Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being an insufferable reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
15hr ago
The historic critiques of the Treaty of Versailles regarding Germany were themselves derived from the terms Germany imposed on France beforehand. If there's any historical denunciation to be had for ruinous reparations as a way to peace, it well predates WW1.
Dean
Flairless
15hr ago
The critical difference is the ability to assert mutual air denial via active air defense systems.
The Russian airforce dared to overfly Ukraine for about a weak, but stopped because even the rare active-detection radar system was enough to get good aircraft shot down, while Russia lacked the sort of EW / counter-emitter capabilities to suppress those air defense systems. However, this was a mutual paradigm- Russia couldn't intrude, but Ukraine couldn't either, and both stayed behind their lines in the air-defense bubble.
The issue is that NATO has a lot better tools to conduct suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD), most notably stealth aircraft that aren't so vulnerable to that sort of 'pocked AD' strategy. You turn on that sort of active radar, you (generally) still don't detect the aircraft for a weapons lock, but those weapons it has can lock onto you. Once high-altitude air defense systems are cracked, you can 'simply' fly over the lower air defense systems, use the gravity advantage to extend the range of your strikes, and progressively widen your air operation area to progressively strike more things.
It's not as absolute or one-sided as that, and it's certainly not a turkey shoot setup. Russia has absolutely invested a lot in mitigating those sort of stealth investments. But the Soviet anti-air concept that Russia inherited was much more of a 'buy time for the ground forces to win' model, as opposed to 'we have nothing to fear.' With time, you can take care to gradually peel back a defense envelope and act within the safe margins, which is exactly what we see in the current environment with the Russian glide bombs. However, the NATO countries have much better air penetration options, and air munitions, than the Russian airforce whose design purpose was to keep the NATO aircraft delayed by days/weeks/months so the army could run over the ground defenders and then get entrenched.
'Stick it to the man' has always been to a large degree performative. Many of the people proclaiming it were literally performers, many of whom notably 'sold out' to the people paying them.
Social media has changed the social technology, but it's not particularly hard to find older equivalents. Modern social media is your personal brand? Back in the day, your reputation preceded you. You need the your acquaintances for job referrals? Back in the day, you wanted to leave your boss on good terms as a prior supervisor on your resume. You feel you need a passionate public image? Nepotism is having people willing to feign passion about you, specifically, behind closed doors.
The expression 'don't burn bridges,' by its nature, isn't typically talking modern metal bridges. It's talking about even older sorts. The message behind the metaphor is even older.
Not sure what @Dean 's opinion is, I do not want to put words into their mouth.
Thank you. I appreciate not being assigned a position I've never taken.
My position for some time (years) has been neither side is running out of manpower in an absolute sense. The somewhat less than 2-to-1 in favor of Ukraine is reasonable-ish, with emphasis on swings on which part of the front when. When Ukraine does localized counter-attacks over time, such as trying to delay the fall of defense line that has gotten supply-interdicted by fires (drone or artillery), it's worse. When Ukraine is doing 'generic' line defense, it's higher. Per-capital casualty rates of national populations aren't really relevant, since neither side is being limited by the size of the population per see, but rather political considerations for accessing significant parts of it.
In Ukraine, this limitation the political willingness to draft the younger age cohort to fill the infantry with more fit bodies. This is bad, and people can feel free to add more emphasis if they like, but it's not the 'there is nothing left' metaphor either. Every year of the war, an entirely new year of potential conscripts leaves the protected age bracket, and when you compare that number to casualties per year, the number of potential 'new' conscripts far outnumbers the casualties by a large degree in absolute terms. The issues are separate about opportunity costs and so on, so the decision on what to prioritize is a political / policy decision, not a physical limit. Bad politics or policy can and do lead to bad results. But this is also not as bad in the same way / to the degree most people might conceptualize, because the Ukraine War- and particularly the drone dynamic- has changed what sort of 'fit body versus support force' ratio actually is, in ways that military science, let alone social understanding, haven't caught up with. A few years ago, a 'healthy' infantry-drone balance might have a drone user per platoon, with X platoons for Y amount of territory. Now we are looking at multiple drone operators per squad, with Z squads per Y' territory. Whatever the ratio 'should' be, the amount of infantry 'needed' for a certain level of frontage is changing. Ukraine can simultaneously not have enough, and people have outdated / over-inflated assumptions of what 'should' be.
In Russia, the limitation is the economic willingness off older age cohorts to take volunteer enlistment bonuses. Russia tried to leverage its population via a conscription model in the first year of the war, and it went so badly that somewhere between half a million to a million Russians left the country in the first year, and Putin preferred to pay significant other material and other costs to avoid a reoccurance. This works as long as the Russian volunteer base is willing to take the offered salaries, but the issue with market-rate enlistment bonuses are you actually have to pay them, and any model that relies on pre-saved money to fund deficit spending to avoid other issues will, eventually, run out of pre-saved money. Market-rate military expenses are fickle as well as fiscal, and are prone to spiking when shortages occur, such as if fewer people want to volunteer because parts of the contract bonuses (such as regional government bonuses) are cut for fiscal constraints. Difficulty does not mean absence, and Russia has already gone through various long-term costs to provide the short-term funds to meet needs, but shell-games come with tradeoffs and the functional recruitable base is not a simple total-population-size ratio between Russia and Ukraine.
