I doubt that Luxemburg bears a sufficient diplomatic weight on both sides, compared to the Saudis which might benefit from stepping in and:
- get credit for the recognition of the Palestianian State by Israel (which will benefit Israel diplomatically)
- get rid of the Iranian influence in Palestine (better once Netanyahu has completed his dirty job, unless it is too late)
- normalize relations with Israel (which will benefit Israel and the Saudis in terms of bilateral security and business agreements)
- get credit for contributing to rebuild Gaza (which could benefit Saudi projection in the Mediterranean Sea as a reward)

(And both the US and the Arab world may very much welcome it).

Yet, I’m not sure what we have to do with such information. — neomac

It's not a grievance: WW1 happened and the Ottoman Empire took part. It wasn't the only Empire to be cut into pieces, Austria-Hungary was also chopped and fell in bits too (Russia before that). — ssu

I was referring to the kind of grievances the Arabs/Palestinians were voicing against the British since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

And when it ended, did the Palestinians/Arabs pursue peace, stability and prosperity? — neomac

What peace and prosperity was there to pursue when Mandate Palestine ended? The British had been fighting the Zionist terrorists already and the Zionists and the Palestinians were already engaged in hostilities. The end was just the Brits pulling out and leaving the locals to fight, which then invited neighbors to join in. — ssu

You asked me “you really think that these countries wouldn't opt for peace, stability and prosperity in the region with good relations around to the present clusterfuck?”. So, I wondered: what evidence do I have to answer this question? Since at any time one can appeal to historical grievances to reject a peace-deal, was there any better time in which Arabs/Palestinians could show their good will to pursue peace and prosperity than at the end of the British mandate? Unfortunately, as Benny Morris claims (1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War) “The immediate trigger of the 1948 War was the November 1947 UN partition resolution. The Zionist movement, except for its fringes, accepted the proposal.”, not the Palestinians/Arabs.
And later, failed wars against Israel simply entrenched Israel in a defensive position and provided them with all the necessary security concerns averse to Hamas-style of resistance, while the Palestinians (certainly in Gaza) ended up relying more and more on Hamas-style of resistance (since there was no meaningful alternative to represent them).

And I’m certainly not underestimating or dodging the issue of American historical hegemonic ambitions: the very existence of Israel can be a way of containing regional powers to become more ambitious in a very strategic place for world balance, as much as an independent and military strong Ukraine (with which he US has no military alliance either) can support the containment of Russian imperial ambitions. — neomac

This is the strategic containment bullshit that just wrecks everything. At least Russia is one state and actually a real former empire, but what is then this Arab-Muslim entity to be confined? What just is wanted to be “contained”? — ssu

You can call it “bullshit” and dislike it all you want, that doesn’t make it less intelligible and real as far as I’m concerned. As I said Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia as regional powers CAN and DID project ideological, economic and/or military power outside their borders and create alliances that are competing if not expressly hostile to the West by controlling areas which are relevant for World balance (for commodities, commercial routes, migratory routs, etc.). There is absolutely nothing “theoretical” about it, if “theoretical” means something like hypothetical or speculative.
To my understanding the idea of the US wasn’t just to use the stick of military support and diplomatic pressure but also to offer opportunities for economic growth through globalization. That is true also for China, Russia, Iran which exploited this opportunity to consolidate their authoritarian regime and project power abroad in defiance of the US hegemony, instead of improving standards of life and increase freedoms for their people.
The comparison with the containment of Soviet Union should be taken just as an analogy. During the cold war the existence of two political and economic blocks made the containment strategy by the US more easy to be implemented. The globalization weakened the US and made its competitors stronger and defiant, even in the West (see Germany). So the US is now trying to catch up with this predicament but with evident difficulty also due to a national political crisis. The logic of containment still remains the default approach (at least for the bipartisan establishment, which resists the isolationist temptation), because the alternatives are withdrawal (i.e. giving up on the role of global hegemon) or direct engagement (i.e. dangerously overstretching). To compensate the US is kind of forced to turn down globalization (with protectionism against Europe and China, and break the link between Germany and Russia/China as they have turned into security/economic threats) on one side, and concede/solicit greater military engagement and/or discretion to its strategic allies (as long as national interests converge), like the Europeans and Israel.
Maybe with Trump things may change. Not sure to what extent, though (especially in the case of Israel).

If we are talking about civilian casualties, as far as I’ve understood, IDF can still play the card of proportionality of their military operation over collateral civilian casualties because they still can claim to follow the principle of distinction which Hamas doesn’t — neomac

Which principle distinction? Of Bibi's reference to Amalek? Well, if Hamas was OK with 1967 border some time ago, perhaps the principle is different from Bibi's principles...

Nope sorry, both Hamas and IDF have done what earlier were called warcrimes. But that's now something irrelevant, I guess. — ssu

Let’s not mix things up. This is the principle of distinction I was talking about: https://casebook.icrc.org/law/principle-distinction which IDF generally respects and Hamas generally doesn’t. The war between IDF and Hamas is asymmetric or non-conventional by Hamas’s choice, but this choice violates the principle of distinction, so Hamas can be more easily charged for Israeli civilian casualties, than Israel for Palestinian civilian casualties which is why I question your equivalence in principle (without excluding that IDF may be suspected or proven to be de facto much worse than Hamas in terms of unscrupulous targeting of Palestinian civilians).
My reasoning doesn’t depend on Netanyahu which is an ADDITIONAL complication. Even if the Israelis will manage to remove him at some point, I’m not sure how much of the damage he has inflicted on the Palestinians can/will be recovered by a peace deal on Israeli initiative with Hamas. Do you have any solid evidence that hints in this direction? I couldn’t find any (by comparison, Biden however critical of Trump’s foreign policies, he didn’t reintroduce JCPOA with Iran). And assuming that 85% of the Israelis would end Bibi’s political carrier after this war is over, would this 85% still be willing to reach a peace deal with Hamas after the massacre of October? I doubt it (https://time.com/6333781/israel-hamas-poll-palestine/). And arguments against the two state solution are stubbornly there as the arguments against one state solution from the Israeli perspective.
Maybe some foreign actors could broker peace for Israeli and Palestinians after Netanyahu, but who? Whatever one suggests there are reasons to doubt it would work assuming the current international predicament persists or worsens.

If all those countries would just opt for peace, stability and prosperity in the region with good relations around to the present clusterfuck, why did they end up in this clusterfuck in the first place? — neomac

One reason, which should be trendy, old white European men with moustaches:

Misters Sykes and Picot:
the-skyes-picot-agreement-was-concluded-in-london--1436469334493.jpg

Mr Balfour:
1025371-271125035.jpg?itok=4vDl7FtY

Or perhaps WW1 in general and it's aftermath, which basically started modern Zionism and the inherent instability of countries like Iraq etc. — ssu

Sure, trendy as all historical grievances are everywhere (while the contrition for such historical grievances seems particularly trendy ONLY in the West). Yet, I’m not sure what we have to do with such information.

Palestine has been a multi-ethnic land (partially populated by some nomadic Arab tribes in ancient times) under the domain of foreign powers practically since ever until the end of the British mandate. And when it ended, did the Palestinians/Arabs pursue peace, stability and prosperity? No they started a full scale civil war because they didn’t like how it ended, which was much better than what they got later, I guess. So we can’t easily discount their agency in what happened later either.

