Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Nov 17, 2022 30 tweets 7 min read Read on X
The Poverty of Realism

This interview illustrates some key fallacies, shortcomings and outright intellectual dishonesty associated with Mearsheimer's realist approach. And since his authority is instrumental in legitimising the appeasement advocacy, I will discuss it in detail🧵 Image
Let's start with dishonesty. Mearsheimer denies that Putin hold any intention to conquer Ukraine before this war. He even quotes Putin's article of July 2021 as an evidence of Putin "recognising the Ukrainian sovereignty". This is a highly inaccurate representation of its content Image
Let's open the original text of Putin's article kremlin.ru/events/preside…

Putin argued that modern borders of Ukraine are illegitimate. They had more territory leaving the USSR in 1991 than they had joining it in 1922. Justice would require Ukraine to give it all away [to Russia] Image
Already in July 2021 Putin portrayed Ukrainian borders as fundamentally unjust. Tolerating this "new geopolitical reality" is our concession. There's no "recognition of sovereignty" here, rather the opposite. Ukrainian border is illegitimate, we just had been merciful to them
So here is the first Mearsheimer's shortcoming - he misrepresented the content of a key source he was referring to. Putin didn't "recognise that Ukraine was a sovereign state" as Mearsheimer claims. To the contrary, he questioned the legitimacy of its national borders
Ok, but what does Putin write about Ukrainian sovereignty in this article?

1. Ukraine is not sovereign now (explicitly)
2. It can be sovereign only in partnership with Russia (explicitly)
3. It's apparently up to Russia to decide whether Ukraine is sovereign or not (implicitly) Image
That's a very important point. It brings us to another problem - the meaning of words. As we can see here, Putin's understanding of Ukrainian sovereignty (=partnership with Russia) is opposite to what we conventionally understand by sovereignty (=choosing your own road)
If Putin talks about "Ukrainian sovereignty", you can't conclude "Oh yes, he respects Ukrainian sovereignty very much". Nope. What Putin understands by "Ukrainian sovereignty" has nothing in common with what most people would understand by it. It's rather the opposite
"Putin talks about Ukrainian sovereignty -> He recognises it!" - It's not an analysis. It's not a research. It's a neuron activation. Research would require an analysis of what exactly Putin understands by "Ukrainian sovereignty". Because he may mean a different thing. As he does
This brings us to a second major shortcoming of Mearsheimer: the lack of basic empathy. And I don't mean the emotional empathy with Ukrainians, God forbid. I mean the cognitive empathy with Putin. You must empathise with Putin to get what he's doing and why
Mearsheimer refuses to analyse what we know of Putin's worldview. Look how he casually dismisses Putin comparing himself with Peter I. Meanwhile, this is the key to understanding Putin's motivation. He doesn't see himself as a conqueror. Not at all. He thinks he is a REconqueror Image
Why did Putin even bring up Peter I? Well, to make a parallel between what Peter I did back then and what Putin is doing now. In Putin's interpretation Peter I didn't conquer anything. He just retuned back what had once rightfully belong to Russia. Just like Putin is doing now
Putin in July 2021: "Ukrainian border is illegitimate"
Putin in June 2022: "I'm returning to Russia what had once belonged to it. Just like Peter I"

Mearsheimer ignores the first statement and dismisses the second. Considered together they break his entire line of argumentation Image
Contrary to what Mearsheimer claims, there was no sudden U-turn in Putin's mindset or actions in 2022. To the contrary, we see a very consistent policy based on his deep conviction that Ukrainian borders are unjust. If they are unjust, they need to be renegotiated. Simple as that
There's nothing unexpected about Putin wanting to renegotiate the Ukrainian border. Remember him quoting his old boss Sobchak? That is Sobchak's interview of 1992. We see exactly the same argumentation as Putin is using now