This all matters because much of the discussion about casualty ratios is applied to total population sizes (Russia is X times bigger, so Ukraine needs an Y kill ratio to compensate). This misses the manpower limitation on both sides, and that casualty ratios matter more as a factor of the relative recruitable bases, which are far less clear / even less consensus.
which in itself is not enough to be a central theory of victory for the same reason, they need Russia to run out of money or will or something else before men at that rate if Russia can keep recruiting.
This is approaching my position, but with a whole lot of context / framing that would take a rather long post in and of itself.
In so much that I present a definition of 'victory' for Ukraine, my inclination has generally leaned towards 'terms that are sufficient to allow Ukraine to deter yet another continuation war by Russia.' As a result, my general stance since the first two years of the war have been that victory in the war is more about the final terms than the terrain.
(The 2022 invasion is arguably the 3rd continuation war since the 2014 Crimea incursion, which was followed by the Nova Russia campaign and then the direct intervention when that failed.)
By this standard, the 'peace terms' offered by Russia in the first month of the war would have been a loss as they were basically disarmament demands that would have reduced the Ukrainian army to fewer tanks than the Ukrainian army lost in the next year or so of actually fighting the war. The Ukrainians would have 'won' more land in the short term, but at an extremely high risk of Russia just reorganzing and launching another mechanized invasion that Ukraine would likely have been able to resist without a reoccurance of the 2022 fuckups, which would have led to the strategic defeat. By contrast, while Ukraine has taken [insert McBigNumber] casualties in the three years of war since the invasion, in the process it has largely depleted the Soviet strategic stockpiles of tanks / ammo / etc. that were what allowed Russia to replenish mechanized formations. Now those reserves are largely gone, and so even if Ukraine loses all of the Donbas and the fortress belt fighting rather than merely turning over uncontested, it's still a 'better' [victory] than if Russia still had the perceived mechanized invasion capacity it had a few years ago.
Similar points exist in other aspects of deterrence credibility. If the war had not continued, the limits of the Russian ammunition stockpiles (since supplemented by purchased North Korean munitions) would not have been so clear to all, and thus strengthened the Russian negotiating leverage were Russia still at 10-to-1 artillery advantage as opposed the more contemporary 3-to-1 estimates. If the war had not continued past the first month, Russia might still have had a unilateral advantage in terms of its long-range strike capability of operational stockpiles of cruise missiles, and Ukraine would not have gradually increasing its own long-range strike campaign credibility to the point where it now routinely hits highly-visible, and budget-significant, Russian infrastructure. Had the war ended sooner, when Russia was still aggressively using Soviet AA missiles against everything it could, the deterrence narrative might have been stuck on the question of 'has Ukraine / the West run out of air defenses,' rather than flip that to 'if Russia struggles against these drones, how safe is it against NATO airpower?'
None of this is to say that Russia hasn't advanced its own capabilities in various areas over the war. Drone warfare is absolutely a thing. But deterrence isn't about 'can the attacker win,' but rather 'can the defender make it not worth the cost.' And in that sense, and for that purpose, increasing Russian costs now, in the present, shapes Russian future cost calculus later, when Russia (particularly Putin) might try again.
This is an attritional struggle, but it's not an attritional struggle to 'win' this war in terms of 'Russian military collapses and Ukraine regains territory.' While I'm sure the Ukrainian public would love it if some sort of Russian balance of payments default led to the Russian army leaving the field or mutinying in mass and marching on Moscow, that's neither likely or necessary. Rather, the war is an attritional struggle that seeks to add enough military and economic and political-will costs such that even Putin will think about starting another invasion, and go 'I'd rather not.'
And in that context, the attritional goal for Russian infantry and such isn't 'there are literally not enough men to fight,' but rather 'future!Putin does not want to pay the costs he'd have to to get enough men to fight.'
That could the direct economic costs to the Russian state budget and fiscal planning if he has to pay market costs. That could be the political costs if Putin in this war has to supplement the volunteers with conscripts. That could be the material costs, if Russia feels it needs to replace the stuff it already lost in this war before it tries again. That could be reconstitution costs, if the survivors of this war decide they'd rather not join the next war because they got their signing bonus and intend to live with it. It could be any or all of these, so long as the sum-total is enough that Putin, when he's out of sunk-cost-fallacy mode, would rather not try.
But all of this framework derives from a theory of victory that doesn't really define victory in this war in terms of territory lost or gained, or even Ukrainian casualties.
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
The ICC needs, at a minimum, to be delegitimized, discredited, and humiliated.
Limiting its claims of jurisdiction to only its members and member territory, while requiring members to be sovereign states with defined boundaries recognized by the UN, might serve as an alternative.
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
There's also the point that asymmetric tit-for-tat doesn't require identical fields of retaliatory regulation. If EU authorities target US operators to open up competition space in the EU markets, US authorities can target EU banks that the EU would count on to finance those EU operators. The EU financial sector can make far more money by accessing the US financial markets than by servicing EU operators cut off from the US financial system, and EU attempts to try and set up dummy-financial companies still run into the issue that, at some point, those nurtured companies are expected to access private capital investments. Which, by the nature of the global markets, will want access to the US financial system and US markets and US consumers to grow faster than a company that exists solely on EU government dole.
