No one here is arguing that Russia is right in what it does.

This is what you can't seem to understand: my argument is not that we ought to look more favorably on Russia's actions, but that we ought to look more critically at the United States' — Tzeentch

Playing dumb ain't gonna help you, dude.

First I doubt you are intellectually honest in claiming that you are not arguing that "Russia is right in what it does" given claims such as [1]

Second, your complaint can be easily retorted: my argument is not that we ought to look more favorably on the US's actions, but that we ought to look more critically at Russia. And if that is what makes me pro-US, then the opposite argument, namely the exact argument you just made makes you pro-Russian. You take Russia to be a lesser evil than the US. I take the US to be a lesser evil than Russia. To call mine a bias and yours not a bias, you have give compelling arguments, so far you offered questionable arguments.

[1]

I do believe the matter of Ukraine becoming part of the American sphere of influence represented a legitimate security concern to the Russians. — Tzeentch

Again with your piece of pro-Russian propaganda? — neomac


You're responding to a simple statement of fact.

So obviously the Kremlin believed it was their business, and whether you agree with that or not, if you do not take warnings like these seriously, you're a fool, or you're the United States preparing to sacrifice a pawn. — Tzeentch — boethius

More loaded than simple. The framing is suggesting a questionable alternative: either Westerners didn’t take the Russian warnings seriously or they were serving the evil US at the expense of the Ukrainians. Unfortunately neither Ukrainians were pawns (the image is used to stress that Ukrainians have no agency like mechanical puppets or are just gullible/corrupted) nor the Russian warnings have been disregarded (indeed, Russian warnings HAVE BEEN TAKEN SERIOUSLY, if that means act in accordance to Russia’s demand DO NOT LET UKRAINE JOIN NATO and Ukraine never joined NATO until now, also Ukraine remained neutral by constitution and popular support until the occupation of Crimea, and yet the EUROPEANS WERE RELUCTANT TO COUNTER RUSSIA, even then, that’s how seriously they took the Russian warnings [1]). The further questionable implicature is that the US is the evil mastermind exploiting Ukrainians to aggress Russia. Such assumption is questionable on geopolitical and common-sense grounds: if the geopolitical arena is inherently competitive and conflictual then ALL players (including minor actors like Ukraine or Hamas) are expected to do competitive and controversial things, especially when pursuing hegemonic goals (like Russia and the US). So claiming that the US is “provoking” Russia equates to claiming that the US is doing something competitive and controversial wrt Russian hegemonic ambitions, and therefore it is to be blameful and evil, it means you do not understand the game or you're spinning pro-Russian propaganda. Besides the West (including the US) wasn’t that confrontational with Russia, as I’ve argued: the Western-led globalization enabled and encouraged Putin’s aggression of Ukraine WAY MORE than whatever grievance Putin had. As far as common-sense goes: if you were to choose based on avg standards of life, where would you prefer for you and your beloved ones to live, under US hegemony or under Russian hegemony? This is not to say there are no third alternatives, but that if there weren’t I would still prefer to live under the US hegemony than under the Russian hegemony. To that extent I’m pro-US and reason accordingly. That’s the only “exceptionalism” I can readily accord to the US vis-à-vis Russia.


[1] Pro-Russian propaganda complains a lot about Western intelligence and military interference in Ukraine and then argues for Ukrainian neutrality, but it forgets Russia’s massive interference in political countries, especially in their neighborhood (including Ukraine), and the main military naval base in the Ukrainian territory. It's like Germany or Italy declaring to be neutral with an American military base in their territory.

For example, if you pull a gun on me and warn me you'll shoot me if I take another step, I'd be a fool to ignore that warning whether I feel you'd be justified in shooting me or not. At the end of the day I don't want to be shot and I need to navigate the real world and not the world as I wish it was. I may wish you wouldn't shoot me despite your warning or then wish that someone would jump in front of me to take the bullet and so I don't suffer the consequences of my own actions, but if that's not what reality is like then I'm a fool to make decisions based on delusional wishes. — boethius

First, as I said Russian warnings were taken seriously, but obviously neither the US nor Ukraine could accept whatever condition Russia would require for peace: the US is the hegemon (so submission to Russia’s demands aren’t expected, not even respect for its sphere of influence, China is complaining about the same), Ukraine was/is open to Westernisation precisely to get rid of Russian oppressive hegemony, and Europeans are arguably interested in Ukraine for the same compelling reasons Hitler was (“Ukraine is a God-endowed country. For centuries she has excited the envy of her neighbors because of her unique situation, her fertile soil, her abundance of raw materials, and her gentle climate” https://www.amazon.fr/Hitlers-Occupation-Ukraine-1941-1944-Totalitarian/dp/125802585X). So there was a convergence of interests at the expense of Russian imperialism.
Second, there are military miscalculations, divergence of political interest, divergence in political decision making and/or divergence in marketisation of political decisions among all major players. But the degree of resilience may vary significantly (e.g. I take Western democracies as more vulnerable, individually and collectively, than autocracies like Russia). The West was overconfident Russia wouldn’t attack, because NATO arguably wasn’t an incumbent military threat to Russia in any meaningful way and, even less so after the occupation of Crimea, which was tolerated by Western Europeans. Unfortunately this encouraged Russia to raise the stakes (and any future attempt to appease Russia can turn against the West in the same way). This is called: OPPORTUNITY. So we should stop talking about provocation and talk of OPPORTUNITY. Putin (with the blessing of his Chinese boy friend) took the OPPORTUNITY to aggress Ukraine because the West was/is perceived as WEAK and DECADENT. Then you have to explain to me how a weak and decadent West constitutes a serious threat to a strong and non-decadent Russia.

That the US would drop Ukraine like a hot potato the moment the war no longer serves US interests was as obvious at the start of the war as it is now.
You can complain about "complacency" all you want, but unless it's a surprise betrayal, which is not in this case, then that's not a basis for decision making.
People should do A, B, and C and therefore I will do D based on the assumption they will do what they should, is only valid if there's reason to believe people will actually do that. — boethius

I’m not a decision maker and I do not pretend to know or to know better than political decisions makers. Besides I think no decision maker involved in this conflict is deciding without considering a pool of advisors more competent than anybody I hear in this forum in all relevant domains (economics, propaganda, military, etc.), secretive diplomatic channels and classified information (not available to the general public). So even when mistakes may look trivial, the reasons why such mistakes happen may not be as trivial.
For that reason I just limit myself to understand the ongoing events based on certain geopolitical and historical arguments because they are the kind of arguments actual political advisors (like Kissinger, Brzezinski, Wolfowitz) and their critics (like Mearsheimer or Walt) take to be relevant in foreign policy decision making, besides information from sources I perceive as reliable enough. I think this is the kind of critical examination should be welcomed in such a philosophy forum.
In accordance to what I said earlier, claiming “the US would drop Ukraine like a hot potato the moment the war no longer serves US interests was as obvious at the start of the war as it is now” doesn’t seem anything more than claiming “the US is doing something controversial during a hegemonic competition with Russia”. I find such claim rather USELESS to pin responsibility or evilness, since that’s the “anarchic” game being played (and I would argue it MUST be played also for moral reasons, despite the dangers, the tragedies and human fallibility) as if one sitting in the stands complained that that dude on the ring started punching the other dude in the face for no reason and that’s immoral, without realising he is watching a boxing match.
So if it gives the impression to be a good argument to pin responsibility or evilness , then either the game is not understood or it’s a case of pro-Russian propaganda.

The Ukrainians see the US abandon their "close allies" and "deal friends" in Afghanistan, watch Afghanis literally fall off the last airplanes, and then tell themselves: hmmm, I want me some of that. — boethius

Your conclusion holds if the analogy between Ukraine and Afghanistan holds. But to me it doesn’t because the conditions of the conflict are significantly different in the two cases: in the former, the US antagonist is primarily Russia and the concerned sphere of influence is Europe, in the latter it’s respectively Islamist terrorism (or more specifically Al-Qaeda and Talibans) and Middle-East. Islamist terrorism doesn’t arguably look as challenging to the US hegemony as Russia. Europe is an area which (still) is not as disputed as the Middle-East and its integrated institutional, social, economic assets can more readily serve American economy and politics (this aspect can likely develop further with a Westernised Ukraine) than what the US could find in the Middle East.

Making decisions based on reality and not wishes or assuming what other people "should do" when they have no track record of dong it, is a principle of decision making so basic it even appears in Disney movies:

The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can't. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you'll have to square with that some day. And me, for example, I can let you drown, but I can't bring this ship into Tortuga all by me onesies, savvy? So, can you sail under the command of a pirate, or can you not? — Captain Jack Sparrow


Which I've quoted before but clearly the lesson remains lost, but your philosophical compass should definitely point directly at this paragraph to see you through these conceptually rough seas. — boethius

You argument would sound more compelling if one aimed at understanding politics through propaganda. But I understand propaganda as a tool of politics (not the other way around), and this implies two things: first, the standard is not necessarily accuracy but effectiveness and, second, propaganda is not the only tool or the most important tool for political decision making. So criticism of propaganda based on accuracy or relevance may remain questionable even when sounding plausible.
Besides my understanding of politics relies more on geopolitical and historical considerations than on propaganda highlights one can read in the news. I would like to understand political reasoning prior to communicative needs addressing national audience, and transversally or comparatively wrt ideologies and regimes. So such reasoning is definitely part of what politicians can and are arguably expected to take into account in their decision making.

Putin will be forced to use tactic nuclear bombs, now. European populists and men-of-honor save Europe with your indisputable all-knowing wisdom! — neomac


You still don't get it.

As Ukraine loses the capacity to legitimately threaten Russia, NATO can therefore augment whatever doesn't change the outcome. — boethius

I wouldn’t take the current snapshot of the conflict as definitive. The war isn’t over yet and its future consequences may take years, if not decades, to manifest. Westerners, Ukrainians and Russians are not just fighting for their present but also for their future which is something we do not see yet.

Why is Steadfast Defender, the largest NATO military exercise since WWII, happening now rather than last year ... or the year before that ... when it would have actually been a legitimate threat of intervention as well as legitimate threat of moving even more more equipment and weapons into Ukraine? A threat that would have genuinely applied a lot of pressure on the Russians.

Because Russia is no longer under pressure in Ukraine and so this additional NATO pressure is no longer all that meaningful. — boethius

So you are claiming that even though Russia is complaining:
https://tass.com/politics/1740307
https://tass.com/politics/1743107
https://tass.com/defense/1756871
the West shouldn’t take Russia seriously?

More existential provocations against Holy Russia by the Great Satan and its European servile coward minions:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/222847.htm
https://tass.com/politics/1737915
Putin will be forced to use tactic nuclear bombs, now. European populists and men-of-honor save Europe with your indisputable all-knowing wisdom!

You have even in this thread many examples of people believing the Palestinians being something "artificial" construct, and that Palestinians simply should move to somewhere else in the Arab world. — ssu

To the extent nations are cultural phenomena, they ALL are artificial construct. There are however some traits about the Palestinian nationalism which make it more easy for Israel to question its ideological credibility: 1. its ideological roots are in pan-arabism and pan-islamism, both of which are broader ideologies than the idea of a Palestinian nation-state 2. Palestinians didn’t branch out as a separate politically self-conscious nation from within the Arab world, as the Ukrainians branched out from the Russian empire, the Argentinians from the Spanish empire, the Brazilians from the Portuguese empire, the Americans from the British empire despite the ethnic ties. So their national ideology looks very much shaped by a struggle against a foreign power (the Zionist one) with no ethnic ties, not because non-Palestinian, but because non-Arab (indeed, at the end of the Ottoman Empire Palestinians were mostly just fine to be part of Great Syria). That’s why there seems to be no Palestinian national identity, widely shared and politically conscious, prior to the conflict with Israel. 3. The link to Iran which may have hijacked the nation-state aspirations of the Palestinians (Hamas Islamism superseding the PLO secularism isn’t a good sign).

I think however that there are other factors that Israel can’t discount: 1. How the Arab states’ questionable attitude toward the Palestinians (and Palestinian refugees) may reinforce the Palestinians’ aspirations to a distinctive Palestinian nation-state. 2. How couching the Zionist project as a ethnocentric and Western-supported colonialist project is now more than ever detrimental to its perceived legitimacy, even in the West not only in the Rest. It feels now like fighting for Israel is done in the wrong time, in the wrong place, by the wrong people.

The obvious thing here is that there's not just one way to fight a war. There are many ways. Starting from the way you approach the civilian population. I've made the point right from the start in October last year that Israel should approach the fighting just like the US approached it's fight against Al Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq: to take into consideration the civilian population. But it didn't. It went with no political goals, hopes of "voluntary transfer" of Palestinians somewhere else and the creating a famine. This has been a strategic mistake in the long run, but this government isn't thinking in the long run. It's thinking about the next day and it's popularity among the voters. — ssu

This article offers a critical reading of such comparison with the Americans fighting in Iraq and Syria: https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-devastation-of-gaza-was-inevitable-a-comparison-to-us-operations-in-iraq-and-syria/ On the other side, other Western articles share your concern about the post-war scenario: https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/remaking-mistakes-in-gaza/
My understanding is that even if Israel had the sort of post-war plan the latter article is talking about, it still looks unlikely that Netanyahu will politically survive after the war ends to pursue any post-war plans. The uncertain support from Biden (and now even from Trump) is putting Netanyahu in a difficult spot which will hardly soften his resolution to pursue his war against Hamas and, possibly, other neighbouring enemies. So what the US, Arab and Israeli representatives may more easily work on is a post-Hamas and post-Netanyahu situation. And for such representatives may be enough to distance themselves from Netanyahu more than really trying to shut his personal mission in Gaza down.

