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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   36407 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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There's been a fair amount of discussion of America's military aid to Ukraine, and no few condemnations of those of us who have opposed that aid. I am informed, in fact, that this forum is overrun with Russian Propaganda, such that some no longer wish to participate. This is lamentable if true, so I thought it might help to prompt some elaboration of the pro-Ukraine case.

People who support aid to Ukraine, in whatever form, suppose that you personally are given complete control over the US government, and can set policy however you wish. What would your answers be to the following questions?

  • How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?

  • 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?

  • 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? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

...Reading comments from those arguing for Ukraine, I've noted from the start that many of the arguments presented in favor of aid appear to be mutually-exclusive. In this most recent discussion, I've seen some people arguing that we should be sending in US or NATO troops, and other people arguing that of course no US or NATO troops are needed and that sending them would be obviously crazy. This is a natural consequence of many people arguing many points of view in one forum, but it seems helpful for people to lay out their own views when possible; often, these positions are just stated as though they should be obviously true.

There have been several pro-Ukraine replies now. Let me turn the question the other way around. What end state the Trump administration and pro-Trump posters are seeking, in Ukraine and elsewhere, and how are the administration's actions contributing towards it?

I can see that there is a point at which any US government would decide that providing aid and supply to Ukraine is no longer worth it. Perhaps the stockpiles are dwindling dangerously, perhaps there is no reason. Given Trump's election campaign, it was even expected, but it was always was a possibility without Trump.

The puzzling part is the way Trump is withdrawing the support. No attempts at diplomacy, no attempts to maintain face. Not only the US is ceasing to provide more weapons and ammo (perhaps understandable, as they are valuable and cost money), Trump has been turning off capabilities that were probably of nearly marginal cost (sharing intelligence and satellite images and HIMARS targeting data, apparently also switching off F-16 radar support). Different than no longer sending weapons. It reads as good-will message to Russia.

In the context of other Trump non-diplomacy (Canada, Greenland, antagonizing NATO), it is difficult to see all of it as a strategy favorable to Ukraine, or Europe, or the US interests in Europe. More like, the MAGA diplomacy is throwing away the interests and allies in Europe, the burning of bridges style.

How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money?

I would continue the amount we've been providing for the last few years, since that appears to be working fairly well. I think spending $50 billion per year to kick commie ass with no risk to our own troops, and the opportunity to test out new weapons and strategies in modern warfare is a great deal for us.

No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella?

Of course not. Any risk to our troops would negate all the advantages of the current situation.

What is the end-state your policy is aiming for?

To punish Russia for this invasion, and deter future invasions by Russia and China. I think the bare minimum is to prevent Russia from being rewarded for their aggression. They should not receive any territory, and if possible they should lose territory. Ideally they should also be economically and militarily crippled, so we have one fewer adversary to deal with.

Putin deposed?

That would be great, but I don't think it's likely.

Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

Well I guess if Putin suddenly came to his senses, apologized, gave back the territory he stole, and submitted himself to a warcrime tribunal, maybe I would support a ceasefire. Or if the Ukrainian people decided they no longer wanted to fight. Otherwise, I don't see why anything should suddenly change.

To punish Russia for this invasion, and deter future invasions by Russia and China. I think the bare minimum is to prevent Russia from being rewarded for their aggression. They should not receive any territory, and if possible they should lose territory. Ideally they should also be economically and militarily crippled, so we have one fewer adversary to deal with.

This cannot be accomplished without significant additional assistance, most definitely including US and/or European troops in theatre and on the front lines in large numbers. It is not clear it can be accomplished at all, without significant risk of going nuclear. The status quo ante can result in nothing better than a grinding forever war until something unpredictable changes (in favor of either side).

If you want a peace by agreement rather than by beating Russia outright, you're going to have to accept less than that. If you want to beat Russia outright, you're going to have to put considerably more in.

Maybe it's impossible, but I don't see the downside of trying. Even if Ukraine loses the war, funding them just means it will take longer and Russia's resources will be more depleted. If Russia is going to end up with more territory, at least we should make them suffer as much as possible for it.

You don't see the downside of keeping up a war of attrition? It's waste on a massive scale. Waste of resources, waste of life, waste of time. Sure, if you're a Ukranian and you don't want to live under Putin it's currently the best alternative, but for anyone who has more options it's a damned foolish one.

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

If you think you're going to have to defend yourself against Russia at some point, you want more than to just keep grinding, unless there's no way to knock them back further.

If you are funding Ukraine, your resources are being depleted as well.

Now that the proxy is expended, Americans pivot to deep concern for Ukrainian lives, to sober realism about Ukrainian prospects. Ukrainians to blame, for fighting, for taking scraps that were thrown to them, for trusting empty American promises. Admittedly Ukrainians were suicidally naive.

I wanted Ukrainians to take whatever deal they could have when ahead because I thought US was never serious about Ukrainian victory, that current outcome is the default. I did not think the pivot would be so shamelessly bold and callous, so miserly. My money was on Ukraine going into the memory hole.

It's all so tiresome. America is not at fault for Ukraine's current condition nor do we owe them anything.

George Washington was right to warn against "foreign entanglements" in his farewell address. Any time we get involved, anywhere, all parties blame the United States for anything that goes wrong and never credit it for anything that goes well.

There's no winning.

How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?

I'm not sure about exact numbers. But sending weapons or monetary support is reasonable. (not doing these things is also reasonable - we don't, and shouldn't fund every conflict around the globe). Putting US soldiers/sailors/airmen in direct combat with the Russians seems like a bad idea which we should avoid.

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?

I wouldn't say no if Putin fell; his government is rather odious. But I don't think that should be our goal because we don't have a reasonable way of accomplishing it without incurring disproportionate risk.

The more reasonable goal would be empowering the Ukranians to resist as long as they want to resist; even though the Ukranians haven't covered themselves with glory in the way they've handled e.g. the Donbass, Russia is the overall aggressor here, both in general (trying to force the Ukranians into their sphere of influence) and in specific (the "special military operation"). As we want to discourage military aggression for territorial expansion or political subjugation, enabling the attacked party to resist more effectively would seem to generally be a good (though not mandatory) thing.

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? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

I would need some evidence that Ukraine was generally the aggressor in this matter, e.g., the "special military operation" launched by Russian in February 2022 was either a false flag, or that the Ukranian government had been substantially harming Russia in some way sufficient to constitute a real casus belli prior to that.

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:

  1. It seriously threatens the economy

  2. It seriously threatens US security (as in, the US wouldn't be able to handle a direct attack)

  3. 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

  • The aid sent actually hurts Ukraine and benefits Russia

  • 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.

lso for China/Taiwan, etc.

what what what Almost every country legally considers Taiwan to be part of China

Most countries pay lip service to the One China policy, yes, but in practice most countries do have separate relations with Taiwan, because Taiwan is de facto a separate country from mainland China and has been for decades.

and has been for decades. This is irrelevant. (e.g. Somaliland). They just like one split and do not like the other

And?

and i want that "and" double think to cease

What doublethink? Why must any user agree with politicalspeak of any country, even their own?

Doublethink is that in one case, de jure explanation are heavily used when in favors American interests, and de facto explanation in the other.

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.

This is just stating that the original goal at the outset was delusional. Many countries have been altering borders by force for the last 3 decades without NATO intervention. At least one of them, Turkey, is a NATO member.

Yes we shouldn't have let Turkey do that, but it seems to me the orders of magnitude involved in those wars is not similar at all

Turkey took over half a country, Cyprus, and is currently occupying vast swathes of Syria. Its not orders of magnitude smaller. The only thing smaller is the media coverage.

Cyprus is a very small country with 1 million inhabitants, and Turkey invaded a third (not half) of the country and its population. 300 000 people is the same order of magnitude as just the losses during the war in Ukraine.

About Syria, it's a mess. Everyone and their friend owns some part of Syria. If you can tell me more about it I'm curious, honestly. How many Turkish soldiers are their in Syria? What part of the territory do they control?

How so?

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 why adding a border nation with a substantial army to a rival military alliance could be perceived as threatening or otherwise unacceptable by Russia, or any given country, then your model of the world is woefully inadequate. Imagine the PRC pulling Canada into its orbit and stationing Chinese troops on the border of North Dakota.

I get this constant vibe, not necessarily just around here but also when discussing this subject elsewhere, this sense of "Why would anyone consider us someone to defend against? We're the heckin' good guys!" and it just feels so out of touch.

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

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?

I'm saying they would perceive less threat, which may or may not be a good thing depending upon the circumstances. If you think being perceived as threatening is important to keeping a bully in line then just say so, but spare me the feigned indignity that anyone could ever consider your troops on their border a security issue.

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

My purpose isn't to steelman Russia's military policy, it's to push back at the ridiculous notion that no one has any reason to view your Defensive Friendship Legions marching along their border as threatening.

What is your theory exactly? The proof that Ukraine is a threat to Russia is that Russia decided to increase the threat level? If Ukraine in NATO is dangerous to Russia, what about Finland and Sweden then? The NATO threat on Russia plays absolutely no role in the actions of both sides (excepted as a propaganda tool) therefore it is unimportant.

My theory is that pretty much any country under nearly any circumstances is going to perceive a rival military alliance expanding to its border as a threat to its security.

Fundamentally, neither side should trust the other because neither side is actually trustworthy. Stalemates, ceasefires, and uneasy peaces backed up by threats of force is all that is on offer until one or both sides collapse internally.

Fundamentally, neither side should trust the other because neither side is actually trustworthy. Stalemates, ceasefires, and uneasy peaces backed up by threats of force is all that is on offer until one or both sides collapse internally.

Not an universal principle. Denmark and Sweden fought a war approximately once per generation circa 900 until 1815. A classic example fundamental lack of trust and historical ethnic enmity driving a permanent conflict. Then, after Napoleonic wars they stopped. Denmark decided of pick a couple of fights against Prussia afterwards, but List of wars between Denmark and Sweden ends in 1814. Both sides had suffered setbacks but neither country collapsed in the sense Austria-Hungary or USSR collapsed. Sweden had lost its meager empire to Russia, and stopped trying to reclaim it. Denmark stopped trying to reclaim Scania.

It's perfectly possible to decrease the threat level significantly, for example by verifiably decreasing the stockpile of nuclear weapons both sides, establishing verifiable demilitarized zones both sides of the border,...

"You gave me insufferable provocation. When I wanted to rob you I found you had locked the door."

Strategic policy doesn't spring forth from fresh earth, it is a consequence of strategic context. Finland, the Baltics, Poland and more recently Ukraine have their armies configured primarily to fight a Russian invasion because Russia has a history of invading, and its leader talks about how he could totally invade. Oh look Russia invaded Ukraine and is annexing their territory, again. It's Ukraine's fault, he was coming straight at me, you all saw it.

In the hypothetical where the PRC are invited to the Canadian side of the border: what happened that lead to that point?

In the hypothetical where the PRC are invited to the Canadian side of the border: what happened that lead to that point?

Who gives a damn? Unless the hypothetical is "the PRC and the US have become best friends and the troops are just there to blow kisses" there's no answer to this question that's going to stop the US from perceiving it as a threat, and that's the point.

The US should give a damn, because if it's been sabre rattling its closest neighbour to the point it feels the need for foreign military assistant it should understand that the """threat""" it is facing is a locked door.

And once the US "understands" this, then what? They decide actually thousands of Chinese troops on their border are just dandy? They stop moving any of their own forces around in reaction, and invite China to send over a million more just for fun?

there's no answer to this question that's going to stop the US from perceiving it as a threat, and that's the point.

If you think taking actions Russia would view as threatening is a good idea because they're warmongering bullies who need to be kept in check then fine, but own it. Stop acting like it's crazy that anyone would view having your happy funtime soldiers on their border as a security concern.

What does it matter?

Is there some metaphysical karmic ledger we must balance, or are we allowed to take geopolitical decisions in the here and now in the interest of the living?

All land is stolen land. So what? I still don't want to be blown to smithereens for no reason so borders and control of ressources should reflect actual military power, not ideology.

All this discussion started with my very falsifiable claim that Ukraine surrendering to Russia would increase, not decrease, the threat level for eastern Europe. I'm not sure how you got to the point that there is any metaphysics involved

I'm as puzzled as you are. Because I think that the threat level for Eastern Europe has nothing to do with Russia's historical imperialism or "trust" or any other such fib and everything to do with how relatively weak the European militaries that defend it are.

There is no world where Eastern Europe isn't contested because lest we forget:

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.

But Ireland and Portugal have also a relativemy weak military and they aren't particularly threatened

They're in western Europe.

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The US until recently occupied Afghanistan flooding Russia with heroin and putting American air bases close to Russia's nukes. The US has been invaded Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It is clear that the US would attack Russia if it could. American politicians would attack or topple Russia if they could. The US is hyper expansionist and extremely aggressive. There is a clear reason why the Russians wouldn't want them on their border. If caring about countries outside your border is paranoia, why does the US care so much about latin American countries?

The US until recently occupied Afghanistan flooding Russia with heroin

China does this with fentanyl and precursor chemicals in Mexico. Does this give us a casus belli against the Chinese?

Yes. You're just illustrating that myopic idealism is irrelevant to international relations, and what actually matters is cost/benefit analysis. If China were doing what it currently does with no nukes and the 1980 economy we'd already be in Hong Kong and Bejing.

Fair enough. To be clear, I didn't ask the question rhetorically or as a "gotcha." I'm not even sure there is a single "correct" response there.

If they did it enough, absolutely.

I'm sure the Chinese understand the concept of an Opium War.

Is china occupying Mexico and using its troops to gaurd druglabs and plantations?

No, just actively supplying the harmful chemicals/drugs.

flooding Russia with heroin

This sounds believable given rumblings about Afghan poppy crops, but do you have any sources for this?

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.

Ukraine can be part of NATO without any change in the threat level for Russia.

Respectfully, this is silly, the border between Ukraine and Russia is (or was) nearly 2,000 km and that's a lot of extra airspace to cover if you're trying to defend against a first strike on either your nuclear assets or your command and control assets. Ukraine also had, I think, the largest non-Russian army in Europe, which meant adding them to NATO represented a much larger conventional threat.

I grant the "nuclear ace in the hole" that Russia has currently is a nice one to have, but will they have it forever? If the US gets a missile defense shield some Russian nuclear weapons might become unreliable as a deterrent.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't think Russia cares about Ukraine merely because of the conventional threat, but it's not serious to say "I have nukes, so my largest and best-armed European neighbor joining a de facto hostile military alliance poses zero threat to my national security." Of course it does. Unless you're suggesting that nuclear-armed states can have no conventional threats at all – in which case neither China or Russia pose a threat to the United States and nothing happening in Ukraine can reasonably bother England or France.

adding them to NATO represented a much larger conventional threat

Am I misremembering: I distinctly recall the issue that caused Ukraine to slip away from Russian sphere was not Ukraine's hypothetical NATO membership but concerned a trade deal with EU, in 2013. Politicians started discussing Ukraine joining NATO only after the shooting in Donbas had started. As a result, decade after the Euromaidan, Russia has lost its gas trade with Germany, more of its European neighbors have joined NATO, and Ukraine will likely not return to its sphere willingly.

Losing Ukraine was an obvious own goal for Putin. Had he accepted the Ukrainian trade deal with EU that Yanukovich had negotiated could plausibly have supported Russian policy of wielding political power in German politics by economic connections and gas.

Yes, I think the economic angle is important. As I understand it, Russia made a competing deal that the President of Ukraine was inclined to accept, but he got tossed out on his ear instead in Euromaidan, and subsequently Russia invaded Crimea.

However, Ukraine-can-into-NATO? discussions actually go back to the 1990s, and NATO declared that Ukraine (and Georgia) would become NATO members in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit. It looks like Ukraine did put their aspirations on hold between 2010 and 2014, which is probably where you got the impression that it was a new discussion, but it's not as if the post-2014 discussions were the first anyone had ever heard of it, Putin had been telling anyone who would listen that Russia opposed Ukrainian membership in NATO for decades by the time 2022 rolled around.

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)

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.

Obviously the presence of a peer competitor anywhere in the world does make you less safe, but if you can't predict that great powers treat their near environs differently than distant ones – and will find some security situations much more tolerable than others – I dunno what to tell you.

(and you don't seem to intend to do anything to avoid it)

Although probably both Vladimir Putin and JD Vance are Motte posters, I am neither, and thus my options for doing anything as regards Russia are pretty much nonexistent.

Decent odds, maybe 50% chance Vance is here. Doubtful on Putin. Would be unsurprised if Russian intelligence used this forum as a source of intelligence on exploitable culture war topics.

You have too high opinion of Russian intelligence.

Yes, I agree with this assessment, except I would be a little surprised if Russian intelligence had heard of this place. Vance being here would be the least surprising thing in the world.

Eh, Russian influence operations run more like ‘hey (fringe group) want some cash and organizational assistance?’.

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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.

if the US were expanding their borders in the process

Oh okay. So if Russia said "hey we're not expanding our borders, we're turning these oblasts into...Legally Distinct From Russia, er, Novorossiya" that would fly with you? Regime change is fine as long as border change isn't? Because the United States attempted regime change in Cuba, and took direct military action against it (that's what a blockade is). And in fact in a lot of places. And I am not convinced that couping people is Good and Friendly behavior.

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Russia's strategy up until the 2014 revolution was not expanding their borders (although Kiev was Russia from 1686 to 1991!), but in exercising soft power and diplomacy in Ukraine. They lost the soft war, so had to settle for a hard one.

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No-Fly Zone

Of the bunch, I think this one is ill-defined --- just larping as if this were Iraq versus the Kurds or Kosovo: the idea of "neutrally" grounding all air assets in the area being helpful to allies that didn't have any. Both Ukraine and Russia have established air forces and the West has even cobbled up aircraft to donate to their preferred side. Maybe it seemed useful in the first weeks when the survival of Ukraine's aircraft seemed questionable, but it's not something well-defined today, I think.