The reason the Russian expropriations of McDonalds or Irish airlines were able to 'work' is that the Russian banks are already cut-off from western financial sectors, and so have little to lose. Even then they have, and will, pay high opportunity costs for the credit close offs, such as we're seeing with the Chinense economic takeover of the Russian market. The EU would have to cut off the US financial sector as a self-own to open up an equivalent policy space, and that still wouldn't address the issue of the incentive structure from the US side (i.e., paying people more than the Europeans).
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
And those things warrant their own arguments. The point of the substitution format is that the argument being subjected to substitution is typically relying on unstated arguments that are being smuggled, not made. Forcing the substitution can reveal the sort gaps that a more explicit argument might reveal... but that more explicit argument, in turn, may open the original argument to scrutiny.
For example, 'things you're allowed to do with enemies that you're kinda not supposed to do with allies' is an excellent example of an unstated argument that could bring awkward focusto the previous argument. Such as, trying to arrest the head of state of an ally of an ally. Is Israel an enemy of Europe? There's a reason that the OP didn't make that argument. And if that argument was made, it would expose them to the question of what you do to the allies of an ally. It might even raise the question of if the French judge was being a bad ally to the US, by going after a US ally, even though that ally is not an enemy of Europe. A potential retreat- 'it's not about being an ally, it's about adhering to international law'- would still allow the counter-attacks that (a) the ICC judge was going well beyond international law by trying to prosecute a head of state not part of the Rome Statute, and (b) abandoning the ally/enemy distinction as a smokescreen. Which then surrenders that field to the opposition that might press that ally/enemy relevance.
There are certainly arguments that some would eagerly make that the jews are enemies of the west. However, that's an argument the OP would rather avoid. Substituting 'Europe' for 'Russia' is the sort of counter-argument that forces original argument to be adhered to and defended, as opposed to abandoned.
The implications, issues, and tensions with the ICC's efforts to establish broad jurisdiction despite being a non-universal treaty organization have been discussed in various contexts for approaching 30 years. I can't say how much you may have misread as opposed to not read at all.
In most other contexts, it is considered absurd to try and impose treaty institutions on a state that is not part of the treaty, even when you think that treaty is a good idea or should supersede other principles of international law. Given that the French media article cited is not even inclined to argue that it is a matter of international law, but European law, it becomes even more absurd to try claim a European jurisdiction over non-Europeans for acts outside of Europe against other people not under a European sovereign aegis.
Why should being democratically elected shield you from ICC prosecution? The whole point of the ICC is that it is, well, international; you may believe that the people of Israel forfeited their right to judge Netanyahu when they elected him, but the ICC does not judge in the name of the people of Israel but in the name of the people of a pretty large chunk of the Western world.
This is smuggling in a consensus of the basis of the ICC authority. The ICC does not get to judge because it does so the name of the people of a pretty large chunk of the Western world, nor does it get any extra legal authority from having the word 'International' in its name. These are utterly irrelevant factors. It would have the exact same jurisdictional reach if it's title were changed to the European Criminal Court. Its jurisdiction beyond non-signatories would be just as valid if its composition switched so that non-signatories were the signatories and the signatories were the non-signatories.
The International Criminal Court is a treaty-law organization. Its powers derive not externally, but from the sovereign authorities of its constituent members. As such, by it's very nature, it judges in the name of its treaty signatories. No more, and no less.
But this also means that- as a treaty-law organization- a treaty law organization's legitimacy in applying authority to non-signatories ends where the treaty's signatories end. Other- and higher- principles of international law recognize that the sovereign right of sovereign states to bind themselves in international laws, i.e. treaties, also entails to not join into such international agreements. In turn, the sovereign legitimacy of those states, whose sovereignty is what enables them to commit or not to such arrangements, derives from the legitimizing source of those states.
As such, it is not that 'being democratically elected should shield you from ICC prosecution.' It is that 'a legitimate sovereign state, whose sovereign legitimacy derives from its democratic processes to elect its own leader, should have the right to refuse to become a member of any treaty, and to refuse attempts to impose treaty-law they are not a part of.'
A pretty large chunk of the Western world has no greater grounds to pass judgement or ignore the sovereignty of other nations than another chunk of the Western world, or the non-western world.
For a very different polarity example, by all accounts Milošević was elected democratically and "genocide the Albanians" seems to have represented the Serbian people's will pretty accurately in the '90s. Was it "dangerous and destabilising" that he was dragged to the Hague for enacting it?
Yes.
Opposing Milosevic was moral, righteous, and even lawful for reasons beyond the ICC. UN treaty law that the Soviet block was also nominally a party of already forbade genocide. There's a reason that for decades when anti-NATO shills try to raise 'muh sovereignty' objections to the Yugoslav interventions, they conspicuously avoid asserting Milosevic's own legal obligations at the time. At the same time, dragging Milosevic also entailed an international war that- but for a geopolitical context of a temporary decrease in Russian military capability to intervene- could have expanded into a much broader regional conflict. 'Just war' does not mean 'safe war.'
But the R2P ('Responsibility to Protect) principles also encoded into the Rome Statute and that were invoked over Milosevic have absolutely been both risky and destabilizing when put into practice. Its attempts to assert universal jurisdiction as a basis, reason, and even requirement for states to act to resolve the injustice directly contribute to geopolitical conflicts when the state being motivated is acting against a state that- even if evil- will work to ensure its own survival. And that's when R2P works.
