If the Russians are actually crossing the Dniepr, they will be very vulnerable to shelling as they rally to the few places where it can be done. The Ukrainians may advance only as far as to make that easier to do. The west bank could turn into a huge prison colony.

When considering the possibility of a negotiated peace versus continuing the war, it seems to me that that the future of displaced persons takes precedence over security guarantees. Many Ukrainians live as refugees in Europe. Many others have been deported to Russia.

If Russia is to come forward as a serious participant in peace talks, the question of whether people will be allowed to return to where they used to live will be front and center.

The dim view you have of the Ukrainian government has no immediate bearing on their stated purpose to restore their territory. The issue is how far support from other nations will go to achieve this goal. That issue falls within the question Benkei raised. Clearly the support cannot continue at "any cost."

It is unlikely that your moral calculus will be used to figure out what the limits will be.

It is not clear who would be doing the appeasing in your description. Is it the man behind the curtain using Ukrainians to fight a proxy war or a choice Ukrainians are making for themselves?

The answer to who is calling the shots relates to how an end to the war can be negotiated.

I wasn't speaking generally of populations who support war. I was expanding on my comment that is germane in the present circumstances:

If the Ukrainians are found to employ anything like the disinformation regime used by Russia on their citizens or conduct the war as barbarously as they have, that would make your method weighing of the cost of surrender against the cost of resistance more reasonable. Such circumstances would also reduce the support Ukraine receives from other nations and increase the number of those who view the Ukraine government as an equivalent of the Diem regime in the Vietnam war. — Paine

How would it be a different decision if Ukraine were an autocratic dictatorship? They'd be in exactly the same position with regards to weighing territory loss against the cost of continued war. — Isaac

They would not have the same level of support that has allowed them to repulse the Russians as much as they have. The people fighting would not view the change of government as significant if the leadership was as brutal as the Russians. Both factors shape any kind of negotiated deal.

Where have I said that they don't represent the Ukrainian people? — Isaac

There's no such entity as 'the Ukrainians' to even ask. — Isaac

Russia claims Ukraine is being run by a dictatorship. They also say that Ukraine is an integral part of their nation. Any deal they make with the Ukraine government will have as much water under it that the previous ones have had.

If the Ukrainians are found to employ anything like the disinformation regime used by Russia on their citizens or conduct the war as barbarously as they have, that would make your method weighing of the cost of surrender against the cost of resistance more reasonable. Such circumstances would also reduce the support Ukraine receives from other nations and increase the number of those who view the Ukraine government as an equivalent of the Diem regime in the Vietnam war.

In this case, the existence of the state is directly tied to its legitimacy as an 'entity' of the Ukrainians.

A Ukrainian government exists which is capable of making unilateral decisions about Ukrainian military action and diplomatic agreements — Isaac

Yes, and the point I was making is that you and Russia don't consider it representative of the people who live there.

The Ukrainian government definitely exists, no one is denying it and there's no credible threat to their continued existence as a legislative body (despite the individuals therein being under personal threat) that would prevent them from making the decisions in question. — Isaac

Perhaps I should have underlined the word "Ukranian." You do not regard that government to be legitimate agents of those people or that they even exist. You say:

There's no such entity as 'the Ukrainians' to even ask. — Isaac

Whatever agreements made by that government would have to be accompanied by an acceptance by Russia that such a state exists. That is going to take far more than the grudging acceptance of Minsk II because invading the entire country put an end on Ukraine having sovereignty. It is absurd to think one could recognize a government but "fix" their leadership with "denazification."

You have to understand that basically Russia isn't really an imperialist nation trying to cling on to it's old colonies and conquered countries. — Isaac

Claiming this is the case is a form of denying the existence of the Ukranian state. When discussing Chechnya, you said this about their attempt at independence:

Is Russia entitled to any land at all? Or are we just going to say anything more than a shed outside Moscow is just rampant empire building? — Isaac

After adding up this subtraction of Ukranian identity to the views put forward by many here that the Ukranian state is merely a proxy for NATO powers, I resubmit the proposal that the thousands of comments on this thread mostly concern whether Ukraine is a nation represented by its present government.

Your bullet points of questions refer to a Ukrainian state. A generous portion of the 11,300 comments on this thread concern whether it exists or not. It is lost or found between the interests of Russian and other nations.

When you speak of choosing between lesser or greater evils, the experience of actual war has superseded the calculation of peace bought at the cost of oppression.

How would an accurate response to your set of speculative questions provide a possible way to end the conflict?