But if that’s the case, why do we keep stopping our explanatory investigation at old white European men with moustaches and don’t go further back to the Ottoman men with moustaches or the Islamic men with moustaches or Persian men with moustaches?
Or why do we not stop earlier at when Hamas decided to massacre Israelis on the 7th October?
Why the explanatory chain has to stop always where there are Europeans or Israelis making decisions?
And why do we call Misters Sykes and Picot Europeans and not just a British politician and a French politician?
If we believe in human agency and individual responsibility, it’s really hard to understand how the outcome of past political choices of certain political leaders should burden future generations around the world just because part of it could benefit from it and part of it wasn’t. Or why past political choices should be scrutinised through the lenses of future generations instead of the ancient generations, which were much more used to brutality and foreign domination.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no age of innocence in world history. And there is little benefit in pointing fingers at nasty games (like the British are accused of) when people around the world were historically exposed to cycles of foreign/local dominance and abuses for centuries under kingdoms and empires. On the other side the dominant influence of the West in the rest of the World was not enabled just by scheming and nasty political games out of greediness for personal wealth and power more than by technological and economic progress. So much so that, at some point, the rest of the World too benefited from the Western progress in medicine and agriculture which improved life conditions in the Rest too, and Western cultural progress (the notion of human rights and state nation) is what allows the Rest to retort the Western ideas against the West while nurturing their identitarian revanchism. Concerning the latter, to the extent such identitarian revanchism (like the Iranian Islamic revolution and ISIS) is incompatible with Western institutions (like democracy, human rights) it can potentially grew hostile and aggressive toward the West. So even if Westerners should feel concerned for the fate of the Jews and of the Muslim world, the point is that Jews integrated with and contributed to Western economic, political, financial and technological progress significantly more than the Muslims. And still do.

Indeed, why would Iran even care about the fate of Palestinians? — neomac

It is as interesting question like as why is US treating Israel so differently than any other of it's allies. (No wait, Israel isn't actually an ally of the US, meaning there is no actual defense treaty, hence Israel doesn't have to come to the aid of the US.) — ssu

The Jewish community and lobby in the US shape also the American national interest in the middle east region. While there is no Palestinian lobby in Iran worth the name, to begin with.
And I’m certainly not underestimating or dodging the issue of American historical hegemonic ambitions: the very existence of Israel can be a way of containing regional powers to become more ambitious in a very strategic place for world balance, as much as an independent and military strong Ukraine (with which he US has no military alliance either) can support the containment of Russian imperial ambitions. I’m just insisting that the Russian, Chinese and the Iranian governments do question the American hegemonic ambitions most likely out of THEIR OWN hegemonic ambitions and not out of identitarian (or even humanitarian) concerns about the World. So until the US pursues hegemonic ambitions in the world or in the middle east, Israel will likely get its support to counter Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia’s hegemonic ambitions.

Well, it maybe hard for Christians to understand that the Muslim community, the Ummah, means a lot for Muslims if Christendom is now days totally meaningless for us. That's the first reason. — ssu

Since the prophet Mohammad, the Ummah was built through blood: first as tribal and family feuds then later as empire building. And TODAY muslims as muslims kill other muslims which are not the right kind of muslim (Sunnis consider Shiites heretics). Iran supports also Armenia vs Azerbaijan even though Armenians are mainly Orthodox Christians while Azerbaijan is muslim. Kurds are Muslims but the Iranians do not give a shit about the Kurdish nation-state aspirations (nor the Turks nor the Saudis for that matter). It’s hard for Muslims too to understand that the Muslim community, the Ummah, means for Muslims. BTW Palestinians are fighting for a nation state not for the Muslim Ummah.

Secondly, not only is the cause of Palestine popular in the Arab street (remember Pan-Arabism etc), but also there are the Shiias in Lebanon, which formed and fought against Israel after it attacked and occupied Southern Lebanon. Not only are they defending Muslims, but also fellow Shiites. And since Iran is an revolutionary state that wants to promote it's Islamic revolution and islamic values like revolutionary states typically do (just like, well, the US), this is a perfect way for Iran to show it's the vanguard of the Ummah against the West and that all these Monarchies or Arab republics close to the West and US aren't doing anything about the genocide against Palestinians. — ssu

Sure, the fellow Shiites and the Islamic Ummah are a convenient narrative for the Iranian propaganda to spin in order to seduce the Arab people. Still the Iranian revolution ideology is not just revolutionary but fanatic and barbaric in nature wrt Western standards of life: see how the Iranian ayatollahs treat THEIR OWN Iranian people. Besides the populism of the Iranian Islamic revolution ideology is rather dangerous to Arab monarchies and military dictatorships.

Thirdly, when the US has made Iran part of the Axis of Evil and Americans talk of attacking Iran and how a threat it is to everybody, then it's far more better to have the conflict been played out somewhere else than in Iran. Far more better to have the fight somewhere else, like in Lebanon, Yemen or Iraq and Syria. — ssu

Sure, still Iran is part of the Axis of Evil not by chance, they defied the West as Putin is doing.

Trump's Abraham records was basically an attempt to bribe the countries in normalizing relations with Israel and simply to sideline the troublesome question of the Palestinians. — ssu

Well, choices can fix some problems to some extent not all problems at once and forever, so all choices can be said to sideline some other problems which are claimed to be more urgent . Besides States compete over material resources as much as over narratives and the political competition is such that the value of one move is not independent from how other competitors will move next. In other words, politics is not about taking time to solve the matrix of all possible outcomes and find the optimal path toward peace and prosperity for all, before acting, while the rest of the world is holding their breath. Nobody will give politicians the time and serenity to do any of that. But about more or less reliable heuristics to gain relative advantage vs competitors. In the hindsight, all can seem so stupid or evil, especially to nobodies who have never navigated the political and unscrupulous pressure to which state political leaders (especially of hegemonic countries) may very likely be exposed to before and after making their choices, i.e. a clusterfuck on its own. See what happened to the political and biological fate of the enlightened Rabin. (BTW the popularity of Netanyahu plummeted to 15% according to certain polls, so is there a chance angry Israelis will assassinate him too?)

I’m afraid the is no recipe to get out of this mess, which nobody fully understand or dominate. — neomac

Actually, you can understand it. And the more you understand it, the less hopeful you are of a negotiated peace deal. — ssu

If you really think you understand how to fix this mess, fix it. What are you waiting?
Literally nobody can say: “I understand how to fix this mess” and then fix it, as far as I can tell.
There have been negotiated peace deals and yet they failed. It’s not only hard to reach negotiated peace deals, it’s also hard to keep them over time. Like in Ukraine.
Hopefully by trial and errors they will find a way to stabilise the situation for the better of all involved parties.

I find it very hard to be optimistic about it, though. — neomac

I feel the same way. What would be the reason why a two state solution would be reached? Perhaps that Bibi really fucks up and we aren't going to be talking about tens of thousands of killed Palestinians, but perhaps a hundred thousand killed. Or two hundred thousand. When does Israel loose the "beacon of democracy" role in the eyes of Americans. And how after will gentile Americans and Europeans feels towards Jews in general when Israel is in the international arena like white South Africa?