R2P was a contributing factor / legitimizer to the neocon wars of the middle east, including the Iraq War, when 'bringing Saddam to justice' for many very real and very bad things he did to the Shia and Kurd populations entailed cracking apart a police state and triggering a civil war. R2P can be directly tied to regional policy disasters that have made the humanitarian issues they were intended to resolve worse, such as the Libya intervention that a pretty large chunk of the western world was happy to use as a pretext to settle old scores with a dictator who had, if not repented, long since stopped being a state sponsor of terrorism that ran up those scores. R2P might have 'succeeded' with Milosevic, but that experience and validation was what contributed to the American participation in Somalia, and thus the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, which in turn had just a little to do with the American decision to sit out the far-more-genocidal rwanda genocide in 1994, and (some time later) the electoral prospects of a later American president who ran on a platform of domestic focus and compassionate conservatism.
Ah, but those are American military interventions. Perhaps you 'only' meant legal stuff, not enforced by state hard power?
Well, it turns out that when motivated would-be litigants sympathetic to separatists or insurgencies would like to sue countries for the ugly business of fighting said conflicts, it neither inclines the states to hand over jurisdictional authority to the potentially sympathetic judges that motivated parties are seeking to court shop, or to adopt the belief systems of the people who think they really should anyway. Which is how nations like India (which speaks for about 1/6th of the whole world, not just a good chunk of the west) ends up not exactly wanting to become a part of that legal mindset, and involved in expatriate conflicts with in-exile separatist advocates who absolutely will try to lawfare whatever they can wherever. Which, in turn, brings India- or India equivalents- into geopolitical conflict with the states hosting such litigants. Hence the India-Canada issue, which shapes the India-US relationship, which is very significant to the India-US-China dynamic, which is the single biggest geopolitical stability issue of the century.
Or, conversely, claims to universal jurisdiction lets any state attempt to lawfare-litigate as a geopolitical cudgel. South Africa absolutely has no internal or international political interests to be advanced by accusing Israel of genocide, it is solely because they really care that much. And, since the South African movement created a legal obligation on the part of Europeans to act against Israel, which weakens the European influence on Israel to end the war (cause, you know, the Prime Minister of Israel will no longer go to European capitals where they can try and talk or lobby him). This might have made the Israelis more susceptible to American pressures to end the war in the Trump peace plan (that was widely panned as being unrealistic and prone to failure), but that influence / negotiation goes both ways, since things the US President is more comfortable with are no longer deal-breakers if there is no European deal to break. So while the Europeans recognized a Palestine, the Israelis restarted a long-restrained eastern jerusalem / west bank settelement plan that even the litigants would probably eagerly concede / argue / accuse of being bad for the (West Bank) Palestinians, but which the ICC won't have any real recourse except to support an invasion to take by force of arms, or sit around for years/decades hoping that international isolation will lead to an Israeli collapse... which no one claims will help the Palestinians in the interim, if at all.
And let's not get started on the topic of amnesty in international law, and the commodification/commercialization of it as an economic migrant population flow policy, and what various states have to accept- in terms of legal and political opposition- to mitigate it. Or exploit it as leverage, such as the totally-not-Russia-encouraged Belarusian-Poland border crisis the year before the Ukrainian invasion, which totally-wasn't-a-signal of what too much support to Ukraine could lead to. Or used globally in later propoganda as a demonstration of what European claims to human rights law really means.
All of which further weakens the role of humanitarian protection in international law. When you present humanitarian considerations as self-evidently legitimate basis for overcoming all objections, including sovereignty, you are incentivizing states to pre-emptively avoid systems created to respect it because there is no limiting principle. It sets incentives for motivated parties to invoke it as much as they can, but surviving states that don't want to be eternal hostages to Current Thing to systematically reduce the relevance of laws intended to codify empathy of a different era. It even incentivizes states to take fait accompli actions that international law cannot reverse in any sort of consistent or timely manner.
But worst of all, it doesn't normalize prioritizing humanitarian consideration. International law normalization is a function of how many states actually do the thing. The more states that are pushed by, or to, cynicism to water down humanitarian protections, the weaker those protections become when they are needed most, not as steady-state lobbying devices but as calls to action to stop imminent genocide.
Which- if it's not clear enough- is a reason to overcome sovereignty objections. States concede that genocide is not an internal-only matter when they sign certain treaties. But when this gets expanded and leveraged beyond actual not-even-technically genocide on grounds of universal jurisdiction, at the behest of people whose interests aren't actually genocide, the consequences (of bad policy) and the blowback (of delegitimization) can be measured in terms of catastrophes.
Milosevic is a symptom, not a cause. It is not 'because NATO countries intervened in the caucuses, these bad things happened.' Rather, NATO intervened because of pre-existing paradigms of optimistic / moralistic assumptions that, when run into reality, regularly do not pan out. That does not mean they never pan out. Again, Milosevic. But when they fail, they can fail in ways that make existing problems worse, and destabilize entire geopolticial regions for years or decades to come.
