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Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

70 points| mchan | 4 years ago |economist.com

248 comments

order

tpoacher|4 years ago

From wikipedia:

Bulverism is a term for a rhetorical fallacy that combines circular reasoning and the Genetic fallacy with presumption or condescension. The method of Bulverism is to "assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error." The Bulverist assumes a speaker's argument is invalid or false and then explains why the speaker came to make that mistake (even if the opponent's claim is actually right) by attacking the speaker or the speaker's motive. The term Bulverism was coined by C. S. Lewis[1] to poke fun at a very serious error in thinking that, he alleged, recurs often in a variety of religious, political, and philosophical debates.

Similar to Antony Flew's "subject/motive shift", Bulverism is a fallacy of irrelevance. One accuses an argument of being wrong on the basis of the arguer's identity or motive, but these are strictly speaking irrelevant to the argument's validity or truth.

conradev|4 years ago

John Mearsheimer has a really great video from 6 years ago about Ukraine that I found fascinating: https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4

Basically, he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO, and he thinks it should remain a buffer state between NATO and Russia

jcranmer|4 years ago

> he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO

NATO doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO (at least, not for the foreseeable future). That's why, even now, when Ukraine is more or less begging to join NATO, NATO has done diddly squat to do so.

A lot of the pressure to join NATO within Ukraine has increased since Russia invaded Georgia and then Crimea. Russia only has itself to blame for the fact that its neighbors are terrified of Russia violating their territorial integrity and want to run as fast as possible from its sphere of influence.

rosndo|4 years ago

> Basically, he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO

This is a downright lie. Anyone who follows NATO knows that there has been very little desire to allow Ukraine to join.

unclebucknasty|4 years ago

The only way this argument makes sense is if Ukraine's sovereignty is not acknowledged.

calyth2018|4 years ago

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300259933/not-one-inch

M. E. Sarotte wrote a whole book on it.

I haven't finished reading the whole thing, but it starts with the fall of the Berlin wall, and reunification, where US and Germany figured that it was possible to have their cake and eat it - Soviet troops out of East Germany, NATO being allowed to stay, Warsaw pact falling apart, and NATO enlarging as a military alliance instead of pan-european (Atlantic to Urals) security arrangement. Russia was at its very weakest, and not in the position to object much; plus missteps by Gorbachev and Yeltsin contributed to enlargement.

You've got Yeltsin wanting Russia to join NATO, back when US enjoyed quite a bit of good will, only for them to slowly realize that plans like Partnership for Peace is meant to enlarge NATO; the US is not going to let Russia join NATO, despite some wishful-thinkng; NATO membership being dangled in front of Ukraine to encourage them to return the soviet era nukes back to Russia or have them destroyed; NATO's enlargement policies is basically neo-containment of Russia at the get-go...

I'm sure it's only going to get more colourful as the book goes on.

In any case, it's rather disingenuous for US and NATO to dangle membership to Ukraine. They know even in the 80s and 90s that Russia would strongly object to a military alliance that has Article 5 in it, not to mention a NATO member state would generally be required to have foreign troops and weapons (among other things nukes) on their soil. At the end of the day, US is probably not going to risk nuclear war over this, but at the same time, it just keeps using Ukraine to try and stick it to Russia. Regardless of what Ukraine's wishes actually are (and it's more diverse than the media generally likes to portray), realistically it's not something that Ukraine has the only say in the matter - US will continue to find any which way to further is neo-containment aims; Russia would continue to oppose that.

PedroBatista|4 years ago

What I fear for folks who watch that video, is they leave with the perception ( most came in with ) that peaceful Putin's Russia was minding their own business and one day there comes big bad NATO bully taking over the "buffer states".

At least from the late 90's on, those countries knew what's up and they tried to assure their chances of survival. OF course there are multiple interests as always but after a World War and 50 years under communism can you blame them?

The Cold War never ended, its just that one side was temporarily out of commission and the geniuses from the other side just stopped caring.

Just hope this "Ukraine is West's fault" doesn't turn into some realpolitik's version of affluent white guilt.

rapsey|4 years ago

A president with a poor approval rating and a war machine left without a war to fight make fast friends.

hogrider|4 years ago

Making it neutral would truly be the best outcome for everyone.

Day1|4 years ago

It looks more and more like this is propaganda from the US—Which is rather unfortunate for my oil holdings.

coliveira|4 years ago

This is what it looks like, especially when the US government is day and night trying to incite a war between Ukraine and Russia. Because Russia is not buying it, they are constantly "reading the mind" of the Russians and saying what they will do, even though neither Russian nor Ukraine are saying they want war.

