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Viliam_Bur comments on Calibrating your probability estimates of world events: Russia vs Ukraine, 6 months later. - Less Wrong Discussion
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1938: "Just give him the parts of Czechoslovakia he wants. Yeah, annexing a part of other country is wrong, but a minority speaking his language lives there, so, uhm, he kinda has a good reason. More importantly, we have a good reason to believe he will stop there. Just let's not be the bad guys who fight over nothing. Everything will be fine when he gets what he wants, he is a reasonable guy."
2014: "Just give him the parts of Ukraine he wants. Yeah, annexing a part of other country is wrong, but a minority speaking his language lives there, so, uhm, he kinda has a good reason. More importantly, we have a good reason to believe he will stop there. Just let's not be the bad guys who fight over nothing. Everything will be fine when he gets what he wants, he is a reasonable guy."
The analogies are much deeper here than merely "he is a guy we don't like, therefore Hitler". Things that happen inside Russia are also very disturbing -- I am trying to ignore politics, and I usually don't care about what happens in Russia, but some news still get to me -- Putin's supporters are openly nationalist, racist, homophobic, pretty much everything you associate with fascism, he has a strong support of the Orthodox Church, journalists who criticize him are assassinated. (Someone living in Russia would be more qualified to write about this.) The only way he could lose an election would be against someone who is even more like this. Winning a symbolic war against the West will only make him more popular.
To test how strong is this analogy, we should make bets like: Conditional on Putin successfully annexing a part of territory of Ukraine, what is the probability of Russia attacking another country within 1, 3, 5, 10 years? Which country will it be?
But Russia still has a "democratic" political structure, everyone off course knows that it's not like this in reality and only one party exists. But soon in 2018 there'll be new president elections and that's last term for Putin. Uncertainty that's what we will get for sure
I'm living in Russia however I don't watch TV and read newspapers, but I can say for sure, that Russian Invaders are proclaimed heroes, and NATO guys as Evil. And It's not a surprise for me that on the other side of the Globe opinion is exactly the contrary. My personal view of the problem is that Putin and Obama are both worth each other, they are strong leaders and will they never stop if there is a chance to gain more power. Situation in Ukraine is imho this - Ukranian side completely entangled in their own problems, and they thought that it was Russia who they must blame and gone comletely nuts, then West gave them weapons and so on
Too much globalization (russialization in this case) is hard to contol, Russia has enormous territory, we already got Crimea which is a port, and got unfriendly response from the world. I expect things to calm down for next 4 years I assume probability of 5% of the invasion to any other country
As someone in America, I can tell you the idea of calling Obama a "strong leader" sounds hilarious.
All of these things also apply to the other examples I mentioned, and many other countries besides. People said the same things about Saddam, Qaddafi, Assad, etc. Putin is of course saying similar things about his Ukrainian enemies to what you are saying about him. (Admittedly, they make it easy for him.)
There is no shortage of historical examples of historical revanchism, yet the "Hitler in 1939" analogy utterly dominates. So why rely 100% on one analogy. Why insist on using the example that is the closest stand-in for "evil psychopath who cannot be reasoned with, but must be destroyed utterly?"
Probably because you're in the midst of a media driven two-minutes hate. History begins and ends with Hitler, 1939!
(Seriously, your standard for being Hitleresque is being racist, homophobic, and nationalistic? It might be a fun exercise for you to write down a list of 100 historical leaders, determine how many were/were not racist, homophobic, or nationalistic. This will give you your Hitler/non-Hitler ratio. Do you think the ratios of Hitlers : non-Hitlers is greater or less than 1?)
This situation is optimized for media, but exactly in the opposite way. The whole attack is divided into many incremental steps. Each small step is not enough to evoke a military response from the West. Then there is a pause, until media stop paying attention and find something else to care about. Then another small step.
