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Notes -
My knowledge of Ukr politics begins and ends at ‘I support whatever the UGCC wants’, so this is an honest question- does Zaluzhny have sufficient internal support to force through a peace agreement over the nationalist’s objections, or to expand the draft until Ukraine is fully staffed again? Could that be the reason?
As for Zelenskyy, making high risk maneuvers is far from unknown when leaders sense a direct threat to their power.
@Dean
Elections in Ukraine are cancelled indefinitely with US State Department approval, so barring a military coup Zaluzhny can’t force anything through. The State Department might be changing its tune though. The war is going very badly for Ukraine. Budanov was supposed to be the hard-headed butcher that would fight to the last Ukrainian, so if he wants to tap out that means the situation must be very dire. A catastrophic, total Ukrainian collapse would make NATO a lot harder to defend because the Russians would be sitting right on the Polish border. The Balkans would also be at much higher risk. It would be better for NATO to force Ukraine to give up everything east of the Dneiper and freeze the conflict for another ten years. That at least gives Europe time to rearm.
and how it would be supposed to be changing things?
Kaliningrad is a thing, Belarus is effectively absorbed as far as military staging goes.
US State Department is not adding here much, elections are suspended in accordance of Ukrainian constitution on account of having a war
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.
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