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I don't think Ukraine is a good example of your point, as apart from being a war between two nations, it is clearly also a war between democratic and authoritar

I don't think Ukraine is a good example of your point, as apart from being a war between two nations, it is clearly also a war between democratic and authoritarian belief systems. That ideological divide is a large part of what sparked it in the first place--the whole thing began with mass pro-democracy demonstrations that ousted an authoritarian leader. My perception is that Ukrainians know what it's like to live under an authoritarian system and they would rather risk death and the total destruction of the country than go back to it. Nationalism is clearly a factor as well, but it is deeply intertwined with pro-democratic and anti-authoritarian ideals. I don't think you'd see anything close to this level of resistance if victory would mean an authoritarian Ukraine rather than a democratic Ukraine.

mjburgess 4y ago
> I don't think you'd see anything close to this level of resistance if victory would mean an authoritarian Ukraine rather than a democratic Ukraine. Ah, well: I do. I think this has extraordinarily little to do with any "political system", of which Ukraine and Russia were both quite similar. One Nation invaded another, and in such moments people's nationalism is trigged. One defends' "one's own nation" regardless. This is a vastly more powerful reaction than any intellectual-sentimental philosophy. This "Nation" is "Ours" and not "Yours". Indeed, the heart of the matter is that Russia isnt nationalist. They're still operating in a pre-National era of loose ethnicities being "of a common group" and hence do not think these borders matter so much. What russia hasnt fully understood is that essentially the rest of the world has become nationalist, whilst it still operates under an ethnic-imperial model.
- danenania 4y ago
  I don't think your reading lines up with history. Putin was clearly content to allow Ukraine a large degree of sovereignty and autonomy as long as they remained under an authoritarian system. If nationalism was the only driver, why overthrow Yanukovych, thereby spitting in Putin's face and risking domination by another country? What wasn't tolerable to Putin was a bourgeoning democracy on Russia's doorstep with similar ethnography and demography to Russia. If it proved to be more successful than Russia's model (which isn't hard), that's a clear threat to his regime. 'I think this has extraordinarily little to do with any "political system", of which Ukraine and Russia were both quite similar.' It seems like you're simply ignoring what happened in 2014. The stark difference between Ukraine and Russia's political systems (and their future trajectories) after that point is one of the main causes of the war.
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    The "authoritarian system" in question was russia's ethnic-imperial system of empire. That it was "authoritarian" is far less important than its being Russian, ethnically and culturally. The offense to russia was first to turn to the west, and hence as Russia sees it, a counter-empire; and the secondly, the suprise and outrage, to believe that it's a Nation. Both are incomprehensible to Russia -- it has nothing to do with how "authoritarian" anything is. These are the concerns of intellectuals in op-eds
    - danenania 4y ago
      I see some truth to your point, but it's also very reductive, and you're providing nothing to back up your reductionism. The "turn to the west" is geopolitical but it's also a turn away from a conservative authoritarian order and toward a liberal democratic order. Is that just a meaningless geopolitical coincidence? No, it's clearly part of the equation, though certainly not the only part.
      - mjburgess 4y ago
