Your friend should see the Ukrainians as fighting for freedom and fewer concessions than if they surrendered. So Ukrainians are dying to achieve this.
It is likely that the fate of a foreigner fighting for Ukraine is capture and captivity[1].
If you are captured as a combatant, you give Russia leverage by trading you back to your country.
The reality is that, to secure the freedom of a small number citizens, a US or other NATO country might give disproportionately large concessions against Ukraine’s interests.
Because of this, a single person’s travel and participation might undo the lives given of many Ukrainians.
This US aligned website seems authoritative and has regular assessments. I think anyone looking at participating should consider the content on that website.
Oh. You ran up an update that they are Russians. That is unusual.
Do your friends know that punishments for fighting against one’s own country are usually extremely harsh?
For one case, look at this American who joined the Taliban before 9/11. It’s unclear there’s any evidence he took any action against or wanted to harm Americans, and he got 20 years. There’s no reason Russian treatment would be better. Under the circumstances, punishments probably include execution.
If you thought your friends were wrong or excited and you don’t respect their wishes/preferences:
Maybe try to argue that instead of being imprisoned or executed, it’s really valuable to help Ukrainians or dissidents while being in Russia and being Russian gives special advantages. This gives them something to do and tends to be distracting (it’s easy to get lost in “OPSEC”, bikeshedding, etc.). If they are just excited this allows for “value drift”.
I think ploys are bad but in the case of death, and possible killing of others, it’s acceptable.
If your friends are serious, and know the penalties, I think in these situations, it’s really difficult to communicate or convince them otherwise without knowing them personally.
I don’t expect that you will get a lot of helpful comments and this seems like a bit of a drama mine.
Thank you for your reply! That’s the thing, I don’t know if they’re wrong. I generally believe fighting for Ukraine is the right thing to do, though maybe not for everyone. I also don’t want to lose them or make them think I don’t care. So I wondered if there is an objective way to evaluate their expected impact, and if it comes out low, I’d make an argument based on that. And if it comes out high, I’d find something else to say. I am not sure if they’re serious, maybe they want me to talk them out of it, but I’m not going to make an argument based on lies.
Setting aside the combat and violence of personal actions, I think that supporting military efforts for Ukraine is bad because Russia will win, and we shouldn’t take actions that prolong the conflict. Prolonging the conflict may add many days of extreme violence.
I think Russia has been incredibly shamed morally and also militarily. Nothing further or learned will be accomplished by Russia using heavy weapons and artillery, which they may do.
There are other issues from prolonging the conflict. Large amounts of western volunteers, shipping large amounts of weapons and further pressures on Putin’s regime could be destabilizing.
The fact that Russia will win (or level Ukrainian cities) is probably the key factor for the “EV” of intervention.
Although you don’t want to use a ploy, I’m not really sure this is helping. This thread you have created would be most valuable if your friends are very serious. However, if they are very serious, breaking out some spreadsheet, explaining the inevitable defeat, or mansplaining suffering to Ukrainians or strong supporters seems bad or counterproductive.
The reality is that there is a huge supply of untrained volunteers, and even if there wasn’t a war, there’s no capacity to make these people into effective units. Even if your friends weren’t Russians, no one would give them a javelin or any responsibility. Most unskilled volunteers will probably be given a rifle and sent to some general area, not trusted to undertake any important operation or even important defense. It’s likely they won’t be allowed to move freely.
Even for regular soldiers, the reality of warfare is extremely boring. Bickering and bureaucracy, mismanagement and waste of resources is common. Like in many businesses, the perception is that most work is useless, corrupt and ineffective. In a losing situation, all the above is many times worse. Food, medicine and clean water will run out and sleeping on the cold ground with poor equipment gets old quickly.
The quality of “managers” or the NCOs in the militia are probably really bad. A militia unit isn’t going to get good “talent”, and leaders will be incompetent or blowhards. If you ever had a bad boss and thought that was oppressive, in this situation that person will now have life and death control over you and your friends and you may not be allowed to leave.
The reality of fighting in any conflict is that regular or even marginal quality troops are much more effective than an average person to a degree that it’s hard to understand or explain. This is true even for very talented, athletic people, who have studied warfare. In the same way that even if you were the best football player, you would completely fail if you tried to play basketball.
The reality of the conflict is that the most likely situation your friends will ever encounter Russian forces they could actually affect is if they are being overrun, and terror and panic in that experience is terrible.
The above doesn’t go into diseases, fragging (which your Russian friends should be pretty worried about), war crimes (often widely committed by both sides in any conflict) and PTSD.
