I wrote this quickly. It may contain errors. Please correct them in the comments after reading this post's special commenting guidelines.


You should ignore the news unless it's of historic import. Russia's invasion of Ukraine constitutes an event of historic import.

Interstate conflicts are inherently political. Politics is a delicate topic on Less Wrong because political topics tend to trigger tribal impulses. Arguments-as-soldiers are symbiotic with soldiers-as-arguments.

I'm writing about this topic because it's at the intersection of two topics dear to my heart: ① responding to rare events ② operating in a hostile informatic environment.

These are our players (in descending order of importance):

  • Russia (including its ally Belarus)
  • Ukraine
  • European Union + Britain
  • United States
  • China

China

China doesn't care what happens to Ukraine. China primarily cares about preserving its trade relationships with Russia and the West. China would prefer not to impose sanctions on Russia because sanctions are expensive.

The United States

The United States prefers that Ukraine remain out of Russian hands, but the United States cares more about the rise of China than Russia's fading empire. The United States just pulled out of Afghanistan. The United States does not want to get bogged down in another land war in Eurasia.

The United States has provided something around $2 billion in military aid to Ukraine since 2014. A couple billion dollars isn't nothing, but it's insignificant compared to Russian might.

The United States is not committed to defending Ukraine the way it is committed to defending Taiwan, Japan and NATO members. The United States does not plan to use its own troops to defend Ukraine.

The European Union + Britain

The European Union and Britain are allied with the United States. They would prefer Ukraine to stay out of Russian control but don't care enough to deploy their own troops in combat roles against Russia.

Thus, the European Union's (and Britain's) primary option is sanctions. But the European Union and its allies have already been imposing sanctions on Russia for its actions in Crimea since 2014. Putin has already demonstrated that this level of sanctions will not stop his actions in Ukraine.

Europe (especially Germany) is dependent on energy imports from Russia. Europe ramping up sanctions against Russia would damage the European economy and industry in the short term.

Too little, too late. The European Union does not have the will to stop Russia. Britain, alone, is too weak to act without the European Union. (Except—possibly—by threatening a nuclear attack on Moscow, which they are not going to do to protect a non-NATO state.)

I am making no claims to whether the European Union and Britain should or should not stop Russia from invading Ukraine. It is none of my business. I'm just saying that if you live in Ukraine then you should not count on much more support from the EU than from the US.

Ukraine

The Ukrainian government will fight a total war to defend its sovereignty. It has issued an emergency order allowing its people to buy firearms (they were not, previously, legal to own) but it has not trained its people in guerrilla warfare.

Russia

Putin is committed to invading Ukraine.

The War

There is probably going to be a war. Ukraine is probably going to lose. The question is how much, how quickly and on what terms.

Eastern Ukraine is a flat plain contiguous with Russia. If you just look at troop counts then Ukraine would seem to have a chance against Russia. But Russia has superiority of aircraft and heavy weapons. Russia will conquer Eastern Ukraine. The Russian Armed Forces is among the three most capable militaries in the world. The Ukrainian military isn't.

If you live in Ukraine then you might have faith in your government to defend your borders. Don't. Governments consistently lie about how "we will win the war" until days (or hours) before enemy forces march into your city. It happened in World War I. It happened in Nanking in 1937. It happened in Kabul in 2021. It will happen in Ukraine (if it hasn't already).

This is not a criticism of Ukraine in particular. I know little about Ukraine. This is a statement about governments in general, across history. You should expect your government to lie to you and the news to mislead you.

I responded appropriately to COVID because I took extreme measures when everyone in my neighborhoood was acting as if nothing was amiss. You should do the same. Don't be afraid of looking stupid. Be afraid of you and your family dying for stupid reasons.

If you live in Eastern Ukraine, the best time to flee is weeks ago. The second-best time is now. Romania is willing to accept half a million refugees.

Maybe you'd prefer to live under Russian occupation amidst a Ukrainian insurgency and a Russian counter-insurgency than to flee your home. If so that's your choice. But don't just assume everything's going to continue as normal and be okay.

World War III

Three days ago a friend send me a text "It's likely WWIII Eve". I'm not worried about WWIII because the United States, European Union and Britain are not committed to an escalation of direct conflict with Russia the way they were during the Cold War. If their positions change then I will worry.

Commenting Guidelines

In the case of cold strategic analysis, you are actively encouraged to point out anywhere you think I might be wrong. My guidelines about speaking in the positive are temporarily suspended.

But any discussion of justice, morality and which side is "right" will be crushed with an iron fist. Advocating what policies democratic governments (especially Western powers) "should" take is similarly off-limits.

Russia has Invaded Ukraine
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One major point I think is under-discussed is what this means for nuclear proliferation.

Ukraine used to possess nuclear weapons, but agreed to give them up in exchange for promises of protection from the US and Russia.

With this plus the fall of Gaddafi in Libya a while back, it's hard to see a result that isn't 'everyone wants to get nuclear weapons ASAP, and no-one wants to give them up.'  If promises of protection in exchange for nonproliferation aren't upheld, there's very little incentive for nonproliferation.

Apparently, in one important sense this isn't true: they physically possessed the weapons, but not the capacity to do anything with them.
[I have no personal knowledge on this - just something I bumped into today, but it seems credible]
[EDIT: the point about non-upholding of protection agreements stands; I just wanted to clarify what "possess nuclear weapons" meant in this context]

Apparently, in one important sense this isn't true: they physically possessed the weapons, but not the capacity to do anything with them.

That's an important point.

However, I believe that a highly industrialized nation with modern nuclear weapons (but without the launch codes) would have had the capacity to do something with them. Using the weapons grade material (not only the fissible material, also the electronics etc) and using the weapons as prototypes for designing warheads should have had the potential to greatly accelerate a nuclear weapons program.

