neomac

Ukraine Crisis
↪Manuel

Thanks Manuel, but going back and forth when there are too many quotes to comment on and little/scattered spare time to dedicate is unpractical to me. So before commenting, I often copy the entire target post somewhere else and then I comment inline whenever I have time.
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

> The part in parentheses was "even if sometimes only figuratively", Ie not necessarily referring to an actual flag. The flag represents control by the government of that country. Control over some aspect of Ukraine's government (either by having them sign a binding agreement, or by installing a friendly 'puppet' governor in some region) would reduce their risk from foreign influence.

Now it’s clearer. I disagree with this claim “The flag represents control by the government of that country” even when this can be a plausible conversational implicature. National flags as Ukrainian and Russian flags (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_flag) are symbols of a nation not of their governments. Governments can change and yet the flag and the nation that the flag represents can remain the same. I’m not saying this to be pedantic, but for its motivational implications as well as strategic and moral. People who are fighting against a puppet governments of some foreign power (as Yanukovych was to the Ukrainians) in defence of their national identity and independence are not fighting against their flag, but for their flag as expression of their national identity and independence. And I find this kind of fight morally defensible.

> Well then your agreement is nonsensical. I don't know what more to say. Either fighting over national identity is wrong or it isn't. It doesn't become wrong or right based on the interpretation of some specific historical event. If your agreement that "fighting over a flag is always wrong" is dependant on how the Ukraine war is interpreted, then how did you decide before Russia invaded Ukraine?

First of all, my agreement was conditional and you should have reported as such, as I explicitly asked. If you found my conditional agreement nonsensical or confusing, you could have protested or asked for clarifications, instead of misinterpreting it the way you see fit and move on. Secondly, I formulated my conditional agreement to address an ambiguous theoretical assumption of yours that could be interpreted in different ways. Indeed, to avoid confusions about my position I also immediately explained what I meant in that post, and reiterated in the following posts. If fighting a war over a flag literally amounts to fighting over a piece of coloured fabric as an ornament of a building, then I find it preposterous and 100% immoral. If it’s understood in a metaphorical sense (which is the opposite of talking about “the insignificance of flags”), then we should clarify the metaphor and if you take the national flag to represent a government (yet this too could be morally defensible, for example if the alternative is between a democratic and mafia government), then I disagree with that reading too for the reasons I explained previously. Finally, each of us is presenting and tentatively defending a certain understanding of this war based on moral and strategic assumptions and their implications, so it’s on us to clarify how to understand our metaphors as well as our examples wrt to the issue at hand.
Concerning your alternative “Either fighting over national identity is wrong or it isn’t” is that fighting over national identity is morally defensible (even through war) because people can morally value things more than their own lives, like national identity and independence and unlike a piece of colored piece of fabric on top of a building or a puppet government.

> So you'd have to forward some argument to that effect. It's no good just saying 'for me' at the beginning and expecting that to act as an excuse not to supply any reasoning at all.

I have no such expectations. My expectations are instead that you ask for clarifications, if interested, as I did when I needed clarifications from you. Notice also that I had to reiterate my request for clarifications to you (for example wrt your alleged third strategy or your understanding of “fighting over a flag”).

>Why do you see it as a matter of Ukrainian national security vs Russian oppressive expansionism. Why not, for example, a matter of American expansionism vs Russian expansionism? To quote from the article @StreetlightX posted earlier…

Indeed the war between Russia and Ukraine can be seen in both ways, namely as “American expansionism vs Russian expansionism” and as “Ukrainian national security vs Russian oppressive expansionism”, the reason why I privilege the second depends on genealogical and moral considerations. The clash between American and Russian expansionism in Ukraine is shaped as it is because it is nested in a more ancient clash between Ukrainians and Russians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_nationalism), which echoes in the chaos of narratives about the Ukrainian national identity among Putin and Ukrainian authorities, academics and society at large (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Russians_and_Ukrainians#Reactions, https://uacrisis.org/en/55302-ukraine-identity, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations#Popular_opinion_in_Ukraine). Indeed the clash of empires doesn’t really become meaningful to people (at least ordinary people) until it resonates within their moral landscape and personal experiences: knowing that in this war USA and Russia are fighting a proxy war in a piece of land called Ukraine for human and material resources, doesn’t tell me enough to decide whom I have to side with in this war. Knowing who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed, knowing that the oppressed is fighting for something I would value too at his place, knowing that this fight is a conventional war with its toll on civilians and their homes, etc. all this is more relevant for me to decide if one should support America or Russia or neither.

>Diplomats are not the arbiters of whether a negotiation has worked. If a process stops the war, everyone can see that it has worked, we don't rely on diplomats to tell us this.

You didn’t get my point. Negotiation is a practice based on complex and institutionalised speech acts like making offers and requests, give assurances, cut deals between participants. As all speech acts , they are governed by conversational maxims, one of which is sincerity. So if all diplomats would always lie to each other during the negotiation, all negotiations would fail and the practice wouldn’t even exist. Surely diplomats my occasionally lie, and lie to the public is much easier than lying to other diplomats, yet all get’s compromised when parties start from such a position of mistrust as in this case.

> I'm only claiming that it might. I only need to demonstrate that it is possible in order to substantiate that claim. Those who argue that Ukraine shouldn't negotiate because Putin lies, have the much harder task of demonstrating that such a process never works, otherwise it'd still be advisable to try.

I see no need for such a demonstration to support the idea that is not worth negotiating with Putin, were this the case. If successful negotiations are generically possible and we may have case studies of successful Russian or Ukrainian negotiations, yet negotiations may also fail also due to deep mistrust: indeed, what credible assurance could possible give Putin to not attack Ukraine again if Ukraine gives up about NATO given that Russia has already broken past agreements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances) ? The same goes for Putin, if Putin thinks that the Ukrainian diplomats are too influenced by the US who want this war to continue, then Putin would have no reason to go for a negotiation unless for taking time to better supply his war machine?
And, interestingly, they both could be right while the negotiation will stall.

> That matter is undeniably secondary to actually partaking in negotiations. The parties involved must actually be negotiating in order for it to even be a question.

At this point partaking is not the problem, because there have been many negotiation sessions between Russians and Ukrainians, but they got stalled.

> ...that you find some arguments persuasive is irrelevant to this claim. Your claim is that arguments of America's culpability are not supported by an objective analysis of the facts. I asked how you justify that claim when so many experts, after having made an objective analysis of the facts, reach a different conclusion.

> I don't see what difference this makes if those decisions all tended in much the same direction.

The experts you are referring to (like Kennan, Kissinger and Mearsheimer) converge enough in the analysis of the genesis of the current crisis and claim how wrong the West effort to expand east-ward at the expenses of Russian strategic interests was. I can get how insightful they were on the assumption that the end of the Soviet Union didn’t mean the end of the cold war mentality, especially in the Russian political/military elites from that generation (as Putin is). Yet their claims and advise do not necessarily converge with your views in some relevant aspects. E.g. Kissinger advises “It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. […]. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html). While Mearsheimer concludes that: “The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.” (https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf).
Anyway, as far as “great powers” politics goes, I can get that there are many good reasons to consider antagonising Russia a “strategic blunder” for the US: Russia is not a strategic threat to the US as much as China since Russia is a declining power anyways, normalising relations with Russia could have helped turn Russia into an ally against China, getting NATO involved in a war useless to the US will ruin whatever is left of NATO’s reputation if Ukraine is lost to Russia. So too much at stake for little reward on a lower priority strategic front for the US. On the other side, one big concern for the US is to preserve their long-term influence over Europe against the ambitions of Russia and China, or against Germany becoming more assertive (https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ICS-USEU_UNCLASS_508.pdf, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/could-europe-fear-germany-again) and for the EU (especially for the easter European countries) the concern is to preserve NATO’s protection against any military threat especially from Russia. So the US can not overlook the national interests of its partners and allies in Europe, as much as in Middle East as much as in Indo-Pacific. Even more so, given the technological and economic power concentrated in the EU. Additionally this war is a tragic but maybe necessary wake up call for Europeans against the existential threats coming from authoritarian geopolitical powers and the risks of relying only on the US military support.
And we could go on by wondering what a “strategic blunder” was for Putin to start a war in Ukraine, etc. And it wouldn’t be over yet, because we should also strategically analyze the possible outcomes of this war, etc. and how the rest of the world could react to each of them.
While all this is certainly precious feedback from experts and governmental advisors, yet government foreign policies and foreign policy trajectories over decades are the result of such an overwhelming informational and motivational selective pressure on decision makers (or generations of decision makers) and executive branches by all kinds of teams of experts, lobbies and world events that no strategic analyst could fully rationalize within their theoretical framework, I’m afraid.

But the major problem is the unresolved logic tension between strategic view and moral view. If you want to talk about morality and moral responsibility you need moral principles and agency (capacity of making and executing free informed decisions). Now from great power politics, however morality is relative (“national identity is just a flag”) or instrumental and agency is always reduced to “causal” reaction to perceived existential threats or opportunities (which sounds as an oxymoron wrt so-called realist view in geopolitics), so preventive moves to increase deterrence, reciprocal threats and ping-pong blame game are structurally embedded in this view. Indeed the competition between Russia and NATO didn’t begin with NATO enlargement’s provocation simply because it never really ended with the Cold War (https://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/96-98/cottey.pdf, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/09/21/yeltsin-vs-clinton/442ba04d-23c7-4d8b-9732-2dda43e1544b/).
And geopolitical agents are theoretical abstractions that may hide very different situations for real political agents. Putin’s dictatorial power extends over the last two decades so he could take all his time to prepare for this war and take effective decisions consistent with his goals, meanwhile in the US there have been five different administrations (including a philo-Putinist Trump) in loose coordination with an even greater number of changing and politically divided EU leaders and governments, decided also thanks to a growth of anti-globalist populism that Putin contributed to feed with his money and troll armies. So not exactly the same situation for responsibility ascriptions.

> The west is delivering weapons to the oppressed. Whether that's 'helping' them depends entirely on your analysis of their options.

Sure, then again the West tries to help the oppressed by delivering weapons instead of trying to help the oppressor.

> So? How many people have the 'stick' immiserated. That's the metric we're interested in, not the method.

We who? I’m interested in the method too though. You are interested in metrics? No idea of the number of victims on both sides. Do you? Nor have I an idea about the weight you would assign to each causal factor of your multi-causal analysis. Do you? Out of curiosity, can you give me a rough idea about what your math to calculate the Ukrainian misery based on your multi-causal analysis would look like ? Can you list, say, 3 causal factors and tell me the weight you would assign to each of them and why?

> 4. Ukraine seems more open to share our views on standard of life and freedoms than Russia. — neomac
What am I supposed to do with that? What evidence to you have?

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/03/04/are-ukrainian-values-closer-to-russia-or-to-europe/

> 1. This gives Russia no more than is de facto the case already, so it doesn't give an inch on Russian expansionism, it just admits that we've failed to contain it peacefully as we should have. Russia already run Crimea, Donbas already has independent parliaments and make independent decisions, NATO have already pretty much ruled out membership for Ukraine, as have Ukraine.

A perfect summary of Putin’s negotiation tactics, well done. Yet this tactic didn’t sound that convincing so far and BTW also the US had a de facto puppet government in Afghanistan for 20 years. So no, you didn’t offer any third strategy equally opposing the West and Putin, you just repeated Putin’s demands and related blackmails without considering Ukrainian demands at all.