Hamas has actually come out and admitted that things got a bit out of control in October 7th:

The group said that avoiding harming civilians “is a religious and moral commitment” by fighters of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. “If there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidentally and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces,” read the report.

It added that “maybe some faults happened” during the attack “due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the areas near Gaza.

(See Hamas says October 7 attack was a ‘necessary step’, admits to ‘some faults’

Well, I guess that statement of "Oops, partly sorry about that!" above puts Hamas in the same category of the "most moral" army in the Middle East, the IDF. — ssu

First, that’s a questionable categorization. If we are talking about civilian casualties, as far as I’ve understood, IDF can still play the card of proportionality of their military operation over collateral civilian casualties because they still can claim to follow the principle of distinction which Hamas doesn’t (I’ve discussed that already with another interlocutor). It doesn’t matter if they do it dishonestly or if some authoritative and influential tribunal or Human Rights ONG will condemn IDF for committing a genocide (which is a bit counter-intuitive since the Palestinian population has significantly grown since the Nakba and despite the continuous Israeli fight with Hamas) or severe war crimes against Palestinians. The point is that the massacre of October the 7th was directly and unequivocally targeting civilians as civilians in legal Israeli territories (for the UN), as far as I can tell. Besides it wasn’t a response to an evident escalatory provocation from Israel. Indeed, the timing betrays wider geopolitical objectives, given that the assault took years of preparation and it happened when Saudis and Israel were getting too close.
Second, as I argued elsewhere, politics is not all about propaganda. We shouldn’t discount how influential propaganda is in international politics, but we shouldn’t overestimate its importance either. Propaganda is but one political tool among others.

Maybe states can’t easily skip historical stages: Nordic countries evolved to nation-state status through all the bloody wars of the Middle Ages. — neomac

Actually the last war between the Nordic states happened between Sweden and Norway in 1814, which was the last war Sweden has fought (and actually was victorious). And just think what needed to happen in Europe for Europeans to want integrate and be so peaceful. We had to have WW1 and WW2 where millions of died.

So perhaps both sides have to have the Polish experience of WW2, a war where at least EVERY SIXTH POLISH DIED. After that kind of Holocaust/Nakba, I think the survivors won't in order care a fuck about who controls the Temple Mount and just where the border goes, but want peace. — ssu

As far as I’m concerned, the primary worry for us is not Palestinians or Jews getting their nation-states (neither are perceived as necessary to people other than them themselves) because we can’t write their history for them, it’s about keeping us as far as possible from WW3. And the dilemma for the US as global hegemonic power remains: how is it possible to deter rivals without escalating or risking an overstretch?

The "Logical problem of evil" can be enlightening in politics too:

P1. If an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient X exists, then evil does not.
P2. There is evil in the world.

C1. Therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient X does not exist.

Now if one replaces X with Europe, US, the West, the Rest, voting Western citizen, multipolar world, anti-capitalist system, political ideology, humanity, political lobby, proletarian class, political leader, geopolitical expert, anti-system journalist, military-industrial complex, etc. one can hopefully see how intellectually myopic and hypocritical the "THEY could if THEY wanted" argument used as a bludgeon by the populist propaganda can be.

In what follows, I'm indirectly commenting to your last post too.

You really think that these countries wouldn't opt for peace, stability and prosperity in the region with good relations around to the present clusterfuck? They just really want to fight or what? — ssu

So I don't understand this whole bullshit about somehow Israel doing anything else but giving a reason for various parties to have this war around. There are other problems, like the Kurds, but still, this is the conflict what really gets the place wild. — ssu

If all those countries would just opt for peace, stability and prosperity in the region with good relations around to the present clusterfuck, why did they end up in this clusterfuck in the first place?
Precisely because Turks, Iranians and Arabs do not care about the Kurds’s nation-state aspirations and violently repress them, blaming Israel for the fate of the Palestinians is very much likely convenient to them. Indeed, why would Iran even care about the fate of Palestinians? They are Sunni and Arab, while Iranians are neither Sunni nor Arab and precisely for these reasons Iranian are widely unsympathetic (to not say, “feel hatred”) toward Sunni Arabs, so why do they care about the Palestinians? At least Putin can blabber about the genocide of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, Iran can’t do something similar. So, why does Iran (a repressive country toward its own people and toward internal separatist movements on its own) cares about the Israeli repression of the Palestinians?
Israel and Saudi Arabia were trying to overcome historical conflicts and that might have favoured peace, stability and prosperity, but Hamas and Iranians (at least) messed it up because not convenient to them.
Authoritarian regimes are facilitated to spin a certain narrative to project onto external foes their internal failures, and invest resources in military buildup for power projection, also through proxies, more than Western democracies. Past and recent history offers all the pretexts they need, and nobody is free from blame.
I’m afraid the is no recipe to get out of this mess, which nobody fully understand or dominate. By trial and errors of all involved parties the situation will stabilise over generations, at some point, hopefully. It would be nice if one could start seeing this happening within one’s lifetime and for the better of all involved parties. I find it very hard to be optimistic about it, though.

The Middle East is something that the Nordic countries were in the Middle Ages, the South American countries in the 19th Century. So I don't understand what the benefit truly is to have the Middle East as this cauldron of violence. — ssu

Maybe states can’t easily skip historical stages: Nordic countries evolved to nation-state status through all the bloody wars of the Middle Ages. So nation-state formation in the Middle East has to go through bloody wars as well. Something similar happens with industrialisation and urbanization: e.g. China is going through economic stages that may resemble the ones the West lived in the XIX century.

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

since the Nazis are definitely there and pre-2022 already fighting a war against Russian speakers in the Donbas (which many Russian speakers in Russia feel some responsibility for) and their explicit objective is to destroy Russia — boethius

Can you provide your evidence of Ukrainian Nazis who “have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”?

Exactly how important in purely military terms, I don't know. The one thing that is certain is that it's mainly the Nazis that kept the war in the Donbas going and were killing so many civilians and once it was clear other sectors of Ukrainian society couldn't control them, a bigger war was essentially inevitable for this reason alone. — boethius

Can you provide your evidence for “it's mainly the Nazis that kept the war in the Donbas going and were killing so many civilians”?

To make the argument that Putin "duped" Russia into prosecuting the war you either need to accept Zelensky and Bibi do an equal, if not more, amount of duping their own populations — boethius

Why "if not less" instead? As far as I’m concerned, there are two plausible reasons why Putin's propaganda machine is more free to manipulate the truth at home than Zelensky and Bibi’s propaganda machines in their respective home countries:
- Ukrainians and Israelis can have more easily access to views critical of the regime from the inside and the outside, than Russians. Even during wartime.
- Ukrainians and Israelis are exposed to direct feedback from relatives and friends engaged on the front line more easily than Russians.

If you think Zelensky and Bibi are justified then their lies you won't think of as duping but just another aspect to the war.


If you don't think Putins' war effort is justified then you'll conclude the exact same kind of lies are “duping”. — boethius

As far as I’m concerned BOTH Russia and Ukraine may resort to spinning propaganda at convenience because that is another aspect to the war. Still there are different constraining factors which I can’t discount: in addition to the ones I mentioned earlier, there is the question of the propaganda addressing masses abroad, especially in the West because Ukraine depends totally on Western support for this war, Russia no. Now, given the democratic crisis in the West due to populism and anti-Americanism (promoted also by Russia), pro-Ukrainian propaganda is way more severely scrutinised than the Russian one. You and your sidekicks are the best example of this attitude in this thread. So I guess Ukraine would need to spin propaganda addressing Western masses more badly than Russia to gain Western support, and yet if it does, it may pay hard for that twice (when Russian deceptive propaganda against Ukraine succeeds and when Ukrainian deceptive propaganda fails), while Russia can play deceptively almost for free.

