Dean
1yr ago
It was a bit disappointing, as was the article. Basically another variant of 'the Russians were sincere about opposing NATO expansion,' but without the second or third order argument needed to make it relevant as to why that matters without resting on assumed arguments and strawmen.
There were German protestors demanding the pipelines be turned back on. I don't know if you've seen German gas prices recently - they're pretty high!
Yes. And? Were you going to actually going to try and imply that an unspecified number of protestors in a democratic society meant an imminent government reversal of its own policy?
The fact that the Germans have high gas prices is not news, and neither is the point that general German popular opinion was not in favor of activating Nord Stream 2, nor is it now.
Nor does this actually serve as evidence of who bombed the pipeline in the way you seem to imply it does. This observation is absolutely compatible with a Russian-responsible-but-trying-to-divert-the-blame-to-divide-the-west hypothesis argument, especially since trying to encourage energy concerns political movements more favorable to Russian strategic interests has been a long-running Russian strategic line of effort. That does not make it proof, but it is compatible.
This would not serve as proof of a US-does-this-to-prevent-Nordstream-Reactivation, however, as there is not immediate cause-and-effect of higher energy prices- or even anti-government protests- and the German government re-activating the pipeline, let alone why- if the imminently divided German political establishment WAS coming to a pipeline consensus- the US wouldn't do other actions to keep the status quo, which was no pipeline activation, if the bombs were allegedly planted months ago with a command-activation capability.
If the bombs are supposed to be remote-activated, triggering them before they are needed would be a bit of a goof.
The US was testing sophisticated underwater unmanned vehicles along with its mine-clearance exercises, exercises which presumably involve laying mines. It's easy to imagine that a few of them stay under, hidden to the best of their ability on the seabed, awaiting the order to strike.
Substituting your imagination for evidence or other people's rationals that might drive their own decisions is why you are being silly.
If they're discovered by anyone before they strike - well the US was conducting exercises there and they lost a few drones! Mechanical problems, these things happen. If you think I'm envisioning big obvious mines stuck directly onto Nordstream, visible to any inspection, then perhaps your familiarity with these capabilities is less than you think.
You're suggesting that American mine sweepers in a NATO exercise are covering specialized American underwater mine-laying drones, in an announced military exercise with multinational participation and observation including by the same state you alleged they were deploying the drones against. You're not even alleging anyone saw these drones, or even what mine-laying drones they are, when mine-laying vessels and mine-clearing vessels have, shall we say, slightly different functions and thus forms, none of which you claim were observed for any modifications to mine sweepers suggesting they were modified to carry/deploy said unspecified drones. You offers no rational for why- if it were the Americans- they wouldn't just let an unmarked CIA boat do it during a German federal holiday while everyone's distracted and no one else is looking. The exercise itself has been your proof.
This is silly, as it's just an isolated demand for stupidity to conflate correlation with causation without actually proving a causal relationship.
This is, whether you feel it is or not, very silly.
You know perfectly well that there's a difference between false knowledge 'the Ukrainians will collapse easily', cruelty such as 'let's ensure this guy we hate has a torturous half-life' and random bizarreness like 'let's blow up our own pipelines'. The latter is not like the former.
Well, yes. Two actually happened, establishing a pattern of spiteful strategic incompetence, and the third is an accusation you've expressed confusion about why people won't accept as true without evidence.
As far as trying to waive away a charge of selective appeal for stupidity goes, this is pretty silly.
Dean
17d ago
That would be the micro-aggressions that the woke-americans claim are being conducted, obviously.
Dean
19d ago
I don't know how well read you are on the history of what happened...
Ah, I see we are going to play the pretend we don't know game, such as--
Seems we both agree at the outset that he was democratically elected, do we not? His overthrow was explicitly supported by the US and it's allies.
-that US support for Yanukovych stepping down followed Yanukovych starting to process of shooting protestors in the streets with government snipers.
Are you not aware that there was even leaked audio of Victoria Nuland and the Ukraine's Ambassador that revealed deliberate planning of his overthrow?
Oh, hey, called it-
including the ever-handy reference to the conspiracy theory that the US Ambassador discussing candidates for Yanukovych's invitation for a unity government and considering people who could work with Yanukovych and others was actually plotting a coup against the person who she was going to discuss the candidate list with in the coming days.