> 2. I care very little about Russian expansionism when compared to the lives of thousands of innocent Ukrainians.

Therefore you do not care to offer an opposing strategy against Russian terroristic expansionism, (worse than any Islamist terrorism has been so far to the West).

> If you want to throw them in front of the tanks to prevent it, that's on you, but I'm not going to support that.
> Now explain how it's morally acceptable for us to throw Ukrainian civilians in front of Russian tanks to help us achieve these goals.

Who is us? I didn’t throw anybody under tanks. And the antecedent of that conditional is false. Nothing to explain here.

> What 'moral reasons'?

Putin is a murderous and criminal oppressor of innocent Ukrainian civilians. This claim is intelligible without any multi-causal talks and arguments ab auctoritate. So Western leaders have moral reasons to contrast Putin offensive expansionism the best they can, as long as they can.

> We're talking about the US and Russia here, not Isis. The US 'method' is causing more deaths in Yemen right now than are being caused in Ukraine by the Russian 'method'. And Yemen isn't even the US's only theatre of war as Ukraine is Russia's.

Sure, but your preposterous claim about the immorality of fighting over a flag or national identity was general. And so I offered you another counter-example to make my case even more clear.
If you want to talk about the US and Yemen open another thread. Concerning “methods”, I simply claimed they have moral implications and therefore I take them into account: a stick and carrot strategy (a mix of incentives and deterrence) may be morally more defensible than a full blown-war as in this case.

> Care to expand on these clandestine 'personal preferences’?

Well it was a minor point of a general consideration, but let’s say as a mere hypothetical example that Putin paid you with his precious rubles to support his propaganda in this forum against the meddling of the West in Ukraine. Prior to the war, I would have considered it just something I dislike, now I would consider it immoral.

> That just goes back to your disagreement that Russia had any reason at all to see NATO's actions as a threat (ie arguing that NATO weren't even shaking the table at all). The problem is, an overwhelming quantity of foreign policy and strategic experts disagree with you and you've not provided a single reason why anyone would take your view over theirs.

Indeed, I offered reasons mainly to question your 2 moral claims:
Recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral (as an accusation against the West).
Fighting a war over a flag is without doubt immoral.
And in this post I could complement my arguments with a few more comments about the experts you were alluding to. I didn’t do it earlier simply because I didn’t know whom you were talking about.
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

> So the Russian legitimate security concerns triggered by the West that led to this war ultimately consisted in whose flag is decorating the Ukrainian parliament building. Is this consistent with your claim that a legitimate security interest is an “interest some party might have about their security which actually relates to their security (as opposed to a connection made only for political rhetoric)”? It doesn’t seem to me so because a decorative component of a Parliament building has literally nothing to do with national security — neomac
Did you miss the parenthesised part or do you need me to explain it?

Yes, I need you to explain how Russia’s legitimate security concerns is at the same time actually related to Russian security and to a flag on top of the parliament building in Ukraine based on your “parenthesised part”.

> IT was the bit where you said…
I 100% agree with you — neomac
...just after I'd been talking about fighting over nothing but national identity. Is it that you misunderstood what I was saying

You not only misunderstood what I said but also missed to fully quote me, as I explicitly asked. So here is the full quotation: “I 100% agree with you, if the independence war Ukraine is fighting against Russian military oppression, can be reasonably rendered as a fight over an ornament of a Parliament building. ”
My agreement was conditional. And the antecedent of the conditional doesn’t hold to me, indeed I find it preposterous. I also explained it a few lines later that “For me it’s matter of Ukrainian national security vs Russian oppressive expansionism”, so the issue has nothing to do with a flag as piece of colored fabric decorating a building, unless you take it in some metaphorical sense (the flag as symbolic equivalent to national identity and independence). But also in this case, the problem is that the metaphor, while intelligible, is analytically useless in that e.g. it doesn’t distinguish foreign oppression from fighting against foreign oppression, which I consider relevant for moral assessments and responsibility attributions to geopolitical agents.

> My point is that it must be perfectly possible to negotiate even in situations where your counter party is going to lie because diplomats lie all the time and yet negotiation works. All that's necessary is for each side to think they have the better deal by ending hostilities than by continuing them. That can be achieved through lies, bribery, honesty, threats, concessions...it doesn't matter. That's what statecraft is.

I find your claim questionable for the following reasons:
- if “it must be perfectly possible to negotiate even in situations where your counter party is going to lie because diplomats lie all the time and yet negotiation works” expresses a logic claim then it can not be grounded on empirical claims (like “diplomats lie all the time and yet negotiation works”). Besides it is probably inconsistent: if diplomats lie all the time (which already sounds as an exaggeration) they lie also when they claim to have found an agreement at the end of their negotiation sessions, so no negotiation agreements would be reliable and the practice itself would be pointless. If “it must be perfectly possible to negotiate even in situations where your counter party is going to lie because diplomats lie all the time and yet negotiation works” is an empirical inductive generalisation and “diplomats lie all the time” just a gross exaggeration, it can be statistically true, and yet lead to fallible predictions in the given circumstances: indeed there are negotiations that fail because one of the party perceives the other as too unreliable (see also the current negotiations between Russia and Ukraine). And I doubt that such statistics are relevant for the parties directly or indirectly involved in the negotiations. But probably the specific case studies of Western/Russian past negotiation strategies may be very useful in the negotiation process maybe more than in predicting its outcome.
- “All that's necessary is for each side to think they have the better deal by ending hostilities than by continuing them” sounds true because that’s how negotiations are supposed to work, but it’s also empty of interesting moral/strategic implications. What is morally/strategically interesting is precisely to understand how geopolitical agents come to think “they have the better deal by ending hostilities than by continuing them”, especially on the issue at hand, the war between Russia and Ukraine. Indeed geopolitical actors need to do their calculations as reliably as possible based on what they strategically and morally value, and than get reliable assurance that the agreement will be honored as they expect to be by the other parties, especially if there is such a level of mistrust between parties.
> I assumed you were following the thread. I haven't time to have the same conversation separately with every interlocutor I'm afraid. If you also haven't time to keep up with the whole thread then then we're stuck. Why don't we compromise and you tell me which experts are saying that the US is blameless and why you find their arguments persuasive. That's something you've not yet done so you wouldn't be repeating yourself.

I’m not relying on any specific expert’s views, and more importantly I already provided to you some of the main arguments I find persuasive. I must add that I didn’t claim that the US is blameless (whatever it’s supposed to mean), I just gave you my reasons to question your accusations against the West: “recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral”. Putin’s ambitions are intelligible from a geopolitical point of view as well as western containment strategy against such ambitions. Yet from a moral point of view about the issue at hand I would take into account the distinction between oppressor & oppressed, the nature of the oppression (also wrt its triggers), the nature of the decision process and the value proximity: 1. Ukraine is the oppressed and not Russia, and the West is helping the oppressed not the oppressor 2. Ukraine & the West adopted a more “stick & carrot” containment strategy while Russia opted for an invade and wreck aggressive strategy 3. Whatever action is taken by the West is not coming from the decisions of a single dictatorial leader but of a bunch of democratic leaders with problematic coordination, we can not say the same of Putin 4. Ukraine seems more open to share our views on standard of life and freedoms than Russia.

I can suggest you another compromise: there is no need “to have the same conversation separately with every interlocutor”, it’s enough to give me links to your posts where you mention and/or argue the views of the experts you rely on.

> It’s odd how, when I raise a specific issue about negotiation (Ukraine have lied too, so can't fairly expect Russia to be an honest negotiation partner), you switch to "hypothetical" mode to make your arguments, but when I make hypothetical arguments you won't accept them without specifics…

And what is the specific issue about negotiation you are talking about? Can you exactly quote yourself? Maybe I simply missed it. BTW I already put into account that Ukraine may have lied and be perceived as an untrustworthy party in the negotiation by the Russians: “For example, the Ukrainians can reasonably suspect that a call for negotiation from the Russians is to allow Russians to re-supply their war machine and continue the war. And the Russians can reasonably suspect the same of the Ukrainians. And one of them may be right. So my question is, in this hypothetical situation, are there any alternative moral principles that could tell us how the hypothetical party in “good faith” should proceed, when the other doesn’t seem to be?”
My hypothetical mode of thinking is focused on what we can apply to the case at hand. If you do the same in a way that is understandable to me, I don’t mind if you do it.

> The alternative strategy to arming Ukraine and fighting to the last man is negotiations. Ones involving not only Ukraine and Russia, but America (or NATO) and Europe (EU, or representatives) since the situation involves them too. Russia's existing demands are de facto the case anyway, so they would be a perfectly good starting concession for negotiations.

So you are for pushing Ukraine to concede to Russia all they have demanded (no NATO membership, acknowledgement of Crimean annexation, independence of a couple of Donbas provinces) in exchange to stopping the war. I fail to see how this is a third strategy as you have claimed (“It’s clearly possible to devise strategies which oppose them both”): in what sense is this strategy opposing Russian expansionism?
Anyways, there are many unavoidable reasons why such concessions are geopolitically very problematic for Ukraine, EU and the US, especially Putin’s territorial demands. Crimea is a hub of utmost strategic importance in the Black sea for commercial, energetic and military reasons, while the Donbass region is vital for industrial and energetic reasons. So this concession would not only empower Putin to further his expansionist ambitions (e.g. against other European countries), but it will threaten the EU economic security (due to the energetic and alimentary dependency on Ukraine and Russia as Putin’s blackmailing is proving). Not to mention that it will prove the weakness of the West to the world, from its enemies (starting from Russia and China) to its allies (the eastern and central European states).
So such concessions are not only the opposite of containment strategy. But likely a major breaking point for the entire World Order as we know it. In other words, the West and Ukraine have plenty of strategic reasons to keep fighting Russian oppression as long as they can and as best as they can.

> The 'legitimate security concerns' I believe I've already mentioned. Closer alliances with NATO could allow US or EU military installations in Ukraine. Such installations give Ukraine an advantage in any future negotiations (their meaningful threat level is higher), they act as levers to push Ukraine into further economic union with the EU (harming Russian efforts), and they make Ukraine the stronger opposition in any territorial dispute (such as Crimea) which may hamper further military strength in other areas (as it's a crucial port), finally, actors within Ukraine (such as anti-Russian paramilitaries) are given more strength by being able to shelter under the wing of the stronger Ukraine. It's not rocket science, it's exactly the same concerns NATO have.

Even if the concerns are exactly the same, which I questioned because NATO in this case didn’t expand through forceful annexations of other sovereign nation’s territory and this is a crucial point which you should address before anything else when you talk about Russian security concerns, then we should support NATO against Russian expansionism also for moral reasons in addition to the strategic ones. It’s a shame that the West didn’t handle better this situation and there are probably big mistakes done by the West, and now that the West is in such predicament the West can’t simply step back.

> I thought we'd just done talking about the insignificance of flags?

Only in the sense that I totally disagree with you. So if you take it as a premise of your reasoning, all your reasoning looks as bad as the premise. If not worse.

> China want influence in Taiwan. Their method might be to put their flag over the parliament. The US want influence in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen... Their method is to fight a war to install a US-friendly government under such crippling loan terms that they've little choice to accept US influence. The methods are immaterial here. Both cause massive destruction and loss of innocent life. Both lead their instigators to positions of power.

Well from an abstract geopolitical point of view you can call it influence, but from a more concrete and personal point of view there is a big difference in how this influence is deployed: e.g. Isis might want to put their flag in our decapitated head, while the US might want to put their flag on the sandwich we are eating. Do you see the difference? Because if you don’t, I do and I value it.

