this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Question is, what options are there?
If the outcome is Ukrainian NATO membership, Russia has no motivation to accept a negotiated peace. This leaves only two options:
The West abandons Ukraine and Russia conquers all of it.
The West extremely ramps up its effort to support Ukraine, defeating Russia.
Now option 1 still ends up with the problem, that there is a direct NATO-Russia border. This flips around the threat and motivation to move it back. So now the NATO has a motivation to reconquer Ukraine, maybe in 10, maybe in 20 years.
Option 2 could end with the collapse of Russia. Then some 10.000 nuclear warheads are unaccounted for. This creates an incentive for NATO to try and put a stabilizing force into western Russia, while China would probably move in form the East. Imagine having the instability of the Middle East, but with 10.000 nuclear warheads...
A properly armed and neutral Ukraine with full territorial integrity including Crimea seems to be the best way to create stable security architecture.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with NATO sharing a border with Russia. NATO is a defense pact. It won't invade Russia to "stabilise" or for anything else. It's all right there in the NATO charter.
In fact NATO has shared a border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad for decades. And there haven't been any problems. More recently, NATO member Finland has a land border of many hundreds of kilometers with Russia's mainland territory. That doesn't seem to be hurting anyone or anything, except perhaps Mr. Putin's ambitions to one day reconquer Finland.
Edit: I forgot the Baltics! How could I forget NATO members Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (since 2004)?
Don't worry. Everyone does.
Fun fact: The border is essentially unmanned on the Russian side, they moved pretty much everyone to Ukraine. Doesn't look like they're expecting to be invaded. You may or may not be interested in what military installations exist up on the Kola peninsula and how many roads and rail lines go south.
Aaah, so maybe Finland could take the opportunity to reverse russia's salami land grab tactics used in recent past.
Old border fence, suspiciously new post feet. Everybody's bored on sunday morning anyway, why not?
I believe part of joining NATO was settling those claims and giving up on retaking that territory by force.
No force required, just you know, push those border booths a bit while no ones looking ;)
(But of course, you are most likely right)
Every military pact is a "defense pact". And no country with "superpower" or "regional power" ambition accepts another power right on its doorsteps.
I think the best historical example of the 20th century is the Cuban missile crisis. NATO-Nukes in Turkey, Warsaw-Pact-Nukes in Cuba. Both sides feeling threatened. The solution was to remove both missile threats.
And Finland now sharing a border with Russia certainly is not going to make them more fine with NATO in Ukraine. That is not how geopolitics work.
Lol sure buddy.
So let's arm Ukraine to their teeths and see the russian "empire" crumble. It's overdue anyway.
Incoming: WW3!!!
Did you even read what i wrote?
There is a fundamental difference between arming a country and permanently integrating it into one geopolitical side. If you are so eager to fight in a war Ukraine can use every fighter. But it is always easy to call for other people to go to war isn't it?
Why would Ukraine need to be neutral? Russians have shown themselves to be hostile and don't respect neutrality. So fuck em.
Also the "oh you want Ukraine in NATO? Then go fight there yourself!!!!!" Is such a fucking obvious russian shill line repeated over and over and over again.
Neutral Ukraine would mean a buffer between Russia and NATO. Russia claims it feels threatened by NATOs expansion to the East. While it is understandable for countries to prefer being in NATO over under Russian influence, that is how geopolitical security works. The US would never accept say Mexico to join a Russian or Chinese military pact.
There is only two ways to get Russia out of Ukraine:
Either defeat them and drive them out, or negotiate for them to withdraw.
The latter wont happen with categorically demanding Ukraine to join NATO. The first needs much more Western support, in particular more soldiers to fight the war. When you exclude negotiating, not being willing to support your demand of fighting with your own capabilities is cynical. And that also goes to show how the support so far worked. Making grand statements, but when it came to actually giving what was necessary to Ukraine to defend itself, the West always fell short. If Ukraine had gotten proper equipment right away, the war could be over with a military win of Ukraine. Now to not only hold the line, but push back Russia, Ukraine needs far far more support, that the West is clearly not willing to give.
I want a strong Ukraine with fully territorial integrity. Maybe this can be negotiated as the costs of the war for Russia keep increasing. But this needs to offer Russia an out. Denying that out means the only two options left are a military win or military defeat of Russia. Either will be incredibly costly for Ukraine.
And I don't give two shits about buffers. Russia started this mess, let them sort it out. Russia claims a lot of shit but the reality is - they are the agressors. They had every chance of enjoying free trade, peaceful coexistence but they chose war. So now they get fucked over it. And they deserve every single second of it happening to them. Russia will fracture into a million pieces. They are getting desperate. And you don't win with "desperate" by appeasing those assholes and giving them a second chance to invade in 5 years. 40% of GDP spent on war, and they're still unable to do shit.
I like how you talk about it as if it's about game pieces on a game board. What about the people from Ukraine? How about letting them decide on which "geopolitical side" they want to live?
Which is why someone in Finland shouldn't be making statements limiting Ukraines decision space. If Ukranians decide to continue the war so they can join NATO, then that is their decision and should be supported.
This brings us back to the problem that the Western support has been lacking and now with Trump becomes even more lackluster. But the West cannot withdraw military support while demanding Ukraine to continue fighting.
As it stands Ukraine will be delivered to the Russian slaughter instead of working on actual solutions.
I read you talking about establishing a buffer zone between Russia and NATO. If this isn't limiting Ukraine's decision space over the head of Ukrainians, what is?
Ukraine, with its 1991 border in NATO!
Russia gets denuclearisation.
World peace follows.
And how would "properly armed" be different to NATO? Putin wants Ukraine to be demilitarized. The options for actual reliable self defense for Ukraine are either NATO membership or a nuclear arsenal.