So, in a way this case is quite similar to Gaddafi's - not giving up a functional nuclear arsenal (only South Africa has done that up to now, and I don't think there will be a second case any time soon) but giving up the potential for a nuclear weapons program.

The most interesting thing out of this is Russia's threat to pull out of New START in retaliation for US sanctions, as well as Biden's decision to cut off arms control talks. Pulling out all the stops on the US-Russia nuclear competition is dangerous enough already, but this will most likely kick off a renewed all-out three-way nuclear arms race, which is of course less strategically stable than the bilateral nuclear dynamic during the Cold War. China is already expanding its nuclear arsenal to parity, which if New START were still in effect, would've been 1500 deployed warheads (incidentally today the first silo field seems to have finished construction ahead of schedule). The US had hoped to rope China into its bilateral arms control agreements with Russia; well, now there'd be nothing left to rope into.

3Nanda Ale
  Interesting analysis from a Twitter thread. You may want to view the original, as I am only quoting the text and many of the Tweets use an external link for more context: https://twitter.com/ProfTalmadge/status/1496837475901362180
1dadadarren
It may not cause too great an impact. Everyone might want to have it. But at what cost? All Big Fives are roughly in the same trench in controlling the spread of nuclear weaponry. There are really very few countries that are in a delicate enough position to be able to develop them without facing dire consequences. Even then, they are only fission weapons. Thermal nuclear weapons are still Big Five exclusive. (I think India claim to have it, but the test yield is not conclusive) Interestingly, only about a month before the current war, all Big Five made a joint statement on preventing nuclear war and avoiding arms races. 
1arunto
North Korea's test on 3 September 2017 could have been thermonuclear, too (BBC). Of course, even if true, that does not mean that they have successfully weaponized it yet. But North Korea being able to do that would lead me to updating the probability of other countries being able to develop thermonuclear weapons.

Metaculus had only a 8% chance of "Russian Troops in Kyiv in 2022" as late as Feb 11. (It's now at 97%.) Why did everyone do so badly on this prediction?

Speaking from ignorance: this prediction failure seems (from my ignorant perspective) similar to forecasting failures in Brexit and in the Trump 2016 election, in that it’s a case where some force whose motives are unlike Western academia/elites was surprising to them/us. If so, the moral might be to study the perspectives, motives, and capabilities of forces outside the Western elite on their own terms / by cobbling together an inside view from primary sources, rather than looking via Western experts/media (though this is much harder).

To what extent are there people who visibly made good predictions here beforehand? It seems worth compiling them. I appreciate cmessinger’s comment.

9FireStormOOO
In this vein, here's someone calling the situation we're seeing shortly after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.  Basic premise being that great power competition is alive and well, and the US and European leaders trying to tell themselves it's dead are consistently confused.  Title aside I would not describe his talk as assigning blame - more that the US had a great hand after the collapse of the USSR and has played it poorly.  I found a few talks from this guy, and they've all aged remarkably well.
7RHollerith
A LW post predicted a Feb invasion back in Dec: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QEsqKFabffwKXAPso/ Years ago, many politicians and professors of international relations predicted a strong Russian response to talk of admitting Ukraine into NATO: https://nitter.net/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592#m
[-]lc390

Even the honest-to-god financial markets did badly on this prediction. The moment Russia started invading, MOEX and oil prices had wild shocks, as if something unexpected had happened, even though we already had abundant ahead-of-time warnings about their attack from U.S. intelligence. My suspicion is that everyone, including market analysts, expected Russia to simply annex the seperatist eastern terrority of Donbas. They expected the war to end quickly and with little bloodshed, and for the Ukrainian government to capitulate. The presumption was that they'd be fighting over a small separatist province, and it would have made sense - Putin gets what he wants, which is to look powerful, and he can come back again in 5-10 years for another piece.

Instead, Putin has chosen to do something insane - he is forcing his armed forces to attack and at least temporarily occupy the entirety of Ukraine, including Kyiv, Lziz, and Odessa. These are centers of the Ukrainian resistance that nobody, not even a brainwashed Russian populace, could possibly believe are secretly interested in unification. Maybe he underestimated the response or maybe he doesn't care, but now western countries are thinkin... (read more)

3ryan_b
I wonder if in the aftermath we will be able to decipher the scope of the increase in risk, financially, between the separatist-territories and full-invasion scenarios. I imagine this is questions like $ of assets destroyed or put offline, in addition to the question of sanctions.
-4[anonymous]
Or perhaps Putin has a more accurate world-model and correctly predicted that the world will just sit and watch? Could change any moment of course, but at least thus far it seems he's right about Western threats of severe sanctions being hollow.
7Alaric
I think about several reasons: 1. Mistakes about the magnitude of the power centralization in Russia. I don't know how it was perceived in other countries but in Russia there were many debates about how many powers belongs to Putin himself. Real process of decision-making was hidden and people had different hypotheses about it. Many people thought about Putin as an arbiter between oligarchs/other forces or as first among peers. As far as I understand last week broadcast from Russian Security Council was very surprising for many people. Openly Putin practically humiliated some high officials (especially Chief of Intelligence Service). 2. Mistakes about Putin's motives. I think a problem is a changing in Putin. In the beginnings of his rule Putin demonstrated that he is very pragmatic. He said words which sounds very reasonably. He very rare did something non-reversible. I think all missed a moment when this was changed. 3. I suppose people underestimate the magnitude of Russian intelligence service degradation. I think in Russian defense agencies people were used to say things which their superiors wants to hear. I think Putin understands Ukrainians very inadequately because he read many reports which only confirm his point of view.
7ryan_b
My baseline assumption for this is that everyone always does badly on these kinds of predictions. This frequently includes highly trained defense analysts with access to privileged information sources. I suspect, at a gut level, that this is mostly because markets and crowds work on publicly available information and national security is pretty much the foremost subject for inside-view information being kept from the public.

