Re: [External] [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [cliospsyche] Ukraine/Russia - an op-end by Columbia prof. Matthew H. Murray

Peter Petschauer

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Jun 2, 2025, 11:55:25 AMJun 2

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What a fascinating elaboration by one of our Finnish colleagues.

Here are a few added points: one of the reasons several historians have written, it emerges in this essay, that Russians are generally supportive of Putin’s war against Ukraine is Russians’ diminishing Ukrainians, their language, their culture, their history. Medvedev's disdain fits well. Little Brother is not a positive term either. It came up recently in relation to Russia’s status vis-à-vis China. Also, calling them Nazis latches on to the reality of a Nazi element in Ukraine, but is just as much a refection of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union and Putin’s post-war trauma with that. It is also someone saying of someone else that they are a Nazi, a nasty, in other words.

I sense that some American thinkers see Russia’s war against Ukraine as a war the US somehow initiated and in some ways continues. It did not, but like the Europeans, it has supported Ukraine; it, like other Eastern European nations, want/ed to be free of Russian influence and domination. The argument that NATO’s expansion motivated Putin to defend himself, and thus Russia, against the corrupt West and its minions in Europe is not defensible historically.

Three points:

1. Whatever promises western leaders made to Gorbachev became null and void when Putin ascended power. He was no friend of Gorbachev, the man who in his mind buried the Soviet Union, his homeland, and he showed his cards when Russia’s military literally demolished Chechnya on his orders in 2000 in the 2nd war. It looked like Ukraine today.

2. Eastern Europeans got the message; one after the other, they joined NATO. Having been under Soviet (Russian) domination, they remembered not only the corrupt regimes sponsored by it and their failed uprisings. And since Putin started the war in Ukraine, for the most part, they see their wisdom to join, and others have joined as well.

3. Russia’s propaganda about Ukraine always having been Russian defies what we know of the complexity of the past/region. Part is collapsing historical events. Let me not go all the way to ancient Kyiv and start with Peter the Great and Catherine the Great who conquered the area in the 18th century; as much as I admire her and her gentle approach in this case, the battles against the Ottoman Empire before then were some of most vicious of the century.

No doubt, Putin conveniently forgets this subjugation and that Ukrainians suffered several million of its fellow citizens in the 1930s to starvation. They welcomed the German military when it first arrived, but soon realized that the new devil was worse than the one they knew; a generation later, they died in unbelievable numbers with their Soviet country-men and -women against the NS regime.

Some did join the other side. My father was reassigned to a Wehrmacht army in Upper Austria in April 45. “The last stand.” Fighting so that the 300,000 soldiers and officers would be captured by the Americans rather than the Soviets was a Ukrainian division! My father most likely owed them his life. History can get very personal!

4. Finally, we don’t seem to like the word dictator; it fits Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. We prefer to call our autocrats (one man rulers) authoritarians. It is an euphemism. The reality is that our autocrats have not killed millions of individuals in camps and war, but they have as little respect for human needs and life and, like their likeminded predecessors three generations ago, make war like them. Compare the photos of Germany and St. Petersburg after WWII to those of Ukraine and other war zones today. In their eagerness to dominate, to rework their tortured childhoods, they ignore everyone, except those who say yes and ignore previous carefully made plans, contracts, treaties, needs and generally held truths.

All best wishes,

Peter

Peter Petschauer, PhD, Dhc.

Professor Emeritus, Appalachian State University.

Author and poet.

Recently published:

“Seasons — of Life and Understanding,” a poetry book honoring Basho, the Japanese poet, Charleston, SC (2024);

“Was man so Alles lernt. Südtiroler Rückhalt für die moderne Welt“ (“All the Things one Learns”), Weger, Brixen/Bressanone, IT (2022);

“Listen to Rarely Heard Voices,” a second poetry book, New York City (2022);

“An Immigrant in the 1960s; Becoming an American in New York City” (2020);

“Hopes and Fears. Past and Present,” the first poetry book (2019).

Also available are: “In the Face of Evil. The Sustenance of Tradition,” about my four German “mothers”; a novel, “A Perfect Portrait. A Woman Artist in Eighteenth-Century Germany” and earlier books. Most available at peterpetschauer.com, or through amazon.com.

On Jun 1, 2025, at 06:59, Esa Palosaari <esa.pa...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,
Thank you for the op-ed, Brigitte. The material incentive motivation there seems clear and persuasive. I can believe it.
One part of the puzzle I have trouble understanding is the cultural argument Putin made for the war in his July 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians that was repeated in his war declaration as talk about Ukrainian territory being historical Russian homeland and Ukrainian officers having their common Motherland with Russia. I see this point repeated by pro-war Russians in individual conversations. Maybe experts here can help how the war and the atrocities follow from those premises in the minds of the Russians? Below are my non-expert thoughts about it if you happen to be interested.
Esa