In the end, just follow the money: if Russia enters into a war, the US is the only to benefit, the same way that in WW2 the US was the great beneficiary. It is always nice to incite wars far away from your country, when you're the main seller of weapons.

unclebucknasty|4 years ago

It looks more and more like the western world is acknowledging Russia's prior aggression in the region, and their current aggression that sees them amassing upwards of 200k troops at Ukraine's border.

Suggestions otherwise are conspicuously in-step with Russian propaganda.

ericb|4 years ago

I see in your other comments you are towing the Russian propaganda line. Your comment here didn't age well.

baremetal|4 years ago

I read this as why the economist and friends want russia to want war.

but maybe im just cynical and jaded?

drno123|4 years ago

You are not alone. The economist articles related to Russia/Ukraine for the past few weeks are pure war mongering.

elzbardico|4 years ago

This article is pure propaganda war. It is this generation's "WMDs in Iraq"

And the industrial-military complex will laugh all its way to the bank while stepping on the innocents corpses

skrebbel|4 years ago

I live under a rock, can you clarify why the Economist wants Russia to want war, and who those friends are?

unclebucknasty|4 years ago

Russia annexed Crimea and has been engaged in a proxy war in Donbas for 8 years. The Kremlin has now amassed 100K - 200K troops at Ukraine's border.

Yet, the Russian propaganda machine continues to claim it's the West that wants war.

Can you explain how the West is the aggressor here?

stefan_|4 years ago

This seems to be a popular edgy opinion but I think it's useful to occasionally remember who has thousands of soldiers massed on the border.

aww_dang|4 years ago

It is hard not to be skeptical about the drum beats for war. Pick any conflict from Vietnam to Syria/Iraq and you'll find a complicit media parroting false pretenses.

Any amount of reckoning (fact checks?) for these past incidents (dangerous misinformation?) would go a long way.

VictorPath|4 years ago

You are right. Russia is not even dignified with national interests, it is the Ukraine and "Vladimir Putin and his entourage".

rosndo|4 years ago

[deleted]

t-3|4 years ago

[deleted]

gfosco|4 years ago

I don't think you're too cynical, but we can have our own takes. From what I was able to piece together, Russia isn't the one starting this conflict, in action. It's NATO aligned countries trying to get Ukraine to join NATO. Russia made it very clear, that ain't happening and they'll go to war over it.

So who's still agitating for war?

The zero-evidence claims that Russia was about to invade sure look like pure propaganda from the same people who are thirsty for it.

bsenftner|4 years ago

"Elites have hijacked Russia and conflated the country's interests with their own"

Um... Replace "Russia" with the name of any nation on earth, and the sentence remains true.

As an individual with an Economics graduate degree, The Economist strikes me as such a flimsy propaganda rag, it's sad and pathetic it has any attention at all.

invalidname|4 years ago

Nonsesnse. That's a false equivalency.

Elites have power everywhere. True. But Russia is right now a dictatorship where the elite who kiss the ring of Putin are protected. The others get jailed or worse.

There's an inner circle that decides to go to war and can make that decision without congressional approval. They can mount false flag operations (as they are doing right now) and literally attack unprovoked against the interests of the Russian people.

throw0101a|4 years ago

See also Anne Applebaum:

> Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.

> These are big goals, and they might not be achievable. But Putin’s beloved Soviet Union also had big, unachievable goals. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors wanted to create an international revolution, to subjugate the entire world to the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately, they failed—but they did a lot of damage while trying. Putin will also fail, but he too can do a lot of damage while trying. And not only in Ukraine.

* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukra...

* https://archive.fo/bmQmO

It would also explain the Russian operations with regards to Brexit and the 2016 US election: the more chaos the West has, the better it is for Russia.

See also funding of more extreme political parties in the EU, with a focus on the far-right in recent years:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–European_Union_relation...

irthomasthomas|4 years ago

Russia has been holding the same military drills for over a decade without triggering this panic. [0]

Also, calling Ukraine a democracy is a bit of a stretch. They shut down 3 tv stations critical of the government, and imprisoned a political rival. I am sure there are people here that would love to shutdown RT, but we don't do that in a democracy.