I saw people discussing forecasting success of this on twitter and people were saying that the intelligence agencies actually called this right. Does anyone know an easy link to what those agencies were saying?

Context: https://twitter.com/ClayGraubard/status/1496699988801433602?s=20&t=mQ8sAzMRppI8Pr44O38M3w

https://twitter.com/ClayGraubard/status/1496866236973658112?s=20&t=mQ8sAzMRppI8Pr44O38M3w
 

3lc
The thing about intelligence agencies is that they are really good at insider trading.
-8[anonymous]

My baseline assumption for this is that everyone always does badly on these kinds of predictions. This frequently includes highly trained defense analysts with access to privileged information sources.

I don't think this answers the question. 8% is an awfully strong prediction. Your meta-point is public info. People who honor your meta-point could make a killing in markets as badly miscalibrated as this one. That would make it profitable for people to correct the markets.

So the question stands:

WTF?

4ryan_b
How can we expect well-calibrated markets on questions with so few events? It appears to me there is a ceiling on how good we can expect calibration to be here, and it is much lower than the average Metaculus question. Of course, reflecting on this suggests to me we should be able to take a serious crack at the answer after this one, with more to follow afterward.
2RyanCarey
Off the top of my head, maybe it's because Metaculus' presents medians, and the median user neither investigates the issue much, nor trusts those who do (Matt Y, Scott A) and just roughly follows base rates. I also feel there was some wishful thinking, and that to some extent, the fullness of the invasion was at least somewhat intrinsically surprising.
5RyanCarey
Another possibility is that most people were reluctant to read, summarise, or internalise Putin's writing on Ukraine due to finding it repugnant, because they aren't decouplers.
2ryan_b
A second observation: How is this prediction inconsistent with a combination of these two beliefs: * The Russians are unlikely to invade, and in that case the probability of Russian troops in the capital is ~0 * In the counterfactual case where the Russians do invade, the probability of Russian troops in the capital is ~1 For example, Metaculus has a 97% chance of Russians in Kyiv, but a Russian invasion at all before 2023 is at 96%:
4ryan_b
Welp, I was wrong: the Feb 11 shows a 45% likely invasion before 2023, which is not consistent with the won't-invade scenario I proposed. It is consistent with a moderate expectation of another Crimea level event, but not a full-scale invasion. Do we have a way of determining if the same participants are betting across multiple of these questions, or if the answerers are mostly unique?

Know any good source on why Putin wants to invade Ukraine? I have yet to hear a theory which sounds like how the real world works, and absent that it's hard to guess how anything will play out past the next month-or-so.

Current thoughts on Russian military objectives, based on comment threads here and my own general models...

  • Multiple people mentioned that annexation is an unlikely objective for Putin.
  • Putin could install a puppet government, and then leave. I expect that would be highly unstable; it would only be a matter of time until the Ukrainian populace overthrew a puppet government without a Russian occupation to back it.
  • Putin could install a puppet government, and then set up a long-term occupation. This is the "Russia's Iraq/Afghanistan" scenario. Again, I doubt that it would be stable long-term, although with state media trying to make the war look good to the Russian populace it could remain popular for a while.
  • Putin could dictate terms with the pre-existing Ukrainian government, then leave once a treaty is signed. At a minimum, that treaty would probably include abandoning claim to the predominantly-Russian territories of Ukraine, promising not to join Nato, and probably various other things, with an emphasis on symbolic victories for Russia. This is the most stable outcome I see at the moment, and is probably what I'd be aiming for if I were Putin right now.
  • Putin might not have an exit
... (read more)
9ReverendBayes
My best guess is very similar to you fourth scenario. I think, that one of the main Putin's goal (maybe his very terminal goal, but I'm not sure) is to solve the Ukrainian problem, and then quit the game as a triumphant (after president's election at 2024; but he has option to continue work on it until 2030, if he choose so and nothing changes significantly). Putin's time is relatively short - he is 69 years old, and there are some rumors (not very reliable, thought) that he is somehow sick. So achieving his main goal in two years is very preferably to him, but there are still another six president's years, if he need it and can afford it. Ukraine is one of few ex-USSR republics that is not loyal to Putin's government, and he obviously perceive that as a big problem. So the main Putin's current goal, as far as I can assume, is to create artificial loyal states (on the basis of pretending to independence Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast of Ukraine) between Russia and NATO. There are already couple of such states with limited recognition around Russia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are commonly recognized as parts of Georgia), so it is appropriate way for Putin to create a buffer zone. Installing a puppet government at the Ukraine, as far as I can see, is the secondary goal, but also desired. Speaking of price of the invasion in terms of Russian economics, there is Russian National Wealth Fund, which continuously grew up during almost all COVID pandemic. There were thoughts earlier, that this NWF was intended for possible war (especially considering, that pandemic was not reason to spend it). Today I say news, that government is planning to spend it to support the economics (personally, I consider it as a relatively good sign - if they started to spend the stock for a rainy day then they currently do not plan to escalate current situation even further).
4ryan_b
There are a few dimensions in my general models that have a bearing on the short-term v long-term question, though I am deeply uncertain how they actually shake out. The two that are top-of-mind right now are: 1. Personal incentives. The background for this is the importance of oligarchs to the conduct of Russian affairs, and the significance of members of this group to Putin specifically. Sanctions from the Crimea affair very publicly took aim at (what were believed to be by the sanctioners) the personal fortunes of people judged important to Putin on the theory that they would apply pressure to him so they could recover their wealth. Several of these oligarchs are involved in things like the natural gas pipeline which goes through Ukraine, and other questions of trade between Russia and Europe. It seems plausible to me that one of the payoffs Putin expects is effectively being able to distribute opportunities here to his key supporters as spoils, and probably also profit from them himself. To the extent this is personal profit it is short term; to the extent that it is satisfying key political allies it is long term. 2. Avoid Eurocentrism or: China. The dimension I want to emphasize here is great power competition in Asia, as distinct from trade relations or diplomacy which are the key concerns for the US and Europe. In particular I point to the Belt and Road Initiative as something designed to bring areas which were traditionally under the political/economic influence of Russia under the political/economic influence of China instead. I cannot claim this directly, but it seems deeply plausible to me that Putin or his cohort judge an increasing China as a bigger threat than Europe, and being a junior economic power on all sides is viewed as intolerable. It is worth pointing out that while I think that Russia is the biggest loser in China's rise, I don't see anything about this from the nominal experts. It just appears inevitable to me

