distic
4mo ago
What is the end-state your policy is aiming for? A ceasefire? Deter subsequent Russian invasion? Restoration of Ukraine's original borders? The Russian army destroyed? Putin deposed? Russia broken up? Something else?
The main end-state aim was that every country in the world understand that there is no hope to change the world order by force. So a deterrent, but not only for Russia: also for China/Taiwan, etc.). This end-state is now unreachable, because the world order has changed, but that it hurts the aggressor is the most important part. Saving Ukrainians is a net benefit, though.
How much aid would you provide?
Any aid unless:
-
It seriously threatens the economy
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It seriously threatens US security (as in, the US wouldn't be able to handle a direct attack)
-
There is a risk of direct conflict with Russia
So I would provide weapons, money and intel. No no fly zone (because it means a direct war with Russia), nuclear umbrella only after a peace agreement.
Is there an end-state or a potential event in the war that you think would falsify your understanding of the war, and convince you that providing aid was a bad idea?
Most of the time, I think individual policies are not falsifiable (politics does not work this way). But in this case, there are things
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The aid sent actually hurts Ukraine and benefits Russia
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The NATO threat on Russia decreases (eg the US leave NATO), and Russia becomes less threatening.
The last point is the most important to me. Russia and most of the pro-Trump side justify the invasion by saying that Russia feels threatened by NATO and has no other way to protect itself. I think this is bullshit, and the only reason Russia feels threatened by NATO is because it protects countries it wants to invade. If Russia and Trump are right, then Russia should become less aggressive if NATO is less threatening. If Europe and I are right, Russia should become more aggressive if NATO is less threatening.
If you're unable to understand
I'm not unable to understand anything. So you are telling me if NATO drops its defenses in eastern Europe, Russia will become less threatening? Is this what you mean?
There are other way to build trust and increase your security than invading neighboring countries
distic
4mo ago
Yeah I don’t think so. We’re telling the rest of the world that they don’t get everything for free anymore.
The rest of the world never got anything for free. The domination of the US over Europe was beneficial for the US. In exchange for protection, the US could push for its military technologies through STANAGS and use ITAR regulations to control Europe's defense production. Trump and the US right think that the US only owe their success to their superior economy. It seems obvious to me that it is in a very large part a result of the network of allies they built in the world. We will who is right in the future.
distic
4mo ago
The US and Europe banned Huawei because it was used to spy on them by China. Europe uses a lot of american technology like facebook, and it is also used to spy on us, but you can notice it was never banned. Do you think this will last for long without NATO?
Maybe you think that the US technology is just better and we can't just avoid using it, but then you have to learn that FAIR is in Paris, that's where LLaMa models are trained. Europe might not be as useless to you as you think.
distic
4mo ago
The contentious element of "Ukrainian sovereignty" is not the right of ethnic Ukrainians to rule themselves domestically, it's about Ukraine's right to join the Western block via institutions like the EU and NATO.
No, it isn't. Since the beginning of the war, Putin has been saying that he wants to "denazify" Ukraine, which in his language means changing the government to a pro-Russian one. There are four aims:
- International recognition (including in Ukraine) of Crimea as part of Russia.
- To take the four oblasts that Putin declared as Russian
- Ensuring that Ukraine never becomes a NATO or EU state
- Install a puppet president in Ukraine, as in Belarus ("denazification").
All these goals have something to do with the loss of sovereignty. This is obvious for (4), but also for (1) and (2). And anyway, the very concept of a sphere of influence is very anti-sovereignty: it means that a great power should have a say in what a lesser power does, so that lesser power is typically not sovereign.
distic
3mo ago
There is no international competition, those conferences will be restricted to locals for the exact same reason. The american military researcher can't just choose to go to a chinese conference instead
distic
3mo ago
(apparently agreed upon in advance by the heads of state)
Isn't the british monarch the head of state of like 90% of the commonwealth?
distic
4mo ago
It's only a waste if you think Putin will stop there. If you think you will have to defend yourself against Russia at some point, then the sooner the better
distic
4mo ago
That's like saying because the United States objected to nuclear weapons in Cuba, they logically will blockade every country in the world until nuclear weapons are removed from them.
No, not at all. It would only work this way if the US were expanding their borders in the process (as Russia did with Crimea and wants to do with the four oblasts). Because when you expand your border they actually get closer from the threat, which justifies another war where you expand them further.
