When Western writers declaim about the dire necessity of “regime change” in Russia, they generally mean that they think that Putin has to go. I wonder what makes them think that any foreseeable Russian leader will do things differently than Putin has?
Not only do I think that any foreseeable Russian leader would do most of the things that Putin has, I think that no foreseeable change of government in Russia will result in a truly different regime in Russia. In the light of that when they say “regime change” I hear “Russia has to go”. I wonder how they plan to accomplish that.
It all reminds me of the old story about the reaction of the optimistic child to the bucket of manure he had received—he kept searching because he just knew there must be a pony in there somewhere. There just must be liberal democrats in Russia longing for that liberal democratic Russian government they imagine.
Yes, you probably get another paranoid, delusional type who think Russia should rule the world and act with impunity, but they likely wouldn’t have the consolidation of power held by Putin. Protests would be more harmful. More likely, probably, that the new guy holds back.
Steve
I’ve never seen a claim by Putin that Russia should rule the world. Could you cite the source for that, please?
Hyperbole
It’s an important distinction. The Soviet Union was millennialist; its founding assumption was that socialism (we call it communism) would rule the world. Russia on the other hand is irredentist; the notion underpinning Putin’s claims is that Russians in the various former Soviet republics should be part of Russia.
That runs directly into conflict with other Eastern European countries which are also irredentist and whose claims conflict with that. Ukraine doesn’t just have a population of ethnic Russians; it has populations of ethnic Hungarians and Romanians as well.
It also runs directly into conflict with those who think that the United States should rule the world. That claim takes many forms including demanding American political and social standards in other countries.
This is what I mean:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-treatment-of-prisoners-government-and-politics-aec9afe8d6631795ae9f9478a4ede4cc
Putin’s complaint about the collapse of the USSR was that it stranded Russians in foreign countries, which often had governments openly hostile to the ethnic Russians within their borders. He is not a communist, and Russia is a mixed economy like the rest of Europe. He does not yearn for the USSR.
After 20 or so years, it is pretty evident that Putin is reactive, not proactive, legalistic (at least the formalities), and Russian nationalist. I am not sure he is irredentist/revanchist, but he does want all Russians in Russia, whatever its borders are. He let the Donbas fester for eight years before he moved. He is opportunistic, as Crimea and Syria show.
As the case of Medvedev shows, the Russian elites have moved strongly away from Atlanticism (Russia in NATO and EU) and towards Russian nationalism and Eurasia.
In his speech celebrating the accession of the four oblasts, Putin aligned Russia with the Global South and Asia. He spent a significant amount of time castigating the US and EU for neocolonialism, and he supported the view that the wealth of the US and EU was stolen from the Second and Third Worlds. He said the theft continues, and cited the diversion of Ukrainian grain to the EU as yet another example. He mentioned the genocide of the American Indian.
Any replacement for Putin and his government will be strongly in the mold of Stalin and an expansionist new USSR.
The open gloating of Sec State Blinken over the sabotage of the NS I and II pipelines, and his welcoming of the opportunity to displace German and European industry in the world markets is yet further evidence that the US did it. Biden and Blinken’s State Dept threatened to do it, and they did it. This is really a declaration of war by the US against the EU. How much of this abuse will Germany and the EU take before they turn on us.
All Russians in Russia is unrealistic and Unachievable.
You mean all territories with Russian ethnic peoples under Moscow’s control, whether majority or not.
Willing or not.
Your explanation makes things worse. Russia according to your explanation should own all fo the territory at least over to the middle of Germany, but why stop there. Some of those ethnic Russians probably moved to the west side of Germany once the wall went down. Why shouldn’t Russia control that area. Heck, I employ a 2nd generation Russian who speaks fluent Russian. Shouldn’t Russia then own the US? Any Russians marry someone while they were in Afghanistan? What are the limits of these claims? Why dont the people in those areas who wanted to leave Russia have a say in the matter?
Steve
Take note that I’m not justifying the view just explaining it. I’m not pro-Russian; I’m just not anti-Russian.
WRT to GS’s example. I understand and agree with what you don’t like. Now what?
Resist.
Publicity, film, make genocide and torture the center of the discussion.
Make them defend themselves, color them black.
The nuclear showdown will come, just make sure everyone knows they’re not the good guys defending mother Russia.
They’re pointing into the mirror shouting “Nazi!”
Regime change, maybe the transnational progressives might want to improve the governance of the Sentinel Islanders as a proof of concept.
bob sykes: {Putin} does want all Russians in Russia, whatever its borders are
Let him have the Sudetenland. That should satisfy him.
We’ve already done the proof of concept. It was called “Afghanistan”.
I guess I’m not optimistic enough to keep trying the same things over and over again, hoping for different results. The question we need to answer is what do we do with an intractable problem? I don’t believe there is an answer to that which will satisfy everybody.