I think more than LARP, it's a materialization of the worst of the kayfabe politics that have been spreading everywhere. The idea behind the wording is to suggest that the US has something like anime demon powers where they go "I said KNEEL" and then the lower-powerlevel figures just find their legs buckling for some reason. Of course the US greatly benefits from the perception that it does have those powers, but it doesn't actually have them, and one failed attempt to use them would forever establish common knowledge that it is so and destroy the resistance-is-futile dividend in all future conflicts even against smaller fry. Therefore it finds itself in the awkward situation of having to convince the public that it obviously could do that, but now is not the right time.

Also the part where to enforce a no-fly zone, you have to be willing to enter combat. A no-fly zone means being willing to shoot at Russia and have them shoot back directly. Which is usually called "being at war".

I don’t understand the escalation fear for this scenario. US and Soviet pilots shot each other down in both Korea and Vietnam, right?

Let’s say NATO pre-commits to enforcing Ukrainian sovereignty, at either the 2022 or the 2014 borders. NATO starts shooting down Russian air assets first. Russia responds with conventional missiles aimed at a US carrier group. NATO escalates with conventional strikes against Russian ground forces in Ukraine.

At what point would Russia escalate with tactical nuclear weapons? What is their motivation to do this? Control of Ukraine is not critical for Russian security; we know this because they haven’t had it for three decades and they haven’t been invaded or suffered any threat whatsoever.

Even if Russia does use tactical nukes, again let’s say at a US CSG, then NATO counter strikes Russian forces; even if the target is on proper, pre-2014 Russian soil, there still isn’t an incentive to escalate to strategic nuclear weapons, because all Russia needs to do is withdraw from Ukraine and there is no further threat.

So why would Russia commit suicide over Ukraine?

Someone please explain the escalation ladder that leads from NATO and Russian forces in a direct conflict (over Ukraine) to global thermonuclear war.

The problem with a no-fly zone in Ukraine specifically is the parts with the actual fighting are within the range of Russian air defense. So not only would you have American aircraft engaging Russian ones, you would have to fly into Russian airspace and attack Russian SAM bases. I don’t know what exactly that would lead to but it’s a lot heavier than MIG alley in Korea.

Someone please explain the escalation ladder that leads from NATO and Russian forces in a direct conflict (over Ukraine) to global thermonuclear war.

I actually don't think that is what would happen. I think Russia's nuclear doctrine would work.

Basically, Russia would lob a small atomic munition at Ramstein and Germany would get off the ride. The motivation for doing this is to get their enemies to decide that discretion is the better part of valor, the Russians and French both, as I understand it, have "we will shoot you with a small atomic weapon before we shoot you with a big 'ole one in hopes you see reason" as part of their strategic thinking, and the US and really I think probably everyone but UK also have this ability although they might not necessarily talk about it. Of course failing that, there's also ample motivation on Russia's part for doing so on the grounds that it's an emergency and the nukes are right there behind the "in case of emergency, break glass" glass; failing that, their motivation for doing so is probably "screw you that's why."

Anyway, I don't think Germans want to die for Kyiv. Chastise Germany gently with nuclear fire (worst case scenario), war canceled. You probably don't even have to nuke Germany, you could nuke, like, the Baltic sea, or a random Ukrainian military base just to show that You're Really Serious. That's assuming Germany could be persuaded to buy into "no fly zone over Russia" to begin with.

[Edit to add: this also answers your question about "why would Russia commit suicide over Ukraine" - if you think that nuking the other side will win you the war you don't think you're committing suicide, you think you're winning. If you're wrong, well, regrettable!]

But, to answer your question, the basic idea for how it escalates to WW3 is essentially "US and Russia exchange conventional volleys, Russia decides it's read the room and needs to show people that it's serious so it does a tiny nuclear bomb as a treat and then reminds everyone that it has a comically large number of nukes left, but instead of backing down NATO retaliates in kind and then OH BOY WE'RE NUKING EACH OTHER WITH TACTICAL WEAPONS and then either somebody runs out of tactical nuclear weapons and switches to ICBMs which eventually triggers general conflagration, maybe because the Russians see the ICBM coming and crack all their silos open, or the tactical nuclear exchange wanders too close to Moscow and they decide to take their plutonium ball and go home. Something like that.

But unless something really bad happens (like the Russians see what appears to be a massive US first strike but is actually, idk, Elon having a normal one) I kinda doubt we get there.

I don’t think Russia would lob any nuclear weapons at NATO initially. I think the first thing they would do is a large scale tactical nuclear strike against the Ukrainian military to collapse it, then wait and see what the response is.

IIRC Coalition forces were shot at enforcing no-fly zones in Iraq a few times without escalating into Desert Storm II (that came later, and largely for other reasons). But you do need to be confident enough to shake off anything thrown at you: it needs to look more like US destroyers shooting down drones in the Red Sea without flattening Yemen in a way that, although still asymmetric, I wouldn't expect US-Russia to match.

I am but a humble biologist, and know little of warfare, politics and economics. But I'm surprised to see nobody has mentioned that the majority of US aid to Ukraine was spent with US arms manufacturers. Many Trump supporters (or at least democrat-haters) bemoaned the atrophied state of US/European arms production when Russia was producing more shells than NATO per month. China can kick our ass in drone production. Setting aside all questions of morality (which I obviously find more compelling than your median Trump supporter), why not use the conflict in Ukraine as an opportunity to re-arm? So to answer your question...pretty much anything and everything that we can make that wouldn't enable Ukraine to steamroll the Russian army and march on Moscow. No NATO troops, no air support (just intel), no nuclear umbrella (for now).

As an aside, isn't domestic spending to onshore manufacturing a key goal of the Trump administration? Why the monomaniacal focus on tariffs and not industrial policy more broadly? And particularly tariffs on our allies...but I suppose that's a different discussion.

The arms that are sent to Ukraine are mostly already manufactured. There's a second-stage effect of having to replenish the stocks after part of it had been sent to Ukraine, but it doesn't have to be 1-1 match or done instantly. It is true that manufacturing capacity is lagging severely, but it can't be upgraded instantly. As I read, making a new shell producing factory takes about 2 years (that's if it doesn't have to pass Californian environmental reviews, otherwise it's probably closer to 22) so the process has started but nowhere near completion or even reaching the necessary capacity. I am not sure what would happen now with Trump's pivot - I don't remember even reading a consistent position from him on military budget. Is he going to expand it? Cut it? Reprioritize it? Honestly I have no idea, Republicans traditionally have been big military budget party, but Trump is in no way a traditional Republican. I hope he keeps and increases the capacity upgrade, but who knows. Maybe he thinks his awesome dealmaking skills are enough.

Ukraine's military is a quarter of the US military. Sustaining the Ukrainian military is like sustaining the US military at the height of the Vietnam war for three years straight in a far more intense war.

Once the war ends the US and other backers of Ukraine have to reconstitute a military far larger than any other non Russian European military from ruins. The scale of the problem is simply too vast.Ukraine was on track to becoming an endless black hole that would require unsustainable amounts of resources for decades.

Ukraine's military is a quarter of the US military.

In terms of what? Ukraine spent $44B on its military in 2022 vs $767B in the US.

A half million soldiers vs 2 million in the US military.

Considering we're sending Ukraine dollars and not humans, I don't know if that's the relevant metric.

It is because soldiers need equiptment. The US is the logistics chain for a force 3x times what was in Iraq during the surge and that force is fighting far harder. That is an enormous sustainment challenge.

A lot of people don't understand that weapon stocks degrade and must be refreshed, and that manufacturing chains have to he kept online.

Of course, on the other side, a lot of people don't seem to understand that it's the industrial base and the size of the US military/military budget that enables it to supply Ukraine, and that a lot of the funding for Ukraine "that's being spent in America" is going straight to the Military-Industrial Complex, because that's what it's there for.

I am informed, in fact, that this forum is overrun with Russian Propaganda, such that some no longer wish to participate. This is lamentable if true, so I thought it might help to prompt some elaboration of the pro-Ukraine case.

If the doubt over Russian Propaganda is the basis of raising questions, then you have an odd way of going about clarifying the potentially lamentable situation.

For example, your first 8 questions are-

How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else? What is the end-state your policy is aiming for?

Set aside that many of these are badly structured questions in and of themselves. More importantly, what possible answer could any of these questions provide from a pro-Ukrainian supporter that would or would not illuminate the prevalence of Russian Propaganda in this forum?

If your theory that the forumites answering are only saying [Big Amount] because of Russian Propaganda on this forum, as opposed to other sources of information or non-Russian Propaganda? Would [Smaller Amount] provide any meaningful contrast? If a pro-Ukrainian says 'no, I don't support a No-Fly Zone,' does that... mean anything regarding the forum propaganda that a pro-Ukrainian saying 'yes, I do support a No-Fly Zone?' would indicate?

If not, why are you asking the question as a means to gain elaboration about the thing that would be lamentable-if-true? Where is the light? A 'just asking questions' inverse gish-galloping- demanding a host of extensive answers from low-effort questions- is certainly a technique, but it would be a technique far better suited for generating heat, particularly given the ease of anti-supporters to selectively pick at the answers they find most vulnerable and ignoring the rest, without having to justify (or provide) their own views to the same questions.

Moreover, and this is an even more basic structure question, why aim the question at the supporters of Ukraine aid, as opposed to the opponents of Ukrainian aid?

Again, if your stated basis of concern is to believed, then the best survey audience with whom to evaluate the prevalence of Russian Propaganda on the forum is to start with the people most likely to have adopted Russian propaganda. Then you could ask questions where you know what a Russian propaganda line answer, and then compare the answers that align with the Russian propaganda line versus those that differ. This, in turn, could allow comparison and contrasts, and see how much of opposition to a thing is due to reasons aligned with propaganda versus those that are not.

This wouldn't be the end of a genuine search for truth, of course, as not all capital-P Propaganda is false. Sometimes Propaganda boosts rather than causes the narratives of the target audience. Independent convergence is a thing. But you would at least have chosen a more appropriate survey audience.

And this is without poisoning the well with a bad question like-

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? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

Yes, this is a well-poisoning question. We are both aware we are on a rationalist-adjacent forum where intellectual integrity is prioritized. Most of the audience has internalized the principle that good theories need to be falsifiable, because non-falsifiable is itself evidence that no amount of evidence or reason can reverse the premise. which is Bad in a community that prioritizes pursuing Truth and Reason. This is also a cornerstone of the scientific process, practically an axiom of rationalist discourse, and anyone reading this can recognize the follow-on insinuation. If someone says no, they are being unreasonable since reason demands being open to being disproven (falsification), and if they are being unreasonable in this they are being unreasonable in the rest as well.

What not everyone will recognize is that you are not only asking a leading question, or that you are leading with a variation of the hindsight bias (the mental error of looking back and thinking an eventual result was obvious all along), but that you are insinuating an axiom outside of its appropriate paradigm. The Ukraine War is not a laboratory hypothesis for the scientific method. It is a strategic conflict between multiple strategic actors, and this means that paradigms of strategies and game-theory apply.

And because fewer people are familiar with those paradigms than they are rationalist-adjacent forum norms or maxims regarding the scientific method, they wouldn't recognize that the premise of the question doesn't make sense. Or even that 'yes' is the irrational answer that should invite doubt. Not just because doing so would reveal susceptibility to the hindsight bias invitation- the validity/soundness of a decision is the decision made with the information at hand on the time, not information unavailable to them- but just on the matter of strategic paradigm itself.

Outcomes do not falsify strategies.

Outcomes are results, but results are not a strategy, nor are strategies predictive devices in and of themselves. Strategies entail predictions, but equating the two is a compositional fallacy, believing what is true of a part of a thing is true of the whole of the thing. Even ignoring that potential fallacy, believing that results falsify a process (strategy) that leads to them is a first-order mistake. It is a common mistake, particularly among the sort of people who believe that a strategy that fails is axiomatically a falsified strategy, but this is a bad axiom. And like bad axioms in any field, anyone whose theoretical understanding of a field rests on bad axioms is building their understanding on poor foundations, whether the user acknowledges it as an axiom or not.

This is much easier to see when politically loaded topics are substituted by less political topics, which can be done by some basic coding to produce less politically contentious analogies that rest on the same argument structure and axiom of outcome-falsifies-strategy.

For example, this-

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? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

-could be represented for an axiom test as-

Is there an end-state or a potential [outcome of a high-stakes process] that you think would falsify your understanding of [the high-stakes process], and convince you that [engaging in the high-stakes process] was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on [the high-stakes process] are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

-because the axiom has to apply to all models for it to apply as an axiom. The Ukraine War, in turn, is a [high-stakes process], and events including but not limited to how the war ends are outcomes of that process.

However, the axiom-test is just as valid if applied to-

Is there an end-state or a potential [outcome of a high-stakes process] that you think would falsify your understanding of [the high-stakes process], and convince you that [not engaging in the high-stakes process] was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on [the high-stakes process] are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

-because despite flipping the 'engage with high-stakes process' with a 'not engage in high-stakes process,' the axiom of outcome-falsifies-strategy does not depend on what the actual strategy is. That is why it is an axiom, as opposed to a special pleading rhetorical device / argument-as-soldier to advance the strategist's favored (or dis-favored) positions.

Now consider this in a less ideologically charged- or propagandized- process where a strategic paradigm applies... like gambling. Which has substantial literature overlap with issues of strategic competition, risk-management, and so on. The field of game-theory was named because of the various meta-analysis commonalities, and has been foundational to the field of international relations and conflicts, including the school of Realist theorists.

Now just as we substituted [Ukraine War] for [high-stakes process] for the purpose of the axiom, we can substitute [high-stakes process] for something like...

Is there an end-state or a potential [outcome of high-stakes [gambling with your life's savings]] that you think would falsify your understanding of [high-stakes [gambling with your life's savings]], and convince you that [not engaging in high-stakes [gambling with your life's savings]] was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on [high-stakes [gambling with your life's savings]] are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

Somehow, it is less pejorative if someone says 'no, there is no result from gambling with my life's savings that would falsify my understanding that gambling with my life's savings is a bad idea, and convince me that my strategy of not gambling with my life's savings was a bad idea.'

And that somehow is because people will reflexively drop both axioms- the axiom that outcomes falsify strategies, and also that they must be willing to falsify their theories of strategy to be logical and reasonable- on topics of strategy or risk. Not least because they are not valid axioms on topics of strategy and risk. Which is really not surprising to anyone with any notable experience in games of strategy of uncontrollable factors, or risk management.

As anyone with experience in games of cards or dice should know, even dominant strategies don't always win. Sometimes the other party has a better hand, and statistically improbably things happen all the time. Similarly, there are times where high-risk/high-reward strategies are the only plausible strategies for [victory], whether it's because you're making up a deficit or because playing safe is a guaranteed loss. There is no axiom-level 'your strategy is falsified if you lose' principle in play- there are only disputes about the sort of assumptions should go into evaluating the tradeoffs. And, as with most subjective value systems, there is no axiom that people must agree on shared valuations, or defend their own valuation system to your own, regardless of whether you find it convincing or not. The player who tries their hardest to maximize their probable draws or avoid a lose condition, and the player who throws hands to keep a weaker player in the game because [reasons], are playing fundamentally different games for what [victory] even is, even as they play by the same nominal draw rules.

Similarly, a strategy of risk management doesn't get disproven if the risk manifests regardless. Most forms of risk mitigation are about mitigating the frequency of a negative outcome, not the total impossibility, and so it could well be worse to change strategy after a bad-outcome than to stick the course. Again, examples are not hard to find. The negative consequences of false positives driving unnecessary (and sometimes deadly) medical interventions does not disprove the value of screening for deadly diseases at a point where the risk of surgery can pre-empt the risk of no intervention. If someone asked what sort of outcome from a car crash would make someone falsify their belief that safety belts are a good idea, they would be looked at with suspicion and rightly so, regardless of whether they were a bad-faith actor for [special interest group against safety belt laws] or merely incompetent. Nor are the suspicious being irrational or unreasonable for not engaging with a question about what sort of result of [car accident] would make them falsify their strategy of [maybe we should make seat belts mandatory by law], even if there are possible negative outcomes like malefactors trying to race away from the cops and running over children and wouldn't someone think of the children?

Because, again, outcomes do not falsify strategies. Even emotionally-evocative outcomes chosen to try and shift the strategic choice.

Outcomes can justify a re-evaluation of strategic assessments. Outcomes may reveal new information to update strategic assumptions. Outcomes may even drive changes in strategy as decision-maker's tastes change rather than anything underlying information in and of itself. But outcomes do not 'falsify' strategies. The fact that a strategy turns out poorly (or well!) is independent of the validity of the strategic choice, as good strategies can still fail, and bad strategies can still succeed. And this is because judging the ultimate outcome is judging by [information] that- by its nature- is not available at the time of decision about the strategy. It could only be included if one used that as an assumption.

Which- since the point of a strategy is to try and manage risks and opportunities for the future- is assuming the conclusion to justify a decision on how to approach the future.

Which also is not a good practice as a general point of strategy. But it can work well as a propagandistic frame-setting trick when paired with discrediting pejoratives that dares the target audience to self-identify themselves with the alternative.

Outcomes are results, but results are not a strategy, nor are strategies predictive devices in and of themselves. Strategies entail predictions, but equating the two is a compositional fallacy, believing what is true of a part of a thing is true of the whole of the thing. Even ignoring that potential fallacy, believing that results falsify a process (strategy) that leads to them is a first-order mistake. It is a common mistake, particularly among the sort of people who believe that a strategy that fails is axiomatically a falsified strategy, but this is a bad axiom. And like bad axioms in any field, anyone whose theoretical understanding of a field rests on bad axioms is building their understanding on poor foundations, whether the user acknowledges it as an axiom or not.

I think this is simply a weird position to take, as it makes assessment impossible. If the assumptions are wrong, the strategy is based on faulty premises and won’t actually produce the kinds of results that you expect. If I think Russia is on a mission of global conquest, then a strategy based on containing Russia and challenging them at every step makes sense. But if that’s not true, then that strategy will not work. If I’m basing my strategy on assumptions about Russia being weak, they do not work on a strong Russia.