For me, a pre-condition to justified warfare is the likelihood of being able to win. You need really extreme conditions to justify fighting to the death or sacrificing a large number of citizens and still losing; conditions I simply do not see in the Russia-Ukraine war. — boethius

I don't think Ukraine can win on purely military terms, I don't think anyone is coming to their aid, and therefore I think they should sue for peace and use their leverage of remaining force application to negotiate as good a deal as they can. If they can, with enough Western money and weapons consistently provided over a long period of time, eventually "tire the Russians out" and achieve some gains that way, I don't think that would be at an acceptable cost. — boethius

Now, I do not think Ukraine's war on the Donbas was justified, so based on this I'd conclude Russia's war against Ukraine is therefore justified. — boethius

That’s a handy summary of your pro-Russian views. Not sure about its logic though.
So you conclude that Russia had sufficient reason to wage war against Ukraine from only these two premises:
- Russia was likely able to win against Ukraine.
- Ukraine was waging war against pro-Russian separatists in Donbas.
Is that right?

As a Canadian we had Quebec separatists as a big issue when I was growing up, at no point did I (or that many Canadians for that matter) believe going and killing Quebeckers would be a justified course of action if they separated, even if we non-Quebeckers largely believed it to be "illegal".

So, to say Ukraine was justified in attacking the Donbas and killing Donbas civilians I would need to accept it would be justified for English-Canadians to go kill French-Canadians if they tried to separate (regardless of what I thought of their provincial run elections or provincial politicians or whatever). And I simply don't see why I'd be justified in going and killing French-Canadians in pretty much any situation of separation or how it was done or "if it was legal" or whatever arguments maybe lying around.

Furthermore, if Quebec was still right next to France and we English-Canadians decided it was a good idea to go kill Quebeckers and force them back into our confederacy, then I wouldn't be surprised nor see much grounds to complain if France, with their far bigger military, decided to spank us back across the Outaouais. And why wouldn't French speakers in France defend French speaking populations in Canada if being shelled by Canadians running around with a bunch of Nazi symbolism all over the place?

You play with fire, you get burned.

Of note, Quebec is still in Canada today and we didn't even have to kill anybody. We did have to recognize they're their own nation and can have all sorts of language laws; so, again, I don't see why Russian speakers wouldn't be as pissed about any language repression as French speakers in Canada would be (we accepted all sorts of pro-French language laws and many still wanted to separate, that votes were really close). — boethius

Your thought experiment discounts the fact that Canada and France are sovereign democratic and pluralistic countries. Yet I find it plausible that countries with strong democratic and pluralistic institutions may have constraints that would make an escalation to civil conflict or international conflict with similar countries way more unlikely than countries where such constraints are missing, like in strong authoritarian regimes as the Russian and weak democracies as the Ukrainian. BTW, as far as I'm concerned, that's also linked to the most compelling reason for Westerners to support Ukraine: to protect Western institutions from the political, economic and military threats coming from authoritarian regimes like Putin's.

Israel is an unruly child of the US, poking their neighbours in the eye and stamping their feet. While the parent (the US) is trying to calm the situation and avoid a row between the parents. — Punshhh

I don’t find this image particularly enlightening. To me the power relation between the US and Israel isn’t best captured by the image of a wise father vs unwise child. Even though the history of Israel as a state is more recent than the US’s one, the cultural heritage and identity is much older in the Jewish community than in the American one. Besides even though the US is stronger economically, militarily and politically than Israel, much of the economic, military, technological, political and media power of the US comes from the Jewish community. Let’s not forget that the father of the American nuclear bomb was the jew Oppenheimer. And the Jewish lobby is among the strongest ethnic lobbies in the US.
Besides Israel bears a big weight on its shoulders given its geopolitical environment: being in a very strategic position between the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and in potential competition with 3 hegemonic powers Turkey (cradle of the Ottoman empire), Iran (cradle of Persian empire), Saudi Arabia (cradle of the Islamic empire).
On the other side the US is already in a tense situation coming from international challengers (Russia in Europe and China in the Pacific which may tempt also Israel) and national instabilities (Trump). And its political reputation is rather compromised: as far as genocides, war crimes and highly controversial geopolitical choices are concerned the US can’t really lecture Israel.
So Israel and the US may have competing as much as converging national interests to work out, and resources which may not compensate own or partner's vulnerabilities. The situation is rather messy.

Now we have a contradiction at the heart of the US policy. They want to avoid a war while at the same time thinking strategically how they could have war with Iran, take Iran out. — Punshhh

That’s somehow the point, deter without escalating. How politically feasible is that though?!

Of course, the war and the reasons for the war are a lot bigger than just these Nazi groups, it's just a super easy sell to the Russian population. Especially at the start of the war, "denazification" is a lot easier sell than preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, which is a fairly abstract menace to a normal person.

At the point of interest here, the negotiation the negotiator is talking about, Russia had already effectively defeated Azov brigade in Mariupol, delivering the "denazification" PR victory required to sell a peace to the Russian people: We went in, spanked those Nazis and now we can live in peace with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters (would have been the basic narrative had a peace been achieved). — boethius

So you agree that denazification was basically Putin’s propaganda to dupe the Russian masses and the pro-Russian “useful idiots” in the West. All right. Still it is false that “Russia had already effectively defeated Azov brigade in Mariupol” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol): the Istanbul Communique fell in March while the siege in Mariupol ended the 20 May.
Besides the denazification narrative continued long after the siege of Mariupol was over (https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220707-live-russia-s-war-in-ukraine-to-dominate-g20-talks-in-bali, https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3625636/russia-says-israel-supports-neo-nazis-row-over-ukraine, https://www.timesofisrael.com/moscow-says-ukraine-must-denazify-demilitarize-or-onslaught-will-go-on/).
Finally, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi movements express a way in which the Ukrainian society responds to the historical Russian threat in the Ukrainian territories, as much as Hamas expresses a way in which the Palestinian society responds to the historical Israeli threat in the Palestinian territories. So, the Ukrainian society can’t get easily rid of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi movements as much as the Palestinian society can’t get easily get rid of Hamas. That’s a vicious loop triggered by security and identitarian concerns. Westernisation of Ukraine through NATO and/or EU might have helped reduce the Ukrainian security and identitarian concerns to some extent, and so the political pressure from anti-Russian far right movements, also because the Ukrainian government was/is likely far less influenced by such movements than the government of Gaza by Hamas. The problem is that far right movements are on the rise also in the West, also thanks to Putin.