The expected utility could potentially be extremely negative. If they were to suck enough as a fighter, they’d rapidly become casualties and thus liabilities. It could be especially bad if they were incapacitated at a time when their fellow fighters needed someone to have their back or a crisis when defence is needed and lives are on the line, especially civilian lives. The risk is not only of someone who may never have held a gun but also someone who is facing down tanks.
I know someone who said their mom might go volunteer in Poland to help with humanitarian relief for refugees flooding into the country. That’s one example of how one can volunteer on the ground without risking such an extremely negative outcome. There are already conversations in EA about identifying and evaluating the potentially best opportunities for marginal donations. Checking out those and your contacts donating to those could also easily prove to be much more valuable than them going over themselves to Ukraine to fight.
I think there are a lot of factors here. If you’re a CEO in a wheelchair, you’re certainly better off working and donating. A low-paid person who’s physically strong might be very valuable in Ukraine.
I doubt you could really estimate the utility you can’t really predict the future—Ukraine could win and we could still have many of the bad outcomes people are scared of (e.g. nuclear war, Russia attacking Europe).
There are a lot of other things you could do to promote peace—like advocating policies in the US like renewing New START and reducing the “defense” budget (or equivalent policies in your country), getting a job in arms control/foreign policy (e.g. IAEA, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation), or focusing on understudied/funded issues like landmine nonproliferation.
I’m deeply skeptical that this is a good action for anyone who isn’t personally tied to Ukraine. Foreigners fighting is a substantial propaganda boost for Putin (“Look, Ukraine is a Western stooge after all”) and risks muddying the water around whether or not the nation they are from is at war with Russia, potentially spiralling the conflict. NATO is holding off doing any act tantamount to declaring war for a reason. Ukrainians have the benefit of local geographic knowledge, being trusted by the community and speaking the co-ordinating languages; what they lack is high-tech military equipment. As you can probably tell, my skepticism also includes people who DO have military training, as this exacerbates the risk of it being perceived as state-sponsored assistance, even if these people are more useful militarily. I’m more sympathetic towards volunteers that have medical training and are going in a strictly non-combat facility.
This info was not present at the time I wrote this reply. As you say, most of this doesn’t apply in the case of Russians, but it seems unwise to even discuss the optimal actions for Russians in a non-anonymised public chat.
Your friend should see the Ukrainians as fighting for freedom and fewer concessions than if they surrendered. So Ukrainians are dying to achieve this.
It is likely that the fate of a foreigner fighting for Ukraine is capture and captivity[1].
If you are captured as a combatant, you give Russia leverage by trading you back to your country.
The reality is that, to secure the freedom of a small number citizens, a US or other NATO country might give disproportionately large concessions against Ukraine’s interests.
Because of this, a single person’s travel and participation might undo the lives given of many Ukrainians.
This US aligned website seems authoritative and has regular assessments. I think anyone looking at participating should consider the content on that website.
Oh. You ran up an update that they are Russians. That is unusual.
Do your friends know that punishments for fighting against one’s own country are usually extremely harsh?
For one case, look at this American who joined the Taliban before 9/11. It’s unclear there’s any evidence he took any action against or wanted to harm Americans, and he got 20 years. There’s no reason Russian treatment would be better. Under the circumstances, punishments probably include execution.
If you thought your friends were wrong or excited and you don’t respect their wishes/preferences:
Maybe try to argue that instead of being imprisoned or executed, it’s really valuable to help Ukrainians or dissidents while being in Russia and being Russian gives special advantages. This gives them something to do and tends to be distracting (it’s easy to get lost in “OPSEC”, bikeshedding, etc.). If they are just excited this allows for “value drift”.
I think ploys are bad but in the case of death, and possible killing of others, it’s acceptable.
If your friends are serious, and know the penalties, I think in these situations, it’s really difficult to communicate or convince them otherwise without knowing them personally.
I don’t expect that you will get a lot of helpful comments and this seems like a bit of a drama mine.
Thank you for your reply! That’s the thing, I don’t know if they’re wrong. I generally believe fighting for Ukraine is the right thing to do, though maybe not for everyone. I also don’t want to lose them or make them think I don’t care. So I wondered if there is an objective way to evaluate their expected impact, and if it comes out low, I’d make an argument based on that. And if it comes out high, I’d find something else to say. I am not sure if they’re serious, maybe they want me to talk them out of it, but I’m not going to make an argument based on lies.
It’s valid and thoughtful for you to think this.
Setting aside the combat and violence of personal actions, I think that supporting military efforts for Ukraine is bad because Russia will win, and we shouldn’t take actions that prolong the conflict. Prolonging the conflict may add many days of extreme violence.
I think Russia has been incredibly shamed morally and also militarily. Nothing further or learned will be accomplished by Russia using heavy weapons and artillery, which they may do.