Hence even if Egypt is an ally of the US, Saudi-Arabia is the ally of US (and Iraq was occupied and should have a Pro-US government), the US does feel cautious about how strong this relationship is. Iran and the fall of the Shah and the present relations with the country tells a lot. So could it happen in Saudi-Arabia? Or Egypt? — ssu

I get the need of being cautious, but to what extent? For example, how likely is that the US will call what is happening in Gaza a genocide as it did for genocides in ex-Yogoslavia with the ensuing NATO intervention, really?

American controversial policies are also what Europeans must swallow to keep the front united, otherwise they have to struggle for greater decision power on the coalition, but what are the odds to succeed, really? — neomac

Actually here NATO works (...or doesn't work as a tool of US policy): only few American endeavors have been so that all NATO participates in them. And many times allies can opt out or simply give no actual support. Hence when an American President comes up with a too controversial policy of striking someone, it can be so that nobody shows up. This happened humiliatingly to Obama with Syria, if you remember. Not even the UK showed up and Obama had to backtrack away from his line drawn on the sand. — ssu

If Europeans opt out or not support, that means Europeans’ interest diverges from the US wrt certain foreign policies, but then Europeans should wonder how the US might react if they care about the US military support. On the other side, if we are talking about partnership, this doesn’t mean to co-lead.

Besides, it has been more of the US simply changing it's mind without consulting to it's allies. Here Afghanistan is a great example: the US withdrawal came as a surprise to the other alliance members and they had to react to the whims of the US policy. Something that can be seen now in the support of Ukraine too. — ssu

I’m neither claiming that the Europeans should submit to the US foreign policies nor that the US is a reliable leader. I’m claiming that there are costs for Europeans, at worse, in terms of their own security for their attempts to question the US leadership or opposing US foreign policies.

On the other side, the more the European strategic interest diverges from the US national interest and the European partnership turns unexploitable by the US, the more the US may be compelled to make Europe unexploitable to its hegemonic competitors too. — neomac

To me this sounds a bit confusing. I think Europe is quite happy with the present, but it's the US who has these 'pivot-people' calling for 'pivot to Asia' all the time. Which is confusing. — ssu

What is the present Europe is happy about? What is so confusing in calling for “pivot to Asia” by American ‘pivot-people'?

Yes, but I don’t see any controversial policies on the horizon. I say this because the foreign policies of the U.S. which have led to the majority of conflicts they have engaged in over the last period, since WW2, have now faded. Namely the struggle against the commies. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if an equivalent paranoia regarding China were to develop. Although I would expect this to be trade wars rather than land wars. — Punshhh

We have two ongoing conflicts one in Ukraine and another in Israel, and many in the Rest and in West (including in the US) are blaming the US for one reason or the other (examples: https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/wgtgma5kj69pbpndjr4wf6aayhrszm, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/18/america-root-cause-war-israel-gaza-palestine/ ). That's the kind of foreign policies I'm referring to. If you do not see that, do not waste time answering me next time.
Imagine if Israel is not submitting to the UN security council’s resolution for a cease-fire so the next resolution is economic sanctions, diplomatic sanctions and/or an arms embargo. What if the US vetoes it? What should European countries like France which voted for the cease-fire do? Condemn the US and sanction Israel anyways?

I would think that this depends on the outcome of the Ukraine war and whether Russia can retain some sort of superpower status. Hence my description as pivotal. — Punshhh

So you mean that no matter how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes, it doesn’t change the superpower status of the US, while the conflict in Ukraine may change the superpower status of the US, is that it?

But I acknowledge it, although I don’t see any reason why the U.S. and EU interest would diverge much on this issue. — Punshhh

What issue? The US and EU diverged on the case of Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia to the point that Ukraine didn’t manage join NATO up until now, even if the US was warmly supporting it.

I reiterate though that the U.S. seeking to weaken or exploit the EU, or NATO for some political reason does seem nonsensical here. — Punshhh

Reiterating claims doesn’t help clarify them. Given what I understood earlier from your claims, I guess your reasoning is the following: if Russia wins the war in Ukraine, then the US might lose its superpower status, that’s why the US wants to the hegemonic conflict against Russia in Ukraine, and a strong EU and NATO are kind of necessary to achieve that. Is it that what you mean?

So obviously the Kremlin believed it was their business, and whether you agree with that or not, if you do not take warnings like these seriously, — Tzeentch

Again with your piece of pro-Russian propaganda?
Ukraine couldn't join NATO because Russia had ENOUGH Western/NATO complacent parties and issues (corruption, border issues, far-right movements) to prevent that from happening. So much so that Ukraine didn't join NATO since the collapse of Soviet Union until now.
Besides the reasons to keep NATO alive and NATO military capacity were declining. See how slow and reluctant is the West to support Ukraine? Russia is counting on the West getting tired of supporting Ukraine. Isn't it? How does "existential threat" make any sense in such circumstances other than Russia saying so?
And Ukraine was neutral until Russia annexed Crimea (https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-parliament-abandons-neutrality/26758725.html) as much as Finland did, pushed by Russian aggression of Ukraine.


These are THE FACTS. Suck it up and move on.

BTW since Russia has won and all it wanted, it has now occupied and annexed, its black sea fleet is dominating all the black sea like a boss (right?), Ukraine is a disaster and depending on the West, can what remains of Ukraine join NATO? What is Putin saying?

And, why does the US need to damage the North Stream (which can always be repaired right?) instead of simply ordering the Germans to stop doing business with Russia. Germans are servile coward minions of the Great Satan so they would do anything to please the Great Satan, right?

The U.S. needs a strong Europe just as Europe needs a strong U.S..As I say, the post WW2 settlement is in the past now thanks to Putin. — Punshhh

The problem is that as long as the US is leading a military alliance , the US will have greater influence on the foreign policies of such alliance in the face of world crisis that threaten Western security, ALSO in other areas of interest: so e.g. if the US supports Israel even if Israel is accused of committing a genocide and Europeans do not, that’s a problem. There are also reputational costs into a military or strategic alliance with the US, European states must not ignore. American controversial policies are also what Europeans must swallow to keep the front united, otherwise they have to struggle for greater decision power on the coalition, but what are the odds to succeed, really?
The other issue is that Europeans need their own defense industry to gain strategic autonomy from the US, beside its economic return.
So, yes, the fact of the European rearming sounds good wrt the Russian threat, but this brings other political and economic concerns too, some of which are about the US leadership. On the other side, the more the European strategic interest diverges from the US national interest and the European partnership turns unexploitable by the US, the more the US may be compelled to make Europe unexploitable to its hegemonic competitors too. And if jumping on the US bandwagon doesn’t sound as good as balancing the US power, not doing so may have even nastier consequences for Europeans.

But I really don’t see this talk about the U.S. wanting to keep the EU weak. Or that she would not see the benefit of an alliance with a strong EU? — Punshhh

You are introducing the idea of a race to world domination, or something, we’re not playing a game of Risk here. Why would U.S. “push European hegemony”, more like U.S. would work with EU as a partner and friend. — Punshhh

I limit myself to point out that Europeans can’t give for granted the U.S. partnership, if that means equal partnership, especially in matter of security, as history has shown, starting with NATO (“created to ‘keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’”) and all other examples of unilateralism in Middle East or toward Russia. Concerning NATO, the US is currently struggling between a historical intent “on preserving a 70-year-old framework that lets Washington call the shots and put its interests first” (https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-nato-problem-defense-procurement-training-research/) at the expense of American tax-payers, represented by Biden, and Trump’s America first approach (https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-foreign-policy-puts-america-first/) which arguably aims at preserving NATO but more at the expense of European tax-payers (while threatening to withdraw from NATO otherwise).

Trump is an idiot and a populist, so he will certainly destabilise the situation in his personal interest. But if you look at what he said about NATO, it was just him playing hardball to get EU countries to stump up their fair share to NATO funds. This is not an issue now, as these countries will be making these investments, care of Putin. — Punshhh

We will see what Trump’s game about NATO and Ukraine is, if he gets another chance, but for Europeans it is risky to rely on Trump’s leadership on security matters, so better for them to prepare for the worse. There is however a strategic issue here one may overlook: the problem is not just how much the Europeans spend for their defence and NATO, but how much they buy from the US defence industry at the expense of the European defence industry.

So bombing and killing more than 30K Palestinians is not a genocide according to your very high bar, but the starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens is, right?

You seem to be shouting here, I’ve given my take on this. — Punshhh

I’ve also given my take on your take: “you didn’t clarify in a principled way what your very high bar is, nor offered evidence that ‘the deliberate starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens’ is a direct consequence of Israel’s decision”.

Do you have a list of Azov members and where they come from? — boethius

I gave you the evidence I have. Besides the founder of Azov Battalion is natively Russian-speaker (as Zelensky) and comes from Kharkiv. The same goes for other Azov Battalion commanders (some listed here https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/5-azov-battalion-commanders-return-to-ukraine-in-prisoner-exchange/2940501) who come from Luhansk, Crimea, Kharkiv.
If that's not enough to you, that's your problem not mine.

Probably a better indication of where support for these groups draws from is the Svoboda's election results.

Here's a map for 2019: — boethius

I have no doubt that the West Ukraine is more anti-Russian that the East, and that can reflect also in the support for the neo-nazi movements. But, despite some links between the two, I don’t find your stats about the popularity of Svoboda more useful to draw conclusions about the Azov Battalion recruits, given their different regional roots: indeed, the founder of Svoboda is from West Ukraine and the founder of Azov Battalion that fought the pro-Russian separatists is from East Ukraine. Besides, the support to Svoboda doesn’t prove that neo-nazis are/were governing Ukraine as Hamas (an Islamic terrorist group massacring Israeli civilians in Israel proper) is governing Gaza. Indeed, Svoboda “played a role in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Euromaidan protests but its support dropped quickly following the 2014 elections. Since then, the party has been polling below the electoral threshold, and it currently has one seat in the Verkhovna Rada.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svoboda_(political_party)
So the Ukraine got rid of Svoboda prior to the war Putin started a “special military operation” to denazify Ukraine.

West wants to provoke a war with Russia then you need to back the most radical elements of society. — boethius

The logic of “provocation” which Russians refer to has NO base in international law. I doubt that it even makes military sense to the extent NATO military exercise/aid, neo-nazi militia, nuclear weapons deployment were far from constituting an imminent or existential military threat to Russia. It makes more sense if one reasons in terms of “spheres of influence” as an answer to prospective/hypothetical threats. But if we are reasoning in terms of “spheres of influence” we must also accept its competitive logic: 1. Defensive moves over anticipated threats can be perceived as offensive and if Russia feels threatened by possible future NATO expansion then also the West may feel threatened by possible future Russian imperialist and revanchist campaigns 2. As far as the West is concerned, it shouldn’t surprise that the US is not going to curb its hegemonic ambitions just because Russia wishes so, the US is and aspires to remain the dominant hegemon, yet the US wasn’t that confrontational toward Russia either (see economic and diplomatic ties of the West with Russia at the end of Cold War, NATO and Russia cooperation at least until the Orange Revolution, returning the post-Soviet nuclear arsenal from Ukraine to Russia, the common enemy of Islamism). On the other side, Western Europeans and Ukrainians have been enough conciliatory toward Russia: Germany and France refused to have Ukraine joining NATO, while Ukraine remained neutral until Russia invaded Crimea and it also acknowledged Donbas region’s independence before the special operation started 3. If Ukrainian political leaders pursue territorial sovereignty and integrity which Russia has repeatedly acknowledged (until it didn’t), Russia can’t reasonably expect that permanently violating Ukrainian sovereignty even without prior attack by Ukrainians against Russia proper, will be tolerated by Ukraine and its INTERESTED supporters due to hypothetical future threats of the Ukrainian Westernisation 4. Ukrainian far-right and anti-Russian fringes are less threatening to the West than Russian imperialism. And actually Westernisation was the Western way to also “denazify” Ukraine, while Russia has no problems to support neo-nazi militia if they are pro-Russian.