Understanding that the Nazis in Ukraine is an easy and powerful argument for Putin to sell the war to his own people is just pointing out an obvious fact that is required to understand the war (and be able to predict, or then understand in retrospect, why the Russian soldiers were unlikely to flee and the civilians unlikely to topple the government, in addition to simply the regular reason that's unlikely). — boethius

Such propaganda may have had and still have an appeal to part of the Russian population in supporting the war (especially, among the older generation). That’s plausible, but there are other factors that may have weighed in: the fact that there was no mass mobilisation, that ethnic minorities, convicted, and mercenaries were abundantly used in this war. An additional reason can be that in Russian propaganda the main villain progressively moved from the less threatening Ukrainian neo-nazis to the more threatening West/NATO “aggression” against Russia. So now it’s more about Russia revanchism (for the hawkish Russian elites) or survival from the Western aggression (from the more dovish populace), than saving Russian minorities in Ukraine from the Ukrainian neo-nazis.

Sure, and you got all wrong the issue of the security guarantees, because in that video Arakhamia (the same one I cited: "Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality") says Ukraine needs security guarantees (from the West) because they do not trust Russia, which is what I said while you claim that's not the reason because all politicians know that "states can break their promises", right?. There is also Oleksandr Chalyi that makes the same point I was making.
This still has nothing to do with your blabbering about talking of “security guarantees” as a piece of propaganda for the masses because “guarantees” doesn’t mean “ontological necessity“ that promises are kept, “security guarantees” have to do with what the Ukrainians and Russia demanded from the West/US to feel assured about their respective security concerns compared to past failed agreements. — neomac


Your reading comprehension is really disastrous.

It could only be done if there were guarantees of security.

But we could not sign something, withdraw, everyone would have exhaled there, and then they would have come more prepared.

They would have come, in fact, unpepared to such an opponent.

Therefore, we could only work when there is 100% certainty that this will not happen again.

And there is no such certainty.

Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all. And let’s just fight. — Interview with David Arakhamia, head of the Ukrainian delegation at the peace talks


Is what he says. He doesn't say "oh, yeah, we were going to do it, but just needed some security guarantees from the West". — boethius

Dude, that’s PRECISELY the gist of the Ukrainian proposal in the Istanbul communiqué: discussing in 10 points the neutrality of Ukraine in exchange for security guaranties (which include the US and the UK). No mention of the Nazis or the Russian speaking people. Also the status of the occupied territories wasn’t addressed in resolutive terms.
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/na-peregovorah-iz-rosiyeyu-ukrayinska-delegaciya-oficijno-pr-73933
https://faridaily.substack.com/p/ukraines-10-point-plan

He's quite clear that the reason was they would need 100% confidence, which is simply propaganda.

Obviously there's no 100% certainty of anything: winning the war, continued support from the West to even tread water, etc. — boethius

That’s again a manipulative interpretation.
First of all, you are conflating things: “100% certainty” is NOT used to explain the MEANING of “guarantee” in “security guarantees” but to explain why Ukraine needed “security guarantees” from other actors than Russia, namely because of trust issues. Which worsened after the discovery of what happened in Bucha. “In Istanbul we still didn’t understand the type of war that Russia was waging, its genocidal intent,” Podolyak explained. “Once we returned from Istanbul and the Russians left the Kyiv region, we saw the beastly crimes that they had committed there. And we understood that Russia will try to annihilate Ukraine no matter what.” (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-inside-story-of-russia-and-ukraines-peace-talks-nhbq0fn6k)
Secondly, “100% certainty” doesn’t need to be taken literally, because as I said “talking about ‘security guarantees’ is enough intelligible in a context of geopolitical competition, security dilemmas, and historical diplomatic failures WITHOUT ever needing to blabber about ‘guarantees’ as suggesting that promises among states are necessarily or certainly kept to dupe the masses”. PRECISELY because “there's no 100% certainty of anything” not even of NATO art.5, AND YET states like Finland feel safer by joining NATO instead of remaining out of it under the threat of Russian imperialism, that one can well understand why Ukraine is looking for security guarantees from the West analogous to the NATO ones, even if the degree of confidence would be less than 100% certainty (it should just be sufficiently above past previous failed agreements depending on the design of the agreements, that’s all).
Third, the importance of Western security guarantees rather explicit if one interprets Arakhamia’s comment also in the wider context of other claims by Arakhamia (https://korrespondent-net.translate.goog/ukraine/4462825-arakhamyia-ukrayna-khochet-sdelat-sobstvennoe-nato?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp) and by the head of the legal team in the Ukrainian negotiators O. Chalyi (https://dam.gcsp.ch/files/misc/pb-8-chalyi?_gl=1*capwht*_ga*MTYwNjM3NzE1MS4xNjkzNDg3ODk5*_ga_Z66DSTVXTJ*MTY5NDEwMTgxNC40LjEuMTY5NDEwMTkxNy4yNi4wLjA.).


BTW, just for the sake of your manipulative argument which I reject for the above reasons, I’m not even sure what propaganda effect can ever achieve the usage of the expression “100% certainty” in an interview of Nov 2023 over the Ukrainian masses witnessing a failed negotiation back in March 2022.

He's also quite clear that Boris Johnson tells them to not sign anything and "let's just fight", not that he'd really, really like to arrange a Western security guarantee to increase the confidence the deal would last ... but, shucks, he just can't do that for various reasons. — boethius

He’s also quite clear that they couldn’t sign anything even though the Russians were pressing them, because they need to change the constitution and a referendum. And besides they need security guarantees because they didn’t trust Russia. LATER:
- there was ALSO Boris Johnson who advised Zelensky on the premise that the US/UK will not sign security guarantees ALONG WITH PUTIN and that Putin should not be trusted. Perfectly legitimate move if that was satisfying Western strategic interests, and Zelensky as a leader of a sovereign state was free to decide according to the Ukrainian strategic interests. And he realised that without Western security guaranties the Istanbul communiqué was pointless PRECISELY because the gist of the Ukrainian proposal in the Istanbul communiqué: neutrality in exchange for security guaranties (which include the US and the UK).
- there was also the discovery of Bucha.

That doesn’t exclude the possibility that BOTH Boris and Zelensky made miscalculations at that time (for example about the strength of Russia wrt the Ukrainian resistance plus Western support). But I’m not sure if such miscalculations are enough to support the claim that Ukraine had better to sign an agreement with Russia alone. Besides (geo)political reasons may very much trump the military ones for the good or for the bad. So the miscalculations I would focus on are political ones.

Obviously when Ukraine rejected the peace deal they imagined things would be better now than they currently are. Maybe they believed the Russian troops really would mutiny and flee, or ATGM's were sufficient to win the war, or that they'd have a numbers advantage. — boethius

Ukraine didn’t have time to reject the peace deal, Putin did it first with the claim that talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end" 3 days after Boris Johnson met Zelensky. Indeed, after that, Zelensky was still proposing peace deals to Abramovich (who was believed to be directly in contact with Putin).

