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Then why didn't that work with russia, they have ruined their economy for a war

ketzo 4y ago
That is a very complicated question, but in short: Russia’s economy is supported by oil. Oil is pretty much the one thing that they’ve still been consistently able to export. China’s economy is based on exporting lots and lots and lots of manufactured goods. Many of them are essential, but many of them could be banned tomorrow.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  The point being that Russia would be more desperate due to fewer options? Not trying to argue, just curious.
  - ketzo 4y ago
    The opposite, actually — people NEED Russia’s oil. They don’t have the option to stop buying it without a lot of pain. So Russia’s biggest money-fountain has stayed on despite sanctions. Meanwhile, China exports a lot of things that people don’t need. You can turn those off quicker. Again — huge oversimplifications. But I think reasonably solid mental model.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > Meanwhile, China exports a lot of things that people don’t need. You can turn those off quicker. It's not like that's all they export. They export a lot of essential things, and cutting them off would probably far more economically disruptive to their customers than to them. They're store shelves won't be empty, and given their political system they can probably deal with the fallout much more effectively. There are also a lot of alternative producers of oil, while there's no other advanced manufacturing giant on the scale of China that people can shift their orders to. It would make the COVID supply chain difficulties look like a joke.
- jacobolus 4y ago
  It’s not a complicated question. It’s a very simple question with a simple answer: one man (Vladimir Putin) wanted to go to war and made the (initial and ongoing) decision despite it being a clearly terrible idea to anyone else watching. How Russia got itself to the point where one person has consolidated all authority, surrounded himself with corrupt sycophants, and cannot accurately gather or integrate information from the rest of the society is the complicated question here. It’s a pretty good demonstration for anyone watching around the world that unchecked power can lead to disastrous decisions. It should inspire us to stand up for democracy and against corruption and consolidation of wealth and power in our own societies. It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; the best we can do is speculate. My speculation is that involves some combination of (a) doing what he thinks will best maintain internal political control, (b) satisfying an egoistical urge for historical glory, and (c) a narcissistic belief that others must bow to his personal whims and a raging narcissistic grudge when they do not.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; Entitlement. The closest you came was the descriptor "narcissistic" in (c). Narcissism is supposed to be a rare condition, but it is found everywhere. It is easiest to understand leaders like Putin, Jong-un, Xi, DeSantis and Trump, if framed in psychological terms like narcissism with symptoms of entitlement, grandiosity, attention seeking, arrogance, bullying, lack of empathy, and a fear of criticism.
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  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    >It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; the best we can do is speculate. Russia has no convenient geographic features to protect it from invasion, so it relies on long distances. Those distances are much shorter than they used to be, and Russian doctrine for at least the past decade has been focused on creating confusion and chaos in Eastern Europe. The chaos is here, and they probably misread the international community on what they could get away with. Now that they're in it, though, I think Putin is the biggest obstacle to Russia extricating themselves from the debacle.
- rurp 4y ago
  Russia has even put their energy exports at risk though. They are already trading at a discount and things could get much worse if the war continues to escalate. If Putin advances to using nukes or mass slaughtering of civilians, things will eventually reach a point where the neutral countries finally cut ties. Russia starting a nuclear war would be bad for China, India and others; there's some point at which they'll cut off Russian trade.
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    Russia has been mass slaughtering citizens. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2022/09/22/new-mass-graves-found-in-ukraine-as-putins-atrocities-continue/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2022/09/22/new-mas...
    - okasaki 4y ago
      Yes and they're taking babies out of incubators and leaving them to die.
      - jakubadamw 4y ago
        I understand your snark is simply meant to signal your sympathy towards war crime negationism, but the Gulf War incubator reference does happen to be on topic and not in the way you may have intended. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/09/europe/gallery/mariupol-hospital-bombed/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/09/europe/gallery/mariupol-h...
        okasaki 4y ago
        No, I don't think you got my point.
        jonny_eh 4y ago
        Can you clarify? I'm confused as well.
jm4 4y ago
In no particular order: - Russia overestimated their position - Russia believed the war would be over in a few days (which many in the West also believed) - Russia assumed Europe would keep buying their oil (which has happened to an extent) - Russia believes they can "out-suffer" the West and we will crack after a few months - Russia believed the West was too polarized to reach consensus on an effective response In short, Russia had a bad read on the situation and shot themselves in the foot. They thought they were in a position to impose their will without a fight or a significant response from the West. We have seen a little bit of the same attitude from China the past several years - decadent West on the decline, democracy is flawed, etc. - but I have to think they are smart enough to realize they have been underestimating us. At a minimum, I think it pushes back their timeline for when they believed they would become the world's premier power. Hopefully, that buys us all some time to cool off and find diplomatic solutions.
- NicoJuicy 4y ago
  A democracy is underestimated when the problems are known and shared honestly instead of being hidden by a dictator with a big ego. Both can prosper when things go good, it's when shit hits the fan that you notice the difference.
  - 8ytecoder 4y ago
    A democracy with persuasive leaders is likely to prevail over a dictatorship where no one dares to speak their mind - as in The Emperor’s New Clothes.
    - themitigating 4y ago
      Or a democracy where its leaders lie
- prewett 4y ago
  I don't think diplomatic solutions are possible when one side says "this land that we don't currently occupy is ours", especially when the people in charge view admitting they were mistaking as a existential personal failure. The best you can hope for is balance-of-power detente.