The premise behind R2P have always been risky and destabilizing. Sometimes risks are worth taking, even when they incur costs. But risky and destabilizing they still remain.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
In your effort to notice, you seem to have forgotten to notice that there is nothing surprising about the Americans opposing attempts by Europeans to create precedents of universal jurisdiction that could also be applied against the Americans by international legal institutions Americans also aren't a part of. And by nothing surprising, I mean that the so-called Hague Act is over two decades old, and over half of that was under Democratic administrations.
The Americans have consistently opposed various European efforts to apply the Rome Statute beyond the jurisdiction of the Rome Statute, which has very clear jurisdictional limitations even when you factor in the internal-ICC efforts to claim jurisdiction over the Gaza conflict via a membership application by the Palestinian Authority, which is not a sovereign state, over a decade after the Palestinian Authority was thrown out of (or off of high rises within) Gaza. That various members and lobbyists in the ICC are inclined to ignore this in pursuit of their foreign policy preferences doesn't really change the implications of this longstanding opposition. It doesn't change things even if they are Europeans doing it in Europe with European funds to European applause. They they attempted to apply this against an American ally, in a format that isn't-currently-but-could-easily be invoked against American administrations were it successful, is merely poor statecraft.
That it is also poor legal policy on their part, and very likely counter-productive to the aims they claim to be pursuing, are entirely separate matters.
Dean
Flairless
5d ago
And that way being to not follow lawful orders, which the urgers would like to insinuate are unlawful but are neither inclined to specify nor are they culpable for the consequences of a wrong judgement (though they will, of course, make much political propaganda about it).
The blood sigil is @Dean. What existential corner is air defense supposed to keep Russia out of?
The reason an air defense loss isn't itslef existential threat is because air campaign alone aren't existential unless they are done by nukes. Airpower alone doesn't displace governments or destroy the ability for organized (if dispersed) light infantry. Leader might die earlier than they otherwise would, vehicle may blow up but the governments tend to remain unless there is a separate ground force that can physically displace a government's army. Without that external ground army moving in, for which your own ground army is just one way to mitigate, there isn't an existential threat to the nation-state unless you conflate the dead leader (mortal as they are) with the state.
Russia would not be in an existential risk state without air defense because it has second strike nuclear capability in multiple forms. It does not need air defenses any more than it needs buffer states to make an existential invasion threat a non-viable option for a foreign invader. The best nuclear deterrence survival strategies, in turn, don't rely on active air defenses or standoff distance, but passive measures such as denial, deception, redundancy, mobility, and of course hiding.
What Russia depended on air defenses for is the viability of a regional dominance strategy that depends on armored columns that airpower could otherwise easily destroy. But for air defense, the russian invasion wouldn't be credible, and Russian threats could be more easily ignored.
The ability of Russia's smaller neighbors who cannot / would not invade Russia outright ignoring Russian threats would certainly be an existential threat to Russia's self-image as a great power deserving deference, but this is a self-image existence, not a national existence risk. Self-image, like heads of government, can easily be replaced.
@VoxelVexillologist since they were the nominal subject of the reply.
Dean
Flairless
12d ago
Given that the clock in question is 'unwarranted claims that this is the scandal that will sink Donald Trump,' is there a reason to believe the clock is stopped?
Dean
Flairless
13d ago
As much as it was never going to happen, even at the time of the series I remember really liking the 'Harry is a decoy chosen one / Neville was the real boy who lived' theories for what it could have let Harry Potter be.
Mostly for Harry's character flaws, though not because they make him a worse protagonist. Quite the opposite. Harry being reckless, careless, and not inclined to be discrete are great protagonist flaws. They balance how Harry even as a child had real character virtues- brave, friendly, above the bigotries of the setting. But those virtues, and child age, don't negate the sort of self-centeredness which, while natural/appropriate for a young boy, detracted from a sort of humility that might have been initially assumed from the 'abused / eager-to-please boy' of his early years.
Neville being the real child of prophesy, but Dumbledore letting Harry be the one drawing attention to himself, would have had a number of interesting elements. It would have required better working Neville into book plots to have a slowly emerging role, and thus required Harry to have a few more close male friends over the series than just Ron, but that could have worked well as a parallel to Harry's awkward-but-building friendship with Cedric in Goblet of Fire (where Harry went from the awkward younger male in the dynamic to the more confident/established alternative to Neville). It would have reframed Dumbledore's indulgences of Harry, since it could be seen as a darker user relationship (encouraging Harry to act out), but then it might also have reframed parts of it positively (Dumbledore not manipulating Harry into destiny).
But what could have really made it stand out was as a character challenge to Harry himself, to have gone through a character arc of having come to believe the lie that he was the special / chosen hero, coming upon the revelation that he wasn't the special / chosen one after all, but overcoming it to still be a hero, except this time with humility. It doesn't mean that Neville has to displace Harry as the protagonist of the series, or the leading role in various plots, but reframing the later series as Harry realizing that he is the decoy- that he is drawing the attention / threats / danger that Neville isn't ready for while Neville has to overcome his past trauma and grow to face his own destiny- opens up a lot of juicy character drama.
Like, letting Harry be arrogant / have wounded pride. Hasn't he been the hero so far? Isn't he better than the wimpy, loserly Neville? Isn't he richer than his best friend, who is minor wizard nobility / established family? Isn't he the prodigy who speaks snake-tongue, manifests patroneus, and has a super-cool uncle/patron who got him the best broomstick to win at quidditch with? Isn't he the one who gets young girls crushing on him after dashingly saving them? Why can't he be the chosen hero on top of all that? It's Not Fair!