There are other considerations here.
There are other issues from prolonging the conflict. Large amounts of western volunteers, shipping large amounts of weapons and further pressures on Putin’s regime could be destabilizing.
The fact that Russia will win (or level Ukrainian cities) is probably the key factor for the “EV” of intervention.
Although you don’t want to use a ploy, I’m not really sure this is helping. This thread you have created would be most valuable if your friends are very serious. However, if they are very serious, breaking out some spreadsheet, explaining the inevitable defeat, or mansplaining suffering to Ukrainians or strong supporters seems bad or counterproductive.
Ok, there is more. This is fully truthful:
The reality is that there is a huge supply of untrained volunteers, and even if there wasn’t a war, there’s no capacity to make these people into effective units. Even if your friends weren’t Russians, no one would give them a javelin or any responsibility. Most unskilled volunteers will probably be given a rifle and sent to some general area, not trusted to undertake any important operation or even important defense. It’s likely they won’t be allowed to move freely.
Even for regular soldiers, the reality of warfare is extremely boring. Bickering and bureaucracy, mismanagement and waste of resources is common. Like in many businesses, the perception is that most work is useless, corrupt and ineffective. In a losing situation, all the above is many times worse. Food, medicine and clean water will run out and sleeping on the cold ground with poor equipment gets old quickly.
The quality of “managers” or the NCOs in the militia are probably really bad. A militia unit isn’t going to get good “talent”, and leaders will be incompetent or blowhards. If you ever had a bad boss and thought that was oppressive, in this situation that person will now have life and death control over you and your friends and you may not be allowed to leave.
The reality of fighting in any conflict is that regular or even marginal quality troops are much more effective than an average person to a degree that it’s hard to understand or explain. This is true even for very talented, athletic people, who have studied warfare. In the same way that even if you were the best football player, you would completely fail if you tried to play basketball.
The reality of the conflict is that the most likely situation your friends will ever encounter Russian forces they could actually affect is if they are being overrun, and terror and panic in that experience is terrible.
The above doesn’t go into diseases, fragging (which your Russian friends should be pretty worried about), war crimes (often widely committed by both sides in any conflict) and PTSD.
The expected utility could potentially be extremely negative. If they were to suck enough as a fighter, they’d rapidly become casualties and thus liabilities. It could be especially bad if they were incapacitated at a time when their fellow fighters needed someone to have their back or a crisis when defence is needed and lives are on the line, especially civilian lives. The risk is not only of someone who may never have held a gun but also someone who is facing down tanks.
I know someone who said their mom might go volunteer in Poland to help with humanitarian relief for refugees flooding into the country. That’s one example of how one can volunteer on the ground without risking such an extremely negative outcome. There are already conversations in EA about identifying and evaluating the potentially best opportunities for marginal donations. Checking out those and your contacts donating to those could also easily prove to be much more valuable than them going over themselves to Ukraine to fight.
I think there are a lot of factors here. If you’re a CEO in a wheelchair, you’re certainly better off working and donating. A low-paid person who’s physically strong might be very valuable in Ukraine.
I doubt you could really estimate the utility you can’t really predict the future—Ukraine could win and we could still have many of the bad outcomes people are scared of (e.g. nuclear war, Russia attacking Europe).
There are a lot of other things you could do to promote peace—like advocating policies in the US like renewing New START and reducing the “defense” budget (or equivalent policies in your country), getting a job in arms control/foreign policy (e.g. IAEA, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation), or focusing on understudied/funded issues like landmine nonproliferation.
I’m deeply skeptical that this is a good action for anyone who isn’t personally tied to Ukraine. Foreigners fighting is a substantial propaganda boost for Putin (“Look, Ukraine is a Western stooge after all”) and risks muddying the water around whether or not the nation they are from is at war with Russia, potentially spiralling the conflict. NATO is holding off doing any act tantamount to declaring war for a reason. Ukrainians have the benefit of local geographic knowledge, being trusted by the community and speaking the co-ordinating languages; what they lack is high-tech military equipment. As you can probably tell, my skepticism also includes people who DO have military training, as this exacerbates the risk of it being perceived as state-sponsored assistance, even if these people are more useful militarily. I’m more sympathetic towards volunteers that have medical training and are going in a strictly non-combat facility.
Please note that if Putin wants to say “Ukraine is a Western stooge after all”, he will say that whether there are 20 foreign fighters or 200,000.
But he did say his friends were Russian, which might negate this argument? (Not sure if they have other nationalities though)
This info was not present at the time I wrote this reply. As you say, most of this doesn’t apply in the case of Russians, but it seems unwise to even discuss the optimal actions for Russians in a non-anonymised public chat.