My working theory is that Putin could be worried about some kind of internal threat to himself and his power.

He's betting a lot on his image of strong, dangerous leader to keep afloat. However the Russian constant propaganda that keeps up that image was starting to be more and more known and ineffective. 

Europe also has been trying to get rid of Russian influence through gas for a while, and would likely have managed in a few more years. Then they'd be free to be less accepting of his anti-human rights antics.

Ukraine joining Nato would have made him look extremely weak, and it would have made it easier to make him look weak in the future.

 

Once his strong image faded he might have been worried of reforming forces within Russia to manage oust him out of office with an actual election and mass wide protests if the ball got rolling enough, or he might be worried about someone taking a more direct approach to eliminate him (he killed enough people to be extremely worried about being murdered, I think).

 

So this is his extreme move to deny weakness. Better to be seen as the tyrant who's willing to do anything if provoked, than the ex-strong leader who can be taken out of office.

4Константин Токмаков
It sounds realistic.
2ChosunOne
This is more or less what Kasparov believed back in 2015: 

You can read Putin's own words on the topic.

That definitely matches my models of things-Putin-would-say on the topic, independent of his actual motivations.

For what it's worth, I wrote a Twitter thread which attempted to piece together a partial theory.

"The Russian public really likes this invasion" is definitely one of the higher-prior hypotheses, good to know that it lines up with the data.

Assuming that is the main driver, the obvious next line of thought is that a few years down the line Russia will likely be in the same sort of quagmire occupation that the US was in with Iraq and Afghanistan, Russian public opinion will turn strongly against, and Russia will have to back out and Putin will lose a lot of popularity. Presumably this possibility is obvious to Putin (I have no impression that he's an idiot), so either he's making very aggressive short-term-over-long-term political tradeoffs, or for some reason he thinks an occupation of Ukraine won't be an obvious giant mess. Some possibilities:

  • State-controlled media changes the problem (compared to the Iraq/Afghanistan versions) - maybe Putin does expect the occupation to be a giant mess, but thinks that won't be obvious to the Russian public.
  • Putin expects to be able to leverage the short-term political gains for other long-term political wins which will outweigh the long-term political costs-to-Putin of the war.
  • Putin is getting old, and has abandoned long-term plans.
  • Putin expects an occupation of Ukraine to be easy??

I'm from Russia. The issue of war splits our society. Young people and intellectuals are mostly against the war, anti-war rallies were held today in most major cities of Russia. But the older generation (conservatives) mostly support the war, some even speak out for the complete annexation of Ukraine (this is hardly possible in reality).
Written with the help of an online translator, my English is very bad, there may be mistakes.

Thanks, this is very helpful and whatever translator you're using works great.

Thank you for your input. The readership here skews hard toward Europe/America. I appreciate your addition of a voice from Ukraine/Russia.

By the way, your online translator works great.

The link here was posted in the chat of the translation group of Yudkovsky's articles about AI. Your post was interesting.

Among those supportive of the war, what do they want from it? Why do they want to invade?

In Russia, extremely many are dissatisfied with the collapse of the USSR and the deprivation of Russia's superpower status, therefore they support the return of the former territories or at least political influence on them. In 2014, I also fervently supported the return of Crimea, where almost the entire population is Russian, although I hated Putin. But this was followed by a protracted economic crisis, a drop in household incomes, so now support for Putin's actions is less than at that time.

Opinions of few people from Kyrgyzstan, middle age+

Nobody understands why this invasion started (this seem to be true for Russians too), did not want Russia to invade, scared and disheartened by war. Many have relatives in Ukraine. But! Suspect some unknown reasons for this to happen, probably intel on NATO deployment (Invasion seems rushed, but I'd consider it weak evidence - numbers of alternative explanations.)

Also a bit of clarification on 2014 popularity: it was invasion semantically but casualties extremely low, while right now we are looking at rivers of blood. Wonder how Russian population reacting.

3[anonymous]
Evidence?
5Boris Kashirin
"looking at" as in "anticipate"

In addition to Konstantin words. Many conservators in Russia honestly believe that USA/NATO want to destroy Russia and to seize Russian resources. They don't think that Ukraine and Ukrainians are the agents. They believe that Ukrainians are the pawns of the West. They think that Russian army are saving Ukrainian people from NATO agents and crazy Ukrainian nationalists.

A decline to accept the agency of opponents is very common for Kremlin propaganda and Kremlin supporters.

