Dean
11d ago
It's been interesting to watch the reaction from Western pro-Ukrainians to Ukraine's sweeping new mobilization orders. The prevailing sentiment seems to be "that's a tragedy, and obviously the draft shouldn't exist to begin with, but what can be done?" Suggesting that it would be better to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict is outside the Overton window. It's a foregone conclusion that Ukraine must fight to the last man.
I find it interesting in another direction, such as why you believe it's a foregone conclusion, as opposed to a dismissed propaganda narrative that outran its legs.
We have numbers to use, and the war attrition of the Ukraine War is nowhere near that Ukraine is being attrited to such a degree in population terms. The early-war narratives to that effect required the inclusion of the capture of major demographic centers in the east during the early war and projected that forward, but in the time sense Russia hasn't captured the demographics previously associated with the territory, and the combat attrition rates- even factoring in some of the more incredible Russian claims- are nowhere near enough to warrant a demographic-level narrative. Ukraine may be struggling with the manpower to resist the russian manpower, but that's a balance of scale and desire to mobilize available population, not running out of population.
This also turns on the motte-and-bailey of what negotiating a peaceful end of the conflict entails. The Russian terms from the start of the conflict- including the narrative that the West forced Ukraine to cancel a near-deal- have consistently been terms that were, shall we say, not conducive to a negotiated peaceful end of the conflict, as opposed to obvious set-ups for a fourth continuation war to greater Russian advantage by demanding dismantling of Ukraine's means to resist any future invasion and providing Russia a veto over any external support in case of a future Russian invasion. The Russians have been rather consistent on that front, and have further expanded their claims since, and so it generally falls on the advocates of a negotiating a peaceful end of the conflict as to argue as to how the Russian position is compatible with a negotiated peaceful end of the conflict, which itself was the third unprovoked continuation war in a decade.
There is something hellishly dystopian about fleeing to another country, possibly even across the ocean, and your country of birth is still trying to pull you back. Particularly because women are given a free pass. It's natural to feel like there should be some cost associated with the privilege of not having to be forcibly conscripted to fight against an invading army.
Why would you feel it's hellishly dystopian, when it's a positively banal part of the international system and has been for longer than you've been alive? As long as you claim citizenship of Country X, you have reciprocal obligations with country X, and while countries Y-Z often don't go along in enforcing other countries laws regarding those obligations, they often practice similar practices. This ranges from conscription- I've personally met Koreans who left Ivy League colleges to serve their service time- to taxation abroad, to extradition treaties, and so on.
Conscription is not some international abnormality, and neither is it being gender-restricted. If a normality comes off as dystopian, that implies more about the standard of dystopia than the nature.
This raises questions about Ukraine's ability to keep their fighting force well-staffed going forward, and also questions about the morale of Ukrainian soldiers. Every conflict has some number of draft dodgers, but I wonder if there are any hard stats about whether dodgers are particularly overrepresented in this conflict? That could help adjudicate the question of whether the Ukrainian resistance is an authentic homegrown phenomenon, or if it's largely being sustained by Western pressure.
If you lack numbers of draft dodgers to make any judgement on relative numbers, why would you believe the conflict is being sustained by Western pressure as opposed to authentic homegrown opinion? Especially when you already have access to now years of Ukrainian opinion polling by a multitude of actors that go beyond Ukrainian capacity to control?
It's not exactly impossible to do polling in Ukraine without Ukrainian government approval, and the polling efforts that survive scrutiny are generally consistent. Even on conscription, it's not particularly remarkable: individuals don't necessarily like being conscripted, but can accept/support conscriptions as a legitimate and even necessary component of defense.
I'm more curious as to what you think the alleged Western pressure on the Ukrainians to keep fighting is. Typically that refers to the early 2022 breakdown of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which actors claimed were 'close to agreement', but reporting on actual contents of the negotiations include revealed rather significant gaps in position like-
The draft treaty with Ukraine included banning foreign weapons, “including missile weapons of any type, armed forces and formations.” Moscow wanted Ukraine’s armed forces capped at 85,000 troops, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces. Ukrainian negotiators wanted 250,000 troops, 800 tanks and 1,900 artillery pieces, according to the document. Russia wanted to have the range of Ukrainian missiles capped at 40 kilometers (about 25 miles).
And included Russians provisions like-
Other issues remained outstanding, notably what would happen if Ukraine was attacked. Russia wanted all guarantor states to agree on a response, meaning a unified response was unlikely if Russia itself was the aggressor. In case of an attack on Ukraine, Ukrainian negotiators wanted its airspace to then be closed, which would require guarantor states to enforce a no-fly zone, and the provision of weapons by the guarantors, a clause not approved by Russia.
I don't think anyone has seriously argued that refusing terms like these requires external pressure, given the rather logical implications for one's prospects for a peaceful future if the current invader insists that they must agree to any international assistance to you in case they invade again after you dismantle your means to resist.
