Dean
6mo ago
I agree to a good degree, and even would argue Hezbollah is trying to calibrate the pressure precisely to distract Israel from focusing on Hamas, but states can very much downplay some casus belli factors when they don't want to engage a particular front.
Dean
6mo ago
You really did a multi-month necro just to get a last word and block, huh? That is sincerely amusing, thanks for making a good morning.
Last paragraph seems to have hit the nail on the head as far as predictions go, for just one example.
I was under the impression that they collapsed due to a deeply flawed economic system in combination with a dramatic over-expenditure on military spending in order to keep fighting the cold war.
Common misconception and oversimplification. Incorrect, but common.
But the main point is that they did in fact collapse and nuclear weapons weren't able to stop that from happening.
The actually relevant point, however, is that the Soviet Union didn't collapse from external invasion, or from people who already identified with the core identity unit wanting to leave. This is relevant, because the thing that will actually end Israel as a nation-state- and what ended the crusader states- is external invasion, not civil unrest in the national core. Civil Unrest can weaken a state's capacity for militarily resisting invasion, but if invasion is already negated by other ways- such as nukes- the you have a weak state, not a dead state.
The Soviet Union collapse is a poor historical metaphor because the parts of the Soviet Union who left the Soviets were the Russian imperial sphere that never wanted to be part of the Russian empire. The Russian national core was never challenged or militarily endangered. In the Israel metaphor, this is Gaza and West Bank not being occupied, and the Israeli core existing uninterrupted and without a military threat.
The crusader state metaphor from earlier is likewise bad because that was a case of military invasion destroying the state- which is precisely what did NOT occur with the Soviet Union, for a reason of (among other things) sustained nuclear deterence despite major economic and democraphic and social regression.
I still just don't see how nuclear weapons would be able to save Israel from an economic collapse or social unrest.
Because economic collapse or social unrest don't actually destroy nations, and this is so well established it's easier to identify the exceptions- which are almost universally states without an underlying national identity to bind the state.
This is basic not-understanding-why-states-fail, both historical and mechanically.
Dean
11mo ago
Would or wouldn't?
I'm fairly sure Sarker's point was that the point of relative spending favors the US.
Dean
6d ago
The unmeasurable concept of popularity is creating a self-referential loop here, which is what avoids the original question. Putin is as popular as he is because he runs personality cult -> Putin runs a personality cult because he was popular -> the propaganda of the personality cult is what creates / proves his popularity. It's not an answer to the earlier question of how popular Putin actually is independent of the suppression state in which anti-popularity factors are squashed.
(One insight would be the result of the Wagner Mutiny. No one joined in on the mutiny against Putin... but there was no mass popular uprising in his favor either. There was no equivalent to, say, Erdogan flooding the streets with his supporters during the failed Turkish coup.)
On the other hand, we could compare Putin's popularity with Russians outside the scope (and reach) of his personality cult. This is primarily Russians abroad, but they do exist as a counter-example of Russians, and Putin is not, shall we say, particularly popular amongst those who are not imbibing on the Russian state-influenced media apparatus. The tendency to murder high-profile dissidents does tend to keep people from wanting to be high-profile, but that's a suppression of dissent, not a popularity, unless the undefined standard of popularity is claiming that people keeping their heads down are actually a sign of popular support.
And it's not like there was much of a substantial alternative to him in particular. His biggest opponent was Primakov, another ex-KGB goon, not exactly someone to expect kindness to dissidents from.
Putin and his backers actively worked/conspired to undercut all substantial alternatives to them in general and him in particular. It's been one of his more consistent strategies over the decades, both domestically and externally.
This is not surprising on the Russian political front- the Security Services were the most capable and coherent survivors of the Cold War and had the best means of coordinating formally and informally for mutual benefit and a common understanding of a better vision that a critical mass could get behind- but this is and was a political consequence of policy decisions, not an inevitability or even a testament to popularity.