If you don't want the war, then it's quite easy to make support contingent on concrete reductions of Nazis, and if Ukraine doesn't achieve that, well then no support, no weapons, no hundreds of billions of dollars if you get attacked. — boethius

There are 2 questionable assumptions in your reasoning: the first one is that war started because of the Ukrainian anti-Russian neo-nazi. But I (and others in this thread, if I remember correctly) argued that’s the other way around: Russian neo-nazi and imperialist groups started the war, which in turn triggered the Ukrainian anti-Russian neo-nazi. Second, both Ukraine and the West made efforts to purge the neo-nazi elements exploited by the Russian propaganda (https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis/, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/azov-battalion-drops-neo-nazi-symbol-exploited-by-russian-propagandists-lpjnsp7qg).
What you keep missing is that neither Ukrainians, nor the US, nor the West aim at reaching WHATEVER peace if that implies unilaterally appeasing WHATEVER Russian demands. On the other side, Russia is not just passively reacting to perceived (and questionable) threats or offences in retaliatory ways: Russians pro-actively and competitively aims at restoring a sphere of influence by any means (which is what also Western Europeans are increasingly fearing). If territorial annexations (plus nuclear blackmailing) do not prove this in the most unequivocal possible way, I don’t know what is. As far as I’m concerned, the problem is not the kind of hegemonic PROVOCATIONS which Russia is growling about since in geopolitics they are part of the game (China feels provoked in the Pacific too, go figure!) as much as the pro-Russian propaganda built around such provocations (even the Ur-Nazi Hitler was provoked to invade Poland, as the anti-Ukrainian-nazi Putin reminds the West, go figure!). The problem is the many perceived weaknesses of the US and the EU (including NATO disarmament and NATO disaffection, the embarrassing end of the US’s infamous war on terror, the domestic crisis in the US, the disunity among Europeans, the rising populism in the West, the Chinese threat in the Pacific, the dependency of Europe to Russian oil, the Western mild reaction to the annexation of Crimea, etc.) which offered to Putin a window of OPPORTUNITY to pursue Russian hegemonic ambitions after a military build-up which was fuelled by business ties under Western-led globalization. In short, OPPORTUNITY explains Russia’s hegemonic gamble over Ukraine better than PROVOCATION.

You're presuming the West owes Ukraine something come-what-may and so if Weapons find there way to Nazis despite trying to make that "illegal" then there's nothing that can be done, we all just have to throw our hands in the air and just accept the situation. That's not the case, we could send no weapons at all. The West doesn't owe Ukraine any weapons at all. — boethius

I never argued that the West owes anything to Ukraine. Or that the US is not pursuing hegemonic goals in a war where Europeans and especially Ukrainians are bearing the greatest costs. What I argued is that there are strong security, political and economic concerns that push the West (Europeans included) to support the Ukrainian Westernisation and the containment of Russia’s hegemonic ambitions over Ukraine.

Now, if you want to say "well maybe Ukraine did have a lot of Nazis, concerning amount anyways, and tolerated and armed those Nazis, and the West did too, and maybe they were waging war against Russian speakers in the Donbas, but still!! — boethius

Hum...
Paradoxically—at least for purveyors of Kremlin propaganda, which holds that Ukrainians have been oppressing ethnic Russians—most Azov members are in fact Russian speakers and disproportionally hail from the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/defenders-of-mariupol-azov

About Andriy Biletsky, founder of the Azov Battallion:
A native Russian speaker born in the predominantly Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv, Mr Biletsky refused to identify himself as a neo-Nazi instead preferring to call himself a Ukrainian nationalist - but some of his public statements speak for themselves.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/03/18/inside-azov-neo-nazi-brigade-killing-russian-generals-playing/

we've provided excellent propaganda material to Russia that materially helps it execute on its expansionist ambitions — boethius

The West can’t reasonably troubleshoot everything the Russian can use as a pretext. They do not lack creativity and can literally spin anything in their media (as we have seen, the Isis-K terrorist attack is readily associated to Ukraine, and do you remember the "bioweapons labs" in Ukraine?), while the West can’t do much about it no matter what it does (https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis/) nor Ukraine (https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-parliament-adopts-law-on-self-rule-for-eastern-region/2451232.html, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/azov-battalion-drops-neo-nazi-symbol-exploited-by-russian-propagandists-lpjnsp7qg).
Besides, if we’ve provided excellent propaganda material to Russia, you should most certainly agree that “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault”, “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline”, “The War in Ukraine Was Provoked” are also excellent propaganda material provided to Russia by the West.

Sure. But maybe you didn't get the sarcastic intent of my comment.

Palestinians should surrender before they lose whatever they have left. What a shame it didn’t happen years ago. So many lives could have been saved.

It’s frustrating that Israel will win this and seemingly get away with all the crimes it has been accused of. I feel for the Palestinian people being caught up in this proxy war between Iran and Israel.

I feel so Mikie now. Sigh.

Well the difference in outcomes is enormous for the EU and Russia. It is important for the balance of power between the U.S. and China because if Russia wins, it will bolster Russia’s position on the world stage and become a serious threat to European security. This would weaken the EU and probably lead to another European war in a decade or so. Where as if Russia loses in Ukraine, it will likely result in Russian collapse, splintering of her client states etc, strengthen and clearly define the EU to include Ukraine. This will likely put the EU on course for superpower status and a strong ally of the U.S. The U.S. and EU working together in coalition through NATO would be a formidable foe for China. — Punshhh

I find your scenario questionable on two grounds. First, I doubt that it’s the more likely than a frozen conflict scenario where victory and loss remain uncertain, controversial and exploitable at the expense of Russia and/or EU. Second, the US likely doesn’t want Russia to win (too much), but maybe not to lose (too much) either, because China could profit from Russia's weakness to increase even more its hegemonic influence in Central Asia, at the expense of the US. Russia may be reluctant to lean too much on China as well. Besides the US can exploit the Russian threat to keep its grip on the EU, to prevent it either from becoming a competing hegemonic power or serving another competing hegemonic power, a the expense of the US. In short, there is some balance to be found between competing interests which may not be one where the EU is likely the kind of superpower you are suggesting. This balance however may still serve the US hegemonic interest.

I already answered that question. Russia and the US are the first ones to come to mind. Both may have strong incentives to play divide et impera strategies in Europe to preserve their supremacy.

Nonsense, the U.S. is most powerful working alongside a powerful successful EU. If the U.S. were to go down this line you suggest, it would lead to the break up of the EU, the advance of Russia, and a generation of wars in Europe, which would try to draw the U.S. in many times and which would guarantee China’s hegemony with Russia as her side kick. Regarding Russia, she has been trying to meddle in Europe for a long time, nothing has changed in that. — Punshhh

The isolationist trend in the US politics which Trump likely aims at representing doesn’t seem to worry much about the fate of the EU and NATO, even less motivated to push European hegemony. In this predicament, Europe can very much turn into an arena for hegemonic conflict. Better to not confuse expectations with wishes about the outcome of this hegemonic race. Meanwhile, France shows some intent or velleity to replace the US in safeguarding/leading the EU, we will see.

What act are you talking about? The massacre of October 7 is the act carried out by Hamas. This act can be accused of being genocidal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel . Is such act genocidal or not, to you? If not, what DEMONSTRATES that it is not, to you?

Yes the supporters of Israel and the Jewish lobby etc will naturally claim October 7th as genocide. But if we set the bar so low it will bring thousands of small conflicts around the world into the definition. My bar is very high and I have heard numerous legal specialists on the media casting doubt on what is a genocide in this situation. As I say, for me it is the deliberate starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens, happening as we speak. — Punshhh

So bombing and killing more than 30K Palestinians is not a genocide according to your very high bar, but the starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens is, right? And such predicament trumps whatever security concerns Israel may have, right? Yet you didn’t clarify in a principled way what your very high bar is, nor offered evidence that “the deliberate starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens” is a direct consequence of Israel’s decision.

During the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt the Palestinians fought against the British, hence then you could argue that the ideology was “anti-British”. — ssu

Yes, I would argue that. However, differently from the British empire, Israel is fighting for its own nation state in Palestine, not to preserve an empire. Both Israelis and Palestinians want to build their nation state in Palestine arguably at the expense of the other and are both locked in a vicious circle of retaliations that still is instrumental to their ideological goal. The Israelis are in relative advantage over the Palestinians in terms of casualties, suffering, means of subsistence and territorial losses.
Now, one may want to say that since Palestinians and Israelis are locked in a brutal conflict, other international players may press Israel, the stronger side, to tread more lightly. But the predicament which Israel and Palestinians are stuck in can occur at the international level in an analogous form: i.e. the international supporters of Israel may be compelled to not abandon Israel if supporters of Hamas are not abandoning Hamas either. So my conclusion is that the US may STILL be compelled to support Israel against Hamas because Israel is a strategic ally either for power balance in the Middle East and/or for domestic power balance. What I conceded is that Biden has now greater leverage over Israel, given the domestic pressure from his base, and he’s trying to use it as we are seeing.

The "stuck in a war it cannot win" is basically because the Netanyahu government hasn't any policy what to do after the military operation. Here what is forgotten is that war is the continuation of policy. Just saying "destroy Hamas" isn't enough when you have no idea, no political objective what to do afterwards. It is as simplistic and stupid as Bush going to Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda and then declaring that he won't do anything else and isn't interested in nation building. Well, it didn't go so and it's naive to think that once the IDF declares that it has destroyed the last Hamas battalion, then it can go home and everything is back to normal. — ssu

You are making it all about Netanyahu. To me it isn’t. Even though Netanyahu is politically hawkish, and willing to exploit the current conflict for political convenience, STILL he has the support of the Israelis.
The same for Bush, after Bush the US didn’t pull out immediately from Afghanistan (no matter how problematic the nation building prospects were). Israel is still supported by an American and bipartisan anti-Islamist front. Even more so if religious extremism (both Christian and Judaic) is pushing the US foreign policy and the Zionist agenda in the Middle-East.
What you keep discounting is that people may not pursue peace, if that means WHATEVER peace. That’s what Palestinians (and Israelis (and Ukrainians)) are teaching us. And if this is true for Palestinians why shouldn’t it be the same for Israel? If everything is not going back to normal for the Israelis, the same goes for the Palestinians. Yet, the Palestinians are the ones to lose the most in terms of material and psychological damages.
Gaza will turn into another West Bank, that’s the policy Netanyahu probably aims at pursuing. And others (Israeli and pro-Israel politicians) could likely let him execute his dirty job long enough, so that any post-Netanyahu’s Israeli regime (and other potential partners in the peace process) can more easily take the initiative into relying on Palestinian authorities (other than Hamas) and have a greater appeal than Netanyahu in any peace settlement to the Palestinians.

This isn't an anti-Israeli view. I think who makes this quite clear and obvious is former prime minister Ehud Barak. He states that the military side of might go as now, yet what is lacking is the political side of what to do. Many have stated similar thoughts, but Barak I think gives the most straight forward analysis (even if his English isn't the best). If you have time, you should listen to the former prime minister says here: — ssu

Thanks for the link. It was interesting and it seems to support your views more than mine, until it doesn’t. At min 37:49, the former prime minister says: so people tell me, Barack I got convinced that you are convinced but you're not the only person around, what do I and the other said citizen know that Gantz doesn't know, Eisenkot doesn't know, president Herzog doesn’t know, head of opposition Lapid doesn't know, Lieberman doesn't know? AS LONG AS ALL OF THEM ARE QUIET, me the ordinary citizen thinks that probably TIME HAS NOT YET COME, that's tragedy because there is urgent need to stop this drift to the abyss and the public doesn't see a personal example, energy, focus and determination. Even in political worlds you have first of all to clarify to yourself what you want to achieve so it's not easy.
So again the problem is not Netanyahu, but the surrounding domestic (and I’d add international) political environment that let Netanyahu do what he is doing. I find these circumstances intelligible to the the extent they are also significantly driven by the kind of geopolitically reasons and security concerns I discussed.

And btw many of your links look at states like Syria (prior Iraq) and their WMD projects. Understandably the objectives of these countries has to do a lot with having some kind of parity and deterrence towards Israeli WMDs. — ssu

Yes, understandably. The same goes with the Iranian nuclear program. That’s why I wouldn’t disentangle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the wider hegemonic conflict in the Middle-East. And threats do not need to be actual to guide policies, because when they are actual it may be already too late (also because intelligence failures can happen). We have seen how Hamas and Houthis managed to upgrade their military threats against Israel and the West, and how they want to have a role in the international arena, so we can’t underestimate how their threat can evolve in future scenarios.

Your arguments don’t sound consistent to me: on one side you readily concede that “Deadly terrorist strikes are usually made to get a complacent actor to lash out in revenge and get itself stuck in a war it cannot win”, on the other side you seem to refuse to accept the consequences of such logic. — neomac

I'm not seeing anything inconsistent here. Terrorist want that their target governments lash out in anger and thus show how evil they are. That's their thinking.

Or you don't understand how Al Qaeda or ISIS work? Or how fringe terrorist groups of twenty people think they can change things and move millions of people in their favor?

Al Qaeda and ISIS aren't states, even if the latter insists being the Islamic State. They want publicity for their cause and anticipate the crackdown on themselves and hope that the crackdown will create itself support for their cause. They want an Islamic Caliphate to rise allover, hence their objectives are quite messianic (and really out there). It's quite consistent, so I'm not understanding what is so confusing to you.