> Likewise, Russia could claim that about Syria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia or the Donbas regions.

Talking about this war, the Donbas region wrt Ukraine doesn’t enjoy the same international status as Taiwan wrt China. But even if we ignore this aspect, still geopolitics is not all what counts to me.
Russia can try to influence whoever they want the way they see fit to their geopolitical goals, yet I will react differently depending on moral implications and personal preferences.

> If there are, say, ten reasons Russia invaded Ukraine, all ten are collectively responsible. It doesn't change that to say "he would have attacked anyway with only five”.

I find this line of reasoning analytically too poor and misleading to support such claim about the West: “recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral”. I explained that to some extent here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/675364 immediately after your quotation “> No one argued he needed it. A vase doesn't need me to knock it over in order to smash, any number of things might cause that. This doesn't excuse me if I did, in fact, knock it over.”
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

> Yes, something like. Mostly 'security concerns' in terms of international politics come down to whose flag is over the parliament (even if sometimes only figuratively).

So the Russian legitimate security concerns triggered by the West that led to this war ultimately consisted in whose flag is decorating the Ukrainian parliament building. Is this consistent with your claim that a legitimate security interest is an “interest some party might have about their security which actually relates to their security (as opposed to a connection made only for political rhetoric)”? It doesn’t seem to me so because a decorative component of a Parliament building has literally nothing to do with national security: there could be no flags on top of any Parliament buildings and yet a nation could have security concerns when oppressed by a foreign nation.

> You'd just agreed that fighting over national identity was immoral

Did I? Can you fully quote where I agreed with that?

> ...then that's not 'good faith', is it? Simply assuming your opposite number is going to lie (whilst scrubbing the blood off your own hands) and refusing negotiation on those grounds is about as good a definition of 'bad faith' in the context as it gets. All diplomats lie, it's part of the job. There's no justifiable ground for one side to pull out of negotiations on the grounds that the other side lie. It's rank hypocrisy.

I take “acting in good faith” to mean acting with “a sincere intention to be fair, open, and honest, regardless of the outcome of the interaction”. Then I claimed and still claim that one could think to be acting in “good faith” while having reasons to doubt the other party acts out of “good faith”. In this case your moral principle ("at all times there should be a good faith and active commitment to bringing about peace through dialogue from all parties") wouldn't be satisfied. And your suggestion makes this case more likely: indeed if all diplomats lie then there might be concrete situations in which one party believes to be more trustworthy than the other during a negotiation. For example, the Ukrainians can reasonably suspect that a call for negotiation from the Russians is to allow Russians to re-supply their war machine and continue the war. And the Russians can reasonably suspect the same of the Ukrainians. And one of them may be right. So my question is, in this hypothetical situation, are there any alternative moral principles that could tell us how the hypothetical party in “good faith” should proceed, when the other doesn’t seem to be?

> Thus, you choose your expert and talk about why you find their arguments persuasive, and I choose mine and talk about why I find their arguments persuasive.

Indeed that is what I was asking. As far as I can recall, you didn’t tell me which experts you chose, even less why you found their arguments more persuasive.

> Yes, I understood that. It's erroneous in this situation because there are clearly not only two strategies. It's clearly possible to devise strategies which oppose them both.

No it isn’t erroneous. You may claim it doesn’t apply to your case, but you didn't formulate any alternative strategy to me to prove that it doesn't apply to you, even if I asked you explicitly.

>I didn't feel they needed explaining.

Still I’m explicitly asking you to specify these legitimate security concerns, now for the third time (I see I'm not the only one who addressed this claim of yours). What legitimate security concerns did the West trigger in Putin so that he felt cornered into waging war against Ukraine? Notice that you claimed that these concerns are “legitimate” so you must have a more accurate idea of what these concerns are, otherwise on what ground would you claim that they are legitimate? Unless you want to stick to the preposterous claim that Russia felt legitimately and intolerably threatened by the idea that Ukraine will keep a Ukrainian flag on top of the Ukrainian parliament building or so, of course.

>China has never attacked the US. It hasn't attacked anywhere at all for decades and the last war it fought in was on the same side as the US. So why has the US got security concerns? Because China could attack the US, or it's interests (in some capacity) and an increase in its ability to do so is a threat.

China has territorial claims over Taiwan. And it’s preparing to get it back forcefully if Taiwan resists. Taiwan is a partner of the US so if the US wants to protect Taiwan then the US should get prepared to counter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific and in the US precisely because China’s frustrated expansionist ambitions could lead China to retaliate against the US, with all the offensive means they are capable of (including cyberwar). These security concerns are legitimate in those who are threatened or have to suffer from expansionist aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine, and China is preparing to wage war against Taiwan if the latter wants to fight for its independence. Those two countries, Ukraine and Taiwan, are potentially or actually victims of aggression and whoever wants to support any of them to preserve their independence, should get ready for retaliation from the aggressors. Russia and China are not victims of any actual or potential aggression from Ukraine or Taiwan, and the support they receive from the West is defensive and not offensive.

> Neither of these contingencies excuse me from being part of the mob encouraging violence.

And what does this have to do with the war between Russia and Ukraine? I don’t mind if you want to talk about cricket, vases and mobs as long as you can prove it’s relevant for the discussion at hand. So for me the West is like the mob that is helping the victim (Ukraine) against the bully (Russia), it’s not the mob who is encouraging the bully (Russia) to abuse the victim. Isn’t the same for you? If not why not? What else should the West do to help Ukraine against the Russian bully.

> if you claim that Ukraine did anything that was threatening Russian national security, I would like to hear what that is and what proofs you have for such accusations. — neomac
I made no such claim.

Then how come that Ukraine didn’t threaten Russian national security and yet Russia is invading Ukraine? My answer is that Russia has expansionist ambitions and wants to take control over all or part of Ukraine. What’s your answer?
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

> Wars cause enormous harms, including to people who have no say in the decisions (children, future generations), so only the plausible avoidance of greater harms justifies it. Having a different flag over your Parliament building is quite obviously not such a greater harm.

I 100% agree with you, if the independence war Ukraine is fighting against Russian military oppression, can be reasonably rendered as a fight over an ornament of a Parliament building. So is this the issue for you? Is this the Russian legitimate security concerns you were talking about: a flag decorating a parliament building? For me it’s matter of Ukrainian national security vs Russian oppressive expansionism. So nobody talked about fighting over a flag decorating a Parliament building in the first place, until you did. I thought you meant something much more serious when talking about Russian legitimate security concerns threatened by the West to the point of provoking this war. And concerning morality, I’m talking about the morality and related civic duty to fight against the Russian oppressors by the Ukrainians as long as it makes sense to them to fight for their own national identity and security.

> I think at all times there should be a good faith and active commitment to bringing about peace through dialogue from all parties. I can't see any reasonable argument favouring war over dialogue on principle.

I 100% agree on that principle too. I still don’t see how you would apply it to the present case to justify your accusation that the West “recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral”. For example, if the West thinks that there is good faith and active commitment to bringing about peace through dialogue from them BUT NOT from the Russians, and Russians think that there is good faith and active commitment to bringing about peace through dialogue from them BUT NOT from the West, your principle doesn’t apply so how would you proceed with your moral analysis of the responsibility of the West wrt the Russian ones? Do you have any other moral principles that can help out?

> Then perhaps you could explain why so many experts in history and strategy have reached that exact conclusion.

I gave you my reasons to question your claims. And I don’t know who are the experts you are referring to (so it’s much harder to provide such an explanation, assumed I could), but what if I found experts that would disagree with the conclusions of your experts? Still we would need reasons to rely on the opinion of one expert instead of the other, when they disagree with their analysis or conclusions. Wouldn’t we? In other words, we would still need to have our own reasons to justify our own strategic and moral claims about this war. So I’m here to listen to your own reasons to justify your own strategic and moral claims about this war.

> You seriously can't think of any? Are you saying that the only two strategies you think are possible are Western neo liberalism and Russian anocracy?

The clarification I was looking for concerned your statement (“Only if you're weak-minded enough to see only two options”) in response to my claim (“If you are against advancing Western strategic interests and any logic of containment of its competitors that would risk a war, then you are indirectly supporting its competitors’ strategic interests, indeed of those competitors who are more aggressive in military terms, and therefore you may be rightly judged complicit in advancing them at the expenses of the West.”). I didn’t say nor implied anywhere that the only two strategies are Western neo-liberalism and Russian anocracy, if one can call them “strategies”. My claim is grounded on a simple & logic assumption: in a competitive game between N geopolitical actors with incompatible interests, if you act against (or more against) the strategy of only 1 of them, you are indirectly helping (or more helping) the remaining N-1 geopolitical actors. And this is the case, no matter if you do it knowingly/intentionally or not (yet I recon that it could be more problematic if you do it knowingly and intentionally).

> You're still assuming 'threats' can only come in the form of some military attack. Is there any plausible threat of military invasion to America? No Does America have legitimate security concerns? Yes. That should be all you need to know. There does not need to be an immediate threat of actual invasion for Russia to have legitimate security concerns.

You keep repeating that Russia has legitimate security concerns without explaining what they consist in. And actually I don’t even need to take as an assumption the idea of a military invasion of Russia by the Ukrainians as your misleading example once again suggests. It’s enough to consider the “threats” the Russian propaganda was trumpeting about: Ukrainian Neo-nazism, Russian genocide by Ukrainians, Ukrainian biochemical or nuclear weapons, and the like.

> You appear to be unfamiliar with multi-causal events, perhaps read up about the concept before pursuing this further.

Even if I read it, as you suggest, we could still disagree on how I and you would apply that concept to the case at hand. So if you really want to prove a point, you should actually argue for it.

> Why would they need to be provable? The illegality of Putin's attack is pretty much beyond doubt. We're talking about what was foreseeable, not what was provable.

And I’m talking about what one can foresee based on what can be proved. So if you claim that Ukraine did anything that was threatening Russian national security, I would like to hear what that is and what proofs you have for such accusations.
Ukraine Crisis
It’s significant how many contributors here use this subject as a pretext for questioning democracy generally. — Wayfarer

And the irony is that those who accuse the West of lacking critical thinking about their own corrupted and hypocritical democratic institutions, and warmongering/greedy imperialistic ambitions from the point of view of those who compete against the West (Russia, China, Islam) are just recycling criticisms originally coming from home grown and domestically popularised Western intellectuals: not surprisingly Osama bin Laden was an eager reader of Noam Chomsky.
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

> The link is to having reasons to post about it, not reasons to believe it. I know it's hard for the Twitter generation to understand but I don't feel compelled to post everything I think online.
[…]
I don't see why you're having such trouble with this, I don't have to provide a reason why I haven't posted something I think. It's quite normal to not post things one thinks.

Normal? Well that depends on how we apply conversational maxims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle) to the present discussion. Notice that if you are more vocal about one side of the story, and more reticent about the other side of story, that’s ambiguous. E.g. abstaining from saying that Putin is blameless while insisting that the West is blameworthy, is consistent with thinking that the West is entirely blameworthy, or more blameworthy, or equally blameworthy, or less blameworthy in comparison to Putin as far as the genesis and continuation of this war is concerned, so it’s unclear what the point made is and if it’s enough to justify a suggested course of action. Now, my initial claim concerning your dialectical approach (not only yours though) is that if we are discussing moral/strategic reasons behind this war, then one proves his/her effort to be more objective by articulating their views on both cases also to better assess them in comparison. This expectation has nothing to do with your personal preferences or a Twitter generation’s compulsion, but all to do with what a more objective strategic/moral analysis should look like.