Come now, we can go over the transcripts if you'd like. We can even go over Yanukovych's invitation for the opposition to join the government, which was the basis of Nuland's discussions of who would actually work well within Yanukovych's government which- again- was invited and being discussed in the context of Yanukovych running it.
NATO was never a European alliance of 'peace', it's an alliance that's aimed at destabilizing Eastern Europe, with the intention to weaken Russia
While this certainly nails your flag high, it doesn't really establish your awareness with Euromaiden-
Do forgive a homie for challenging American imperialism unipolarity.
-or that, as far as challening American imperialism unipolarity, Ukraine was such an own-goal by Russia.
This whole quagmire has absolutely zero to do with high minded moral idealism against the Next Hitler, who at the same time the media tells us is losing, running out of gas, is out of ammunition, is incompetent beyond belief; and simultaneously is preparing for world domination and his next target is going to be Poland or Scandinavia. It has everything to do with continued projecting of American and western geopolitical dominance across the planet.
Yawn. Like I said, I'd rather you build a competent historical metaphor, not your naval gazing. If your media is telling us Putin is Next Hitler, or running out of gas, or out of ammunition, pick better media, not other trash.
Dean
19d ago
And where would you expect to see the other side that vested western interests have an interest in keeping suppressed? CNN? Fox? MSNBC?
Non-American or European media, to start. Al Jazeera has good production value if you're insistent on English language, but if you're willing to indulge in machine translation then there are entire other continents of geopolitical fans with viewpoints- and memories- outside of anglosphere cultural frameworks.
However, your citation wasn't to have someone on the other side of vested western interests- your citation was on a claim of what the vested western interests were themselves supposed to be admitting. Citing someone accusing them of stuff is not them admitting to... well, you were very vague and generic, to a degree it's not clear what was supposedly being confessed to (or not).
Which, admittedly, was probably the rhetorical technique intended, it was just an odd appeal to authority to neither cite the authority, or anyone with special insight into the authority's position, but then to immediately appeal to an outsider with no authority when the lack of authority was noted.
How about the world's foremost critic of US foreign policy? Or is he just a senile old man at this point?
Chomsky was a senile old man at heart decades ago, given that he's been an anti-american tribalist for longer than you've likely been alive with no particular moral creed to peg consistency to otherwise, and not a particularly impressive one unless you're awed by sophistry. If you think he's the world's foremost critic of US foreign policy, you have a very shuttered view of the world of American critics.
If you want intellectual heft, try the French foreign policy establishment and its advocates. Defiantly not-American enough not to buy into Anglophone tropes by default, but familiar enough with both western cultural contexts and a cultural inclination towards argument structure to be delightfully relevant, and with significant national patronage in order to define themselves against the US in their attempts to align Europe to their interests.
You're the one who obliged with the logic of that statement. Makes it difficult to argue against if you stand with it.
I suspect the difficulty is that you don't seem to recognize- or at least acknowledge- a satirical tone of non-agreement. Neither he nor I were standing with the position, and your continuing insistence that they were (and your word choice in the process) is suggestive that part of the reason why may be that English isn't your first language.
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.
Seems like you're engaging in some pretty strenuous intellectual acrobatics to preserve a conclusion you wouldn't accept if another actor adopted a similar justification.
I accept your concession of your limited perception with good cheer.
Sure, you made a silly historical metaphor while trying to ignore the inconvenient parts that ruin it as a simile. History's hard. Fortunately, this is the motte, and asinine positions are for being flanked, spanked, and penetrated as a result.
Judged by the standards of moral idealism, maybe both Russia and the US fall short. Judged by the standards of the world's only superpower, Russia isn't doing anything the US wouldn't approve of in it's own defense.
Modern Russia is certainly doing things the modern US wouldn't approve of in its own defense, not least of which is invading adjacent countries in territorial expansionism on irredentalist grounds based in the past. American warmongers of the current generation, as everyone has familair examples of, invade far-away countries on ideological grounds driven far more by humanitarian considerations/rationals in the present.
Even if you wanted to appeal to the 1800s Americas, back when it was run by racist imperialist most Americans would be appalled by and oppose today if a mirror-US magically appeared, the expansionist era American imperialists didn't rely on claims historical conquest to justify their conquests. They just resorted to the sort of lovably mockable jingoism and manifest destiny that's parodied, and no one believes or particularly claims that the Mexican-American war was a defensive war.