Hamas and the PLO have the objective of creating an independent Palestine. The PLO has used similar terror tactics, until it choose to attempt the peace process way. Hamas is still using terrorism. — ssu

First, the distinction you draw between Hamas and Al Qaeda/Isis is disputable, even though the former pursues a nation state while the latter pursue a Islamic caliphate. Indeed, Hamas is a Islamic jihadist group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism_in_the_Gaza_Strip) branching out from another Islamic jihadist group pursuing an Islamic caliphate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood) and heavily supported by Iran which pursues its hegemonic goals in the region. So it looks more as if the secular demand for a Palestinian nation state from PLO has been hijacked by the Islamist cause of Hamas. This is a source of ambiguity that doesn’t help the Palestinian cause at all. Hamas is part of an Islamist network which may strategically fail the pursuit of a Palestinian nation state. So it is myopic to not recognise the agency of Middle Eastern actors and their strategic failures too.
Second, you didn’t get my objection. You seem to claim that Hamas/PLO terrorism is a trap to an endless war and this would be a Israeli failure. But if that is true for Israel, then that is evidently more true for the Palestinians because they are the ones losing the most in terms of life, suffering, means of subsistence and territory. And if that’s not enough to call embracing terrorism a Palestinian strategic failure, or demand a Palestinian surrender at the expense of their nation-state ambitions, then why should it be enough to call the brutal repression of Hamas a strategic failure of Israel, or demand for Israeli mercy at the expense of their own nation-state ambitions?

You have introduced the distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction”, without clarifying its implications, at least to me.

↪neomac
— Punshhh

The implications are that in the case of the Ukraine conflict the difference between the two outcomes, 1, that Russia wins and incorporates Ukraine into Russia and 2, that Russia fails to win Ukraine and Ukraine becomes incorporated into the EU. Would have far reaching and profound implications for the geopolitics between Europe and Asia (and by implication between the West and the East) for a generation or more.
By contrast, the difference between likely outcomes in the Isreal Gaza conflict will not make much difference to geopolitics either way. I don’t see any significant wider geopolitical ramifications. (Please provide some, if I’m wrong). Any linking of these alternative scenarios to a swing of power towards China, or away from the U.S. is weak as the struggle between the two is primarily elsewhere. Russia and the U.S. have been playing proxy wars in the region since WW2. This is just another of those. — Punshhh

I get that the conflict in Ukraine is of primary importance for the EU and Russia, but if you are focusing on the swing of power between China and the US, I’m not sure that the difference between likely outcomes either in the Ukrainian conflict or in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would make a difference for China and the US. As you say “the struggle between the two is primarily elsewhere”. Besides the conflict in Ukraine still looks far from being settled in a way that is amenable to most certainly boost China's or the US's hegemony.
Concerning the “contrast” between the Ukrainian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (or the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for that matter) you highlight, it doesn’t look that compelling to me. One reason is that the pro-Israeli political front in the US is arguably very strong (https://www.timesofisrael.com/congress-is-now-three-times-as-jewish-as-the-us-is/) and it can keep the American focus more on Israel than on Ukraine. Another reason is that the ramification that may have an impact in both rebalancing the power struggle in the middle east between regional powers is for example the normalisation between Saudis and Israeli, with cascading dividends for world hegemonic powers (the US, China or Russia) because the US then would be facilitated in pulling out from the middle east and re-invest its military capital/troops elsewhere to contain China. Yet, as I anticipated, it’s not easy to pull out from the middle-east:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/24/america-is-planning-to-withdraw-from-syria-and-create-a-disaster/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-13/the-us-needs-to-get-out-of-the-middle-east-soon
https://www.theglobalist.com/iran-united-states-middle-east-geopolitics-security/

Germany is making a rapid move away from Russian energy supplies, it will take a while to make the adjustments. Their trade with China is mutually beneficial. If China ceased trading with Western powers such as Germany, it would provide an economic boost and opportunity for whomever replaces the supply, markets would adjust. As I say, China undercutting Western countries with their manufacturing is the main drag on economic activity and growth in those countries. Not to mention China’s economy being dependent on such trade. — Punshhh

Maybe Germany won’t find any replacement, because other foreign markets will be increasingly dominated by competing regional/world hegemonic powers (as it happens in Africa and South America and Asia)

They can try to exploit European vulnerabilities AGAINST Europeans at convenience.

Who will be doing this? — Punshhh

I already answered that question. Russia and the US are the first ones to come to mind. Both may have strong incentives to play divide et impera strategies in Europe to preserve their supremacy. And what’s worse is that the conflict between the two can move from European borders to the heart of Europe in the most insidious ways, through all sorts of political/military/economic blackmailing and/or proxies. The conflict in Ukraine can arguably be considered a case of divide at impera strategy played by the US against Germany (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202210/1277488.shtml). A specular argument can be construed against Russia: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/30/why-russia-wants-to-divide-united-states-and-germany.html
The same game can be played ad libitum with other European countries.

So even if there is a potential for growth, there is also a potential for decadence. Indeed concerns about EU’s decline are persistent and widespread in all domains: population, economy, politics, technology. Here some related readings:

Quite, issues faced by many countries around the world at this time. — Punshhh

The prospects vary among superpowers. But only in the EU the situation looks so worrisome in all domains at the same time, at least now.

I know, I can’t see the EU failing to provide enough support.
— Punshhh

Most certainly not enough to support a Ukrainian offensive, right?

Imagine the response from European countries should Russia start to make substantial ground and look likely to occupy Kiev. — Punshhh

Still, EU’s military aid wasn’t enough to support a Ukrainian offensive, so far. No matter how badly wanted by Zelensky.

I have said more than once that it is only for the specialist investigators who will testify to the ICJ to determine what is in the heads of these terrorist groups. Maybe I should get back to you in 10 years when they have concluded their work. I’m the meantime all we have is personal opinion, or judgement. — Punshhh

You said it more than once to me? Don’t you need “the specialist investigators who will testify to the ICJ to determine what is in the heads of” Netanyahu too before claiming that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza?
As for your opinions, actually I didn’t ask you a legal account, but for your compelling reasons to claim Israel is committing a genocide, while Hamas didn’t in the massacre of October 7. You didn’t offer anything else than your ability to scan “intentions” in people’s heads which is not compelling to me. Do you have other more compelling than this?

I think it is important to bear in mind that genocide is not the intent in itself, but intent and the carrying out of the act intended. So even if it can be demonstrated that Hamas had the intent, I don’t see it being demonstrated that the act, (according to the Israeli’s), intended was carried out. — Punshhh

What act are you talking about? The massacre of October 7 is the act carried out by Hamas. This act can be accused of being genocidal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel . Is such act genocidal or not, to you? If not, what DEMONSTRATES that it is not, to you?

In other words, it doesn’t matter what intent there is, it only becomes genocide when that intent, sufficient to meet the bar of genocide, is acted out on the ground. Hamas was not capable of acting out a genocidal act, all they were capable of was an incursion across the wall, to massacre anyone they found and return home for their evening meal. Doesn’t look like genocide to me. — Punshhh

What is the genocidal act which Hamas would not be capable of acting out, despite having a genocidal intent and committing massacres with genocidal intent? What is the bar of genocide you are referring to? Are you grounding your notion of genocide on the legal definition or on another one?

Security Council Fails to Adopt Resolution on Imperative of Immediate, Sustained Ceasefire in Gaza, Owing to Vetoes Cast by China, Russian Federation
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15637.doc.htm

What Hamas could do was to breach a wall that had lulled the Netanyahu goverment not to focus on Gaza and Hamas. And basically it seems that the Israelis were confident about the inability of the simpleton ragheads to do any kind of coordinated military strike against the wall. And then the wall was breached in a humiliation manner. — ssu

The "destabilisation power" that Hamas had was only because of the Israeli unpreparedness. This simply isn't at all an existential danger. A simple infantry/security team with enough ammunition could fight off the Hamas terrorists, as it in few places happened. — ssu

Notice that I didn’t take my 4 points as individually sufficient reason to consider Hamas an existential threat to Israel. Some of my most basic assumptions are that the first purpose of a state is the monopoly of coercion over a territory, and that people under a state rule are expected to support it at least to the extent the state keeps them safe. Challenging the Israeli territorial sovereignty is built-in Hamas’ declared anti-Zionist ideology. And by indiscriminately killing Israeli civilians Hamas is both challenging Israeli territorial sovereignty and its popular support. Even more so if Hamas can manage to pull into this conflict foreign military support and international support to pressure Israel. In that sense, Hamas is an existential threat to the Zionist state project.
Sure, the disparity of military capacity isn’t in favor of Hamas in a conventional sense, so one could argue that it’s a threat that Israel can easily contain. However, that conclusion doesn’t add up with what you want to claim later (which I don't discount). Indeed, if Hamas succeeds in getting Israel “stuck in a war it cannot win”, something like an unsustainable or endless war for Israel, with ever growing material and reputational costs for Israel, then this would be a strategic failure for the Zionist project. And that still is what makes Hamas an existential threat to Israel as a Zionist project.

Ah, sorry to say this, but I've heard this so many times this lurid narrative during the war on terror. But let's think about this.

Biological weapons, really? I wonder which people have more safety measure to deal with HAMASCOVID+, the Israelis and their efficient health sector or the Palestinians now starving to death?

Then chemical weapons? So Hamas have their made at home rockets, which have a tiny warhead. Now filling that up (which would likely kill more Hamas fighters when making them), but what would be the purspose? To freak out the first responders coming to a scene of a rocket attack? Besides, the rockets can go wildly offcourse and aren't precision weapons in any way. And chemical weapons aren't simply very efficient. That's why they haven't been used much after WW1. The real way would pour some nerve gas in the water system of a big city, if you really want many casualties. — ssu

I don’t know what the chances for Hamas to get and use bio/chemical weapons are,
but I can still argue that there are persistent concerns about bio/chemical terrorism which I have no strong reason to dismiss since they come from both the West and the Middle East:
https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15396.doc.htm
https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3697.doc.htm
https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/International%20Law/ILP0904bp.pdf
https://www.prif.org/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_downloads/A_WMD-DVs_Free_Zone_For_The_Middle_East.pdf
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/cia-report-on-proliferation-of-wmd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

Besides related technology can evolve, so what is costly and unpractical for Hamas today, may be cheeper and handy tomorrow:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/the-u-s-is-defenseless-against-a-drone-terror-attack-be1fabdb
https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/drones-of-mass-destruction-drone-swarms-and-the-future-of-nuclear-chemical-and-biological-weapons/
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Islamic-State-and-Drones-Release-Version.pdf

Yet how does this help Hamas? That Bibi's administration has more credibility when saying that they are human animals that one cannot negotiate with? That the media would be even more fixated on the terrorist attacks and turn a blind eye to the response of more intensified ethnic cleansing? That the US and the West would be more firmly on the side of Isreal?

Deadly terrorist strikes are usually made to get a complacent actor to lash out in revenge and get itself stuck in a war it cannot win. — ssu

But if you want to believe that Hamas and the Palestinians supporting Hamas is this rabid death cult who hate democracy and want everybody to be dead, including all Palestinians, then there's not much to argue with you. Because obviously it just then repeating the mantra we heard so many time during the War on Terrorism. — ssu

Your arguments don’t sound consistent to me: on one side you readily concede that “Deadly terrorist strikes are usually made to get a complacent actor to lash out in revenge and get itself stuck in a war it cannot win”, on the other side you seem to refuse to accept the consequences of such logic. If Hamas’ terroristic attacks aim at indiscriminately killing civilians with the purpose of having Israel lashing out and kill Palestinian combatants and civilians in larger numbers (whom are then called “martyrs”), and yet that’s not enough for you to take Hamas as a “rabid death cult”, all right, so what?! Still the issue is that Hamas’ mindset is alien to humanitarian concerns as Westerners understand them, no less than Israel, and arguably worse than Israel because Hamas can even be accused of committing war crimes against its own people.
Besides, if Israel can not win this war against Hamas, can Hamas win this war against Israel while bearing greater costs in terms of life, suffering and territorial losses? The exchange rate of offenses can still favour Israel, no matter if the feud between Israel and Palestine could last for an undetermined number of generations. In any case, it’s not me who is going to settle what is bearable to Israelis or Palestinians, since Israelis and Palestinians are putting their skin in this game, not me.

OK, first of all, nobody else has territorial demands on Israel than the Palestinians naturally, who want their own independent state and Syria, which lost the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967. Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt or Saudi-Arabia or Iran don't have territorial demands on Israel. — ssu

Still there are disputed territories between Israel and Syria or Lebanon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_occupation_of_the_Golan_Heights
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/13/why-is-there-a-disputed-border-between-lebanon-and-israel

Secondly, do you understand that with nuclear weapons those hostile to Israel seek nuclear parity? If they have nuclear weapons, perhaps Israel won't so casually bomb them as it does Lebanon. Or do you go with argument that Iranians are these rabid mad mullahs who want to destroy Israel and don't care that millions of Iranians could die in the Israeli counter-attack? Is this the death cult argument again?