It turns out that a one-party state with no meaningful civil society does not have coherent political party groups to fall back on if the uni-party collapses.
Dean
22d ago
It wouldn't be an imposition to them, and in fact they'd probably be thrilled to let you know if they had anything else. Researcher groups like that often love when their research is noticed, and policy-support research in particular loves to know when research they provided can change an opinion. You questions / testimony and reasoning why (concern of male disposability) and what assauged your concern (awareness of Ukrainian views on the subject) would be the sort of thing that might tailor future questions and such.
Dean
23d ago
I've no doubt that people say that, but there's probably a considerable amount of category confusion (do Mujahideen trading Stingers with other Mujahideen count as trading away Stingers?) and self-serving narrative biases (various interests in downplaying the relevance of US military aid support in favor of other actors/other types of aid/denying US significance) and the point that there were only so many (the CIA reportedly only gave around 1000 total), and that once they did their primary role- making the Soviets cautious rather than aggressive with their use of gunships- there wasn't much use for them.
Some weapon systems are more about shifting the opponent's behavior rather than being prevalent. Stingers were an example of that.
I'll disagree, and maintain my criticism of your previous post.
On one level, the charge of hyperagency / hypoagency framework isn't a strawman as I'm not saying it's the argument being made, it's what I am characterizing the argument's form as in a meta-contextual description. And I made this point- and stand by it- because the characterization of reasonings for why Ukraine would continue fighting was because Borris Johnson screamed at them- a pejorative framing with connotations of aggression by the screamer and victimhood/submission by the target who acquiesces to it in an imposition of will- rather than multiple extremely more relevant factors. Like, say, Borris Johnson communicating the intend of the UK government to continue supporting Ukraine, and thus allowing the Ukrainians to make a more informed choice as to whether continuing to fight or submitting to the current terms offered by the Russians was better.
When the only relevant factor provided for a party's decision making is another party's verbal harassment, this is an agency framework that reserves true agency to the person who is the true decision maker, and subordinates agency of the other. Were the other relevant factors included and a less pejorative framing used, then the Ukrainians would have been presented as making a choice: the Ukrainians could consider what the Russians demanded (conditions following an unprovoked invasion that increasing risk of a follow on invasions with even worse terms should Russia choose to fight a fourth continuation war to complete the cassus belli war goals that this negotiation did not provide them), versus prospects of fighting on with external support. That would be a choice, even if someone disagrees that it was the better choice. But submitting to screaming is not a choice- it is an imposition of someone else's will.
Similarly, and equally relevant, is the movement of the onus of negotiation failure to the US and UK rather than Russia. The US and UK did not move to put the Ukrainians in a position where war seemed the better than Russian terms- the Russians did, multiple times. The Russians did so by launching an unprovoked invasion on false pretenses (the false-flag attempts of Ukrainian provocations that were leaked before they even occured, the false narratives on the Ukrainian suppression of the Russian-speaking minorities), the Russians also did so by conducting massacres like the Bucha massacre that demonstrated how they would treat the Ukrainians from a position of occupation, and the Russians did so by demanding terms that would directly facilitate the future occupation of Ukraine via demands that would cripple Ukraine's ability to resist occupation in exchange for a cease fire that did not meet Russia's stated or underlying goals when it initiated this war. Additionally, the Russians put Ukraine in this position because the current Ukraine War is no less than the third Russian intervention in Ukraine in less than a decade, and each one of those was a Russian choice.
Attributing the geopolitical context the Ukrainians found themselves in to the US and UK, rather than the Russians, is another form of the hyperagency/hypoagency paradigm that subordinates Russian agency- and thus responsibility for the situation- to the Americans and Brits. They are not responding to Russian agency to launch a second continuation war into Ukraine- rather, the Russian position and actions are treated as forces of natures that simply have to be dealt with pragmatically, and the US/UK actions are imposing an immoral choice on the Ukrainians instead. This is aligned with the previous choice of pejorative- Borris screaming- as the determinative factor, and that framework's issues with hyper- and hypo-agency.