[0] 2020: Russian Military Exercises Near Ukraine. 100 to 120 thousand troops. No WW3, no threat of nukes. https://empr.media/news/conflict-zone/russian-military-exerc...

earlier:

2016 https://www.vox.com/2016/9/1/12729426/russia-troops-ukraine-...

2017 https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2017/09/13/whats-putin-up...

2018 https://archive.is/0gqL0

2019 https://radiolemberg.com/en/ua-articles/ua-allarticles/almos...

iqanq|4 years ago

I suspect "Anne Applebaum"'s loyalty doesn't lie with America.

pbronez|4 years ago

[flagged]

ivan_gammel|4 years ago

The Economist has traditionally the worst coverage of Russia amongst Western media. To the point where it starts looking like it is something personal for the editors: always the same narrative, facts and opinions that not fit in the picture are conveniently ignored etc.

This article has a lot of pure speculations, that oversimplify the internal politics and decision making process in Russia. Yes, there’s a relatively small inner circle of people loyal to Putin and sharing his views. Yes, those views are conservative and nationalist. Are those people committed to a war and occupation of Ukraine? Unless you are reading minds you cannot be sure, and for the same reason we do not believe in the world government, it does not make sense to believe in this war conspiracy, when there are explanations of Russian strategy that do not rely on insanity.

invalidname|4 years ago

Literally everything the west said is happening before our eyes. Russia is mounting a false flag operation trying to find an "excuse" for war.

They were supposed to finish the "exercise" and instead they're adding troops. Will you "accept this as facts" when they march through the entire country or will that just be "an extended exercise". I understand it's hard to admit your own country is run by a power hungry dictator. Mine is too. It sucks.

tim333|4 years ago

> for the same reason we do not believe in the world government, it does not make sense to believe in this war conspiracy

I fail to see what the same reason is. We don't have a world government. War seems quite likely.

ener|4 years ago

I like this daily "What's in the Putin's head" guessing in the West media. The man himself stated everything 15 years ago in his Munich speech. The core problem - European security is build at the expense and against Russia. NATO expansion after USSR dissolution(which was voluntary act) is seen as proof of its hostility and having military bases of the hostile military alliance right at your borders is existential threat. It is this simple.

nextstep|4 years ago

53 points from 2 hours ago but already off the front page

This piece is clearly war mongering propaganda, but the discussion in the comments here is somewhat decent. It’s too bad HN immediately kills any concrete discussion about world events like this.

mchan|4 years ago

The comments and discussion was actually what I was interested in reading when I posted this

tim333|4 years ago

>This piece is clearly war mongering propaganda

I fail to see how it is mongering any wars. It's saying Putin may seek war but not advocating for that.

yourapostasy|4 years ago

I personally think the most concrete outcome of the current situation is that no future nation will ever give up any nuclear weapons they come into possession of without considering what appears to be the shabby precedent set by the Budapest Memorandum. As far as I can tell as a layperson, for all practical purposes NPT is dead, and smaller nations with the means and willpower shall develop their own within 2-3 generations.

Eddy_Viscosity2|4 years ago

The information war on this is already very hot. Diametrically opposed viewpoints coming from each side.

US: The russians are about to invade.

Russia: No we aren't.

Honestly, as someone on the outside of this I really have no idea what to believe. Is Putin just putting up a show of force but not actually going to pull the trigger, or is this the real deal preps for imminent invasion?

aww_dang|4 years ago

[deleted]

rdtsc|4 years ago

The scare of the attack is a great revenue generator for media companies. People in those parts are quite baffled why all of the sudden American media started caring about Ukraine. It’s not bad that they do, but it’s almost like they are goading Putin to attack.

Bloomberg even had a headline prepared that the attack already happened. Then they “accidentally” released it, and then of course, apologized. But they still got everyone’s attention.

The scare of the attack is also beneficial for the Biden administration. If Putin doesn’t attack, he will claim he saved the word from WWIII. If Putin attacks, he will say, of course he did, we told you so. But will he send American soldiers to defend Ukranians? I am guessing not. Just send few blankets and MREs.

ptr|4 years ago

Who cares what Biden will say? If Russia does something as drastic as a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, what's next? European basic security is threatened. I don't care whether something will make Biden look good or not.

wrnr|4 years ago

This article strikes me as rather uninformed

> The problem is that the same logic was just as true eight years ago when the fateful decisions were made to annex Crimea and to stir conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Crimea is the location of Russia's Black Sea navy fleet, and the population there is majority Russian speaking and sided with the pro Russian government during the Euromaidan protests.

