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.

Humans are limited by their short existence but not by their ability to apply logic and derive truth pertaining to god. — Benj96

That is the sort of thing I don't know.

In the context of Descartes' use of God in his epistemology, it is a large step back from an assumption that how we understand must be related by nature to what we wish to know. Descartes is content to make baby steps toward knowing what is true by demonstrating to himself that he is not being deceived by God.

I did read the whole speech. The intention to erase that state does not have to be stated as a goal if it has already been said to not exist.

If you think this, then you're simply unfamiliar with Mearsheimer — Mikie

Which portion are you thinking of?

Edit to Add: All of the references to what Putin was thinking to divine true intentions is what I see as making it all about his agency. We can't peer into his brain, but we can see what he does

Even with this invasion, the facts simply don’t align with it. — Mikie

Whatever Putin's ambitions may be, he kicked off his invasion by saying what he had said before:

In a televised address to the nation, Putin explicitly denied that Ukraine had ever had “real statehood,” and said the country was an integral part of Russia’s “own history, culture, spiritual space.

This erasure of identity is not justified on the basis of making sure Ukraine remains neutral. It is saying that if you insist upon preserving this identity, Russia has the right to end you. The rules of engagement employed demonstrate that this was a sincere statement of purpose. If that is not evidence enough of aggressive intent, I don't know what could be.

Why is he playing a game of Risk? — Mikie

In Mearsheimer's discourse, there are only two agents, the U.S. and Putin. There are no Ukrainians, no Russian people, and no other states with their own interest. It is a game where only one or the other can win, in other words, a game of Risk played with actual humans.

What I don't buy in Mearsheimer's argument is how one motive for Putin to invade has to exclude all others. Whatever degree Putin was motivated to invade because of his perception of what NATO is doing does not confirm or deny other motivations.

Saying that the Ukrainians should not be supported is a Putin talking point. The Ukrainians would have fought back anyway. Whatever game of Risk Mearsheimer is playing, it has nothing to do with the brutality being experienced by actual people. We are way past coulda, shoulda, woulda.

Are you saying that when he told me:

Also, I do not nor have not called for a change in the future world order. — NOS4A2

that he was not being honest?

I started reading Oppenheimer’s The State. A problem appears early in the Preface:

The community, to use Toennies' term, changed into a "society." "Contract" seemed to be the only bond that held men together--the contract based on the purely rationalistic' relation of service for service the do ut des, the "Contraf Social" of Rousseau. A "society" would thus: appear to be a union of self-seeking individuals who hoped through combination to obtain their personal satisfactions, Aristotle had taught that the State had developed, by gradual growth, from the family group. The Stoics and Epicureans held individuals formed the State--with this difference, that the former viewed the individual as being socially inclined by nature, and the latter that he was naturally antisocial. — Oppenheimer, The State

While that description of exchange might apply to Locke's 'natural' community, it is a complete misrepresentation of Rousseau's understanding of the natural man. The second part of the Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men begins with:

The first man who, after enclosing a piece of land, got the idea of saying This is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, what wars, what murders, what miseries and horrors would someone have spared the human race by pulling out the stakes or filling in the ditch and crying out to his fellows, “Stop listening to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the land belong to everyone and the earth belongs to no one.” But it appears very likely that by this time things had already come to the point where they could no longer continue as they were. For this idea of property depends on many previous ideas that could only have arisen in succession and thus was not formed in the human mind all at once. A good deal of progress was necessary: men had to acquire significant industry and enlightenment, and transmit and increase them from one era to the next, before arriving at this last stage in the state of nature. So let us take up these matters from the beginning and try to gather from a single perspective this slow sequence of events and knowledge in their most natural order. — Jean Jacques Rousseau, translated by Ian Johnston

The introduction of transactions between 'self-seeking individuals' is the beginning of inequality. The terms of that change from natural to social is the "Contract" Rousseau is referring to, not a deal between free agents for mutual gain.

Rousseau specifically addresses the difference of agency on either side of the contract in his discussion of amour propre. Here is a note of his on the matter:

(15) One must not confuse amour propre with amour de soi-même, two very different passions in their natures and in their effects. Amour de soi-même is a natural feeling that inclines every animal to see to its own preservation and which, guided in man by reason and modified by pity, produces humanity and virtue. Amour propre is only a relative feeling, factitious and born in society, which inclines each individual to be preoccupied with himself more than with anyone else, which inspires in men all the evils they do to each other, and which is the real source of honour.

Once this is well understood, I say that in our primitive condition, in the true state of nature, amour propre does not exist. For since each individual man looks at himself as the only spectator who observes him, as the only being in the universe who takes an interest in him, and as the only judge of his own merit, it is impossible that a sentiment that originates from comparisons, which he has no inclination to make, could spring up in his soul. For the same reason, this man could have neither hatred nor desire for vengeance, passions that can arise only from the feeling of some offense he has received. And since it is scorn or the intention to harm and not the evil itself that constitutes the offense, men who do not know either how to assess or to compare themselves can commit a great deal of violence against each other when there is some advantage to them in doing so, without ever offending each other. In a word, since each man hardly looks at his fellow men except in the way he would look at animals of a different species, he can carry off the prey of the weaker man or yield his to the stronger, without seeing these acts of plunder as anything other than natural events, without the least impulse of insolence or bitterness and without any passion other than the pain or joy at a good or a bad outcome. — ibid.

Oppenheimer does go on to make interesting observations of how the 'state of nature' philosophers were used for other than their intended purposes but that is not worth pursuing until this fundamental mistake is addressed.

.

Descartes based his confidence that he truly knows things from the existence of God, who allows for the possibility:

But once I perceived that there is a God, and also understood at the same time that everything else depends on him, and that he is not a deceiver, I then concluded that everything that I clearly and distinctly perceive is necessarily true. Hence even if I no longer attend to the reasons leading me to judge this to be true, so long as I merely recall that I did clearly and distinctly observe it, no counter-argument can be brought forward that might force me to doubt it. On the contrary, I have certain knowledge of it. — Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 5:46-47, translated by Donald A. Cress

This confidence does not, however, support the idea that all of what is true can be known.

My thought was a response to the claim that truth is knowable. Taken as the unchanging that is assumed to be the condition for all that exists, how can we, as "systems that change/are under the influence of change", know that truth is knowable? In our ignorance, we can seek the truth but cannot claim that we know enough about it to say what is possible in relation to it. If it were possible to do that, we would already be a lot less ignorant.

I was thinking of it more as ignorance wanting what it lacks. If what is knowable can be established outside of that desire, then it does not have a job or a place to stay.

I was thinking Putin's.
But maybe a better way to ask my question is to ask how this group is one Israel is reluctant to offend because it would offend Russia. Can you point to a specific situation that would bring this into relief?

Do these Russian people in Israel support the present regime?

For something to be true.. It must be knowable. — Benj96

Is it not possible that something could be true but one could not verify it is the case?

If that is not possible, what is ignorance?