Why is it so hard to understand that nations seek nuclear weapons for deterrence reasons, especially when a country hostile to them wanting regime change have them? We already see in Ukraine what happens when one country that has ambitions over another one's territory has nuclear weapons and the other one hasn’t. — ssu

States driven by security concerns are not necessarily pursuing deterrence means (e.g. by getting nuclear weapons) just in legitimate self-defence as you seem to suggest. Indeed, we have seen authoritarian regimes (like Russia and North Korea) use the nuclear threat to get other countries satisfy their predatory demands. So, once nuclear deterrence works to prevent interstate wars, yet the conflict with predatory intents can continue in asymmetric ways (like terrorism) and proxy wars (again see the case of Ukraine wrt the hegemonic competition between US and Russia, both with nuclear weapons).

Ukraine is pivotal for both Russia and Europe and by extension for the U.S. and to a lesser extent China. — Punshhh

Again, I don’t see what is happening in the Middle East as pivotal, even though it can generate an awful lot of hot air. — Punshhh

You have introduced the distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction”, without clarifying its implications, at least to me. As far as I’m concerned, analogies are good to complement not to replace analytical arguments when it’s matter of clarifying meaning. And your analogical distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction” doesn’t help me understand why the US looks concerned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict way more than about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict even though both would arguably be equal distractions wrt the competition with China in the Pacific.
Besides, your argument makes me seriously doubt that your views are congruent. For example the Middle East is pivotal to Israel and the Jews as much as Ukraine is pivotal to the Europeans, right? To the extant the pro-Israel community in the US (Jews and Evangelicals) is influential to the US foreign policy (and arguably it is), then the US can’t simply pull out from the Middle East just because Middle East is a distraction wrt the competition with China in the Pacific. To use your own words, since Israel is pivotal for pro-Israel Americans then, by extension it is pivotal for the U.S., right? If so, what was the point of invoking the distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, again?

In the meantime, which was my point, Europe will have rearmed and with the appropriate weaponry for such a fight. — Punshhh

I’m not making specific claims just making broad observations. For Europe to rearm over the next ten years would be easily financed from the current level of economic activity. Provided there is sufficient incentive( which Russia provides). — Punshhh

You sound more convinced than convincing. I understand that circumstances are motivating Europeans to think more strategically and re-arm. However geopolitical analyses sound more uncertain about the outcome of this wake up call. Here an example: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/27/russia-ukraine-nato-europe-war-scenarios-baltics-poland-suwalki-gap/

Also Europe in the longer term, which I was referring to when I said it would become a super power is inevitable. With a population over 500 million and wide ranging resources including the longer term opportunities for growth, why wouldn’t it? — Punshhh

I already answered that question. You seem to observe “inevitable” trajectories based on a couple of approximative parameters (what are the “wide ranging resources including the longer term opportunities for growth” you are referring to?) without considering the influence of historical circumstances and the implications of hegemonic competition. Europe is still a contended space for hegemonic competition, from within (conflicting interests among European states) and from outside (under the pressure of Russia and the US to begin with). The European economy relies on foreign markets of commodities for their input and/or final products for their output, which are already either under control by regional/world hegemonic powers or contended by regional/world hegemonic powers (example, Germany depending on Russia for oil and on China for export). Besides regional/world hegemonic powers are not just going to sit and watch what Europe will do in the longer term, just to give Europe a chance to “inevitably” become a competing superpower. They can try to exploit European vulnerabilities AGAINST Europeans at convenience.
So even if there is a potential for growth, there is also a potential for decadence. Indeed concerns about EU’s decline are persistent and widespread in all domains: population, economy, politics, technology. Here some related readings:
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/04/china-sees-first-population-decline-in-six-decades-where-does-the-eu-stand
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/10/11/brussels-sounds-alarm-about-eus-rapidly-ageing-population-recommends-migration-to-fill-vac-
https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/very-worrying-trade-unions-alarmed-by-eus-industrial-collapse/
https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/european-issues/642-the-european-union-s-declining-influence-in-the-south
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/15/majority-of-europeans-expect-end-of-eu-within-20-years
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12286-021-00481-w
https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/digital-tech-europes-growing-gap-eight-charts
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/securing-europes-competitiveness-addressing-its-technology-gap
https://www.ft.com/content/d4fda2ec-91cd-4a13-a058-e6718ec38dd1

Conclusion: again you sound more convinced than convincing.

I know, I can’t see the EU failing to provide enough support. — Punshhh

Most certainly not enough to support an Ukrainian offensive, right?

Yes, it could be argued that Hamas committed genocide on October 7th. — Punshhh

And it is argued by various legal experts and genocide studies scholars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel

Firstly, the intent, I don’t see those Hamas insurgents having in their heads an intent to harm the racial group of Israel. But rather to commit a violent raid in a small area outside the wall. I know there are calls from people in important positions in the Hamas hierarchy who have called for the eradication of Israel etc. But this is sounding off, hot air. Arabic people often engage in this kind of rhetoric. — Punshhh

So you can scan “intents” directly from people’s heads now? If you dismiss evidences of Hamas’ massacre and declared intents against Israel, others can dismiss your capacity of scanning intents from people’s heads or even retort it against you: one can scan in Nethanyahu’s head he has no intent to commit a genocide and calling Hamas animals is just hot air.

Secondly, the act of genocide, The Hamas attack was not capable of hurting the racial group of Israel. Yes, it did hurt the people in and connected to the incursion. Who have been very vocal and it has caused a lot of turmoil within Israel. But there was no way in which the racial, or ethnic group of Israel, or the Jews was under threat, or being harmed. In a genocidal sense. — Punshhh

For what reasons “there was no way in which the racial, or ethnic group of Israel, or the Jews was under threat, or being harmed. In a genocidal sense”? Yours is just a claim. There are people claiming that Hamas committed a genocide. Why should I be more compelled by your claims than by others’? What’s the argument? Dude, I didn’t join this forum to make a survey about people’s opinions or to socialize. I welcome actual arguments if you have any. If you don’t, we’re wasting time here.

I think it is important to bear in mind that genocide is not the intent in itself, but intent and the carrying out of the act intended. So even if it can be demonstrated that Hamas had the intent, I don’t see it being demonstrated that the act intended was carried out. — Punshhh

Again you didn’t offer any analytical criteria nor evidences about what DEMONSTRATES genocidal intent when people are massacred.

I have thought about the case of one person’s death at length. In the end, I concluded that it’s not the deaths that are pertinent, but rather the harm and intent to harm a national, ethnic, or racial group. — Punshhh

Here is the problem, if the quantitative element is totally irrelevant than that definition sounds good also to claim that Hamas’ massacre on October the 7th was a genocide. And any accusation of proportionality as intended by many pro-Palestinians here (1 zillion of Palestinian children casualties vs one Israeli soldier casualty) would be equally irrelevant to defend Hamas’ crimes from the accusation of committing a genocide.

We have to understand the Palestinians themselves don't represent an existential threat to Israel as it has an overwhelming military compared to them. In fact, that ONLY non-state actors have been attacking Israel shows the dominance of the Israeli armed forces. So unlike the narrative cherished by Israel, it's not a tiny country surrounded by mighty Arab armies. Nobody else would dare to attack Israel. — ssu

I find this argument weak. First, Hamas has a destabilisation power over Israel for the victims Hamas’ attacks provoke and for their indirect effects (psychological trauma for the population, internal migration and lack of investments due to perceived insecurity, political extremism/division). On the other side, if Hamas government gets the necessary international recognition and manages to form an actual state with conventional military forces while preserving its martyr ideology and commitment to wipe out the Zionist regime, risks can grow further for Israel.
Second, given Hamas extremism and support from Muslim world, there is a risk they could manage to get and use biological/chemical weapons: “In the August 13, 2001 edition of the Palestinian weekly Al-Manar, Abu-Khosa Taufiq, the deputy chairman of the Palestinian Center for Information Services-Gaza, called for 'weapons of deterrence'—including biological or chemical weapons—to help redress the conflict’s military imbalance.” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/058003010).
Third, Hamas is not a relatively isolated threat (as the Basque or IRA terrorism were). Indeed, it can easily combine with anti-Zionist threats coming from incumbent hostile forces (states and jihadist groups) around Israel, which also may have territorial demands over Israel as history has shown. Besides if Iran’s race for nuclear weapons succeeds, the support to Iran from Russia and China continues, while the support to Israel from the US declines and the normalisation with the Saudis doesn’t succeed fast enough, Israel survival as a state can be very much in danger. The world is changing.
Fourth, since Israelis are the ones to have put skin in it (from past persecution in the Christian and Muslim world until the massacre of October the 7th) and will put skin it in case of another Hamas aggression, I wouldn’t dismiss their security concerns wrt Hamas as overblown (or just hijacked by crazy messianic Israelis) even if measures to counter related threats remain controversial.

After double-checking the list of alleged genocides on wikipedia (I don't know how many of them are "legally" proven to be genocides) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
I'm less sure the quantitative criterium which I suggested (the proportion of civilian deaths wrt the ruled ethnic group) is as relevant as the motivational factor. Actually the quantitative criterium is not even considered: The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group"
Yet it sounds implausible that a quantitative condition (e.g. for the death toll) and cumulative condition (among the listed acts) are strictly applied, since in this case even killing one person would amount to a genocide, if intent is proven. So I guess those conditions are present (to prove intent) but treated with greater discretion by the jury/judges. Yet maybe the Israelis can play around international laws by smartly exploiting legal ambiguities to their advantage. In this case this is a problem of international laws.

The point of the argument is that the West supporting the Nazi groups in Ukraine is at best handing an amazing propaganda victory and reason for war to Putin and the Kremlin and at worst are far more powerful than the West realizes and these groups will successfully execute a coup. — boethius

And who are the Russians that would be predisposed to a war to regain territory anyways? The Russian nationalists! So is making an equivalence with Russian nationalists going to convince Russian nationalists that the Nazis in Ukraine are fine? Obviously not. — boethius

It matters only for Western propaganda that first the Nazis in Ukraine are denied they even exist, and then once that's untenable to just wish-wash it away with "oh there's Nazis everywhere" and when that doesn't actually work because there simply aren't similar groups everywhere then ending finally with "well Russia also has extreme Nationalism too”. — “boethius

As far as the propaganda battle is concerned, I made my arguments already. For each propaganda there is a counter-propaganda. However the circumstances for playing pro-Russian vs pro-Western propaganda are asymmetric: 1) Western propaganda can not reach Russian audience as easily, deeply and widely as the Russian propaganda can reach the West. And politics shouldn’t adapt to propaganda needs but the other way around. To that extent, it’s not much the Western politicians that are “handing” easy propaganda exploits, but Western democracy as such. Unfortunately to counter attempts at exploiting the democratic system against itself by authoritarian regimes, Western politicians will be compelled to sacrifice democracy to preserve national stability (either in pro-Russian or anti-Russian vain), that’s the price to pay for supporting authoritarian regime’s propaganda in the West. 2) The neo-nazi component in the Ukrainian society doesn’t threaten Western interest as much as Russian imperialism does (indeed, the war started by Russian neo-nazi and imperialist militia), while the Ukrainian neo-nazis couldn’t reasonably be an actual or incumbent offensive threat to Russia (as the pro-Russian argument might go, if hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian combatants do not stand a chance to win the Russian war machine despite the Western support, that’s even more true for 20k neo-nazi combatants with even less Western support). Besides the Ukrainian neo-nazi fringe due to the war against Russia and their exposure to Westernisation (prospects of joining Europe and NATO) declined in political relevance, ideological influence, number of combatants within Ukraine. And if there is a risk for their resurgence, as your video suggests, this is due to Putin’s war against Ukraine and if Putin wins. This could be one more reason why the West may be compelled to not only support the Ukrainian resistance against Putin but also refuse to recognise Putin’s annexations.