        Well my point is only that a person reading my comments comes to see their "intuitive nationalism" as an explicit feature of their thinking, rather than a natural fact of the world. My analysis doesnt need to be 100% to show that even the very idea of "invasion" in the modern sense is full of contingencies we don't acknowledge. What a weird thing, no, in the history of the world that the US invades iraq and wishes for it to govern "itself". Once you remove the "Nation" from your thinking, various issues become clearer, esp. why so many "countries" appear unstable. Ie., politically they are countries, but havent yet "progressed" to "default nationalism". Once a region adopts nationalism, it seems there's no going back; and people of that Nation are fundamentally radicalised by that notion. There are "borders", "immigration" and indeed -- how strangely -- "illegal" immigration; there are armies, and you should join one if you're "invaded". These ideas appear in our thinking as transparent, obvious, facts of the world; and if we feel they are violated, then we feel outraged -- and would act very severely to get redress. This is radicalism, and a certain "liberal nationalism" has deeply radicalised the west. I think, foremost, we want Ukraine to fight Russia because we believe Ukraine to be a Nation. I think something many of its own people did not think 20 years ago, and now, many die because they believe it.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Russians as a culture are plenty nationalist. Russia as a polity is very confused on this. Officially, it's civic nationalist - you're supposed to think of yourself as a part of the "Russian nation" regardless of your ethnicity, but it's also defined broadly to allow for incomplete assimilation. As a side note, it's more difficult to talk about this in (most) languages other than Russian because they don't have the distinction that Russian itself does. The word "русский" ("russky") usually means Russian in an ethnic sense, while the word "российский" ("rossiyskiy" - from the name of the country, which is Rossiya in Russian) means Russian in a sense of pertaining or belonging to the country. Thus you can compare and contrast "russky nationalism" (ethnic) and "rossiyskiy nationalism" (civic). In practice, the government tolerates and sometimes encourages ethnic Russian nationalism so long as it does not manifest as open political opposition.
int_19h 4y ago
It gets less clear-cut as the war drags on. For example, a rather extreme law on mass media has been passed in Ukraine recently, with the justification that it is necessary to block Russian propaganda. https://kyivindependent.com/news-feed/zelensky-signs-media-law-criticized-by-journalist-groups-as-authoritarian https://kyivindependent.com/news-feed/zelensky-signs-media-l... I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine ends up winning a Pyrrhic victory in a sense that it'll liberate all of its territory, but its internal politics will radicalize in the process, if not to the point of becoming outright non-democratic, then at least becoming more like Hungary or Poland: a democratic majority voting in fully support of a crackdown on all political, ideological, and cultural opposition.
- danenania 4y ago
  Yes, that is true, though similar erosions of democracy also happen in well-established democracies like the US and UK when there are wars. I think there is clearly still an aspiration towards western-style liberal democracy even if there are many gaps in how it's implemented. I think this aspiration is the fundamental problem for Putin. He sees it as encouraging things like the ousting of Yanukovych, which he desperately wants to stop from being repeated in other countries within his sphere of influence. He already almost lost Belarus in a similar way.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure that Putin literally believes all that tripe about "triune people", and I don't think he needed any excuses beyond that. Well, there's also the part where I think he really wants to end up in the history textbooks with the same standing as Ivan III and other famous "gatherers of the land". So, in a sense, he is also fighting for his country and its nation - it just happens to be an imaginary one: "Greater Russia".