So if the strategy doesn’t work, obviously it’s a mistake somewhere in the base assumptions made, and until those assumptions are corrected, nothing you do can succeed. If you take the position that “just because I’m not getting the expected results doesn’t mean there’s a problem in my assumptions,” self correction is impossible. You’ll just do this same strategy even harder as though if you just try hard enough the strategy will work. On what other basis would you judge the worth of the strategy?

This is much easier to see when politically loaded topics are substituted by less political topics, which can be done by some basic coding to produce less politically contentious analogies that rest on the same argument structure and axiom of outcome-falsifies-strategy.

Okay, so like in football, you make a strategic approach to the game by saying “this team is good at pass rushing, so let’s focus on running. If they’re catching your running backs for loss of yards every time, it’s simply stupid to say that the strategy is just fine. Any high school coach would probably change strategies after the first quarter because the point of the strategy is winning the game, and the strategy is not leading toward winning the game.

This is why he draws the distinction between 'updating' and 'falsifying' later in the essay

So if the strategy doesn’t work, obviously it’s a mistake somewhere in the base assumptions made

His point is that this conclusion has to come from something more than just 'it failed' - details, a holistic understanding of the failure. In general, if a strategy doesn't work, maybe you got unlucky, or maybe the mistake was elsewhere.

Why think about a whole country like a gambler, though? This reminds me of Trump telling Zelensky “you’re gambling with lives and you don’t have the cards”. If your country is at stake, then such extreme caution is required that worst case outcomes do disprove strategy. There is a poster here (forgot who, apologies) that uses the metaphor of XCOM frequently. In XCOM, if you die your run is permanently over. So unlike gambling, in XCOM you only want to take odds that ensure victory, or nearly ensure so. You would never consider a “90% chance of winning the engagement” dice roll, because over eleven engagements you’re going to lose permanently. Now Ukraine can be considered one singular engagement. Should they consider something that has a 10% chance of permanent loss? If someone robbed you and said, “give me 30% of your earnings or I will throw you off a plane with a parachute that has a 10% chance of malfunctioning”, I think the former option is always better because of the value of what is safeguarded. That’s important for Ukrainians (obviously), but it’s also important to the West if Russia continues inflicting casualties such that Ukraine has no more viable manpower. Because then they get the whole country.

I have no idea what the actual chance is of Russia taking the whole country — that information is only understood by JD Vance and Trump, who are privy to the absurdly expansive American intelligence network on Russia plus all that Ukraine knows, plus more knowledge of the global economy, plus knowledge about the potential of unrest in the Middle East and over Taiwan! Plus knowledge about both American and Russian technology, plus greater knowledge of nuclear armagaeddon threats. Has the CIA come out against Trump this time on the Ukraine question?

Put another way, any amount of getting pulled over when driving drunk disproves the strategy of driving drunk. Because you shouldn’t drive drunk, because the consequences are so extreme. Perhaps America believes that Ukraine is currently in geopolitical “drunk driving” mode, which is dangerous to the bus filled with naive Europeans who share the road with him.

Remember that whether Ukrainians live under oligarchic control in corrupt Ukraine, or oligarchic control in Russia, hardly affects their lives. Farmers will farm, miners will mine, CounterStrike players will бляt. From the standpoint of a prole like me, I can see the Slavic Christian happy in either region of control, having their basic needs quite met, hopefully reproducing. When war is over, the smart ones will continue to move to the West. It makes Russia more powerful if it takes Ukraine — which isn’t ideal — but I’m not a permaelite like Robert Swan Mueller III, I haven’t invested my reputation into whether America controls the fate of Eastern Europe. And I’m someone whose first American ancestor fought the war of independence! This is not a “life or death” war to me and it shouldn’t be for the average Ukrainian, who has been made to believe that it is much they like were made to believe in Bolshevism a century ago.

Remember that whether Ukrainians live under oligarchic control in corrupt Ukraine, or oligarchic control in Russia, hardly affects their lives

I agree, and I think most Ukraine supporters and also Ukrainians are deluding themselves about this. However, they're deluding themselves because of their nationalistic, patriotic instincts - instincts driven by the correct understanding that you fight back when attacked, even though fighting back sucks, because giving in incentivizes attacks. The US and every other nation has an interesting in sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives for the simple purpose of demonstrating that if you start an offensive war, it will be a bad decision.

Also they have the data point that the pro-Russian breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk ended up being AFAICT horribly, cartoonishly bad places to live vs. usual post-Soviet oligarchy. If they threw in the towel, sure, they might end up a Belarus, much better off in hedonic terms than being current Ukraine in war. But they might also end up a DPR/LPR, a way worse place to be. A principle of being cautious and not gambling with bad outcomes doesn’t really point at capitulation then.

There is a poster here (forgot who, apologies) that uses the metaphor of XCOM frequently. In XCOM, if you die your run is permanently over. So unlike gambling, in XCOM you only want to take odds that ensure victory, or nearly ensure so. You would never consider a “90% chance of winning the engagement” dice roll, because over eleven engagements you’re going to lose permanently.

Uh, that's not how X-Com works, and AFAICT it's mostly not how its bastard remake works either. Actually, one of the reasons the original X-Com winds up on so many "best of all time" lists is precisely that it does allow you to continue from losing battles, and thus has a more realistic war feel because you are not (artificially forced to be) some magic plot-armoured force that wins literally every battle.

Eh, there's definitely points in the campaign of both the original and remake where a squad wipe is game over. If you can't get a B-team up, armed, and (in og) psi-resist tested before you wipe, you'll end up trying to fight ethereals with a truck full of laser rifle rookies who get mind-controlled into killing each other every turn.

The remake made it even worse with the 4 soldier limit. Very easy to not get any backup team trained, because how are you gonna take a dead weight rookie as 1/4th of your squad? Long War raising that to 6-10 and adding a fatigue system to make you rotate troops was a huge improvement.

About the only truly-irrecoverable squad wipe in the original (besides Cydonia, of course) is if your main base gets raided early on. This is how I lost my first attempt at TFTD's Superhuman difficulty: a 1 January FBA proc wiped my base while my Triton and main squad were out (because I might be good, but I'm not good enough to beat an Aquatoid Dreadnought crew with three guys), and while I didn't lose immediately from last-base-killed (because I'd placed another at game start) there wasn't enough time to get my second base operational before I lost from poor score.

While you do need substantial amounts of equipment/training to fight Ethereals, by the time they show up you should have a worldwide interception grid, which means that if you're stuck without an Ethereal-ready squad, you can just stop fighting Ethereal missions until you have one (with perhaps an exception for an Ethereal Small/Medium Scout, if you haven't gotten a psionic capture yet; they aren't too bad). You won't lose from poor score, because shootdowns themselves give bucketloads of points and if you're shooting down incoming UFOs the aliens won't score from succeeding at their missions (in particular, because you're shooting down the Terror Ships, they won't be able to create Terror Sites, which means no massive penalty for ignoring/fleeing from them). Quite recoverable, if tedious.

I haven't actually played the remake, to be clear, and that "mostly" was doing some work because I did know about soldiers being less expendable and there being more hardcoded-game-over missions.

EDIT: "Craft is lost" is painful enough that it's usually not worth risking one, but there are cases where I think optimum play is to take substantial chances of one. The most notable is the first Sectoid terror site in UFO, which will be an absolute ball-buster of a mission (this is the only mission in most games of UFO that approaches Cydonia in relative difficulty; early base defences can be worse but are rare) but which is your first chance to get a Sectoid Leader capture. It's worth taking a substantial chance of failure, including craft loss, to get that capture; you don't know when you'll get another chance and you really want psi to at least be in the works when the Ethereals show up in July. In TFTD there aren't many cases where it's both an incredibly hard mission and a chance to get something rare. The first Terror Site is quite hard, and is technically the only guaranteed appearance of Deep Ones, but there's an 80% chance to get Deep Ones in both the February and March Terror Sites so it's probably not worth risking a wipeout; the first Aquatoid land mission (and thus Calcinite corpse chance) isn't quite the horror show of the first Sectoid terror site in UFO (due to Calcinites being a hell of a lot weaker than Cyberdiscs, and due to a lack of need for rank identification/live capture) so while I think it's probably worth risking a craft loss if you have to (to get drills for cracking open Lobster Men), and I have thus risked it, you usually aren't in dire enough straits that it's necessary (at least, not if you're as good at the game as I am, and if you're not playing some kind of challenge run). There are, of course, plenty of hard missions in TFTD, but most of them can be aborted without missing out on anything irreplaceable.

I guess you're a lot better at the actual "UFO defense" part of UFO defense than I ever was lol. I always struggled with the air war, and couldn't have pulled off dominance like that with interceptors.

Basically, just drop bases in Germany, North Dakota, Beijing, South Africa, Argentina and Tasmania, and give them all Hyper-Wave Decoders (I beeline HWDs immediately after the no-brainer Laser Rifle; I usually deploy the first three bases with Large Radars but wait until HWDs for the last three). This is cash-hungry, but because it lets you recover more UFOs it pays off very fast. Normally I only keep three Interceptors and wait until Avengers to have interception everywhere (because I don't do much interception, preferring ground assaults when possible, and because you need advanced craft to shoot down Battleships anyway), but if I were on the back foot like that and I didn't have Avengers I would spam them (they arrive in four days and Plasma Beams build fast). And yeah, there's a bit of micro with sending Interceptors to where the UFO is going rather than directly at the UFO to avoid long tail chases.

The remake has an ironman mode that only allows auto-saving, no manual.

The original X-Com was also rather infamous for it's odd, weighted chances of ally fire missing all 99% shots, while aliens were able to snipe characters from across the map. In the original, you could replay missions, but said missions could also be rather lengthy, and could be difficult to tell where your potential screwup was, meaning you needed to play very conservatively and tactically in the early and mid-game, while you game up your economy and tech-level.

And this still didn't stop aliens from sniping your guys as they came down the ramp, as sheer random chance could still fuck you over hard.

So his comparison is a little loose, but I get the overall gist of his argument.

The remake has an ironman mode that only allows auto-saving, no manual.

I wasn't talking about loading saves; my point was that you can continue from a lost battle without having to just load a save.

The original X-Com was also rather infamous for it's odd, weighted chances of ally fire missing all 99% shots, while aliens were able to snipe characters from across the map.

Have you actually played it? This meme is just from people whining about missing, not a real thing. (Actually, the remake has a worse case of "you missed an alien standing right next to you"; the original makes rolled misses fire randomly within a cone, which will probably still hit if the alien's close enough, whereas the remake forces rolled misses to actually miss.)

And this still didn't stop aliens from sniping your guys as they came down the ramp, as sheer random chance could still fuck you over hard.

That's not random chance; that's you not knowing how to negate it. Smoke grenades give you concealment and thus block reaction fire. In TFTD dye grenades don't work, but in TFTD there's much less of a problem with this anyway (because the Triton has a door and is flush with the seafloor, and because you can open doors without stepping through them in TFTD).

I wasn't talking about loading saves; my point was that you can continue from a lost battle without having to just load a save.

Certainly. This doesn't stop bad luck from potentially slaughtering your front-runner team, however.

Have you actually played it?

X-com: UFO defense was one of the first games where I was introduced to the concept of 'pirating' and 'cheats' by someone in charge of the computer lab at a school I was helping out at. And while I don't have it installed right now, it's currently sitting nice and neat in my steam library.

Yes, I've played it. I've played it alot, thank you. You trying to brush off it as 'just a meme' makes me wonder if you've played it.

that's you not knowing how to negate it

Yes. And that's part of the difficulty curve - negating random change as much as possible. The original X-com has a surprising amount of tactical depth that can make even normally terrifying circumstances(such as night missions or breaching buildings/landed space ships) trivial, but even experienced gamers likely aren't going to get that out of the box and will experience a learning curve.

Yes, I've played it. I've played it alot, thank you. You trying to brush off it as 'just a meme' makes me wonder if you've played it.

I've beaten it on Superhuman without active psi and with Cydonia on June 1, and I literally wrote a non-negligible chunk of the wiki.

The hit chances are accurate, at least for "hit" rolls vs. "miss" rolls (rolled misses can still hit at close range, and I think it's possible for rolled hits to miss at extreme range or where there's cover involved, both of these symmetrical between X-Com and aliens). Aliens hit a lot on higher difficulties because their accuracy stats are pretty high. If you think there's "weighting" going on that makes X-Com rolls systematically worse and alien rolls systematically better than the normal formula, you're seeing a pattern that's not actually there, presumably due to negativity bias letting you recall "bad" results better than "good" ones. I guess you're one of the (many) sources of that meme.

There are three ways that the AI "cheats"; it can perform Auto mode reaction shots (you can only use Snap), it "remembers" the position of your units after they leave LoS (most notably allowing psi-attacks on them), and it gets omniscience after turn 20. This isn't one of them.

Should they consider something that has a 10% chance of permanent loss? If someone robbed you and said, “give me 30% of your earnings or I will throw you off a plane with a parachute that has a 10% chance of malfunctioning”, I think the former option is always better because of the value of what is safeguarded.

I expect that if "give in to the people threatening you to extract 30% of your income" becomes the normal response, the behavior of threatening people to extract their money becomes more common.

In that example, sure, but re: Ukraine, we have like two or three decades of American foreign policy experts talking about how Ukraine is a special red line for Russia. There’s no indication that the slippery slope is anything but fallacious here.

Hm, I was under the impression that Russia has had expansionist adventures in other places too, not just Ukraine. Is that incorrect?

Remember that whether Ukrainians live under oligarchic control in corrupt Ukraine, or oligarchic control in Russia, hardly affects their lives. Farmers will farm, miners will mine, CounterStrike players will бляt. From the standpoint of a prole like me, I can see the Slavic Christian happy in either region of control, having their basic needs quite met, hopefully reproducing.

Thank you for making this explicit. This is the principle ideological question at issue. Reasonable people can disagree here, of course, but all parties to the debate do need to make their position on this question clear, and anything else is just obfuscation.

More importantly, what possible answer could any of these questions provide from a pro-Ukrainian supporter that would or would not illuminate the prevalence of Russian Propaganda in this forum?

I strongly suspect that some of the reports @FCfromSSC has been getting (he is, after all, a mod) rely on the reasoning that certain positions regarding Ukraine policy, including his own, in and of themselves constitute Russian propaganda and/or are only espoused by Russian propagandists. He is presumably intending to challenge that reasoning by attempting to derive those positions de novo, via the Socratic method.

The Socratic method is kind of notorious for its low success rate, though, with perhaps an exception for a captive audience.

If the doubt over Russian Propaganda is the basis of raising questions, then you have an odd way of going about clarifying the potentially lamentable situation.

I think what the OP meant is that it would be lamentable if some people are really considering leaving over their belief that this place is full of Russian propaganda, not that the OP himself believes that the Russian propaganda is here.

And the premise of the response still applies- if the goal is to illuminate the prevalence (or lack thereof) of Russian Propaganda, then you should solicit Russian Propaganda or adjacent views to invite observations of the contrast, not invite people to maximize attack vectors for Russian Propaganda (or adjacent) arguments-as-soldiers upon themselves.

How did you get the idea that that is or is claimed to be the goal?

If I'm advising a hypothetical DeSantis administration (i.e. accepting the basic premises of MAGA foreign policy thought, but ignoring Trump's personal beefs with Zelenskyy and apparent mancrush on Putin) then my strategic analysis is along the lines of:

  • Ukraine is in Europe.
  • The aims of US policy in Europe are (1) to encourage the Europeans to pay more of the cost of defending Europe [unspoken - from Russia] and (2) to prevent Europe (and the EU in particular) from developing the ability to act in a coordinated way contrary to US interests. This is hard because these aims are almost but not quite contradictory.
  • In particular, Taiwan (and containing China more broadly) is worth more to the US than Ukraine (and containing Russia more broadly), but this matters less than you think because a land war going on right now and a possible naval war in the future draw on different weapon stockpiles with different supply chains.
  • The so-called "rules based international order" is valuable to America, most importantly because it discourages nuclear proliferation. A world where Putin gets what he wants because he is a nuclear madman and DeSantis isn't is a world where a lot of countries are going to build nukes, and a few are going to act like nuclear madmen.
  • Russia's goal is to subjugate Ukraine (probably by installing a pro-Russian puppet government similar to Lukashenko in Belarus). Putin has been explicit about this. "Neutrality" is a furphy - a "neutral" Ukraine would not be able to avoid subjugation without some kind of western security guarantee which Russia would consider a violation of neutrality. In the failed Istanbul negotiations, Russia was far more concerned about "neutrality" than territory, and their idea of neutrality incorporated an explicit treaty commitment by the USA, the UK, and France not to intervene if Russia attacked Ukraine again. Note that from a European perspective, a "neutral" Ukraine is also one that wouldn't be able to prevent Russia crossing its territory in order to attack other European countries.
  • The key known unknown is Putin's intentions after subjugating Ukraine. The Mearsheimer view is that Russia wants to incorporate Ukraine into their sphere of influence, that this is reasonable because Ukraine is a natural part of the Russian sphere of influence, and that once Russia controls its natural sphere of influence Russia will not, for realist reasons, want to engage in continued aggression. The Putler view is that Russia is engaging in what lefties call "imperialism", Paradox players call "blobbing", and academics with sticks up their asses call something like "opportunistic expansionism". 200 years of Russian policy suggest that Russia sees its natural sphere of influence extending at least as far as the Vistula, and public statements by Putin administration officials are consistent with this, as is Russia's campaign of cyberattacks, election interference, WMD terrorism etc.
  • If the Putler view is correct, then failing to defend Ukraine is a mistake. It is a survivable mistake for the US, but a catastrophic one for Europe. (To paraphrase Churchill, if we appease Putler in Ukraine then the US will get dishonour, but the EU will get war).
  • Apart from Putin's intentions, there are no important secrets here. The Russians, Ukrainians, Europeans, Chinese etc. all know the same things we do. In particular, the Europeans know that Ukraine is near-existential if the Putler view is correct.
  • A strategic deal with Russia is not worth it if it means throwing Europe under the bus, because Europe is an order of magnitude more valuable as a trade partner and as an ally against China.