The fact that you tried appeal to a war the better of a century ago- to a war that was declared against rather than by the US by the perpetrators rather than defendent of territorial aggression- to force some kind of equivalence between the modern US-Japan relationship and the ongoing attempt to subjugate Ukraine kind of shows you missed the mark on historical metaphors. The US-Japan relationship of 2020 isn't the relationship of 1950, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not aiming to establish a relationship of 2020 US-Japan.
Now, if you argument is instead that Japan is analogous to Russia, and that Russia should be nuked and forced into unconditional surrender in order to be occupied and forcibly reconstructed as Japan was, that might be an interesting historical parallel to make...
You want me to be more introspective, check your own actions at the door first.
I'd rather you devise a competent metaphor than be introspective. Naval gazing and whataboutism is easy, but not particularly impressive. Competence is hard.
Alas, the Japanese-American alliance today does not remain an unconditional military occupation with overt censorship by the occupying authority.
Which wasn't the point I was making. If you think history is important, I encourage you to read it. If not, then that tells me everything I need to understand your position.
I will submit that you likely think you are far more informed than you are, but that you also don't care when you make a bad historical claim with more relevant differences than similarities.
If you care to disagree with my position on historical differences mattering... let's hear it!
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
19d 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
19d ago
And he tried exercising it to find more amicable solutions to the problem. That's what the Minsk Accords were.
The Minsk Accords were many things- including the functional erosion of national sovereignty by legislating an external power's veto by proxy- but an amicable solution they were not.
Why was the west encouraging Ukraine behind the scenes to give Russia a run around, while the west poured arms into the country to bolster its strength so the government could betray the terms of their agreement?
Why wouldn't the west encourage Ukraine not to submit to unreasonable Russian demands that the Russians knew were unreasonable and would not be accepted, while bolstering the ability to resist the military coercion that pushed the demands in the first place?
The demands were unreasonable, and were made at the end of a military intervention. Europeans, as with many other cultures, tend not to support those things against their neighbors lest it be applied to them.
Dean
1yr ago
This statement is, very obviously, factually untrue, as the war will also end if enough Ukrainian soldiers die, or if Ukraine sues for peace, or of any combination of outside actors forces both sides to enter a ceasefire,
This doesn't make the state factually untrue, it adds additional truths not included in the statement. Which is true of all true statements, because there is always more true things to add.
Just by adding addition end states of the same categorization scheme, you are supporting the claim of the statement.
Dean
1yr ago
Your motivation was already fulfilled from your own source's context. You need to make an argument that the motivation was to carry out the threat twice, not once, for the 'speaks to motivation' to be relevant to your prior argument.
Your initial and broader argument that it's important to carry out one's threats is rendered moot if the threat has already been carried out. Arguing that the NS explosion was the threat being carried out requires an implicit argument that the prior action- the German decertification under American pressure- was not the Americans carrying out their prior threat.
If it was the American carrying out their motivation, then the stated motivation/threat was already fulfilled. NS2 was stopped. It wasn't in any imminent risk of being reactivated. Further action would require a different justification, because the stated justification- 'you must carry out a threat' - is not the same as 'you much carry out a threat twice', which is required unless you reject the relevance of German decertification under pressure.
The defensible claim is 'the Americans have opposed Nord Stream in the past and threatened to work against it, and their credibility would be worsened if they didn't.' The expansive claim is 'the Americans have to be the ones blowing up the pipelines to maintain credibility, because decertification doesn't count.' This is just a motte and bailey that serves to justify a pre-arrived bias, it doesn't actually support that the (successful!) pressure to decertify and stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline wasn't actually a proof of capability that would meet credibility needs.
Given that Ukrainian opinions on European Union affiliation were a matter of public record, it certainly would be a far reach to deny that the EU was popular for the Ukrainians.
Just as the political controversy of Yanukovych granting himself the right to shoot protestors after public Russian pressure was also a well-apparent fact at the time. Just a mite consequential, when your own government is composed of people backed by those protestors.
But feel free to fluff up the American importance in things that weren't really about the Americans. I understand they feel insecure these days, and it makes both them and their haters feel better if they're the hyperagents in a Ukrainian political movement literally named after the Euro.
