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> “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transfor

by amai 5y ago

> “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” He claims that without any proof. This maybe would have been true in the 19th century given the technologies for war and power at that time. But we have the 21st century now. Why should the Ukraine be so important? Why could Russia not be an empire without Ukraine? Russia is the biggest country with the most sources of raw materials. It has the most nuclear weapons. It has a huge fleet. It is feared by all of its neighbors. But that all doesn't matter nowadays. Because if you want to be a world power in 21st century what you need is a huge economy. And Russias GDP is as big as Italy. But invading Ukraine wouldn't help Russia to increase its GDP. And that is why what Zbigniew Brzezinsk writes is outdated nonsense. Everyone who believes that still lives in the 19th century.

codesnik 5y ago
sadly, Putin lives in 19th century and wants everyone join him there
- petre 5y ago
  Russia is close to a modern day feudal state if you think about it. The only difference is that Putin splits the country's mineral resources with the oligarchy instead of the land. This is coming from an acclaimed Russian novelist, Vladimir Sorokin. This Spiegel interview with Sorokin dates from before the 2008 Russo-Georgian war: https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-author-vladimir-sorokin-russia-is-slipping-back-into-an-authoritarian-empire-a-463860.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-intervi...
  - hprotagonist 5y ago
    at some level, it’s fair to say that serfdom just never stopped: you can call the leader “tsar”, “comrade”, “president”, or whatever else you want if it makes you happy, but “prole” and “serf” are more or less cognates too.
ycombinete 5y ago
It would be easier to take your opinions seriously if they weren’t contradicted by events happening right now; events which match Brzezinski’s “outdated nonsense” from the 90s perfectly. You could very well be correct, perhaps the leaders of these countries are living in the 19th century. But the fact that the current leaders of Ukraine, USA and Russia are acting in line with/on these older assumptions makes them relevant still today. Also there’s plenty of information backing up his claims in the book, you’re welcome to go read it. It’s an excellent window into the way geopolics is rationalised, written by one of the people who have shaped it!
- gmuslera 5y ago
  Predicting the future is hard, specially if you think in 20-30 years forward. But, giving enough predictions, you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses. A lot of development happened in the middle that could had turned things in different directions. Also, beware of hindsight bias. Anyway, it is not just one data point what matters. What comes after in his predictions and how adjusted is to what happens in reality (without creative accounting, like with Nostradamus predictions) may tell how right that was.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses. Your whole NATO core staff been voicing this in unison for 2 decades in a row, only for Western politicians to dismiss it. Lookup my other posts today, and especially this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453790
    - trembolram 5y ago
      Yesterday, I read your comment, but it is now flagged. Can I read more about that stuff on a subreddit or website?
  - pharke 5y ago
    > But, giving enough predictions, you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses. I somehow doubt that he made the range of varied and contradictory predictions necessary to make this hypothesis correct. I don't know what to call this muddled assertion that so many people seem to be making about hindsight bias or survivorship bias. It's like a bias towards claiming bias, which seems absurd to me. Is everyone just hunting for places where they can use some witty sounding assertion that they saw someone else use and so they're incorrectly applying it everywhere with little discrimination?
enkid 5y ago
This is all assuming you share an underlying rational with the leader of Russia, which you don't. Putin obviously doesn't care about having a good economy or making life better for the average Russian. He cares about making himself look strong and maintaining power, and showing strength. In the long run Russia is going to hurt over this, but that's not what Putin cares about.
- siliconescapee 5y ago
  +1 to this comment -- as you state it's not possible to apply western success metrics to Russian politics or Putin. Of that Italian-sized economy, the spoils go to Putin's oligarchs and the average Russian is apathetic about political influence and fed government-owned TV news. Historically, they haven't been able to influence things and their needs matter little. It isn't a western democracy or economy -- it's more like an authoritarian regime where it's the needs of the political leadership that matter. They should have seized Putin's super-yacht before it fled Germany last week.
- noduerme 5y ago
  The flipside though is that Putin wouldn't be doing this unless he thought it would be popular and cement his legacy as a czar; and he wouldn't commit his Russians to it if he didn't think it would make Russia stronger and benefit Russia in the long term. His thinking is rational in this regard. Barbaric, but rational. And it will take more than sanctions to shake the foundation of this medieval belief.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    Is there a strong reason to believe that Putin thinks this way? As recently as two days ago, people in my circles were presenting this as an argument for why Putin wouldn’t invade, since it seemed so obvious that Russia would be stronger by claiming to occupy the moral high ground while protecting the separatist regions through deterrence.
    - noduerme 5y ago
friedturkey 5y ago
Ukraine has excellent farmland. Russia has their own local economy and can produce most of the things they need just with their direct neighbors. French cheeses, American-branded phones, and Italian cars may be too expensive for the Russian economy, but the Russian government doesn't care. Close-enough products can be had for a fraction of the price. Thinking of things in terms of raw GDP is what is getting the west into a total mess. For years now people have said Russia won't do anything and couldn't possibly be a threat because their GDP is so low. China will never be a major player because their GDP per capita is so low. But that's, frankly, stupid. People in Switzerland pay $20 for a sandwich. People in Vietnam are paying $0.75 for a sandwich that tastes twice as good. People in China are getting locally made phones with the equivalent of US pocket change and riding high speed trains for the cost of a slow and janky NY subway trip. GDP means absolutely nothing outside of international trade within the global sphere. GDP didn't help America beat Afghanistan, one of the absolute poorest countries on earth. It didn't help them beat North Korea or Vietnam either. They still haven't succeeded in removing communism from poverty-stricken, bottom of the barrel GDP Cuba. If Russia decides to keep moving into western Europe, their GDPs mean nothing. Seizing that land just means Russia gets all of what those countries have, forever, without the high price tag. GDP isn't motivating angry dictators to invade. They're doing it because they can.