2Константин Токмаков
Hello there! Will you translate something else?   And yes, even commentators with a different point of view in Runet are called paid.
8jaspax
Honest question: why is annexation judged to be impossible? I know nothing about Russia's internal politics, and only a little about Ukraine's but directly annexing conquered Ukrainian territory seems like a completely natural outcome to me.
9Kaj_Sotala
Maybe not impossible, but very hard: (source)
5Константин Токмаков
In Ukraine, the majority will not vote for joining Russia. It is impossible to preserve even the visible legitimacy of such an annexation. When Crimea was annexed, the majority voted for joining Russia. In Luhansk and Donetsk (two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine), the majority voted for independence from Ukraine. These referendums are not recognized by most countries, but there is no doubt about the reality of such sentiments of the local population. It won't work that way with the rest of Ukraine.
1[anonymous]
Nothing impossible, just less politically convenient than installing a puppet regime. A mere change of hats.
3jwpapi
I think Putin will not overtake Ukraine and just install a new government that guarantees that it won’t join the NATO.

Putin himself? His explicitly stated ambition is to reclaim all of the former USSR. Why should we not believe it? Ukraine is the first step. Why should we not expect more of the same?

Putin has also threatened "consequences greater than any you have faced in history" if the West intervenes. What can this mean but nuclear weapons?

If he goes after the Baltic states next, merely being members of NATO will not protect them. What will protect them is NATO actually going to war with Russia over them, despite Putin's threats.

Check Dugin's The Foundations of Geopolitics. I've posted some translated excerpts here on fb

Also: when it comes to world-modelling, you may disagree with Dugin on his view of geopolitics, but that's not really important for the explanation. It's enough that Putin's actions make sense in Putin's models. Given that the book has been highly predictive of Putin's foreign policy over the past 20 years, it seems that the simplest explanation is that Putin is at least partially thinking in those terms.  In Dugin's model of geopolitics, invasion is necessary and has long-term goals. 
 

4CraigMichael
You were ahead of the curve here.
6kjz
This article by Tomas Pueyo looks at Russia from a historical and geographical perspective. It makes the case that much of Russia's foreign policy is based on the need to protect Moscow, which is in the middle of the vast Eurasian plain with no natural barriers for defense, and so is vulnerable to attack from all directions. So Russia's strategy has been to expand as much as possible, to either control directly the land where invasions might have otherwise come from (e.g. Siberia), or failing that, to at least create predictably controllable buffer states (the former Soviet republics) between them and their rivals. From that perspective, Ukraine may have been becoming too unpredictable as a buffer state recently, giving Russia an incentive to want to control the land directly.

I like a lot of things about this article - it is a high-effort piece, and the graphics are helpful and relevant. That being said, the author is relying on a bunch of conventional-wisdoms that turn out to be false and as a result, the article essentially raises the defense-in-depth point without having any persuasive power.

A central confusion is rivers, which the article treats as a dealbreaker for commerce to and from Siberia but as not existing for military purposes or commerce with Europe. Rivers are major physical obstacles to cross, and often a major transport advantage to follow, so they are extremely militarily important.

Sidenote: there is a close link between commerce and military activity, on account of both requiring the movement of stuff from A to B. Given no other information, ease-of-invasion should be ranked according to the volume of commerce between two locations.

There are several outright historical errors, such as cavalry being obsolete with the appearance of gunpowder because of guns stopping charges.

The point about different ethnicities is raised without being connected to anything else, and then the claim is made that this requires authoritarian government beca... (read more)

6ztzuliios
I've been trying to think of this too. It seemed like Putin already had everything he could have wanted with a frozen conflict in Ukraine, preventing it from joining NATO. This is what I've come up with: * Ukraine might have still been able to join the EU, which would mean an attack on Ukraine would activate the EU defensive alliance, which would in turn activate NATO. I'm not sure how realistic this was. * Ukraine might have been admitted to NATO anyway, with the ongoing conflict. This seems unlikely. * Ukraine might have been able to defeat the Russian army in a conventional war over just the DPR/LPR, likely in a blitz that would leave it without the breakaway republics. If Ukraine accepts the loss of Crimea, this would allow it to join NATO. Picture the Armenian-Azerbaijani war, but between Ukraine and Russia, with Ukraine using Western technology and drones. I find this somewhat more plausible, but it's not clear why Putin couldn't have simply recognized the DPR and LPR and stationed Russian soldiers there as a "tripwire" similar to NATO in the Baltics.  I think the overarching reason is exactly what Putin says it is: having Ukraine join NATO is unacceptable for both the Russian national image and for Russian national security. Putin's issue in Ukraine has always been EU/NATO membership and the departure of Ukraine from the Russian sphere. 

One aim I could imagine having in Putin's shoes, that seems better achieved by slow telegraphing of war over Ukraine followed by actual war (vs by a frozen conflict), is gathering information about how the West is likely to respond to any other such wars/similar he might be tempted by.

