I think you may have inadvertently pointed to a potential blindspot when you conclude "It threatens the stability of our international system". Even if an international system is by definition for all and by all, it is unavoidable to recognize that Russia (beyond Putin himself) feels shortchanged by the European status quo of that system and in that respect would feel less constrained to challenge it as they did. The long history of their failed attempts to modify it peacefully has been obfuscated in the west, as is the disadvantageous position for Russia that came along with that, as well as other long term disadvantages that they have to deal with.
I think it's fair to say that we collectively underestimated Putin's anger at and frustration with the international system, but I don't think we were really unaware that Russia has legitimate grievances and serious security concerns. I think I was personally surprised by the extent to which this seems—at least to me—to be about restoring the Russian Empire.
The issue was that the Base rates of saber rattling are much higher than the base rates of actual war. On feb 8th I gave russia a 45% chance of invasion, on feb 17th it was much higher (80%) (metaculus) because of looking not at rhetoric (which has a very low signal to noise ratio) but instead looking at troop movement (which had a high signal to noise ratio). But alas I think my brier score was too heavily impacted by rhetoric rather than by looking at the hard data. The hard data would show that while the base rates of sabre rattling are high, the large update to make was the physical movement of physical resources, which can't be faked.
I'm generally not very good at updating relative to other forecasters and tend to focus harder on establishing good base rates, but it's a good idea generally to update based on physical facts very hard and not update at all on Rhetoric (which is always nonsense).
I think that's true. Most saber rattling doesn't lead to war. But because mobilization is costly, it can be more revealing. Rhetoric can sometimes be a meaningful signal—we do learn something from an actor's choice to say something—but because talk is cheap it's often just noise.
I think you may have inadvertently pointed to a potential blindspot when you conclude "It threatens the stability of our international system". Even if an international system is by definition for all and by all, it is unavoidable to recognize that Russia (beyond Putin himself) feels shortchanged by the European status quo of that system and in that respect would feel less constrained to challenge it as they did. The long history of their failed attempts to modify it peacefully has been obfuscated in the west, as is the disadvantageous position for Russia that came along with that, as well as other long term disadvantages that they have to deal with.
I think it's fair to say that we collectively underestimated Putin's anger at and frustration with the international system, but I don't think we were really unaware that Russia has legitimate grievances and serious security concerns. I think I was personally surprised by the extent to which this seems—at least to me—to be about restoring the Russian Empire.
The issue was that the Base rates of saber rattling are much higher than the base rates of actual war. On feb 8th I gave russia a 45% chance of invasion, on feb 17th it was much higher (80%) (metaculus) because of looking not at rhetoric (which has a very low signal to noise ratio) but instead looking at troop movement (which had a high signal to noise ratio). But alas I think my brier score was too heavily impacted by rhetoric rather than by looking at the hard data. The hard data would show that while the base rates of sabre rattling are high, the large update to make was the physical movement of physical resources, which can't be faked.
I'm generally not very good at updating relative to other forecasters and tend to focus harder on establishing good base rates, but it's a good idea generally to update based on physical facts very hard and not update at all on Rhetoric (which is always nonsense).
I think that's true. Most saber rattling doesn't lead to war. But because mobilization is costly, it can be more revealing. Rhetoric can sometimes be a meaningful signal—we do learn something from an actor's choice to say something—but because talk is cheap it's often just noise.