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It's anything but. First of all, it completely ignores the jus ad bellum <-> jus in bello distinction and pretends it doesn't even exist. It also assumes that anyone ever tried to convince Russia with words (When? Who? Of what?), and claims to adhere to the universal moral code that only the side that attacks first bears any responsibility for the conflict (I'd be very, very surprised if these people actually believed that).
This reply feels like a non-sequitur, I think you've replied to the wrong comment.
Also for the record, anyone bleating about how nobody has just tried to talk with Russia is either ignorant of the situation or pretending to be so, plenty of people and groups have attempted to provide an avenue for a negotiated end to hostilities, Russia has simply rejected them by insisting that the only "negotiation" they'll accept is one where they get everything they want.
If you want to bring Russia to the negotiating table you'll apparently need to pave the road to it with tens of thousands of Russian dead.
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You also ignore that they aren't making an argument on jus ad bellum philosophy.
If you want to make that something more than an isolated demand for rigor, we can, but the Russians failed that metric at the first stages, while people helping Ukraine can pass it pretty trivially.
This is less of an assumption and more you showing your ignorance. The Americans were publicizing the buildup and raising the potential invasion in late 2021 with the Russians and the Europeans, and ended the year with an international attention campaign in late 2021/early 2022 about the impending planned Russian invasion down to the level of detail of Russian manufactured false-flag casus belli before they were conducted. While doing this they burned intelligence sources in a way rarely seen, even as they publicized years of military assistance and ongoing weapon deliveries with the obvious insurgency implications, such as ATGMs and MANPADs, which in internal signalling terms is a very un-subtle deterence message of 'if you try this, you will get fucked up.'
The American information campaign was derided at the time, for various reasons- the Russians denied they were going to invade, the French thought the Russians would have to be too stupid to invade for the Americans to be correct, and publicized European diplomats at the time made allusions to Iraq War intelligence failures, and everyone thought the Ukrainians would be beaten- but whatever one can say, it's not a lack of attempting to convince Russia with words.
And this is just the American-centric one, and doesn't even include the French efforts, for which Macron endured no small amount of mockery.
Who made this claim when?
(My original comment got eaten. Whatever.)
I ask you not to be obtuse.
If it weren't the US but Russia, or any other nation you don't sympathize with, engaging in such an information campaign, would you earnestly say that it's a real attempt to convince through words, or would you dismiss it as blackmail / strong-arming?
Also, you're talking about something that was done in 2021. But this conflict very obviously didn't begin in 2021.
Multiple commenters here made the argument that I'm being obtuse/autistic if I'm taking the words of a politician literally. Fair enough. Let's then be honest with ourselves: we know that when a politician makes a public argument in the context of an ongoing war, and says that 'one side could not be convinced through words, so they now need to be compelled through force', the message he means to communicate is 'we're the good guys, so we tried everything to resolve this conflict through diplomatic means', not 'we tried blackmailing them into staying passive while the other side gets to do everything it wants'.
I ask you to be competent and historically literate.
I would indeed say that a country warning of an invasion months in advance, publicizing normally unannounced state visits on the topic, engaging in public diplomacy with regional actors who in turn give public dismissals, and publicly changing its defense policy for public visibility at the expense of operational secrecy is, indeed, engaging in real attempts to convince through words, and not conducting in blackmail / strong-arming.
I would also note that blackmail / strong-arming ARE ways to engage in persuasion via words, but this is why I ask for competence and historical literacy.
Only if you move the conflict back to 2014, which is not the context you have been speaking of. The military buildup for the February 2022 invasion very obviously did begin in 2021, with a non-trivial amount of publicly available imagery of the arms buildup where equipment brought west for Russian exercises in early 2021 was not returned with participating units, and imagery of expanded weapons buildups over time were publicized.
Not only is this in recent contemporary history not even a year old in some cases, but basic knowledge of logistics would recognize that the war had a substantial build-up phase that began well before February 2022 to enable the Russians to conduct the invasion. Hence the request for competence and historical literacy.
I disagree this is honesty, and instead would characterize this as incompetence at best, and demonstrating historically illiteracy for what preceeded the February 2022 invasion.
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I'd be very, very surprised if you actually believed that no one never tried to convince Russia with words, as opposed to trying to set this frankly absurd assumption (Russia has diplomats and embassies, and so do its opponents) as the null hypothesis.
Yes, that's what I actually believe, and I know Russia has diplomats and embassies. Where's the evidence of attempts to convince Russia with words?
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220307-macron-bucks-western-trend-by-keeping-dialogue-open-with-putin
This is the most public example, where Macron made an ass of himself by refusing to see that Putin was not serious about negotiating or talking on this issue.
There will be near constant back channel talks between Russia and other nations as the war progresses and there was undoubtedly a great deal of trying to convince Russia before the war (god knows the Germans and French have been trying to court Russia for long enough).
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