Even framing the negotiations as 'the US and UK made war seem the best of all possible worlds' is a negation of the other parties agencies. The recent Afghan war quite nicely demonstrated that the US aid can't make people who don't want to fight actually fight- and thus it's not the agent as to why Ukrainians formed in the streets of Kyiv to make molotov cocktails in mass in the opening month rather than Ukrainians protesting against fighting the Russians like Putin thought would happen. Nor can the Americans dictate the other side of the table, the harms Russia could do in war. No one in the region is unfamiliar with what Grozny refers to, and the Russian treatment of temporarily occupied areas was already entering awareness. All the Americans could do is offer military support for the Ukrainians to fight if they already wanted to, they couldn't dictate the cost-perception of the Ukrainians continuing to fight.
But the Russians could- and did- both by the content of their negotiations and the conduct of their forces. I made a point a few years ago- I believe on the old site- that Bucha was a disaster for the Russians whose cost was nowhere near worth whatever benefit was perceived at the time, and this is why. Bucha was a demonstration of what the Russians were willing to do if in a position of military superiority, and Russian terms were to dismantle Ukraine's ability to resist a future incursion where it could be done again. The US did not put Ukraine in a position where future Buchas were an easily foreseeable consequence of avoiding the war at hand: Russia did. That Russia might continue to further areas by continuing this war did not change that Russia's alternatives were to set conditions for Russia to claim more more easily going forward. And the perception that Russia might fight a third continuation war in Ukraine, and thus diminishing the value of peace talks in this war that would make a fourth Russian intervention even easier, is solely a result of Russia's repeated choices.
The Nuland call is not inconsequential since it's evidence that EU should operate on its own and not just rely on the US, surely an important message to this day,
True, but perhaps not in the way many think.
Ironically, one of the back-channel complaints from the US in that time was a frustration with the Germans in particular for doing so much to set conditions for Euromaidan, but then dropping the ball and refusing to take any leadership role in negotiations on behalf of Europe despite being one of the key backers of the foundational infrastructure of Euromaidan politics (as in, the EU-funded networks that the US was also supporting). US policy in Ukraine before Euromaidan was basically supporting the European Union's association and social movement efforts, and the key driver and funder of that was the Germans, who had invested heavily in the Ukrainian media space and elsewhere in the decades leading up to it. For the Germans Ukraine was an economic interest and part of their post-Soviet soviet space influence links, and the US was supporting the European desire because why not.
There was a dynamic of that the US was frustrated not because the Europeans wouldn't align with the US, but that there wasn't a coherent European position for the US to align itself with, due to the Germans dropping their previous lead and distancing themselves from the Euromaidan architecture they'd set up. Between the German whip lash and the lack of European consensus, Nuland took steps in a relative void where the Germans had turned self-sabotaging and the Russians were attempting various spoiler efforts to keep the Ukrainians from associating with the EU.
Had the EU operated on its own- which is to say, had the EU actually operated on a consistent position and been willing to stand by its previous decade of messaging- Nuland would likely have been known as little more than a European backer.
Did you even read the content of the article?
Yup. And I even noticed it wasn't by the American State Department, whose own words you were claiming to link to, and then tried to defend not referring to in favor of a detractor's take before taking issue for positions not being accurately reflected.
The article was less interesting than the irony, and not particularly relevant to the post the citation was meant to refute.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that one went right over your head...
A common mistake you make, I'm sure.
Lol. Okay.
Okay indeed.
Now, would you like to drop further points to a more defensible motte, or just try one more time for a last word? There aren't many more positions left for you to abandon in the face of challenge, but I doubt I'll see more than a downvote.
Don't know why you're trying make a mess of history on the matter. Even the regime change wing of the State Department admits of their activities in Russia's backyard and the very thing I'm calling it out for.