- orange_joe 5y ago
  All that might be true for consumer products, but it’s absolutely not true for weapons systems and cutting edge technologies. Their J-20 fighter jet has a cost between 30-120 million, whereas the F-35 costs 78 million. It’s also worth mentioning that the high speed rail in China only exists because of strict control over airways making trains artificially competitive. Despite this state rail system holds 850B in debt alone (with some numbers I’ve seen online indicating a total system debt of 1.8 trillion), and is losing money daily. Regardless of the rumored numbers, a debt level that high indicates that they have to pay near-western prices for advanced technology. Tanks, jets and high speed rail are considerably more challenging to produce cheaply than sandwiches or obsolete smart phones. [1] https://amp.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3127644/china-must-avoid-blind-competition-within-high-speed-railway https://amp.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3127644/c...
noduerme 5y ago
The Mongols didn't need an economy to create chaos and conquer most of Eurasia. Babylon was conquered by Macedonia, Constantinople fell to the Turks, and Rome to the Vandals. Mixing up economic power with willingness to bleed for a mythical cause is a mistake. Also, who needs an economy when you can just have a big army and take booty? Definitely not Russia. This is not the modern-day version of USSR vs USA. It's the modern version of the Mongol Horde vs Civilization. (No offense to current Mongols; you guys are cool).
- achenet 5y ago
  I disagree with that analogy. Modern Russia is not an unstoppable army of nomadic warriors with a strong martial culture arising from their making their living as herders. It's a badly run kleptocracy trying desperately to remain relevant.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Which happens to command a very large arsenal of nuclear weapons which they can deliver around the globe on 15 minutes notice.
    - dmichulke 5y ago
      How do you think they will use them to conquer land?
      - noduerme 5y ago
        Come and see. They don't have to hold land and in most cases, the strategic goal is to have puppets hold it for them. USSR was three levels deep in puppets (four if you count "republics").
        unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        They tried puppets in Ukraine for some time. They also have a dependent client state on another of Ukraine's borders, in Belarus, "led" by a terrified semi-lame autocrat who needs to prove his loyalty to Putin to continue in office. Bad things (and increasingly belligerent, isolated psychopaths) on two sides.
rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
> Because if you want to be a world power in 21st century what you need is a huge economy. Lol being a world power was never about the economy, it had always been about military strength. Americans might think that they are a superpower because they have one of the largest economies in the world, but that’s being totally small-minded and missing the fact that the reason why their economy is that big in the first place is that the purpose of economies is to power the military with networks, talent, and money.
300bps 5y ago
And Russias GDP is as big as Italy Russia’s GDP is 25% smaller than the U.S. State of Texas. It sounds like a joke but it isn’t. Texas GDP is $2.0 trillion. Russia GDP is $1.48 trillion. Most of Russia’s GDP is selling oil and gas which is one of the reasons Putin is able to do this now. Through higher oil prices he’s amassed a war chest of $631 billion in foreign currency reserves that will enable him to weather sanctions. That along with the friendship treaty with China giving them a market to sell their oil and gas and sanctions will prove fairly toothless. https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russia-counts-reserves-shield-against-sanctions-finmin-2022-02-16/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russia-counts-reserve...
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  China doesn’t need Russia as an ally, a client perhaps. Also those petrodollars will slow if Russia has a single buyer. Not to mention, carbohydrates’ days are counter. Gulf countries are diversifying like crazy, Russia not so much.
  - achenet 5y ago
    I think you mean hydrocarbons, carbohydrates are sugars ;)
    - gafferongames 5y ago
      Can confirm carbohydrates market is still strong. I just had an almond croissant for breakfast
      - panzagl 5y ago
        If Putin wins you'll have babka for breakfast
    - rich_sasha 5y ago
      As it happens, Russia is. Big exported of carbohydrates too (grain). But yes, pre coffee booboo.
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
> Why should the Ukraine be so important? Side note: you've used the old-fashioned (and Putin-favoured) english nomenclature for Ukraine as "the Ukraine" in the first sentence, and the Ukraine-preferred nomenclature in the second. This is actually the crux of the issue in two sentences. Ukraine is a sovereign state, but Putin politically asserts it is merely a territory they control, harking back to a pre-WWII time; Ukraine was a territory regularly divided up and under the control of different neighbouring states as a bargaining chip, gift, settlement, or conquest. This is I guess why Brzezinski talked about it as it was and as it is. Ukraine used to be passed around and fought over as a set of territories without a home. Post WWII, it is a nation state and its existence as a nation state historically perturbs its neighbours, most notably Russia. Ukraine still has all the geographical significance it had. It's the second-largest country by land mass in Europe, it is fertile (a nearby breadbasket, geopolitically), it is also mineral rich, etc. So Brzezinski wasn't wrong to say it was still a source of conflict, a prize, but now being an independent nation state it has the right to defend itself and enter alliances. That makes it a risk strategic point -- even perhaps a pivot -- in a future conflict. > Why could Russia not be an empire without Ukraine? If Russia is to (re)build an "empire", it needs Ukraine to do it, for all the reasons above. Bold to say Brzezinski wrote nonsense, though. Good for you: put yourself out there as an international statesman.
- MrsPeaches 5y ago
  Just a very tiny nitpick. Ukraine is not a nation state. It is mearly a state. In fact the part of the problem is precisely because it is not a nation state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Oooh -- that is a fascinating nit picked. And that will start my Wikipedia rabbit hole today. I'm not entirely sure I agree with you, but I certainly should have used sovereign the second time instead of nation.
    - deleted 5y ago
blablabla123 5y ago
Ukraine has gas reserves that seem to be mostly untouched because of regional turmoil and therefore a temporary inability to get that gas out of the ground.