But also- if he's not the actual Boy Who Lived, what will he be if that title is taken away from him? He'll be an orphan with no name and no clue, a middling quidditch player. Worse, who will be left if, when, he's revealed to be a fraud? Will anyone believe him, will the girl he liked / the girls who liked him because of that reputation, and then got to know him, still like 'him' if the popular legend stops being so popular? Harry started the series as a friendless, family-less, isolated child, and what wouldn't he do to not go back to that?
And yet...
And yet, Harry growing to overcome that, and how, could be equally interesting. Take Neville. Neville's start in the series has many (deliberate) parallels to Harry, but he's clearly traumatized in a way Harry was not. (And, vice versa, is not in ways Harry was by his abusive family.) Neville is not yet a man, is not confident, and not ready. He quivers under Snape, and were worse to find him... well, in Goblet of Fire Harry comes off as worse in many ways to Cedric, the older boy who has what Harry wants (the girl, the confidence, the respect of peers). The 'gift' of being thrown into the tournament was no gift, but Harry survived and burnished the legend. Could Neville have survived, let alone thrived, as Harry did?
But Neville could also be framed as a person who looks up to Harry. Like a good Gryffindor, Harry, even as a child, is brave where Neville is not. Harry is popular where Neville is not. Harry acts when Neville when freeze. But most of all, Harry is kind despite all of that, or maybe because of all that, because Harry has been the boy shoved into a closet and worse. Harry is a jock, true, but he acts out of concern, and dislikes cruel bullies, and at least tries to do the right thing despite his jealousies (Cedric) or his dislikes (Malfoy) even if Harry isn't constrained by rules. Harry is happy to help others. Harry is not just the sort of person Neville probably wants to be more like, but also the sort of person who- personal dynamics otherwise- could help Neville grow into someone who can stand up not just for himself, but for others as the hero.
This is a relationship dynamic that could be worked with, especially for how it might play to Harry's arrogance / insecurities. Does Harry just think it's his due at first? That Neville is a fanboy for the Boy Who Lived? After Harry realizes the truth, does Harry feel jealous or insecure, wondering if Neville knows? When Harry realizes the influence that he has over Neville- and that his positive influence is itself what may lead to Neville assuming the mantle of Chosen Hero- what does that mean to him, and to them? If Harry knows he has Neville's trust, and knows he could reveal the truth or hide the secret that gives him his status, what would he do? Especially when both hiding and revealing the truth could be simultaneously selfless and selfish: is Harry hiding it because he wants to protect his status, or because it protects Neville? Would he consider revealing it because Neville Needs to Know, or because he's tired of being the increasing target of the Dark Lord's attention in a war he didn't ask for?
That would be a good character story not only in itself, but also help reframe Harry's place with his friends, which addresses Harry's insecurity. Part of Harry's growth can come from realizing that people like him for him, not just his legend. Ron's signature trait is loyalty, and certainly isn't sticking with Harry to nose up for perks or money. Hermoine as a mudblood never knew the legend, just that he was the boy she met on the train who saved her from a troll in the bathroom. Even the animosities were natural. Draco who might have been fake friends with the Boy Who Lived would be as petty a bully to a commoner-potter, or a Neville-he-didn't-know-better-about. Snape's deal was with Potter, the parents, not The Boy Who Lived.
But just as important for the character arc and series culmination, Harry can learn / actualize that people also like him for his relationships with others. Yes, he saved Ginny from the Chamber of Secrets, which is grounds enough to transition a hero-crush to a personal-hero crush, but he's friendly and capable of being friends with looney Luna, her friend that others avoid. Yes, he finds magically-attractive Fleur attractive, but her regard is won by him risking himself for her sister in the tournament, not his place in it as a legend. When Harry comes to fixate on his legend, his friendships can wane- the sort of distancing where his insecurities When Harry can overcome that by having a true friendship with Neville, then it can inspire others- including Neville- into the Dubledore Army or whatnot that nominally exists to support Harry, but secretly supports Neville, with whom Harry is in alignment.
I imagine such a series finale would go into its endgame with Neville integrated into the core three, all knowing the truth but keeping the lie so that Harry can play the part of decoy protagonist and draw away the Dark Lord's attention so that Neville can do his Chosen One deed. Harry's earlier flaws- his brash, reckless nature- are allowed to be assets complimenting his virtues, even as Harry's greatest virtue from the character arc- his growth of true humility, as opposed to the abused boy syndrome he had at the start- is what lets Neville take the Dark Lord by surprise.
Truly a power the Dark Lord knows not.
At which point the story can wrap up with its happily ever after where the series-long secret is revealed, but ends with Neville publicly crediting / elevating Harry as the indispensable hero in defeating the dark lord, in a parallel to how over the books Harry helped elevate Neville into the chosen hero he needed to be. Harry might lose the mythic hero backstory he no longer cares so much about, but gains a new (genuine) heroic legend to replace it, and more importantly keeps the personal relationships he was once afraid of losing. War scars the survivors, but the optimism is there, as not just Harry, but people he's influenced like Neville are in turn giving hope / building up the next generation more than Harry himself ever could have alone.