I'm not sure why you believe Global Research .ca, an anti-globalization conspiracy website, represents the regime change wing of the State Department, but this would be both an incorrect citation and not a rebuttal to the post on hyper and hypo agency.
And as such, Russia's response is reasonable in turn to US' operations in their sphere of influence.
Similarly, you seem to have missed that point that he was making fun of the argument structure, and not actually making a position that your argeement with would advance your position.
Doesn't make for strange bedfellows when you understand the Minsk Accords mandated a similar relationship to Ukraine that the US imposed on Japan in the postwar period,
Which was not an amicable solution to negotiations, but a compulsory surrender punctuated by more than one nuclear weapon after years of unrestricted submarine warfare against an island that needed to import resources and firebombing of cities made of wood and paper... after the receiving country had launched a series of unprovoked invasions and a litany of warcrimes across the region.
The Minsk Accords were, again, many things, but the Pacific Campaign of WW2 they were not.
which remains today.
Alas, the Japanese-American alliance today does not remain an unconditional military occupation with overt censorship by the occupying authority.
Also, the Russians aren't interested in dismantling a warmongering oligarchy as much as installing one.
Dean
1mo ago
I'd expect a lot of people don't want to fight regardless of conscription.
If you're asking if conscription as a policy indicates a lack of public support for a war, not really. No major war as a share of national population has been fought on a volunteer-only recruitment basis. At the same time, there have been many wars where support for continuing the war has remained high even as conscription numbers ran high.
Dean
1mo ago
Is your position that Ukraine conscripts are 60% free and 40% slaves?
If not, what percent do you think are the slave-analogs here? 30%? 15%
Dean
1mo ago
...?
By contrast, the power of Borris Johnson to coerce, compel, bewitch, or otherwise overturn the true desires of the Ukrainian political establishment was...?
Dean
1mo ago
As are the core claims, because the core claims as much from what people believe on twitter as in the non-consensus-but-valid research.
Skepticism and not deferring belief is as valid against a non-consensus as it is against the replication-crisis-tainted consensus, as the counter-establishment types are operating in the same fundamental ecosystem, with the same underlying incentives: to over-claim, under-demonstrate, and fail to replicate without selective utilization of data.
When the bad research is the norm, and not the exception, skepticism of anything from the field is warranted and sensible. The issue is not that one of a thousand papers are compromised- it's that upwards to 900+ of the 1000 papers are compromised, and if you can't determine which are which, 'look for the good ones' is meaningless admonishment.
Dean
3mo ago
That might be a narrative reason in isolation, in the same way that the 5-man-ban trope really tends to support 2-siblings (so that 3 outsiders can be added), but that also doesn't really change that it's not terribly hard to find counter-examples in American media of sibling-ensemble casts. Swiss Family Robinson, Little House on the Prairie, Bradey Bunch, the Cosby Show, Boxcar Children. If you're willing to go animated, the Incredibles, Brave, Brother Bear, the Aristocats, Peter Pan, or the Simpsons. Even Disney's Coco and Encanto- which I'd consider far more 'conservative' than 'progressive' in theme- carry on with large families, albeit maybe in an ethnic stereotype fashion.
Not having families of 3 or more is a narrative choice, not a narrative constraint.
Dean
3mo ago
I am honestly trying to recall recent major progressive-themed media where having three kids was presented as any such cultural ideal, particularly without one of the kids being cast as a negative influence (i.e. mentally divergent / physically impaired / morally lacking).
What will be left of Ukraine after Russia and the West are done with their proxy war?
A nation-state centered around Ukrainians, generally democratic and politically European, rather than a subject-state or administrative unit centered around Russians ruled by autocratic collaborators.
It's hard to get good numbers as both Russia and Ukraine lie about everything. But it feels that Ukraine is exhausted and will soon lose this war. My heuristic for this is reading between the lines of the news.
Yawn. You could read that interpretation since the very start of the conflict, given it's been one of the most prevalent propaganda narratives the whole time.