by amai 5y ago

codesnik 5y ago

sadly, Putin lives in 19th century and wants everyone join him there

petre 5y ago
Russia is close to a modern day feudal state if you think about it. The only difference is that Putin splits the country's mineral resources with the oligarchy instead of the land. This is coming from an acclaimed Russian novelist, Vladimir Sorokin. This Spiegel interview with Sorokin dates from before the 2008 Russo-Georgian war: https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-author-vladimir-sorokin-russia-is-slipping-back-into-an-authoritarian-empire-a-463860.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-intervi...
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  at some level, it’s fair to say that serfdom just never stopped: you can call the leader “tsar”, “comrade”, “president”, or whatever else you want if it makes you happy, but “prole” and “serf” are more or less cognates too.

ycombinete 5y ago

It would be easier to take your opinions seriously if they weren’t contradicted by events happening right now; events which match Brzezinski’s “outdated nonsense” from the 90s perfectly. You could very well be correct, perhaps the leaders of these countries are living in the 19th century. But the fact that the current leaders of Ukraine, USA and Russia are acting in line with/on these older assumptions makes them relevant still today. Also there’s plenty of information backing up his claims in the book, you’re welcome to go read it. It’s an excellent window into the way geopolics is rationalised, written by one of the people who have shaped it!

gmuslera 5y ago
Predicting the future is hard, specially if you think in 20-30 years forward. But, giving enough predictions, you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses. A lot of development happened in the middle that could had turned things in different directions. Also, beware of hindsight bias. Anyway, it is not just one data point what matters. What comes after in his predictions and how adjusted is to what happens in reality (without creative accounting, like with Nostradamus predictions) may tell how right that was.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses. Your whole NATO core staff been voicing this in unison for 2 decades in a row, only for Western politicians to dismiss it. Lookup my other posts today, and especially this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453790
  - trembolram 5y ago
    Yesterday, I read your comment, but it is now flagged. Can I read more about that stuff on a subreddit or website?
- pharke 5y ago
  > But, giving enough predictions, you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses. I somehow doubt that he made the range of varied and contradictory predictions necessary to make this hypothesis correct. I don't know what to call this muddled assertion that so many people seem to be making about hindsight bias or survivorship bias. It's like a bias towards claiming bias, which seems absurd to me. Is everyone just hunting for places where they can use some witty sounding assertion that they saw someone else use and so they're incorrectly applying it everywhere with little discrimination?