> Is it immoral to fight for one’s own nation’s independence and/or for the freedom that one enjoys in such independent nation? — neomac
Fighting a war over a flag is without doubt immoral.

Why? Is this a basic moral principle of yours or did you deduce it from more basic moral principles? Can you elaborate on this? Of course nobody is fighting over a flag, literally speaking. If they do, that’s because they value some national identity that the flag represents, and that is deeply rooted into their personal history and upbringing within a certain community. In that sense, Israel for example has fought and is fighting over a flag against hostile neighbors. The same do Palestinians against Israel. The same did the Indians against the British colonial oppression, and the Algerian against the French colonial oppression. Are they all without doubt immoral?! I don't think so.

> Isn’t there any civic duty to fight for one’s own nation against the oppression of other nations’ tyrants? Don’t you really see any moral imperative in trying to contain the geopolitical ambitions of a ruthless tyrant even if at risk of total defeat? — neomac
Yes. I'm arguing against certain strategies, not the objective.

Do you mean that the only morally legitimate fight against a military aggressive ruthless tyrant is not through war but through economic sanctions and non-violent protests? Or what else do you see as morally legitimate strategy to fight against foreign oppression? BTW do you claim that strategy should be always constrained by morality also at the price of a more likely defeat?

> No one argued he needed it. A vase doesn't need me to knock it over in order to smash, any number of things might cause that. This doesn't excuse me if I did, in fact, knock it over.

I find this example more misleading than enlightening wrt what I claimed. Let's make one step back. My assumption here is that we are not dealing with some simple and mechanistic causal link between intentional action and consequences, but with intentional interactions involving geopolitical agents with strategic interests, means to serve them (including propaganda), expectations about reciprocal behavioral patterns (including proven ambitions and risk aversion dispositions) and limited rationality in processing the preferable outcome. And the other assumption is that one can assess responsibility wrt some pertinent and preeminent moral principle (where there might be potentially conflicting moral understanding of the situation) by agents capable of free and informed choices.
Now, from a strategic point of view, the idea that Putin was knowingly and recklessly provoked into a war by the West sounds plausible only if, on one side, we reason in terms of containment of the Russian military expansionism (not in terms of Russian national security concerns) but, on the other side, we overlook the nature of containment strategies to give more credit to fabricated national security concerns. Indeed the lack of a credible imminent threat from Ukraine to Russia (since Ukraine has neither nuclear weapons nor proved aggressive expansionist intentions) makes the West interference in Ukraine look as a provocation to Russia as much as putting rottweilers and cameras around a villa looks as a provocation to burglars. And since rottwailers and cameras usually function as a deterrent more effectively than their absence, we can reasonably predict that they should reduce not increase the likelihood of being burgled. So this alleged “provocation” is defensive and not offensive, preventive and not aggressive, and should reduce not increase the likelihood of an attack. On the other side, Putin proved to be a ruthless tyrant, very much inspired by the idea of making Russia great again, aggressive in foreign politics, admittedly averse to Ukraine national identity and independence from Russia. In fact he attempted at Ukrainian self-determination repeatedly at least since 2004, so a while before NATO membership became the new provocation, the simple manifestation of Ukrainian national self-determination was already an intolerable provocation. Therefore, if you add to that the disproportion of military capability between Russia and Ukraine, then you can understand that Putin constituted a real imminent threat to the Ukrainians and could have likely tried to impose his will against any Ukrainian resistance by military means even without Western interference, as he did in Chechnya. In other words, Putin was a threat to Ukrainian national security much much more seriously than Ukraine was to Russian national security. That’s why Ukrainians were and are looking for the western military support.
Moreover, actions and reactions between geopolitical agents are not a one to one correlation. Western interference in Ukraine at the expense of Russian expansionist ambitions was balanced by not admitting Ukraine into NATO (whose raison d’être was already in question in the West!) and preserving economic ties with Russia, which put together resulted in a sort of “carrot & stick” logic of containment. So, Putin wasn’t cornered into waging war against Ukraine in any strategically reasonable sense, even if the perceived threat from NATO was more serious than it actually was, as once again the Cuban missile crisis proves. Putin could have countered Western interference through sanctions or military agreements. Or through whatever “carrot & stick” strategy was compatible with his expansionist ambitions.
From a moral point of view, the moral principle of legitimate defense applies to Ukrainian case more seriously than it does to the Russian case. While the moral principle that one shouldn’t put in danger civilian’s life & well being nor increase such a danger applies under two reasonable conditions. The first condition is that it doesn’t conflict with the former principle, in other words, that the pursuit and civic duty of national self-defense against foreign actual or potential oppression doesn’t count as putting the population in danger or greater danger (otherwise self-defense against foreign oppressors wouldn’t even be possible). The second condition is that the likelihood of a certain dangerous event is known, but we can’t exclude some serious miscalculations on both sides: indeed the West was unprepared to the eventuality of a full war between Ukraine and Russia, also because the US and the EU had different perceptions of Putin’s threat. On the other hand, Putin too didn’t predict such an evolution of the war, especially the reaction of Ukrainians and the EU, yet if he expected to win so easily, it means that Putin couldn’t perceive any serious threat to Russian national security coming from the West or Ukraine (in fact the annexation of Crimea). Finally, while the West is a collective geopolitical agent whose aggregated response toward Russia is not fully orchestrated by a single tyrannic leader, so it’s hard to assess how its putative collective responsibility can be shared or distributed across individual western states, especially if there are different perceptions of the problem at hand and dispositions to deal with it, however we can not say the same for all the aggressive actions taken by Russia against Ukraine.
Conclusion, the claim that the West recklessly and knowingly provoked Putin into waging war against Ukraine at the expense of million of innocent civilians doesn’t seem to me supported by a more objective understanding of the historical and strategic interactions between Ukraine, Russia and the West with its related moral implications.

> If you are against advancing Western strategic interests and any logic of containment of its competitors that would risk a war, then you are indirectly supporting its competitors’ strategic interests, indeed of those competitors who are more aggressive in military terms, and therefore you may be rightly judged complicit in advancing them at the expenses of the West. — neomac
Only if you're weak-minded enough to see only two options.

So what would be the other available options that the strong-minded enough would go for?

> America is taking great pains not to equp Ukraine with any weapons which have a range long enough to present a credible threat to Russia. For this exact reason.

Well then there are no national security concern for Russia after all. But Russia could yell "not yet". Couldn't they? So until Russia can ensure a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine the risk is still there, even grater than before if Ukrainian are looking for revenge. And if national security was Putin’s concern before, it should be even more so now.

>Then you can not be sure of Western moral responsibility in knowingly provoking Putin either. Can you? — neomac
Why not?

Because you seemed to claim that Putin acted out of legitimate national security concerns triggered by the West. But if Putin didn’t act out of legitimate national security concerns, then there were no legitimate concerns that the West triggered in Putin leading him to start a war against Ukraine.

>Well then what forms of attack are you claiming Russia should have no fear of?

Any conventional or non-conventional attack that could seriously threaten Russian national security. The point is that there were no provable aggressive intentions from Ukraine against Russian national security, with the plausible exception of Crimea, but only after its forced annexation by Putin: so in this case it’s Putin who once again provoked the Ukrainians by attempting at their national security and integrity, not vice versa.

Yet those demands do not seem enough to guarantee the national security of Russia from a now more likely hostile country. — neomac
So? That doesn't influence their likelihood of being met.

Again, I was questioning the claim that Putin acted out of national security concerns provoked by Western interference. Ukrainian Neo-nazism, Russian genocide by Ukrainians, Ukrainian biochemical or nuclear weapons, could make the national security concerns narrative look more plausible. His actual demands however betray once more that Putin acted out of his aggressive expansionist ambitions and not out of national security concerns.
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

> I didn't say it was 'required' did I? I said I had no reason to. Not liking cricket gives me no reason to play cricket. Is that the same as saying I'm 'required' to like cricket in order to play cricket?

No, my point is that there is a missing explanation! What is the logic link between being Russian or talk to Russians and having reasons to believe that the Russian aggression of Ukraine is immoral? You didn’t state it in that part I quoted and I didn’t see any. This answer of yours doesn’t compensate it either, actually it makes your position look even more pointless: you may have moral reasons to condemn Putin independently from your willingness, interest or liking to do it. And if we are not here to socialise but to discuss moral or strategic reasons about this war, who cares if you like cricket or dislike condemning Putin?!

> Only if I thought it would help. If I though it would cause more harm, how would that be the moral option?

After considering also your subsequent claims, I guess that your position would be less ambiguous if you stated not that you have no reason to morally condemn Putin but that you have moral reasons to not voice your moral condemnation of Putin’s actions even if they are immoral because this would hypocritically deflect attention from Western’s moral responsibilities in the genesis of this war, and would be taken to promote the immoral indirect interventionism of the West.

> recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral.

Any demand that a ruthless tyrant of a nation can make against another nation (e.g. as Hitler made against Poland or Kim Jong-un makes against South Korea) that goes unsatisfied can be seen by him as a provocation, so should we meet his demands whatever they are to avoid a war and so endangering millions of people's life and wellbeing? And who is to decide that? What if his success would make him stronger in terms of resources and determination to oppress other independent nations with further demands? Is it immoral to fight for one’s own nation’s independence and/or for the freedom that one enjoys in such independent nation? Isn’t there any civic duty to fight for one’s own nation against the oppression of other nations’ tyrants? Don’t you really see any moral imperative in trying to contain the geopolitical ambitions of a ruthless tyrant even if at risk of total defeat? BTW do you consider the West immoral only when provoking a Russian ruthless tyrant or also when supporting his ruthless regime and ambitious geopolitical goals through economic ties?

> I assume it's because Putin is an immoral turd and would probably applaud them.

Well if Putin is such a moral turd then the moral responsibility of the West in the genesis or the continuation of this war doesn’t seem as morally questionable nor reckless as you claim. Not morally questionable, because an immoral turd doesn’t need any specific strategic provocation by the West to wreck Ukraine the way he’s doing in this war (the Ukrainian neo-nazi narrative could have worked just fine even in the absence of the NATO expansion narrative), except for playing it as a counter-propaganda against the West and its public opinion, to create division and so weaken Western governments’ resolve to counter Russian aggression against Ukraine. Nor reckless because the West may just have provided enough military support to Ukrainians to precisely withstand such eventuality, while reliably counting on its antibodies to neutralise Russian propaganda against the West. It’s worth noting that Ukrainians remember very well that Soviet Union under Stalin provoked a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians (and nobody was talking about Ukraine joining the NATO or the neo-nazi Ukrainian regime at that time), so the fact that Putin, ex-KGB, considers the collapse of Soviet Union “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and is deeply convinced that Ukrainians are not a distinct nation from Russians may sound quite threatening to them if they value their national identity. By consequence, Ukrainians may have a very good reason to fight by all means against the eventuality that such immoral turd has such a control over Ukraine that would enable him to repeat the Holodomor if he so pleases.
Therefore what you claim to be an immoral provocation by the West toward an immoral turd with strategically pertinent concerns about Russian national security, may be seen by Ukrainians with strategically pertinent concerns about Ukrainian national security and national identity preservation as a morally laudable support in preventing an otherwise unavoidable national capitulation to such an immoral turd.