Your confirmation bias will continue to be well fed for the next year, as was predicted nearly half a year ago by the people who recognized the logistical limitations of the western artillery ammo shortage and production-mobilization lagging behind the Russians.
Every optimistic story about Ukraine's war effort in the last year has failed to bear fruit.
Only if you selectively choose the optimistic stories you remember, just as your numbers arguments only bear fruit if you selectively recall your numbers.
I have to ask, at this point, why does the West still support Ukraine?
Because they like its perseverance more than they like Putin's.
There are multiple angles to this, ranging from the domestic political rewards of supporting Ukraine versus costs for wanting rapprochement with Russia, international angles of posturing withing various international organizations and forums, ideological views of various elites, security considerations for military establishments, economic incentives for politically-justifiable retoolings or expansions of military-industrial complexes, and so on.
There's also the point that Putin's kind of a dick, who tried to blackmail and then crash the European economy in the opening year of the war with energy cutoffs that have triggered long-term and painful economic shifts in the European industrial economy. Revenge and retaliation as a form of future-deterrence also play a role.
Yes, it's very convenient that Ukraine is willing to destroy itself to hurt Russia. But, as a utilitarian, I am very skeptical of the benefits of "grand strategy" type decisions like this. The world is complicated. If we let Putin have the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine will he then demand the Polish-speaking parts of Poland? No. It's not like this war has been a resounding success. Furthermore, he could die tomorrow.
The war has been an abject disaster for the Russian state because the Ukrainian nation fought back, with western support, and did so despite obvious and predictable great cost. The deterrence model you appeal to only applies on behalf of the costs already imposed, and threatened to continue to be imposed, which your proposed compromise undercuts by indicating that resistance is neither indefinite or desired by yourself.
Moreover, Putin both started the war with war goals far beyond the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine (hence the attempt at a coup de main centered on Kyiv), and retains war goals far beyond the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine (which, notably, have never voted for association with Russia except when supervised by Russian military forces).
But the deaths suffered by Ukrainian conscripts (and yes Russian conscripts too) are very real. We are trading the deaths of real people for theoretical future benefits.
You are (allegedly) a utilitarian. Trading real costs for theoretical units of value (utils) is the core conceit of utilitarianism as a model.
And we are destroying an entire country in the process.
'We' are not, unless you are speaking in association with the Russians invading Ukraine. The moral, ethical, and legal responsibility for the Ukraine War, the Ukraine War's continuation, and the Ukraine war's future costs are on Putin, who made the destruction of the Ukrainian national identity a core premise of his war from the start.
Why not go to the bargaining table and end this cruel and pointless war?
Because Putin continues to maintain maximalist war goals of in yet another continuation war against Ukraine, with stated and demonstrated objectives of waging a war of national destruction against the Ukrainian nation to subordinate them on revanchist grounds that apply to multiple other partners and allies of the broader Western coalition.
War is always cruel. War doesn't become pointless simply because you don't agree with the point.
What, the consequences of illegally and secretly invading or bombing neutral countries finally caught up to the President and Congress spat the dummy, demanding total withdrawal?
Not really, no. Cambodia was not particularly relevant to the American political opinion or actors involved at the time. This isn't exactly some social secret either- there still exists public opinion polling and records of remarks and interviews from the period that you could look at if you cared to.
This is more of a demonstration of your lack of awareness of relevant subject matter.
Nixon and Kissinger were playing their own game, haughtily excluding everyone else from their plans and then turn around with a shocked expression when they got the rug pulled out from under them.
Simply because you believe the framing you subscribe to should be the one others subscribe to does not make it so. It does, however, make you wrong when trying to characterize the reasons that actually held influence to those others.
Expanding the war into Cambodia was a direct cause of much of Nixon and Kissinger's political woes, it went squarely against his electoral promises to withdraw and scale down the war. It caused considerable public anger and distrust, including in Congress. The duo's loss-management skills were poor, especially since fighting in Cambodia didn't change the outcome.