enkid 5y ago

This is all assuming you share an underlying rational with the leader of Russia, which you don't. Putin obviously doesn't care about having a good economy or making life better for the average Russian. He cares about making himself look strong and maintaining power, and showing strength. In the long run Russia is going to hurt over this, but that's not what Putin cares about.

siliconescapee 5y ago
+1 to this comment -- as you state it's not possible to apply western success metrics to Russian politics or Putin. Of that Italian-sized economy, the spoils go to Putin's oligarchs and the average Russian is apathetic about political influence and fed government-owned TV news. Historically, they haven't been able to influence things and their needs matter little. It isn't a western democracy or economy -- it's more like an authoritarian regime where it's the needs of the political leadership that matter. They should have seized Putin's super-yacht before it fled Germany last week.
noduerme 5y ago
The flipside though is that Putin wouldn't be doing this unless he thought it would be popular and cement his legacy as a czar; and he wouldn't commit his Russians to it if he didn't think it would make Russia stronger and benefit Russia in the long term. His thinking is rational in this regard. Barbaric, but rational. And it will take more than sanctions to shake the foundation of this medieval belief.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  Is there a strong reason to believe that Putin thinks this way? As recently as two days ago, people in my circles were presenting this as an argument for why Putin wouldn’t invade, since it seemed so obvious that Russia would be stronger by claiming to occupy the moral high ground while protecting the separatist regions through deterrence.
  - noduerme 5y ago

friedturkey 5y ago

Ukraine has excellent farmland. Russia has their own local economy and can produce most of the things they need just with their direct neighbors. French cheeses, American-branded phones, and Italian cars may be too expensive for the Russian economy, but the Russian government doesn't care. Close-enough products can be had for a fraction of the price. Thinking of things in terms of raw GDP is what is getting the west into a total mess. For years now people have said Russia won't do anything and couldn't possibly be a threat because their GDP is so low. China will never be a major player because their GDP per capita is so low. But that's, frankly, stupid. People in Switzerland pay $20 for a sandwich. People in Vietnam are paying $0.75 for a sandwich that tastes twice as good. People in China are getting locally made phones with the equivalent of US pocket change and riding high speed trains for the cost of a slow and janky NY subway trip. GDP means absolutely nothing outside of international trade within the global sphere. GDP didn't help America beat Afghanistan, one of the absolute poorest countries on earth. It didn't help them beat North Korea or Vietnam either. They still haven't succeeded in removing communism from poverty-stricken, bottom of the barrel GDP Cuba. If Russia decides to keep moving into western Europe, their GDPs mean nothing. Seizing that land just means Russia gets all of what those countries have, forever, without the high price tag. GDP isn't motivating angry dictators to invade. They're doing it because they can.

orange_joe 5y ago
All that might be true for consumer products, but it’s absolutely not true for weapons systems and cutting edge technologies. Their J-20 fighter jet has a cost between 30-120 million, whereas the F-35 costs 78 million. It’s also worth mentioning that the high speed rail in China only exists because of strict control over airways making trains artificially competitive. Despite this state rail system holds 850B in debt alone (with some numbers I’ve seen online indicating a total system debt of 1.8 trillion), and is losing money daily. Regardless of the rumored numbers, a debt level that high indicates that they have to pay near-western prices for advanced technology. Tanks, jets and high speed rail are considerably more challenging to produce cheaply than sandwiches or obsolete smart phones. [1] https://amp.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3127644/china-must-avoid-blind-competition-within-high-speed-railway https://amp.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3127644/c...

noduerme 5y ago

The Mongols didn't need an economy to create chaos and conquer most of Eurasia. Babylon was conquered by Macedonia, Constantinople fell to the Turks, and Rome to the Vandals. Mixing up economic power with willingness to bleed for a mythical cause is a mistake. Also, who needs an economy when you can just have a big army and take booty? Definitely not Russia. This is not the modern-day version of USSR vs USA. It's the modern version of the Mongol Horde vs Civilization. (No offense to current Mongols; you guys are cool).

