You sent me the Zaluzhny wish list that was "enough". I then provided hard data that showed South Korea alone had the resources to deliver "enough". Now you move the goal posts and say it isn't. If Zaluzhny gave a public wish list of what is enough to win, who are we to dispute him?
Definition of growing up:
1. Taking responsibility for prior erroneous forecasts and publicly acknowledging that your previous articles were dead wrong ("the war is a manufactured distraction", "surrender would be better", "Russia is winning" in July, "stalemate" in September just before Kharkiv).
2. Not responding to evidence refuting your argument with diversionary ad hominem accusations of "blood lust".
3. Growing up means letting go of the narcissistic hubris of believing that your own customer service deescalation skill set is universally applicable when there are numerous obvious exceptions (Warsaw in 1943 and 1944, Nanjing 1937-38, Israel in 1948 and 1967, the USA in 1864-65, Finland 1939-40, the Baltics failure to fight in unison in 1940, Spain 1936-39).
Defeating Russia will not solve all problems and create new ones, just as empire demolition in 1918, 1945 and the 1990s created new local ethnic wars in the Balkans, between Poland and Ukraine and in Central Asia.
But leaving the Russian empire half or undefeated will leave the biggest problem in place, as it did with Germany in 1918. Half defeated empires always turn revanchist. Russian dissidents, from Kasparov to Khodorkovsky to Memorial, all see deimperializing Russia and demythologizing Russian national identity as the sine qua non of getting a peaceful outcome from this war. And you're telling me that you know more about Russia than they know about their own country?
Ukrainian victory won't solve all the problems inherent to Russia as a brittle, resource-cursed kleptocratic land-based colonial empire on the periphery of the global trading system (read Emmanuel Wallerstein to understand this). But an un or half defeated will ensure that none of these problems are solved. Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin shows how Russia's elites, whether Tsarist, Soviet or post-Soviet oligarchic, continually choose autocracy and imperialism to close the gap between Russian geopolitical ambition and state capacity. They could accept reality and choose otherwise, but don't (transcript of vide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMyrb8-Jd3c&t=116s):
"Is Russia inherently imperialist and expansionist? Must Russia by some innate cultural
or civilizational trait seek to conquer its neighbors. No Russian aggression is not innate. It is a choice and Russia's rulers could make different choices. Russian aggression stems from what I call Russia's geopolitical conundrum. Russians, especially elites in Russia have long harbored an abiding sense of living in a providential country but for half a millennium. Russian foreign policy has been characterized by soaring ambitions that have exceeded the country's capabilities.
Russia strives to be a great power of the first rank but finds again and again that Western countries are more powerful. This spurs resentment towards the West for supposedly under-appreciating Russia's uniqueness and importance. It also spurs attempts to manage or even even overcome the gap with the more powerful West. Russia's rulers invariably look to the state as their instrument to manage or close the gap with the West they impose coercive state-led modernization to try to beat Russia into being more competitive while also trying to undermine Western power and unity and as a result this quest for a strong state however invariably devolves into the personal rule of a single individual.
One thinks of the tsarist autocrats from Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great to the Alexanders and the Nicholases and the Communist General secretaries such as Lenin and Stalin down to today's imitator of the czars, Vladimir Putin. Instead of getting a strong state, Russia gets a would-be despot who conflates his personal interests with Russian national interests and conflates the survival of his personal regime with the survival of Russia. And so despite all the differences over time between czarist Russia the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, this pattern has held in a paradox. The efforts to build a strong State have invariably led to subverted institutions and capricious personalistic rule which is only worse than the very geopolitical conundrum falling behind the West it was supposed to fix.
The danger for Russia's neighbors has been evident Russia has no natural borders except the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean and to an extent the enormous mountain range in Russia's South stretching from the Caucasus to the Himalayas Russian security has thus traditionally been partly predicated on moving outward in the name of preempting external attack to seize its neighbors before Western countries could use them as supposed springboards for invasion of Russia today too smaller countries on Russia's borders are viewed less as potential friends than as potential beachheads for enemies. In fact this sentiment was only strengthened by the Soviet collapse, as has been made abundantly clear President Putin and many others among Russia's elites do not recognize the existence of Ukrainian Nation separate from a Russian one. He views all states on Russia's borders now including
independent Ukraine as weapons in the hands of Western Powers intent on wielding them against Russia. Russia's foreign policy orientation in other words is almost a condition A syndrome but to repeat, it is ultimately a choice. If Russian Elites could somehow relinquish their unwinnable competition with the West and acknowledge that Russia not only cannot but need not be an absolute great power of the first rank, they could set their country on a less costly more promising course. In this connection we can think of Britain and France in the first instance and the Netherlands and Portugal to a lesser extent. Although all those cases involved overseas Empires we can also think of Nazi Germany and Hirohito’s Japan, which were crushed in war.
Until Russia brings its aspirations into line with its actual capabilities it will not become a quote normal country even if it can somehow recover. The rise in its per capita GDP experienced in the early years of Putin's rule whether even a transformed Russia would be accepted into and merge well with Europe is an open question. But the start of the process would need to be a Russian leadership able to get its public to accept permanent retrenchment and agree to embark on an arduous domestic restructuring. You wouldn't be alone in noting that a Russian regime run by Vladimir Putin seems unlikely to ever want to make that case. Someday Russia's leaders may come to terms with the glaring limits of standing up to the west and seeking to dominate Eurasia.
Until then Russia will remain not another necessary crusade to be won like the cold war but a problem to be managed. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine applied for membership in NATO both nations have vibrant democracies professional militaries and proximity to Russia giving them a compelling case for joining NATO's defensive Alliance their possible entry into NATO may seem surprising because of Sweden and Finland's reputation for neutrality or non-alignment.
But that wasn't always the case. Up until 200 years ago Sweden had a long history of armed conflicts with Russia fighting constantly in dozens of Wars for control over land and access to the Baltic Sea after losing over a third of its territory to the Russian adversaries including the land that became Finland Sweden embraced neutrality following the Napoleonic Wars as a means of self-preservation this neutrality lasted through two world wars and the Cold War but now because of Putin's wanton invasion of Ukraine Sweden is ready to abandon neutrality and join Nato in defense against Russian aggression Finland's embrace of neutrality also came about because of Russia. It gained its independence from Moscow in 1917 after Russia's Bolshevik Revolution following its liberation Finland fought Russia in multiple conflicts to keep its nemesis at arm's length. These clashes continued into the 1940s when the two nations came to an uneasy peace arrangement, with Finland choosing neutrality to avoid further Russian aggression. But like Sweden, Finland now senses more danger from neutrality than from membership in the NATO security alliance. The addition of Sweden and Finland will strengthen NATO As It prepares for further aggression from the Kremlin, especially since all Nordic Nations will now be unified in their relations towards Russia, it is with rich irony that Russia claimed it invaded Ukraine in order to prevent the expansion of NATO on its border only to see it expand with Sweden and Finland."
Defeating Russia will not solve everything. But not defeating and deimperializing Russia will guarantee that nothing gets solved. Anyone who refuses to recognize this simple geopolitical lesson from Russian history and geography is denying reality--the very definition of not growing up.
