible way to do that without "boots on the ground" (formally starting WW III) or the use of nuclear weapons (again, formally starting WW III).

There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early 2022 (too bad the Biden admin didn't do any of those), but those are gone now and Russia currently controls much of the territory they had as military objectives.

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aguaviva 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Doesn't need to be a huge escalation.

Just enough to send the tide of attrition turning slowly the other way for a while.

After which HN will instantly fill up with comments about "how badly Russia is losing", "it's clear Ukraine has already lost", and so forth.

There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early 2022

Russia never had casus belli in this conflict, and no one did anything to present it with such.

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pclmulqdq 6 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure Ukraine wins a war of attrition in any meaningful way. Russia is also shockingly good at wars of attrition, and the entire Russian economy has been built around war with the West. Ukraine is a small state in comparison, and they are running out of men, money, and munitions so fast that even tipping the scales by 10x will sink Ukraine before Russia retreats from the territory they now own. In 2022, the goal would be to make it costly to acquire territory so ideas about attrition would have worked a lot better, but it's 2024 and Russia has already grabbed the land. Someone needs to go take it back.

Here's a memo for you on Russia's causus belli. You can claim that they didn't have a legitimate one (I don't think they did), but they had one that got them enough local and international support to work in both 2014 and 2022: https://www.ponarseurasia.org/vladimir-putins-casus-belli-fo...

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n4r9 5 days ago | parent [-]

In your opinion what could Ukraine have done to avoid the causus Belli in 2022?

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pclmulqdq 5 days ago | parent [-]

The causus belli was twofold, and was aimed at the Russian people:

1. Prevention of NATO encroachment toward Russia

2. Protection of ethnic Russians in Donbas

Any and/or all of the following would have weakened or broken Putin's narrative:

1. Stop the military buildup in Donbas that had started in 2021

2. Cease admission of new NATO member states for 3-5 years

3. Stop the process of Ukraine getting closer to NATO and the EU

4. Reduce or stop US military assistance funding to Ukraine

5. Drop the Biden administration's economic sanctions of Russia

6. Continue implementation of the Minsk accords

7. Stop the planned deployments of US missiles to Ukraine

There are many more options. The US administration in 2020 was bringing Ukraine into the fold (because it wanted to be there), but that is not a recipe for peace. NATO had previously agreed not to get close to Ukraine or other states bordering Russia.

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chx 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

You would greatly benefit from watching https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcfqP0PtWDcGKIHGTTbVl...

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pclmulqdq 4 days ago | parent [-]

I tend to prefer to read documents from think tanks and professors about this conflict, but I'm sure "Sarcasmitron" has a lot to add on top of that.

	▲	talldayo 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you only listen to think tanks and professors that affirm your preconceptions then you're not educating yourself at all. Liberals fall into the same trap of denying genocides when they demand that Noam Chomsky's memoirs be the only relevant framing of geopolitics. It's a nonsense diversion, and you even added a scoop of ad-hominem on top. With credit to the parent comment, I've seen the linked video and it's both high quality and entertaining. I'd also wager it's more peer-reviewed than whatever primary sources you use, if you think NATO is the villain for offering the protection Russia's neighbors want.

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aguaviva 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The basic flaw in what you're suggesting (that the war could have been averted by mollifying Putin on the terms of his stated narrative), is that, as we both seem to agree, the stated narrative was never the real basis for his decision to invade.

Putin's actual reasons, in turn, seem to have been primarily about:

1. Securing the 3 currently (as of Feb 2022) occupied regions, especially the Crimea, for permanent annexation. Russia's position in the Crimea in particular was at the time severely compromised, due to Ukraine's shutting off of its water access. It also "needed" a land bridge (around the Azov) in order to be reasonably secure in the long term. (We put "needed" in quotes here to remind ourselves that this was the regime's internal desire, not any kind of objective or real "need"). As gravy, or as a way of offsetting the cost for the whole operation, there was also the matter of the Donbas region's significant lithium reserves (estimated at $3T).