achenet 5y ago
I disagree with that analogy. Modern Russia is not an unstoppable army of nomadic warriors with a strong martial culture arising from their making their living as herders. It's a badly run kleptocracy trying desperately to remain relevant.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Which happens to command a very large arsenal of nuclear weapons which they can deliver around the globe on 15 minutes notice.
  - dmichulke 5y ago
    How do you think they will use them to conquer land?
    - noduerme 5y ago
      Come and see. They don't have to hold land and in most cases, the strategic goal is to have puppets hold it for them. USSR was three levels deep in puppets (four if you count "republics").
      - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        They tried puppets in Ukraine for some time. They also have a dependent client state on another of Ukraine's borders, in Belarus, "led" by a terrified semi-lame autocrat who needs to prove his loyalty to Putin to continue in office. Bad things (and increasingly belligerent, isolated psychopaths) on two sides.

rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago

> Because if you want to be a world power in 21st century what you need is a huge economy. Lol being a world power was never about the economy, it had always been about military strength. Americans might think that they are a superpower because they have one of the largest economies in the world, but that’s being totally small-minded and missing the fact that the reason why their economy is that big in the first place is that the purpose of economies is to power the military with networks, talent, and money.

300bps 5y ago

And Russias GDP is as big as Italy Russia’s GDP is 25% smaller than the U.S. State of Texas. It sounds like a joke but it isn’t. Texas GDP is $2.0 trillion. Russia GDP is $1.48 trillion. Most of Russia’s GDP is selling oil and gas which is one of the reasons Putin is able to do this now. Through higher oil prices he’s amassed a war chest of $631 billion in foreign currency reserves that will enable him to weather sanctions. That along with the friendship treaty with China giving them a market to sell their oil and gas and sanctions will prove fairly toothless. https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russia-counts-reserves-shield-against-sanctions-finmin-2022-02-16/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russia-counts-reserve...

rich_sasha 5y ago
China doesn’t need Russia as an ally, a client perhaps. Also those petrodollars will slow if Russia has a single buyer. Not to mention, carbohydrates’ days are counter. Gulf countries are diversifying like crazy, Russia not so much.
- achenet 5y ago
  I think you mean hydrocarbons, carbohydrates are sugars ;)
  - gafferongames 5y ago
    Can confirm carbohydrates market is still strong. I just had an almond croissant for breakfast
    - panzagl 5y ago
      If Putin wins you'll have babka for breakfast
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    As it happens, Russia is. Big exported of carbohydrates too (grain). But yes, pre coffee booboo.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

> Why should the Ukraine be so important? Side note: you've used the old-fashioned (and Putin-favoured) english nomenclature for Ukraine as "the Ukraine" in the first sentence, and the Ukraine-preferred nomenclature in the second. This is actually the crux of the issue in two sentences. Ukraine is a sovereign state, but Putin politically asserts it is merely a territory they control, harking back to a pre-WWII time; Ukraine was a territory regularly divided up and under the control of different neighbouring states as a bargaining chip, gift, settlement, or conquest. This is I guess why Brzezinski talked about it as it was and as it is. Ukraine used to be passed around and fought over as a set of territories without a home. Post WWII, it is a nation state and its existence as a nation state historically perturbs its neighbours, most notably Russia. Ukraine still has all the geographical significance it had. It's the second-largest country by land mass in Europe, it is fertile (a nearby breadbasket, geopolitically), it is also mineral rich, etc. So Brzezinski wasn't wrong to say it was still a source of conflict, a prize, but now being an independent nation state it has the right to defend itself and enter alliances. That makes it a risk strategic point -- even perhaps a pivot -- in a future conflict. > Why could Russia not be an empire without Ukraine? If Russia is to (re)build an "empire", it needs Ukraine to do it, for all the reasons above. Bold to say Brzezinski wrote nonsense, though. Good for you: put yourself out there as an international statesman.

MrsPeaches 5y ago
Just a very tiny nitpick. Ukraine is not a nation state. It is mearly a state. In fact the part of the problem is precisely because it is not a nation state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Oooh -- that is a fascinating nit picked. And that will start my Wikipedia rabbit hole today. I'm not entirely sure I agree with you, but I certainly should have used sovereign the second time instead of nation.
  - deleted 5y ago

blablabla123 5y ago

Ukraine has gas reserves that seem to be mostly untouched because of regional turmoil and therefore a temporary inability to get that gas out of the ground.