That is a very complicated question, but in short: Russia’s economy is supported by oil. Oil is pretty much the one thing that they’ve still been consistently able to export. China’s economy is based on exporting lots and lots and lots of manufactured goods. Many of them are essential, but many of them could be banned tomorrow.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
The point being that Russia would be more desperate due to fewer options? Not trying to argue, just curious.
- ketzo 4y ago
  The opposite, actually — people NEED Russia’s oil. They don’t have the option to stop buying it without a lot of pain. So Russia’s biggest money-fountain has stayed on despite sanctions. Meanwhile, China exports a lot of things that people don’t need. You can turn those off quicker. Again — huge oversimplifications. But I think reasonably solid mental model.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > Meanwhile, China exports a lot of things that people don’t need. You can turn those off quicker. It's not like that's all they export. They export a lot of essential things, and cutting them off would probably far more economically disruptive to their customers than to them. They're store shelves won't be empty, and given their political system they can probably deal with the fallout much more effectively. There are also a lot of alternative producers of oil, while there's no other advanced manufacturing giant on the scale of China that people can shift their orders to. It would make the COVID supply chain difficulties look like a joke.
jacobolus 4y ago
It’s not a complicated question. It’s a very simple question with a simple answer: one man (Vladimir Putin) wanted to go to war and made the (initial and ongoing) decision despite it being a clearly terrible idea to anyone else watching. How Russia got itself to the point where one person has consolidated all authority, surrounded himself with corrupt sycophants, and cannot accurately gather or integrate information from the rest of the society is the complicated question here. It’s a pretty good demonstration for anyone watching around the world that unchecked power can lead to disastrous decisions. It should inspire us to stand up for democracy and against corruption and consolidation of wealth and power in our own societies. It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; the best we can do is speculate. My speculation is that involves some combination of (a) doing what he thinks will best maintain internal political control, (b) satisfying an egoistical urge for historical glory, and (c) a narcissistic belief that others must bow to his personal whims and a raging narcissistic grudge when they do not.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; Entitlement. The closest you came was the descriptor "narcissistic" in (c). Narcissism is supposed to be a rare condition, but it is found everywhere. It is easiest to understand leaders like Putin, Jong-un, Xi, DeSantis and Trump, if framed in psychological terms like narcissism with symptoms of entitlement, grandiosity, attention seeking, arrogance, bullying, lack of empathy, and a fear of criticism.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - deleted 4y ago
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- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  >It’s impossible to determine Putin’s personal motivations from outside; the best we can do is speculate. Russia has no convenient geographic features to protect it from invasion, so it relies on long distances. Those distances are much shorter than they used to be, and Russian doctrine for at least the past decade has been focused on creating confusion and chaos in Eastern Europe. The chaos is here, and they probably misread the international community on what they could get away with. Now that they're in it, though, I think Putin is the biggest obstacle to Russia extricating themselves from the debacle.
rurp 4y ago
Russia has even put their energy exports at risk though. They are already trading at a discount and things could get much worse if the war continues to escalate. If Putin advances to using nukes or mass slaughtering of civilians, things will eventually reach a point where the neutral countries finally cut ties. Russia starting a nuclear war would be bad for China, India and others; there's some point at which they'll cut off Russian trade.
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  Russia has been mass slaughtering citizens. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2022/09/22/new-mass-graves-found-in-ukraine-as-putins-atrocities-continue/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2022/09/22/new-mas...
  - okasaki 4y ago
    Yes and they're taking babies out of incubators and leaving them to die.
    - jakubadamw 4y ago
      I understand your snark is simply meant to signal your sympathy towards war crime negationism, but the Gulf War incubator reference does happen to be on topic and not in the way you may have intended. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/09/europe/gallery/mariupol-hospital-bombed/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/09/europe/gallery/mariupol-h...
      - okasaki 4y ago
        No, I don't think you got my point.
        jonny_eh 4y ago
        Can you clarify? I'm confused as well.

jm4 4y ago

In no particular order: - Russia overestimated their position - Russia believed the war would be over in a few days (which many in the West also believed) - Russia assumed Europe would keep buying their oil (which has happened to an extent) - Russia believes they can "out-suffer" the West and we will crack after a few months - Russia believed the West was too polarized to reach consensus on an effective response In short, Russia had a bad read on the situation and shot themselves in the foot. They thought they were in a position to impose their will without a fight or a significant response from the West. We have seen a little bit of the same attitude from China the past several years - decadent West on the decline, democracy is flawed, etc. - but I have to think they are smart enough to realize they have been underestimating us. At a minimum, I think it pushes back their timeline for when they believed they would become the world's premier power. Hopefully, that buys us all some time to cool off and find diplomatic solutions.

NicoJuicy 4y ago
A democracy is underestimated when the problems are known and shared honestly instead of being hidden by a dictator with a big ego. Both can prosper when things go good, it's when shit hits the fan that you notice the difference.
- 8ytecoder 4y ago
  A democracy with persuasive leaders is likely to prevail over a dictatorship where no one dares to speak their mind - as in The Emperor’s New Clothes.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    Or a democracy where its leaders lie
prewett 4y ago
I don't think diplomatic solutions are possible when one side says "this land that we don't currently occupy is ours", especially when the people in charge view admitting they were mistaking as a existential personal failure. The best you can hope for is balance-of-power detente.