I agree with your account that Dugin is providing the back story for Putin's oft repeated theme of historical destiny. I would like to qualify this observation, however:

The references to culture wars, to Russia being very Christian and so on are just to try to lure the far right in the West. — ssu

It is true that Russia is not undergoing the culture wars in which ultranationalists of other nations participate. Putin has been adept at telling them what they want to hear. But getting the thumbs up from the Russian Orthodox Church that his is a just war is important. Things would be different if they even declined to comment. But they continue to bring balloons and pom-poms to the funeral.

Putin's speech does reflect Dugan's vision. As a challenge to world order, it is difficult to imagine how the clash of civilizations is supposed to work when Putin and his gang of oligarchs gain and maintain their wealth through participation in the despised 'unipolar' system. The Russian economy will collapse if separated from globalized markets and resources.

Efforts that recognize the difficulty of preserving traditional forms of life in the face of 'unipolar' economy call for the opposite of imperial schemes. They wish to establish 'communities of communities' to increase the agency of people to shape the world around them. The relative independence of communities is not something one will find in the Cheka playbook that Putin absorbed in his youth.

As for the argument that the 'loss of universals' is what is destroying the idea of human nature, it is funny to have Heidegger be the champion for that cause. As Strauss pointed out in Natural Rights and History, deconstruction through historicism is what undermined the view of humans as having their own nature. And whatever else Heidegger may have been, he was an historicist of philosophy itself.

You don't know what methods were used. There was an attempt to canvass the eastern oblasts. I figure that has to be very difficult to do in the state of war with so many refugees and deported people. I am interested in how many supporters of the 2014 invasion still support the Russian state after they have gotten a taste of their love.

But I didn't bring up the poll to argue for a proper resolution of the conflict but to point out that there are enough self-identified Ukrainians around to undermine your claim:

There's no such entity as 'the Ukrainians' to even ask. — Isaac

I use "they" in the hope they are reporting what they think in polls such as these.

I imagine you will dismiss it as fake news. But it is by means of gathering reports in some way that we will learn the answer.

They are loudly telling themselves. The question of those who don't see it that way is a reasonable one. But that issue is different from you stating without qualification:

There's no such entity as 'the Ukrainians' to even ask. — Isaac

If the Ukrainians don't exist, you need to get out there and tell them. They have not received your testimony.

If Nationalism is bullshit, what is the principle supporting this claim:

Is Russia entitled to any land at all? Or are we just going to say anything more than a shed outside Moscow is just rampant empire building? — Isaac

Why 'imperial' retention. Are the UK 'imperialistically' retaining Northern Ireland?
Are Spain 'imperialistically' retaining Catalonia? — Isaac

It would not be a redefinition of language to note an important difference between your examples and a "retention" involving the Massacre of Civilians in order to preserve this "entitlement."

Should the Ukrainians be consulted over whether Russia is entitled to their lands?

Oh, and do you even reslise how absurd it is to include Chechnya in your list of evidences of imperialist expansion? — Isaac

It would be more accurate to call it a case of imperial retention as the independence movement came from the slow recovery from when "The Stalinist regime fallaciously accused the Chechens (and the Ingush) of massive collaboration with the German invaders, and then deported them en masse on February 23, 1944."

This might be why some people get nervous when Putin starts calling them Nazis.

Forgive me if I don't take that as a response to my observations regarding the role of "identity."

That is a very interesting development. While being pissed off by the U.S. could be a powerful motive, I wonder how much the rise of the Salafist parties played a part in these troops resisting the Taliban. That struggle played a major part in the Chechen wars.

If this group went full Merc, that sort of thing won't matter. Pretty nihilistic, after all that has happened.

Arguments based upon authority are the weakest kind.

Since you have no independent view of the matter, what would Mearsheimer accept as evidence of intent?

Organisms are not completely determined through their genetic makeup but have different life experiences due to the particular environment in which they emerge. For humans, that environment includes forms of living together that produce language, shared values, and instruments to sustain life through work. While the genetic code may mark out the limits of what is possible in life, it does not include all that is happening. I agree that life would be stupid if it did.

Identity is clearly a development of the environment of humans living together and its methods of continuing skills from generation to generation. We don't know very much about how these behaviors relate to Life as the activity exhibited by all organisms. But the importance of upbringing and education in the outcome of every individual is there for everyone to see and has been for time out of mind. When Le Rochefoucauld observed that "education is a second amour propre", it was an acceptance of our behavior as "natural", not an attempt to establish a separate domain. When one gets to the viewpoint of Vygotsky, the unique experience of the individual emerges directly from surviving the human environment as one of the conditions of life.