Obviously they did not foresee being in the current situation, therefore seems a mistake to have rejected the peace deal on offer, therefore saying "100% confidence" was lacking sounds a lot better than saying they thought they would have won by now, but turn out to be wrong about that. — boethius

This is beside the point I was making which is that the expression “security guarantees” makes intelligible sense even without propagandistic intentions.
Anyways, I can’t exclude that there was a propagandistic intent in Arakhamia’s interview concerning responsibilities and miscalculations, as you suggest. Not sure however whether the hyperbolic expression “100% certainty” is what best reveals Arakhamia’s possible manipulative intent. Indeed, also for ordinary Ukrainians who perceive Russia as a threat is pretty much clear that with proper security guarantees like NATO they would hedge better against the Russian threat (see the NATO referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Ukraine and the polls over NATO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations#Public_opinion_in_Ukraine). So also the ordinary Ukrainian masses may very much have the cultural tools to understand that “100% certainty” can be just hyperbolic in that context.
Besides I think the more plausible propagandistic intent is THE OPPOSITE of what you are suggesting: namely, the intent may be not to HIDE responsibilities and miscalculations, BUT TO “SOFTLY” HINT AT THEM in order to put the blame on Zelensky (he was a committed dude, but made miscalculations; Russia isn’t that bad either, Putin was just happy with neutrality after all; Westerners aren’t that committed allies either; Ukrainian negotiators couldn’t do much since they didn’t have the power or the authority to sign anything, but we informed Zelensky we were so close to a peace deal, etc.) and his reliance on the Western support. Indeed, we have hints that over time and especially after the so-called “failed offensive” internal conflicts within Zelensky’s government and around it Ukrainian vip’s voices started to emerge. So I find more plausible to read the most recent comments of Chalyi and Arakhamia, Arestovych, Klitschko, and Zaloujny as a way of distance themselves from Zelensky. In other words, Zelensky (& the West too, if Zelensky’s not enough) has to be blamed for whatever went wrong, the West needs to be pressed to get more support, or the anti-Russian narrative needs to be softened for future negotiations in a post-Zelensky era.

Was Putin also ready to hold hands with Zelenskyi and sing Kumbayah? :snicker:

Again, a bit crazy Putinist apologetics from you, but that's you... — ssu

Hum... you are commenting my quote but "you" refers to Boethius, I guess.

But to take your very next sentence under consideration:

OK if you wanna put it in these terms, let’s test your reading comprehension now: can you literally quote a source where Ukrainian politicians or diplomats claim that “peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because ‘the security guarantees’ couldn't actually be ‘guaranteed’”? — neomac


We literally just went over this:

A few points relevant to our current discussion seem to be clarified about the negotiations by someone who was actually there.

So not only did we know a lot about these negotiations and the Russia offer before, now we know even more!!

Russia's only important interest was neutrality (according to the chief negotiator for Ukraine talking to a Ukrainians journalist), all the other points were "cosmetic, political seasoning" in his words. — boethius

Yes denazification and Russian-speaking population, and blah blah blah from Putin were cosmetic, political seasoning. But such Russian propaganda arguments to dupe the masses were the ones you cared so much to regurgitate in this thread. Just neutrality was fine for Putin to have peace, go figure.

He then explains the reasons for rejecting the Russian offer was security guarantees (something we've discussed at length). — boethius — boethius

Sure, and you got all wrong the issue of the security guarantees, because in that video Arakhamia (the same one I cited: "Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality") says Ukraine needs security guarantees (from the West) because they do not trust Russia, which is what I said while you claim that's not the reason because all politicians know that "states can break their promises", right?. There is also Oleksandr Chalyi that makes the same point I was making.
This still has nothing to do with your blabbering about talking of “security guarantees” as a piece of propaganda for the masses because “guarantees” doesn’t mean “ontological necessity“ that promises are kept, “security guarantees” have to do with what the Ukrainians and Russia demanded from the West/US to feel assured about their respective security concerns compared to past failed agreements.

I totally get it, the policies of America are usually hidden behind a smoke screen of plausible deniability and key actors don't usually just come out and tell us what's up. — boethius

What’s that now?! Dude, focus, read and answer my questions, rambling stuff as if you are talking with your imaginary friend is getting boring. I’m not your therapist. And I have no pity for you.

First, I do not trust your telepathic powers to read into other people’s mind, so when you claim “ that Russian ‘can't be trusted anyways’, is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe”, can you provide evidence about Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually claiming that Putin can be trusted anyways? — neomac


Your reading comprehension continues to degrade and I will only fix this first error. — boethius

Sure, but I’m more interested in ALL other alleged errors, though.

What I stated was:

They obviously don't.

American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises.

Ukrainian politicians as well. The story that one reason the peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because the "security guarantees" couldn't actually be "guaranteed", that Russian "can't be trusted anyways", is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe.

It is a piece of propaganda to appease the masses, and it works well on people such as yourself. — boethius


What I am stating is that Ukrainian politicians are aware, like the US and Russian politicians, that states can break their promises.

How do you go from my literally claiming "American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises." followed by "Ukrainian politicians as well." to concluding I am claiming that Russia can therefore be trusted? — boethius

OK if you wanna put it in these terms, let’s test your reading comprehension now: can you literally quote a source where Ukrainian politicians or diplomats claim that “peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because ‘the security guarantees’ couldn't actually be ‘guaranteed’”?
Either you are playing dumb or you lost focus. I’ll remind you that I’m targeting your argument that “guarantee” in “security “guarantees” is just ornamental and meant to dupe the masses because "American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises”. So your argument hinges on the premise that Ukrainian politicians and diplomats believe that “the security guarantees” couldn't actually be “guaranteed”. I’m claiming that the claim your argument hinges on is a manipulated claim that doesn’t show the actual meaning of “security guarantees“ for Ukrainian politicians and diplomats and Russia TOO, for that matter. EVEN PUTIN didn’t have any trouble to use the expression “security guarantees” FROM THE WEST when addressing his concerns to Ukraine and the West. “Guarantees” as ontological necessity of keeping promises plays absolutely NO role in Putin and Zelensky understanding of what they are demanding from the West/US. They want security agreements such that BY DESIGN they can feel MORE hedged against risks of defection from guarantors THAN it was the case in past failed agreements (like the Budapest memorandum, Minsk I and II). The problem is not to dupe the masses, the problem is really to see how Ukraine and Russia can find security agreements FOR THEMSELVES WITH the West/US in a more reliable way than in the past. The problem is not that “the security guarantees” couldn't actually be “guaranteed”, but that for Ukraine that SECURITY GUARANTEES SHOULD NOT BE GUARANTEED BY RUSSIA ALONE. And for Russia, that SECURITY GUARANTEES FOR UKRAINE SHOULD NOT BE GUARANTEED BY THE WEST ALONE.

1. If they did a proper analysis and concluded continuing the war was the best thing to do for Ukraine, obviously that analysis was wrong. If they were betting they could raise a 1 million man army, get NATO weapons and training, and then just spank the Russians across the Azov sea, in a short amount of time limiting the destruction to Ukraine, they were obviously wrong.

2. If they didn't bother to sit down and do a proper analysis (for example actually war-game out with Boris Johnson what he was suggesting, how it would actually work in practice) but rather just saw Dollars! Dollars! Dollars!!! So many free dollars raining down from the US and EU treasuries they'd be literally barfing with dollars, then maybe they just didn't really give a shit about their intuition that they were unlikely to beat the Russians and they'd be sending a lot of Ukrainians to die so that themselves and their friends could pocket a pretty penny. — boethius

So Ukrainians are either dumb or corrupted. No need to talk about their security concerns (as pro-Russian propaganda does with Russian security concerns, right?). Nice manipulative framing.