> unless of course you are against advancing Western strategic interests. Are you? — neomac
Yes.

If you are against advancing Western strategic interests and any logic of containment of its competitors that would risk a war, then you are indirectly supporting its competitors’ strategic interests, indeed of those competitors who are more aggressive in military terms, and therefore you may be rightly judged complicit in advancing them at the expenses of the West.

> An interest some party might have about their security which actually relates to their security (as opposed to a connection made only for political rhetoric).
[…]
How can a non-nuclear power as Ukraine constitue a threat for a nuclear power like Russia in the first place? — neomac
By serving as a base for much better equipped allies like the US.

Then Putin’s aggression will result in a total failure if he will not at least put a pro-Russian regime, because the West is already military equipping Ukraine even if Ukraine is not yet a NATO member and still has a putative "neo-nazi" regime, and will likely do it even more so once Russia withdraws from Ukraine. Not to mention the fact that all other eastern countries that feel threatened by the Russians, including Sweden and Finland, will increase their military equipment to fight against any aggression from Russia.

> why are you so convinced that Putin acted primarily out of security concerns? — neomac
I'm not.

Then you can not be sure of Western moral responsibility in knowingly provoking Putin either. Can you?

> BTW if he so afraid of Russian national security why is he so quick and vocal in menacing the West to escalate to a nuclear war when nobody in the West or Ukraine is planning to attack Russia? — neomac
Because his concern is not an attack on Russia. A land invasion of one's country is not the only thing that comes under the umbrella of a security concern, obviously.

What?! I talked about attacking Russia, not about land invasion on Russia.

> why did he limit his demands to the denial of NATO membership to Ukraine, and the acknowledgement of the annexation of Crimea as well as the independence of a couple of Ukrainian regions instead of going for the annexation of the whole Ukraine or at least for a pro-Russian regime change to ensure that no other competing power could turn Ukraine against Russia? — neomac
Because those demands were more likely to be met.

Yet those demands do not seem enough to guarantee the national security of Russia from a now more likely hostile country.

> It was Yanukovych's attempts to create just such a relationship and the EU's refusal to countenance it that acted as one of the precipitators of this whole thing.

Yet Yanukovych’s fall didn’t compromise the economic ties between West and Russia as badly and probably long-lastingly as the decision of Putin to start and protract his aggression against Ukraine.

> all he’s proven with his war against Ukraine is that he’s willing to take military action if lobbying doesn’t suffice to reach his ambitious strategic goals that certainly go beyond national security concerns. — neomac
Not sure what the 'all' is doing there.

I meant that the lack of an actual immanent threat from a declared hostile country (as the US experienced during the Cuban missile crisis and dealt with without destroying Cuba or bring about a regime change), the aggressive geopolitical strategy beyond national security concerns (lobbying parties, trolling the mass media and hacking companies in the US and in the EU, and establishing a prominent military presence in the Middle East and in Africa), Putin’s official declarations against the current world order, and his being an immoral turd or ruthless tyrant make his national security concerns look less pertinent and more as a piece of propaganda to promote his ambitious geopolitical goals. Actually by acting as he did, he just compromised more and more rapidly Russian national security. Besides this war could seriously threaten his own regime too more than anything else has done so far.
Ukraine Crisis
I'm not Russian, nor talking to any Russians. Why would I morally condemn them? This is a discussion forum, not a socialising site. You're not 'getting to know me better' by my writing a little puff piece about all the things I like and dislike. — Isaac

To think strategically or morally about this war doesn’t require you to be Russian, nor to talk to Russians. So your question is grounded on a non-sequitur. Maybe what you are implying here is that your readiness to voice your moral condemnation of the Russian aggression is conditional on your capacity of affecting their choices. But that’s a very weak argument, indeed if you can not affect directly their choices (assumed you could just by being Russian or speaking to Russians), you could affect them indirectly by promoting western governments’ decision to support Ukrainian defense precisely because Russian aggression is morally wrong. Additionally it sounds contradictory wrt your further claim: this is a discussion forum, so we can discuss things just for the sake of discussing them.
Finally the purpose of my argument was not to socialise but to discuss in a philosophical forum about this war. And the point is precisely that your analysis about this war instead of proving to be more objective, it just proved your preferences.

Morally - People have implied (outright said in some cases) that 'the West' bears no responsibility for what's happening. I think that's morally wrong, so I oppose it. No one has said that Putin's is blameless, so there's no cause for me to write anything morally condemnatory about him. — Isaac

And what are the moral principles or the moral values which the West has infringed and therefore should bear responsibility for the Russian aggression of Ukraine? Besides if the West did something morally wrong, why isn’t the West being attacked by the Russians but Ukraine? Are you including Ukraine in the West?

Strategically - Again, no one has commented to the effect that we should not take America's strategic interests seriously, so there's no cause to write anything to the effect that we should. People have, however, treated Putin as if he were a psychopath with no legitimate security interests, I think that's wrong so I oppose it. — Isaac

That people are treating Putin as a psychopath should be welcome if it advances western strategic interests, unless of course you are against advancing Western strategic interests. Are you? Or do you believe that Western strategic interests are better served if people do not treat Putin as a psychopath?
And, even if you discuss for the sake of discussion, what do you mean by “legitimate security interests”? First of all if we reason in strategic terms, then no geopolitical agent has legitimacy beyond what its competitors are willing to accord, precisely because we have excluded morality as a primary source of legitimacy for strategic action. Besides any geopolitical agent can rationally decide to respect or infringe any agreements and sphere of influence if it proves effective in advancing as long as possible their strategic interests. In other words, even legal legitimacy based on international law is strategically irrelevant if it is not granted by a super-national overwhelming deterrence power.
Secondly, why are you so convinced that Putin acted primarily out of security concerns? Just because Putin claimed so? I think that there are enough strong evidences that is matter of geopolitical influence not of national security per se for the following reasons:
How can a non-nuclear power as Ukraine constitue a threat for a nuclear power like Russia in the first place? And if the threat Putin perceives is about letting Ukraine have nuclear missiles in some far future, then why didn’t he demand an agreement analogous to the one between US and Soviet Union during the cuban missile crisis in the first place, instead of invading Ukraine? Besides no other eastern European country has nuclear missiles even if they are NATO members, so why having Ukraine inside NATO is a security threat for Russia as a nuclear power?
BTW if he so afraid of Russian national security why is he so quick and vocal in menacing the West to escalate to a nuclear war when nobody in the West or Ukraine is planning to attack Russia?! Or why did he limit his demands to the denial of NATO membership to Ukraine, and the acknowledgement of the annexation of Crimea as well as the independence of a couple of Ukrainian regions instead of going for the annexation of the whole Ukraine or at least for a pro-Russian regime change to ensure that no other competing power could turn Ukraine against Russia?!
Finally the military presence of Russia in the Middle East and in Africa has nothing to do with national security concerns, but with a world power struggle. And Putin’s strategic choices wrt all other eastern European countries [1] and western European countries (given the Russian lobbying in American and European politics) seem more aiming at becoming more politically influent in Europe then supporting national security concerns per se. Indeed economic ties would have been sufficient to preserve peaceful relations between EU and Russia, and things could have gone even more awesomely if Putin boosted democratisation and the rise of a middle class in Russia to the point of making Russia eligible to join NATO as he wanted. So all he’s proven with his war against Ukraine is that he’s willing to take military action if lobbying doesn’t suffice to reach his ambitious strategic goals that certainly go beyond national security concerns.

[1]
“The demands, spelled out by Moscow in full for the first time, were handed over to the US this week. They include a demand that Nato remove any troops or weapons deployed to countries that entered the alliance after 1997, which would include much of eastern Europe, including Poland, the former Soviet countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Balkan countries. Russia has also demanded that Nato rule out further expansion, including the accession of Ukraine into the alliance, and that it does not hold drills without previous agreement from Russia in Ukraine, eastern Europe, in Caucasus countries such as Georgia or in Central Asia.”. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-list-demands-tensions-europe-ukraine-nato)
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

All right, I’ll expand my argument with a premise. I see 2 distinct kinds of possible evaluations on the current Ukraine-Russia conflict: one is strategic and the other is moral. From a strategic point of view, what counts is how geopolitical agents can maximise benefits and opportunities while minimising costs and risks wrt actual/potential competitors, independently from any moral considerations. Indeed moral considerations are seen as instrumental in the form of propaganda or soft-power in winning consensus against geopolitical competitors. On the other side, from a moral point of view, an action can be good or bad without necessarily being strategically good or bad, yet strategic thinking should be constrained by moral considerations. Given this distinction one can argue that while letting Ukraine free to choose to join NATO was morally good because we value freedom and sovereignty, yet it was not strategically good because it challenged Russia to react in a way we weren’t neither ready nor capable to properly contain; or argue that the Western propaganda is hypocritical in trying to downplay the role of neo-nazi movements or even hide their indirect support to neo-nazi militia, yet this propaganda is strategically effective in winning the consensus of the western public opinion for supporting the Ukrainians.
The distinction I just pointed out is at play also in your (and not only your) comments when, on one side, you morally condemn the the Western hypocrisy (see the case of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc.) and “warmongering” propaganda at the expenses of the Ukrainians. On the other side, you switch to strategic thinking mode when the subject is Putin, so the point is no longer to condemn the propaganda or the inhumanity of the Russian aggression of Ukraine, but to evaluate costs/benefits of a protracted war between Ukraine and Russia. And expect your interlocutors to do the same.
This dialectical approach is twice flawed:
- You are switching between two modes of thinking as you see fit, and you may take it as a sign of intellectual - if not moral - dishonesty when your interlocutors do not follow you on this or, worse, they do the opposite of you (i.e. they morally condemn Putin, while thinking strategically about Ukrainians and Westerners can do against Putin). But you didn’t provide any compelling reason why your way of switching between strategic and moral evaluations is more legitimate than alternative ways of doing it.
- This switching between moral and strategic thinking is also misleading you into thinking that your reasoning is more objective and detached than the one of your opponents when you reason strategically. But that’s not the case because: A. If you want to talk strategy then also propaganda is part of the game and must be judged accordingly for its effectiveness, no matter how much you feel morally above any propaganda. Indeed, from a strategic point of view any moral claim, can be exploited for achieving non-moral goals: e.g. your view too is or can be instrumental to the Russian propaganda! B. You are limiting the scope of your strategic analysis to how much or how likely the Ukrainians can lose (e.g. in terms of human lives or political/territorial integrity) in this war as if this is all that matters. This might be true from a moral point of view (even if I have difficulties to understand how this can match the interest of humanity at large), or from Ukrainians point of view (but they do not seem to think like you), anyway that is not certainly so from a strategic point of view at large because what is at stake in this war goes beyond Ukraine’s fate and its outcome can destabilise the world order in ways that no other war after the end of cold war has done.
Ukraine Crisis
Worth wile to see. — ssu

thanks for sharing this video, it was very instructive!
Ukraine Crisis
I expect he'll end up getting more than what he asked for before the war. And a real danger is the longer it goes on, the more he may demand. — Baden

A real danger? You keep asking for evidences (which already seems to clash with the idea that we are living in a news environment poisoned by propaganda from any side) what evidences do you have to support the idea that the longer it goes on, the more Putin may demand? I think we have more evidences to the contrary. Indeed he wanted to denazify Ukraine in the first place , which also implied a regime change, along with having Ukraine forever outside Nato, securing Crimea annexation, and keeping the independents Ukrainian regions independent. Now he is not talking of denazification or regime change on the negotiation table.