And the resulting policy recommendation is:

  • In the early days of the war, support for Ukraine is cheap and there is an outside chance of solving the Russia problem (if Russia either cuts and runs or offers a reasonable deal once it becomes clear that they can't win quickly). The Biden policy of providing cheap help like intel, and older weapons which were going to be replaced in the next 5-10 years anyway was a good one.
  • Once it becomes clear that this is a long war, and that support for Ukraine is going to start coming out of the budget rather than existing idle resources, the goal is to maintain a leading role while dumping the economic cost on Europe. So say, first quietly and then loudly, that the US is happy to continue helping Ukraine, but after some reasonable period of time (3-6 months) they are not going to do so for free. Then follow through - based on the above analysis the Europeans will grumble, but pay up. The US should chip in enough to retain a seat at the table - say 10-20% of the cost.
  • Engage in some performative show of strength in the Pacific to make clear that this is a pivot and not a bugout.
  • Support the European-funded response. Sell anything the US can produce that Ukraine wants on normal commercial terms. Encourage US arms manufacturers to prioritise orders bound for Ukraine (which is at war) over orders for the US (which is not). Share intel if you already have it or can acquire it cheaply. If Musk refuses to provide Starlink service to the AFU on normal commercial terms, then he doesn't get US government contracts.
  • Support the economic war against Russia, particularly in ways which directly promote US interests. (An energy-rich America is an economic competitor to Russia). Drill, baby, drill. Tank the oil price. Build out LNG export capacity. Name and shame the German businessmen who are trading with Russia via Kyrgyzstan.
  • Points about public diplomacy which shouldn't need saying but apparently do - don't lie for the benefit of a domestic audience, because everyone can see you lying. Don't take sadistic pleasure in selling out Ukraine, because it strongly suggests you would sell out Taiwan as well. Don't endorse Russophile right-populist parties in western Europe. Talk like you are leading a coalition, stamp US flags on US-made weapons the Germans are paying for, etc. etc. - the whole point is to gain the benefits of leading the free world while shirking the cost.
  • What is the win condition? We were seeing it in January/February this year. The combination of the cumulative impact of sanctions, the increasingly effective Ukrainian drone war, and the lame-duck Biden administration's decision to allow Ukraine to use western weapons to attack targets on Russian territory means that Russian logistics are falling apart. (The west, on the other hand, has near-infinite logistical capacity). If Russia doesn't come to terms while they can still supply the army in Ukraine, then the army is destroyed and they lose everything including Crimea - so they probably will.
  • If Putin does come to terms, offer face-saving concessions (Ukraine in the EU but not NATO, possibly international recognition of Russian rule in Crimea if they still control it) but not substantive ones.

Your plan just looks like the Biden plan, but the Biden plan is what got Ukraine invaded to start with.

I suppose if I look extra hard its like the Trump plan but super slow and tediously done with no real offramps for the US.

In either case its a silly plan. "Support European-funded response" might as well read "Spread Unicorn horn dust". Also, "support the economic war..." its not possible. The Euros sabotaged that capability by going green.

No, this looks exactly to me like the kind of half-pregnant sort of plan that "serious people" opted into with Iraq and Afghanistan. At least if you came to me with a serious decapitation plan with SEAL teams and assassinations and sabotage of Russian nuclear facilities I could take you seriously. This, I cannot.

If the Putler view is correct, then failing to defend Ukraine is a mistake. It is a survivable mistake for the US, but a catastrophic one for Europe. (To paraphrase Churchill, if we appease Putler in Ukraine then the US will get dishonour, but the EU will get war).

You lost me here. The idea that Russia is even capable of threatening more conquest is just silly. Ukraine was the softest target in Europe, and Putin has spent years beating his head against it. Both Ukraine and Russia have been bled dry by the war, so even if Putin won a total victory today he still wouldn't get back the manpower and materiel he spent conquering it. There is no way that he's going to come off a victory in Ukraine and move on to Poland, especially not after Poland has had so much time to prepare. And Poland wouldn't even have to fight Russia alone, since it's a NATO member. Given that Putin couldn't even get a clean win against Ukraine, it's safe to say that if he ever goes toe-to-toe with the core members of NATO his ass is grass.

Russia is poor and weak, and it just spent a whole bunch of its dwindling manpower to laboriously pry a few provinces out of Ukraine's cold, dead hands. This was its last gasp.

Ukraine was the softest target in Europe

Ukraine had the largest army in Europe outside of Russia. It had conscription and a pretty large pool of veterans of the conflict with Russia that started in 2014. It had a decent amount of Soviet weaponry, including SAM systems (largest in Europe) that prevented Russia from gaining air superiority. Last but not least, Ukraine is large that allowed them to consolidate defense. A small country would be wiped out if Russians advanced 150 km.

Of all the countries neighboring Russia in Europe (China would definitely be a different matter), Ukraine was the hardest target. Putin invaded for two reasons: he expected Ukraine to fold and not defend (essentially a repeat of Crimea capture but with some token fighting) and secondly, of all targets, Ukraine is the most precious. Subjugating Ukraine would make all the other countries that are not NATO protected to become subjugated, too.

The Baltics exist. They are a lot weaker than Ukraine. By helping Ukraine, we do two things:

  • Demonstrate our credibility in defending countries against Russian aggression
  • Degrade Russia's war fighting capacity

Both of which deters Russia from messing with the Baltics later on. Yes, the Baltic states are in NATO, which precisely makes it worse, because fighting over them has a good chance of leading to WW3 or nuclear Armageddon, with a far higher likelihood than a war in Ukraine. So in this case, "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" makes sense. It's also not even "we fight them over there", it's "we give the Ukrainians weapons so they can fight them over there" which makes the calculus even better.

I believe the current NATO assessment is that Russia's warfighting capacity has increased and that it will be stronger and better-prepared to fight NATO after the hostilities end.

I'm not aware of that assessment but it's not unbelievable the Russian military at this point in time is more capable than it was in 2022, simply because of the necessity to fight a high intensity conflict in Ukraine. However, long term Russian war fighting capacity is still being degraded due to the accumulating effects of battlefield losses, economic sanctions and their inefficient war economy. The more we can deplete their strategic reserves, cause more casualties, and inflict economic damage, the less of a threat Russia is in the long term, and the more time they'll need to re-organize and re-arm before their next military adventure.

So if Ukraine capitulates today and Russia decides to immediately shift to attacking NATO, then, yes, that would indeed be a poor outcome. If we keep supporting Ukraine and Russia gives up because of war exhaustion, that's the best outcome. If we keep supporting Ukraine and it becomes a frozen conflict, it's still a good outcome because Russia is still occupied with Ukraine. If we keep supporting Ukraine and it eventually loses in a year or two, that would be suboptimal but still better than forcing Ukraine to capitulate now since it will keep Russia occupied for longer, depleting more of their resources, and they'll need a longer recovery period to reconstitute their strength before they can think about attacking the countries we really care about.

However, long term Russian war fighting capacity is still being degraded due to the accumulating effects of battlefield losses, economic sanctions and their inefficient war economy. The more we can deplete their strategic reserves, cause more casualties, and inflict economic damage, the less of a threat Russia is in the long term, and the more time they'll need to re-organize and re-arm before their next military adventure.

Yes, the Russians have blown through their Soviet-era artillery munitions stockpile. But pull back for a second. When was the American military more capable, 1941 or 1945 after taking a million casualties? Was the US more of a threat over the long term after 1945 or less of one?

Or heck, let's say you think the US isn't a good comparison because we destroyed all of Europe's industry. Fine, let's take Russia - more of a threat in 1941 or 1945 after losing 27 million people? I'm sure that theoretically caused them long term problems but we still had a couple of decades where "nuking Germany repeatedly" was basically our best bet at stopping them.

If we keep supporting Ukraine and it eventually loses in a year or two, that would be suboptimal but still better than forcing Ukraine to capitulate now since it will keep Russia occupied for longer, depleting more of their resources, and they'll need a longer recovery period to reconstitute their strength before they can think about attacking the countries we really care about.

I think this is context-dependent on what we're supporting Ukraine with. If we're supporting them with our own munitions stockpiles and we're sending weapons to Ukraine faster than we can reconstitute them, then we'll be the ones needing a long recovery period. This knife also cuts both ways when it comes to advanced weapons systems, the more of which we supply Ukraine with the less capable they will be if we ever use them against Russia.

Russia has blown through its stockpiles and it is not doing well economically, which impacts its military production and force generation. Sure, their military capability might have increased through adaptations and experience, especially with drones, but it's not a significant departure from their army in 2022. In fact, in terms of equipment, their formations are probably less mechanized today than three years ago. I don't see a parallel between the Russia today and the US or USSR from 1945.

Yes, if we (NATO) are depleting our materiel faster than we are depleting that of Russia, then that's a problem. So far, I don't see good evidence that's the case. Further, Ukraine itself is also producing a significant amount of war materiel like ammo, armored vehicles and drones, so having Ukraine by our side is still better than forcing it to surrender.

it is not doing well economically

Hmm. A quick Google tells me they made 3.6% growth last year. That seems...fine. Better than the US, even.

So far, I don't see good evidence that's the case.

How large was the collective NATO artillery park in 2022 versus now? How about tanks? Mines-clearing vehicles?

Why is Germany's military now less ready than it was in 2022, falling to 50% readiness rates? Probably has nothing to do with shipping gear to Ukraine (spoiler: it has something to do with shipping gear to Ukraine).

More comments

How is it going to fight NATO if it can't even take more than 1/5th of Ukraine?

Yes Russia's progress has been slowed heavily thanks to US aid. But presumably "fighting NATO" would imply levels of direct involvement from the US and its allies beyond what we've seen in Ukraine.

I mean - it probably isn't. I don't think Vladimir Putin wants to fight NATO. That's part of why he attacked Ukraine before they joined up.

But without copious amounts of American air power I do think that the Russians would tear a hole through NATO EU right now (well assuming away the fact that their hands are full of Ukrainians). The Europeans are just not ready to deal with Russia casually vomiting thousands of drones, mines, and cruise missiles in their direction and then sending a hundred nominally obsolete tanks to do donuts in the rubble. The European cope is that Ukraine's NATO-trained troops are actually retards and that NATO's indigenous ways of knowing modern means of warfighting would carry the day but I think the truth is that we're witnessing fires lap maneuver again and they would get shellacked.

Once it becomes clear that this is a long war, and that support for Ukraine is going to start coming out of the budget rather than existing idle resources, the goal is to maintain a leading role while dumping the economic cost on Europe. So say, first quietly and then loudly, that the US is happy to continue helping Ukraine, but after some reasonable period of time (3-6 months) they are not going to do so for free. Then follow through - based on the above analysis the Europeans will grumble, but pay up. The US should chip in enough to retain a seat at the table - say 10-20% of the cost.

This is the part that seems like the lynchpin to me. Suppose that the Europeans reasonably believe, as they have for 50 years now, that they can call America's bluff here and either not pony up, or only pony up for things that are not useful to the war effort like expanded benefits for servicemembers? Are we willing to back that up by writing off Europe? Is Europe able to hold us hostage by putting a knife to their own throats?

The whole point of my argument is that very visibly phasing out free support for Ukraine (while continuing to offer paid-for support) unambiguously forces the decision, under circumstances where Europe has more to lose than the US if support for Ukraine ceases. If the US was following my approach and Europe didn't pay up*, then US support for Ukraine would cease at the end of the phase-out period and Europe would be faced with the even more visible choice between ponying up and watching Ukraine lose.

* Note that Europe has, in fact, been paying about 60% of the financial cost of supporting Ukraine, although this is arguably less than our "fair share" given that it is our backyard and not yours.

Now the US has forced Europe to put up or shut up, the bond market thinks that Germany is going to borrow a lot of money to pay for rearmament, and the usual suspects on the British left are freaking out about Rachael Reeves looking for welfare cuts to pay for rearmament. So Europe acting collectively to defend Ukraine is likely - but in our timeline it is going to be implicitly anti-American in a way which could have been avoided by smarter US policy.

Note that Europe has, in fact, been paying about 60% of the financial cost of supporting Ukraine, although this is arguably less than our "fair share" given that it is our backyard and not yours.

It's possible that, since the start of the war, the EU has supported Russia more than Ukraine via its imports of natural gas and oil.

I ran this by AI, and it seems eminently plausible. Here's what Grok says about EU purchases from Russia since the start of the war, although I wouldn't take it as gospel:

Value: The financial cost is estimated at €125–156 billion for this period, with 2024 alone seeing €21.9 billion spent on Russian fossil fuels (oil and gas), per reports from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and The Guardian. This exceeds the €18.7 billion in financial aid to Ukraine in 2024, highlighting a persistent economic link despite sanctions.

The comparison is a bit unfair because Russia doesn't produce natural gas for free, so it's not all profit. But still, it's fair to say that the EU is funding both sides of the war. Kinda like the US funding both sides of the Israel/Hamas conflict.

It's possible that, since the start of the war, the EU has supported Russia more than Ukraine via its imports of natural gas and oil.

I am struggling to determine if this is correct. It appears to be true insofar as it considers financial aid (not military or humanitarian aid) from EU institutions. If you include all types of aid, and include European countries themselves as donors (rather than EU bodies), it is not true, from what I can tell.

(1) https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/28489/ukrainian-military-humanitarian-and-financial-aid-donors/ (2) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/24/eu-spends-more-russian-oil-gas-than-financial-aid-ukraine-report

Excellent summary.

I think making Ukraine (and Europe in general) something the Europeans solve for themselves is good for both parties. America simply doesn’t have the resources to put hundreds of billions into Europe when there are lots of hotspots popping up across the globe. It doesn’t work logistically. But at the same time, I don’t think it works for European countries who have become extensions of American foreign policy in their own territories. They really don’t have a strong enough military to deal with European military threats because the assumption has always been “we don’t need to be ready for war because Americans will defend us.. We can’t do that, even the USA probably doesn’t have the manpower to fight in Taiwan and Eastern Europe at the same time. Add in a flare up in MENA and you’re asking the impossible.

How should we support Ukraine becomes obvious once the question Why we should support it answered. And I mean the toyota five whys.

How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?

I think the amount of weapons, money, and intelligence that was being provided at the start of the year should have been maintained for the time being, but I also think we should have used the threat of cutting off this funding to encourage European nations to rearm and build out their own military capabilities. No no-fly zone, direct air support, or American boots on the ground under any circumstances short of a Russian attack on a NATO member. If the situation were particularly dire for Ukraine and they asked for further assistance, I would be fine with Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc. sending "volunteers" to bolster their ranks, with the understanding that such soldiers would not be protected under NATO Article 5 and would be disavowed by their governments in the event of capture to maintain a fig leaf of plausible deniability, and that this was the last possible escalation on our end i.e. no NATO troops fighting under their own flags, including European NATO members.

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?

To prevent further loss of Ukrainian territory so long as and only while the Ukrainian government and people are committed to continuing the fight. When they no longer are, a ceasefire will be signed and the front line will become a DMZ akin to Korea's, patrolled by peacekeepers from either some neutral third country or a mixture of troops from NATO and CIS member nations. I don't care about Ukraine's original borders or the destruction of the Russian state or military, only maintaining the norm that countries should not annex the territory of their neighbors.

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? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

If Putin uses a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine (with the exception of preventing the loss of Crimea, which I think is his red line), then I will admit that whatever level of western support led to that outcome was too high, as it led to an even worse violation of international norms than the one it was intended to punish. I will conclude the same thing if this war leads to the Russian government collapsing in such a way as to lose control of its nuclear arsenal or have its eastern territories annexed by China.

I will start that I'm from Poland which may create a completely different vision to someone more distant from Russia. I'm also no military expert and I have no idea what the best course of action is.

Having said that, I think that the collective west should do everything in their power to stop Russia from subjugating Ukraine because after this, we will face not just Russia but Russia+Ukraine and Russia will not stop. This is a repeat from 1938, where the Czechoslovakian military potential that could have subtracted the Germany potential, got added to them. Russia has a long history and experience in breaking Ukrainian spirit and after pacifying, they will conscript them and send them to die in another Russian war. Russia's win will also start a new era of nuclear proliferation (if this ship has not sailed already) and the world with nuclear arsenal distributed among many more players will become much less stable.

I am personally willing to endure a substantial hit of my standard of living now to contain Russia. I donated money to Ukrainian cause but obviously my whole wealth would hardly make a noticeable dent if not followed by a collective action. I believe that any spending now is a bargain compared to the spending in resources and lives in the future facing victorious Russia. It is clear in hindsight that a much stronger response in 2014 would have been much better that having to deal with the current situation.

I'm just wondering if you're aware that in that particular crisis the Polish military regime, instead of offering military assistance to the Czechoslovak state to defend itself, actually decided to take part in the partition of it instead in order to pursue irredentist territorial aspirations of its own? They did this even though they were aware that they were the only state capable of realistically offering military assistance to Czechoslovakia in a potential defensive war, and that the Nazi government was staking a claim for Danzig for a long time, which meant that Poland was obviously going to be threatened in the future, that is, they were going to be next.

This is a repeat from 1938, where the Czechoslovakian military potential that could have subtracted the Germany potential, got added to them.

The remaining Czech rump state received no security guarantees or assistance from any great power, it had an enormous armaments sector that was completely intact, and was actually even beyond the range of the air forces of Germany's enemies. The parallel with Ukraine doesn't have legs to stand on in any of those aspects.

I'm not claiming the current situation is a 1:1 copy of the interwar period, just that the Czechoslovakian potential helped in later Hitler's military conquest (including several Slovakian divisions being used in 1939 invasion of Poland). I'm not going to defend the Poland's dick (and short-sighted) move of grabbing Trans-Olza from Czechoslovakia, either. It is worth pointing out, though, that Poland's help to Czechoslovakia was a complete fiction back then because Poland and Czechoslovakia were not too friendly, mainly due to a similarly dick Czechoslovakian move of invading Trans-Olza in 1919 while Poland was preoccupied in defending their eastern borders.

A couple of things.