In Finland, one justification for NATO membership was: “If Russians are willing to do that to members of a nation they consider as close brothers, then what horrors are they willing to inflict on us, a non-Slav, non-Orthodox nation?” The way of thinking was that you would be least likely to hurt your family members.
However, in discussions with Russians online who have Zs in their profiles and who seem to be ex-patriots, living outside Russia, I found the exact opposite justification for the war in Ukraine, and the lack of it in Finland. Despite Finland’s very real, realistic and eventually realized intentions to join NATO and double NATO members’ border to Russian right next to St. Petersburg and the nuclear warheads in Kola Peninsula, the “ordinary Russians” say they are not in the least interested in Finland, in general, and not especially in expending blood and treasure to invade it exactly because it “is not even Slavic”.
Some historical and cultural examples that came to my mind were (1) Hitler’s ideologies, speeches and policies, (2) the Russification ideologies and policies over the past centuries, (3) and language policies and wars in the Nordics in the 20^th century.
(1)  Hitler apparently had a similar playbook as Putin and focus on ethnicity across the borders which justified conquest:
(i)             Ethnic unity: German Austrians/Sudeteners are “one people” with the Reich. “The oldest eastern province of the German people shall be, from this point on, the newest bastion of the German Reich”(https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-anschluss)
(ii)           Self-determination plebiscite: Hitler ordered a vote after troops were inside Austria to cloak annexation in legality.
(iii)         Victim narrative: Prague and “Jewish-Bolshevik” forces were allegedly abusing Germans. Hitler apparently told the Germans that the Sudeten Germans were being exterminated, annihilated, oppressed in an inhuman manner and treated in an undignified way: The Germans were not allowed to sing any song that the Czechs do not like. The greatest enemies England and France together with their natural allies were encircling Germany and keeping it weak.
(iv)          Promise of limited aims: Each land grab was the last revision required for peace. When the Czechs have come to terms with their other minorities, and that peaceably and not through oppression, then there is no further interest in the Czech state. “It is the last territorial demand I shall make.”
There were also Germanization programs before Hitler, it seems, like there was a tradition of Russification programs before Putin. For example, Polish was banned in primary schools in 1901 and German made the sole school language in Danish North Schleswig in 1888. Hitler also had similar kidnappings of children as Putin now has an arrest warrant for, stealing thousands of children looking physically like their preferred ethnicity and educating them into their preferred language and culture (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensborn-program; https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/vladimir-vladimirovich-putin).
(2)  Russification ideology in Putin’s war essay and policies has a long history. The idea of ‘triune Russian nation’ of Great Russians, Little Russians (Ukrainians) and Belarussians seems like an old nationalistic construction created in Tsarist Russia that was dormant during the Soviet Union but was resurrected by nationalists like Alexander Dugin after its fall (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449057.2023.2247664).
The official ideology of Nicholas I was Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality: a single faith, a single ruler, and a single Russian culture (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Orthodoxy-Autocracy-and-Nationality). These seem to have been common ideas also after Nicholas I. For example, in the 1880s, Polish was banned in schools, on school grounds and in the offices of Congress Poland. Research and teaching of the Polish language, Polish history or Catholicism were forbidden. In Lithuania, public use of spoken Lithuanian as well as the use of Latin and Gothic scripts in publishing were prohibited. In Bessarabia, the use of the Romanian language was forbidden in the administration in 1829, in churches in 1833, in secondary schools in 1842, and in elementary schools in 1860.
This is what Catherine had in mind for Ukraine and Finland in 1764:
"Little Russia [Ukraine], Livonia, and Finland are provinces governed by confirmed privileges, and it would be improper to violate them by abolishing all at once. To call them foreign and deal with them on that basis is more than erroneous-it would be sheer stupidity. These provinces, as well as Smolensk, should be Russified as gently as possible so that they cease looking to the forest like wolves. When the Hetmans are gone from Little Russia, every effort should be made to eradicate from memory the period and the hetmans, let alone promote anyone to that office."
The minister of education of Nicholas I, Uvarov, tried to eradicate Ukrainian identity by focusing on the future generations. For this he commissioned a new history textbook to all education districts of the whole empire. The second attempt at recruiting historians for this project succeeded and he got his book presenting Ukrainians and Russians as one nation instead of distinct peoples, similarly to Putin’s claims that he used for supporting his war.
Under Alexander II, all Ukrainian Sunday schools were abolished and proscribed. His minister of internal affair wrote to the censors that “there has never been, is not, and cannot be any separate Little Russian language", "the so-called Ukrainian language". Publication of the Ukrainian translation of the Gospels was banned. Similarly banned were the importation of all Ukrainian-language publications into the empire and the publication of any Ukrainian literature. The existing Ukrainian publications were to be removed from school libraries and the theatrical performances, songs and poetry readings in Ukrainian were prohibited. And so on.
In Finland, the imperial laws subordinating the previously autonomous Finnish laws to it, making Russian the administrative language, and merging the Finnish army into the imperial army as well as the press censorship, the infusion of Russian civil servants, and the plans to abolish the Finnish Diet led to a half-million-name petition, mass draft refusal, strikes, the assassination of Governor-General Bobrikov, and finally to the declaration of independence in the beginning of the 20^th century.
