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Remember, the US is the hyperagent. Other countries don't make and execute their own decisions- other countries either act in accordance with American permission, or are forced to respond to American impositions.
The whole Ukrainian govt is on US and EU payroll, about half their money comes from the West vs Ukrainian taxes.
"So I'm on trial for war crimes. Where is the justice? We are all individuals, making our own decisions. I never forced anyone to do anything. This prosecution is based on spooks, naïve conceptions of conspiracy and a simplistic understanding of a complex world of interrelated cause and effect."
"Well you did pay the soldier's wages. You provided them armaments, training and intelligence. You're responsible for their actions, your support is implicit."
Thank you for demonstrating a failure mode.
Do you feel like these snarky comebacks add anything, impress or convince others?
The galaxybrained 'you're just projecting your own ignorance and whenever you point out the silliness in what I'm saying - it's actually you that's wrong and each time you point this out it only shows how wrong you are' approach was fun but it's gotten a bit tired by now. You need a new routine.
And I am sure that- in your superiority and/or boredom- you will no longer waste your time responding to any of my posts that are not directly to you ever again.
In return, I will continue to strive to do the same for you.
Your example was actually a fair skit for showing the limits of a hyperagent mentality.
The short discussion, as much of a caricature as it starts as for Agent A, is rather more damning for Agent B, the supposed reasonable party and hyperagent proxy. By literally having a discussion that does not include an intermediary Agent C who perpetrated unspecified war crimes, whose existence is acknowledged but also dismissed by Agent B in favor of prosecuting Agent A on implicit rather than even explicit responsibility, it demonstrates the hyperagent theorist failure and inclination to unjustly allocation punishments and sanctions on the basis of convenience and accessibility, rather than agency is the nominal crimes.
There are interesting angles, historical examples, and differences/hypocrisies that could easily be pointed at. After all, at no point does Agent B ever actually assert that Agent A had any knowledge of, issued any direction for, had any operational control over, or ever voiced any support for. Agent B's accusation and prosecution of Agent A as the responsible party could run word-for-word even if Agent C actively deceived, defied, circumvented, and even defected from Agent A in order to commit the war crimes. Agent A is responsible merely for having supported Agent C at some point, not for having supported Agent C for the purpose of the atrocity alluded to. There is no criminal intent required, or even awareness.
The allocation of responsibility to Agent A by Agent B is fundamentally uninterested in the agency, moral responsibility, and moral culpability of Agent C. Agent B merely treats Agent A as the hyperagent on the basis of providing support, regardless of the degree of support (A is not claimed to be the decisive supporter), the exclusivity of support (A is not claimed to be the only supporter), or the restrictions that were attempted (A is not claimed to have taken not mitigations). Agent B, in doing so, begins to validate the nominally farcical accusation by Agent A that Agent B is naive, simplistic, and ignoring cause and effect.
If it was intentional, it was well done, with multiple levels. If it was not, that was my error, and I apologize for confusing you.
The key point in that example is not all the myriad nitpicks one can make about a 2-line example designed to make a general point.
The key point is that when you give people huge amounts of money, when you enable them to do things, you bear a level of responsibility for what they do with the resources you've provided. More importantly, your patronage is taken as implicit support of their stance corresponding with its magnitude. When the patronage is roughly half the government's revenue then it is a significant level of investment and responsibility.
And the key / general point remains wrong. How other people want to take something is an appeal not even to subjectivity, but second or even third-party subjectivity, which is a fools errand in attributing agency. There are indeed contexts where the appearance of impropriety matter, but they are contexts of where the agent making the decision and why they are taking those decisions are related to the impropriety.
It also runs into historically inconvenient facts in Ukraine.
The responsibility for disruption of elections lies with Russia- whose invasion was intended to entirely replace the state that would conduct elections, and came with planned target lists of the sort of pro-democracy activists who were seen as categorical enemies. The Russian plan was intended to impose a state that would also not provide for free of fair elections or any sort of democrat legitimacy, for the sake of forcing through policy changes that did not survive electoral cycles years ago.
This invasion, in turn, met the conditional for which the Ukrainians had already considered and designed a policy at a government constitutional level. You may not feel 'don't have elections in the middle of an invasion' is a bad policy decision, but that is why it is not your policy decision any more than it was an American policy decision. This Ukrainian policy decision, in turn, was not made as a result of American patronage, which only began well after the Ukrainians made the policy decision which set conditions that the Russians later met.