And yet you didn't articulate it directly.
Because it was historically illiterate for missing key relevant context that contradicts the desired framing. For example, this was additional historical context that you neglected-
Setting aside that the Minsk agreement did not actually propose to restore Ukrainian's sovereignty due Russian-demanded poison pill provisions that would give its proxies vetoes over Ukrainian national institutions, which would lose the ability to govern the country as a whole even as the Russian-separatist regions could engage in diplomatic agreement with Russia (thus giving the Russian-supported proxy groups more foreign power sovereignty than the government) while proposing elective systems that did not require Russia give up proxy control (which they did not relinquish)-
-and this was your evasion of that context.
In 2019 Zelensky got elected on a peace platform to resolve the conflict between Eastern Ukraine and Russia. He began to move forward on it and tried to go to the Donbass. What it would have meant was a kind of federalization of Ukraine that gave a degree of autonomy for the Donbass, which is exactly what they wanted. Something like Switzerland or Belgium, but he was blocked by right-wing militias which threatened to murder him if he persisted with his effort. If you're essentially telling me that the inhabitants of that part of Eastern Ukraine don't have a right to their own freedom and self-determination because it would mean their interests would play into the hands and service the objectives of Russia, that exposes the prejudice of your personal political views on the matter; but does little to address what the source of the conflict was actually about.
Note, audience, that he does not actually challenge the existence of the sovereignty-sabotaging clauses, or that it would give the autonomous region more autonomy than the central government as a whole. It does try to claim a new equivalence instead with other countries- but does not acknowledge that neither government has the sort of diplomatic veto and autonomy to enter into its own agreements that the Russian interpretation of Minsk insisted. Nor has he addressed the role of Russian military proxies as the in place, and to be still in place in the system due to the autonomy protections preventing the central government to allow free and fair elections that would empose on the 'self-determination' of the Russian supplied, and Russian-manned, proxies.
You're actually thinking Japan has this much autonomy and independence in its foreign policy establishment? It's widely accepted in most foreign policy circles that its own foreign policy conduct is ultimately subordinated and dependent upon continued American economic and military support.
You also widely deride the foreign policy establishment as inaccurate and untrue, yet now you appeal to them even as you'd be wiser not to. People who are unable to understand the difference between a choice of alignment and an inability to choose otherwise are poor foreign policy experts, and believing that the current warm US-Japanese relationship is a direct continuation of the American occupation-state is negligent of several decades of intervening history that saw the US and Japan reconsider their relationship multiple times.
The ultimate Russian justification against Ukraine is NATO's military expansion up to the borders of Russia.
This is not a justification against Ukraine, as Ukraine is not a part of NATO, was not close to becoming a part of NATO, and multiple NATO members had for nearly a decade been actively blocking Ukraine's ability to formally become a part of NATO. A successful conquest of Ukraine doesn't even reduce the NATO borders to Russia- it expands the NATO - de-facto-Russian border.
It is also completely unrelated to the reason for Japan's subjugation to American reconstruction, which was not planned to deny or destroy Japanese national identity.
You can appeal to undetectable, subliminal and nefarious ulterior motives all day, but short of having direct access to his mind, all you're left with in the end are Putin's own statements on the matter. And that fundamentally hasn't changed since he began talking about it.
Sure they have. Putin's Russia's position on NATO and Ukraine has evolved numerous times over the years, including when he wanted to be a part of NATO and when he explicitly avowed that he had no territorial designs on Ukraine.
Putin's posture on NATO shifts with the narrative wind. There's a reason that there was a multi-month pre-invasion buildup focusing on non-immeninet prospects of Ukraine in NATO, and virtually no significant reaction to the largest expansion of Russia-NATO borders as a third of Russia's naval forces found themselves in a NATO lake. In one context Russia was building a pretext for war that was already determined over a notional threat that wasn't a threat, and in the other it was also not a threat.
You completely missed the point I was making.
No, I got the point you were making, it was just historically illiterate.
The Minsk II agreement was initially adopted by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in 2015, and endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council. It presupposed withdrawal of George W. Bush’s invitation to Ukraine to join NATO and was reaffirmed by Obama, then vetoed by France and Germany. It called for disarmament of the separatist Russia-oriented region (Donbass) and withdrawal of Russian forces and spelled out 3 mutually dependent parts: demilitarization; a restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty that included control of the border with Russia and complete autonomy for the Donbass in the context of the decentralization of power in Ukraine as a whole. Which wasn't at all unlike the conditions the US imposed on Japan in the postwar period, by banning Japan from having an army, called for disarmament and economic integration with the western powers.