Currently, there seems to be hostility in Russia to Finno-Ugric and other non-Russian languages still spoken within its borders. In 2018, it passed a law overruling previous laws by ethnic autonomies, made education in all languages but Russian optional, and reduced instruction in minority languages to two hours per week. Putin said that pupils must not be forced to learn a language that is not Russian. In the 2020 constitutional rewrite Russian was elevated at the language of the “state-forming people”.
In 2021, the Russian association removed itself from the World Congresses of Finno-Ugric peoples because of its criticism of Russia. Earlier in 2015, Putin’s right hand, Nikolai Patrushev claimed that the Finns attempt to create separatism in Karelia through support for its language and culture. The leader of the Karelian Congress Anatoly Grigoryev said that Patrushev’s words were typical for KGB and commented that the Russians themselves were provoking the same separatism in Ukraine that they were accusing of others doing.
Russia has also accused others of the child kidnapping it itself seems to be guilty of in Ukraine. There has been over a decade of Russian-language media claims that the Nordic child welfare authorities are stealing Russian children, running concentration camps, and selling youngsters to gay couples.
For example, in 2014 the Russian children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov called both Finnish and Norwegian child welfare authorities as terrorists and fascists for removing children from their Russian families (https://yle.fi/a/3-7631016). Some other Russian headlines: “We are at the Finnish Gestapo. Russia, help us.” “Finnish government’s policy against Russian kids – genocide or fascism?”, “Finland – a concentration camp for kids”(https://euvsdisinfo.eu/finland-puts-russian-kids-in-prison-disinformation-that-shaped-the-minds-of-millions/). Similarly, the Norwegian the child-welfare agency is said to be a totalitarian stealer of children: “Scandinavians Take Kids From Russian Families to Reverse Population Decline“(https://euvsdisinfo.eu/norway-a-nation-in-moral-decay/).
The Nordic child welfare policies are in reality based on citizenship rather than on ethnicity or language, and favor keeping children with their parents as much as possible. This has been taken to the logical conclusion in that the government has organized flights to retrieve children and their Finnish citizen mothers of different ethnicities who travelled to the Islamic State to help ISIS and were imprisoned by the Kurds after its fall: “"Under the constitution, Finnish public authorities are obligated to safeguard the basic rights of the Finnish children interned in the camps insofar as this is possible” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55387991). Also there have been a few deaths of children by their parents because the authorities did not have enough resources to do their work or they were reluctant to remove the at-risk children from their parents (https://yle.fi/a/3-7344039). The Russian media claims about the nature of Finnish authorities therefore appear bizarre to me. They seem to be created for having handy propaganda available if there would happen to be a need for attacking the Nordics like with Ukraine.
(3)  Nevertheless, there seems to be historical parallels with the Russian nationalist policies in the Nordics in the past. The official languages have been emphasized in the past in favor of unofficial minority languages.
“The Sámi people were the subject of assimilation policies adopted by the state and church in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the forced accommodation of Sámi children in boarding schools, where they were forbidden to speak the Sámi language and forced to integrate into the majority culture. Some reportedly suffered violence and mistreatment.” (https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/03/finland-must-address-legacy-human-rights-violations-against-sami-people-says). Finnish-speaking children in Sweden were apparently also physically punished for speaking their own language at school even during class breaks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meänkieli).
In Finland, there have also been ideas of linguistic kinship among other speakers of Finno-Ugric languages like the Karelians and the Ingrians which have affected state policies like immigration and war. Before the Treaty of Tartu in 1920 which confirmed the border between the independent Finland and the Soviet Russia after the Finnish Civil War, there were volunteer Finnish expeditions in Russian East Karelia with goals from annexation to helping kindred peoples secede from revolutionary Russia. However, the goal was not to exterminate the “brother nations”. And nowadays Finland champions Nordic minority rights and funds Karelian heritage projects which support the unique cultural developments rather than making them conform to majority Finnish culture and ethnicity.
One Russian establishment utterance, regardless of its factuality, I have some contact from my own experience with Finnish language and culture, perhaps, is Medvedev’s post on Telegram that “the Ukrainian language is only a ‘mongrel dialect’ of Russian” (https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/19/ukraine-russia-war-stalemate-victory-congress-military-aid/; https://www.opinionglobal.cl/what-a-russian-victory-would-mean-for-ukraine/). There is some debate on whether the Finnish-like language spoken in Northern Norway (Kven) or in the Tornio/Torneå Valley border area of Sweden and Finland (Meänkieli) is really a separate language or a dialect. To me, who grew up in Tornio Valley, the language sounds more like a dialect than a separate language like Estonian. Those Finnish-like languages have been given minority statuses in Norway and Sweden, but I find it difficult to think of them as separate languages and ethnicities to Finnish.
Maybe something similar is happening in the heads of Russians regarding the Ukrainian language. But I still don’t quite get why the killing of Ukrainians because of their Slavic ties instead of attacking non-Slavic Finland for its NATO ambitions, for example. Maybe the material incentives from the corruption racket, mentioned in the op-ed, and then the ideological compliance from claiming that the country is being held hostage by the ultimate evil, the Nazis, who back-stabbed Russia once before and threatened its existence in the Second World War and who now again persecute Russians?