Given that the current Ukraine War is at least the third continuation war in a decade after the occupation of Crimea (the first continuation war being the NovaRussia campaign that was intended to start a mass uprising, and the second continuation war being the conventional Russian military intervention to preserve the enclaves as separatists when the NovaRussia campaign failed), peace talks really do have to address the prospects of future wars, and not treat the current war as one in isolation. Especially as multiple Russian claims as to why their invasion was justified would retain for future use would not be resolved in any near-term ceasefire.
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.
Dean
2mo ago
The desire to remain control of the conversation is a substantial part of why the lawyer guy's broader position continues to lack the consensus he regularly tries to build. By denying previously provided compelling evidence of misconduct warrinting doubt as compelling, and then insisting later that only uncompelling arguments were ever offered, not only does the presenter lose credibility regarding the root argument, but lose credibility as an interlocuter in subsequent repetititions. It's not that a negative needs to be proved, it's that repeat iterations have demonstrated that there's no point in further engaging with positives that will be inevitably denied/diminished/claimed in the future were never provided.
This is without the acknowledgement that the lawlerly systemic approach isn't an approached to uncover truth, but to win a legal argument in a court of law- but coming in the context where only around 1-in-5 people trust lawyers. Unlike more respectable professions, which rely on public trust for deference, lawyers are owed no such deference due to the lack of trust.
It is his form of fun, however, so he'll enjoy his otherwise quiet night none the less.
Dean
21d ago
...you, uh, are aware that Iranian-aligned and supplied groups have been shooting rockets into northern Israel for months now, right? Like, well into the hundreds of rockets. To a degree that 60,000 Israelis were mandatorily evacuated from parts of northern Israel due to the ongoing campaign.
And you are aware that one of the main groups doing so, Hezbollah, is regionally seen and understood as an Iranian proxy-ally, with significant degrees of coordination / support / direct armaments?
And you are aware that the primary agency of Iran that conducts this coordination/arming is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose commander was the one targeted in the strike?
This is really not a mystery. Iran has been participating in the Gaza conflict for several months. It has been directly instrumental in its efforts to expand the conflict to a second front in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which it has been arming and coordinating with via its positions Syria. It's not even the first effort to cause a multi-front war, which date to the start of the conflict.
The metaphor of kicking a hornet's nest relies on the implicit pre-state that the hornets are not already out and trying to sting you.
What else could they do? Israel bombs their consulate and kills their people.
They could credibly signal they intend to no longer actively engage in proxy warfare and distance themselves from their proxies. They won't, but they could.
Israel bombed the Iranian consulate because the Iranian asymetric warfare commander who has been organizing a multi-month bombardment campaign of Northern Israel was at the consulate, where he was quite likely in the business of facilitating further bombardments because that literally was part of his job. Everyone with an understanding of the region understood that context as soon as the Iranians publicized and admitted it was the IRGC Commander, and that as such this was not a tit-for-tat provocation stand-alone incident where Iran was responding to an Israeli kinetic instigation, but a tat-for-tit-for-tat cycle where Iran would be responding to an Israeli response.
The difference is significant- and telling in how the Arab states responded- as the difference between responding to a response versus responding to an instigating response is that any game cyclic equilibrium will look at the response of the response for indications on whether the cycle will continue. People who believe that an Iranian non-response would be perceived as cowardliness and Israel believing it can act with impunity aren't familiar with the region. The accusations could come regardless- how Iran chose to respond is indicative of how it intends to continue with the policies that provoked the Israeli retaliation.
Isn't this just a general purpose argument for extending the war forever?
No. It's a specific-person argument relevant to the key decision maker based on past actions and demonstrated intentions.
Algorithm for perpetual war
Opponent is losing: Don't stop now, he's toast. March on to victory. Opponent is winning: Don't negotiate from a state of weakness.
Your algorithm lacks basic considerations such as not reflecting the considerations of what objectives are being pursued, the considerations of Putin that Resolute Raven was referring to, not factoring in the game theory of the nuclear weapons.
It also lacks the characteristic of having been made by the person you are responding to, rendering it a straw man that does not address their actual position.
Honestly, I don't know. Maybe Putin wouldn't accept peace even at the current borders. Maybe he would. Maybe he'd give it all back in exchange for international recognition of Crimea. Why are we afraid to try offering an olive branch?
I don't know- why are you afraid?
May other people aren't afraid, they just deem it an irrational and even harmful olive branch based on the multiple other olive branches Putin was offered that Putin discarded, ignored, or used as weapons in the course of his path to the present.
Which returns to your propensity to ignoring the history of involved actors and repeated iterations of conflicts and compromises as a factor in other people's considerations of how to deal with said actors.