(Remember the first step? Russian soldiers without uniforms in Ukraine territory, not yet openly fighting anyone, just carrying weapons and looking intimidating. So, what are you going to do about it? First, there is no war yet, and second, they even deny being Russian. Calm down, everyone, calm down, nothing to see here. -- A few steps later it's obvious there are Russian troops there, but we already kinda knew it for months, so why the sudden overreaction today? Calm down, everyone, calm down, nothing new is happening here.)
This is how you overcome the Schelling point -- by doing a calculated very small step, and then calling your opponent irrational if he wants to react.
This Yes, Prime Minster video is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX_d_vMKswE
Dividing something in many incremental steps that each are newsworthy generally means that the whole things gets more media attention than if you do everything at once.
Wikileaks for example didn't release all the cables at once but purposefully spread them out over a time to give them more media attention.
Not just being nationalistic, not just being expansionist, but actually taking territory.
I would guess that more than half of all rulers in history took others' territory, or tried to and failed. And being nationalistic goes without saying ever since the invention of nationalism.
The specific tactic of nibbling on your neighbors one bit at a time, varying your speed depending on international reactions, was used by Hitler but also by many others. Calling a common behavior Hitleresque isn't useful.
There are good reasons for comparing Germany in 1938 with Russia in 2014, but I don't think these are among them.
And more than half of all the rulers in history would find themselves really really out of place in the modern world if they tried to do the same things they did in their historical contexts, and we would rather not have to deal with them.
A rather low bar to get over, there.
I don't think Hitler was very unusual among rulers of, say, the post-Napoleonic epoch of 1814-1945. He was just first unusually successful (making many enemies) and then unusually thoroughly defeated and occupied (allowing those enemies to make his name particularly infamous).
Would you mind tabooing what you mean by "racist" (and possibly also "nationalist" and "homophobic") and why your definition is bad, there is currently a long debate in another thread on this very subject.
Things like the Nashi movement, and laws against LGBT people.
Yes, there is the irony that Nashi is officially an "anti-fascist" movement. To understand this, it is necessary to know the connotations these words have in the former communist countries, as propaganda shaped them for decades. Shortly: anything associated with former Soviet Union and her satellites is "socialist", and anything associated with West is "fascist". It's like yin and yang for everything; e.g. collectivism is "socialist" and entrepreneurship is "fascist", but also being ethinically Russian or at least Slavic is more central to the concept of "socialist", and the idea of human rights (other than the right to live happily and obediently under a socialist government) is kinda "fascist", because it goes against the power of the collective.
So a person who doesn't think about this too deeply (you know, most of the population) can identify themselves as "anti-fascist" and mean: "I hate entrepreneurs, homosexuals; and everyone who is not ethnically Russian/Slav should go away from this country". Having read a few articles about the Nashi, this is more or less the meaning they use.
(This is a point I would like to emphasise as often as possible -- though usually I don't, respecting the LW's attitude to politics -- that the ideas of "left" or "socialism" in former Soviet countries are so completely unlike their versions in the West. It is just a result of successful propaganda and suppressing the flow of information that makes most leftists in the West believe otherwise. If you take a typical Nazi, reduce his hate of Jews by 80%, and convert him using the chronophone to a post-Soviet culture, this is what passes as "left" here.)
Looking at the article, I don't see what specifically you're considering "racist". It would help if you stated your definition. Ok, it would help even more if you didn't through around words commonly used by SJW's to mean "anyone I disagree with".
You mean like the laws every country had until maybe a couple decades ago?
So are the Russian creating an overarching recreational organization and bringing all private clubs under its control?
Better.
To taboo the SJW-like words, here is what I mean: worship of physical power, enthusiasm about war, emphasis on reproduction of purebloods, agression against people different from the norm.
Britain tried embracing foreigners even ones who had no interest in assimilating. This was the result.
Those are just two different ways of judging people by their ethnicity instead of by their individual actions.
My idea would be something like: Do whatever you want as long as you follow the law. When you break the law, go to jail.
Except that in this case the police and social workers weren't willing to enforce the law for fear of being called "racist". More generally, the law is only as strong as the will and ability of people to enforce it.
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Yes, Nashi is impressively scary. Kudos for reading up on them.
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