'Brigitte DEMEURE' via Clio’s Psyche <clios...@googlegroups.com> kirjoitti 31.5.2025 kello 13.08:

Hello
Below an op-ed in the newspaper Le Monde by Columbia professor Matthe H. Murray about Russia and Ukraine – I fully agree with him, it has always been my point of view since I dealt with Russian customers for export from France.
Best
Brigitte
----
“The invasion of Ukraine is the consequence of the system of widespread corruption that is plaguing Russia”
Matthew H.Murray
Professor of Public and International Affairs at Columbia
To truly address the roots of the war in Ukraine, Russia must start by acknowledging and fighting systemic corruption, which poses a threat to Russians and the rest of the world, says U.S. public and international affairs expert Matthew H. Murray, in an op-ed in “Le Monde”.
After his phone call with Donald Trump on May 19 on the issue of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow supported “a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis”. However, he reiterated that the “roots” of the conflict must be eliminated . Roots that, in the leader's fallacious and revengeful speech, are clear: on the one hand, Ukraine belongs to Russia; on the other hand, the efforts of the United States and Europe to protect Ukrainian sovereignty pose a threat to the Russians. Thus, Putin continues to distort history to impose unacceptable conditions on Ukraine, to evade any negotiations worthy of the name, to neutralize and demilitarize the country.
The conflict in Ukraine is a war of choice. History will show that the Kremlin's decision to attack a sovereign Central European state in the 21st century is the consequence of the system of widespread corruption that plagues Russia. Because systemic corruption is fueling Russia's aggressiveness – against Ukraine, against the liberal international order and against democracy itself.
Under Putin, it is clear that Russia has failed to democratize and modernize its economy. Despite considerable natural resources, technological know-how and human capital, the country is unable to develop industries that are competitive on the world market and comply with international rules, including those of the World Trade Organization, which Russia joined in 2012. This economic failure is due to the omnipresent oligarchy, which monopolizes Russian institutions and bleeds the country dry in order to enrich itself and monopolize political power.
In Russia, corruption is truly systemic. In the “power vertical,” the president sits at the top of a nepotistic network that controls government agencies, budgets, and public and private companies. This network appropriates public resources, stifles innovation, and creates barriers to hinder market entry for Russian entrepreneurs and foreign investors. This state-backed oligarchy cannot remain within Russia's borders: it is under the necessity of laundering and placing its illicit gains in foreign markets.
Russia began invading Ukraine in 2014, in response to the “Revolution of Dignity” [or Maidan Revolution]. So, Ukrainians took to the streets and occupied Maidan Square in Kyiv to protest against President Viktor Yanukovych: he wanted to abandon Ukraine's plan to join the European Union (EU) and join the world's largest economic bloc. The demonstrators defended the right of citizen-entrepreneurs to innovate and evolve in an egalitarian market, regulated by transparent rules applicable to all.
For the Putin oligarchy, on the other hand, Ukraine's accession to the EU is the equivalent in the economic field of membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the military field. When, in 2014, Maidan protesters forced Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia, the Kremlin reacted manu militari by annexing Crimea and occupying the Donbass in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, he has embarked on a hybrid war aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the new government in Kiev. Putting corruption at the service of its war, Russia has been funding local henchmen to get their hands on Ukrainian government institutions and domestic industries.
Hatred of democracy
The fact remains that Russia did not succeed in stopping the Maidan revolution. A revolution that led to the election of anti-corruption candidate Volodymyr Zelensky as president. Ukraine then laboriously set about the task of dismantling oligarchic structures and replacing them with independent institutions. It has attacked the kingpins of corruption, targeting in particular the main Kremlin agent on its soil, the media tycoon and MP Viktor Medvedchuk. Thus, Ukraine was transforming into an independent democracy and a prosperous economy. A stone's throw from Russia.
By deciding to invade the entire territory of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin has shifted into high gear in his campaign against post-Maidan Ukraine. In his speech on February 21, 2022, preparing Russians for this invasion, the head of the Kremlin accused Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions of being destabilizing elements for Russia. His plan was simple: invade Ukraine in a matter of days and replace the Zelensky government with a new corrupt oligarchy, Medvedchuk included, and local proxies, all backed by Russia and under the thumb of the Kremlin.
To address the roots of the war in Ukraine, Russia must therefore start by acknowledging and combating this systemic corruption, which poses a threat to Russians and the rest of the world. Putin seems to be aware of Russia's economic failure. During negotiations with the Trump administration, its envoys repeatedly called for the lifting of European sanctions and export controls. They argue that a peace agreement would create considerable opportunities for trade with Russia.
Moreover, if Russia is serious about normalising its economic relations with the West, the Kremlin must first agree to an unconditional ceasefire and then negotiate an end to the war. He must also openly support Ukraine's EU membership project. And recognize that a stable, prosperous and democratic Ukraine would benefit both Ukrainians and the entire region.
As for the United States and the EU, they have a crucial role to play in this economic dimension of the war. Together, they must impose new sanctions on Russia, while promising to lift them if it takes steps towards a lasting peace. They must also help Ukraine to complete its EU accession process and to strengthen its anti-corruption institutions, laws and practices.
In short, to achieve lasting peace, it is imperative that Russia address the endemic corruption that plagues it. Otherwise, his foreign policy will continue to be characterized by a hatred of democracy and the use of armed force.
Matthew H. Murray is an Assistant Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, New York. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in the Obama administration's Department of Commerce.
Matthew H. Murray (Professor of Public and International Affairs at Columbia)

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jun 2, 2025, 12:50:41 PMJun 2

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jun 2, 2025, 12:51:20 PMJun 2

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jun 2, 2025, 12:51:49 PMJun 2

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jun 3, 2025, 5:43:57 AMJun 3

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Thank you Peter, Brigitte, Esa, Hans, and all,

I want to comment on one of Peter's points. He said, after the Second Chechen War, "Eastern Europeans got the message; one after the other, they joined NATO." We need to unpack this and put it into a broader historical/geopolitical context.

First, it is understandable given their history of domination by Russia that the Eastern Europeans would fear for their security in the wake of Russia's wars to prevent the secession of Chechnya. However, it is a completely separate question why the United States and the leaders of NATO chose to admit these countries into the alliance. With the end of the Cold War, a much easier and less expensive way to uphold the security of the Eastern Europeans would have been to negotiate verifiable threat reduction arrangements with Russia. Such security treaties had been concluded with the USSR and both sides complied with these treaties. Why was this successful method of pursuing security abandoned AFTER the Cold War, precisely when it would appear the time was ripe for demilitarization?

The answer has nothing to do with Russia, Putin or Eastern Europe. One part of the answer is that war and war preparations are big business, and the "defense" contractors, military bureaucracies and other special interests that benefit from militarizing security arrangements prevailed in the halls of power. This explains two important facts that Peter's narrative does not address. First, the expansion of NATO predated Putin and the Second Chechen War; the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were admitted into NATO in March 1999, five months before Chechan Islamists' attacks on Russian civilians set in motion the events that became the Second Chechan War. In March 1999, the Cold War was long over and the First Chechan War had been over for nearly two years, so at least this first expansion of NATO was entirely "unprovoked" and requires a psychohistorical explanation.

Interestingly, pro-NATO Americans and Europeans are quick to construe Putin's conduct of the Second Chechen War as a manifestation of Russian imperialism, while making no such characterization of Yeltsin's conduct of the First Chechen War. Why the double standard? Here too, the answer is straightforward. Yeltsin was the darling of "the West," having outsourced privatization of the Russian economy to Wall Street, while Putin brought the neoliberal party to an end, making him the villain de jour in Washington and Brussels.