(I know nothing of geopolitics, so please don't update from my thinking so. I got this idea from this essay)

8spkoc
I sort of get it and I want to believe it. But it makes no actual sense and that's terrifying. The west would barely care if Putin was doing this in the *stans or Georgia. The only other target to go to after Ukraine is Moldova and then the Baltics. If he goes in the Baltics that's war with NATO. Nothing about the reaction to Ukraine makes a difference there. It's black and white NATO vs not NATO. I feel like the most parsimonious explanation is he's not being very rational, rumors about him having terminal cancer are also pushing me towards that belief. It really doesn't seem like anyone on the Russian side saw this coming either, which is extra scary.
2Dirichlet-to-Neumann
The Baltic states are part of NATO, but I doubt it really makes a difference for the average American. Putin saying to the US "don't get involved, or we will send nukes" may be just as effective before invading Estonia than before invading Ukraine.
7arunto
That has been a key problem of NATO's defense posture for many decades: How believable is it that the US will risk complete self destruction to protect the freedom of European countries? And iirc that was one reason during the cold war to switch from "massive retaliation" to "flexible response" as a deterrence doctrine. As it was then, even now, I think, it is not about assuring the adversary that the US will be involved - there can't be certainty about that. It is more about changing the probabilities for a US involvement. That is the main reason behind the troop movements to NATO's eastern border, e.g. US F-35 fighter jets and an infantry batallion. An operation killing American soldiers in combat is massively more risky (and therefore, hopefully, much less likely) than an operation without this risk. Telling the US "Get out of the Baltic states (even though you have guaranteed their safety), or else" is quite different from "Don't get into Ukraine, or else". Furthermore, there are troops in the Baltic states of other NATO countries with nuclear weapons, France and the UK.
6jwpapi
THIS. Putin is saying the same thing for 20 years. He doesn’t want to have border countries to be NATO members which he sees an extended arm for the United States (which military is probably true). Putin wanted to join the NATO, NATO wants Russia to be more western. Putin feels bullied. NATO keeps going extending EAST and broke the promise that was given after fall of the Berlin Wall. NATO argues that every country is free to join if they want to. That’s the conflict. Even on the 15th February Putin said he doesn’t want war he just wants assurance that Ukraine isn’t joining NATO. To put it easy to understand: Putin feels bullied by NATO.

A lot of people keep saying that Putin feels afraid of NATO. I really dislike this meme. Russia has been an imperial aggressor in Eastern Europe(and beyond) for centuries. The belt of countries from the Baltic to the black sea have been the Russian Empire's victims again and again since the 1700s through to the fall of the USSR.

Now that Eastern European countries are joining a defensive alliance suddenly Putin feels threatened? 

Why? He has nukes. The end. No one is ever invading Russia. It is just impossible. NATO is not going to invade Russia. 

All NATO membership does is make Eastern European countries expensive or impossible to bully. This is what really bothers Putin. 

There is nothing an abuser hates more than when their victims can protect themselves. He is not afraid of NATO invading Russia, an absurd idea that again would NEVER happen, because it takes more than the whims of one crazy dictator to trigger a NATO attack. 

Putin is afraid that the people he views as his rightful prey and subjects are now able to defend themselves. That's it. He's a predator and he wants his subjects vulnerable.

Don't give him the benefit of the doubt by taking the BS rhetoric about NATO encroachment seriously. As if NATO was bribing and invading countries one by one to get them to join the way he does geopolitics. Pure projection by a psychopath.

2ztzuliios
Russia has nukes with aging delivery mechanisms that are outpaced more and more each year.  If NATO missile defense can change the calculus such that retaliation from a first strike seems survivable, MAD is gone and Russia is vulnerable.  If NATO cyber capabilities could Stuxnet the Russian arsenal, MAD is gone and Russia is vulnerable.  It isn't as simple as "He has nukes, the end." 
8superads91
" If NATO missile defense can change the calculus such that retaliation from a first strike seems survivable" Lol. Survive retaliation? Depends on what you mean by surviving. Maybe only get 70% of your country destroyed instead of 100%, maybe only get 70% of the population subsequently die from nuclear winter? Not much of a survival. Stuxnet the Russian arsenal? Are you serious? That barely worked in a baby nuclear arsenal, do you think it would work in the nation with the greatest nuclear arsenal, and with some of the most capable communities of cyber warfare? Why would NATO want to pretty much "just almost" destroy the world just to invade Russia?
1ztzuliios
There are depressingly many Washington think tanks who produce whitepapers on "winnable" nuclear exchanges with Russia and China. It does indeed depend on what you mean by surviving. That doesn't mean it's impossible. The problem is not what the enemy will do, it's what the enemy can do. 
3superads91
Maybe no need to attribute any qualities to those papers. If, for instance, the situation was such that such war was inevitable, then yes, it makes sense to know if we could "survive" someway. My claim was simply that NATO would never invade Russia knowing that it would take at least civilization collapsed. It's completely self-defeating. The person to which I responded said "it's not as simple as"Russia has nukes, the end", in the context of a possible NATO invasion of Russia. All I meant to say was it effectively is.

I looked up the source of Putin's claims that NATO promised not to expand, and it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Putin cites the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990, during negotations about NATO deployment in Germany. Here is the quote in context:

Our strategy and our Alliance are exclusively defensive. [...] This will also be true of a united Germany in NATO. The very fact that we are ready not to deploy NATO troops beyond the territory of the Federal Republic gives the Soviet Union firm security guarantees. Moreover we could conceive of a transitional period during which a reduced number of Soviet forces could remain stationed in the present-day GDR. This will meet Soviet concerns about not changing the overall East-West strategic balance.

It is clear that he is speaking about not deploying NATO troops on the territory of former GDR, not about a broader commitment to not enlarge NATO. Gorbachev himself confirms that "the topic of NATO expansion was not discussed at all". So this is just another lie of Putin.

1jwpapi
There are NATO troops in every NATO country, though.

So what's the end state Putin wants to achieve through invading Ukraine? If Ukraine becomes part of Russia, then Russia will be bordering with NATO states.

4ztzuliios
Well, then it's reasonable to assume that Putin's desired end state is not complete annexation of Ukraine. However, even if Ukraine is an Austria/Finland-type neutral party, outside the Russian bloc but also outside of the American bloc, Putin's security goals are achieved. The minimum criteria for Putin's ideological goals being achieved seems like internal autonomy for Donetsk and Lugansk, the maximum would be the annexation of those areas to Russia in the style of Crimea. So annexation is unnecessary ideologically and strategically, and seems unlikely as a goal. 