Cue the series end, with Harry Potter ending it as the hero of his own story, just not in the way he intended it to be, but having developed other character virtues that bring him to the company of fictional greats like Frodo.
Dean
Flairless
15d ago
I've always wanted to see a reversion to the pre-procedural filibuster, where if you want to filibuster, you actually have to keep talking, and when you stop it's over. None of this 'well, you say you're going to talk forever, so we'll just stop there and save us both the effort.'
Nah. If people want to filibuster, let their vocal cords bleed.
Dean
Flairless
17d ago
Ah, but he has every right to play the part of the fool by complaining about it.
Dean
Flairless
18d ago
I disagree. @Bartender_Venator was doing effective debating, which can be seen for how he maneuvered BurdensomeCount into falling into the same debate trap twice.
The debate-appropriate response to bad faith framing arguments is to note their use rather than engaged in desired debate on the terms set by the accusation. When the initial presenter is approaching with a potential motte and bailey argument when the rhetorical bailey is itself trying to insinuate and argue over a connotation, and thus assume the conclusion that the insinuation is valid basis to start discussion, the appropriate response is to challenge the argument's paradigm in the first place.
Note that Bartender_Venator's breakdownn isn't an ad hominem argument that BurdensomeCount's argument is an invalid troll argument is wrong because he is a shit-stiring troll, repeat troll troll troll. He didn't try and justify a charge of trolling based on past BurdensomeCount troll efforts to establish a pattern of history, or even linking to the rather direct mod analysis on BurdensomeCount's trolling style. Bartender_Venantor is targeting the argument, claiming that argument-level deicisions reveal bad faith, and letting the implications of that argument critique pain BurdensomCount.
Specifically, Bartender shifted the debate from any debate over the characters Count wanted attention provoked towards to a meta-structure review of how BurdensomeCount's argument was structured. He identified and contrasted both obvious and subtle methods that were used to lead the audience to a conclusion or conflict without actually committing BurdensomeCount to making certain arguments. Bartender noted various points where Burdensome could have added elements that would have earned charity/good faith credit (could explain his reasoning), but also notes the implications- and thus potential reasons- for why they are absent. These coincide with argument structure decisions that could, in isolation, have innocuous reasons, but coincidentally happen to have overlapping / reinforcing thematic effects consistent with trolling. While Bardtender does end off with the passive-aggressive accusation by very conspicuously drawing attention to the lack of a personal accusation ('I'll leave it to the gallery'), the core of the argument for why the audience should find that creidble is how a characterization of Count's argument-structure stand on its own as evidence of good or bad faith on Count's part.
Note in turn that BurdensomeCount did not actually contest Bartender's characterization of his argument in any respect.
If Bartender made had made an ad-hominem debate attack, that would have been an easy winning move. If the original original argument structure was sound, or at least defensible, it would have undercut Bartender's critique and any implicit judgement on good faith. Burdensome could have strengthened the foundations of his argument by providing additional justification for suspect design inclusions, he could have added to the foundation by taking Bartender's invitation for elaboration. Burdensome could even asked for audience forgiveness, claimed he was trying to keep his wordcount down, that it might have distracted, or so on.
Instead Count attempted a suspiciously specific deflection of a personal characterization that wasn't made ('I'm not leftoid baiting'), and then tried to change the subject via a rhetorical concession ('Instead I fully and freely acknowledge') to a topic that had nothing to do with the structural analysis of his argument or Bartender's position. This might work in troll-format motte-and-bailey where the bailey is arguing about the subject of nominal discussion, and the motte is falling back to 'well a more reasonable characterization of the topic was this.' But it was also a a transparently plebian attempt to change the topic, even as he couldn't resist not giving an actual denial that he was baiting.
Which, is why the motte-and-bailey retreat failed on its face. Count's intended motte no longer had value because both motte and bailey were now the bailey to Bartender's position- that the argument structure itself was bad faith. Count's attempted fallback still left him within this bailey that Count was more interested in not-making arguments in able to troll a conflict rather than defend a relevant position.
Count made it even easier for Bartender to draw attention to Count's penchant at rheotorical sleights of hand ('I don't think you're a leftoid baiting') and attempts to reframe the argument. Not only does it make Bartender look better at understanding Count's argument than vice versa, as Count didn't dispute Bartender's correction, it also makes Count's subsequent retreat to a persecution defense another validating example of abandoning the previous arguments. In this way, Count not only gave validity to the initial critique, but practically turned it into a prediction.
Which is how Bartender's argument works on multiple levels. He was not only able to describe Count's conduct in mechanical terms that Count didn't dispute, but do so in ways that Count's own nature led him to validate, even after they were explicitly pointed out. Add to it that Count's response also aligns to rather direct style call-outs from months ago, a style which many posters know, and Count comes across less as some sort of genius, evil or otherwise, and more like someone whose predictability is part of the charm they are clearly getting humored for.
Dean
Flairless
18d ago
And I see you're still inclined to ignore the Yanukovych administrations actual actions in the final days, as well as @The_Golem101's points on the broader events of that morning, as well as all the other previous exchanges and your own court case documents you used to link to so proudly.
As such I look forward to your next attempt to claim that perfidy was obvious at play but that it couldn't possibly have been at the behest of the sitting government.
They aren't presenting the other side because the other side isn't saying anything.
On what grounds do you believe this to be true?
- Did the presenters claim this?