Second, the expansion of NATO is part of a package of other militarist policies pursued concurrently. These include US withdrawal from security treaties with Russia, nuclear weapons modernization, and US militarization of the Pacific, the Middle East and indeed the entire planet and outer space. (Lest this sound like overblown rhetoric, it is the STATED policy of the United States--called "Full Spectrum Dominance"--though couched in less ominous sounding jargon.)

Third, and finally, we might well wonder why US and European leaders have been pursuing war and war preparations at the expense of international security and general prosperity. The answer to this question will not surprise psychohistorians. In my 1990 survey of the US Council on Foreign Relations, I found that hawks outnumbered doves by two-to-one, and this sample of the US foreign policy establishment probably undercounts hawks. Male hawks (defined as men who support militarist policies) exhibit machismo and authoritarianism, and female hawks exhibit authoritarianism. These unconscious motivations have nothing to do with the rational pursuit of security, which as I said could be more easily, effectively and cheaply achieved by verifiable threat reduction agreements.

For more on all this, I refer you to the PowerPoint from my May 24 IPhA presentation "Understanding the Ukraine War: NATO and the Psychology of Militarism." It also contains a short bibliography with relevant supporting publications.

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dlo...@nycap.rr.com

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Jun 4, 2025, 12:49:15 AMJun 4

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At this time Russia has the 11^th largest GDP of all the nations in the world, an economy smaller than Canada, Brazil, and Italy, about 1/13 of the size of the US. It is 1.9% of the world economy.

At one time – roughly between 1945 and 1990 we had the USSR, an entity whose population (in 1989) was twice as large as the current population of the Russian Federation. The population of the USSR plus all the Eastern European countries that were members of the Warsaw pact in 1989 was more than 5 times as large than the current Russian population; larger than the population of the United States at the time. However, this is 2025 - Russia is not what it used to be. They used to be an adversary we could sink our teeth into. We grew accustomed to having an enemy who was strong enough to be feared but from who we could protect ourselves, if we spent enough money on the MI complex. With the 1990 collapse of the USSR we were bereft. We made do with terrorists for a while, Sadam Hussein, Al Queda and ISIS; and now we have China.

Russia is a nuclear power, is getting some military assistance from China and North Korea and is engaged in a full scale war in Ukraine - and yes there are fanatics like pan-Slavist like Alexander Dugan, but to think that Russia wants to invade Poland, Estonia, Latvia, or Finland is insane. It can only come from the regression to the old familiar paranoid stance toward our (we used to say former) mortal enemies. It also stems from ignoring the importance of the provocative elephant in the room, US and NATO expansionism.

David

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Esa Palosaari

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Jun 4, 2025, 3:10:38 AMJun 4

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Hi,

I don’t think it is insane to think that Russia or Putin would want to invade also other areas that were part of the Soviet/Russian Empire in addition to Georgia and Ukraine. Putin has already talked in terms of spheres of influence and made demands on the foreign policy of its neighbours (like Finland) in contradiction to previous talks about their sovereignty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2021_Russian_ultimatum_to_NATO). Russia has also been constantly harassing and waging hybrid warfare against its neighbours like Estonia and Finland, including cutting underwater power and communication cables, jamming GPS (thereby threatening safety in the air and on the sea), attacking communication networks through cyber warfare, having its jets and bombers violate the airspace, and so on. There has been talk that Trump and his allies have already destroyed NATO by directly dishonouring their previous commitments and by sowing doubt that they will not honor their commitments in the future, saying that they are willing to leave the alliance. This cutting of the Atlantic ties happens to be one of the chief aims of the Russian strategy as articulated by Dugin, for example, in his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics. In addition to dismembering Georgia, cutting the United Kingdom from the European Union, and annexing Ukraine. Using that book as a source of predictions seems to have worked better than listening many analysts of Russia and Ukraine who thought that suggesting a large-scale invasion of Ukraine was insane just before it happened [1].

My understanding is that most Westerners have been giving Russia the benefit of the doubt despite the first and second Chechen Wars and the annexation of parts of Georgia, and with the first round of annexations from Ukraine. This happened also in Finland which tried to believe the best and did business with Russia until the full-scale invasion. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was also a fall in military expenditure as % of GDP in Europe and in the United States (according to SIPRI data used by the World Bank in the figure below [2]). The EU countries especially reduced their military spending as well as the size of their armies. Countries like Sweden gave up their conscription armies altogether. People in non-ex soviet block states, in general, believed that Russia had become or was on its way to become a ”normal” liberal democracy that wasn’t a threat to its neighbours. You would be shunned for thinking otherwise. It was considered a scandal in Finland when the minister of defence Häkämies gave a speech in Washington in 2007 where he said that Russia would be a security challenge for Finland [3]. Even in 2019, the former minister Eero Heinäluoma said that the member of parliament Jussi Halla-aho was talking about impossible, crazy things when Halla-aho suggested that Russian might take advantage of EU dependence of Russian energy (https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000009111897.html). Politicians in Finland also got rid of all anti-personnel land mines in 2012 because they thought it would help civilians in countries of the Global South (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty).

However, Finland fortunately is currently not as defenceless as many of its neighbours are. Russia knows that an invasion would be very costly, and an invasion or a special military operation is indeed currently unlikely, partly because of that. I don’t think we are trusting and I don’t think we ever should or will be trusting allies, NATO or otherwise, to come to our help when the Russians cross the border next time. Although Finland as an independent state has existed only about a hundred years, the territory and its inhabitants have seen war at least as long as there have been written records here. I believe that because of the memories of the wars and the facts of geography, the Finns never gave up on the conscription army and the Finnish defence forces bought the tanks and the artillery pieces from other European countries who thought that they had become useless with the new Russia. The civilian bomb shelters have been and will continue to be built and maintained. And the size of the reserves will increase and not decrease despite the NATO membership (https://yle.fi/a/74-20161729). Just in case something insane comes from the east.