The other day the US envoy to the UN, warned in an official speech that Russia might make the discovery of a mass grave as a casus belli for invading Ukraine, a few hours later Russia Today reported on having found a mass grave of native Russians.

This is not counter espionage, it is counter trolling, watch these joke by Putin how these scary KGB people think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0oic-ix9bM

daniel-cussen|4 years ago

So to begin with, fact, Putin is a better chess player than Biden.

You might think, oh it's just a board game, computers are better at it. You could say that.

Apparently the strategy right now is get right next to the border of Ukraine and do military exercises, then watch as NATO loses its shit with every passing second.

cainxinth|4 years ago

Part of me wonders if it’s all a ploy to drive up oil prices.

jabagigo|4 years ago

I think the question the article brings up is, why is Russia playing chess against Ukraine and other such countries?

Why isn't Russia instead building bridges, establishing stronger economic bonds, and addressing its own issues inside itself to help increase the quality of life of its people?

And they seem to answer it by saying that Putin and entourage love chess and are really good at it, that's why.

Thus the conclusion is that they are more focused on themselves then what's best for their people.

I don't know if that's true, but it's what I understood from the article.

unclebucknasty|4 years ago

So, Russia takes on a war posture. NATO naturally responds rather predictably, then Russia just pulls its troops back?

What, exactly, is the strategic advantage there?

hackeraccount|4 years ago

NATO has no de jure or de facto commitment to Ukraine. Together and individually they've said repeatedly they don't want Russia going in to Ukraine and they've offered Ukraine support both military and non-military short of an actual commitment while at the same time threatening Russia with sanctions.

What exactly is stopping Putin from acting? Every day that goes by and Putin fails to act is it better to say "NATO is losing it's shit" or "Putin is afraid to act and is trying to find a way to declare victory without the burden of acting"

tonfreed|4 years ago

Why does this feel like projection?

valyagolev|4 years ago

my favorite hot take from the economist about this war was that one article that considered if Russia might lose because the roads in Ukraine during spring are just dirty and bad

from one of the worst publications to get one’s opinions from this graduated into comedy

edit: for some people it was a serious enough proposition to entertain that i had to check and indicate that no, the analysis shows that russia won’t lose because of dirty roads

chrisseaton|4 years ago

Not sure why you think this is funny? Ground conditions are a critical factor in how Russia can use their armour.

throw3838|4 years ago

I read crazy theory conspiracy this is about destabilising EU and our energy policy. US can not put sanctions on closest allies directly (NS2), so there has to be war. Just crazy conspiracy theory though...

ComradePhil|4 years ago

Russia has absolutely nothing to gain by escalating war in Europe. America has nothing to lose. Everyone knows who wants war.

dbspin|4 years ago

Neither part of that is true. The US and the entire world economy will suffer immeasurably if there's all out war. The US will be seen as even more ineffectual internationally than it already is after Afghanistan, emboldening Chinese aggression in Taiwan and elsewhere.

Russia - lets be clear, the country that is threatening an all out invasion of a Sovereign nation it's already attacked and occupied; has the possibility of gaining territory, blocking NATO expansion, threatening it's former Warsaw Pact partners into favourable deals, gaining control over Ukraine's enormous agricultural resources, etc etc.

krzyk|4 years ago

Tell that to Crimea people.

k__|4 years ago

I would really like to know if Russia would still do it for ego reasons alone.

throwaway4good|4 years ago

For some alternative perspective - here is an analysis from Chinese government outlet Global Times:

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1252149.shtml

US needs Ukraine crisis to harm European economy, and legitimize its military presence

...

Chinese analysts said Sunday that keeping the crisis intense will benefit the US in several fields: legitimizing its military presence in Europe by demonizing Russia and poisoning Russia-EU ties, increasing uncertainties and concerns to harm the eurozone economy so there will be more capital flight from the continent to the US and thus easing the US inflation pressure, and using the tension to stir up trouble for China-Russia ties.

...

quantum_state|4 years ago

When CNN reported that neither the people in Ukraine nor people in Russia were talking about the happenings between Russia and Ukraine as much as Washington did, it is natural to ask why would Washington cares so much about things far away from home when there are plenty of urgent things to take care in the US?

pbronez|4 years ago

Lots of fun creative writing opportunities in authoritarian propaganda offices.

purple_ferret|4 years ago

Absolutely true. Similarly, US needs China to invade Taiwan and take over the whole South China Sea to justify their presence in the Far East. And who are the CCP to deny such an ambition?