If we're concerned about the real world, then what effect these Nazis have is providing a convincing reasons for Russia to fight in Ukraine. Now, if you want Russia to invade Ukraine then supporting the Nazi factions is definitely something you would do. If you don't want Russia to invade Ukraine or if they do you want Russian soldiers to more likely have actual morale problems then you'd want to suppress these Nazi groups and make it clear they aren't the "West's boyz”. — boethius

Russia invaded Ukraine prior to any Western military support to Ukraine and independently from any neo-nazi narrative, since the Russian imperialist and neo-nazi militia wanted to take back Donbas and Crimea before the Westernisation of Ukraine could happen. After the end of the Cold War, the neo-nazi movements and network which raised everywhere in the US, Europe and Russia under the threat of liberal globalization and islamic jihadism, weren’t a specific issue of Ukraine, nor a specific problem for Russia (e.g. Ukrainian neo-nazis were against Ukrainian political corruption and jewish power everywhere, from West to East Ukraine, from North to South Ukraine). On the other side, Ukrainian anti-Russian nationalism has been always a problem for Russian imperialists, and it proceeded the competition between the US and Russia during and after the Cold War. The Euromaidan (in which pro-Russian far-right hooligans plaid a relevant role in the ignition of violent suppression https://khpg.org/1385933116) were the occasion for a split of the Ukrainian neo-nazi groups between pro-Russian (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Gubarev) and anti-Russian (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andriy_Biletsky), and a convergence between historical Ukrainian anti-Russian nationalism and Ukrainian neo-nazi militia (BTW notice that “most of the unit's members are Russian speakers from Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Brigade).
In other words, we are talking about a phenomenon indigenous to Ukraine which pre-existed the Western support. And Western propaganda can’t do much to influence the Russian people because Putin is the one who runs the propaganda in Russia. So there is no point in prioritising the purging of a “tiny tiny tiny” group of Ukrainian neo-nazis over the fight against the Russians, also because they are good fighters (likely, they will be the first ones to die on the front) and exposition to Westernization could have been enough to domesticate them, as it arguably happened to some extent.
All I can concede is that the “denazification” narrative may have looked a smart propaganda move from Putin’s perspective to persuade his people about the “special military operation” to the extent his people were/are receptive to Russian propaganda because: 1) liberal Russians reject nazism for ideological reasons 2) non-Russian minorities in Russia hate neo-nazis because they are victim of their violence 3) the Russian old generation hates neo-nazis because they remind them of WW2 and the great patriotic war 4) Russian imperialists and neo-nazis are enemies Ukrainian neo-nazis because they resist Russian hegemony in Ukraine.
Talking about “denazification” could also be smartly exploited to appeal to Westerners harbouring anti-American feelings for whatever reason, because Ukrainian neo-nazis may serve American interest.
However, I wouldn’t overstate the importance of the denazification propaganda for the Russians either, for many reasons: 1. Putin and his circle seem to play the denazification narrative depending on the conflict evolution, like the nuclear threat, so the denazification narrative seems more a means than a goal 2. Russians at large are claimed to be more depoliticised wrt war than politically committed (https://russiapost.info/society/passive) 3. Russian private militia do not seem to rely on the neonazi narrative (see Girkin or Pregozhin) 4. Why should a Russian caucasian soldier give a shit about a genocide of ethnic Russians by a Ukrainian neo-nazis after all, since they were victims of RUSSIAN neo-nazis’ violence (https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/russian-neo-nazis-strike-again-right-wing-execution-video-under-investigation-a-500053.html)?

The other problem with equating Ukraine to Russia as an argument to defend Ukraine is that just begs the question of why we're on Ukraine's side. Ok, Ukrainian nationalism is as problematic, bad and out of control as Russian nationalism ... so why are we supporting Ukraine again? Seems at best a coin flip, but Russia has more resources so probably more practical to just side with them in this scenario, if we had to pick sides. — boethius

The West is compelled to support Ukraine, because Russia is fighting against the West, while Ukraine is fighting for Westernization. Besides, as I argued elsewhere while the war in Ukraine it’s a fight for hegemony for the US, for the Europeans it’s rather a fight for preserving functional democratic institutions and averting the risk of bringing the hegemonic fight inside Europe.
In addition to security concerns, there are some strategic commodities which Ukraine can bring to Europe (https://visitukraine.today/blog/1783/only-ukraine-has-this-the-uniqueness-of-our-land-and-its-importance-for-the-whole-world).

Anyways, you asked for my sources to backup my claims, I understand by your moving the topic to Russian nationalists that you accept said sources do indeed lend sufficient reason to my claims. — boethius

Well I asked something specific [1], you didn’t provide the source I asked yet. While the sources you provided so far support your views significantly less than you seem to realise. In any case, my conclusion is that your sources do not lend sufficient reason to your claims, as I argued after taking into account the wider historical and geopolitical context.




[1]

“such as nazi groups doing their best in the Donbas to trigger the current larger war, and explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia ... and then Berlin!”

“Many of the factions supporting these provocative policies vis-a-vis Russia had no qualms of explicitly stating their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.”

“The Nazi's are definitely there in Ukraine (I am happy to re-post all those Western journalist documenting it) and are definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine). They are also a genuine security concern for Russia (as they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”

Can you link your source?

You can keep calling it “genocide”, but you have no sentence from an authoritative tribunal that supports such an accusation — neomac


For that to happen someone has to bring a case. The process of gathering evidence, making arguments, hearings, and all the rest of it takes ages. And that doesn't stop people reading the law, looking at the facts, and applying the law to the facts themselves, and coming to a reasoned opinion. — bert1

Sure, I get it. But there is also a moral hazard in this, since people can form their opinions without adequate legal competence and investigation, reason why it takes ages for an authoritative tribunal to come to a legally compelling conclusion. And even if one wants to look at the facts and the laws, I still have my doubts: it’s harder to argue for a genocidal intent if there are plausible security concerns in the way (due to the Hamas terrorist approach and pervasive infiltration of the Gaza society) and the numbers of actual non-combatant casualties don’t seem large enough yet (see the Armenian genocide by comparison).

The genocide is the deliberate starvation of approximately 500,000 Palestinian citizens in the north of Gaza. — Punshhh

What are your evidences that Israel is responsible for that?
Notice that international law doesn’t prohibit sieges and blockades as long as they are meant to achieve military goals [1]. On the other side, Israel claims to do the necessary to aid the Gazan civilians, and accuses Hamas for depriving Palestinians of food and drugs. This is to say that one needs a tighter and independent investigation into such allegations since they often come from interested parties and therefore may not be the most reliable source.

[1]
Sieges that cause starvation
The prohibition of starvation as a method of warfare does not prohibit siege warfare as long as the purpose is to achieve a military objective and not to starve a civilian population. This is stated in the military manuals of France and New Zealand. Israel’s Manual on the Laws of War explains that the prohibition of starvation “clearly implies that the city’s inhabitants must be allowed to leave the city during a siege”. Alternatively, the besieging party must allow the free passage of foodstuffs and other essential supplies, in accordance with Rule 55. States denounced the use of siege warfare in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was also condemned by international organizations.

Blockades and embargoes that cause starvation
Likewise, the prohibition of starvation as a method of warfare does not prohibit the imposition of a naval blockade as long as the purpose is to achieve a military objective and not to starve a civilian population. This principle is set forth in the San Remo Manual on Naval Warfare and in several military manuals which further specify that if the civilian population is inadequately provided for, the blockading party must provide for free passage of humanitarian relief supplies.Blockades and embargoes of cities and regions have been condemned by the United Nations and other international organizations, for example, with respect to the conflicts in Afghanistan and the territories occupied by Israel. Embargoes imposed by the United Nations itself must also comply with this rule.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule53

however the Middle East is like a cauldron around which the hegemonic powers stand and takes turn to stir from time to time. There are a number of risk factors in that region, such as crime, Jihadism, oil price, WMD, money laundering. But there is also the risk of more and more failed states and the hegemonic powers don’t want to get drawn in to much. So I don’t think it plays a pivotal role in geopolitics, more a distraction. Although I have long thought that it would be most advantageous for Russia to seek to control the area, but they have failed in the past and don’t seem to mesh culturally with the Arabs. — Punshhh

I don’t know what you take to be “pivotal” in geopolitics. It is claimed by many analysts that, among the major geopolitical competitors of the US hegemony, the main challenger is China. Therefore both the conflict in Ukraine and in the Middle-East can be seen as “distraction” from the main challenger. Even under this assumption, the issue is that for Russia the conflict in Ukraine is not a distraction, and both China and Russia can add up their efforts to keep “distracting” the US. Besides one can’t ignore that the US geopolitical efforts can be hijacked by subnational groups, like the pro-Israel lobby in the US. That’s why the conflict in the Middle East isn’t much of a distraction that the US can easily pool out from any time at its convenience.
See the case of Afghanistan, it was claimed the withdrawal was necessary to husband all available means to contain China, remaining with be a distraction. Whether the result in Afghanistan was protracted civil war or the fall of its freely elected government, the outcome would have not significantly impacted the US national interest. But also this argument looks questionable not only wrt China (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/24/afghanistan-withdrawal-biden-trump-china-india-asia-pivot-us-military-geopolitics-pullout-drawdown/), but also wrt Russia (https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/why-now-the-afghanistan-ukraine-nexus/).
As far as I’m concerned, a narrow-minded distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction” can mislead us into discounting or underestimating the role played by circumstances in guiding or misguiding geopolitical efforts.

Russia and China as competitors of the US (the former primarily in East Europe, the latter primarily in the Pacific) are interested in getting the US overstretched: inducing the US to divide attention and energies in multiple conflicts like in Ukraine, in Israel, in the Red Sea perfectly serves that purpose.

Yes, however this would only play out if China enters into conflict with Taiwan. Which I doubt they would want to do. — Punshhh

But China doesn’t operate like that. She spreads Maoist ideology and colonises in a less violent way. — Punshhh

Yes, an important question, however there is only one one military force any where near capable of taking on the U.S., China and as I have suggested, China is really not interested in a conflict with the U.S. under any circumstances. — Punshhh

Still the Chinese military build-up, posturing and meddling in other conflicts is understandably taken to signal the US should prepare for the worse anyways. And we should not forget that there are also preventive wars.
Anyways, maybe the US under Trump would not be interested in a conflict with China either:
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/china-says-trump-could-abandon-taiwan-if-he-wins-us-election-1.2028732
https://tass.com/world/1755693

The weakening of Russia is in a whole other dimension compared to Europe and China. Russia is destroying her fighting age men as cannon fodder, has destroyed her lucrative trade in gas and oil with Europe. Is now under the strictest economic sanctions and is sinking into a deep dark authoritarianism reminiscent of the dark days of the Soviet Union. By contrast Europe is feeling the effects of having those fuel supplies suddenly cut off, but will soon bounce back and as I said will now rearm after 70yrs of relying on U.S. and U.K. guarantees of security. — Punshhh

You sound pretty confident, I don’t know what evidences you have to support your claims. For example 10 years seem enough time for Russia to restore its pre-war capacity for another push (https://kyivindependent.com/reznikov-russia-could-take-up-to-10-years-to-restore-its-military-after-losses-in-ukraine/) or threaten NATO (https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/03/16/7446764/, https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/14/russia-military-war-nato-estonia-intelligence/). And Russia’s war economy (aided by its hidden network of opportunistic supporters) still looks pretty resilient. Meanwhile Europeans face other uncertainties about re-arming and defence (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/21/europe-military-trump-nato-eu-autonomy/, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/02/26/war-in-ukraine-not-all-european-countries-view-russia-as-top-threat_6560936_4.html, https://www.politico.eu/article/what-another-trump-presidency-would-mean-for-nato/).

Myths around the economic malaise, or decline in Europe are overblown. (Here in the U.K. this has been used as an argument for Brexit for internal political reasons). It’s true there has been a slow down in growth due to the economic pressures of globalisation along with all affluent countries. But the opportunities for economic growth in the E.U. are large with the expansion including Eastern European countries, not to mention Ukraine, offering the opportunity to bring their economies up to speed with western standards. Also once the economic woes of southern European countries is remedied the E.U. will become quite the superpower. — Punshhh

Again, you sound pretty confident, I don’t know what evidences you have to support your claims. Even if we give for granted “opportunities for economic growth”, given our recent experience of financial crisis, pandemics, wars, and the crisis of the Western world order under the pressure of a more assertive Rest, I would not rely too much on optimistic forecasts. In other words, I seriously doubt that uncertainties and hostile superpowers (which we might soon include the US under Trump) are the best environment for European economic growth or ambition to superpower status.

You fail to see the significance of this. Currently Russia is dangerous for the whole Eurasia continent and particularly for Europe. Her becoming bogged down in Ukraine will weaken her for a generation while Europe rearms. This neuters the only serious threat to global stability at the moment. The last time this happened in WW2, a deranged tyrant spilled out across Europe. This time it won’t happen, Putin is now powerless and a pariah on the international stage. — Punshhh

To keep Russia bogged down in Ukraine, the West still needs to adequately and promptly support Ukraine as long as needed. Yet the support from the West had dramatically declined after the last Ukrainian offensive until it collapsed (https://www.csis.org/analysis/impact-ending-military-aid-ukraine-gradual-decline-then-collapse).

Yes, this is a looming threat. Although it is an enterprise which will be controlled solely by China and will result in all these other states becoming controlled in a malignant way by Chinese authoritarianism, (to sell their souls). China knows that she will win the economic war in the long run and will not be distracted by wars in the meantime. — Punshhh

Economic growth is possible if input, output, shipping are secured, free, and sustainable from and to China. But we are seeing a resurgence of global security concerns, Western protectionism, national demographic decline that may compromise the Chinese economic growth.

Either human rights are universal and they apply to everybody or they're not — Benkei

The problem is that even if one believes that human rights are universal and they apply to everybody, the capacity to enforce the respect of such human rights is very limited and its legitimacy even contestable. So any state no matter how committed to human rights it claims to be will makes efforts to ensure that human rights are primarily respected for its own citizens, not at their expense.

The erroneous comparisons with WW2 have already been extensively dealt with in this thread. — Benkei

What posts are you referring to? Can you link some post dealing with these erroneous comparisons ?

It’s a comment on the how the suffering of the Palestinian people can be alleviated and who of the two sides in this conflict can deliver this. — Punshhh

Sure, but it looks more reasonable to expect that the stronger party imposes its conditions on the weaker party than the other way around. So if it was only matter of strength then Hamas is expected to wave white flags, not Israel.