This would be demonstration two...
And what was the fruit of the Paris Accords?
Exactly what was described in the answer you ignored but dismissed as they didn't seem relevant or important to you. Which would be demonstration three....
That's a big war, albeit not a world war.
Absolutes that seem big to people with smaller frames of reference are not the same as big things in absolute terms. A seventh is a considerable and non-trivial fraction, but it is not a big fraction.
America losing a big Vietnam war as opposed to a small Vietnam war surely helped the Soviets in the Cold War.
Since the Soviets subsequently lost the Cold War to the results of the post-drawdown reorientation of the US, that would surely be an uninformed conclusion, even without the fallacious attempt to assume a conclusion that doesn't even hold.
You completely misunderstood my point,
I understood your point, it was simply characteristic of you and unsubtly trying to ignore previous points to make a jab.
I don't see how I'm stupidly deriding American competence when they made the exact same mistake again in Afghanistan,
You are stupidly deriding because you are demonstrating a considerable lack of intelligence, awareness, or understanding of the things you deride.
Such as here. This line, and the paragraph that was clipped, is its own example. It does not take some sort of uncommon insight to identify multidues of differences- and things to critique- between Vietnam and Afghanistan from political, social, diplomatic, economic, military, opposition, local regional, and many other relevant factors. Breezing past them for a not-partiuclarly-well-constructed historical metaphor to force a commonality on topics you have stronger opinions than knowledge about is quite characteristic of you, but also a stupid form of derision.
What's the quote about repeating the same thing again and expecting a different outcome?
You never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
That Iran was aware of the Hamas intent to launch the general premise of the 7 Oct attack and provided technical and additional forms of help to assist with the planning.
Obviously states collapse for a variety of reasons and I only provided the two that seemed the most prominent.
And are also counter-productive to your claims, as one of the claims (Crusader States) were conventional invasions that nukes would have defeated had the Crusader states had access to them, and the other (Soviet) did not see the collapse of the core state (the Russian Federation) that would be analogous to Israel and thus is generally unapplicable as a metaphor of how Israel would be destroyed and instead an example of why Israel would not be destroyed (because even at a point of massive economic/military/social/political power disrepencies, Russia survived as an nation-state centered on the Russian nation).
This is, as far as I can see (especially since you called it common), the conventionally accepted wisdom as well - economic hardship lead to reform attempts which then lead to dissolution and breakup. If you've got a more compelling theory or hypothesis I'd unironically love to hear it.
Sure- don't skip the causal intermediary between 'reform attempts' and 'dissolution and breakup.' The Soviet system lost the willingness to enforce its imperial control by mass violence, not its ability to.
Maintaining social control by violence is actually quite cheap, and we saw a number of case-examples during the Soviet collapse itself- including in Russia itself. North Korea and Cuba practically the capstone example, and much better Israeli metaphors than the Soviet empire-block given their coherency and external aid dependency, but nearly all the post-Soviet states that chose not to democratize and maintain autocratic models were able to. Russia itself is an example here, as even as it faced real struggles economically, socially, and what have you, it was still able to put down rebellion when it chose to (Chechnya). While it would have been immensly expensive to, there is a very strong argument that the Soviets would have been able to hold much of the empire by force if they chose to, if they thought it was worth that cost. Especially with nuclear weapons to keep invaders out. Nuclear-counter-rebellion strategy is a high-cost strategy, but not an impossible one.
The reason the economic travails and reforms led to dissolution is because they didn't think it was worth the cost to hold the empire together.
