Mariana Budjeryn

 Mariana Budjeryn

@mbudjeryn

15 Tweets, 12 Sep 2022

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As Ukraine is making history with its counteroffensive, there's much witty sarcasm hurled at those who are being proved spectacularly wrong: those who predicted Ukraine's quick defeat at Russia's hands, urged territorial concessions to Russia, peace talks and West's abstention.🧵

I have been thoroughly enjoying reading these stabs here on Twitter. But resisting the non-negligible urge to join in, I want to give those analysts a fair trial. After all, social scientists are notoriously bad at predictions, especially about the future.

It is also fair that few, outside of the US intel community, anticipated a full scale Russian invasion, few were unsurprised by Ukraine's capable and fierce resistance and Russian military's inaptitude, and few are observing the developing counteroffensive without a sense of awe.

Yet the analysts and politicians (we all know who they are) of whom I write are a different breed. What they share in common and what sets them apart from the rest of us whose expectations are overtaken by events is two things: arrogance and self-righteousness.

It is also remarkable that these analysts fall into two diametrically opposite theoretical camps: so-called realists and so-called pacifists. Their premises are entirely different but their predictions and prescriptions converged.

Realists looked at the balance of power, defined in material terms. They counted Russian tanks, airplanes and troops, pointed to Russian nukes and GDP per capita, and concluded that Ukraine didn't stand a chance.

They also looked at the balance of interest in Ukraine between Russia and the West, and stated, as a matter of an axiom, not an argument, that Russia wanted Ukraine more, that the US had no vital interest in Ukraine, so it should not get involved.

The pacifists started from the premise that no military solutions of any security problem are legitimate; in Ukraine they are also not possible. No explanation given, but if one were required, see realists above.

The pacifists' urge for concessions and peace negotiations stem from their declared concern for civilian lives, which concessions and negotiations would save. Western arms supplies, they argued, would only prolong the war, which Ukraine would likely lose anyway.

Both realists and pacifists make their assumptions and theoretical commitments transparent. The problem is that neither is falsifiable. No new evidence, scholarship, even unfolding real-time events are likely to sway them to rethink the merits of their assumptions.

In that, realists and pacifists are not theoretical traditions. They are ideologies. They have already decided how the world works and if it might appear that the world doesn't work like they think it does, it's the world's problem, not the problem of their theories.

None of these criticisms are new. We all heard about cherry-picking empirical evidence, about blindness to domestic politics, cultural contexts, just war, responsibility to protect, national identities, and so much more good social science that aims at nuance not reduction.

It's not that most realists and pacifists knew little about Russia and even less about Ukraine. It's that they didn't even care to learn. They could take just one look at Russia and see a great power, take a glimpse at Ukraine and conclude that it's weak and worthless.

I might have indulged in a bit of strawmanning, but not much. I do hope, however, that both realists and pacifists can take a hard look at Ukraine today and use it as opportunity to learn in earnest: revisit their assumptions, gaps in understanding, and ethical commitments.

Arrogance and self-righteousness is no way to go through life; it is also no basis for advocating policy that can make or break a people about whom you know or care next to nothing. END