  1. Don't you think that it's rather far-fetched to claim that Poland was "defending" her "eastern borders" in January 1919? From whom? The newly formed Ukrainian state that was claiming her independence at roughly the same time as Poland? Also, what "eastern borders" did Poland have? East ot Poland a civil war was raging, and the bolshevik regime was fighting for survival, not attacking Poland.

  2. Slovakia's actions after 1939 don't fit into your parallel at all. Nothing of this sort did happen or is ever going to happen in Ukraine. (You're not going to claim that Slovakian independence was illegitimate, are you?.) Regarding military potential, it's true that the Germans captured enough equipment to equip roughly 45 divisions, plus large armaments industry facilities intact. Again, this is something that's never going to happen in Ukraine at all. To spell it out: the area that remains under the control of the Ukrainian government never had and does not have an armaments industry comparable in scale at all (to spell ot out further, look at size of the Czechoslovak armaments sector as compared to the German in 1938, and that of the Ukrainian as compared to the Russian today), and even if it did, there's no chance of the Russians ever capturing it intact ever.

  3. No matter what went down in 1919, in 1938 Poland should have assisted Czechoslovakia against Germany even out of nothing else but self-interest. It was well known by that time that Hitler wanted to undo the Versailles Treaty, consequently to regain lands that were surrendered to a newly formed Poland, especially Danzig. It logically followed that if the Sudeten crisis ends with concessions made to the Germans, they'll be emboldended and make similar demands to Poland. It was evident. France and Britain were not in a geographical position to assist Czechoslovakia in a defensive war, but Poland was.

The remaining parts of Czechoslovakia were also annexed in 1939, handing over those armaments sectors too. The best defensive positions (and fortifications) against Germany were given up with the Sudetenland.

I know. My point is that the rump Czech state had an armaments sector which was enormous by regional standards and was captured intact by the Germans, and without force. None of that applies to Ukraine. When Czechoslovakia surrendered territories, it was not given any security guarantee by any great power afterwards, as far as I know. That's also something that very obviously isn't going to happen to Ukraine.

My suspicion is that Ukraine now has the third-largest military drone industry in the world (after China and Turkey). But the main thing that Europe loses if we surrender Ukraine and end up confronting Russia later is a large, competent, battle-hardened army.

Where do you think Russia fits in on that scale? I don't have a sense for the size of drone forces on either side there.

Also drone warfare seems a pretty clear loss for the US in the last decade: I remember 15 years ago DARPA (or maybe some other part of defense) was funding quadrotor control research, but even though that looked interesting at the time, they weren't the ones to operationalize it first, and still don't seem to have (announced) plans to do so.

My understanding was that Russia was getting their drones from China.

Also drone warfare seems a pretty clear loss for the US in the last decade: I remember 15 years ago DARPA (or maybe some other part of defense) was funding quadrotor control research, but even though that looked interesting at the time, they weren't the ones to operationalize it first, and still don't seem to have (announced) plans to do so.

That surprises me. I had always just naively assumed the US was at the leading edge of all technology, especially defense related.

I find it hilarious that EU members and North American states are not even in the top 3 (if you're correct).

In the case of the US (and, I suspect, most other NATO countries) it is the usual disruptive technology threatening incumbents problem. The culture that is the USAF sees it as a jobs program for fast jet pilots. Hence drones replacing fast jets is existential to the USAF.

this forum is overrun with Russian Propaganda

I have seen some on youtube but not a single one on this forum actually.

How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?

The most important idea is making it clear to Putin that he needs to back off or the US will take a more active role in the conflict. I would have given him an ultimatum, a week to make significant steps towards a ceasefire or 5 US divisions arrive on the front. In fact, I assumed this was exactly what Trump meant while talking about "ending the war in 1 day". Putin would have caved because his nation is barely hanging on while fighting against a 3rd rate local power. This is from the perspective of 2 months ago of course, when this was still a US proxy-war. I actually don't think the US is in a position to threaten anything anymore, Donald Trump burned too many bridges and diverted too many resources.

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 "ideal" outcome would probably be a return to pre-war Ukrainian borders or similar, and a somewhat neutral Ukraine. Meaning, not Russia's puppet but not a puppet of the EU either. So a neutral grayzone and a hard stop to the Russian conquest of neighboring countries. And the US could have gotten A LOT of natural resources, of course. They would have been the obvious side to build mines and factories since the Ukrainian infrastructure and economy will be in shambles whenever the war eventually ends.

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? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

Maybe there's an asteroid about to destroy Earth tomorrow and Russia is somehow the only country in a position to stop it and conquering Ukraine is somehow necessary for destroying it?
I dunno, I have a difficult time imagining the continuation of the conflict as necessary or good or sensible in any way. Some people are afraid of MAD but I can't imagine Putin dooming his country to nuclear devastation. He doesn't care about many things but he does care tremendously about Russia's stability and continued existence.

Putin would have caved because his nation is barely hanging on while fighting against a 3rd rate local power

As a matter of fact I think this is not how we should be perceiving Ukraine, and in the present condition it would likely have been able to overwhelm any European military except perhaps France and Poland one on one. Consider that Europeans are not actually Aryan superhumans, their pretty exercises would amount to meme material in a week of fighting a real large scale war, and they have very little in the way of materiel too. They are concerned about Russia for a good reason: they are in fact weak.

What are you basing this on? I dont really know much in that regard, but e.g. noone has air superiority in the current war, and thats something I would think the europeans are good at. Of course, a lot of european countries just arent that big individually, and certainly Germany would need time to get its infantery running, but getting overwhelmed? And France has nukes.

Experience in modern warfare, army size, operational logistics. Western aviation is unlikely to be a game-changer.

I do not account for nukes.

Yes. Great power should be able to easily overrun small shithole country in three day special operation (and then get bored by decades of guerilla warfare and go home).

The implications of late Eastern European events are:

Either Russia is shithole country too or Ukraine is Great Power too.

My radical thesis is that both are shitholes but not really militarily inept ones in the way people might imagine.

The "ideal" outcome would probably be a return to pre-war Ukrainian borders or similar, and a somewhat neutral Ukraine.

How do you intend to achieve a neutral Ukraine? The ukrainians can decide to be pro-western without our consent, and as things stand it seems that they would.

How do you intend to achieve a neutral Ukraine? The ukrainians can decide to be pro-western without our consent, and as things stand it seems that they would.

A treaty between Russia, the US and major European nations to defend Ukraine against further aggression. A token military force from said nations overseeing the relevant borders.
Investment, humanitarian efforts and debt relief from both western nations and Russia so Ukraine can recover within a reasonable period of time (decades as opposed to centuries).

In return, changes to Ukraine's constitution comparable to Switzerland's so they're not legally allowed to join any alliances or start offensive wars. And maybe some small payment in natural resources (nothing even remotely close to 50% of revenue).

All of this is assuming smart, competent leaders guided by a sense of empathy, of course.

I guess I expected something stronger. Im from Austria, and we also were and are nominally obligated to be neutral since the end of allied occupation - but in practice, we were and are a western country. Our neutrality is great, we used it as an excuse far more than it stopped us from doing things we want - many americans wont even know it exists. But for that same reason, I doubt this kind of neutrality is much of a concession. Propably NATO Ukraine is equally achievable.

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Please allow me to begin by politely registering my disdain for your vagueposting.

I am informed, in fact, that this forum is overrun with Russian Propaganda, such that some no longer wish to participate.

I can sympathize with your sentiment, but while turnabout may be fair play, that does not make it good.

Anyway. For a little context, since of course nobody here knows who I am, I think my general political position is to the left of the median Motte attitude on many issues, but at the same time I have some views that would probably see me labeled a “dangerous fascist” or something like that in the deep-blue city in which I live. When it comes to the Russo-Ukrainian War, I would accept being labeled as something of a hawk. I believe we should have responded to the 2014 invasion of Crimea much the way we responded to 2022’s “full-scale” invasion. In fact, at the time I recall writing a short essay for my high school AP Lang class arguing in favor of sending Javelin missiles to the Ukrainian forces… but I digress.

So to answer each of your direct questions:

  1. I would provide weapons, money, training, and intelligence, much as we are now. Direct US military involvement, whether from the air only or with boots on the ground, would be foolish in the extreme. I doubt I need to convince anyone of that! However, I would have fewer strings attached to the support. I would have provided higher-end weapons sooner (with a concomitant greater urgency toward improving our own materiel production) and would apply far fewer, if any, restrictions on their use. Probably the only restriction I would apply is not to fire indiscriminately on civilian targets. Disallowing the Ukrainians from firing into Russian territory is/was, in my view, just nonsensical. This policy allowed the Russians to mass equipment just across the border, defeating the purpose of providing advanced long-range weapons in the first place. At that point you may as well not send any aid at all.
  2. The target end state of the war would be a formal peace treaty with a minimum of territorial concessions to Russia. Obviously Russia is the stronger country and a certain amount of concessions would be necessary, for example, I don’t see any realistic pathway to Ukraine getting Crimea back as part of the negotiations. We would be aiming for an outcome somewhat like Finland achieved at the end of the Winter War: losing on paper and giving up territory, but retaining independence and control over most of the country with formal recognition by the aggressor. This could in practice look something like giving up Crimea, probably Donetsk and Luhansk, and the occupied territory in Kursk while the Russians withdraw from the rest of their currently-occupied territories. After this treaty the Ukrainians would retain their democratic government and general pro-Western alignment.
  3. I suppose if Ukraine’s government collapsed, or if the country suffered demographic collapse, or if it looked like Russia was going to end the war stronger than when it started. Each of those would be fair grounds to call the US/Western backing a failure/waste, but frankly none of these really seem to be on the table as things stand.

To be honest, many of the right-wing-ish takes I’ve seen against aid for Ukraine (not necessarily yours, to be clear, I don’t really know what you personally think) seem to rely on an oddly naive view of the Russian Federation as a geopolitical actor, as though Putin is sitting at the table ready to sign a peace treaty and it is only Zelensky’s personal perfidy that is stopping this from happening. It takes two sides to end a war. The Russians have no incentive— none— to come to the table if the West ceases to back Ukraine. Let us not forget that the initial invasion plan was for an immediate decapitation strike to topple the Kyiv government and Russian troops parading in the streets on a days-long timetable. The big-picture goal has always been to absorb and annex certain territories (basically Crimea plus a connection to Russia proper) and turn the rump Ukraine into a subservient client state, like Belarus.

If the US drops its support for Ukraine, it will not lead to a swift end to the fighting, it will lead to an acceleration in fighting (even if after a pause) as the Russians press their newfound advantage. The only way this war ends in even a semi-permanent peace is for a formal treaty to be signed (probably involving some kind of UN, EU, or Turkish monitoring mission along the negotiated border), and that can only happen with Ukraine in a position of relative strength.

How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?

Assistance at the level of July-Dec 2024 seems like a reasonable starting point. We could discuss variation from that, but surely nothing like troops on the ground or a no-fly zone.

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?

I wrote last week, and I'll stand by it, that I think the specific terms of the resolution of the conflict are somewhat less important than their finality.

Is there an end-state or a potential event in the war that you think would falsify your understanding of the war

I'm not sure what this means, necessarily. I certainly could come to believe facts about the period of time from 2005-2022 that would change my opinion on it. That wouldn't be the product of new events, except insofar as those events reveal new evidence of what happened in the past.

convince you that providing aid was a bad idea?

I think the term "bad idea" here is a bit overloaded. There are outcomes that would lead me to believe that we (the pro-Ukraine forces) could have perhaps done better or that it's a shame that we didn't accomplish as much or that it failed.

Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

I mean, new evidence on the period from 2005-2022 would be one. For example, evidence of a genuine pro-Russia sentiment in the western half of the country being suppressed would constitute strong falsification of my current belief that the majority of Ukraine wishes to remain independent of Russia.

How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?

Not being an expert, intelligence, money to spend on new American-sourced materiel, and materiel we have on hand that is unneeded or soon due for replacement (more or less what we've done, to my understanding) all seems to make sense. Military intervention, like your other examples, would be problematic.

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?

Ceasefire and deterring subsequent Russian invasions (and other wars of aggression). A Germany-esque partition wouldn't be a good thing, but it would be a lesser evil to periodic invasions or whatever you call the Georgian border situation

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? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

Russia somehow becoming more powerful, due to the war. But with how much the war has damaged Russia, that seems unlikely.

Edit: And I second @Dean's point about single-trial outcomes and strategies (relevant ACX post), but I answered the question as though the future-observed outcome was knowably the most probable outcome, for the purposes of legibility to you.

Deciding between exact amounts or types of aid is like deciding whether Burger King or McDonalds is better. Deciding between no aid and aid is like deciding whether raw sewage or McDonalds is better. You need a lot less judgment for the latter decision than for the former.

I'm no military analyst, so I couldn't tell you the exact details of what aid is appropriate. But I can safely say that "none" is not in the right ballpark even while lacking the expertise to give you those exact details.

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?

A Holocaust denier could ask the same question. Is there evidence that could convince me that the Holocaust didn't happen? Not really. You'd have to go through all of the evidence for it piece by piece and show all of it to be wrong in some manner. There's so much evidence for it that it could only be wrong in some weird scenario like being a brain in a jar who is being fed completely fake information about the outside world.

I'm no military analyst, so I couldn't tell you the exact details of what aid is appropriate. But I can safely say that "none" is not in the right ballpark even while lacking the expertise to give you those exact details.

The position I really resent is "more", endlessly, with no self-conscious awareness that this is in fact the position being taken. I strictly prefer "none" to an endless "more", for a whole variety of reasons. I strongly resent conducting "limited" wars where we burn endless resources and lives just to keep the fight churning. A decisive end, even if it is not the end we wanted, is better than that. I would be very happy if South Vietnam had survived, but the Vietnam war ending, even with a victory for the North, is still a better outcome than another decade of warfare.

A Holocaust denier could ask the same question.

That's a hell of a thing to say.

Are you familiar with Friedman Units? At every point during our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, we were told "The next six months are crucial" and how we needed one more troop surge or clearing operation to get things stable so we could finally see some durable results. Sunk cost fallacy is a hell of a drug. If what is needed is American troops, say so, and we can discuss whether the juice is worth the squeeze. If what is only needed is arms and money and intel, say that. But either way, I do not think it is too much to ask for those arguing for more support to clearly identify what results we should expect from that support, and where they're willing to draw the line if the results they predict are not, in fact, achieved.

But either way, I do not think it is too much to ask for those arguing for more support to clearly identify what results we should expect from that support, and where they're willing to draw the line if the results they predict are not, in fact, achieved.

If you are asking about falsifying results rather than falsifying factual claims such as "there was a Holocaust" or "Russia started the war", then Dean answered you: strategies are not falsified by results.

There's so much evidence for it that it could only be wrong in some weird scenario like being a brain in a jar who is being fed completely fake information about the outside world.

The difference is whether your decision is based on predictions. At least thats what I think, because the level of certainty you describe is wildly off-base for predictions about the outcome. There are good reasons of course not to act based on situation-specific predictions in conflict, so maybe a better question would be: Is there any outcome that would change your mind about how to approach future conflicts, not involving Russia or Ukraine?

A lot of the pro-Trump/pro-deal faction on here like to describe themselves as realists and pat themselves on the back for understanding Realpolitik and not being squishy idealists. It seems to me, though, that the Realpolitik goes in the other direction. Russia is our biggest foreign military threat, and is the biggest threat to our allies as well. While I'd prefer a world in which they didn't invade Ukraine, they've proven both that they are too incompetent to score a quick victory and too bullheaded to call off their dogs. For their part, the Ukrainians don't seem to have any interest in capitulating.

What we have here, boys and girls, is a proxy war. Whether or not Ukraine has a shot at "winning" or regaining significant territory is irrelevant. Every day that the war continues is another day that the Russian military continues to deteriorate without any loss of American life? But what about the Ukrainians? As long as they're want to keep fighting, we should support them. They're morally in the right here, so I don't see what forcing a settlement on them accomplishes. If the war becomes unpopular enough that the situation changes, then I'm all for changing along with it, but other than a few anecdotal accounts of people fleeing conscription, I'm not seeing it. If there were mass anti-Zelensky protests in the street, we'd know about it. And the idea that Ukraine can't sustain these kinds of losses for much longer is hogwash. In World War I, Germany, with about the same population, lost close to 2 million war dead. Ukraine's population was similar at the beginning of World War II and they lost 1.6 million war dead, in addition to over 5 million civilians. In 3 years of fighting, Ukraine has lost about 100,000 soldiers and a few thousand more civilians. This war can continue for a very long time.

The thing that pisses me off the most about this, though, is that Trump makes it sound like a deal is ready to go and all that's missing is Zelensky's signature, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. All we have is Trump's word that Putin is willing to deal, but for all we know that could mean anything. There seems to be some suggestion that the front lines will be frozen, but I just don't see that happening. I don't see Putin letting the forces in Kursk who he's been unable to dislodge in 6 months being allowed to stay indefinitely. It wouldn't surprise me if, in addition to this, Putin were to start demanding additional concessions, like Ukrainian withdrawal from the entirety of the regions he wants to annex.

And at this point there's no reason for Puitin not to make such demands. If he gets them he gets them, and if he doesn't, then he's in the same position he was a few months ago. And what does Trump do in that situation? He certainly hasn't indicated that if Putin is the one that isn't willing to deal, that he'd send US troops or drastically increase aid or anything like that. In other words, I really just don't see how making this deal furthers American interests in the region. I can see how it furthers Donald Trump's personal interest, in that he wants credit for ending the war regardless of how bad a deal it is or whether the peace lasts longer than the end of his administration. I honestly don't see the point in all this.

And one final point: A bunch of people have said that it's better for Ukrainians that the killing stops and that they still have a country, period. First, if you're going to make that argument, at least acknowledge that Putin is more to blame for all of this than Zelensky. He could end this war right now if he cared to, but he's more concerned about pursuing his revanchist vision of Mother Russia. Second, if you want to do this, don't talk about realism, and don't talk about how you personally don't give a fuck about whether Ukraine survives because you only care about America. These views simply aren't compatible.