Esa

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13523260.2023.2259153

Abstract: When Russia amassed troops in the winter of 2021–2022, many analysts deemed

a large-scale invasion of Ukraine unlikely. Surveying the expert literature, we

establish that these arguments largely relied on utility-based reasoning:

Analysts thought an invasion was improbable, as it would foreseeably entail

massive costs for Russia, its people, and its regime. We show that this regnant

expert opinion had not sufficiently accounted for the Russian regime’s

tendencies to increasingly accept risks, coupled with an inadequate processing

of information on Ukrainian and Western views and policies. We argue that

analysts miscalculated partially because the most prominent facts, long-term

trends, and causal mechanisms available to them jointly suggested Russian

cost-sensitivity, but provided only weak signs of countervailing factors. We

thereby showcase that good forecasting requires explicit theory with a view

on multiple interacting causal factors, area expertise and Socratic humility on

the extent, context and certainty of our findings.

[2]

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2023&locations=EU-US-RU&start=1960&view=chart

[3] "In general, Finland is privileged to be located in one of the safest corners of the world. However, given our geographical location, the three main security challenges for Finland today are Russia, Russia and Russia. And not only for Finland, but for all of us.

"It is clear that Russia is, supported by the huge revenues it is reaping from oil and gas, on its way of becoming a world player again. According to the Russian world view, military force is a key element in how it conducts its international relations. As a consequence, there is a determined program to strengthen the Russian military capabilities. If the military procurement program 2006-2015 will be financed as expected, it will mean a much stronger Russia in military terms by the middle of next decade.

"In terms of its military capabilities, Russia will have a lot more weight to throw around. Whether it chooses to do it in its immediate neighbourhood is another matter. The bronze statue crisis with Estonia raises some disturbing questions. There is no smoking gun that will clearly indicate that the Russian authorities were behind the cyber attacks. Yet, the attacks were well coordinated and gave a foretaste of what could be done in situations where state-level actors would choose to use cyber attacks as a weapon.”

https://www.defmin.fi/en/topical/speeches/minister_of_defence_jyri_hakamies_at_csis_in_washington.3335.news?11927_o=10#00b05dba

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Ken Fuchsman

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Jun 4, 2025, 3:17:37 AMJun 4

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There is a much bigger elephant in the room than NATO expansion. It is the revolution in American government and the destabilization of the world’s economy in 2025. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is crucial. But it does not hold a candle to other recent events, including that in the U S in 2016 and 2024 and Poland in 2025 that the radical right has made election gains the countries that have practiced popular elections have not seen in a long time. Let’s put first things first.

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jun 4, 2025, 4:52:33 AMJun 4

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Esa, you wrote: "After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was also a fall in military expenditure as % of GDP in Europe and in the United States (according to SIPRI data used by the World Bank in the figure below [2])." However, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP is not a measure of military capability. It is a measure of the sacrifice a country needs to make to achieve a given level of military capability. A country may make such a sacrifice if its leaders feel that their security or the very existence of their state is on the line. But they would have to be delusional to make such a sacrifice to conquer a rival military alliance that is spending over 20 times more than Russia on their militaries in absolute terms, which is the real measure of military capability (however imperfect, as all measures are). And Alexander Dugin is indeed delusional.

If you want to buy a house that costs ten million dollars and you only earn fifty-thousand dollars a year, it is harmless to indulge in fantasy about buying the house. But if you INTEND to buy the house and PLAN to buy the house, you are delusional. Alexander Dugin's dreams of a Russian world empire are entirely beyond the realm of possibility given Russia's actual economic level. That is the significance of David Lotto's summary of Russia's economic level.

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Brigitte DEMEURE

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Jun 4, 2025, 5:12:25 AMJun 4

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Again, my view is that the kleptocrats in power in Russia just do not want the civil society there to practice their right to democratic debates. They thought the "special military operation", which was supposed to be very short, would silence the Ukrainian civil society, many of them speaking Russian and have contacts there.

As Ken Fuchsman said, the far right expanding everywhere, and the new president was supported by Trump :

https://www.politico.eu/article/polands-tusk-gets-trumped/

is a main issue.

envoyé : 4 juin 2025 à 10:52
de : Brian D'Agostino <bdagost...@gmail.com>
à : clios...@googlegroups.com
objet : Re: [External] [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [cliospsyche] Ukraine/Russia - an op-end by Columbia prof. Matthew H. Murray

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Esa Palosaari

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Jun 4, 2025, 5:16:06 AMJun 4

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Hi,

Those are fair points. However, Putin seems to have a like-minded person in the White House who would also like to annex territories belonging to other states in its own hemishpere, and has seened to want to get out of NATO for decades. Divided by individual countries, there are many NATO countries next to Russia whose military capabilities are minimal in comparison. There are good reasons to think that Americans would not be ready to all die in nuclear armageddon for the sake of the Baltics. And maybe Russia would not threaten the US beyond the ”big, beautiful Ocean” that Trump says would give you security.

Trump and MAGA isolationism seems to have been also predicted by Dugin:

”It is especially important to introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics.”

Esa

Brian D'Agostino <bdagost...@gmail.com> kirjoitti 4.6.2025 kello 11.52:

Esa, you wrote: "After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was also a fall in military expenditure as % of GDP in Europe and in the United States (according to SIPRI data used by the World Bank in the figure below [2])." However, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP is not a measure of military capability. It is a measure of the sacrifice a country needs to make to achieve a given level of military capability. A country may make such a sacrifice if its leaders feel that their security or the very existence of their state is on the line. But they would have to be delusional to make such a sacrifice to conquer a rival military alliance that is spending over 20 times more than Russia on their militaries in absolute terms, which is the real measure of military capability (however imperfect, as all measures are). And Alexander Dugin is indeed delusional.