The Ukrainian government will fight a total war to defend its sovereignty.

Counterprediction: The Ukrainian government will fold without a (significant) fight.

I appreciate you registering your counterprediction on a public forum.

[-]lc360

For what it's worth, I think this counter-prediction already seems almost certainly wrong.

6Jayson_Virissimo
Care to specify over what time horizon you expect(ed) it to fold?
5Arcayer
No. I'm going to judge my prediction by the number of deaths, not days (or weeks, or months. Years would really mess with my idea of what's going on.) Insignificant: Less than 20,000. If single battles in the American Civil War are larger than this entire conflict, then the sides must not have been fighting very hard. Total War: I would normally say millions. I expect that the original prediction did not actually mean that? So, I'll say the other side was right if it's over a hundred thousand. More right than me at above 50,000. Of course, I'm also wrong if Russia surrenders.   There's a lot of fog of war right now. I think anyone who's changed their mind about the events in Ukraine based on new data is being silly. Hopefully we'll have real data, and not just war propaganda in the not too distant future. Russia says it's winning easily, but is taking its time to avoid civilian casualties. Ukraine has a paradoxical stance where it's winning easily, but if Germany (or X) doesn't give it (Something) (Right Now) it'll cave instantly. There's pretty much no neutral observers. I sort of expected more and clearer information. I think that was a mistake on my part. Ukraine and Russia are both incredibly untrustworthy, so I shouldn't have based that part of my expectations on typical wars. In general I'd like for the facts to speak for themselves, and would like to avoid debating definitions too heavily? I'm displeased that I'm turning a simple and symmetric single sentence statement into several paragraphs of text, but think people are updating way too strongly on either the wrong evidence or on unreliable evidence that should be ignored.
7spkoc
These numbers are absurd, in my opinion. 10s of thousands of military dead is massive numbers in a modern context. You cannot compare 1800s warfare to modern war, people literally lined up in a square and shot at each other until half of them were dead/injured back then. And due to crap med tech tons of injured didn't survive. Modern conflicts have MUCH MUCH lower death ratios. America finished the conquest of Iraq with like 150 dead(granted Iraqi army folded). Over the course of the whole occupation(2003-2011) America lost around 4500 soldiers. If Russia loses like 1000 soldiers before taking over Ukraine that's absolutely brutal resistance. Iraqi force's losses were much higher, but still not over 20k during the invasion. Keep in mind there WAS a lot of resistance. The invasion took like a month or something, so wasn't just a trivial walk through the country. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War Yemeni civil war isn't even at 20k yet after 8 years, as far as I can tell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Civil_War_(2014%E2%80%93present) I think 20k combined military civilian deaths in the next 2 weeks would be absolutely massive resistance and probably the bloodiest war in decades. The real question to me is if the Ukrainians are holding all major cities by the end of this week. At that point substantial military aid from the EU will be steadily flowing in through the west and it becomes a lot less clear how Russia makes progress. Mass bombardment of cities... doesn't do anything if people are angry and stubborn enough to keep fighting. 
5Arcayer
I can see arguments as to why some people would feel cheated at 20 thousand. I wouldn't agree. People have gotten too used to fake wars, and are too willing to call just about anything total warfare. I don't think the modern warfare thing is enough to change anything. World War two was pretty deadly. Vietnam had millions of deaths. I should be clear I was thinking all deaths caused by the war, on both sides, civilian and military. The question is how hard the Ukrainians will fight, not how effectively. My general perception is that Iraq is not generally considered to have fought hard for Saddam? I even based my 20,000 figure partially on Saddam. In any case, the specific definition isn't that important. I propose that the casualties will be lower than the other side thinks, for reasons of their model being wrong in a way that becomes obvious when looking back on data that does not yet exist.

One point of data re the expected impact of sanctions: the Moscow stock exchange is down 50% (!), which presumably means investors expect very serious consequences for the Russian economy, likely due to sanctions.

Yeah, that data point was extremely surprising to me. On the surface, it seems to imply at least one of three things:

  • Putin severely mispredicted the short-to-medium-term economic impact of the invasion
  • Investors are severely mispredicting the short-to-medium-term economic impact of the invasion
  • Putin thinks the invasion is worthwhile (at least for himself) even if it results in the sort of short-to-medium-term economic trainwreck which knocks stocks down by 50%.

I'd have considered all three of these quite improbable beforehand.

On the other hand, it could just be a short-term liquidity phenomenon, e.g. there was a bunch of foreign money invested in Moscow's markets which had to exit due to Western sanctions (or expected to need to exit due to Western sanctions). If that's the main driver, then now's a good time to buy for anybody who has access to Moscow's financial markets.

MOEX appears to now be down only 20% from pre-invasion price level. Still significant, though much less so than 50%. This follows a common pattern that I've seen anecdotally about stock prices following bad news: that the price drops precipitously immediately following the news, and then mostly recovers shortly thereafter. I remember seeing this pattern in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, soon after it became mainstream to be concerned about the Coronavirus pandemic, and I think when Trump got elected. Not sure if this is somehow a real counterexample to the efficient market hypothesis, or if I'm overfitting or selectively remembering cases where the pattern holds.

1TLW
The EMH requires 0 cost of trading and 0 cost of information, and only requires that markets converge, not that they converge instantaneously. Third option: this isn't a counterexample to the efficient market hypothesis. EMH + counterexamples to overstated news[1] taking slightly longer to disseminate than the original news[1] nicely explains the effect.  Forth option: [2] 1. ^ read: information becoming public 2. ^ This is a joke, to be clear.

