War in Ukraine, 22-03-2022

 

War in Ukraine, 22-03-2022

At this point in time, the world is witnessing the fourth week of the Russian invasion into Ukraine. All reports from independant sources suggest that the war is not going very well for Russia, and therefore Putin and his Ministry of Defense has decided to terrorize the civilian population with bombs, hunger and forced relocation to Russia. Presumably to some kind of refugee camps, whatever the situation in these camps may be.

Logistics of an invasion

It is said that to be able to invade a country and subdue the population for a long time (months or years) you need 20 soldiers on 1000 enemy civilians. Ukraine has 44 million, and Russia 0.8 million soldiers. Of those, 0.2 million are in Ukraine, and if reports are true, largely do not want to be there.
Anyone who has ever played the board game of Risk knows that you should not move your entire force when invading a country, but leave enough behind to defend your own territory. So, with 0.6 million left behind, and possibly not very combat ready or well equipped, Russia is already in trouble.
The fact they import troops from Chechnya and Syria and the Wagner group, now Liga (very nasty all of them) is more evidence that Russia is actually in trouble. The fact they try to get military support and equipment from China is more evidence for the same proposition.
The war is not going great for Russia, and although it causes massive destruction, likely tens of thousands of dead, many more injured and maimed for life and cities lie in rubble, they are not actually winning. Not in the sense that they have conquered Ukraine's hearts and minds, and 'liberated' them from their 'evil regime'. On the contrary. Also, Russian troops are dying by the thousands, although it is hard to find truthful number, not that it really matters. You should not forget that the Russian boys sent to the front and who die there or come back with limbs missing are as much victims of the Russian regime as the Ukrainians are. Russian equipment is failing, fuel, food and supplies are not available to the Russians.

Terror Tactics

Putin is faced with an Ukrainian male population of fighting age in the many millions, and plenty of females too. Who are very motivated to fight for their existence. Russian soldiers do not want to be there for the most part. Except maybe for the nasties, like Wagner, the Chechnians and the Syrians. So Putin turned to terror as a tactic, through death, hunger, kidnapping of even the most vulnerable: pregnant women and babies, the elderly, children with cancer in hospitals. It makes my stomach turn, my head spin and fills me with sorrow. There can be no doubt that the Russian regime knows exactly what they are doing, including the people in charge of presenting an alternative truth to the Russian television and the Internet.

Ukraine might still win on their own

As long as Ukranian can keep their fighting spirit up they might even win. And brave they are, even little children. I saw that little girl sing the Ukrainian national anthem before a huge crowd. I saw an old lady pick up a gun to defend her country. No wonder thousands joined the foreign legion. The West likely will keep providing Ukraine with the things they need: guns and machine guns, anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems (S300?), drones. There is a stream of food and medical supplies. Almost 3 million refugees are accomodated in Europe.  Actionable intelligence is shared with the Ukrainian military, from satellites and other sources. Providing satellite internet is hugely helpful. Sanctions against Russia continue to be expanded and harm their economy, their ability to fund the war. Dissent under Russian civilians is growing. It all works against the Russian regime.

However, if they do win, it will be at the cost of possibly hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, many more injured and the whole of the population traumatized for life. Out of fear for escalation, NATO does not want to interfere directly. It could lead to WWIII and the use of nuclear weapons, they say. I think this is true, but I also think that the longer this war goes on, the likelier it becomes we all end up in that situation anyway.

How it can get much, much worse

Seeing that Ukraine is more likely to fight to the death than to capitulate, just like the Russians were in WWII, the Russian regime has two choices: pull out or continue their war and their terror campaign. All of Putin's retorics on television and elsewhere show that he will not stop, so the only option left is to go on. His political survival and possibly his life depends on it. It seems as there is a third option: a compromise involving Ukraine to cede territory. However president Zelenskyy says any deal has to go through a referendum first and polls indicate as much as 80% is against ceding territory to Russia, and there are more showstoppers. Also there is the question if Putin is sincere in negotiating. All in all it seems not likely to me that the Ukrainians are going to accept any deal that feels like caputilation. Just like the Russians in WWII, they are tough. The harder it gets, the tougher they become. Remember Leningrad. Next level tough.

The Russian regime might resort to chemical or even biological weapons. The use of chemical weapons raises the odds of NATO entering the conflict in earnest well above 50%, I think, while using biologicals makes it a near certainty. If Russia releases some kind of plague, it will not be contained by national borders, and the acute need to contain it automatically means NATO needs to step in with medical personel and military to protect that containment effort. Regardless of trying to contain a bioweapon, it may and likely will spread to Western Europe, the Middle East and likely to Russian troops and Russia itself. 

So chemicals almost certainly will lead to NATO in war with Russia directly, biologicals will lead to WWIII, no doubt at all.