A lot of the pro-Trump/pro-deal faction on here like to describe themselves as realists and pat themselves on the back for understanding Realpolitik and not being squishy idealists. It seems to me, though, that the Realpolitik goes in the other direction. Russia is our biggest foreign military threat, and is the biggest threat to our allies as well. While I'd prefer a world in which they didn't invade Ukraine, they've proven both that they are too incompetent to score a quick victory and too bullheaded to call off their dogs. For their part, the Ukrainians don't seem to have any interest in capitulating.

Our biggest potential rival is China not Russia, and the battle will likely be over Taiwan not Ukraine. So we’re fighting the wrong war from the realist point of view. My concerns for the future are refugees from MENA flooding Europe and North America, a wider MENA war, and China making a play for Taiwan (which is a major high tech manufacturer, including critical computer chips). Ukraine is not a critical country here. Russia isn’t a strong enemy, they have a lot of mineral and oil wealth, but they aren’t a modern country with a modern economy and military. They’re only relevant because they have a nuclear arsenal. Ukraine, if it hadn’t been invaded is not a prize. It’s a corrupt country full of farmers. It has no critical industries, it secures no border, it’s just there.

As long as they're want to keep fighting, we should support them.

The glaringly obvious problem with your argument is that the whole reason many of them are willing to continue fighting in the first place is their assumption that the US continues to support them, and will continue to assist European NATO states in their efforts to also support Ukraine. The causation is the other way around.

Russia is our biggest foreign military threat

I don't understand why we're required to take a permanently antagonistic stance towards Russia.

But what about the Ukrainians? As long as they're want to keep fighting, we should support them.

I don't think that Ukraine's continued participation in the war is tethered in any direct way to the "will of the Ukrainian people" (and I'd say the same for basically any other country in a similar situation as well; Ukraine is not unique in this regard).

you personally don't give a fuck about whether Ukraine survives because you only care about America

I don't give a fuck about Ukraine as an abstract political entity, no. But I do care about the lives of individual Ukrainians, I assure you.

If I were Ukrainian my choice would be to lay down my arms and join up with Russia, without hesitation. Some things are worth fighting to the death over, and some things are not. If it truly is the "will of the people" to fight to the last man, then that too is their prerogative. But I see no reason why we should be obligated to support them in an effort that I regard as futile and self-destructive.

Kursk who he's been unable to dislodge in 6 months being allowed to stay indefinitely

They've basically halved the size of the Ukrainian territory held in Kursk and it's beginning to look rather more like a salient than an offensive (queue the calendar stretching back to 1943 meme): https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/83a2f24901c941d581c0c523ecd2619b

First, if you're going to make that argument, at least acknowledge that Putin is more to blame for all of this than Zelensky. He could end this war right now if he cared to, but he's more concerned about pursuing his revanchist vision of Mother Russia. Second, if you want to do this, don't talk about realism

People on this forum are very confused about what realism means in terms of international relations which is fair since very few actually studied IR. Realism is about modelling world affairs through a framework of rational, power-maximizing states competing for power. Realism has no moral stance, no more than a wildlife photographer has a moral stance about the territorial struggle of two wolf packs.

You can use realism to advance moral ends or immoral ends. It's like a physics model, morally neutral.

The alternative to realism is liberalism and constructivism, which do have a moral stance. The liberals and constructivists believe in crusading for democracy, they won't rest until the whole world shares their ideology, the constructivists think that the struggle for power is just a social construct that can be undone with nagging, sanctions and judicious use of force. They didn't really believe that Russia was using a realist model since they didn't really believe in realism, they don't believe in an anarchic world, they believe in a world policeman suppressing all the baddy countries and enforcing the law.

There are serious downsides to this lack of realism. We now live in a world where Russia and China are closely aligned, undoing the US's most underappreciated masterstroke of the Cold War, splitting China away from Russia. Considerable quantities of munitions have been expended. Air defences that could be useful in Asia have been diverted to Europe. China is getting even stronger in relative terms.

This is what Trump and his people (Colby in particular) are worried about. While the liberals have been starting and losing stupid wars in the Middle East, China has been building industry. While the liberals were bitching about Russian spying or taking towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass, China has been building ships, missiles and planes. They produce more manufactured goods than the next ten countries combined. Now they're getting ready to go in on places that matter (chip producers, high-tech economies, sea lanes that dominate world trade) and the liberals want to prioritize helping Ukraine keep the maximum number of towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass? Over the fate of the entire world, the decisive final battle for dominance?

Who cares this much about Eastern Europe besides the Eastern Europeans themselves? Why did anyone ever think that this was a hill worth spending extraordinary efforts on, let alone dying on? And yes, NATO instructors are dying in Ukraine in small numbers, dying nonetheless. What was the point of it all, saying Ukraine will one day be in NATO when a realist could tell you 'never going to happen'? The realists are right as usual, like they were about Iraq and Vietnam.

Of course this is how realists would like to see reality, but critics might counter that it’s very suspicious that all their harsh, amoral, apolitical, non-ideological analysis happens to support a relatively standard ideological position (a combination of gunboat diplomacy and soft isolationism, except when it comes to the western hemisphere).

There's nothing wrong with preferring easy wars to hard wars ceteris paribus. The costs have to be proportionate to the gains.

There's nothing wrong with focusing on primary threats, as opposed to secondary ones.

There's nothing wrong with seeing a conflict overseas and doing nothing about it since it's not relevant to your interests. Plus it usually causes all kinds of flow-on problems if you do intervene.

Colby is no isolationist, if you read his book 'strategy of denial' he says that the US goal should be to back up frontline allies in Asia to prevent Chinese hegemony over this very valuable and important region. He judges that Russia is not powerful enough to threaten hegemony over Europe, the Chinese are the primary threat to US power and so there needs to be a substantial US presence in Asia, he wants to maintain alliances. It's a judicious, strategically justified rationale.

While the liberals have been starting and losing stupid wars in the Middle East, China has been building industry. While the liberals were bitching about Russian spying or taking towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass, China has been building ships, missiles and planes.

Reminded me of this Skyrim gem.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231110051836/https://www.escapistmagazine.com/skyrim-tales/

Though of course non-combat skills actually out scale combat skills in Skyrim quite significantly. With alchemy and smithing alone (even setting aside the infinite loop trick) you can loop to create weapons that will kill even a max levelled Draugr in 1 or 2 hits even on Legendary difficulty, and boost your combat skills with alchemy if you wanted to. Not to mention you'll be rolling in gold to pay for training in combat skills if you want.

The equivalent to AI in the real world perhaps? The self-improving loop leaving behind the basics of ships and planes.

The question is whether you're training a Smithing (exceedingly powerful applications to combat) or a Lockpicking (slight improvements to things you could already do just fine).

This is what Trump and his people (Colby in particular) are worried about. While the liberals have been starting and losing stupid wars in the Middle East, China has been building industry. While the liberals were bitching about Russian spying or taking towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass, China has been building ships, missiles and planes. They produce more manufactured goods than the next ten countries combined. Now they're getting ready to go in on places that matter (chip producers, high-tech economies, sea lanes that dominate world trade) and the liberals want to prioritize helping Ukraine keep the maximum number of towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass? Over the fate of the entire world, the decisive final battle for dominance?

Those things are not mutually exclusive. Aid to Ukraine has been a drop in the bucket as far as US military spending and budget is concerned. There is nothing in that spending that has stopped US from preparing for your so called vision of a decisive final battle for dominance with China. The reason why you have a big hole in the budget is not because of military spending, it is because of Social Security and Medicare. However, to be frank, if US was actually interested in mobilizing the will for standing up to China, you would actually fix all of that by raising taxes.

Dislodging Russian and Chinese co-operation on current terms is frankly delusional. As a Russian or Chinese leader, you would have to be frankly stupid to allow US to create a wedge between the two only because seemingly US has now warmed up to Russia.

What current situation has created is that for Europeans it is indeed better to be much more autonomous (and I have always agreed with that as an European), but furthermore, it is now better to build pragmatic ties with China rather than just follow whatever US dictates. Don't see how that benefits US if US is actually interested in taking on China.

the constructivists think that the struggle for power is just a social construct that can be undone with nagging, sanctions and judicious use of force

Actually existing constructivists are batshit, which is too bad, because the first-principles logic of realism really is fake, and in the MAD world it was created to explain its more fake than ever. Theres no reason why something like e.g. current front lines should matter to a settlement between nuclear powers, beyond historical ones. And yet it does matter, and you cant unilaterally do away with it either.

Front lines are surely relevant in terms of bluffing and prestige. It would be rather obnoxious for the US to suddenly demand that Russia give up its gains in Eastern Ukraine under threat of nuclear exchange, those were hard-won gains. Putin would be a massive cuck if he didn't call that bluff. He who is not willing to send out his tanks for victory is surely not willing to burn his cities for victory.

The reviews within the book include Colin Wight's "Do I agree with it? No." and Jerome Busemeyer's "Some of these ideas may ultimately not be supported".

That's hilarious.

I agreed that theyre relevant, the question is why theyre relevant, and I think the reason for that is in large part "thems the rules".

He who is not willing to send out his tanks for victory is surely not willing to burn his cities for victory.

Thats true, in the world where actually sending out tanks gains you things. If it didnt, youd just be smart not to send them. So this explains why the rule of respecting conventional gains persists - thats different from explaining why its there in the first place, which is because thats how it worked historically.

It would be rather obnoxious for the US to suddenly demand

Of course, because that would be against the rules. As I said, you cant just change those "because I said so". The "constructed" reasons Im talking about are not something that adds on top of or conflicts with game theory - they show up directly in your judgements of whats reasonable and credible. These judgements cant be derived purely from military capability.

But sending out tanks does gain you things? The Russians have secured a swathe of territory in Donbass, they took Mariupol.

We're agreed that the rules can't be unilaterally changed but I think there must be some concrete reason why all the powers invest so much into conventional forces. Nukes are very powerful but not appropriate for all conditions.

Even in the Cold War everyone was stacking up huge columns of troops in Europe, along with masses of nukes. Nukes held the line for the Western bloc up till about 1978 when they started to gain a conventional advantage. But people were still interested in conventional weapons.

The Russians have secured a swathe of territory in Donbass, they took Mariupol.

Yes, but in the hypothetical different nuclear equilibrium, they wouldnt get to keep it.

I think there must be some concrete reason why all the powers invest so much into conventional forces

The purely nuclear equilibria have very sharp rules. If theres a situation where neither party is allowed to nuke, its a free win for whoever invested in conventional forces. It cant actually, realistically happen outside a toy example world set up with it. In the cold war, I think neither party would have been willing to nuke over losing individual european satellites that somehow happen without a general attack.

I think youre just not confident enough because this mechanism is new to you. Start out small in using it. My example was chosen for illustrating what sort of thing I mean, not for being convincing. Something more realistic might be e.g. the discussions early in this war whether Russia could get away with a "tactical" nuke - they propably cant, but there may well have been a world where they could.

They could get away with a tactical nuke, it's just that doing so would incur various costs. It's just a matter of calculation about risk and reward. If somehow the whole Russian army got encircled in Mariupol, they might well start nuking intensively rather than lose the war. The US considered nukes in Korea and Vietnam but concluded the costs weren't worth the gains.

These weapons aren't unthinkable, that's just a social construct that the US likes to propagate.

Russia has been confident of conventional victory the whole time and doesn't want to irradiate land it wants to conquer, a country they want to vassalize or annex.

In the Cold War the Soviets demonstrated what they'd do if they lost a European satellite - send in the tanks!

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While the liberals have been starting and losing stupid wars in the Middle East

Which liberals? George W Bush? Dick Cheney?

Neoconservatism is an ideology of liberal imperialism. This is uncontroversial.

Yes, they are, in fact, liberals. Aside from Cheney's daughter, or Bill Kristol, now being besties with the Dems, the Overton Window in all Western democracies is about as wide as that joint's from the Blue's Brother's.

A touch cold-hearted, but sure -- assuming you accept that Russia is an implacable threat, and a hostile relationship is the only way forward. Which could be argued either way, but there's another problem:

Whether or not Ukraine has a shot at "winning" or regaining significant territory is irrelevant. Every day that the war continues is another day that the Russian military continues to deteriorate without any loss of American life

This part is only true until it isn't -- if Ukraine runs too short of bodies to hold the line at some point, there's a risk that Russia wins outright. Then we have an implacable enemy with a battlehardened (granted, drawn down some) armed force, a shiny feather in its cap, and a nice big buffer zone between us and its heartland.

Seems a little risky?

I thought they were our implacable enemy?

Russia is our biggest foreign military threat, and is the biggest threat to our allies as well.

This is only arguably true at all because they have a huge nuclear arsenal. China is much larger economically and their military is comparably sized (I don't think this would be true in a normal year but Russia's military is unusually large right now). China also has a very good territorial claim to Taiwan, which is (from what I can gather) viewed as a red line by our ally Japan. If China moves to take it, there's a very good chance they start with ballistic missile strikes on Japan. So I suspect China might actually be the bigger threat to us-and-our-allies here, in part because they hold the stronger hand, relative to Russia. (Or they seem to. I think we might live in a world where LRASM just works fantastically and we actually sink the entire Chinese fleet in a week and go home, which ironically would likely mean the Russians win their war, for a certain value of winning, and the Chinese lose theirs for any reasonable value of losing.)

Every day that the war continues is another day that the Russian military continues to deteriorate without any loss of American life?

This would be a better argument IMHO if Western generals didn't keep coming out and saying "well the Russian army is more capable now than before the invasion" which isn't startling if you know a thing or two about war: wars typically make militaries more capable, not less. Unless you lose decisively, or hit economic trouble. I'd say the calculus for giving arms to Ukraine really varies a lot on the ultimate outcome. If the West can win the war, or deal a very bad economic hit, it begins to look like a decent deal. If the West throws its own tanks into Ukraine for them to get ground up and Russia to come out stronger than ever before while European NATO is weaker than before, well, you've made yourself weaker and your enemy stronger and that seems less than ideal. I don't think Ukraine will win the war outright, but it does seem plausible there will still be bad economic consequences for Russia.

In World War I, Germany, with about the same population, lost close to 2 million war dead. Ukraine's population was similar at the beginning of World War II and they lost 1.6 million war dead, in addition to over 5 million civilians. In 3 years of fighting, Ukraine has lost about 100,000 soldiers and a few thousand more civilians. This war can continue for a very long time.

A quick Google suggests that the median age in Germany during World War one was likely about 28; the media age in Ukraine is about 42 now. I think this matters even if Ukraine can absorb the same number of causalities on paper.

Second, if you want to do this, don't talk about realism, and don't talk about how you personally don't give a fuck about whether Ukraine survives because you only care about America. These views simply aren't compatible.

At the risk of steelmanning a view that may diverge from my own, it seems to me that "America first" implicitly suggests other nations to count, just...second. Or third. Or fifteenth.

I think almost everything you say about China is true, except for this:

If China moves to take it, there's a very good chance they start with ballistic missile strikes on Japan.

I would be surprised if China took this approach. I think they're just biding their time and patiently waiting to outgrow the US to the point that the gap in military capability and logistics insofar as it relates to Taiwan will be too obvious for the US to want to defend it. The U.S. is already making moves to secure semiconductor production at home in order to wind down the strategic importance of Taiwan, so the writing is starting to be put on the wall.

There's also a strong likelihood that when Democrats come back into power, they'll have another Mark Milley type chairman who will tuck his tail and submit to the will of China. I think China is banking on the cost-benefit calculus becoming too lopsided for the US, and in this scenario all they have to do is wait it out a little longer.

I’d be interested to read any argument against this scenario. I’m curious if there are angles I’m not seeing.

I’m curious if there are angles I’m not seeing.

You're not seeing China's atrocious demographic structure and their stalling economic growth. China's fertility rates are worse than Japan's, and unlike Japan, China will get old before (and more probably without) getting rich. Welcome to the middle income trap.

I think they're just biding their time and patiently waiting to outgrow the US to the point that the gap in military capability and logistics insofar as it relates to Taiwan will be too obvious for the US to want to defend it. The U.S. is already making moves to secure semiconductor production at home in order to wind down the strategic importance of Taiwan, so the writing is starting to be put on the wall.

Sure, I think this is plausible. I am not convinced that China will make an opening move. But if they do, missile strikes on Japan (to hit fighters and airbases there, and ships in harbor) make sense if you're not willing to wait for a counterpunch.

I’d be interested to read any argument against this scenario.

I've discussed this before a bit on here. I am not firmly convinced the Chinese will take one route or the other, but I think the argument against is that every year that goes by, it might actually grow harder to take the island by force. US anti-ship weapons stockpiles grow deeper and more sophisticated, as we begin to deploy hypersonic missiles and next-generation stealth bombers, and Australia begins to acquire nuclear submarines. Taiwan might begin to focus on area denial weapons instead of prestige equipment such as ships, tanks, and fighter aircraft, and from what I understand every year Taiwanese begin to think of themselves as more "Taiwanese" and less "Chinese." China's potential aging problems have also been discussed. All that being said, I think there might be a window of time where China's chance to retake the island militarily peaks and they might act during that time.

I also think the cheap drone revolution (and AI revolution, to the degree it's applicable) don't help China as much as people think in this scenario. In fact I think they might cut against China. If China can make a million cheap suicide drones per year and has 1,000 ships, then you just need (let's say) 2,000 drones and 2,000 mines to hold off an amphibious attack, and the fact that China can kill a million people with drones, while scary, doesn't get them any closer to successfully invading Taiwan than having nuclear weapons does.

Now, as you say, maybe this will all be moot since China won't invade. But China's chances of coercing Taiwan rise with their chances of being able to successfully invade (whether or not a single shot is fired) so I can see it mattering regardless.

from what I understand every year Taiwanese begin to think of themselves as more "Taiwanese" and less "Chinese."