What do you do with an intractable problem?
1) Persuade the players to agree THAT the problem is intractable.
Call it MAD, or lose-lose, or whatever you like.
2) Construct a consensus-based framework for approaching the problem’s intractability.
“Given that we can’t do THIS, what CAN we do that might work instead?”
3) Sell that framework as a viable alternative to MAD/lose-lose.
Carrot and stick approach here. “If we don’t solve it, everyone dies, but here’s what’s in it for you.”
My versions of the above:
1) “Exponential technological change has rendered “us/them” solutions obsolete.” New attacks already out-evolve new defenses, and the rate of change is still accelerating. We NEED a common frame, or we all lose.
2) I have this. Working on writing it up.
3) I’m really bad at this, sorry. That’s what slows the writing! But one thing is clear: if it’s an “us/them” framing, it won’t work. So don’t bother with those.
At this point we’re not doing a very good job even in identifying the players—we’re too inclined to think of the U. S. as the only player.
BTW “wicked problems” have been widely researched and Russia appears to be one of them. The first step is identifying a process. We don’t have that.
Family Lore, 🦻🌞
Has it one set of my greats got married even though they couldn’t understand each other.
He was German and she Czech.
They emigrated to the states afterwards.
Thank you, ancestors.
BTW, Trump has offered to mediate this crisis.
So crazy it just might work.
Some coffee-addled thoughts on process, Dave. I’ll link rather than copy/paste:
https://twitter.com/MJPiercello/status/1577294110733516802
Piercello (from link): “We” is a category, not an entity with decision-making agency.
That is not correct. Organizations can reach decisions. The U.S. declaring war on Japan is a decision. That doesn’t mean everyone in the U.S. agrees, but it does mean that certain actions will be taken by the organization, including the build-up of arms and eventual destruction of the Japanese Empire.
Similarly, a person can make a decision, even though he may have second thoughts (parts of the mind or body are in disagreement).
I’d rather engage on substance than quibble over terminology. Thanks anyway.
Piercello: I’d rather engage on substance than quibble over terminology.
That’s funny in light of your digression about terminology. Indeed, we found it to be a valid thought, even if wrong. Neither organizations nor minds are unitary entities, but are complexes of competing appetites and anxieties. But decisions are still made resulting in coordinated actions.
Piercello: I’d rather engage on substance than quibble over terminology.
To return to the topic, and to integrate your point, nations are complexes of competing concerns. When engaged in diplomacy, it is important to realize the competing concerns so as to address the underlying political reality in your diplomatic partner and of your own government. What can you and they realistically promise given these constraints? What enticement do they need to address the concerns of the various factions? Will force or threat of force help or hinder these efforts? But, in the end, what you want is a *decision* made by the diplomatic partner to an agreement. And it’s the same when trying to reach an agreement with an individual. The person may have various concerns of differing weights that need to be addressed.
Better! But you are making my point for me.
I never claimed that minds are unitary. Nor did I claim that organizations never exhibit coordinated decision behavior!
Instead, I claimed that the decision engine itself is PERSONAL, and that it necessarily rests within the individual, and that this has profound (and often unanticipated) effects on the nature of conflict resolution, especially at the organizational level.
Linguistic artifacts litter the human experience, causing us to mistake agreement for disagreement. Social media bot networks are designed to amplify that effect. Network effects in general mean you cannot solve the conflict problem by balkanization, because no subdivision can hold firm in the face of exponentially advancing network technology.
And yet here we are, sniping at one another over who should get to draw and control the linguistic subdivisions…
This is why the solution is so damnably hard to describe in writing.
Yet the solution exists! And so does the frustration.
Not every problem has a solution.
Piercello: Instead, I claimed that the decision engine itself is PERSONAL
And that is where we disagree. It is true that diplomats and individuals in government each have their own personal concerns—a president may respond to flattery about his big hands, for instance—but so do factions within the government, which can act in a coordinated fashion (such as military factions). And while individuals have their own motivations which must be recognized, that doesn’t mean that factions and governments can’t make decisions that result in action. We provided the example of the U.S. declaring war on Japan. Sure, each Congressional member reached their own decision based on their experience and knowledge of the situation, but the net result was *decisive*.
Your position is akin to saying that only neurons make decisions in the mind, when what is happening is that the decisions of individual neurons each contribute to the group decision of the brain (or, alternatively, impulses contribute to the decision of the conscious mind).
Some people are splitters and some people are lumpers when the truth is often a complex interrelationship between parts and wholes.
Dave Schuler: Not every problem has a solution.
True enough. But not all problems need have a singular solution. The stated problem may be like asking for an unachievable perfection when excellence {or just good enough} may suffice.