Setting aside that the Minsk agreement did not actually propose to restore Ukrainian's sovereignty due Russian-demanded poison pill provisions that would give its proxies vetoes over Ukrainian national institutions, which would lose the ability to govern the country as a whole even as the Russian-separatist regions could engage in diplomatic agreement with Russia (thus giving the Russian-supported proxy groups more foreign power sovereignty than the government) while proposing elective systems that did not require Russia give up proxy control (which they did not relinquish)-
-this was not only significantly different from the US government design for Japan, which not only did not enshrine foreign proxy sub-states at a constitutional level, but the post-war Japanese occupation also was in no way a respectful recognition of Japanese sovereignty to negotiate, but a result of unconditional surrender. The American occupation system was imposed, not a result of amicable negotiation, and there was no pretense of Japanese sovereignty until a good deal after the US occupation forces left and Japanese elections were able to be held without American occupation shaping permissable conduct.
Nor, and this is also relevant, does the comparison acknowledge the context of the imposition: that Japan was denied sovereign rights and agency due to having just lost a war of regional conquest in which Japan was an imperialist aggressor against most of its neighbors including the US itself. Whereas the Russian justification is that Ukraine warrants a Japanese-style submission because... America bad, or the Ukrainians were killing fewer Russian-speaking civilians over a decade than the Russians did in a few months, or something equally heinious.
Again, as for reasons why the positions emerge, Russia in a future defeat and occupation to the US would be far more analogous to Japan occupation than Ukraine is to Russia.
It seems you don't even understand my position enough to coherently disagree with it, sadly.
Understanding your position doesn't mean it's a good position, sadly.
Ah, excellent. While the abandonment of previous lines of argument to ever shifting deflections and changes of argument is as enjoyable as always (Really? You tried to use Macron warning about a Ukrainian defeat as a counter to Russia's invasion of Ukraine being a strategic disaster of choice? In the same post rejecting government strategic positions as unreliable due to lying, no less?), I think we can close this exchange by returning to one of the original points that you've been defending against all this time, which your attempt to avoid acknowledging illuminates nicely.
As was forewarned-
As we are back to the American national strategy, I will offer you a direct question to establish your familiarity with American national strategy, which in full forewarning I will call out if you try to evade.
Before I posted the link, and before you posted your opening thesis on American strategy, had you ever read or reviewed an American National Security Strategy?
And your response is more than telling.
This may be news to you but you do not have to read these documents to discuss national strategy. You can look at what actually happens in the real world. You can interpret govt priorities with your own eyes. This is better than trusting in the documents. Govts lie! The Chinese might say that they're interested in purely peaceful development - yet actually build up a gigantic navy and forces targeting their near abroad. The US might say it's worried about Iraqi WMDs and Saddam's links with terrorists - but have other motivations and goals for invading Iraq.
And when govts don't lie, they try to be tactful, they massage their words and adopt a certain frame. The Chinese adopt this supercilious tone where their military may be forced to take action if foreign provocateurs incite a rogue province into illegal independence activities. That's not a lie but it's not straightforward communication. Better to ignore the cheap talk and look at results.
This is a rather unsubtle attempt to waive aside the relevance of having read the American strategy, when a simple affirmation would have bolstered your position considerably more in a single word. Add to that your earlier ignorance of the documents in question and attempt to cherry-pick contents of the document after introduction without awareness of how they fit into their own location, I feel reasonable concluding...
No, you did not read or review the American National Security Strategy before your commentary on American national security strategy.
And given your word choice in this non-rebuttal to as to what the Chinese 'might' say in their strategy- as opposed to what they do say in their strategic policy documents- I strongly doubt you've read Chinese equivalents either.
Which makes a fair degree of sense, given your obvious lack of familiarity with not only American strategic thinking, but how Western strategic policy systems work in general, including the distinctions between strategies and policies. And your simultaneous attempt to assert that it doesn't matter if you read national policy documents or not because of your powers of observation, but also that the American national strategy document isn't the real strategy anyway so, like, it double doesn't matter if you read it or not.