The comment in bold below seems to be a claim that a Hamas surrender would deliver this. Are you sure about that?

Better in what sense? For whom?

The suffering of Palestinians. — Punshhh

How do you assess what we can be sure about, here? There were proposals for a cease-fire from Hamas, which Netanyahu rejected. So the problem seems more about negotiation conditions than trust. In this case the least one can say is that the more favourable Hamas’s negotiation conditions for a cease-fire are to Netanyahu, the less incentives or pretexts Netanyahu has to continue bombing and sieging Gaza. This in turn would reduce the suffering of the Gazans. Anyways, at this point, since Netanyahu likely wants to eradicate Hamas from Gaza once for all, Hamas can propose negotiation conditions which are favourable ONLY to Gazans and not to Hamas. This shows that Hamas doesn’t care about the Gazans’ suffering in humanitarian terms, as you seem to do. But if Hamas doesn’t, why should Israel?

If Hamas had surrendered prior to committing the 8/10 massacre, then this would have spared the Gazans the current brutal retaliation. Any time Hamas surrenders in exchange for a cease-fire, then this would spare Gazans further brutal retaliation. If Hamas doesn’t surrender but it returns the hostages in exchange for a cease-fire, then this would still spare Gazans further brutal retaliation. So if the purpose is to spare Gazans Israelis’ brutal retaliation or further brutal retaliation, then not committing the 8/10 massacre, surrendering, returning hostages would be (or have been) all available options to Hamas. Wouldn’t they?

What is happening now is something more than a brutal retaliation for 07/10. It is the deliberate starvation of a captive population. A genocide. — Punshhh

You can keep calling it “genocide”, but you have no sentence from an authoritative tribunal that supports such an accusation. And legally speaking, it is really hard to prove the genocidal intent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocidal_intent). Understandably so in the case of Israel, since Israel keeps framing its beef with Hamas in terms of security concerns triggered by actual terrorist attacks and Hamas is a terrorist group that pervasively governs Gaza.
Talking in terms of numbers (https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/02/04/hamas-combat-battalions-down-70/), Israel claims to have eliminated 17 out 24 Hamas battalions at the beginning of February (1 battalion is more than 1000 combatants, but to simplify let’s put 1000), so we are roughly talking about 17000 combatants. If the number of casualties was roughly 27000 at the beginning of February (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/3/israels-war-on-gaza-list-of-key-events-day-120), that means roughly 10000 were civilians. So the ratio between combatant/civilian casualties is roughly less than 1 (this is also relevant to assess proportionality). If the ratio keeps stable, we should expect that the eradication of 24000 Hamas combatants would roughly cost 14100 civilians which is roughly 0.7% of roughly 2 million Gazans. Even if we assume that all 27000 killed by Israel were civilians, we would still be talking about 1.3% of the Gazans. If assume that current 31K casualties were all civilians, we would reach 1.55% of the Gazans. On the other side if we are talking about the Palestinians in the occupied territories (roughly 5 million) , we would get roughly 0.5%. And if we are talking about all Palestinians under Israeli rule (so including also the Palestinians living in Israel in the computation, another 2 million, roughly) we would get less than 0.4%.
The Armenian genocide under the Ottoman rule (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-armenian-genocide-1915-16-overview) was at least roughly 660000 of civilian casualties over a population that was roughly 1.5 million Armenians, so roughly at least 44% of the Armenian population. To conclude, I’m not sure you even have credible numbers to call it a genocide.
(Of course, feel free to correct my math, if I’m wrong).

(1) When Israel kills people, it’s unintentional/accidental. In this they have a near perfect record.

(2) When Palestinians (whether Hamas or whomever) kill people, it’s terrorism. — “Mikie

The plausibility of such distinction (not its actual validity, which remains to be investigated) comes from the “principle of distinction”, which Hamas’ asymmetric warfare approach doesn’t allow.

Why? Because even though they’re the oppressed people in this scenario — living for decades in concentration camp conditions under a superpower-backed colonial state — and have killed FAR less people, they do it intentionally. — Mikie

That is consistent with what I just wrote. Hamas prefers an asymmetric warfare approach because it can’t compete with Israel in conventional ways. So Hamas purposefully exploits an asymmetric warfare approach to radicalise both the Israeli and the Palestinian population, which in turn helps Hamas perpetuate its warfare approach.

So how many innocent Palestinian children need to die before Israeli actions count as terrorism/“bad”? — Mikie

Terrorism is a warfare approach. And it is not based on comparing number of casualties or civilian casualties, but on respecting or violating the principle of distinction and the notion of proportionality that goes with it. Of course, reality is arguably much messier and uglier than this, I can concede you that. Yet that doesn’t mean decision makers can or even should try to fix it.

What Israel should do is the right thing, regardless of Hamas demands. — bert1

Well, it depends on what you mean by "do the right thing".
Ordinary citizens should act according to laws, regardless of the reasons why they have those laws. But should political decision makers take decisions, regardless of the political consequences of their decisions?

So what? War is neither a beauty contest nor a fair play contest.

↪neomac

You keep saying this, asymmetrical war is a reality, I’m not saying that it’s a question of morality, fair play here. But rather an imbalance in agency. The only agency Hamas has had since October 8th is the option of releasing the hostages and surrendering themselves. Israel has wide ranging agency and propaganda machinery. Not to mention the thing I said about apartheid. — Punshhh

You mean that since Israel is disproportionately stronger than Hamas and can erase Hamas from Gaza, then Israel must yield to Hamas’ demands? Or that since Israel is disproportionately stronger than Hamas and can erase Hamas from Gaza, then Hamas can’t help but fight Israel to death? Do these conditionals make sense to you?

Also if Hamas had surrendered, the course of this situation might not have been much better than where we are now. Certainly if they had released the hostages, but not surrendered, it may well have been considerably worse than that. — Punshhh

Better in what sense? For whom? If Hamas had surrendered prior to committing the 8/10 massacre, then this would have spared the Gazans the current brutal retaliation. Any time Hamas surrenders in exchange for a cease-fire, then this would spare Gazans further brutal retaliation. If Hamas doesn’t surrender but it returns the hostages in exchange for a cease-fire, then this would still spare Gazans further brutal retaliation. So if the purpose is to spare Gazans Israelis’ brutal retaliation or further brutal retaliation, then not committing the 8/10 massacre, surrendering, returning hostages would be (or have been) all available options to Hamas. Wouldn’t they?

Yes, however this is an asymmetrical situation. Israel is an occupying force with state of the art weaponry. Hamas is a small band of terrorists with basic weaponry. — Punshhh

So what? War is neither a beauty contest nor a fair play contest. War is as shitty as it can get. Precisely because there is an asymmetry of forces it's not advisable for the weaker to poke in the eye of the stronger. If the weaker does it for whatever reason then there are consequences to be payed.

Also the idea that Hamas can spare the population by handing back the hostages and surrendering, or something. Works on the assumption that Israel doesn’t have an ulterior motive, or can be sufficiently trusted. — Punshhh

Sure but the argument can be retorted: the idea that Israel can spare the Palestinian population from the consequences of the conflict and withdraw from Gaza after returning the hostages, works on the assumption that Hamas doesn’t have an ulterior motive or can be sufficiently trusted. What differs is the price to pay, given the asymmetry of forces the Palestinians are the ones to risk the most.

So if Palestinians are doomed to suffer whatever price Netanyahu is willing to inflict on them (at least until Hamas keeps hostages and Netanyahu is in power), who is going to help them? If it is the Great Satan to do it, what would be the benefit for the Great Satan?

And the invading Russians have installed people they allegedly sought to do away with. — jorndoe

:up:

But their Nazi thing is a great (rabble-rousing) rhetorical/propaganda device (like sort of extending The Great Patriotic War), — jorndoe

Yes the Russian forget to mention that before the Great Patriotic war there was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact
And that during the Great Patriotic war "while millions of Ukrainians fought against the Nazis as part of the Red Army during WWII, approximately 250,000 Ukrainians joined the German forces and participated in the Holocaust and other German atrocities."
https://origins.osu.edu/read/living-ghosts-second-world-war-and-russian-invasion-ukraine?language_content_entity=en
Not to mention, that there was a comparable number of Russian collaborationists of the Nazis:
https://www.feldgrau.com/WW2-German-Wehrmacht-Russian-Volunteers/

One of the basic problems is that there isn't similar case like Ukraine when the West has supported one side in an conflict or had it's own conflicts. Invasion of Iraq was quite dubious, done with false arguments and little understanding of how unstable Iraq was. Yugoslavian civil war was indeed a civil war. And Serbia shows that even if Serbians ousted Milosevic, they weren't at all happy with the US after NATO had bombed their country. Yet the assault on Ukraine 2022 is a clear cut example of one country attacking another with Putin giving even more delusional arguments (neonazis controlling Ukraine and hence a denazification of Ukraine) than the WMD argument for invading Iraq. — ssu

Among other issues, there is one which I find philosophically deep and troublesome: namely, the notion of sovereignty as it is shaped by the Westphalian system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system)

What we should note is that if Putin would have opted just for Crimea and not tried to instill revolution in all Russian areas (which didn't happen in Kharkiv or Odessa, but only in the Donbass), it might have worked. We could have been fine with that as Europe was already at easy with a "frozen conflict" in Ukraine. Yet February 24th 2022 changed all that. Now it's quite simple. — ssu

That sounds about right. BTW how are the Finns taking the recent Russian threats: https://www.deccanherald.com/world/putin-says-russia-will-deploy-troops-to-finlands-border-now-it-is-in-nato-ria-reports-2935190 ?

The population is expendable in the pursuit of Israel’s objectives. — Punshhh

No less than the Palestinian population is expendable in the pursuit of Hamas’ objectives, right?

I explain for over 2 years how to get the best outcome for Ukraine: diplomacy, using both economic incentives and the potential for continued violence (which even if devastating for Ukraine is still harmful for Russia and, most importantly, there's huge error bars on all sorts of processes and events at the start of the conflict, which must be priced into decision making) as leverage in that diplomacy, prevent tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of deaths, mass trauma and injuries, a large part of the entire youth of Ukraine permanently gone, retain as much territory as is viably possible ... and somehow I'm pro-Putin. — boethius

You keep framing things in a way that I find rather questionable.

To me, “the West” refers to a political strategic alliance between numerous democratic countries: there are conflicting agendas between Western countries and within Western countries. And Western governments have also changed over 20 years. Russia is one country, with a despotic regime that has been lasting for more than 20 years. Westerners likely care about not losing their standards of life more than Russians. Westerners can voice their discontent more often, more loudly, more widely than Russians and can be infiltrated by pro-Russian propaganda more than Russia can be infiltrated by pro-Western propaganda. Competing political/economic lobbies (including those financed/guided by foreign powers like Russia) can thrive and weaponise Western people’s discontent against any government. That’s why boosting military build-up, implement coherent/timely foreign policies over a long period of time and getting confrontational with a foreign foes, namely foreign policies that demand sacrifice to the nation are much more easy to enforce for Russia than for the West. In other words, the decision-making process and the political will in Western democracies is structurally more weak and vulnerable to international shocks, than in the authoritarian regimes.
So to the extent there was/is a Western failure to support Ukraine adequately this may have less to do with ethic of Western decision makers than with the structural problems of Western decision making as such. And what makes your argument still pro-Putin is again its hypocritical purpose of morally discrediting the West, even if the lack of resolve and cohesion in the West is not inherently immoral and it stems also from people like you whose prejudicial distrust over Western institutions amplifies lack of resolve and cohesion.

I've posted the same Western reporting on the Nazis in Ukraine I think 4-5 times now. It's the same cycle, someone mentions the Nazis in Ukraine as mere Russian propaganda, I post the evidence based on Western reporting, and then no one wants to talk about it anymore.

Got through these videos and you will see what the concern is. — boethius

I watched your 4 out 5 videos (one is not available) and I couldn’t find what I expressly asked: your evidence to support the claims “they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”, “their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.”, “explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia”.
So I’m still waiting for your source to support such claims.

Once faced with the evidence, the denialists will then say "well there's not enough Nazis!", but then refuse to answer the question of how many Nazis would be enough. It's a simple question, if I say "this isn't enough water to live on" presumably I have some standard in my head of what is enough water and could inform you that a thimble is not enough water but about 2 litres a day is a normal healthy amount (but may vary quite a bit depending on the conditions). — boethius

I doubt that you watched the videos you linked since one can find there many pertinent answers to what you have been asking to the denialists.
Take video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUgKTfe-IqA
At minute 9:39 the guy says “if you look at the electoral results of the far-right political parties in Ukraine, they actually only add up add up to 1.65% IN TOTAL, which is less than some INDIVIDUAL far-right parties in other European countries have achieved” and that doesn’t even reach the bar for obtaining any seats.
At minute 15:54, the guy answers to question about the scale of the Azov phenomenon as follows: “In absolute numbers, it’s a TINY TINY TINY of the Ukrainian population. None knows for sure, but I think the last reliable figures were about 2000 active fighters at any one time”, while the wider Azov movement is max 20k people.
At minute 12:32, the guy goes even so far to concede: “If there wasn’t a neo-nazi problem before this war, there might be afterwards”. So Putin’s war would be the reason why there is a neo-nazi problem for Ukraine that wasn’t there before the war.