Regarding the extent genetics predetermine outcomes, it should be noted that there is an emerging science of Epigenetics that shows how environmental factors can alter what is expressed through DNA. The realm of Ecology, as the collision of the many elements of Life, is getting more complicated, not less.

That is a fair challenge after you give some kind of reading of Hegel that could serve as a point of departure. So far, there is no way of knowing what you think Hegel said.

What do you understand Hegel to be saying to be so confident in your dismissal?

Developmental psychology.
Game Theory.
Models of urban planning.

All built on the view of process as an interaction of conflicting goals.

Okay, it looks like Russia has gone too far to jump start a Minsk III. The annexations also make an armistice line an unlikely option because Ukraine would view that as a de facto relinquishing of territory. Russia's destruction of civilian infrastructure deepens the motivation to keep the structure of sanctions after any kind of cease fire.

The idea of a U.N. referendum is interesting. It seems like that would require restoration of occupancy by refugees who headed west and the return of those deported east.

It's not looking good for Humpty Dumpty.

The arguments over who caused what is interesting but which part of the truth of that relates to a future of possible agreements?

Whatever was possible at the beginning of the invasion is not available now. If the Russians had any kind of discipline in their rules of engagement, they could have established a language of limited goals that could lead to negotiations. Threatening to kill people is all they have talked about so far. Which agreement or disagreement from the past can serve as a template for progress in the situation? That is not a rhetorical question. On the other hand, nothing discussed here has yet to approach it.

The response by the Ukrainians to the invasion was not expected by many. Their continued existence makes future negotiations not as simple as some kind of Partition of Poland, as advocated for by some. Nobody involved will be allowed to return to some glorious past.

That is a sort of delightful self-overcoming which is also difficult to properly represent, as well as being an example of practicing Will to Power. — Bret Bernhoft

Will to Power is not something one practices, certainly not in the sense of divination to discover a personal outcome. Nietzsche's development of the idea is better reflected in the following from The Gay Science:

Two kinds of causes that are often confounded. This seems to me to be one of my most essential steps and advances: I have learned to distinguish the cause of acting from the cause of acting in a particular way, in a particular direction, with a particular goal. The first kind of cause is a quantum of dammed-up energy that is waiting to be used up somehow, for something, while the second kind is, compared to this energy, something quite insignificant, for the most part a little accident in accordance with which this quantum "discharges" itself in one particular way-a match versus a ton ot powder. Among these little accidents and "matches" I include so-called "purposes" as well as the even much more so-called "vocations" : They are relatively random, arbitrary, almost indifferent in relation to the tremendous quantum of energy that presses, as I have said, to be used up somehow. The usual view is different: People are accustomed to consider the goal (purposes. vocations, etc.) as the driving force, in keeping with a very ancient error; but it is merely the directing force; One has mistaken the helmsman for the steam. And not even always the helmsman, the directing force.
Is the "goal," the "purpose'' not often enough a beautifying pretext, a self-deception of vanity after the event that does not want to acknowledge that the ship is following the current into which it has entered accidentally? that it "wills" to go that way because it must? that is has a direction, to be sure, but -- no
helmsman at all?
We still need a critique of the concept of "purpose." — The Gay Science, 360, translated by W Kaufman

I start with being glad the thing is still going on. Not as a part of some idea. Just that the return is an unexpected gift.

Before 911, Al Qaeda was split on whether to force the 'far war' to be brought into the 'near war.' The die was cast and the response surely wiped-out AQ. The result has advanced some of their aims, however. The triumphant bugles of the neocons have fallen silent.

It was not a matter of doing nothing or projecting maximum force. The Bush National Security Doctrine specifically discounted international instruments that would have treated AQ as a criminal gang. Whatever one thinks about that choice, it was an expensive one.

Hegel's social and political philosophy cannot be adequately addressed without discussing his Philosophy of Right. — Fooloso4

Indeed. Hegel's representation of the ownership of property being an integral component of our experience as free agents is the fault line of the many disputes over what his view of development requires. In the section immediately following the dismissal of slavery as ever being a right in a society of free agents, Hegel says this:

In relation to external things, the rational aspect is that I possess property, but the particular aspect comprises subjective aims, needs, arbitrariness, abilities, external circumstances, and so forth (see §45). On these mere possession as such depends, but this particular aspect has in this sphere of abstract personality not yet been established as identical with freedom. What and how much I possess, therefore, is a matter of indifference so far as rights are concerned.
Remark: If at this stage we may speak of more persons than one, although no such distinction has yet been made, then we may say that in respect of their personality persons are equal. But this is an empty tautology, for the person, as something abstract, has not yet been particularised or established as distinct in some specific way.
‘Equality’ is the abstract identity of the Understanding; reflective thought and all kinds of intellectual mediocrity stumble on it at once when they are confronted by the relation of unity to a difference. At this point, equality could only be the equality of abstract persons as such, and therefore the whole field of possession, this terrain of inequality, falls outside it. The demand sometimes made for an equal division of land, and other available resources too, is an intellectualism all the more empty and superficial in that at the heart of particular differences there lies not only the external contingency of nature but also the whole compass of mind, endlessly particularised and differentiated, and the rationality of mind developed into an organism.
We may not speak of the injustice of nature in the unequal distribution of possessions and resources, since nature is not free and therefore is neither just nor unjust. That everyone ought to have subsistence enough for his needs is a moral wish and thus vaguely expressed is well enough meant, but like anything that is only well meant it lacks objectivity. On the other hand, subsistence is not the same as possession and belongs to another sphere, i.e. to civil society. — Hegel, Philosophy of Right, section 49

It is important to understand why something is happening. And if there is any kind of resolution possible through dialogue, it will have to start from a shared point of departure. If Putin did anything that remotely resembled that sort of language, there would be more options.

I would like to be proven wrong on this.

Yes, it is absurd if we've gotten it into our heads that Putin had (and has) "imperial ambitions." But there's no evidence -- or very flimsy evidence -- to support this. This is the point. — Mikie

I am curious what standard of evidence you deem legitimate in the matter. When one state invades another to obtain territory and control, what value is there in aligning that act with a set of ambitions?

If someone breaks into your house and destroys all the furniture and shoots anybody who resists, what is the point of wondering if they meant to wreak complete destruction or were only hoping to get a snack?

In regard to ssu's observation about language use issues, I wonder how many Ukrainians who felt marginalized about that before the occupation feel about it now they have experienced Russian forms of governance. I tried to look for research about that but failed. Probably difficult to get clarity on something like that with so many displaced people during wartime.

I made this comment a reply to you because I am not sure how the nationalism presented in your links relates to language use within Ukraine before and after the invasion.

I did not say that one should ignore geopolitical facts. I merely note that one of the important ones has not been properly included in the analysis.

It is interesting that you use the model of a villager in Vietnam to make your point when the Ukrainians are an organized political state successfully engaging Russian forces.

The Ukrainians don't think it is a proxy war. That is what is missing in all this fine analysis of who is threatening who.

With all the shifting accounts given by Putin stating the goal of the operation, the consistent message given through the process is that each set back he suffers will be answered by escalation.

For argument's sake, let's say that any result that would make it impossible for Ukraine to align with the west would have satisfied Putin's requirements. At a minimum, that would require a different administration in Kyiv and a consolidation of the gains made in 2014. By that measure, nothing has changed. Both elements are needed to stop the country from becoming more 'western.'

Giving Putin territories in exchange for letting the rest of Ukraine live will not give him the neutrality he demands. It will accelerate the change he has been fighting against. So, he keeps escalating.

The choice is a partial capitulation to buy both sides temporary relief from the war or to continue the incremental form of escalation Biden has been using to answer each emerging threat as least aggressively as possible. With the attacks on the cities on the rise, it is time for lots of missile defense and contractors to maintain them.

I don't understand how noting the limitations of our knowledge in the context of all that is true amounts to saying we could not learn anything that is true or what behavior is better from what is worse.

Yes, it is an update from the Vietnam era:

"We had to destroy our village along with their village in order to save either one."

In essence he shows commitment to a belief without feeling the need to explain it to others. — Benj96

Nothing could be further from the truth. While it may have been presumptuous for him to confidently declare how the perfection of God's mind relates to his creatures, he explicitly cautions against thinking our knowledge as being able to approach all that is true:

That in passing from the knowledge of God to the knowledge of the creatures, it is necessary to remember that our understanding is finite, and the power of God infinite.

But as we know that God alone is the true cause of all that is or can be, we will doubtless follow the best way of philosophizing, if, from the knowledge we have of God himself, we pass to the explication of the things he has created, and essay to deduce it from the notions that are naturally in our minds, for we will thus obtain the perfect science, that is the knowledge of effects through their causes. But that we may be able to make this attempt with sufficient security from error, we must use the precaution to bear in mind as much as possible that God, who is the author of things, is infinite, while we are wholly finite. — Discourse on Method, Principles of Philosophy, 24, translated by John Veitch

Descartes' point of bringing up the possibility of being deceived was in order to support his fundamental argument that the method for obtaining authentic knowledge must come through the process of doubt rather than accidentally having the correct opinions.