If some Ukrainians (they are not, as I keep having to repeat, some kind of homogenised entity, they are 40 million diverse people), if some Ukrainians ask for help in the form of military aid, then our governments (and us in our role as their mandate) have to decide whether it is in the best interests of humanity at large to give such aid. It is totally up to us to decide what's best for them, that's the nature of the power relationship. We have the weapons they need, so we must decide whether what they're asking for is in their (and other people's) best interests. — Isaac

I’m wondering if we should not think of 40M Ukrainians to be some kind of homogenised entity, all the more it’s true for ~8 billion of currently living people that constitute (still in small part) humanity at large, what makes you think we are even capable to decide what it is in the best interests of humanity at large?! In any case your dialectic approach looks to me deeply flawed mainly for the following reasons: you as many other contributors here want to keep the privileged moral position to denounce ("critically think" about) the hypocrisies of the West, its propaganda machine and showcase your pity for the Ukrainian population’s fate while accusing your opponents of “cheerleading” the Ukrainians against the Russians (and this position indeed is not a strategic stand wrt a geopolitical power struggle), and then expect from your opponents a rational and detached strategic analysis (assuming anybody here is as competent and reliably informed as strategic analysts who shape our government’s choices are) based on evidences which you may claim are compromised by propaganda if coming from western mainstream media, to understand Putin’s aggression of Ukraine, Putin’s demands and the likely evolution of this war to convince you that the best options for Ukrainians or “some” Ukrainians (and not humanity at large) is to accept Putin’s demands as soon as possible to end this war (which I doubt it’s a strategic objective for the Ukrainians or “some” Ukrainians or other indirectly involved parties who support Ukrainians).
Ukraine Crisis
all I care if you can explain to me how this war can be ended without conceding to at least some of the Russian demands. — Baden
Who knows? Maybe it will end as the Afghan wars with the Soviet Union first and with the US later ended. But most importantly, since making concessions to Putin's demands will have strategic consequences for the economic and military security of all players around the world, and not just for Ukraine, one can not possibly think that what is at stake is just Putin's demands to end this war. As long as the Ukrainian feel like fighting against the Russian oppression, whoever might feel strategically threatened by Russia and the imperial ambitions of authoritarian regimes around the globe now or in the near future can not do other than side with the Ukrainians one way or the other, forced by the same logic that Putin claimed to justify his attack against Ukraine and fend off the putative threat of having the NATO at their doorstep. And BTW Russian representatives are not stopping to spread their military threats against the West beyond what's happening in Ukraine: they clearly want the world to take the Ukrainian case as an example of the Russian Superpower status and so influence whatever "new world order" may come with it.
Ukraine Crisis
↪Baden
so it's like we are trading with a terrorist. Are concessions the best strategy to deal with terrorists?
Ukraine Crisis
I view the purpose of analysis to make decisions, not morally condemn.

What decisions matter to me in this situation that I can affect: the policies of my own country and political block.

What are those decisions:

A. Go to war on the assumption of Ukrainian just cause ... well, nearly the entire country and political block believes in Ukrainian's just cause yet we are not going to put our boots where our mouths are.

B. Send arms to Ukraine in the hopes they fight our righteous battle "for the free world" for us and win.

C. Pump arms into Ukraine, not for the purposes of option B, but to ensure an endless insurgency that bleeds the Russians at Ukraine's expense ... Wooooweee!!!!

D. Use diplomatic leverage to protect civilians as much as possible and work on a diplomatic end to the war.

[...]

So, it seems to me D is the best choice. — boethius

So options A,B,C are practically saying that the West supporting Ukrainian defence is coward, hypocrite and cynical. While you would choose D which implies refusing to support Ukrainian defence and accepting Russian demands (whatever they are) not out of cowardice, hypocrisy or cynicism of course, but because it saves Ukrainian civilians as much as possible. And this is supposed to be the best example of analysis to make decisions not to morally condemn or do virtue signaling, right?

If Russians generally support the war, which they seem to do — boethius

If they support it, why is there such a level of censorship in Russia (which is not even under martial law)?
Ukraine Crisis
What's evil is the invasion, the bombing of civilians, etc. — Olivier5

Worse than this, Putin is killing people who - he claims - belong to the same nation as Russians. So he's like killing Russians!
Ukraine Crisis
So why did you involve my post? If you want to have a different conversion, don't do so in response to my posts, it's really confusing. — Isaac

You didn't specify anywhere what kind of conversation you want in your post. This is a public forum about Ukrainian crisis. You made a claim that I as others find questionable and I addressed it as such.
Ukraine Crisis
wanting a war to continue — Isaac

Then by your definition I'm not warmongering. I didn't want a war between Russia and Ukraine nor I want it to be continued. I was talking about my expectations about what the Ukrainians want not about what I want. BTW were the Russians warmongering when fighting back the Nazis out of their country in WW2?
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

Me or Putin? Define "warmongering".
Ukraine Crisis
Why is that more unhelpful for peacemaking than the opposite framing of 'totally innocent Ukrainians bravely fighting a ruthless and hell-bent tyrant, deaf to all pleas'? — Isaac

I don't expect the victims of an aggression to make peace with the aggressor, especially while the latter is rampaging with the aggression. Unless they are demotivated to fight and defend their rights for themselves, of course.
Ukraine Crisis
So you agree with me that all the framing of this war as 'evil Putin vs. noble Ukrainians' is unhelpful. — Isaac

No the problem is that Putin has framed the 'evil neo-nazi Ukrainians vs. noble holy-warrior Putin&Russians' in the first place (and persisting with that). That is unhelpful for peace making.
Ukraine Crisis
The senator was totally shocked that the answer wasn't no, and changed the subject to his next question (aka. damage control) — boethius

I see zero shock on Senator Rubio's face, voice, posture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvRpntmUIxs). The next question is just reinforcing the narrative that Russia can use the Ukrainian bio labs for a false flag operation similarly to what may have happened in Syria & Chechnya.

she's talking about shouldn't fall in the hands of the Russians and they're working hard to make sure that doesn't happen. — boethius

What is ambiguous may be that she didn’t say simply “no” right away. However the explanations she gave were enough to make clear that whatever was in that lab could have been weaponized by the Russians against the Ukrainian civilians (as it is claimed to have happened in Syria and Chechnya). And that also why she didn’t simply say “no”. Still the Russians and its troll army could try to play it against Ukraine b/c whatever can be weaponized against the Ukrainian civilians can as well be weaponized against the Russian army or philo-Russian civilians.

which is alarming and also just weird as to why they didn't take care of it if they knew the war was coming as US intelligence publicly claimed. — boethius

They took care of it.

What does the EU get? — boethius

Unity against a common enemy (Russia) and question their subordinate role toward an unreliable US. This awakening may be essential for EU's future survival and prosperity.
Ukraine Crisis
she's answering the direct question of whether there are bio-weapons in Ukraine. — boethius

If they wanted a clear & unequivocal answer from Nuland, they would have asked for such an answer. But they didn’t, and also that can be seen as suspicious.

it obviously will play well to the Russian supporters of the war and consolidate support for the war, which makes the war less reckless. — boethius

Feeding the Russian propaganda with half truths to increase Russian support will facilitate e.g. Russian use of chemical weapons in a "false flag" attack against Ukraine [1]. This would be an example of being more reckless.

the classic strategy for what you propose is to feed Russia false intelligence that can be easily disproved, denied or just ignored later. — boethius

I’m referring to a war of propaganda and how the Russian intelligence resources might be invested to feed the propaganda machine.

"fuck-the-EU" Nuland just wants to do what she claims and fuck the EU by orchestrating a coup with neo-Nazi's, setting those neo-Nazi's up with means and resources and then institutional legitimacy, and then setting up bio-weapons labs for this neo-Nazi cesspool as she feels that's a good way to "fuck-the-EU" which is her stated desire. — boethius

I’m just saying that one part of the American establishment might find some use in feeding the “neo-Nazi”, “bio-weapons”, “Russian genocide” narrative in a way that on their side grants plausible deniability while on the other side it can contribute to escalate tensions between Russia, Ukraine and EU.

EU has gotten fucked, has it not? — boethius

As much as Russia, its useful idiots and its useless troll army.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-may-use-chemical-weapons-false-flag-attack-not-more-broadly-western-2022-03-11/
Ukraine Crisis
But if you have a better explanation of Nuland's answer, feel free to debate that point of view on a debate forum. — boethius

We can not exclude that there are competing views within the American establishment toward this war. Some maybe want to escalate the conflict between the West and Russia. Others do not want to escalate it further. Maybe "fuck-the-EU" Nuland is dog-whistling to the Russian propaganda and intelligence on purpose, to galvanize them and maybe offer them a pretext for becoming even more reckless. In other words, Nuland and the piece of establishment she represents could be doing their dirty job by exploiting such ambiguous declarations in public hearings.
Ukraine Crisis
As long as we are in a military strategy discussion, why didn't Russia simply do this with cruise missiles to destroy military targets?

Why not simply threaten to invade?

Is arming rebels a good strategy and does it violate the UN Charter?

Why not simply threaten to use Nukes in the first place?

Saving lives... — FreeEmotion

For Putin's internal propaganda of course, coz the Ukrainian population wasn't that neonazi afterall. They should have been liberated from the neo-nazis, right? Now after fighting against Ukrainian civilians, being condemned by the Ukrainian Jewish community, having millions of Ukrainian refugees going west not east, shelling Ukrainian residential areas, destroying hospitals, violating humanitarian cease-fire, and killing Ukrainian children (which is as like as killing Russian children b/c Ukrainians and Russian are "one people" [1]) is harder to back up the narrative of the "neo-nazi problem" any more, isn't it?

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220201003310/http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
Ukraine Crisis
Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
The above presupposes that you have a good grasp of my view. — creativesoul

Right, but what if you do not have a good grasp of your own view?

So... show me. — creativesoul

I'm quoting you when I make my objections and then I spell out in detail what I have to object to your quotations, as well as why it is relevant (here is a good example to prove my point). So this already shows what I understood about your views (unless you expect from me to parrot your claims or to fill up a questionnaire). And I expect you to do the same every time you have something specific to object against my claims or arguments. But you on the contrary waste lots posts and words in recycling the same generic objections, dismissive remarks and compulsive framing accusations, that either miss my point and its relevance, or miss what I argued to support it, or simply prove your intellectual dishonesty [1]. That's why, not surprisingly, any objection to your claims and arguments are either conflating or irrelevant according to you, no matter how preposterous your arguments and claims evidently look to everybody else.
To prove once more what I just said, your most recent posts [2] do not offer any support to the target of my objections: the ignoratio elenchi fallacy (as discussed here, see third point). Instead they point out, at best, some flaw in the way I presented my argument, and that helped me just sharpen my objection.
Another example of your shallowness is here:

False belief cannot possibly be true.
— creativesoul

Which I'm not questioning. Indeed also false statements cannot possibly be true. — neomac

...we can claim of a belief (or proposition) that is proven to be true (or false), that it could have been false (or true)... — neomac

Arriving at incoherence is a sign of self-contradiction and/or equivocation. You've littered the thread and this conversation with such things... — creativesoul
Where you accuse me of self-contradiction and/or equivocation without spelling out in detail where the contradiction or the equivocation is. You just slam your preposterous claims, and then you move on with your dumb rant as if it was enough to quote me to make your point!