I fully expect you to continue this denial of relevance defense, of course. After all, it's far more palatable to deny that the strategy exists or that it matters if you are aware of it than to concede that you didn't read it before trying to summarize it in boo-words.
While prioritizing the personal truths of one's own interpretation is typically more associated with progressive DEI advocates than detractors, it's a common enough retort when challenged over inconvenient external objective facts that might challenge their interpretation, like the publicly available national strategy documents that anyone could check their claims against.
Which returns to the original question that led to this exchange, and the structural answer that resulted.
Do you agree with my characterization of national strategy for either country?
No. Because you never bothered to learn what their strategies are, and it shows in what you've chosen to project and focus on instead.
Can anybody tell me about the validity of the claims that Islamic Palestinians have occupied this region for thousands of years?
Given that the average human lifespan is about two magnitudes lower than thousands of years, any person who is claiming continuous existence or continuity of experiences longer than they were alive is probably stretching a point and then some.
Like given a random family currently living in Gaza, when did they likely migrate there? 1000 years ago? It was there a more recent migration of people?
The more recent migration of random families on the Gaza strip was in 1948. In the longer term, the Levant has been invaded / conquered / settled / assimilated / conquered again so many times that demographics don't trace so linearly so nicely.
Dean
7mo ago
This is nonsense. During the Cold War, neither the US nor the USSR gave weapons in proxy wars that resulted in incursions into the other sides’s territory let alone amped up the exchange.
Neither had the opportunity, as neither directly invaded an adjacent neighbor and started a sustained urban bombardment campaign.
In terms of preparation, the Russian position on NATO as a threat is that this is precisely what NATO has been from the start: a US proxy threatening incursions or worse into peaceful Russian territory. The Russian narrative, propaganda it may be, is as relevant to precedent for Russian nuclear deterrence posturing as anything else, or even more so, because one can take Russia's own words and actions for what both represents a threat but demonstratably does not represent a nuclear-retaliation trigger.
Mentioning Korea is besides the obvious point
You seem to have missed the original point as much as the previous replier, so that's not a surprise.
The Cold War did not have anything close to the current situation.
The Cold War had numerous examples of both sides engaging in massive conventional arms shipments that resulted in tens or even hundreds of thousands of casualties to the other in the other's wars of choice where losing would not threaten to trigger state collapse and existential risk thresholds that drive nuclear weapon use.
As the relevant comparison being invoked was nuclear risk, that is incredibly relevant, especially as the Cold War had multiple contexts were nuclear war was far closer than the current Ukraine war.
Finally the causal mechanism is clear — weapons are provided that help Ukraine make serious inroads into say Crimea and Russia uses tactical nukes. NATO responds and the world ends.
That is not a causal mechanism, as the threshold criteria has already been falsified in this very conflict.
If 'serious inroads into Russia' were the standard that would invoke nuke use, nuclear weapons would have been used last year, because the Ukrainians have already made 'serious inroads' into de jure Ukrainian territory that Russia annexed. This is just one of the reasons why Putin's annexation gambit of the eastern parts of Ukraine last year was panned as a strategic mistake- in his attempt to box himself and any would-be successor into continuing the conflict to victory, he demonstrated that Ukrainian military successes in internationally-recognized but Russian-annexed Ukrainian territory were NOT something Russia was going to go nuclear over, a dynamic that was furthered with the Kherson defeat and which is ongoing in the southern front in late 2023. The obvious rheotrical off-ramp- that these aren't 'serious' inroads- just undermines the central premise, because the Russians can always claim that a major defeat is not 'serious', which moves the nuclear retaliation from objective criteria to subjective criteria, which goes to rational or irrational actors, which drives back to what observable indicators there are of nuclear thresholds and if they've already been passed X number of times, why they should be believed to be nuclear on X+1 time.
A similar lack of credibility occurred with claims that any attack on Crimea might meet a nuclear response- there have been many, many, many attacks on Crimea since the war started. They have not made the war go nuclear. Attacking ships in port did not make the war go nuclear. Conducting operations from within Russian-claimed territory, and even internationally-recognized Russian territory, did not make the war go nuclear. There was never any particular reason to believe they would besides people claiming clear causal mechanisms, but like many, many other Russian red lines, these have not been nuclear. That the Russians claim Crimea is a part of Russia as any other is itself undercut by the other areas they claim is part of Russia, ie. the territories they claimed not only when they didn't already hold them, but also lost significant major portions of. The precedent is already set, because Crimea is only as indisputably Russian for nuclear deterrence purposes due to being annexed as the also-annexed Ukrainian east, which has not been basis for nuclear retaliation.