If Russia is so terrified with having its territory invaded, then the first step should be not to annex Crimea and Mariupol, because with their coast they provide a very sweet invasion spot, eg from Turkey.
distic
4mo ago
You didn't reply to the strongest point of my message, where I argue that your logic logically implies that Russia will never be safe until it controls the entire world (and you don't seem to intend to do anything to avoid it)
distic
3mo ago
Likely giving other nations time to choose (with us or against us), and slapping the nations who chose to align with China with huge tariffs in 90 days.
If that was the plan, it's pretty dumb. First you can't really un-declare a (commercial) war. Second, if you want people to side with you, you don't start a fight with them. Third, it puts everyone except China and the US in a better negociating position with those two, because they can play one against the other.
distic
3mo ago
It's a commonwealth of nations (that's its name...) not a commonwealth of individuals
distic
3mo ago
They would have to end democracy to achieve the conquest (just imagine the protests...), and therefore the opinion of canadians would not matter at all
distic
4mo ago
You are strawmanning, you know. If Russia wanted to decrease the threat at their borders there are other ways, like building trust. With their invasion they only increased the perceived threat from the other side and therefore their own threat level. Given that they were perfectly able to predict it the perceived NATO threat is just a pathetic excuse and you know it
distic
4mo ago
If caring about countries outside your border is paranoia, why does the US care so much about latin American countries?
I didn't say caring about countries outside your border is paranoia. It would be contradictory with helping Ukraine, wouldn't it?
But if "caring about countries outside your border" means invading other countries and expanding your own territory even though your country is already the largest in the world, then the only conclusion is that Russia will have to conquer the entire world to feel safe.
Russia is already the country the most heavily armed with nuclear weapons ; and Ukraine or not the US can erase Russia from the map, so Ukraine can be part of NATO without any change in the threat level for Russia.
distic
4mo ago
Regime change is fine as long as border change isn't?
It's not about being fine or not, it's about disproving the claim that Russia is only interested in protecting itself against NATO
distic
4mo ago
They lost the soft war, so had to settle for a hard one.
No they "had to" nothing. The best way to ensure security is to build trust with your neighboors and not to sponsor corrupted autocratic governments
distic
4mo ago
Europe has a capital market problem but it has no innovation problem. So American companies use the research done in both US and EU and put it to the market (like they do in Facebook AI Research and DeepMind). Or do you think both labs are useless? Huggingface was also created in France untiel they had a need for more funding.
The inexistence of European Big Tech is at the US advantage (they get skills without a competition).
distic
6mo ago
We have had these arguments (and internal mod discussions) since the reddit days, and whenever someone proposes a "solution" that will achieve perfect balance, it turns out that solution maps precisely to "moderate exactly to the degree that would make this place conform to my preferred state."
"User driven moderation" or whatever you call it was a bad idea and a very good way to overmoderate any users in the minority. The only thing that makes sense is rules-based moderation...
distic
2mo ago
direct connections to the Republican president?
The president himself is not really an example on those matters
distic
3mo ago
Unless that includes God or Nature as intent sources
Yes it does if you believe nature or God have intents (it works better with God than nature, as most people who think that nature has intent also think that nature is a kind of god). People who don't think God exists or nature has intents also don't think there are purposes in nature.
Intended purpose means that the way you use the tool now (the purpose it's used for now) is what it was built for (the purpose of its creator). For example if you use your shoes to protect your feet it's their intended purpose, but if you use them to kill a fly it's not (presumably).
distic
3mo ago
A few years months ago, before Elon Musk bought twitter, there was a very popular opinion here on the motte, and probably also among conservatives, that freedom of speech should not be limited in any way, whether directly by the government, or by powerful actors like social medias. When big tech fired people due to their right wing political opinions, conservatives were defending them while liberals were saying things like "they are bigots, they must be improductive anyway".
I don't know what happened, but it seems that a lot of people who had a very broad definition of free speech switched to a very precise and restricted one.
distic
4mo ago
But Ireland and Portugal have also a relativemy weak military and they aren't particularly threatened
"The purpose of a system is what it does" is a stupid opinion if it is taken as a general mathematical truth. The concept of purpose assumes intentionality (the purpose of something is the intent of the people who built/used/participated in it) and therefore the opinion assumes the effects of a system are always those intended by the actors, which is obviously false.
Most of the time "the purpose of a system is what it does" instead means that what the actors want is less important than what the system actually does (it provides more prediction power, as you said).
There are some cases however where intentionality is very important, for example if you kill someone the police and the court will be interested.
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