The reason that reform attempts lead to losing will to maintain imperial control was that the reform attempts involved enabling information flow- necessary for economic improvement- that deligitimized the ideological premise of the project from a revolutionary premise worth costs along the way to an objective failure unable to deliver. The Soviet Union wasn't simply an economic unit, it was an ideology-project, and a materialist one at that. While there were always overlaps between the Russian imperialist habits and the Soviet strategy, the metaphorical glue that held the system together- not only from the bottom-up (why do we accept this) but the top-down (why do we do this to ourselves) was the ideological underpinnings of 'because Socialism will build a better society and make people's lives better.' Except it didn't. The system did not work, the ideology did not deliver its central premise of improving living standards vis-a-vis the alternative, the more moral society wasn't more moral than the alternative, and the systems very clearly wasn't working, and people already knew that. What the laxing of information controls meant is that everyone else knew that too. When it came to choosing between holding together the lesser option by force and even greater cost and misery, the Soviets- which is to say the Russians- ultimately didn't.
But this isn't the circumstance Israel is in, even in the abstract. Israel's information space is already open enough that one of the key snowball dynamics- the mass sharing of dissolutionment- is impossible since people already have access to the information and eachother. Israel's core ideological premise- an ethno-state that will work to protect jews from both hostile states and statues unable/unwilling to do so internally- is not under ideological threat for the core auidence, i.e. the jews who feel unsafe or insecure elsewhere in states that visibly do not even try. The parts of the Israeli context that could be metaphorically analogous to the Soviet Block are the Palestinian territories, not Israeli proper- and thus vestigial territories, and not core dependencies.
Which goes to the point of 'who is choosing to leave and let-leave.' In the Soviet System, the imperial block- particularly eastern Europe- wanted to leave. The Germans wanted reunification, the Poles wanted independence, even the 'totally Russian all along' Ukrainians wanted to leave. The Russians let them, because the Russians didn't feel the project was worth the costs of violent suppression. We can see today, in Ukraine, what an alternative decision process might have been, as the Russians are now led by the sort of leadership for whom trying to militarily impose Russian dominance absolutely is worth the cost... and while they are paying a cost, they are also nowhere near a state collapse in doing so.
Yes, it didn't collapse from the kind of problem that nuclear weapons prevent, given that it had nuclear weapons (though if the Russians all decided to leave I don't think nukes would help there either).
The Russian Federation didn't collapse as a state at all, precisely because the problems that nuclear weapons prevent did not form (because everyone knew Russia was a nuclear state and that trying to invade it would be suicide).
The Russian Empire collapsed. The Russian State did not. And the reason it did not is because there was no one who was going to come in and kick it down and drive them out of the territory they held until they held nothing else, which is what happened to the crusader states and what the parties interested in Israel's destruction want to do to it.
But Israel is in fact surrounded by dangerous threats in just about every direction but the sea, and this means that they are going to need to spend a huge portion of their GDP on the military budget - far more than they do currently, and to the point that it is going to have a big impact on society. That's an extremely dangerous position for a nation to be in, nukes or no nukes.
In terms of state survival? Not really. This is where 'dangerous threats' becomes a motte and bailey between 'it's bad' and 'it's a cause for state collapse.'
Terrorism is dangerous. But it's not existentially dangerous. Neither is spending a large amount on GDP on military budget- which itself is assuming a conclusion at odds with various dynamics of what goes on with the Israeli defense budget in a contraction (between would-be-negated needs, like West Bank occupation, or the preference for exepnsive high-precision munitions that support patron political preferences to minimize civilian casualties).
The type of power required to destroy Israel in the form required for the crusader states metaphor to be valid requires the power of a state. States are precisely what are targettable by nuclear weapons in case of existential risk to the nuclear power. You have already had to awkwardly dance around this fact by claiming that other actors (Muslim Brotherhood) would totally make the trade as long as they weren't in power, without actually establishing how they would make such a trade without having power over the state, lest the state refuse the trade. Even proxy warfare has it's limits- while the Iranians certainly are edging nuclear breakout, MAD is mutual, not unilateral.
This is basic not-understanding-why-states-fail, both historical and mechanically.