I wouldn't count on that remaining the case forever. This form of self-identification is pretty far downstream from information diet, and we might still be in the phase where we are seeing the delayed effects of the 1950s-1990s period in which Mainland China was a relative memetic non-entity, and Taiwan looked to itself (and Japan, and the US) for narratives. In recent years, though, the PRC's output has grown so much that it is pushing to dominate certain segments (live-service games, in particular) even in non-Chinese-speaking locales. What would that be like if you are primarily a Chinese, rather than English, speaker? All my Chinese diaspora friends watch PRC films, listen to PRC music and play PRC games, even if they have no family ties to the mainland, and among them are many suckers for shared cultural patrimony wanks.

VERY interesting. Yes, I think that "the West" is just now realizing that perhaps we're locked in here with them, with here being the internet and them being the entire population of China (both as consumers and producers).

A quick Google suggests that the median age in Germany during World War one was likely about 28; it's about 42 now. I think this matters even if Ukraine can absorb the same number of causalities on paper.

That's not the issue. The issue is what the current Ukrainian median age is compared to the imperial German median age at 1914. There are a myriad of other contentious issues which undercut this parallel completely. Like, how many people does the Kievan government actually have real sovereignty over as of now? How many of those are fighting-age men? How many men will it be able to draft in the coming years? I'm pretty sure nobody has an exact idea of any of those.

I misspoke, the current Ukrainian median age is about 42 now.

But which way does the China/Taiwan thing actually land?

On the one hand, focusing on Russia as a major competitor in world power detracts from focus on China. Sanctions on Russia by the west only cement China's grip and trade.

On the other, playing hard-headed realist with Ukraine makes the Philippines think we'd do the same with them. And makes everyone believe that backing the US against China in a proxy war runs the risk of being left out to dry every 4-8 years.

For my money's worth, this is why clearly signaling your commitments is ideal if you can do it.

What really gets me is the constant jumping between the callous "whatever, call me when there's another 5 million dead, who cares when we can kill Russians so cheap" and "it's the crime of the century for trump to return draft-dodgers to fight in Ukraine!"

I know a handful of 20-something Ukrainians who managed to get out before the mass roundups of fresh meat started. I don't want them to be sent back to die, but the same people who casually talk about feeding another million men like them into the meat grinder to spite Russia don't seem very consistent in their callousness.

If a liberal is happy to draft every Ukrainian man and boy from 16 to 50, but doesn't want to send the women currently shopping in Paris and skiing in Switzerland back to work in the shell factories... To me that looks like the actual geopolitical goal is less "winning" than killing as white men as possible in grotesque drone snuff videos to share on bluesky.

Ukraine support is not about killing white men, and the major Ukraine boosters are generally opposed to deporting Ukrainian draft dodgers to Ukraine.

Ukrainian teenaged and 20 something males should be in the army. But the NAFO types aren’t making that point.

I think it's something of a reach to say that Ukraine support is about killing hwite men.

  • I think the Biden level of support was roughly correct. Our military-industrial base couldn't actually handle a lot more without severely depleting the reserves too much, and the fears of over-escalating via too many long-range missiles were also valid fears. Sending boots on the ground is political suicide, not necessary, not very feasible, and a bad idea besides for direct escalation reasons.
  • End goal was ideally a permanent peace, but not a restoration of original borders, as that was likely off the table in practical terms seeing as a stalemate being the best military case has been near-obvious for at least a year if not longer. I think I would have liked to see some kind of internationally administered true referendum, a binding one, in the occupied areas as to what they would like their status to be. Maybe a separate one for Crimea and one or two in the Donbas + similar areas. An acceptable non-ideal endpoint would be some kind of cease fire with deterrence in some form, specifics I really dunno. Don't care about specifically punishing Putin or anything. We want to, IN GENERAL, send the message that blatant invasions in Europe for pure conquest purposes are not OK, that's the only message I really care to send. Proportional response, right?
  • I don't think I fully understand this question. Can you elaborate? Are you asking about if aid was "too much"? I think it was the obvious response to send the above message. Now, part of the issue was that 2014 was handled poorly by almost everyone, but outright invasion I think literally cannot be accepted. Or are you asking if there's some event that would convince me that Ukraine was the "bad guy" or a "worse guy" all along?

Part of this is that I feel very strongly that NATO is and would still have remained (and still WILL remain) a fundamentally defensive alliance. I guess loosely related to your question #3 is that I have mixed feelings about the NATO expansion. Clearly, a demand is there for smaller states worried about invasion from Russia - something that even in post-Soviet times they are literally and explicitly guilty of (Georgia 2008 absolutely must be mentioned). I don't know if NATO was really the best tool, but the need was there. So I guess I could say that concrete signs that NATO would consider an offensive, counter-Russia action would be notable, but they do not in reality exist. For example, strong evidence in favor of this is how NATO has promised and still does not station nuclear weapons in any former Warsaw Pact nations. This idea that Russia was somehow 'goaded' into attacking I view as almost explicit Russian propaganda - at least, explicitly spread, I don't think it's intrinsically faulty, though of course it is I believe factually false.

For example, large military exercises near Russia's borders are seen as provocative, and of course they might send a political/diplomatic message, but in no conceivable scenario are they actually threats. The idea behind military exercises being threats is that they can sometimes mask real invasions. Russia, obviously, just used this excuse for its own attack. But the structure of NATO, and the nature of the alliance and its countries (democracies) almost literally prevents NATO from ever declaring a surprise invasion or offensive action. Similarly, missile defense systems being deployed in Poland, etc. are I think a little more understandable, but again, NATO is almost never going to initiate shit, much less a nuclear initiation, so again this isn't a legitimate reason to be afraid of NATO. The only actual NATO offensive action was Yugoslavia, and even that was telegraphed far in advance, was explicitly humanitarian in an already-war situation, so I fail to see how it would ever serve as a template for Russia to be worried.

For example, large military exercises near Russia's borders are seen as provocative, and of course they might send a political/diplomatic message, but in no conceivable scenario are they actually threats.

If you establish military alliances with countries along the borders of a rival, ship your soldiers there, and "send messages" by marching them around, then that rival is going to interpret your actions in a threatening light. Expecting otherwise is flatly ludicrous and wildly out of touch. NATO is America and its lackeys, and America does whatever it wants. America blew up Iraq just because it felt like it, and then just went "oops lol" and shrugged when it turned out that the entire casus belli was completely made up.

I'm pretty sympathetic to your position here, but there's some things I think need to be parsed out.

The only actual NATO offensive action was Yugoslavia, and even that was telegraphed far in advance, was explicitly humanitarian in an already-war situation, so I fail to see how it would ever serve as a template for Russia to be worried.

Can't all of this be said of the invasion of Ukraine? Russia surrounded Ukraine and sent ultimatums demanding that Ukraine be banned from NATO, and then when they were rebuffed it launched a military operation, claiming it was staging a humanitarian intervention in an already war-torn land...and I think it's pretty reasonable for Russia's neighbors to be worried, honestly! But by the same token I don't think handwaving Yugoslavia really assuages Russia's concerns about the potential for NATO to be turned against them and their allies, especially since intervening there was arguably a violation of the NATO charter and NATO did it regardless.

Similarly, missile defense systems being deployed in Poland, etc. are I think a little more understandable

Let's talk about this a bit. AEGIS Ashore (which was deployed in Romania) uses the SM-3 in a land-based VLS cell.

Guess what also uses VLS cells? The Tomahawk surface-to-surface cruise missile. That should have made AEGIS Ashore illegal under the INF treaty in my reading, but as I understand it, the US brushed off the concerns with "well we've made it so that it won't accept the Tomahawk" - I'm not really sure how the Russians are supposed to be able to verify this. At any rate, the US pulled out of the INF (which was the right thing to do) so it's a moot point now, but at the time I think the Russians were technically correct to find it fishy (of course they likely violated the INF themselves, so, even if it was "in response," they arguably lose the right to persuasively complain about it.)

Anyway, let's set aside the Tomahawk, guess what has a secondary surface attack mode? Any missile, in theory (the Russians engaged a number of surface targets with S-300 surface-to-air missiles during the ongoing war). So the Russians were possibly, based on what I've read, not just worried about the destabilizing nature of a missile shield in their backyard, they were also concerned that the Americans were putting a launcher under their nose to conduct a decapitation first strike. The Russians are touchy about that sort of thing (there allegedly was a touch-and-go Nuclear Suitcase moment under Yeltsin because the Scandinavians sent up a single civilian rocket that the Russians were unaware of, and the Russians thought it might be a first strike, since a single launch first strike was one of their scenarios.)

PERSONALLY I think that the Russians are overly neurotic about this stuff because we can probably put SSGNs just about wherever we want and fire Tomahawks anyway, but it's probably worth understanding that to the Russians "putting BMD in Romania" and "putting ballistic missiles in Romania" may trigger an "it's the same picture" response and I don't think the US going "nah trust me brah" is very persuasive.

Georgia 2008 absolutely must be mentioned

It might be worth mentioning that the EU's independent report determined Georgia started said war.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. That's some interesting somewhat new information about the missile shield stuff. To be clear, I'm framing all of this exactly on that last premise, where Russia's whole argument against NATO is that it's somehow an existential threat against the Russian state. This is absolutely ridiculous. In absolutely no world would the US much less NATO actually launch a nuclear decapitation first strike against Russia, and yes I'm willing to bet the world on that. The only scenario in which nukes get exchanged is the result of massive miscommunications in the face of existing tensions or fog of war, and in that scenario the actual tactical considerations like "is the launcher in Romania/Poland/Estonia/etc or is it in Germany" are not relevant anyways. And even then it's not NATO pushing the button, it's the United States directly, so even more a moot point. NATO again requires a ton of buy-in from many actors, which means pulling the trigger on offensive actions isn't some secret. Whereas there was legitimate doubt whether Russia would actually invade Ukraine up until they actually did it. NATO would never. It's a committee, for crying out loud.

Anyways. Yes, in theory, the various nuclear agreements were supposed to give decision-makers more time to make such decisions, thus increasing the chance of a good decision, by limiting the (relatively) shorter range types of missile, but IIRC (welcome corrections) the Russians literally were the first ones to purposefully develop such a missile in violation of the treaty, and thus deserve the bulk of the practical blame. I think that's still in keeping with your information, as again, even IF the conversion of Aegis systems to Tomahawks was possible, my understanding is that it's not an overnight fix kind of thing. (Also, didn't the nuclear-variant Tomahawk in question get retired in 2010-2013, says Google?) Thus, even if Russians might be upset that the US isn't keeping the spirit of the INF treaty, developing their own non-compliant missile creates the exact risk the INF agreement was supposed to prevent, and their concerns, while justified maybe more broadly, still shouldn't have extended to this particular issue. Which brings me right back to the original point. I get that the Russians are historically touchy, but there's a difference between paranoia and common sense.

Russia is a single entity and NATO is not. Russia was and will never be genuinely militarily threatened by anyone - even in Georgia it was secessionists who were shelled, not Russian territory - but the same is patently not true for individual European states. Russia wanting the Donbas separatists to win wasn't out of some patriotic desire to help Russian speakers but naked political greed and expansionism. We can tell exactly because of the Ukraine stuff that went down can genuinely cause us to re-examine the 2014 grab and conclude (even if we hadn't been sure already) that this was starting shit, not 'taking advantage' of an existing crisis. The additional fact that Russia has been deliberately and freely embracing "grey zone" tactics to achieve their goals (little green men, online astroturfing, etc.) should work against their credit, not in their favor.

Yugoslavia on the other hand is not Russia. If smaller former Warsaw Pact countries want or wanted to form a defensive military alliance to protect against similar NATO "aggression" (it kind of takes genocide to get them going which is a somewhat high bar?) they are free to, and NATO might be unhappy but it won't like, freak out.

I strongly believe the US would act in exactly the same way as Russia if put in the same circumstances. Imagine if there were a coup revolution in Mexico tomorrow, throwing out the elected pro American government for one that is decidedly pro China. So much so that Mexico wants to join an alliance with China, stop trade with the US, possibly disallow the US military and civilian ships access to the Gulf of Mexico, provide accommodations for military bases for China in Mexico on the border, and possibly station Chinese nuclear weapons pointing north. While the US has never been to war directly with China, and they aren’t threatening to invade, we would invade Mexico and not think twice. We would field tactical nukes in the case we were losing ground with Mexican troops approaching San Diego and not think twice.

Believe me, things like the Cuban Missile Crisis are almost perpetually part of my thinking that I like to challenge myself with. But I try to avoid too-crazy what-ifs because nothing in foreign policy is ever divorced entirely from history or circumstance. Lack of realism proportionally decreases the usefulness of thought exercises. A better thought exercise is, for example, if the US gets in a shooting war with China and loses a major fleet, does it use a tactical nuke? What if instead China air-nukes a fleet, do we air-nuke a city in response? What do we do if China preemptively shoots down a ton of our GPS or other satellites, but takes no other action, how would we respond? All of those are much more relevant and important questions to ask and plan for rather than... whatever weird fiction that is. Or, talk about for example the actual real-world case of US putting pressure on Panama to kick out the nearby Chinese ports near the canal (and whatever other crock Trump is spouting). Maybe engage in some reasoning about what if those ports were militarized or something. Would the US be justified in invading Panama to stop Chinese influence in this case? Well, treaty-wise I think we'd have some latitude, but practically speaking I think that that would be bad and the world would be wise to try and stop it from happening.

To the extent that moral reasoning matters (which is, not much, mostly when convenient and/or don't infringe too much on the more core responsibilities) I similarly think it's enough to put yourself in their shoes and better understand context rather than conjure up some kind of convoluted alter-history just to reason through a low-relevance moral point.

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Of course!

The only scenario in which nukes get exchanged is the result of massive miscommunications in the face of existing tensions or fog of war, and in that scenario the actual tactical considerations like "is the launcher in Romania/Poland/Estonia/etc or is it in Germany" are not relevant anyways. And even then it's not NATO pushing the button, it's the United States directly, so even more a moot point.

I don't think this is true. The threshold for nuclear use is probably lower than people think and does not require miscommunications.

Particularly when discussing tactical nuclear weapons, the location is very important. Russia can't hit the US with ~any of its tactical nuclear arsenal, whereas the entire US tactical nuclear arsenal can be targeted at Russia due to NATO air bases.

I agree that NATO/the US is very unlikely to launch a first strike against Russia, nuclear or otherwise.

my understanding is that it's not an overnight fix kind of thing.

It depends on what exactly was done to the VLS cells to prevent Tomahawks from being loaded in. If the answer is "nothing" then you could stick a Tomahawk in at any point.

Also, didn't the nuclear-variant Tomahawk in question get retired in 2010-2013, says Google?

Yes, but the INF bans conventional intermediate-range weapons as well. China did not subscribe to the INF, which is one of several reasons why it was good the US withdrew.

Russia was and will never be genuinely militarily threatened by anyone

Is this historically true? How long has it been since Russia fought a large conflict to maintain control of their territorial borders? World War Two? Maybe the 1990s...?

Russia wanting the Donbas separatists to win wasn't out of some patriotic desire to help Russian speakers but naked political greed and expansionism.

Is this an either/or? It seems completely wrong, if you pay attention to individual Russians, to think at least some of them aren't emotionally caught up in the cause of the Donbas separatists. If Russia was entirely motivated by greed and expansionism I would have expected them to seize Finland first, as it is smaller and much less armed than Ukraine. (Similarly I would have expected them to have seized Latvia and Estonia in 2003 before they became part of NATO, those countries have essentially zero power to resist a Russian invasion.) But instead they first attacked Ukraine after the government was violently overthrown in 2014. It seems to me that "realpolitik," while present, is probably overstated when modeling Russia's interactions with its neighbors, particularly with Ukraine.

The analogous situation is California leaving the Union during a big break-up and then flirting with a Chinese security alliance. After a revolution overthrows the democratically elected government and replaces it with a Chinese-favorable one, the government of the United States moves to seize its naval bases and a land corridor to ensure they can be resupplied. Local insurgents, with a bit of CIA encouragement, attempt to split some of the northeastern farmland off from California proper, and California, with supplies and training from China, responds by shelling the insurgent's cities for eight years and preparing a large offensive to retake their territory.

Do you think the US government would be entirely motivated by realpolitik in that scenario? Might some other motivations creep in?

If smaller former Warsaw Pact countries want or wanted to form a defensive military alliance to protect against similar NATO "aggression" (it kind of takes genocide to get them going which is a somewhat high bar?) they are free to, and NATO might be unhappy but it won't like, freak out.

Yes, this is CTSO.

The additional fact that Russia has been deliberately and freely embracing "grey zone" tactics to achieve their goals (little green men, online astroturfing, etc.) should work against their credit, not in their favor.

I think a lot of this is just how soft power looks when the enemy does it. The russians of course have their narrative about colour revolutions, and the recent USAID cuts have certainly found a lot of direct state involvement in "independent media". Theres arguments that ours is in some way legit and theirs manipulation, but thats far too deep into the ideological weeds to be the basis of a diplomatic rule.

Little green men are just Russian troops out of uniform. That isn't soft power, it's hard power deployed perfidiously.

I agree that Russian social media troll ops look like Voice of America in reverse if you don't start with "democracy good" biases.

If I had complete control, I would continue the intelligence sharing, military materiel transfer to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. No security guarantees, no troops on the ground, no direct air support, intel is fine. In terms of magnitude, I would probably give more because Ukraine is currently losing, and they'll need additional help to hold the line. The goal is to bleed Russia and teach them that aggressive wars do not pay. Which makes it less likely that they will think about trying the same against the Baltics and Finland, who are actually NATO members. Which in turn makes it less likely for the US and Russia to go to war against each other down the line.

In terms of falsifiability, I guess if it's discovered that Ukrainian oligarchs are squirreling away a large portion of the aid money, that would make further aid a bad idea. Some corruption is expected since Ukraine was itself corrupt, but if I had to put a number to it, we'll need to rethink it if more than 20% is actually ending up in someone's swiss bank account.

From my perspective, I see almost an equal amount of Ukraine skeptics and Ukraine supporters on this forum.

How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?

I would continue to provide intelligence sharing, weapons, economic aid. I would not involve our own military. Continue to strike as many deals as possible to economically isolate Russia as well.

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?