If you want to buy a house that costs ten million dollars and you only earn fifty-thousand dollars a year, it is harmless to indulge in fantasy about buying the house. But if you INTEND to buy the house and PLAN to buy the house, you are delusional. Alexander Dugin's dreams of a Russian world empire are entirely beyond the realm of possibility given Russia's actual economic level. That is the significance of David Lotto's summary of Russia's economic level.

On Wed, Jun 4, 2025 at 3:10 AM Esa Palosaari <esa.pa...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I don’t think it is insane to think that Russia or Putin would want to invade also other areas that were part of the Soviet/Russian Empire in addition to Georgia and Ukraine. Putin has already talked in terms of spheres of influence and made demands on the foreign policy of its neighbours (like Finland) in contradiction to previous talks about their sovereignty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2021_Russian_ultimatum_to_NATO). Russia has also been constantly harassing and waging hybrid warfare against its neighbours like Estonia and Finland, including cutting underwater power and communication cables, jamming GPS (thereby threatening safety in the air and on the sea), attacking communication networks through cyber warfare, having its jets and bombers violate the airspace, and so on. There has been talk that Trump and his allies have already destroyed NATO by directly dishonouring their previous commitments and by sowing doubt that they will not honor their commitments in the future, saying that they are willing to leave the alliance. This cutting of the Atlantic ties happens to be one of the chief aims of the Russian strategy as articulated by Dugin, for example, in his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics. In addition to dismembering Georgia, cutting the United Kingdom from the European Union, and annexing Ukraine. Using that book as a source of predictions seems to have worked better than listening many analysts of Russia and Ukraine who thought that suggesting a large-scale invasion of Ukraine was insane just before it happened [1].

My understanding is that most Westerners have been giving Russia the benefit of the doubt despite the first and second Chechen Wars and the annexation of parts of Georgia, and with the first round of annexations from Ukraine. This happened also in Finland which tried to believe the best and did business with Russia until the full-scale invasion. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was also a fall in military expenditure as % of GDP in Europe and in the United States (according to SIPRI data used by the World Bank in the figure below [2]). The EU countries especially reduced their military spending as well as the size of their armies. Countries like Sweden gave up their conscription armies altogether. People in non-ex soviet block states, in general, believed that Russia had become or was on its way to become a ”normal” liberal democracy that wasn’t a threat to its neighbours. You would be shunned for thinking otherwise. It was considered a scandal in Finland when the minister of defence Häkämies gave a speech in Washington in 2007 where he said that Russia would be a security challenge for Finland [3]. Even in 2019, the former minister Eero Heinäluoma said that the member of parliament Jussi Halla-aho was talking about impossible, crazy things when Halla-aho suggested that Russian might take advantage of EU dependence of Russian energy (https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000009111897.html). Politicians in Finland also got rid of all anti-personnel land mines in 2012 because they thought it would help civilians in countries of the Global South (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty).

However, Finland fortunately is currently not as defenceless as many of its neighbours are. Russia knows that an invasion would be very costly, and an invasion or a special military operation is indeed currently unlikely, partly because of that. I don’t think we are trusting and I don’t think we ever should or will be trusting allies, NATO or otherwise, to come to our help when the Russians cross the border next time. Although Finland as an independent state has existed only about a hundred years, the territory and its inhabitants have seen war at least as long as there have been written records here. I believe that because of the memories of the wars and the facts of geography, the Finns never gave up on the conscription army and the Finnish defence forces bought the tanks and the artillery pieces from other European countries who thought that they had become useless with the new Russia. The civilian bomb shelters have been and will continue to be built and maintained. And the size of the reserves will increase and not decrease despite the NATO membership (https://yle.fi/a/74-20161729). Just in case something insane comes from the east.

Esa

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13523260.2023.2259153

Abstract: When Russia amassed troops in the winter of 2021–2022, many analysts deemed
a large-scale invasion of Ukraine unlikely. Surveying the expert literature, we
establish that these arguments largely relied on utility-based reasoning:
Analysts thought an invasion was improbable, as it would foreseeably entail
massive costs for Russia, its people, and its regime. We show that this regnant
expert opinion had not sufficiently accounted for the Russian regime’s
tendencies to increasingly accept risks, coupled with an inadequate processing
of information on Ukrainian and Western views and policies. We argue that
analysts miscalculated partially because the most prominent facts, long-term
trends, and causal mechanisms available to them jointly suggested Russian
cost-sensitivity, but provided only weak signs of countervailing factors. We
thereby showcase that good forecasting requires explicit theory with a view
on multiple interacting causal factors, area expertise and Socratic humility on
the extent, context and certainty of our findings.

[2]

<Sijoitettu kuva-1.tiff>

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jun 4, 2025, 5:40:32 AMJun 4

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No rational planning is possible with Trump, but he is politically digging his own grave. And you are right not to trust NATO if honoring the alliance would mean nuclear war. Isn’t that a reason to negotiate verifiable, mutual threat reduction arrangements with the Russians? We did it during the Cold War, so we know it is possible.

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Brigitte Demeure

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Jun 4, 2025, 6:20:35 AMJun 4

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Brian, "as we did before" - who is now 'we" ? Trump's government and what about Putin's mafia régime, which is not the USSR any more...