Nukes are one option. Otherwise giving Ukraine the ability to rebuild its military and arsenal, in particular defensive weapons like Anti-Air and Anti-Missile capabilities.
A Ukraine with nukes is as bad for Russia as a Ukraine in NATO. Russia wants to rule again over "its" (aka Soviet) lost "sphere of influence". This is textbook imperialism and if that's what you want to defend here, fine. Just don't expect me to agree.
Worse for Russia I'd argue. A NATO member state still lays under the pressure of political power of the pact. Ukraine armed with nukes is something that could go south with a future leadership change for the worse. And despite all the propaganda, Russia very well knows that they aren't actually threatened by NATO - at least for as long as they don't attack member states, which is where the issue lies. They want Ukraine, that's why they don't want them in NATO. Can't invade and annex them anymore once they're part of the pact.
..which is why we urgently need to dump the general rule of "frozen conflicts prevent accession into NATO" and change them into tailormade agreements. Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine: so far, Russia has an incentive for frozen conflicts to steer these countries on the course it wants. We should no longer allow this.
I mean... North Macedonia joined NATO in 1995.
The EU accepts countries with border disputes into the union (in fact there's a couple very fun ones between member states, generally low-intensity though, e.g NL and DE even agreed to disagree in perpetuity), the EU is also a defensive pact, trouble being getting into the EU is quite a bit harder than getting into NATO: Vastly stricter rule of law and democracy standards, on top of that trade integration, economics and everything.
OTOH the EU is also not above creating new ad-hoc treaty structures with unimaginative names so a... DCENSV, "Deep and Comprehensive European Neighbourhood Security Vehicle" is absolutely within the realm of possibilities. People are basically waiting for Trump to move while preparing responses for every scenario, very little if any of this kind of preparation will reach the public eye.
Your option 1 would mean that Russia is going to attack the next country.
Addition: Russia must be defeated and pay for Ukraine's reconstruction, Putin and possibly other war criminals face prosecution, Ukraine's future is in Nato and EU.
Which country would that be? Russia is not going for a direct confrontation with NATO as it would loose that for sure.
If they get Ukraine they would turn it into a compliant regime as a buffer zone. Using its war-economy is far more profitable in enforcing access to natural resource in Asia or Africa, rather than go to war with Poland or Finland.
Why then is Russia so heavily involved in creating disinformation and helping socially weak, pro-autocratic, isolationist leaders gain power in the West? They are trying to divide and conquer EU and US, because Russian military and economic power wouldn't be enough to take on a united EU/US.
And note that I said economic power as well. Despite present-day Russia being a glorified petrol station to the world, they are trying to realize their "Eurasia" trade zone.
They aren't strong enough to take on each separately, either. For Russia to attain their coveted superpower status they'd need to stop fucking around and actually invest in themselves. They do have more than enough land and resources, they have a reasonably well-educated population, it wouldn't take that long trouble is they're a kleptocracy and the chief kleptocrat thinks being a superpower is measured in land mass.
My point is they're strong enough to take on smaller individual EU countries with military force. And they can gain mindshare in bigger European countries.
I don't think they're deluded enough to think they can gain a permanent mental grip over the US, but that's irrelevant to their territorial plans anyway.
The EU is a defensive pact in itself and while "defend our brothers" sentiment is not tightly woven, there's a tripwire cascade. You cannot attack Estonia without every single Finn being personally offended, and you cannot separate Finland and Sweden in military matters, the list goes on and on. The effect flattens out the further away you get but you'd be hard-pressed to find a member thinking twice about sending arms and MREs. Poland would have boots on the ground before Spain gets the call.
Estonia. The fuck has Estonia ever done to anyone. They're essentially a mascot of the EU: Them being, willingly, part of the pack is witness to the EU actually being a post-colonial project. They're way too precious to be left hanging. I can't even bring myself to make an alcoholism joke right now.
This is what everyone was saying looking at those 100kish Russian soldiers at the Ukrainian border at the beginning of 2022. "They won't do it, that is not enough men".
And who says it is going to be a open escalation? Remember Crimea? Hacking attacks? Russia is all about destabilisation just below the threshold of clear and open aggression. Them stirring up some bullshit in for example Narva will put the west to the test. And I'm sure there will be a lot of voices on our side warning against an open conflict with Russia just because they seized a small border town in a small country.
It's the same as in Ukraine: if Putin has enough reason to believe it might work, he will try it.
I live in one country that could be next. Putin already has useful idiots here daying thay we should leave NATO. Putin also tried to push for these countries thay used to be in the Russian sphere of influence not to be in NATO.
You make one step back and Putin makes two forward.
Russia has very few regional bases of power. Most of Russia is controlled by the Kremlin pretty directly and the parts of Russia lacking direct control also lack nukes. So the most likely option is a bit of maybe even violent infighting in the Kremlin and then the victor rules Russia. The Kremlin would also control nukes, so China is unlikely to invade.
Speaking of nukes, there are 8 launch sites for ICBMs, 3 nuclear submarine naval bases with nukes and two air bases with long range bombers aremed with nukes. So 13 locations need to be controlled. That seems rather possible to me. So honestly I doubt it will be too bad.
Ukraine has seen what the Russians are willing to do to Ukraine, so they themself will try to become part of NATO or the EU as much and as soon as possible. So it is pretty much NATO/EU or Ukraine building nukes, probably even both.
Russia would be weakend and needs some time to rebuilt. A defeat would mean that reconstruction period would take a long time. Looking at demographics and Russias economy maybe never.
Do I smell Vodka there?
To you maybe. To Russia, no way.
There's always option 3, which is to allow Russia to continue conquering smaller countries unchecked, which won't work out well for Europe, but has precedent. Kicking the problem along to the future seems to be the status quo these days.