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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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If Ukrainians didn't want to fight, they won't. People have their own agency, and no amount of cajoling and money got the Pashtuns to fight for 'Afghanistan' or Cubans to fight against Castro

I'm mostly agree but it seems that most of the Ukrainians want to fight in abstract, as country, but not themselves, as the existence and unpopularity of mobilization show. You don't close the borders for fighting-age males if you aren't suspecting that they will choose to run from the country instead of risking their lives for it.

Yes, most want some other countryman to fight. Conscription always has this tension of 'are we getting the right bodies in the fight' and right now, especially since mid 2023 we can posit that war enthusiasm has died down with the calculus shifting on where Ukraines maximal capability is following Ukrainian failures even with the much vaunted European armour. Mobilization in any country has never been popular, with responses ranging 'bitching about it' to 'fragging the Lt'. On this front I will give Russians a measure of credit, the sheer number of buryats and tajiks enthusiastically clambering into shitboxes to catch a mine is quite amazing.