To pick just one related to territorial claims, the history that Putin himself recognized Ukranian territorial integrity before he decided not to, before he said he had no further territorial claims on Ukraine, before he sponsored an uprising he claimed he had nothing to do with, before he launched an armed intervention to secure separatist republics he claimed he had no territorial ambitions on, before he annexed them but claimed he had no territorial goals on the rest of Ukraine, before he declared the annexation of not only territories held but territories never captured, to current highly costly efforts to continue conquering territory not held and never held previously.
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.
Oh, hey, look who evaded acknowledging the inconvenient factor of Yanukovych granting himself the right to shoot people without legislative consent.
That it was orchestrated by the US? Yeah, that's long since been established. (1, 2)
Oddly, neither of your sources indicate that the pro-European protests were orchestrated by the US as opposed to the US supporting protests that would occur from organic pro-EU support following Yanukovych's backing out of a highly popular agreement with the European Union also suppored by EU advocates well implaced.
Typical hyperagency / hypoagency framework, but American fanatics are American fanatics even if they are haters.
Further, your conspiratorial framing is outdated. Everyone who wants to trace the money and media flows knows that the Ukrainians were primarily reading German-owned media, not American.
If your historical metaphors are on par with the propagandists you find running the narrative, I see no reason to not treat them as roughly equivalent.
Fortunately they are not, and I tend to avoid them unless there's an amusing parallel, such as who in the current day might be analogous to a warmongering expansionist imperialist power with dreams of establishing itself as a global power pole against western decadence.
Personally I don't think Ukraine meets that model, but such is life.
If there's a solid historical argument in there that doesn't evade the facts of what happened, I haven't seen it. Only an egotist's internal monologue.
Again, the self-reflection.
And yet, far less so than ignoring nuclear weapons as a deterrent for invasion.
The argument that Russia was not under threat from the US axis is not made on the basis that the US wouldn't if it could beat Russia in a conventional war- not least because nothing about the Ukraine war changed the underlying reality of Russia's conventional deficit vis-a-vis the US and has only made it worse- but rather that beating Russia in a nuclear war wouldn't be worthwhile when the cost is measured not in divisions, but cities.
The Russian national security argument for invading Ukraine has always fallen to the point that it does not change the actual nuclear balance of power against the US in any conflict, and that it has been nuclear deterrence that Russia had, and all those others have not.
Dean
17d ago
That would be the micro-aggressions that the woke-americans claim are being conducted, obviously.
Dean
18d 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
18d 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
18d 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
18d 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.
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
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.
It won't, because it won't exist, because you can't reach peace right now.
Among the reasons you won't have peace right now is because the Russians are uninterested in peace right now that results in a European-Ukraine as opposed to maintaining what they know to be untenable and belligerent-unacceptable capitulation terms that would result in a Russia-dominated Ukraine that they know the Ukrainians will not accept.
Which is unsurprising to anyone with a vague awareness of the geopolitical calendar and the logistics of the conflict, because they would already be aware that Putin's predictable windows for a stronger hand in actual negotiations is late next year, after the results of the US presidential election are known, after a fighting year where the Russians are anticipated to have an artillery ammo supply advantage, where it's not clear if Ukraine will have enough for an offensive rather than grinding defense, and where the Russians will have a general year-long opportunity to making propaganda hay of a nominally one-sided conflict even as they are already spinning up various military-posturing dynamics to otherwise further their inevitable-victory narratives to try and have a stronger hands in relevant negotiations late next year than they do this year.
Admitting a susceptibility to propaganda narratives for nearly the entire duration of the conflict isn't the defense of your reading between the lines that you think it is.
By contrast, the sort of people who recognized the logistical limitations of western artillery ammo were also the people predicting a long drawn out conflict (guerilla or west of the Dneiper), had no pretensions that the Russian economy would collapse, and warned against dramatic territorial expectation-metrics for the offensive.
You adopted new, and in the current case old, propaganda narratives.
Your belief is irrelevant to your lack of realism, assuming that by realism you are alluding to an accurate understanding of reality of the conflict.
False appeals to probability are common in pseudo-rationalist posturing, but it only betrays a lack of understanding of what other people consider unacceptable, and acceptable, costs.
It's not a problem if you are not actually a utilitarian, but are adopting a utilitarian persona for gravitas while disclaiming the central conceit of considering abstract and future value considerations.
In such a case, the feigned confusion is an appeal to authority, in much the same way the classic 'I don't understand how one could disagree' is an appeal to the unstated reasonable-informed observer rather than an admission of personal limitation.
Your prejudice is a poor model for international conflicts in general, and Russia and Putin in particular, who neither collectively or individually follow your preferred paradigm.
Models that are not used by, not followed by, and do not predict the decisions or actions of others are useless for understanding others.
Clearly.
Still yawning. Repeating the latest iterations of a nearly two-year old propaganda narrative with even shoddier justifications is not a commendable effort to argue an unpopular opinion. It's simply repeating the latest iterations of a nearly two-year propaganda narrative without acknowledging or dealing with why the opinion earned it's unpopularity. In other words, trite.
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