Even if chemical or biological will not be used, Ukraine will likely fight to the death and generate not just 4 million refugees which is already hard to cope with but 10's of millions with severe consequences for the stability of Europe, and in itself a situation that would almost certainly cause a NATO-Russia war. At this point, other countries will really take sides militarily, like China, India, Middle East countries. Not just take sides in what propaganda they emit to their populace.

Next steps for Putin

I think Putin wants to deter USA/NATO from providing Ukraine with weapons that could make Ukraine win.  Those weapon deliveries prolong the war so that the sanctions really bite Russia and it becomes too dependent on China. China wants order and tranquility in the world and has no interest in Putin's world-destabilizing war. I really doubt China is going to pick Russia's side by selling weapons or provide military help. 

So Putin might be able to hurt the Western economies and infrastructure with cyber attacks. Naturally the west will respond, but with the Western civilazations being so open, it makes them more vulnerable to that type of attack than a counter attack on Russia. The same goes for China. But cyber attacks will work only for a while, until systems are patched, firewalled or are disconnected from the open Internet.

Autocrats hate the Internet

I think Russia and China really hate the existence of the Internet. It was so much easier to repress truth without it. This is true also for all countries where dictators (or de facto autocrats) rule: Belarus, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar, Russia, China and more.

It is even true up to a point for Western democracies because of things that have emerged from a free and open Internet, like: end-to-end unbreakable encryption, cryptocurrencies, all kinds of social networks, encrypted overlay networks like TOR (invented by DARPA, part of DoD of the USA by the way). Of course the narrative goes that it provides terrorists, organized crime and child pornographers with tools that make it harder for governments to catch them. This is not untrue, but these are not just tools for the "Dark Side". They are force in and off themselves and have the potential to empower the people in general. They are indispensible for a free press, for whistleblowers, environmentalists, human rights activists and just mundane businesses. Cryptocurrencies have the potential to create more fair economies, and blockchain technologies have many applications in programmable contracts, proving the origin of raw materials, providing humans with a self-sovereign identity, like a passport you can prove who you are, but without an "evil" goverment (or one that can turn evil in the future) that can take it away. I think that Internet and all its power-tools are a great force for freedom, justice and equality, and it is no surprise that the more oppressive a government is, the more it wants to restrict the Internet as well. 

Even in a country as free as the USA, under the Trump "administration", NASA was forced to quickly copy all their climate change data to scientific institutes outside of the USA because Trump wanted to destroy it. Free countries can turn sour and become unfree.

Attacks on the Internet Infrastructure

Russia (or China) could attack the undersea cable infrastructure, which would be catastrophic to the entire world, including China's economy. China will not allow Putin to use this tactic unless China is also heavily sanctioned and their economy has collapsed and therefore they have less to loose from the de facto destruction of the Internet (it will still be there but be very slow). I think China only tolerates the Internet insofar as it benefits them and I think they can at least cripple it in a moment. A few depth charges will suffice. It happened during the Arab Spring with cables in the mediterranean, and recently at the onset of the Ukrainian invasion with optical fibre cables going to radar stations on Svalbart, Norway.

Satellites are vulnerable as well, and both China and Russia have demonstrated that they can destroy objects in Earth orbit. This was highly irresponsible because other satellites could have been or where damaged, and the ISS needed to make evasive maneuvers.

The destruction or severe crippling of the Internet is a possible tactic for autocratic regimes that reason like: "it hurts us, but it hurts them much more". This is why I think that Starlink and systems like it are a great benefit to mankind, although I hate it very much because it ruins astronomical observations. 

Of course, if the Internet goes down, there should be plans in place how to save our economies because anything "Cloud Based" will go down with it. Which means easily more than half of all company and government institution servers will just disappear in the blink of an eye. The resulting chaos will be so severe, that they (Russia, China) might as well start WWIII and actually very well may do so by using such an event to launch nukes, having the element of surprise and conceivably prevent the West from striking back.
If any intelligence service reads this, well, think on this possibility.
What conditions must be met (level of sanctions or isolation against them) for Russia or China to make such a strike against the global Internet advantageous? What plans are in place to prepare when the Internet goes down globally? Is it wise to move critical government IT services to AWS or Azure? What kind of strike on the undersea cable infrastructure would do the most damage? How can the resulting chaos be used to maximal effect with follow-up strikes on the West? How can we mitigate those effects? 