2. Permanent deterrence of any NATO bid on Ukraine's part, likely involving some form of formal declaration of permanent neutrality (Finlandization).

3. As gravy, anything it could have also won in terms of regime change in Kyiv, preventing whatever rump state (if any) that remained in Western Ukraine from joining the EU, or simply damaging its chances for success and prosperity generally ("wrecking it", in Mearsheimer's words) would have been a very signicant plus.

The thing is, (2) by itself could have been had without resorting to a full-scale invasion. The West was eager for some kind of deal to end the 2014-2022 conflict, and having Ukraine in NATO was always optional, as far as it was concerned.

But the price for Putin -- forgoing his paramount desire for (1) -- would have been far too high. Plus he thinks of himself as a visionary leader, destined to make his mark on history, and for many years had deluded himself as to Russia's actual capabilities for military adventures of this sort.

So that's why he went "whole hog" in Feb of 2022. The main point here is that there doesn't seem to be much logic in thinking the war could have been avoided by addressing the stated narrative. When Putin's real reasons for invading, with emphasis on (1) above, would be in no way addressed by tactical appeasement of this sort.

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pclmulqdq 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think in the postmortem we will figure out that this was about #2 moreso than anything else. He wanted NATO off his doorstep but NATO kept encroaching since he did nothing every time they encroached. This is somewhat the act of a madman, but it's a response to NATO continually breaking promises.

The land bridge to Crimea is nice, too, don't get me wrong.

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aguaviva 4 days ago | parent [-]

This is somewhat the act of a madman, but it's a response to NATO continually breaking promises.

It's not, actually. The history around this is widely misunderstood.

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pclmulqdq 4 days ago | parent [-]

Putin was not in power in 1994 or 1997, and that appears to be the last time they agreed to a NATO expansion. Those were the Yeltsin years, and treating the Yeltsin and Putin administrations as though they are the same is like treating the Obama and Trump administrations as though they are the same. Enlargement of NATO kicked into high gear in the early 2000's, and Putin himself has cited NATO expansionism as a reason for this war (as well as the Georgia war and the 2014 Crimea war).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO

There is no serious analyst on this situation who thinks NATO expansion isn't at least a factor, if not the primary cause.

	▲	aguaviva 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Treating the Yeltsin and Putin administrations as though they are the same I'm not, and you're completely misreading me if you think that's what I'm saying.

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n4r9 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> he thinks of himself as a visionary leader, destined to make his mark on history

Well put. This seems to get glossed over. Putin doesn't have too many years left in good health and won't go quietly on gardening leave.

I agree with you and would also add that even if the NATO expansion argument is merely a facade, it's not the only one he has to play with.

OP mentioned protecting ethnic Russians in Donbas. Putin's narrative to Russians in fact goes much further than that: he portrays himself as reconquering and unifying the traditional Russian state. Let's not forget the speech he gave shortly after the invasion, in which he described Ukraine as an illegitimate state on Russian soil.

The other narrative he pushes is about neo-Nazis taking control of Ukraine. Iirc one of the aims of the "special operation" is to remove Nazis from the Ukrainian government. Which is obvious bollocks to us in the West, given that Zelensky himself is Jewish. But in Russia the war is successfully portrayed as a sort of rehash of WW2: soviets vs Nazis.

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chx 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> if there is any possible way to do that without "boots on the ground"

Of course there is but the Western allies are slow to arm Ukraine because they fear the Russian nuclear retaliation.

To recap, Ukraine received very few , around a hundred ATACMS missiles with severe restrictions on targets. They got less than two dozen F-16 jets. This is just nothing compared what the US might be able to send if they wanted to, they have over 300 Falcons at Davis-Monthan AFB (aka Boneyard) to begin with. There are near four thousand ATACMS missiles manufactured so far. And so on, with tanks etc.

If the "tap" were to open full stream instead of dripping, the war would be over very fast. The question is, which end would we get.