Slowly and annoyingly bleed out Russian resources until they get exhausted and go home. No grand last stand. No obvious red lines crossed. Just endless quagmire for Russia, enormous cost for no lasting progress. Make it crystal clear that there's a rules based order and if you just cross boundaries in a war of conquest we will not make it easy.

A world where we didn't defend Ukraine is a lot more volatile. I contend that our willingness to simply surrender Afghanistan to the Taliban because we got bored is likely what contributed to the Ukraine invasion. I'm sure Putin thought he's nowhere near as fucked up as the Taliban, surely the US won't mind if he retakes Ukraine.

Oops.

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? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?

If this causes WW3 and we all die in nuclear armageddon I would say it was a bad idea. But to some degree it would be unavoidable if Russia is that suicidal and that expansionist.

I would continue to provide intelligence sharing, weapons, economic aid. I would not involve our own military. Continue to strike as many deals as possible to economically isolate Russia as well.

Presumably you don't want to involve our own military because of escalation concerns, correct?

What happens if Ukraine starts losing, either because the intel, weapons and economic aid were insufficient, or because Russia starts getting their shit together, or because Ukraine's forces are bled white? Do you accept their loss and call it a day, or do you escalate? If you escalate, what with?

Slowly and annoyingly bleed out Russian resources until they get exhausted and go home.

This strategy seems likely to maximize Ukrainian casualties, and it seems at least possible that Ukraine simply runs out of soldiers before Russia becomes exhausted enough to have to go home. If that happens, the choice becomes whether to accept a Russian victory, or to escalate. From your description, it seems to me that you are inclined to escalate. What with?

Make it crystal clear that there's a rules based order and if you just cross boundaries in a war of conquest we will not make it easy.

In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. We deployed our military to destroy his, forced the survivors back over the border into Iraq, and fomented an uprising against him. The uprising failed. We put in place ruinous sanctions and a no-fly zone, and leaned on him with all the pressure we could bring to bear. He stubbornly clung to power, and continued existing as a thorn in our side. So after 9/11 we invaded, toppled his government, hunted him down and hung him, kicked everyone associated with him and his Ba'ath party out of power, and tried to rebuild the country as a democracy. We tried for eight years, and the results were fairly disastrous. It does not seem to me that the "rules based order" was enhanced by this chain of events. In fact, it seems to me that the Iraq war and its knock-on effects did serious damage to America's internal cohesion and to international order as a whole. Ditto for our interventions in Libya and Syria.

You speak as though we are in control in some meaningful sense, that we have the capacity to impose our will on other nations. When I look at our history over the last few decades, I see little reason to believe that we actually possess such a capacity, and many examples of how a belief in such a capacity lead directly to disaster.

I contend that our willingness to simply surrender Afghanistan to the Taliban because we got bored is likely what contributed to the Ukraine invasion.

We spent twenty years and trillions of dollars occupying Afghanistan. We now know that the people running the occupation were systematically lying to the public about the occupation's prospects and achievements for most and perhaps all of those twenty years, because in fact the occupation was achieving nothing of identifiable value. You describe withdrawing after twenty years of occupation as "growing bored". How long, in your view, should we have stayed? Another twenty years? Another forty? What goal would staying longer have achieved?

I am opposed to supporting Ukraine because I do not want to go to war with Russia, and because I am extremely skeptical that "limited" aid will in fact stay limited. I think what will happen with Ukraine is what happened with Afghanistan and Iraq: the next six months will always be crucial, the next surge will always be the one to win it all, the next escalation will always be the one that's going to turn things around. This does in fact appear to me to be how Ukraine is going already, and I think conducting war in this fashion is obscene.

A world where we didn't defend Ukraine is a lot more volatile.

We didn't defend Armenia from Azerbaijan. We didn't defend Georgia from Russia. We didn't defend Ukraine when all this kicked off a decade ago. Did that make the world more volatile than a steadily-escalating European land war?

If this causes WW3 and we all die in nuclear armageddon I would say it was a bad idea. But to some degree it would be unavoidable if Russia is that suicidal and that expansionist.

You are arguing for a limited war. What I am looking for is some indication that the war you are advocating does, in fact, have meaningful limits. What I suspect is that your support for Ukraine is "limited" in the sense that "just one more step forward" is "limited"; after all, it could be two steps, or five, or a hundred. But in fact no matter how close to the precipice we are, I suspect you will always be in favor of "just one more step forward". Your flippant disdain for ending the Afghanistan occupation certainly lends weight to this impression.

We now know that the people running the occupation were systematically lying to the public about the occupation's prospects and achievements for most and perhaps all of those twenty years, because in fact the occupation was achieving nothing of identifiable value. (…) What goal would staying longer have achieved?

Not dr_analog, but an obvious answer - not necessarily mine, but obvious - would be "the same goal as keeping a dangerous terrorist in prison even if the rehab program he's supposedly signed up for has a snowball's chance in hell of reforming him". The people in charge lying about how well the turn-it-into-an-enlightened-democracy project was going looks like a grievous blow to the entire enterprise if you think westernizing Aghanistan was actually the point, but not if you think that "we're just staying as long as it takes to turn them into a peaceful democracy" was always just a fig leaf to make the bitter pill of "we're indefinitely occupying this colonized territory to keep the barbarians suppressed" go down.

Make it crystal clear that there's a rules based order and if you just cross boundaries in a war of conquest we will not make it easy.

Are you sure about this? The US' current policy is that if you cross boundaries in a war of conquest, invade other nations, bomb their hospitals and murder their children the US won't just go out of their way to make it easy for you, they'll make boycotting you illegal and declare criticism of your actions a public health crisis while supplying you with vast quantities of money and advanced weaponry. If you actually want to send that message, would you be fine with declaring Israel a rogue state and applying the same sanctions on them until they return to the 1948 borders?

I think if we're all being honest there is an actual difference between wars of aggression by a major world power and in Europe than elsewhere in the world. Wars of aggression by smaller players is one thing but major players is another. I think it's in everyone's benefit that the major powers stop it, right?

And yes, before you say it, I wish other countries had thrown more of a fit about Iraq, though still more defensible: forcibly exporting democracy was a loser idea, WMDs were a lie, but Hussein was also legitimately an evil psychopath guy in a way Ukrainian presidents just... weren't, and the US didn't even get all that much out of it. Before anyone goes "it was about oil" Iraq actually exported less oil even after the invasion and has only gone down since. It doesn't fit the expansionist mold, and expansionist wars by major powers are the most dangerous kind, the kind we want to discourage. Comparatively, who cares about minor wars in far-flung underdeveloped countries?

I think if we're all being honest there is an actual difference between wars of aggression by a major world power and in Europe than elsewhere in the world.

I don't think that. What, exactly, makes the lives of people outside of Europe worth less than those of Europeans? Why would it be more acceptable for China to invade my nation than it would be for Russia to invade Poland?

It doesn't fit the expansionist mold, and expansionist wars by major powers are the most dangerous kind, the kind we want to discourage.

Ok, so what about Israel? They are explicitly waging expansionist wars with the backing of the US, a major power. Why didn't you address the core point of my comment and instead go onto a tangent about Iraq? I mean, I agree that the Iraq war was a terrible idea, but what does that actually have to do with the west's full-throated and enthusiastic support of expansionist wars by heavily militarised ethnostates?

First of all I didn't take your comment seriously because Israel was attacked both times it took territory, in response, and also because Israel comments often feel more like bait than legitimate attempts at discussion. Sure, they took a little more land from Syria recently, but that's whatever, they didn't even fight over it. Lest you think I'm an Israel stan however, I really dislike their provocative settlement stuff. I think they're borderline apartheid, certainly guilty of the lesser sin of racially-delineated callousness at least. But their behavior falls far short of "expansionist wars" by most measures (I guess they've invaded Lebanon a time and a half? Is that what you're referring to?). If they bomb Iran or something (I want us to strongly discourage this) then we can talk and maybe re-assess. Overall though if you think the US is constantly making a habit of funding expansionist wars I guess we just disagree on the facts.

Anyways, this has nothing to do with the value of lives and everything to do with the balance of world power + avoiding mega-wars. Honestly, I consider war a semi-normal state of affairs, especially for those between smaller states. It sucks, but is also human nature. We can do things to discourage it, sometimes respond on a case to case basis, but we can't solve everything. I care more about big state actions because they tend to domino around the globe more than localized conflicts. Even if I were to say "oh Israel is bloodthirsty invader" that's still not something that has a major knock-on effect elsewhere. China invades Taiwan? That affects not only chips, but global shipping routes, and more. Not the same.

I don't think we have some kind of moral duty to police everyone, though I do think we can do some smaller things to help keep stuff stable. You're free to take another tack, and I don't think on that philosophical stance there is one objective superior truth. So do I hold big states to a different standard than small states? You bet I do. I think most people who claim they don't often end up twisting themselves into pretzels trying to have some kind of defining all-applicable global principles. I don't think such a world-view is possible, not with total consistency.

and also because Israel comments often feel more like bait than legitimate attempts at discussion

Bait? I'm being completely earnest here, and it seemed to me like you just ignored the Israel question and went on a tangent because it completely destroys your main argument.

Sure, they took a little more land from Syria recently, but that's whatever, they didn't even fight over it.

See, you don't actually care about these norms at all. "Yeah we come down really harshly on gaining new territory via conquest but Israel doesn't have to abide by those rules because... umm, they just don't, okay!" is not a norm that anyone will give a single shit about. Why should Russia or China care in the slightest about this supposed norm against wars of conquest when your moral condemnation passes silently over Israel and gives them a pass to exterminate an unwelcome ethnicity because of their stated desire for more lebensraum? Why can't Russia, China or 1930s Germany simply claim the same "that's whatever" exemption Israel does? And if you want to say that Israel didn't even fight over it, do you want me to go get some evidence of Israel's frequent military interventions in Syria before the fall of the Assad regime?

But their behavior falls far short of "expansionist wars" by most measures (I guess they've invaded Lebanon a time and a half? Is that what you're referring to?).

Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. If you don't think that what happened to Palestine counts, then Russia and China can simply adopt the same strategy and conquer new territory in the same fashion.

Anyways, this has nothing to do with the value of lives and everything to do with the balance of world power + avoiding mega-wars.

Asia's population is almost 7 times larger than Europe's - a total war that impacted the entirety of Europe would barely even be a regional conflict by Asian standards. China alone is a far larger player in the real global economy than Europe is - the TSMC fabrication plants getting destroyed and Japanese shipping getting interdicted due to conflict seems to me like it would have a far larger knock-on effect than anything Russia or the US would do to Europe. It seems like you agree with that, but I got the opposite impression when you claimed(seemingly, my apologies if I misunderstood) earlier that "in Europe" rendered a conflict more serious than elsewhere in the world.

I don't think we have some kind of moral duty to police everyone, though I do think we can do some smaller things to help keep stuff stable.

The US is currently aiding and abetting Israel's aggression, and actively working to prevent peace in the region. You're right that there's no moral duty to police everyone, but there is a moral duty to police those who you shower with mountains of blood and treasure. As for keeping stuff stable, I have good news - with Trump and Elon Musk demolishing both USAID and the NED, a lot of places around the world are going to be substantially more stable (especially Latin America).

So do I hold big states to a different standard than small states?

So it's fine to be an aggressive, expansionist power, you just can't get too big. Would you be fine with Russia's invasion of Ukraine if they instead simply loaned all their troops and equipment to the Donbass Republic? After all, you can't hold small states to the same standard as large ones like Russia.

I don't think such a world-view is possible, not with total consistency.

I oppose wars of aggression and conquest no matter the size of the states in question - I am an advocate for peace and believe that peaceful co-existence is not just possible but an ideal worth striving for. Total consistency with no pretzels needed! Of course, actually adjudicating whether or not a given war is a war of aggression can be tough in some circumstances, but you get that issue with just about any world-view.

I honestly don't understand if this is a disagreement or tough words because you think I'm hypocritical. Please distinguish. There's no agenda posting here, I'm legitimately trying to give a complete picture. I think big powers and small powers differ, and I think not all parts of the world are of equal importance to foreign politics (I should note that certain areas of Asia as you correctly note are also of high importance in a way yet another civil war in Sudan is not). That's not to assign less value exactly, it's just the reality of foreign affairs where you can't afford to be entirely dogmatic and you can't be entirely pragmatic either. I lean towards pragmatism, but that doesn't mean 'heartless pragmatism', I allow for space to do individually non-optimal things out of a moral stand every once in a while, or in order to gain a wider and broader benefit. I will argue equally with anyone that this kind of ideological-dogmatist-pragmatist balance is the ideal. "I oppose wars of aggression and conquest" is not a coherent foreign policy (to the extent that coherency even matters of course) and perhaps more importantly if implemented it wouldn't work. "Total consistency" is not the benchmark to grade a foreign policy approach even remotely. It's not just naive, it's counter-productive.

For every problem, it's also important to ask how much of the problem is zero-sum, and how much of it is variable? That's the other question in addition to "how much should I care?" which involves, yes, realism about the size and scale of the matter.

Israel is a problem, but it's not a problem on the scale of Russia, China, Germany, or the like. Does the US prop them up and implicitly allow them to get away with a ton of shit? Yes, and I often wish we wouldn't. Do they oppress people and commit borderline-genocidal atrocities? Yes, that too. But they also are a potential anchor in the region, a trade partner, and at least modestly democratic and egalitarian with potential for positive change. I can see "both sides" if we call Israelis and Palestinians "sides" and it's just a shit sandwich all over. My long-preferred solution is for everyone to stop being forever at cross-purposes and just accept that all of Israel needs to fully integrate somehow, and work on doing that and all of its mess well. Two-state solution is the stupidest pipe dream I've ever heard of, and Israel is a democracy right there, so like hey, just go do your messy democracy stuff directly! Palestinians and Israelis both have had some unfair shit go on historically and at some point grievances can't go on forever. Nothing the US does is going to magically fix anything one way or the other. Honestly, I didn't dislike the vaguely Trump-shaped plan of "well if they just have some economic boom it will lift all boats and restore regional diplomatic ties" as a step toward that end.

Back to the point. It's somewhat natural for states, including big ones, to want influence over their neighbors. But despite being a much-maligned word, "norms" actually do work on big states in a way that they do not on small states, since they are more stable, long-term actors. Thus, in my view, it's perfectly rational to apply different standards to them, even beyond the typical dogmatic-pragmatist balance. Russia arming Donbas separatists is worrisome and annoying, funding opposition parties also bad, cyberattacks it depends (haven't figured out the norms for that yet) but it doesn't cross a line in the way that Russia's further actions did. Examples include deliberate grey-zone warfare tactics, deploying their own "little green men" troops directly, hell, even the airliner that was shot down was done so we believe more or less directly by actual Russian military members.

I honestly don't understand if this is a disagreement or tough words because you think I'm hypocritical.

Both - my apologies if I came off too hostile. I've recently been somewhat sleep deprived and that may have made my words a bit harsher than would be ideal.

I think big powers and small powers differ, and I think not all parts of the world are of equal importance to foreign politics (I should note that certain areas of Asia as you correctly note are also of high importance in a way yet another civil war in Sudan is not).

As someone who doesn't live in Europe, I got the mistaken impression you were ignoring the relevance of the far larger region of the world which I actually live in. Mea culpa.

"Total consistency" is not the benchmark to grade a foreign policy approach even remotely. It's not just naive, it's counter-productive.

I agree with you here - foreign policy should be tailored to a specific situation and total consistency isn't always the best way to go about it. But that's very much not the case when it comes to proposed norms.

My long-preferred solution is for everyone to stop being forever at cross-purposes and just accept that all of Israel needs to fully integrate somehow, and work on doing that and all of its mess well.

I agree with you here too - I'm on record as supporting a single state solution with full franchise and democracy. I disagree with the idea that they're a good anchor or ally, but I think that's a bit beyond the scope of this discussion.

Back to the point. It's somewhat natural for states, including big ones, to want influence over their neighbors. But despite being a much-maligned word, "norms" actually do work on big states in a way that they do not on small states, since they are more stable, long-term actors.

I even agree with you that a norm against wars of aggression and conquest are a good thing, but your proposed norms just aren't fit for purpose. If Israel can do what they do with the full support of the US without violating these norms then they're just completely worthless. All Russia would have to do to comply with your norms is put on a figleaf and announce that they're donating materiel, training and expertise to the Donbass republic. Absolutely nothing would change on the ground and the war would still be taking place, but your norm would be satisfied due to the loophole that you're leaving in to allow the US to continue to aggressively wage war. China would still be able to reconquer Taiwan, they'd just have to announce they're supporting the faction of Taiwanese who want reunification - and your norm would be satisfied despite the war it was meant to prevent taking place.

Foreign policy does not have to be totally consistent - but that is absolutely not the case for proposed norms. If the US says that wars of conquest are bad and then proceeds to fund, support and profit from a war of conquest then you aren't actually proposing a norm, you're proposing a set of rules which handicap other great powers but don't prevent you from engaging in the proscribed behavior. It is explicitly bad faith negotiation, and the morally correct response for other great powers is to tell you to fuck off. "You don't get to change your borders through military force" is a perfectly fine norm - but it is universal or it does not exist.

More comments

I think if we're all being honest there is an actual difference between wars of aggression by a major world power and in Europe than elsewhere in the world. Wars of aggression by smaller players is one thing but major players is another. I think it's in everyone's benefit that the major powers stop it, right?

Kosovo?

If you had cut out the last bit you could have squeezed Saudi Arabia and maybe Turkey in there (Turkey invaded Syria, as I recall, although perhaps they managed to avoid blowing up hospitals and killing children? I hope so.)

But notice that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are also both US allies. One is a NATO member state. So nothing that they do is ever a violation of the “rules based international order”

Those are some nice additions. I think there are a few other US supported wars of conquest as well, but I just stuck with the most belligerent violator of said norms I know of.

If Ukraine had invaded, murdered, raped, and kidnapped Russians first, then I wouldn’t call Russia’s current military deployment in Ukraine a war of conquest, even if they annexed territory. It matters who started it and why.

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