Think it misses the point a bit to say that the EU and UK don't care enough to deploy their own troops in combat roles against Russia. Whether they care enough to do so isn't relevant; Ukraine isn't part of NATO, and Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons if NATO troops support the Ukrainian army. So deployment of NATO troops was never on the cards. General assumption seems to be that Ukraine will lose the war relatively quickly. 

Sanctions will only make a difference if they are significant enough to harm EU/UK/US as well as Russia. Not sure anyone knows how extensive they will be. A lot depends on German public opinion, I think, given that Germany's close economic links with Russia would mean that Germany would bear a lot of the pain, and that it has previously been more pro-Russian than any other large country. I know nothing about German public opinion, though the website of Bild, Europe's highest circulation newspaper, is interesting this morning.

If sanctions are too weak to make a difference, Putin will have won. He has said that he will keep on trying to recreate the Russian empire, which now includes several NATO states. Listening to what he has said he will do has... (read more)

Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons if NATO troops support the Ukrainian army

How should threats like that be evaluated, given that, (I'm guessing that nuking NATO troops would result in nuclear retaliation?) it would be... hard for Russia to benefit, causally, from initiating an exchange, and given that Putin lies quite frequently, and given that there aren't really any limits to what a nuclear state can get you to go along with if you just take them at their word whenever they threaten this sort of suicidal act; you have to draw a line somewhere, there has to be a limit, where you're willing to disbelieve. What's the limit?

I'm having a lot of difficulty seeing nukes as being are applicable or relevant to war, at least in wars between nuclear states, probably even in a war limited to Russia and Ukraine. What would Russia gain from nuking Ukraine? They damage their prize beyond any plausible savings this would impute for their infantry. So, how can this claim that they'd do it be substantiated?

Last I heard (the information could be outdated), the US has fewer nukes than Russia. This was a choice: There was no military advantage to having more. There is a sense in which the credible signalling of will and strength, could no further be waged, that frontier was saturated, the game of war had to leave it.

What would Russia gain from nuking Ukraine?

He did not threaten to nuke Ukraine. He threated to use nukes against NATO countries if they get directly involved in that conflict. Not a direct quote, but a summary would be "We know we can't win war against NATO, but we still have nuclear weapons - there will be no winners". 

8birdy
Responding to say that as of now, public opinion in Germany seems pretty certain that Russia is in the wrong. The reliable news stations mostly agree that Putin's official reasons for invading are weak at best, but also that this is -- as harsh as it sounds -- not a pressing enough issue to seriously consider going to war over. Still, I note several things: 1. Gas is barely talked about at all on the news. I presume that this is because the government is trying to divert attention from the fact that if Russia restricts it, that'd be a catastrophe. 2. Some of the less trustworthy media (including the BILD, which is quite infamous for being loud, emotional, and anti-everything-the-government-does) have been virtue-signaling about how Germany needs to "take action" against Russia, ideally via the (actually in-very-poor-condition) military, and how that would be worth any economical consequences. Those people don't know a lot about economics or politics or wars, but they're loud and it's worrying. 3. Public opinion has been moderately anti-russian for some years. Favorable enough to keep doing business with Russia, but bad enough to be disgruntled about it. 4. Most people are apparently not (yet) aware how big of a deal this is, and much less of the consequences this war will (or might) have on Germany. This worries me a lot. It might be relevant though that my social bubble involves mostly young, educated middle-class people, and also that I live in the northwest. I have no idea how things are in less privileged groups, or other regions.  Generally, I believe that the biggest parts of the public are still in shock. I myself am getting increasingly worried about the NATO deciding to directly involve itself in the conflict, both because I feel Germany would be hit HARD economically and on daily-life-basis (especially regarding energy supply and russian products) and well, because of the nuke threat.
5ztzuliios
  Where has he said this? How directly? 

You should ignore the news unless it's of historic import. Russia's invasion of Ukraine constitutes an event of historic import.

To share a datapoint, I looked at the news, felt a bunch of grim emotions that I won't go into, but still couldn't think of a reason not to read about this in like 1-2 years. 

I don't think it will directly effect me or anyone I know personally, and the basic argument that "information at-the-time will be subject to extreme pressures of narrative-control" still stands.

(I will check into any hints that this will grow into a war with US or UK involved.)

I think it's extremely useful practice to follow momentous live events, try to figure out what's happening, and make live bets (which you can do for example by trading Russian/European stock indices and commodities). When the event of historic importance happens at your doorstep there will be even more FUD to deal with as you're looking for critical information to make decisions, and even more emotions to control.

I know this sounds kinda morbid, but I often ask myself the following question: what would I have done if I was a rich Jew in Vienna in 1936? This is my personal bar for my own rationality. I think it is quite likely that I will face at least one decision of this magnitude in my life, and my ability to be rational then will outweigh almost everything else I do. I know that life will only give me a few practice sessions for this event, like November 2016 and February 2020. I think it's quite worth taking a couple of days to immerse yourself in the news because it's hard to do right now.

4Dead Hour Canoe
George Mikes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mikes) told the story of a friend of his in Hungary who was convinced that war was imminent in 1939. Someone had told his friend that some substance, I think it was red lead, was essential to fighting wars, so even though he had no idea what red lead was he borrowed as much as he could, bought red lead, and became enormously wealthy in a very short space of time. Not sure if there's an equivalent substance for modern armies. 
2[anonymous]
What happened in November 2016? Election of Donald Trump?
7Jacob Falkovich
Yes. I think it ultimately wasn't a momentous historical event, especially in the short-term, but it was hard to know at the time and that's good practice for staying rational as history is happening (or not) as well.
1Eli Tyre
This exactly.