For example, if you're robbing me and pointing a gun at me and offer me the deal "just give me your wallet and you can go" the reason for me to accept is not because I trust you, I honestly don't trust you as hard that maybe before you to believe, but because you're pointing a gun at me and I view the odds of your interest (you want the wallet and don't want to kill anyone) and pressure (the state will hunt you more vigorously if you murder me) outweighs my ability to prevail with fisticuffs in a gun fight. — boethius

Another manipulative example. Here is another less convenient example (but still kind to you): if I’m pointing a gun at you and offer you a deal "just let me and my friends gang-rape your ass and take a video to post on TikTok and then you can go”, what will you do honourable man? What will Russians do? What will Ukrainians do? And Chinese? And Nigerians? And Iranians? And Arabs? And Mexicans? And Germans? And Jews? And Palestinians? And Afghans?
Again, I’m fine with your examples as long as you are not trying to frame things in such a way that ONLY YOUR way of assessing risks and costs is the acceptable/accepted one. You can’t take yourself as representative of the entire humanity, as far as I’m concerned.

the ethnic cleansing is being carried out and endorsed by Western forces who are bound by human rights protocols and live by, or so they proclaim the morality of free and fair societies — Punshhh

That’s a problem indeed. But this problem may also depend on some implicit assumptions that mislead our understanding of the problem itself. For example: what makes us think that there is a practical contradiction (i.e. what one claims to do or be committed to do does not correspond to what one is actually doing) between state X sponsoring and proclaiming commitment to human rights, free and fair society, and military/economically/diplomatically support another state Y which is widely perceived of pursuing ethnic cleansing and committing war crimes, even inside state X and state Y? There would be a practical contradiction , for example if we assume that “sponsoring and proclaiming commitment to human rights, free and fair society” broadly logically implies an unconditional commitment wrt any other population of any other state in all circumstances. Indeed, if one state acted in a way that does not correspond to “an unconditional commitment wrt any other population of any other state in all circumstances” then one can logically infer that it would practically contradict also the engagement expressed by “sponsoring and proclaiming commitment to human rights, free and fair society”.
However I find this assumption rather implausible for historical and geopolitical reasons, and even paradoxical if this claim is meant to imply that sovereign states should sacrifice their right to self-defence for humanitarian reasons.
Concerning historical reasons, the violent nature of nation-state formation practically in the entire world history should discourage optimism over pacific conflict resolutions over nation-state formations.
Concerning the geopolitical reasons, the international order (including the international agreements and institutions) is grounded on sovereign states’ consensus and power relations. The problem is that political imperative for sovereign nation-states is ideally to pursue their national interest even at the expense of other foreign people and sovereign states, even more so if they feel threatened by people perceived as hostile and which are not even recognized as part of a sovereign state. So I would find much more reasonable to take commitments for humanitarian reasons as very much conditional on national interests imperatives and power relations, which doesn’t exclude margins of cooperation if national interests converge enough. That said, I can also understand that it may be more convenient to present such commitments in the best light possible for “physiological” soft-power or propaganda needs. Yet this choice has reputational risks/costs attached to it, which sovereign states may seriously need to take into account (but struggle/fail to do it successfully, of course).

To me that’s just a straw man argument: first, you didn’t provide evidence that relevant Ukrainian, Russian, American politicians take “ ‘guaranteed’ as some sort of ontological status” whereby promises are necessarily kept as a reason to enter or not enter into contracts. — neomac


They obviously don't.

American and Russian politicians are quite aware states can break their promises.

Ukrainian politicians as well. The story that one reason the peace agreement offered by Russia was not acceptable because the "security guarantees" couldn't actually be "guaranteed", that Russian "can't be trusted anyways", is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe. — boethius

First, I do not trust your telepathic powers to read into other people’s mind, so when you claim “ that Russian ‘can't be trusted anyways’, is not something the Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually believe”, can you provide evidence about Ukrainian politicians and diplomats actually claiming that Putin can be trusted anyways? Because I have evidence of Ukrainian politicians and diplomats like Zelensky, Kuleba and Arakhamia making claims supporting the idea that Russia alone can not be trusted in negotiations and, given previous failed agreements, that doesn't sound implausible at all.
Second, your reasoning looks grounded on a self-induced conceptual confusion. That Russians can not be trusted can simply mean that the risks of Russian defection wrt agreements and Russian deceitful dispositions wrt declared intentions have historically proven to be high and costly enough for the Ukrainians, so that security guarantees for Ukraine must hedge against these risks by design and by contrast to previous agreements and security assurances. In other words, “guarantee” can still be understood in terms of perceived probability, not of ontological necessity.
BTW “ontological necessity” is abstract philosophical jargon so of little use for propaganda to dupe masses, one might wish to replace it with “certainty” or “beyond any reasonable doubt” instead. But again, there is absolutely no need to understand “guarantee” as “certainty” or “beyond any reasonable doubt” either, also because the negotiations took place in a context of mistrust due to past agreement failures and rivalry, which later embittered even further.

It is a piece of propaganda to appease the masses, and it works well on people such as yourself. — boethius

Talking about propaganda doesn’t work against me for reasons I repeatedly explained: first, we seem to have a significantly different understanding of the purpose or relevance of propaganda. Second, I can even more easily retort the accusation against you as spinning pro-Russian propaganda to discredit the West. Indeed, you didn’t provide arguments that Russia state propaganda machine and the Russian troll army wouldn’t conceive and spread to dupe the masses. In other words, your getting all frenzy and verbose over deconstructing ONLY Western propaganda (even if we pretend it’s plausible) is at best just expression of your pro-Russian bias, at worst ALSO of intellectual misery due to your populist bias. And I very much suspect it’s the latter.
In any case, I’m less interested in what politicians may say to the masses and more interested in what political decision makers may say to one another, especially behind doors. And the notion of “security guarantees” for Russia was requested by Putin himself to the West not to appease masses but to appease himself since he takes NATO and Ukraine inside NATO to be a security threat to Russia (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-demands-security-guarantees-but-what-putin-really-wants-is-ukraine/), if we want to take Putin seriously and not as someone who says things just to dupe the masses over his actual predatory hegemonic ambitions, right? In any case talking about “security guarantees” is enough intelligible in a context of geopolitical competition, security dilemmas, and historical diplomatic failures WITHOUT ever needing to blabber about “guarantees” as suggesting that promises among states are necessarily or certainly kept to dupe the masses.

Besides you even contradict yourself because after insisting that “guaranteed” is ornamental because it doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept if they are "guaranteed" and this would hold for contracts between states and work contracts between individuals, later you deny that the term “guaranteed” is ornamental “between parties subordinate to state power” even though that still doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept. — neomac


You need to really work on your reading comprehension.

The word "guarantee" appearing in a contract subordinate to state power is still ornamental. It simply embellishes the promise as an ornament to said promise, and if you embellish a promise then a judge will take that into account in determining liability.

It is not substantive though because you already promised whatever it is; adding that you guarantee it is simply promising twice, leading to even more actions by the promised party that are reasonable to take assuming you promise (and therefore more damaging if you don't fulfill your "super duper promise").

The issues of substance in such a dispute are "what was promised?", "was the promised fulfilled or not", "if the promise wasn't fulfilled, what are the damages that caused?".

None of the substantive issues relate to a guarantee (because guarantees do not change the ontological status of anything of substance; whatever is actually guaranteed, say "the laws of physics" obviously there would never be a court case where you promise the laws of physics will hold and that doesn't happen".