Finally let's appreciate the scale of your methodological failures (practically, as catastrophic as your substantial claims and arguments): if you think I'm misunderstanding you, you can always rectify or answer my request of clarifications. But you do not address many of my pressing questions [3] and take as rectification, just repeating the same preposterous claims or arguments that I already quoted and you claim I've misunderstood. This is a very dumb dialectic strategy because if I failed to understand your claims (even when I'm directly commenting your quotes) as you state, what's the point in reiterating them? On the other side, if I don't understand, that may only depend on the non-evident logic or meaning or truth conditions of your claims wrt shared assumptions between me and you, so it's dumb just to repeat your claims (which are under question or misunderstood) and provide examples on how to apply them (as you did here
↪creativesoul
), all the more if you so candidly admit "I am very well aware of the difficulty inherent to what I'm setting out". You should instead prove your claims with logic tools and clarifications about meaning/truth conditions/logic implications or presuppositions consistent with shared assumptions between me and you [4]. If you do not do this, you are not making your view look more convincing, but simply incommensurable wrt more standard views. Indeed it's the dumbest philosophical strategy to challenge a view with claims and arguments that are unintelligible within that view, and reiterate ad nauseam until brainwashing interlocutors holding that view succeeds. And you do know what that means right? That you literally proved nothing substantially valid to support your views since the beginning of this exchange [5] up until now, especially wrt your central claim [6].
To recapitulate and not lose focus, here are the main important claims/assumptions that you didn't prove yet wrt what I questioned:
- You did not prove the immense explanatory power of your definition of belief
- You did not prove that you are not ascribing a contradictory belief in your “more accurate” belief report
- You did not prove that the knowledge requirement is necessary for accurate belief report
- You did not prove that your belief report is more accurate than the one we would normally provide in the relevant example of Jack
So spare me your sermons, insults and brainwashing sessions, and do some actual philosophical work, if you really care.

[1]

2 examples of inappropriate quotations:

↪creativesoul

My sentence was creatively chopped out by a deranged soul.

↪creativesoul

Taken in its context, my claim was referring to a different example from the one we are handling here, and only in order to clarify some implications of your views, not mine. (But now that you made me think about it, I would not be surprised if also on that occasion you were already committing a similar ignoratio elenchi fallacy ). — neomac

[2] Here is a bunch of them:

↪creativesoul

↪creativesoul

↪creativesoul

↪creativesoul

↪creativesoul

↪creativesoul

↪creativesoul

[3]
Like the following one. You keep repeating such kind of claims:

is impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood; and it is impossible to knowingly be mistaken — creativesoul
But why is it impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood or to knowingly be mistaken ? What is "knowingly" supposed to mean here? Can you spell it out?

[4] As I did for example here :

[2] "all A's can possibly be either true or false" would be a contradiction in terms if "all A's" meant "all true A's and all false A's" — neomac

And I take to be shared all other substantive claims I made which are relevant for my objections and that you didn't directly nor specifically question, like this one (referred to “False belief cannot possibly be true”):
its truth conditions (which you did not specify) depend on the meaning of the word “true” and “false” (which are contradictory terms) not on the meaning of “belief” — neomac

Indeed I took also your remark about the logical structure of your 2 claims, as a valid observation, because I can understand it wrt our shared assumptions, even though it didn't substantially affect my objection. And since you are proving to be so sensitive about logic structures, then there is still hope you will readily acknowledge that this other argument of yours is a non sequitur:

Yet I have another objection. Now that you made clear that your argument is only this:
Jack was mistaken. It is impossible to knowingly be. Thus, a proper rendering of Jack's belief will come in a linguistic form that is impossible to knowingly believe.

Then your argument (as it is) is a perfect example of non sequitur, logically speaking. I'll formalise it for you:
premise 1: Jack was mistaken (p)
premise 2: It is impossible to knowingly be mistaken (q)
conclusion: a proper rendering of Jack's belief will come in a linguistic form that is impossible to knowingly believe (c)

p
q
-------
c

This is not a valid logic deduction!!! — neomac

[5]

Care to further discuss the topic, as compared/contrasted to my interlocutor?
— creativesoul

I don't see how we can further it. — neomac

Do you find the account I set out in the first three posts of the debate to be a complete one? — creativesoul

We can set all the other stuff aside for now and focus upon what counts as belief.
Then, we will see how much sense it makes to ascribe belief to another, because we will have some standard of belief for comparing our ascriptions/attribution to. — creativesoul

[6]

At time t1, Jack believed that clock was working.
At time t1, Jack believed that broken clock was working.
You're claiming the first is more accurate. I'm claiming the second is. — creativesoul
Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
False belief cannot possibly be true.
— creativesoul

Which I'm not questioning. Indeed also false statements cannot possibly be true. — neomac

...we can claim of a belief (or proposition) that is proven to be true (or false), that it could have been false (or true)... — neomac

Arriving at incoherence is a sign of self-contradiction and/or equivocation. — creativesoul

Where is the contradiction? Where is the equivocation? Can you exactly spell it out? First of all notice that the subjects are different: “false belief” and “belief” (qualified vs unqualified subject). Secondly, notice that also what is predicated is in different verb's mood (i.e. “cannot possibly be…” vs “could have been…”). But I get that some intellectual effort (which you are evidently incapable of) is necessary. So here are some additional hints (and if they are not enough I'll sharpen them at the next round): the claim that you apparently need so badly is “False belief cannot possibly be true” but this is a misleading claim, because - among others - its truth conditions (which you did not specify [1]) depend on the meaning of the word “true” and “false” (which are contradictory terms) not on the meaning of “belief”. In other words, reasoning in terms qualified subject (i.e. “False belief”) is ambiguous wrt what we can infer from "being a belief" or from "being false"). To avoid this ambiguity we can better render your claim (“False belief cannot possibly be true”) as a bi-conditional:
```
If a belief B is false then B is not true and if a belief B is true then B is not false.
```
Notice that in this latter statement, the subject is unqualified. Of this unqualified subject we can claim at the same time without contradiction:
```
1. If a belief B is false then B is not true and if B is true then B is not false
2. B is actually true (or false) and B could have been false (or true)
```
And BTW the same holds for propositions/statements (i.e. “False propositions/statements cannot possibly be true”):
```
1. If a statement S is false then S is not true and if S is true then S is not false
2. S is actually true (or false) and S could have been false (or true)
3. If a proposition P is false then P is not true and if P is true then P is not false
4. P is actually true (or false) and P could have been false (or true)
```
Do you agree with these conclusions? If not, can you spell out exactly why not in substantial terms (i.e. meaning, truth conditions, logic implications or presuppositions)?

The structure was different. That is exactly what I pointed out. So, they are not just different except for that structure. — creativesoul

All right, I missed to properly address this part. I’ll do it now. The distinction of A and B as 2 variables ranging over values in 2 different domains respectively, serves your specific purpose of comparing propositions and beliefs. So what your objection is highlighting [2] is the logic structure of your comparison as such. That’s fine and since I didn't clarify well enough what I took to be the same or different in the logic structure of your 2 claims wrt my 4 claims, your objection is understandable. The point is that it's grounded on a misunderstanding due to my poor phrasing. Indeed my comments were pointing at some implicit assumptions embedded in the logic structure of your 2 claims (so that's relevant for your own theory), and that do not depend on the comparison between beliefs and propositions: namely the contrast between qualified and unqualified subjects (do you deny it? [3]). Now, my 4 claims - as I said - “made more evident” this aspect by using variables ranging in the same domain. Clarified the misunderstanding, the point is that the contrast between qualified and unqualified subjects (which holds for my 4 claims too) should be relevant also in guiding a proper comparison between beliefs and propositions. And, indeed, this is the ground for my objection to your ignoratio elenchi fallacy (as discussed here, see third point). So, despite your excusable misunderstanding, my objection still holds (along with all others I made, of course [4]) .
You can however try to deny the validity of my 4 claims, for example do you deny the following ones? If yes, can you exactly spell out why in substantial terms (i.e. meaning, truth conditions, logic implications or presuppositions)?
```
If all beliefs can possibly be either true or false, and false beliefs cannot possibly be true, then beliefs are not equivalent to false beliefs.
If all beliefs can possibly be either true or false, and true beliefs cannot possibly be false, then beliefs are not equivalent to true beliefs.
```
How many strikes do we get again in your game before being counted out? — creativesoul

It's a bit late for that. In my game you lost a while ago. And there is no way to recover it. We are just reviewing how badly you lost. And we can continue as long as you enjoy it. Unless I get bored, of course.

[1]
you keep repeating the following claim without specifying anywhere its truth conditions:

when we know that an individual's belief is false, we can also know that it cannot possibly be true — creativesoul
What does the modal predicate "cannot possibly be" mean here? Are you saying if an individual's belief is false in the actual world, then it is not true in any possible world? In other words, if any individual's belief is false, then it is necessarily false, and if any individual's belief is true, then it is necessarily true, so there are no contingent true/false beliefs only necessary true/false beliefs? And if you do not mean that, what else do you mean exactly? Can you spell it out?
Besides do you also believe when we know that an individual's statement is false, we can also know that it cannot possibly be true? if not, why not?

[2]

If all A's can possibly be either true or false, and false A's cannot possibly be true, then A's are not equivalent to false A's.
If all A's can possibly be either true or false, and true A's cannot possibly be false, then A's are not equivalent to true A’s. — creativesoul
vs

If all A's can possibly be true or false, and false B's cannot possibly be true, then A's are not equivalent to false B's.
If all A's can possibly be true or false, and true B's cannot possibly be false, then A's are not equivalent to true B's. — creativesoul

[3] "all A's can possibly be either true or false" would be a contradiction in terms if "all A's" meant "all true A's and all false A's".

[4] Here is a list of entry points to my main objections to your preposterous claims and arguments:
- 1. Preposterous "CreativeSoul propositional calculi" (here)
- 2. Conflation between false beliefs and contradictory beliefs (here,here,here,here,here)
- 3. Fallacious presupposition of knowledge and truth-value assessment for proper belief report (here,here)
- 4. Irrelevance of "awareness" claims wrt "contradictory belief" claims (here)
- 5. Irrelevance of the “non-problematic understanding” argument (here)
- 6. Inadequacy of the “belief” notion (here)
- 7. Inadequacies of your “knowledge ascription” requirement (here,here,here,here)
- 8. Missing justification of your belief ascription practice wrt your definition of belief (here)
- 9. Non sequitur fallacy (here)
- 10. Ignoratio elenchi fallacy (here)
Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
> So, when we know that an individual's belief is false, we can also know that it cannot possibly be true, and that the individual cannot knowingly believe whatever it is that they do at the time [1]. If we then make the further metacognitive claim that they believe something that can be true, or something that is believable, then we've just ascribed a belief to the individual that they cannot possibly have [2].

On one side, claim [1] can be applied to both beliefs and propositions, so it can not be used to distinguish them (if this is the aim of such considerations). On the other, against claim [2], we can claim of a belief (or proposition) that is proven to be true (or false), that it could have been false (or true). Any belief (or proposition) capable of representing the world in a given way is contingently either true or false (unless they are contradictions or tautologies). This is perfectly consistent with the claim that both beliefs and propositions can be understood independently from their truth-value assessment. Besides truth-value assessments are fallible, so the same belief can be assigned different truth values by the same person at different times or by different subjects at the same time. In other words, identifying a belief is a distinct task from assessing its truth-value and indeed the latter task presupposes the former task.