Zachriel, I am curious as to whether or not you think this piece is diagnostic of our conversational problem:
https://piercello.substack.com/p/reason-in-the-age-of-disinformation
Piercello: I am curious as to whether or not you think this piece is diagnostic of our conversational problem:
Evidence must be material and probative. In the case of the scientific method, it starts with a hypothesis. From that are deduced entailments, which are then tested. For example, *given* Newtonian mechanics, if the Earth rotates, *then* the equator should bulge. If the equator bulges, *then* gravitational force should be reduced near the equator. If the gravitational force is reduced, *then* the pendulum should be retarded when compared to a pendulum at a higher latitude. This was confirmed by Edmond Halley in 1677.
You might provide a simple example that you think results in a “Standard-of-Evidence attack”.
There are two areas of disagreement we have found. One area is due to a misunderstanding of the science, such as with evolution or climate. Maintaining the denialist view requires positing a vast conspiracy so that the evidence can be ignored. The other area is due to the inherent uncertainty of social sciences, such as economics, and the limited ability to provide predictive value. You can often drive a metaphorical truck through such uncertainty. You are left with judgment, and both sides often have a point. Conservatives are right about incentives, while liberals are right that institutions matter and can change.
Yours is a textbook example of the science/engineering “standard of evidence,” yes?
“Evidence must be material and probitive.”
But in politics and other emotional matters of the human heart, where rational arguments do not hold sway, that SoE is next to useless. It is certainly not binding!
This observation is easily verified by a glance at the internet.
Take it as further evidence that the human decision engine is not bound by rational limits. Analyzing human decision-making as if it WERE bound those limits is a grave mistake.
One solution to uncertainty in science is emergence. Consider the ideal gas laws. Stochastic processes can lead to convergent results, yes?
In theory, similar such universals in the human decision-making architecture could combine to create standing waves in the fabric of society; emergent waves with powerful predictive and explanatory power.
But you’d have to analyze at the right levels, using the right tools, or such laws would remain forever invisible.
And then, THEN, then, you’d still have to get people to slow down enough that you could explain how those laws worked…
Hari Seldon, eat your heart out.
Piercello: Take it as further evidence that the human decision engine is not bound by rational limits.
Agreed. However, did you provide a simple example that you think results in a “Standard-of-Evidence attackâ€? Also, your original claim was “‘We’ is a category, not an entity with decision-making agency.” Decisions don’t have to be rational. Indeed, as Hume pointed out, reason is the slave of the passions. But decisions can still be made by individuals or by organizations.
Did I not just launch a successful standard-of-evidence attack upon your own suggested standard of evidence? Is this not example enough for you?
Let me put it in starker (but still very general) terms:
EVERY time someone says to you “but what about X,” what they are doing is challenging the soundness of your implicit [or explicit, or assumed] standard of evidence.
(Whether or not they could have reasoned out the answer for themselves is a separate issue.)
All of which takes us back to terminological quibbles!
In this entire thread, not once have you disagreed with any of my arguments, nor with the presence of the human mechanisms that my arguments have described.
Not once!
Your sole contention appears to be what the definition of “decision” is, or ought to be.
In its own way, a definitional challenge is a standard-of-evidence attack. But on the internet, where everything is personal (including terminology) and expert credibility is shattered into a million contradictory pieces, this kind of SoE attack is often spectacularly counterproductive.
Debate club tactics don’t work on the internet. You can’t win by rationality knockout! The emotional aspects of the decision engine are where the score is kept. That logic is both wider and wilder than mere rationality, and runaway network effects make it perilous to disturb.
The universalities of the non-rational logic of human decision-making CAN, however, be mapped by rational means, provided one has the presence of mind to look.
I have drawn that map. It led me directly to my opening assertion: ‘We’ is a category, not an entity with decision-making agency.
Unfortunately, the internet-amplified minefield of linguistic artifacts makes it hard-to-impossible to translate that map into writing.
So here we are.
That said, I don’t mind the practice in framing my arguments.
Piercello: Is this not example enough for you?
If you did so, it was obscure. That’s why we asked for a simple example.
Piercello: EVERY time someone says to you “but what about X,†what they are doing is challenging the soundness of your implicit [or explicit, or assumed] standard of evidence.
Not necessarily. They may just be pointing to additional evidence or cases that have been overlooked.
Piercello: not once have you disagreed with any of my arguments
We disagreed with your original claim and have yet to see a substantive defense of that claim.
Piercello: Your sole contention appears to be what the definition of “decision†is, or ought to be.
If consideration leads to specific actions, then that is a decision. Notably, we provided a simple example: the U.S. declaring war on Imperial Japan.
Piercello: Unfortunately, the internet-amplified minefield of linguistic artifacts makes it hard-to-impossible to translate that map into writing.
If you can’t frame your support in words, it may be a problem with your supporting argument.
Horse. Water. Some assembly required.
Thanks, Dave. I hope some entertainment value remained by the end.