- Did the presenters claim this with evidence?
- Did the presenters ask the other side to say anything?
- Did the presenters acknowledge anything the other side said?
- Did you do your due diligence to see if the presenter claiming this was lying?
- Did you look for other sources other than your chosen presenters?
- Did you ask for other sources that you were unable to find?
- Did you ignore or dismiss other sources that have been provided, maintaining a totality by categorical exclusion of contrary evidence and speakers?
For example, the Rittenhouse affair had Red Tribe internet sleuths piecing together video evidence of Rittenhouse's activities and movements for the hours leading up to the shootings. Within 48 hours they knew more than the prosecution's attorneys knew over a year later.
Why do you believe the internet sleuths knew more than the prosecution's attorneys, as opposed to the prosecution's attorneys feigning ignorance in order to conduct a politically hostile prosecution despite the available and mutually-known facts?
Dean
Flairless
20d ago
I see you're back to ignoring the Yanukovych administrations actual actions in the final days, the external state (Russian) pressures and incentives that were used to drive his changes towards those actions, and claiming as novel the mechanical form in which the Maidan Revolution succeeded, which was that there was a critical lack of elite and and party support for the lethal force crackdown that Yanukovych and the Russian-aligned interior ministry had attempted to initiate.
Unsurprising, and I look forward to your next attempt to claim that perfidy was obvious at play but that it couldn't possibly have been at the behest of the sitting government.
Dean
Flairless
20d ago
None, but that's because my view of what a Stalingrad is implies something distinct and I wouldn't view any of the fortress city battles to qualify.
The shorter version is that Russia's manpower limits are clear enough now that the Russian military isn't going to do the sort of Bakhmut storm/siege that they did in '22/'23 where Russia prioritized high-casualty urban operations to move the urban gains map forward. Instead, the model is more likely to be the Pokrovsk, where the strategy was to try and isolate the city by advancing around the edges, interdict the supply lines, and force the Ukrainians to withdraw or risk a closed pocket.
The advantage of the Pokrovsk approach is that it's a lot less casualty-intensive in the way that Bakhmut was. The downside of the Pokrovsk method is that it takes a long time as the ability to effectively push flanks to isolate a city, which means it's still a very bloody process it's just extended over a longer time, which is more sustainable in a force-generation perspective.
Well, if you like a contribution enough, you know what to do with it.
I will carry your point about NATO GDP a bit further, though. The economic implications for NATO go beyond even that. It isn't '0.2% on top of normal.' That 0.2% spent going to directly shape what the new-normal in the future is, since future defense spending will have to adjust to what is needed, not what used to be needed. Any critique of 'it's unreasonable to spend so much to help Ukraine fight Russia' can be fairly asked to state a position on 'how much spending is reasonably needed to fight Russia without Ukraine.'
A lot of the NATO defense spending discussion is framed in media in terms of 'Europe needs to spend more to catch up to Russia.' There is truth there, but it's not the entire truth, just as another refrain- 'we need to create capabilities the Americans may withdraw' is a part-but-not-whole of the truth. An additional element is that a lot of the NATO spending European states need to is to just dig themselves out of the hole of the post-Cold War defense cuts that lowered their various institutional, not just military, capabilities. Resolve deficit capabilities in things like administration, communication architecture, procurement agencies, legacy system commitments, and so on, and then you can better modernize the actual hardware in inventory and try to train new people to actually match the Russian threat once ignored / discounted.
But if part of spending requirements is 'resolve the deficit' and another part of 'match the adversary,' how much you need to spend to match the adversary depends on, well, the adversary's capabilities. Which, a half decade ago, included a Soviet Union's worth of stockpiles of ammo, reactivatable vehicles, and weapons. 'Reasonably sufficient' defense spending to reasonably counter such a threat had to be able to match / overcome both [ongoing Russian military industry from the current economy] and account for [the vast reserves of Russian reserve material]. And that was a huge amount of capacity, the sticker shock of which contributed to the European defense spending paralysis, since it's easy to be dwarfed by the magnitudes involved. Russia lost more tanks in the first year of the war than most of the major EU NATO members had total. To 'match' that, you'd be talking trippling or quadrupling tank orders.
But that's if you have to match the Soviet stockpiles. Now that much (though not all) of that Cold War inheritance is squandered, Russia is increasingly dependent on [modern economy funded production], as opposed to [inherited mountains]. And Russia's [modern economy funded production] is far, far, far more practical for the European states to match or keep up with. When you take away Soviet stockpile reactivations, which is how Russia gets 'more than 1000 tanks produced* a year' over the war, back in 2020 Russia was producing around 200 new tanks a year.
It takes a lot less NATO expenditures to overcome 200 tanks a year compared to 1000 tanks a year. Or to overcome 10,000 missiles that have been shot rather than still could be shot. Or suppress a black sea fleet that's already on the sea floor.
None of this means there isn't a great deal more spending to be done, or that the NATO countries can coast without spending. The Europeans have decades of investment deficit to make up for, everyone needs to modernize for drones, and that's without other competing priorities. The Russians may have a smaller economy than many European nations, but they have a significant head start in certain relevant sectors.
But it is magnitudes easier- and cheaper- to keep up with someone who can't out-spend you rather than to try and catch up with someone with a seemingly insurmountable lead who still continues to spend.
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