You can try to re-allocate responsibility for others peoples actions and decisions from those people on whatever grounds you want, including funding. You can even ignore time and space and argue that patronage after a fact can be taken as responsibility for the facts of the past. This is considered poor practice since it is a position with no limiting principle, but plenty of people make poor arguments. It is still the hyperagent failure mode if those decisions are not, in fact, driven by funding.
Elections being held or not held is neither here nor there, it's perfectly reasonable not to hold them during wartime. Running the country under a constant state of martial law is however somewhat concerning from a liberal-democratic point of view.
The US could've pressured Ukraine into holding elections with the immense amount of leverage America possesses. If they stopped funding Ukraine the bottom falls out from the Ukrainian war effort. It's well within America's power to replace Zelensky. That's what BigGuy is actually talking about. The US however doesn't want to particularly stir the boat after all the rhetorical and emotional investment in Zelensky, plus it's more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic than anything productive.
All Ukrainian decisions are taken in an atmosphere that American patronage enables. If it weren't for US economic and military support, the war would've ended by now with a clear Ukrainian defeat.
This line of argument you keep making 'oh these people think the US is this unrealistic, omnipresent, hyperagentic state and others are merely reactive' is particularly inappropriate for a country like Ukraine which is so heavily dependant on American aid. It's unhelpful in general but egregious here.
The US invented the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, NATO, Bretton Woods... America is a very big and rich country, highly interventionist, with many fingers in many pies. Not everything comes out of America but the US is very important.
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In a press conference Antony Blinkin stated that Ukraine wasn’t going to have elections until all its territory is recovered, including Crimea. In other words, Ukraine is never going to have elections again. My point is, Zelensky isn’t going to call elections and the US State Department isn’t going to lean on them to either.
Truly, Antony Blinkin's word is Ukrainian law forever into the future, and 'the State Department isn't going to lean on them' is the same as 'State Department approval.'
Opposition parties remain banned, the press is still under government control, the Verkhovna Rada re-passes the martial law declaration every 90 days with the precision of a metronome. There are no plans for an election in the near future. I’m not seeing any stunning Ukrainian rebuke of what Antony Blinkin said.
That's good! You'd probably have a vision problem if you did. One typically does not see stunning rebukes of foreign, and former, political appointees who are providing rhetorical, financial, and military support to your own side.
You’re trying to have it both ways. You claim that Antony Blinkin and the State Department do not speak for Ukraine, then you turn around and list all the ways that they have MASSIVE LEVERAGE over Ukraine. So which is it? Are the documented statements by official representatives of the American government that Ukraine will have elections when they have Crimea (read: when pigs fly and the sun rises in the west) a legitimate statement of policy of not? Why should I ignore the rantings of Ukraine’s very rich, very influential benefactor that could scotch their war effort on a whim?
Both! One does not need to speak for someone to have influence over them. There is no contradiction of Ukraine not wanting to needlessly offend the Biden administration (not doing a stunning rebuking a gesture of support), and the Secretary of State not speaking for Ukraine.
Of course not. That's not how national policies work, particularly when the American government representatives saying so is no longer an American government representative, and has been fired / traded out for someone willing to execute a new policy.
Aside from that rantings are safely ignored in general, because Antony Blinkin is not Ukrain'es very rich, very influential benefactor anymore. He is, in a sense, an unemployed bum.
Blinken's influence was tied to his status-at-the-time of being President Biden's Secretary of State. While the Secretary of State, Blinken had substantial sway over the Biden administration's dispersal of material and monetary aid. This is why he was very rich- as rich as the American government cared to be- and very influential- with influence at the highest levels of the American government.
The status went out the door when current Secretary of State Marco Rubio became the very rich, very influential benefactor that could scotch their war effort at a whim. Rubio has not, to date, taken any position on the urgency (or infinite delay) in Ukrainian elections. When he does, he is not bound by Antony Blinkin's preference or prior statements.
So the policy of the State Department didn’t change at all. That’s not very surprising given that the policy of the State Department hasn’t changed in 75 years. Which makes your diatribe about Blinkin as skid row wino irrelevant. You’re twisting yourself into a knot to explain away the fact that Ukraine is a military dictatorship with US approval and encouragement.
You are doing the motte-and-bailey language game again, where you make grasping claims you'll walk back when challenged. We could do that point noting what has changed in the last 75 years, or in the last year, and so on. We can do it with different types of relationships, or even what different terms for government mean.
Really, though, it just goes back to the hyperagency bias. Keep on keeping on with it.
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