Ergo, it's not about Putin. It's collective mindset
It's not about Putin, it's about collective mindset. Russian politicians have been talking about Crimea for decades. Consider a mayor of Moscow Luzhkov. He started talking about Crimea being rightfully Russian back in in 1990s. In 2008 Ukraine prohibited him entering the country Image
Invasion of Ukraine is not some random, capricious move of Putin. Plenty of politicians had been talking of what Putin did for decades. They had been using the same arguments which Putin would use later. Ignoring this fact reflects total disinterest in Russian public imagination
I would even argue that the incredible contempt towards the public imagination of non-Western countries is a major (or perhaps *the* major) factor that hampers prognosing the actions of Russia, China, etc. They make their moves based on their imagination. Which you largely ignore
And the final Mearsheimer's shortcoming may be the most impressive of all. He claims that Putin did not intend to conquer Ukraine, because he sent too few troops to proceed with the conquest. Ergo, he must have wanted something else Image
That's literally the worst mistake of retrospective thinking one could have made. We now know that upon invading Ukraine Putin engaged into a bloody and protracted war. That's what we know now. But we could not have possibly known that before. We could only hypothesise
Putin couldn't have known for sure how his invasion would turn out. He could only hypothesise based on the information he got. And we have the evidence that the information he got had been misleading. Or at least he believes it had been misleading
On February 24 Putin invaded Ukraine. On March 11 he purged the 5th department of FSB: the foreign intelligence branch of the Russian state security. Dozens of officers were arrested, including the generals. Why? Most probably, they misinformed him about the situation in Ukraine
It was the 5th Department of FSB that monitored political situation in Ukraine and informed Putin. Two weeks after the invasion started, they were purged. It is highly likely that Putin found information they had provided him with to be false. Hence, punishments
Most probably, 5th Department just told Putin what he wanted to hear. Much (most?) of Ukraine hates the regime and Kyiv and secretly adores the Tsar in Moscow. Basing on this information, Putin decided to invade. That is why he didn't make proper war preparations
If most of Ukraine is actually Russian and waiting for Russian liberators, there will be no war. They just gonna drop their weapons or switch to our side. That what Putin probably expected and that is why he sent so few soldiers. He expected there would be very few resistants
This would explain why Russian army of invasion was relatively small. They just did not prepare for war. This would also explain purges against the 5th Department - they misinformed Putin and became the scapegoats for the failed invasion. Putin didn't and couldn't know the future
That is why Mearsheimer's logic (Putin sent few soldiers -> He didn't plan for conquest!) is technically correct and still false. Yes, he didn't plan a conquest. Conquest implies resistance and Putin expected no resistance. He can't see the future after all
Mearsheimer's fallacy is quite impressive but honestly very typical. We tend to underestimate how much the present differs from the past. In February most believed Russia would crush Ukraine in no time. That was considered as an almost self-obvious truth. Now we forgot about it
Nowadays we know that Russia didn't crush Ukraine. We know that Ukraine fought back and did it highly effectively. And we extrapolate current knowledge to the past. We know it now -> We've always known that. But that's not true. We did not
We underestimate how quickly and how drastically our mental models and systems of assumptions change over time. That is a major obstacle hampering our ability both to reconstruct the past and to prognoses the future. The end of 🧵

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More from @kamilkazani

Sep 1
Reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Set in southwest England, somewhere in the late 1800s. And the first thing you need to know is that Tess is bilingual. He speaks a local dialect she learnt at home, and the standard English she picked at school from a London-trained teacher
So, basically, "normal" language doesn't come out of nowhere. Under the normal conditions, people on the ground speak all the incomprehensible patois, wildly different from each other

"Regular", "correct" English is the creation of state
So, basically, the state chooses a standard (usually, based on one of the dialects), cleanses it a bit, and then shoves down everyone's throats via the standardized education

Purely artificial construct, of a super mega state that really appeared only by the late 1800s
Read 10 tweets
Aug 9
There's a subtle point here that 99,999% of Western commentariat is missing. Like, totally blind to. And that point is:

Building a huuuuuuuuuuge dam (or steel plant, or whatever) has been EVERYONE's plan of development. Like absolutely every developing country, no exceptions Image
Almost everyone who tried to develop did it in a USSR-ish way, via prestige projects. Build a dam. A steel plant. A huge plant. And then an even bigger one

And then you run out of money, and it all goes bust and all you have is postapocalyptic ruins for the kids to play in
If China did not go bust, in a way like almost every development project from the USSR to South Asia did, that probably means that you guys are wrong about China. Like totally wrong

What you describe is not China but the USSR, and its copies & emulations elsewhere
Read 7 tweets
Jul 7
Victory has a hundred fathers, defeat is an orphan

Everyone is trying to appropriate the rise of China for their own purposes, like it proves their theory, ideology whatever

No one, however, wants to appropriate the post-Soviets, who, by the way, also made capitalist reforms
What I am saying is that "capitalist reforms" are a buzzword devoid of any actual meaning, and a buzzword that obfuscated rather than explains. Specifically, it is fusing radically different policies taken under the radically different circumstances (and timing!) into one - purely for ideological purposes
It can be argued, for example, that starting from the 1980s, China has undertaken massive socialist reforms, specifically in infrastructure, and in basic (mother) industries, such as steel, petrochemical and chemical and, of course, power

That was almost entirely state's job
Read 4 tweets
Jul 1
The primary weakness of this argument is that being true, historically speaking, it is just false in the context of American politics where the “communism” label has been so over-used (and misapplied) that it lost all of its former power:

“We want X”
“No, that is communism”
“We want communism”
Basically, when you use a label like “communism” as a deus ex machina winning you every argument, you simultaneously re-define its meaning. And when you use it to beat off every popular socio economic demand (e.g. universal healthcare), you re-define communism as a synthesis of all the popular socio economic demands
Historical communism = forced industrial development in a poor, predominantly agrarian country, funded through expropriation of the peasantry

(With the most disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences)

So, yes, living under the actual communism sucks
Read 5 tweets
Jun 28
Some thoughts on Zohran Mamdani’s victory

Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc

Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one Image
1. Public outrage does not work anymore

If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while

For a while, this tactics worked

Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
Read 8 tweets
Jun 28
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
Theory: X -> Y

Reality:

There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.

Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation

And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
Read 6 tweets

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