> If convention has issue putting what I've presented into logical notation, it is not a flaw of what I've presented, rather it is the accounting practice that is found lacking.

If you have issue understanding logic, it is not a flaw of logic, rather it's you who are found lacking.
Ukraine Crisis
Most of the propaganda has a grain of truth somewhere, denying that fans the flames of such propaganda, it doesn't quash it. — Isaac

The grain of truth is what I said [1]. And there is no need to fabricate any other narrative around this. Additionally, Putin wants guarantees that Russia will keep control over lands like Crimea, Donetsk, and Lougansk, without fearing any future demands or revenges by a Ukrainian (ultra-)nationalist government. So far all the parties involved can get it. But this has nothing to do with the label "Neo-nazi problem": Ukrainian does not need to be neo-nazi to re-claim control over Crimea, Donetsk, and Lougansk as much as the Spanish government does not need to be neo-nazi just to fight against the Catalunian separatist movement; and EU is not a neo-nazi government just because it fights against the far-right and far-left populist propaganda; and Trump is not a neo-nazi even if he flirts with neo-nazi right?
What I found dubious in your claims is that you were talking about joint investigations about the "neo-nazi problem" [2]. And this can not be since the label "neo-nazi problem" is evidently designed to support Russian propaganda to justify their expansionism and/or preventive war. We could label the same issue in many other ways: like the "anti-Russian nationalist problem" or the "Ukrainian far-right problem" or the "Russian minority oppression problem" or the "Russian separatism problem" or the "Russian expansionism problem" or the "'Ukraine belongs to Russia' problem". But probably the label "neo-nazi problem" sounds much better for the Russian propaganda inside and outside their country. So no, we shouldn't fall for this label.

[1]
Concerning the neo-nazi problem, what we can more prudently claim is that this conflict involves anti-Russian Ukrainian ultra-nationalists (which include some Ukrainian neo-nazi militants) as well as anti-Ukrainian Russian ultra-nationalists (which include some Russian neo-nazi militants).

[2]

Sweeping the rug out from under him by promising to jointly investigate the problem at least has a chance of undermining some of his support in Russia if he refuses. — Isaac
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

Then what are you talking about?
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

> Putin says "The west are bullies who ignore the rise of the far-right because it suits them"

> You think that not making concessions to his propaganda is - ignoring the rise of the far-right and bullying people into not mentioning it.

On the negotiation table there is no Russian population nor Ukrainian population nor NATO population nor EU population, nor me nor you. On that occasion Putin can make all the demands he wants the way he wants and then sell it to the Russian population the way he wants. He can say exactly what you just wrote, word by word, as if he was your ghost writer. But he will probably and hopefully fail for the reasons I've already explained: a public acknowledgement of the neo-nazi justification by Ukraine, EU and/or NATO may be totally irrelevant for his own real goals, especially if we consider how easily such a demand could be easily dismissed or retorted against him. And indeed this is not what he asked so you do no need to overthink about it any more: https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-russian-military-action-will-stop-moment-if-ukraine-meets-2022-03-07/

> You'll really have to explain that.

Sure, here you go: a public acknowledgement of the neo-nazi justification by Ukraine, EU and/or NATO may be totally irrelevant for his own real goals, especially if we consider how easily such a demand could be easily dismissed or retorted against him.
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

> I don't see how that addresses the issue at all. The point is that if Putin needs the humanitarian gloss to cover his invasion (which he evidently does) then threatening to remove that can be useful negotiation tactic. Saying "there's nothing to see here", when there's categorical evidence is not a sensible tactic. Sweeping the rug out from under him by promising to jointly investigate the problem at least has a chance of undermining some of his support in Russia if he refuses.

I do not know how far Putin can go to support his own propaganda and censorship measures, but as we can see he can go very very very far. So I seriously doubt that even making such kind of concessions is helpful. Besides Putin is already having problems in terms of consensus despite his nasty propaganda. Therefore he will not concede anything more that will compromise his narrative for sure.
It is more reasonable to find some agreements on the status of lands (i.e. Crimea, Donetsk, and Lougansk) that he can always claim to have “liberated” from the neo-nazi oppressor, independently from an international acknowledgement of his propaganda. (Indeed this is what Putin is clearly looking for: https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-russian-military-action-will-stop-moment-if-ukraine-meets-2022-03-07/)

> He's made a living out of playing the role of 'thorn in NATO's side', he's already played up NATO meddling as being responsible for the rise of the far-right.

This can be easily retorted. Since far-right political movements have been financially supported by Russia in the west, and they are at home in Russia. Indeed Putin himself is clearly a far-right leader.

> How exactly do you see that undermining Putin's propaganda?

For sure not by making concessions to Putin’s propaganda. Besides, concerning the Russian propaganda in their home country we can’t do much as we can’t do much about the propaganda in China or North Korea, especially in war times.
Ukraine Crisis
↪boethius

> Or then ignore anything Putin says as your negotiation strategy ... but then why go speak about anything if the plan is just to simply ignore the points of the counter-party?

On a negotiation table Putin can ask whatever he wants, the point is that a public acknowledgement of the neo-nazi justification by Ukraine, EU and/or NATO may be totally irrelevant for his own real goals, especially if we consider how easily such a demand could be easily dismissed or retorted against him.

> People seem to be debating based on the premise that keeping social media momentum that any act of defiance no matter how irrelevant militarily speaking (such as just "defying" Putin on this philosophy forum), is going to save Ukrainian lives.

I’m here to debate about reasons to believe or act as a form of personal entertainment.
Ukraine Crisis
↪boethius

> Guy, this is Putin's stated justification of the war.

To justify the costs of the war before the Russian population. But the Ukrainian Jews find this justification preposterous.

> A response at the negotiation table can be be "we don't believe it" or "here's proof there's no neo-Nazi's" or "it doesn't matter" or then "we also don't like Nazi's and would agree to policies that reduce their numbers and influence, however bit it is, after a peace is achieved."

I have reasons to doubt it: Putin probably wants to keep Crimea, Donetsk, and Lougansk, under Russian control and formulate his demands accordingly on a negotiation table. But all this can be formulated in a way that is perfectly understandable without being based on "neo-nazi" or "denazification" claims.
To which I would add: Concerning the neo-nazi problem, what we can more prudently claim is that this conflict involves anti-Russian Ukrainian ultra-nationalists (which include some Ukrainian neo-nazi militants) as well as anti-Ukrainian Russian ultra-nationalists (which include some Russian neo-nazi militants). In other words, whatever requests Putin makes about Ukrainian neo-nazi problem can be easily retorted to him (so he could not even claim of himself to be an anti-neo-nazi hero).

> Are you basically suggesting that if Russian diplomats bring up the Nazi justification that Ukrainian and / or Western diplomats just say nothing?

I guess they could say something like what I've just said.
Ukraine Crisis
And therefore is our most powerful bargaining tool. It's that simple. — Isaac

I already addressed this:

nobody is expecting Putin to put on the negation table whatever limits his authoritarian power in the interest of the Russian population. Besides Ukraine, EU or NATO are not primarily worried about freeing the Russian population from Putin’s authoritarian regime. But to free Ukraine from Russian invasion. — neomac
Ukraine Crisis
↪Paine

> Yes, the message about neo-Nazis is not a reference to antisemitism.

Well Putin expressly talked about antisemitism too in denouncing the Ukrainian government. But even if we ignore the accusations of antisemitism against the Ukrainian government, Putin is clearly misusing the expression "neo-nazi" and "denazification" [1] to justify his special military operation for his own personal and geopolitical ambitions. Concerning the neo-nazi problem, what we can more prudently claim is that this conflict involves anti-Russian Ukrainian ultra-nationalists (which include some Ukrainian neo-nazi militants) as well as anti-Ukrainian Russian ultra-nationalists (which include some Russian neo-nazi militants)

[1]
https://www.timesofisrael.com/putin-calls-on-ukraines-jewish-president-to-halt-frenzy-of-neo-nazism/
Ukraine Crisis
↪Isaac

> You've still not made clear your link between proof of the scale of Neo-Nazism (its mere existence is not even in question) and its role at the negotiating table.

Because I don’t know how the negotiation demands will be specifically formulated by the Russians wrt to the alleged Ukrainian "neo-nazi problem". We are hypothetically reasoning based on the available evidences, and all I can say is that there is no neo-nazi political majority, nor a neo-nazi regime, besides anti-semitism is banned in Ukraine, the president and prime minister of Ukraine are jewish, and Ukrainian Jews reject Putin’s claims. On the other side Russia is also affected by neo-nazi and anti-semitic propaganda and activities (russian neo-nazi are also involved in military operations against Ukraine). If these are the premises, I don’t see how the “denazification” claims can play any relevant role on the negotiation table.
Putin probably wants to keep Crimea, Donetsk, and Lougansk, under Russian control and formulate his demands accordingly on a negotiation table. But all this can be formulated in a way that is perfectly understandable without being based on "neo-nazi" or "denazification" claims.

> You admit that the propaganda plays well in Russia, them claim that it's of no use in negotiations. If it plays well in Russia, then it's relevant to Putin's hold on power which makes it relevant negotiation position.

I don’t get your line of reasoning. The opinion of the Russian population is relevant to Putin for keeping his authoritarian power, not for Ukraine, EU or NATO. He needs excuses to justify the costs of his “special military operation” in Ukraine before the Russian population. And nobody is expecting Putin to put on the negation table whatever limits his authoritarian power in the interest of the Russian population. Besides Ukraine, EU or NATO are not primarily worried about freeing the Russian population from Putin’s authoritarian regime. But to free Ukraine from Russian invasion.
Debate Discussion: "The content of belief is propositional".
You're such a moron — creativesoul

The objection was based upon a conflation of belief and statements. I do not conflate belief and statements. The objection was based upon what you did, not I. What you did is irrelevant. — creativesoul

The problem is that you can not soundly prove your claims. You can not soundly prove that I'm conflating statements and beliefs, that I'm misrendering your claims, and that my arguments are irrelevant. At best you can insult me when you fail to brainwash me. And you failed on all grounds.
Additionally, the more you insult me or try to brainwash me (by repeating the same claims ad nauseam without even understanding the logic implications of what you yourself are claiming and related objections), the more you prove my point.

Look, if you are tired of debating with me, there is no need to get hysterical, just ignore my posts and my arguments.
Ukraine Crisis
Perhaps you could clarify. How does "the claim "There is a Neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine" needs to be proven." have any bearing on "relevance on a negotiation table". I'm not seeing the link — Isaac

One has to prove that neo-nazi problem exists, if it is relevant and to whom. Neo-nazi activists are present both in Russia and all western countries, not only in Ukraine. Is this a problem? Well it depends. If you claim that this is relevant for negotiation between Ukraine and Russia now, I doubt that for the reasons I pointed out (including the war crimes allegedly committed by Putin). The problem for Russia is not neo-nazi activities in Ukraine per se (if you also consider that the president and the prime minister of Ukraine are jews, there are the Ukrainian laws banning anti-semitism [1], and Ukranian Jewish community is voicing their disagreement with Putin's "denazification" claims ) but the far-right nationalists who are against Russian minorities. So focusing on neo-nazi movements has some cheap propaganda benefits for Russia which may play well with some part of the Russian population (mainly for historical reasons) but it doesn't necessarily play well on a negotiation table with Ukraine, or other involved third parties (like EU and NATO).

[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-passes-antisemitism-law/31473362.html

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