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jun 4, 2025, 8:33:58 AMJun 4

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Brigitte, mafiosos make deals all the time. International agreements do not depend upon trust; they are designed to be verifiable and contain provisions to remediate violations. If one party seriously and repeatedly violates the agreement, the latter becomes null and void. That rarely occurs because if a state intends to violate the agreement, they just formally withdraw from it. The agreements generally work, because they benefit both sides. When they fail, it is not usually because the governments are treacherous, but because hard-liners on one or both sides sabotage the agreement. But my point is that we in civil society should be demanding formal arms reduction on both sides, not rallying behind leaders who seem hell bent on squandering general prosperity on war preparations.

As for Trump, as I said, he is politically digging his own grave. But maybe this is the time for European leadership. Unfortunately, the European regimes seem just as beholden to the arms industry and militarism in high places as the Americans. You guys gave us two world wars and there's still time for a third. :-)

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Brigitte DEMEURE

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Jun 4, 2025, 8:39:03 AMJun 4

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Who is "you guys" ???

envoyé : 4 juin 2025 à 14:33

de : Brian D'Agostino <bdagost...@gmail.com>
à : clios...@googlegroups.com

objet : Re: [External] [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [cliospsyche] Ukraine/Russia - an op-end by Columbia prof. Matthew H. Murray

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jun 4, 2025, 9:04:13 AMJun 4

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Mostly the UK and Germany, but other members of Europe's dysfunctional "family of nations" played a role. See David Beisel's The Suicidal Embrace: Hitler, the Allies, and the Origins of the Second World War. Beisel examines the group fantasies found in diplomatic communications in the years before World War II. And the Treaty of Versailles laid the groundwork. The idiocy of US and European statecraft today is rivalled only by the Treaty of Versailles. I use the word "statecraft" VERY loosely.

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Brigitte DEMEURE

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Jun 4, 2025, 9:19:10 AMJun 4

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I do not quite understand, so there are the "you the bad guys" (the Europeans, I suppose I am included) and "us" the good guys ?

envoyé : 4 juin 2025 à 15:03

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jun 4, 2025, 9:38:02 AMJun 4

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Brigitte, from my many, fierce posts on this list critiquing the Pax America and US leadership, it should be abundantly clear that I don't consider the Americans to be "good guys." But it was European leaders who were responsible for World War I and II. As for the Americans, it will have to suffice that "we" were "only" responsible for three hundred years of Black slavery, over a century of Native American genocide, over a century of imperialism and militarism, and decades of supporting murderous right wing dictatorships around the world. So there is plenty of opprobrium to go around.

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dlo...@nycap.rr.com

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Jun 5, 2025, 12:09:51 AMJun 5

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I would suggest that people search on the history of Russia-Finland conflict. It’s a bit more complicated than the account given below. Among other things it leaves out the part where Finland fought alongside the Wehrmacht in their invasion of Russia in 1941.

All of the events highlighted in yellow below occurred after Finland joined NATO – which is an anti-Russian military alliance. Who is provoking who here?

From: clios...@googlegroups.com <clios...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Esa Palosaari
Sent: Wednesday, June 4, 2025 3:10 AM
To: clios...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [External] [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [cliospsyche] Ukraine/Russia - an op-end by Columbia prof. Matthew H. Murray

Hi,

I don’t think it is insane to think that Russia or Putin would want to invade also other areas that were part of the Soviet/Russian Empire in addition to Georgia and Ukraine. Putin has already talked in terms of spheres of influence and made demands on the foreign policy of its neighbours (like Finland) in contradiction to previous talks about their sovereignty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2021_Russian_ultimatum_to_NATO). Russia has also been constantly harassing and waging hybrid warfare against its neighbours like Estonia and Finland, including cutting underwater power and communication cables, jamming GPS (thereby threatening safety in the air and on the sea), attacking communication networks through cyber warfare, having its jets and bombers violate the airspace, and so on. There has been talk that Trump and his allies have already destroyed NATO by directly dishonouring their previous commitments and by sowing doubt that they will not honor their commitments in the future, saying that they are willing to leave the alliance. This cutting of the Atlantic ties happens to be one of the chief aims of the Russian strategy as articulated by Dugin, for example, in his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics. In addition to dismembering Georgia, cutting the United Kingdom from the European Union, and annexing Ukraine. Using that book as a source of predictions seems to have worked better than listening many analysts of Russia and Ukraine who thought that suggesting a large-scale invasion of Ukraine was insane just before it happened [1].

My understanding is that most Westerners have been giving Russia the benefit of the doubt despite the first and second Chechen Wars and the annexation of parts of Georgia, and with the first round of annexations from Ukraine. This happened also in Finland which tried to believe the best and did business with Russia until the full-scale invasion. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was also a fall in military expenditure as % of GDP in Europe and in the United States (according to SIPRI data used by the World Bank in the figure below [2]). The EU countries especially reduced their military spending as well as the size of their armies. Countries like Sweden gave up their conscription armies altogether. People in non-ex soviet block states, in general, believed that Russia had become or was on its way to become a ”normal” liberal democracy that wasn’t a threat to its neighbours. You would be shunned for thinking otherwise. It was considered a scandal in Finland when the minister of defence Häkämies gave a speech in Washington in 2007 where he said that Russia would be a security challenge for Finland [3]. Even in 2019, the former minister Eero Heinäluoma said that the member of parliament Jussi Halla-aho was talking about impossible, crazy things when Halla-aho suggested that Russian might take advantage of EU dependence of Russian energy (https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000009111897.html). Politicians in Finland also got rid of all anti-personnel land mines in 2012 because they thought it would help civilians in countries of the Global South (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty). Are you suggesting that the real reason was to weaken Finland’s defenses against the coming Russian invasion? If Russia were to invade Finland, as Finland is a member of NATO, article 5 requires that all NATO countries, including the US, are obligated to use military force against an invading Russia. Thinking that, given this reality, Russia would invade Finland is truly insane.