How did we get into this mess and how to get out

All in all, Putin was an idiot in starting this conflict which has no good outcomes for Russia. But the West, including the USA even under Obama, who I kind of did admire, is very much to blame as well. All Western politics is now firmly behind Ukraine, and rightly so, but where is the outrage about the million-score starving of Yemen children due to Saudi Arabia? There has almost been more fuss about a single chopped-up journalist (the Kashoggi murder).  What about Russia supporting Assad and the millions who where massacred in Syria?  What happened with Obama's "red line" when chemical weapons where used on Syrians? 
Too long has Putin been appeased. Russian gas and oil was sold to the West even while Syrians and Chechens died. I am totally for the Ukrainians, but it is hyprocacy that the same sanctions were not imposed when non-Europeans where dying back then. Worse, Europe has become addicted to Russian gas, and we fear the economic withdrawal symptoms when they or we decide to stop the flow. The flow continued while Russia attacked our democratic institutions in the USA, and in Europe, influencing election outcomes to swing right. Right wing parties have basically harbored traitors and continue to support Putin even now. Totally surreal development for conservative "hawks" to become leashed by Putin the Master Falconer. The very same parties in the West that feared communists everywhere and hunted liberals under McCarthyism. The wheel of fortune has turned indeed.

How to get out of this mess? Apart from cynically letting Putin win in Ukraine, by stopping the support for the Ukrainians (which would make the Ukrainians hate us forever, and implode the West to a black hole caused by the weight of its own karma), there is not much we can do now that Putin has turned "crazy". A calculating and rational kind of crazy which is the most dangerous type. If he wins, it is bad for all of freedom loving human kind. Even if he looses, and all deployed Russian troops are killed (which would be a tragedy as well, at least for the conscripts), he can still send more or decide to use chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. At this point, I believe Putin will stop at nothing at all. I think he is so dangerous, he will put his own survival and that of his regime before even the destruction of Russia which will be the end result.  I would not even put it past him to link his physical death to the launch of Russia's nukes, like a dead-man switch. So not even killing Putin may solve the quagmire we are in. We can hope for regime change in Russia. We can hope for the Ukrainians to win. We can hope for some type of settlement.

Causes for suffering

So what is the cause of all this? Two things:

First: The lack of unity in national politics, and so selling out the national good for the partisan interests. 

And second: The lack of principles, humanity and basic values in international politics. Which brought us the climate crisis, destruction of forests, countless species, ocean life. Which causes economic hardship (nothing to fish, nothing to farm, droughts, floods, storms, forest fires), which causes the "race to the bottom" (literally, in the case of over-fishing)  for which all countries are to blame. African hardwood forests are burned to provide charcoal for barbeques in the West. But hardwood import from such forests are forbidden. Import of exotic animals as pets is forbidden, but meat import from land where rain forests once grew is not.

The main cause for human suffering is the fact that we are willing to value one group more than other groups. The own nation more than others. White more than black, or vice versa. People with your religion, or no religion are worth more than those with another religion (or none). Conflicts over natural resources, or land, water, fishing rights come down to this if you just follow the logic to the end. If there is a finite resource, and everyone views all humans as of equal value, then naturally people will share equally. Only when people find the self, or the own group as more important than the other, conflict will arise. You can think of any example, but when you apply this logic to the end the outcome is always that the core reason for conflict and suffering is the perceived inequality among humans.

All these conflicts over any kind of resource are versions of the "Prisoners Dilemma" which is a non-zero-sum game, according to a mathematical branch called Game Theory. Individual players can of course achieve a higher reward when non-cooperative, but only at the expense of others, thereby acting on the principle of valueing the self more than the other. Which proofs exactly the point: human suffering is caused by not universally accepting that humans are of equal value. 

How to stop the suffering

All mankind is one, and all humans are of equal value. To act otherwise is to cause suffering. It is that simple. Practice this principle and almost all suffering will cease. There will still be some, caused by natural causes, but the need to care for other humans should inspire international cooperation to provide early warning systems against floods, tsunamis, epidemics and so on. It is just a matter of engineering once humanity and politics would settle in this frame of thought.

Applying the rule of human equal value implies that these natural disasters must be mitigated as to minimize suffering. The fact that in times of the climate crisis and everything else going on in the planetary ecosystem, we still have militaries that are fighting each other, or else are preparing for war, is a disgrace of epic proportions. Instead of that we should build a world army, specialized in coping with natural disasters.

We need a United Nations Disaster Relief Army. And we need it yesterday. 

Our planet with all its living creatures and all its natural bounties, including mineral resources, is one. It is a closed system. To not care for it, is to prioritize the own group, the self, over others. Overconsumption of natural resources violates the principle of equal value of humans.

The unity of mankind, when thought through to all its consequences, is the guiding principle to stop all suffering, end all wars, save the planet.

Unity of mankind is like a "Theory of Everything" in theoretical physics. All else follows from it, like a procession of theorems and proofs in a mathematical textbook.

And without unity of mankind, in this junction of human history, all will be lost.

Without applying this guiding principle at all levels from the individual the highest echelons of international politics, the human species will destroy itself, and the planet that is our home, or "Space ship Earth" or "Ark" if you need to be religious about it, will be lost.
Lost for humanity at least, because the planet and the ecosphere will reset, and new species will evolve in the course of millions of years, without us to witness it.