This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Ukraine is already taking away its male citizens right to life. Taking away its female citizens right to date German men is a small step in comparison.
If the government is going to conscript men and send them to the front to die, then all citizens should chip in and help. Women should be working in arms plants, farms, and in support roles in the military. And, yes, they should be there to form families with the returning soldiers when the war is over.
And if these women would prefer not to, shouldn't Ukrainian men get to opt out as well?
What's bizarre is the Western world asking Ukrainian men to bear nearly the entire brunt of this conflict as if their lives have no value.
The 'Western world' isn't asking anything of them. The Ukrainian people and government want to fight, and want the west to support them. If the Ukrainian government wanted to surrender, they could do so tomorrow without asking for anyone's permission.
Other countries have agency too.
Agency doesn't mean free choice. When they tried mere negotiations, Boris Johnson flew over to scream at them until they stopped.
...?
When the Ukrainians tried mere negotiations, the Russians were demanding a dismantling of the Ukrainian military and veto over any external security guarantors actually providing assistance in case of another continuation war.
Further, the timing of those Russian demands broadly coincided with the Ukrainians discovery of the Bucha massacre and forcing the Russian retreat from Kyiv, both of which changed the Ukrainian political appetite- governmental and popular- for negotiations.
By contrast, the power of Borris Johnson to coerce, compel, bewitch, or otherwise overturn the true desires of the Ukrainian political establishment was...?
You frame this as if it were absurd to think US had any way of influencing Ukrainians. I do find the focus on Johnson silly. The idea that at that pivotal moment US helped Ukrainians decide to commit themselves to the meatgrinder, not so much. Obviously Johnson himself would be little more than a mouthpiece.
My impression is that you never give an inch.
I frame it as absurd to think the US was responsible for the Ukrainian point of view when there is no indication the Ukrainians changed positions at all, other than claims generally fronted by Russian-originated sources which had every incentive to claim that the onus of the war continuing was on the Americans / Brits.
Characterizing negotiations breakdown as a result of the UK 'screaming at them until they stopped,' as opposed to the Russians demanding terms that would have prevented the Ukrainians from pulling a similar defense of the country in the future even as Russian atrocities were being recognized, is a silly when put in the context of what the state of negotiations were when they ended, and thus also silly when said terms and contexts aren't being acknowledged.
That the US had any way of influencing Ukrainians is truism: that's a bar so low you have to dig to not walk over it. That the US influence (by proxy, no less) was the determining factor is an appeal to the hyperagency/hypoagency framework that's a consistent flaw in understanding international affairs and especially the Ukraine conflict, which for nearly a decade has been a consistent series of Putin's Russia not recognizing Ukrainian agency and trying to attribute responsibility for resistance on others.
Just to clarify, the most recent source of the claim, that I'm familiar with, was some high-ranking Ukrainian official. There were also some German politicians saying things to this effect, but I think they were from the terminally pro-Russian faction, so I was taking that with a grain of salt until more recently.
OTOH, I probably oversold how confident I am in the claim, this is in the "something that popped up on my feed, and I never followed up" category.
But on this I have to push back. Framing it as a "the hyperagency/hypoagency framework" is a strawman, or a weakman at best. The point being made here isn't that Russians literally couldn't make another choice, it's that an American / Western move put them in a position where war seems like the best of all possible options. Normally this isn't a controversial framework, the US was justifying it's own invasion of Iraq in exactly the same way, not long ago.
I'll disagree, and maintain my criticism of your previous post.
On one level, the charge of hyperagency / hypoagency framework isn't a strawman as I'm not saying it's the argument being made, it's what I am characterizing the argument's form as in a meta-contextual description. And I made this point- and stand by it- because the characterization of reasonings for why Ukraine would continue fighting was because Borris Johnson screamed at them- a pejorative framing with connotations of aggression by the screamer and victimhood/submission by the target who acquiesces to it in an imposition of will- rather than multiple extremely more relevant factors. Like, say, Borris Johnson communicating the intend of the UK government to continue supporting Ukraine, and thus allowing the Ukrainians to make a more informed choice as to whether continuing to fight or submitting to the current terms offered by the Russians was better.
When the only relevant factor provided for a party's decision making is another party's verbal harassment, this is an agency framework that reserves true agency to the person who is the true decision maker, and subordinates agency of the other. Were the other relevant factors included and a less pejorative framing used, then the Ukrainians would have been presented as making a choice: the Ukrainians could consider what the Russians demanded (conditions following an unprovoked invasion that increasing risk of a follow on invasions with even worse terms should Russia choose to fight a fourth continuation war to complete the cassus belli war goals that this negotiation did not provide them), versus prospects of fighting on with external support. That would be a choice, even if someone disagrees that it was the better choice. But submitting to screaming is not a choice- it is an imposition of someone else's will.