A third extension of this theme of undermining nuclear-threshold criteria is, of course, Russia's own attacks into the other's territory: Russia set precedent in the world that strikes into urban centers were an acceptable form of non-unacceptable activity, and when the Ukrainians reciprocated, the Russians demonstrated it was not, in fact, a nuclear threshold. These were, notably, established with Urkainian strikes not dependent on Western advanced munitions, but from Ukraine's own stocks of Soviet-derived (and in some cases Soviet-produced) munitions. The actions doable from non-American sources demonstrated the lack of threshold criteria in claimed thresholds, and so western-provided munitions have to have something more than a magical western aura to be nuclear-escalation risk. Maybe if Urkraine began some sort of population-targetting WMD campaign... but the Ukrainian bio-weapon labs have not exactly materialized.
Between strategic mismanagement and precedence, the Russians have demonstrated that Ukraine taking Russian-claimed cities, reciprocating strikes, and other forms of military engagement remain below the level of nuclear threshold criteria, which is typically only associated with the survival of the state or WMD retaliation. Throughout the war, the Ukrainians have not significantly impacted the Russian state's ability to maintain internal control of the population, or even the military, which might cause a threat to the continuity of government, which is also credible nuclear thresholds. The most relevant threat to the state's capacity to control in the last two years have been overwhelmingly self-inflicted internal politics, which would not- and did not- lead to a credible nuclear threat.
If the argument is that aid packages will eventually allow Ukraine to march on Moscow, which would threaten state survival, that's not an argument against current aid packages. That's an argument against hypothetical future packages well, well after the point of Ukraine taking its internationally recognized borders.
And this is aside from the assumption of the Western response, for which leading to MAD results from the typical muddling of whether actors are rational or irrational. Even setting aside the nature of assuming the NATO response would be nuclear, if the Russians are rational nuclear actions, and NATO nuking is a given, then the Russians would not conduct the nuking that leads to MAD, because they are rational and the use of the nuclear weapon would not be worth it. As the Russians have not used nuclear weapons to reverse battlefield setbacks even without the threat of NATO nuking, the non-Russian observer is going to have to justify why a particular Russian battlefield loss will precipitate nuclear use when it hasn't been rational to do so to date, but also why- if the argument twists to that the Russians are irrational- why the irrational Russians haven't done so to date.
Which goes down to the typical muddling of actors being simultaneously rational and irrational which tends to retreat for the motte when challenged.
Dean
1yr ago
I wonder how this will be remembered, if it will be remembered, in future discussion of the prisoner's dilemma. The standard nash equilibrium is pretty stale and well known- everyone should cooperate- but this is a pretty good case where cooperation with one party is highly suspect given his current, and previous, acts the undermine credibility.
Dean
1yr ago
Which part of the article do you assume was relevant, and which parts were not?
As is, this seems a very awkward appeal to an authority, except without tying the authority to any specific position that can be questioned. It's a favorable expansive claim, but not a particularly meaningful one justifying a day-later 'look, even this person agrees (except I don't know how or about what or when).'
Okay, you get some slack because of our unofficial, unwritten policy of being more lenient with people giving mods shit than non-mods (even when they are arguing with a mod who is speaking in a non-mod capacity) but directly calling someone a liar is always going to cross the line unless you can unambiguously prove that the person you're accusing is in fact lying. From my perspective, what you have here is a failure to communicate. I don't doubt you genuinely believe that @ymeskhout is a liar. However, I do doubt that @ymeskhout believes he is a liar.
The reason I call him lying now, but not before, is specifically because he specifically (and has repeatedly) quotes a post (the May21 post and thread) that says why I no longer provide him with sources, and then claims I provide him no reason, but also that my reason is something else. This is not the first time he's pulled this particular phrasing (not my job to educate you) either, or the first time it's been clarified that, no, the reason is in what he is quoting. He then repeats the same claim, and the same wonderment, at the next opportunity.
