Gadianton wrote: ↑Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:09 pm
H wrote:I don't think it is an exaggeration to say those who side with the claim NATO caused the war are asserting the world reform around a 19rh century world order. That being one where great powers assert control over their regions in what JJM has described as a multipolar bounded order. It's no more so than it would be a similar regression to assert the ex-husband in the analogy is justified in their belief they should maintain control over their ex-wife as a Man.
If we have to think in terms of moral right and wrong, then helping Ukraine is randomly helping one of many battered exes, and it's akin to giving this ex as many cans of pepper spray as we can afford but stopping short of anything that will fix the problem because the guy is a big dude with a truck and a gunrack, and I don't want him coming by my house. The moral justification is a "nice to have" once all the cold materialism has been calculated, but even then, the moral justification seems to require more than we're willing to help.
Fair points, perhaps, if we assert what made the situation in Ukraine different from, say, Georgia in 2008, or what occured and continues in Hong Kong is random. Or perhaps it isn't rationally moral and so we are left with pragmatic "cold materialism" as you said. Perhaps.
One of the issues I see with neorealism is it's static determinism where the relationships that matter are primarily based on the magnitude of power a polity possesses to generate influence. It takes a picture of the moment and predicts the future based on that dynamic then asserts policy should be determined from rationally calculating the cost/benefit. What we've seen in Ukraine is the unknowns and intangibles become force multipliers such that hidden deficiencies in Russian military capability combined with morale and national identity in Ukraine wouldn't be predictable factors if one simply assumes this approach yet they've proven decisive so far. Pragmatically the forecast remains that Putin's Russia is still the stronger, bigger, and theoretically better equiped force so the probable outcome should still be a Russian victory. But who really knows.
I think what Kotkin had to say early in the conflict has weight here when it comes to the topic, though:
https://www.hoover.org/research/5-more- ... -edition-1
So there's a misunderstanding of quote democracy in Russia in the nineties. In addition, we had this debate in the early part of the Cold War, Peter. We had this debate where people said, you know, we didn't respect Soviet's sensitivities. We didn't respect Stalin psychology. And so look what happened. He conquered all his neighbors because he was disrespected. He conquered Eastern Europe. He conquered Northeast Asia. We should have respected him more. Peter, I'm sorry, that argument is bunk. There are internal processes in Putin's Russia, which started in Yeltsin's Russia, which predate both of them by a long, long time where the recourse to autocracy, the recourse to repression, the recourse to militarism, the suspicion of foreigners, these are not reactions to something that the West does or doesn't do, these are internal processes that had a dynamic of their own, and that NATO expansion became a pretext or an excuse post-facto. For many years we've now been having this I would say self-flagellation. Let's imagine that we don't expand the security perimeter and the realm of freedom. Where would those countries be right now? Where would Czechoslovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, where would they be right now? They would potentially be in the same place as Ukraine.
So perhaps we do favor former-Soviet satellite states bordering the West that show resolve and the ability to put up a meaningful resistance to Putin's aggression where we don't step in to Georgia. We will likely respond to China differently when it comes to Taiwan than we have in regards to Hong Kong, too. The analogy was meant to show there is a certain backwards mindset that simply defaults to great power dynamics akin to the behaviours of larger powers towards lesser powers as a right of being a greater power. The push back shows the flaws in both the analogy and the attempt to say we are engaging with moral clarity. If there is one thing international relations will likely never involve, it is moral clarity. Rare events such as Fascism in Europe create an illusion of just war. But lack of moral clarity in most instances creates an equally dubious illusion of extreme moral liability as the alternative to staying home and STFU. in my opinion.
I don't think being against NATO requires a person to be multipolar, although perhaps JM is multipolar, I don't know
I'd be curious to see how one maps an international order that is not multipolar that favors disbanding NATO? JJM has written extensively enough that we can know he favors a multipolar bounded international order. Primarily because neorealism asserts liberal unipolar international orders are doomed to fail while multipolar bounded international orders are the norm. Those being the lowest stable energy state of international order, if you will:
One might acknowledge that the liberal international order is in terminal decline, but argue that it can be replaced with a more pragmatic version, one that avoids the excesses of the post–Cold War order. This more modest liberal order would pursue a more nuanced, less aggressive approach to spreading liberal democracy, rein in hyperglobalization, and put some significant limits on the power of international institutions. The new order, according to this perspective, would look something like the Western order during the Cold War, although it would be global and liberal, not bounded and realist.
This solution is not feasible, however, because the unipolar moment is over, which means there is no chance of maintaining any kind of liberal international order for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, President Trump has no intention of pursuing a “liberal-lite” world order, and without his support, that option is a nonstarter. But even if Trump were not an obstacle and the international system were to remain unipolar, the United States would fail if it lowered its sights and attempted to construct a less ambitious liberal order. Indeed, it would end up building an agnostic international order instead. It is impossible to build a meaningful liberal global order with modest or more passive policies.