The Ukrainian neo-nazi problem was such a non-problem that in Ukraine there is a Jewish president, there are Jews fighting in Azov Battalion and fighting against Russia for Ukraine:
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-762000
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/israeli-government-welcomes-azov-battalion-leader-as-honored-guest/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-zelensky-adviser-40-jewish-heroes-fighting-in-mariupol-steel-plant/
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/ukraine-conflict/1651655303-russia-claims-israelis-fighting-alongside-azov-militants
https://genevasolutions.news/ukraine-stories/in-ukraine-jews-embrace-their-double-identity

Now, maybe there isn't and has never been enough Nazis in Ukraine that not-invading and destroying said Nazis would be the appeasement.

But, they're clearly there with quite a bit, even if "not enough" power, and it is foolish to dismiss their presence, goals and how they impact events, in both direct and indirect ways. — boethius

If you watched those videos you linked, the neo-nazi problem in Ukraine is never taken to be a problem primarily for Russia! But for the US and Europe given the international far-right network and far right terrorist attacks in the West. And more so for Ukraine itself after the war with Russia, because there is a chance that neo-nazi may fight against any peace agreements with Russia made by the Ukrainian government (as shown when they protested against Zelensky in 2021 https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-right-protesters-zelenskiy/31410694.html).
Notice also that even Prigozhin the leader of the Wagner Group questioned the nazi narrative of Putin: https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/24/wagner-boss-openly-defies-kremlin-ukraine-nazi-narrative

It's also important part of the conflict as it's simply giving Putin and the Kremlin immense propaganda wins. Russians don't squint their eyes and debate exactly what kind of runes we're looking at when they see obvious Nazis talking obvious Nazi shit.

Of course, simply because something is true doesn't mean it won't be used and exaggerated for propaganda purposes, and in this case it is a simple motivator that goes some way to explain why Russian troops didn't just run away from the battle field as they low morale and "didn't know why they're fighting" and other lines repeated by Western media. — boethius

The nazi problem which Russians lament is not a NAZI problem AT ALL. It has nothing to do with Nazi symbolism, antisemitism or white suprematism for the simple reason that the neo-nazi, white suprematists, far-right ideology and militia in Russia is not only bigger in volume wrt Ukraine (https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id-moe/09348.pdf, https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/RAD-135-10.-12.pdf, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1022970.pdf, https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/0/e/27072.pdf, https://www.foi.se/rest-api/report/FOI-R--2592--SE, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301232300_The_New_Russian_Nationalism_Imperialism_Ethnicity_and_Authoritarianism_2000-15) but WAY MORE influential abroad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_nationalism). Indeed, Putin and Russian ideologists (like Dugin) have been actively engaged in exporting and supporting such far right movements abroad (https://www.justsecurity.org/68420/confronting-russias-role-in-transnational-white-supremacist-extremism/).
Not surprisingly Russian neo-nazi militia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism_in_Russia#Groups) are the ones involved in Euromaiden and the conflict in Donbas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_separatist_forces_in_Ukraine, https://ukraineworld.org/en/articles/infowatch/russian-neo-nazi). I wrote a series of additional notes on this, starting from this post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/882175
The problem for the Russians is not if Azov battalion is ideologically neo-nazi, but that they are "Russophobe"!

The actual Nazis are one thing, the perception of those Nazis by Russians and Putin and so on is another thing, and their discourse about said Nazis is still yet a third thing. Of course, how we know anything about reality is through our and other perception and discourse on those perceptions, in this case we can be confident of some degree of objectively confident view of the Nazis due to the reporting of credibly unbiased reporters that have no stake in the outcome of whether the Nazis are there or aren't there or what they are doing or not doing (a credibility that would be based on yet still more perceptions and discourse on those perceptions). — boethius

Yes, I can collect videos too:

This one's just adorable. — “boethius

As these ones:

Again I don’t see the U.S. having any interests in the Middle East other than the supply of oil from the Arab states and protecting the Western outpost of Israel. They want to maintain the status quo in the area for these reasons. They were happy for Syria to be thrown to the wolves in the fight against Isis and now they are only maintaining a presence in those areas to prevent the rise of Isis in the region over the next period.
As such I don’t see the Middle East as an important arena of geopolitical, or hegemonic tension.
I don’t see any signs of wider conflagration, or broader hegemonic locking of horns, or WW3, resulting from this crisis. Neither the U.S. or China wanted this. — Punshhh

Maybe that depends on where and what you are looking for. As far as I’m concerned, the Middle East, Europe, the Pacific, Africa, South America are contended/contendable spheres of influence for 3 major hegemonic powers: Russia, China and the US. Controlling these areas means controlling their economic/security input and output and whatever transits through them. The Middle-East is important for commodities like oil and gas, and for international routes (commerce of goods, oil/gas supply, internet supply). Besides that region is source and exporter of Islamic Jihadism, that can spill over in other areas of interest (like Africa and Europe). That’s not all: as a hot area the middle east nurtures the international contest in military supply (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/11/fear-of-china-russia-and-iran-is-driving-weapons-sales-report) and as failed governance area criminal business thrives (https://www.arabnews.com/node/1944661). All that sounds particularly worrisome if WMDs are involved (https://thebulletin.org/2023/04/why-a-wmd-free-zone-in-the-middle-east-is-more-needed-than-ever/)
So there are several reasons why the Middle East can very much be subject to hegemonic interest and struggle, and wars in Middle East can get more news attention than the war in Ukraine (not only in the West).
Russia and China as competitors of the US (the former primarily in East Europe, the latter primarily in the Pacific) are interested in getting the US overstretched: inducing the US to divide attention and energies in multiple conflicts like in Ukraine, in Israel, in the Red Sea perfectly serves that purpose. The co-occurrence of such conflicts doesn't look casual at all, given that Iran (a regional hegemonic power strategically allied with China and Russia against the US) can very much be the liaison among the three by supporting Russia against Ukraine, Hamas in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Yemeni Houthi in the Red Sea (https://www.arabnews.com/node/2465036/middle-east, https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/sites/default/files/Iran%27s%20Proxy%20Wars_2.12.24_JC_JMB_JC_JMB_JC.pdf). The geopolitical link between what happens in Israel and the hegemonic conflict between super powers is candidly stated by involved parties:
“We want the Arab communities in the West to be active, and (we want) cooperation with superpowers like China and Russia,” the former Hamas chairman continued. “Russia has benefited from our (attack), because we distracted the U.S. from them and from Ukraine.”
“China saw (our attack) as a dazzling example. The Russians told us that what happened on October 7 would be taught in military academies,” the terrorist leader boasted.
“The Chinese are thinking of carrying out a plan in Taiwan, doing what the Al-Qassam Brigades did on October 7,” Mashal claimed, saying “The Arabs are giving the world a master class.”
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1698588842-oct-7-will-be-taught-in-military-academies-hamas-leader-boasts-of-russian-chinese-support

Russia and China do not need to get more directly/openly involved in the conflict in the middle east: indeed, they may just want to maximise the military/economic/reputational costs for the US to their benefit while minimising the costs for them, and for that it could be enough to abstain from helping to fix the middle east crisis or contribute to keep it alive (e.g. by helping Iran and other forms of triangulations).
https://www.orfonline.org/research/how-hamas-taliban-are-gaining-from-russia-chinas-growing-influence
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/russias-dangerous-new-friends
https://theins.ru/en/society/269789

As long as the West is eroding its power of deterrence against a more assertive Rest, the question remains: how can the West, the US, Israel deter without escalating? And that’s not all, when the tide of historical circumstances will favour the Rest, we should also expect that the Rest will come back at the West (https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-09-20/china-russia-india-and-the-global-south-the-era-of-revenge.html). This explains the race for military build up also in the West (and not only, https://theowp.org/south-korea-to-increase-military-spending-and-to-set-up-a-military-unit-specializing-in-drones/, https://www.vox.com/world/2023/1/15/23555805/japans-military-buildup-us-china-north-korea) and why certain taboos are broken (https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-defense-committee-marie-agnes-strack-zimmermann-european-nuclear-weapons/, https://www.euronews.com/2023/09/01/conscription-is-seeing-a-revival-across-europe-is-that-a-good-thing).

The primary geopolitical game being played currently is by Russia in Ukraine and as far as the West is concerned (geopolitically) that is going nicely in that it is keeping Russia occupied and gradually weakening her. This is also providing the incentive for Europe to re-arm and wean herself of Russian oil and gas. There is however the increased affiliation of Russia with China to consider. However I would expect this to result in a reluctance for war from this coalition once the Ukraine war has played out. This will most likely result in a new Iron curtain dividing Europe from Russia, as I predicted in the Ukraine war thread. Russia will pull back from China when they realise they would be required to sell their soul. — Punshhh

Even if Russia is weakening, that’s maybe true also for the West. Europe in particular is weakening economically (https://apnews.com/article/economic-growth-europe-recession-red-sea-trade-2b28c78474cf9ed2f3d28e85e9458bc9) and politically (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240223IPR18084/parliament-calls-for-action-against-the-erosion-of-eu-values-in-member-states, https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/europe-will-struggle-unite-if-ukraine-loses-2024-03-11/) in a period where political cohesion and expenditures must grow to face common security and energetic challenges. And the possibility of a European decline is ominously looming (https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2024/02/23/the-decline-of-europe-becomes-more-evident/, https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west/). Even the hegemonic power of the US is strained by national challenges and the pressure from international competitors. Besides, if the US wants Russia to be bogged down in the war in Ukraine, China may want the US to be bogged down in the war in Ukraine, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the Red Sea. Notice also that if China manages to establish a strategic alliance with Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, amongst the major oil suppliers (with the possibility of widening the strategic alliance of oil/gas exporters over Nigeria, Kuwait, Algeria, etc. maybe through the BRICS), this could be a non-negligible threat for the West (https://unherd.com/2023/07/has-the-west-lost-control-of-oil/, https://www.cointribune.com/en/saudi-arabia-and-china-sign-the-end-of-the-petrodollar/).

As I said before, why would China enter into a ground war, or dabble with proxy wars, when she is already winning the economic war? — Punshhh

A part from the fact that the Chinese economy has run into some serious troubles (https://time.com/6835935/china-debt-housing-bubble/, https://www.vox.com/world-politics/24091759/china-economic-growth-plan-xi-jinping-crisis), if you want a deeper risk analysis for hotter conflicts involving China you can find lots of interesting readings on the internet, like this one:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/04/china-war-military-taiwan-us-asia-xi-escalation-crisis/

If the IDF were wicked then the IDF should be targeted; not random, peaceful civilians. Hamas hurts the Palestinian cause of self-determination. — BitconnectCarlos

BTW
The cruel irony of Hamas’s onslaught, which alongside the scale of bloodshed, shocked Israelis with the barbarity of the terror group’s torture and documented sexual abuse, was that many of the civilians Hamas slaughtered and kidnapped were precisely the loudest voices for peace with Palestinians.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/peace-activists-in-a-traumatized-israel-remain-hopeful-for-a-two-state-solution/

Russia deepening ties with global axis of evil, Israel charges at UN
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-789156

You keep repeating that:

“such as nazi groups doing their best in the Donbas to trigger the current larger war, and explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia ... and then Berlin!”

“Many of the factions supporting these provocative policies vis-a-vis Russia had no qualms of explicitly stating their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.”

“The Nazi's are definitely there in Ukraine (I am happy to re-post all those Western journalist documenting it) and are definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine). They are also a genuine security concern for Russia (as they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”

Can you link your source?

Yet Pakistan didn’t perform or wasn’t cooperative as required. — neomac

And why is that? Because the state of Pakistan had it's own security agenda, which the Bush administration didn't care a shit about. There were there only for the terrorists ....and either you were with them or against them .And that's why it failed. — ssu

A part from unnecessarily caricaturing Bush’s administration attitude toward Pakistan, your views seem to overlook Pakistan’s agency in dealing with the terrorists. And this risks to attribute to Bush also Pakistan’s strategic mistakes:
https://southasianvoices.org/what-went-wrong-pakistan-strategic-depth-policy/

But how clearly wrongheaded did it look the idea of exploiting that "window of opportunity” within Bush administration, back then? — neomac

So clearly wrongheaded that few people including myself saw the error that was being done. All you needed was read a bit. What was telling then was Scott Ritter, who had been part of the weapons inspection team and wrote a little book about there being no WMD program anymore before the invasion. Of course he faced the wrath of the US later and once those bridges are burnt, the only thing to get income is to be Putin's spokesperson. — ssu

Trump shattered the stupid idea of "The Prez just got bad intel”. — ssu

Even if the link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, or Iraq possessing WMD or the bad intel were convenient hypes, still your analysis may miss something deeper in Bush’s approach to the region:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/wmd-just-a-convenient-excuse-for-war-admits-wolfowitz-106754.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/05/11/no-weapons-no-matter-we-called-saddams-bluff/0be893f3-f877-44d9-84b2-5f580266213e/