The first time could be a misinterpretation (hence why it was initially described as a flaw), the second time a miscommunication, the third even a sloppy strawman, but after the fourth or fifth exchange of a saved post being re-raised in the right way it ceases to be credible that it's accidental. Consistent misrepresentation of text and position, especially after multiple clarification, indicates will.
The charge of lying, to be clear, is specially for how he uses the May 21 quote chain he keeps on hand. I do not consider his flaw of conflating different conversations into a single narrative to be a lie, just a flaw, except when it engages in willful misrepresentation of the specified quoting.
I am not going to dig through all of your back-and-forths line by line to extract the exact phrase that you contend was a willful mistatement of the truth (and for which I would then have to dig through probably two years of previous conversations in order to render judgment on whether it is in fact a lie).
No need, since the lie accusation specific to this week, but I understand (and agree with) the premise behind this decision. I, too, would prefer (/expect/respect) focusing on behavioral trends rather than re-litigate past months of packed weeks of material.
Which is ironically relevant to this dispute, since demands to relitigate past months of culture war exchanges was one of the points that led to the assessment he cites.
Here's a very simple rule which we have always enforced: don't make personal attacks. You are certainly verbally adroit enough to get your point across without calling someone a liar, and if that sounds like "You can say you don't think someone is being honest as long as you don't outright call them a liar," that's correct. Attack the position, attack the words, point out what you perceive to be the contradictions. That leaves the ball in the other person's court, and they can then either rebut, clarify, or say nothing and let the audience be the judge.
I understand and accept this chastisement in the spirit it is intended.
I also note that the exchange that started this exchange this week was a response to boo-outgroup remarks that would be personal attacks were the people who'd stopped engaging him still around. (This is where we get the evaporative cooling point from in the separate thread this week, which was not a response as I walked away.)
But your hostility has ticked past the "slightly heated" phase and seems to be entering "personal grudge" territory, so cool it.
I will try, but it would probably help if the mod in question stopped trying to pull saved-quote-jutsu to misrepresent the same saved quote.
Dean
1yr ago
But I did, in the same post above you're replying to. If DeSantis was serious about actual voter fraud, I don't have an explanation for why he'd choose to make a public spectacle of people who were misled by his administration and dragging them to jail.
This would be credibility-boosting confession of failure, were it not intended to pretend to humility.
Given your past ruts on this topic with similar tendencies of not acknowledging contrary evidence...
We've been over this so so many times by now, and this exchange from May 2021 remains the most illustrative. I ask questions and your response is along the lines that it's not your job to educate me.
Oh, hey, look- linking to an argument that charged you with conflating information sets to dismiss the grounding of other people's prior arguments as non-existent...
You either have specific arguments to make or you don't.
...to conflate information sets to dismiss the grounding of other people's prior arguments as non-existent.
When the charge is you dismiss previous arguments and treat them as having never existed, dismissing previous arguments to treat them as having never existed is certainly illustrative, but also demonstrative.
I get that you don't like it when I talk about the 2020 election fraud theories, you've made that abundantly clear! What I don't get is why you keep wasting time on this beat.
Raising attention to your poor conduct and worse competencies on this topic is not time wasted.
Your projecting your opinions onto other people's evaluations is one of your consistent analytic flaws that deserves noting to warn others not already familiar with your tendencies.
If you don't have any, or you just refuse to make them out of principle, vaguely complaining is not going to accomplish anything. I'm not a mind reader, and you can't expect me to respond to arguments you choose to keep cloistered in your head.
Based on your past- and still present- conduct, I don't expect you to respond to arguments in good faith at all, and I consider it sound reminder to newer members of the community to be aware of this for the same reason the best advice to give anyone during the Julius saga was to warn those unfamiliar to move on.
given your frequent shills for your private substack and the financial interests in catering to your desired target audience I would submit you are not impartial
Well, you caught me. The dozens of subscribers paying $0 a month pose a grave liability to my impartiality. I hope my reputation can someday recover.
This, too, would be credibility-boosting confession of failure, were it not intended to pretend to humility.
Also, you're a lawyer.
Dean
10d 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.
Which is not claiming the point is false, or invalid.
There is a reason that pro-war people for the worst of wars are often mocked and derided. That it is not Russian-specific doesn't degrade the relevance to the current Russian context.
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