Then please enlighten me! I just don't understand how an Israel that sustains severe economic damage due to the removal of western support manages to maintain itself in such a dangerous security environment.
Because it has nukes enough that the dangerous states in its environment capable of existentially threatening it aren't going to existentially threaten it lest they destroy their own states in the process.
Economic collapse has historically been a cause of state collapse when it allowed an external party to conventionally invade. The Crusader States fell because the loss of foreign economic support and economic issues allowed external parties to conventionally invade. Big-vs-small wars are usually one-sided because the small-side's economic disadvantages allow the external party to conventionally invade.
But nukes do mitigate the threat of conventional invasion to physically displace territorial control. Nukes can be used against the organized armies of the invaders, or the cities and ports they use as key logistical corridors to project power, or against the very capitals of those controlling them. Superior numbers and economics and conventional capabilities do not make invading a nuclear-armed power more preferable than not.
This is why you had to appeal to the Soviet Collapse as an example of state collapse without conventional force. But the Soviet collapse was a case of *choosing not to fight,' and for which the consequence was the loss of functional colonial holdings, not core state or it's dominant demographic. And in the Israeli context, choosing not to fight the displacement of a state of jews for a state of arabs is precisely that, with openly acknowledged genocidal implications.
This is certainly a construction of security politics worthy of NonCredibleDefense, but not a particularly compelling one.
I see this happening well within my lifetime.
Since by definition you will have to die before it doesn't occur in your lifetime for it to be proven to not happen in the way you foresee it happening in your lifetime, this is why I find this a boring non-falsifiable.
Probably not before the next culture war thread, but I don't see US aid to Israel lasting for another 20 years.
It doesn't need to.
First, US aid to Israel is not a critical dependency to Israel such that the loss leads to a state collapse. This is a not-uncommon premise shared by the sort of American hyper-agency types who believe the US factor is the dominant factor in anything it's involved in, but it's really not.
From a fiscal perspective, Israel does not need to be spending the amount of money in the way it does in order to survive- there are both discretionary areas that could/would be cut in an imperial collapse context (West Bank occupation costs), and costs-for-preference that would change as the patrons do (Israel uses expensive precision munitions capabilities to 'roof knock' because it's patrons want it to), and so on. If military financial resources were cut, Israel would adapt, as has every other state. It doesn't simply cease to exist because defense spending fllas (or increases).
And even this is setting aside why US aid to Israel exists in the form it does, which is as a basic form of geopolitical bribery for purposes of maintain access near the Suez Canal in case someone tries to close it, as a domestic industry subsidy program, and as a means of influence Israel into more preferable/less-undesirable courses of action when provoked.
Note that all three of these motivations exist not only regardless of any US sympathy for Israel, but also for any other would-be patron state. If other regional actors don't like Palestinian refugees- and that's not liable to change in the next few generations- then there will always be willing donors for Iron Dome sustainment, despite the 'uneconomical' nature of the interceptor system, less the Israelis decide to not simply take it.
And this is without considering the plausible political contexts where US aid is suspended, especially in the next 20 years. While it would be quite a just-so narrative for the US to cut aid to Israel, but everyone else is the same, this isn't particularly plausible compared to the US cutting aid to everyone in the region, including most of the regional states that could plausibly threaten Israel. And reasons for that would vary from 'they have all collapsed due to a catastrophic regional war'- which would indicate a lack of proximal existential threats to Israel as Arabs spend more time trying to rebuild than get themselves nuked further back by deciding to YoLo what's left- to 'the US has suddenly chosen to create a power vacume in the Middle East'- which would be a patron state influx of patrons interested in the still-substantial oil flows of the region for Israel to solicit and play off of to regain external support- to 'Israel has already nuked the relevant threats'- which would certainly make them a pariah but not necessarily endangered.
The US was not the first patron-state of Israel, nor is there any particular reason for it to be the last, nor is there any particular reason to believe that Israel will collapse in the interim.
Yes. Frequently. Regularly, even.
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