mjburgess 4y ago

> I don't think you'd see anything close to this level of resistance if victory would mean an authoritarian Ukraine rather than a democratic Ukraine. Ah, well: I do. I think this has extraordinarily little to do with any "political system", of which Ukraine and Russia were both quite similar. One Nation invaded another, and in such moments people's nationalism is trigged. One defends' "one's own nation" regardless. This is a vastly more powerful reaction than any intellectual-sentimental philosophy. This "Nation" is "Ours" and not "Yours". Indeed, the heart of the matter is that Russia isnt nationalist. They're still operating in a pre-National era of loose ethnicities being "of a common group" and hence do not think these borders matter so much. What russia hasnt fully understood is that essentially the rest of the world has become nationalist, whilst it still operates under an ethnic-imperial model.

danenania 4y ago
I don't think your reading lines up with history. Putin was clearly content to allow Ukraine a large degree of sovereignty and autonomy as long as they remained under an authoritarian system. If nationalism was the only driver, why overthrow Yanukovych, thereby spitting in Putin's face and risking domination by another country? What wasn't tolerable to Putin was a bourgeoning democracy on Russia's doorstep with similar ethnography and demography to Russia. If it proved to be more successful than Russia's model (which isn't hard), that's a clear threat to his regime. 'I think this has extraordinarily little to do with any "political system", of which Ukraine and Russia were both quite similar.' It seems like you're simply ignoring what happened in 2014. The stark difference between Ukraine and Russia's political systems (and their future trajectories) after that point is one of the main causes of the war.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  The "authoritarian system" in question was russia's ethnic-imperial system of empire. That it was "authoritarian" is far less important than its being Russian, ethnically and culturally. The offense to russia was first to turn to the west, and hence as Russia sees it, a counter-empire; and the secondly, the suprise and outrage, to believe that it's a Nation. Both are incomprehensible to Russia -- it has nothing to do with how "authoritarian" anything is. These are the concerns of intellectuals in op-eds
  - danenania 4y ago
    I see some truth to your point, but it's also very reductive, and you're providing nothing to back up your reductionism. The "turn to the west" is geopolitical but it's also a turn away from a conservative authoritarian order and toward a liberal democratic order. Is that just a meaningless geopolitical coincidence? No, it's clearly part of the equation, though certainly not the only part.
    - mjburgess 4y ago
      Well my point is only that a person reading my comments comes to see their "intuitive nationalism" as an explicit feature of their thinking, rather than a natural fact of the world. My analysis doesnt need to be 100% to show that even the very idea of "invasion" in the modern sense is full of contingencies we don't acknowledge. What a weird thing, no, in the history of the world that the US invades iraq and wishes for it to govern "itself". Once you remove the "Nation" from your thinking, various issues become clearer, esp. why so many "countries" appear unstable. Ie., politically they are countries, but havent yet "progressed" to "default nationalism". Once a region adopts nationalism, it seems there's no going back; and people of that Nation are fundamentally radicalised by that notion. There are "borders", "immigration" and indeed -- how strangely -- "illegal" immigration; there are armies, and you should join one if you're "invaded". These ideas appear in our thinking as transparent, obvious, facts of the world; and if we feel they are violated, then we feel outraged -- and would act very severely to get redress. This is radicalism, and a certain "liberal nationalism" has deeply radicalised the west. I think, foremost, we want Ukraine to fight Russia because we believe Ukraine to be a Nation. I think something many of its own people did not think 20 years ago, and now, many die because they believe it.
int_19h 4y ago
Russians as a culture are plenty nationalist. Russia as a polity is very confused on this. Officially, it's civic nationalist - you're supposed to think of yourself as a part of the "Russian nation" regardless of your ethnicity, but it's also defined broadly to allow for incomplete assimilation. As a side note, it's more difficult to talk about this in (most) languages other than Russian because they don't have the distinction that Russian itself does. The word "русский" ("russky") usually means Russian in an ethnic sense, while the word "российский" ("rossiyskiy" - from the name of the country, which is Rossiya in Russian) means Russian in a sense of pertaining or belonging to the country. Thus you can compare and contrast "russky nationalism" (ethnic) and "rossiyskiy nationalism" (civic). In practice, the government tolerates and sometimes encourages ethnic Russian nationalism so long as it does not manifest as open political opposition.

int_19h 4y ago

It gets less clear-cut as the war drags on. For example, a rather extreme law on mass media has been passed in Ukraine recently, with the justification that it is necessary to block Russian propaganda. https://kyivindependent.com/news-feed/zelensky-signs-media-law-criticized-by-journalist-groups-as-authoritarian https://kyivindependent.com/news-feed/zelensky-signs-media-l... I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine ends up winning a Pyrrhic victory in a sense that it'll liberate all of its territory, but its internal politics will radicalize in the process, if not to the point of becoming outright non-democratic, then at least becoming more like Hungary or Poland: a democratic majority voting in fully support of a crackdown on all political, ideological, and cultural opposition.

danenania 4y ago
Yes, that is true, though similar erosions of democracy also happen in well-established democracies like the US and UK when there are wars. I think there is clearly still an aspiration towards western-style liberal democracy even if there are many gaps in how it's implemented. I think this aspiration is the fundamental problem for Putin. He sees it as encouraging things like the ousting of Yanukovych, which he desperately wants to stop from being repeated in other countries within his sphere of influence. He already almost lost Belarus in a similar way.
- int_19h 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure that Putin literally believes all that tripe about "triune people", and I don't think he needed any excuses beyond that. Well, there's also the part where I think he really wants to end up in the history textbooks with the same standing as Ivan III and other famous "gatherers of the land". So, in a sense, he is also fighting for his country and its nation - it just happens to be an imaginary one: "Greater Russia".