Similarly, and equally relevant, is the movement of the onus of negotiation failure to the US and UK rather than Russia. The US and UK did not move to put the Ukrainians in a position where war seemed the better than Russian terms- the Russians did, multiple times. The Russians did so by launching an unprovoked invasion on false pretenses (the false-flag attempts of Ukrainian provocations that were leaked before they even occured, the false narratives on the Ukrainian suppression of the Russian-speaking minorities), the Russians also did so by conducting massacres like the Bucha massacre that demonstrated how they would treat the Ukrainians from a position of occupation, and the Russians did so by demanding terms that would directly facilitate the future occupation of Ukraine via demands that would cripple Ukraine's ability to resist occupation in exchange for a cease fire that did not meet Russia's stated or underlying goals when it initiated this war. Additionally, the Russians put Ukraine in this position because the current Ukraine War is no less than the third Russian intervention in Ukraine in less than a decade, and each one of those was a Russian choice.
Attributing the geopolitical context the Ukrainians found themselves in to the US and UK, rather than the Russians, is another form of the hyperagency/hypoagency paradigm that subordinates Russian agency- and thus responsibility for the situation- to the Americans and Brits. They are not responding to Russian agency to launch a second continuation war into Ukraine- rather, the Russian position and actions are treated as forces of natures that simply have to be dealt with pragmatically, and the US/UK actions are imposing an immoral choice on the Ukrainians instead. This is aligned with the previous choice of pejorative- Borris screaming- as the determinative factor, and that framework's issues with hyper- and hypo-agency.
Even framing the negotiations as 'the US and UK made war seem the best of all possible worlds' is a negation of the other parties agencies. The recent Afghan war quite nicely demonstrated that the US aid can't make people who don't want to fight actually fight- and thus it's not the agent as to why Ukrainians formed in the streets of Kyiv to make molotov cocktails in mass in the opening month rather than Ukrainians protesting against fighting the Russians like Putin thought would happen. Nor can the Americans dictate the other side of the table, the harms Russia could do in war. No one in the region is unfamiliar with what Grozny refers to, and the Russian treatment of temporarily occupied areas was already entering awareness. All the Americans could do is offer military support for the Ukrainians to fight if they already wanted to, they couldn't dictate the cost-perception of the Ukrainians continuing to fight.
But the Russians could- and did- both by the content of their negotiations and the conduct of their forces. I made a point a few years ago- I believe on the old site- that Bucha was a disaster for the Russians whose cost was nowhere near worth whatever benefit was perceived at the time, and this is why. Bucha was a demonstration of what the Russians were willing to do if in a position of military superiority, and Russian terms were to dismantle Ukraine's ability to resist a future incursion where it could be done again. The US did not put Ukraine in a position where future Buchas were an easily foreseeable consequence of avoiding the war at hand: Russia did. That Russia might continue to further areas by continuing this war did not change that Russia's alternatives were to set conditions for Russia to claim more more easily going forward. And the perception that Russia might fight a third continuation war in Ukraine, and thus diminishing the value of peace talks in this war that would make a fourth Russian intervention even easier, is solely a result of Russia's repeated choices.
But it's exactly your characterization of the argument's form that I'm objecting to, not any specific claim you're making about the lead-up to the conflict, or the invasion itself. Hyperagency / hypoagency is something that's wrong on it's face. Generally in life there's few situations where someone has all the power while someone else has none, let alone in geopolitics, let alone when the country with hypoagency is supposed to be one like Russia. The reason why I'm objecting to the characterization is that portraying the argument's form this way allows for dismissing the actual argument, without touching it's substance. So even if this isn't technically a strawman, it ends up working in a very similar way.
A more accurate characterization of the argument's form is something like a "pawn sacrifice". Every game with even the most basic strategic element will involve making a move, and hoping your opponent will respond in a way that you can take advantage of. That's what the US / the West is being "accused" of here, except it's not really much of an accusation, because that's just politics. Nowhere in there is "hypoagency" being attributed to any actor. If we go with the example of Johnson's visit, I'll apologize for intuitively reaching for a portrayal of the affair that makes it look like the west was imposing it's will, but it doesn't matter whether they did it by screaming or sweet-talk, threats or bribery, the point is that they made a move hoping for certain results. If the whole thing ends up being a quagmire for Russia, and Ukraine gets out of it with just a few bruises, I will have to tip my hat to the western establishment, and congratulate them for a game well played. If it turns out to be a disaster for Ukraine, on the other hand, they will end up looking incompetent. If it turns out they always knew it would be a disaster for Ukraine they will end up looking callous. You can attribute the majority of agency in the situation to Russia, and I don't see how it changes the above calculus.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link