Where the word "guarantee" becomes relevant is once the substantive issues are settled and the promise has indeed been made but has not been fulfilled and indeed it caused much strife and consternation and rescheduling (aka. damages), then the fact that ornaments were added to the substantive meaning of the promise to embellish said promise will come to bear on the extent of liability or punishment for said damages; as a judge can easily say that when you flex your promises by guaranteeing them, and then don't deliver, I pity the fool!

However, between states, precisely because everyone knows it was an ornament, there isn't really any difference between calling something "security guarantees" or then "security promises"; the diplomatic cost will be the same whatever you call it. — boethius

Some more blah blah blah that doesn’t address the points I’m making AT ALL. To my understanding the SUBSTANTIVE and NON-ORNAMENTAL part is, as I repeatedly said, that all three parties, Ukraine, Russia and the West intend “security guarantees” to be by design something different wrt past failed agreements in terms hedging against risks of Russian aggression or defection from guarantors. So our understanding of “guarantee” doesn’t need AT ALL to go through your rhetoric quibbling over the ontological status of promises to deconstruct and discredit Western propaganda in favour of pro-Russian propaganda. It’s the historical and geopolitical context of past negotiations between Ukraine, Russia and the West that can give enough intelligible meaning to the word “guarantees” as concerned decision makers understand them and talk about them between them, even behind doors. Such guarantees likely have to establish as clearly and concretely as possible (namely, to a certain degree of acceptability for relevant decision makers) things like if there are going to be guarantors’ boots on the grounds, guarantors military aid and/or support to the Ukrainian military industry or army, the entity of such support, under what operational and legal conditions, and what preventive measures, will be taken to contain possible future Russian aggressions etc., in CONTRAST to past failed agreements. These concerns are intelligible and strategically plausible under certain geopolitical and historical assumptions, no matter whatever else the Western propaganda to dupe the masses claims.

I would question all your four points — neomac


You can question all the points.

My explanation is to expound on the correct analytical framework in which to evaluate a proposed peace settlement. If "security guarantees" (as in promises) can never be "actually guaranteed" (as in an ontological status of necessity), then that begs the question of upon what basis would a peace agreement be reasonable to accept.

The 4 points I list are the main issues of consideration to evaluate sufficient reason to accept a peace deal.

Of course, regardless of the evaluations of likelihood of the 4 points, one can always propose a peace deal that is unacceptable. For example, "You must rape every baby as a condition for peace" is arguably, and I would both argue and agree, worth fighting to the death to avoid accepting.

Similarly, one can always propose values in which any given peace offer is unacceptable.

Rather, a better way to think of it is that evaluating the 4 points expands the area of acceptable peace terms.

If one believes all 4 points are very unlikely, then one should be willing to make equally little concessions for peace.

If one believes all 4 points are very likely, then, likewise, one should be willing to make equally graet many concessions for peace.

Obviously, to do it properly you'd need some matrixes representing all possible outcomes and their respective likelihoods and the changes of those likelihoods under all possible peace terms, and so forth until everything we could imagine ever happening is nicely represented in some way we that is almost, but not entirely, meaningless, and then calculate some eigenvalues and eigenvectors and then dabble in multi-variable integration over abstract higher dimensional spaces, and then before you know it bobs you're uncle: QED.

It would all be very mystifying and edify absolutely no-one, I'm sure you'd love it. — boethius

Dude, I’ll repeat once more, I’m an anonymous nobody, and never claimed to teach anything to anybody (differently from you) nor to edify anybody with my posts. I’m discussing these things to my personal intellectual entertainment without any concern for anybody else’s edification. I do not give a shit about any self-entitled anonymous nobody’s opinions about me. I don’t take it personally. So the only way you can score points with me is by trying harder to focus on what I’m questioning and provide compelling evidences and arguments in support of your claims against mine. That’s the only game I’m interested in playing here.
Concerning your 4 points “to evaluate sufficient reason to accept a peace deal”, even if we assume they are a plausible way of framing the issue from the Ukrainian perspective, still likelihood and costs must be weighed by Ukrainian decision-makers, not me. At best, I can try to speculate or comment other peoples’ speculations about what such decision makers’ assessing process may be (given the available evidences plus certain geopolitical and historical assumptions), and if I find it rationally compelling enough (yet under the assumption that I’m in NO better position to assess what would be reasonable for Ukrainian decision-makers to do). That’s all as far as I’m concerned.

That’s irrelevant wrt the point I was making. The argument I was making is that people Tzeench cites mention that Zelensky’s attitude toward negotiations changed after Bucha, so claiming that the peace deal was all but finished but the West blocked it, is twice manipulative: — neomac


Literally no one is claiming that Ukraine was "about" to sign the peace deal and then Bucha happened and that changed Zelensky's mind. Even the Western media recounts that the peace deal was rejected on advice from the West, and in particular Boris Johnson. Furthermore, the Ukrainian lead negotiator literally went on national television and explained what the Russians wanted and the reason they rejected the deal, which was not Bucha, which we've already discuss. — boethius

You really need to work on your reading comprehension. I didn’t write anywhere nor believe that Bucha was THE reason why Zelensky refused to pursue negotiations. I simply questioned what Tzeench claimed: “the peace deal was all but finished when Boris Johnson flew in to announce Ukraine would not be signing any deals with the Russians” or “the negotiations were blocked by the West”. I find such claims manipulative (especially wrt what else all people he cites claim) and instrumental to spin pro-Russian propaganda with a pretence of being unbiased and impartial. So the problem is not Boris, but what the fuck “all but finished” and “the negotiations were blocked by the West” are supposed to mean, imply, presuppose, or suggest.
And the reasons why I find such claims questionable are the following: first, there is the problem of the security guarantees from the West (but I think also the status of Crimea could have been a reason for concern in the exchange with Boris, and Arestovych gives hints on the issue of Crimea too, among other things which Tzeench overlooks). One can’t reasonably give for finalised an agreement that concerns third parties without third parties’ consensus. Most certainly so if there are such competing interests among relevant parties that even past agreements repeatedly failed. Chalyi too talks extensively about the importance of Western security guarantees for the negotiation from the Ukrainian perspective and the problems to get them.
The second reason why I find Tzeench’s claims manipulative is that the people Tzeench cited (Bennet and Arestovych which were also involved in the negotiations) mention Bucha as having or arguably having a profound impact on Zelensky’s attitude toward the negotiation. Notice though that I do not take this to mean that Zelensky immediately perceived Bucha massacre as a sufficient reason to refuse negotiations (I’m not the one assuming that Zelensky’s choice was impulsive or whimsically indifferent to the long-term national interest of Ukraine!), still Bucha may have “reinforced the perception of the genocidal nature of Russia’s aggression” and “introduced additional political costs to Zelensky’s choice of pursuing over-conciliatory negotiations with Russia” which Zelensky couldn’t ignore either (“In late March, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would consider accepting neutrality as part of a settlement with Russia, but it would need third-party guarantees and approval in a referendum. However, that idea fell by the wayside as Ukrainian government and public attitudes hardened following the discovery of Russian atrocities in liberated towns such as Bucha and Irpin” https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/FP-20231213-ukraine-nato-pifer.pdf), ESPECIALLY if there were no sufficient security guarantees from the right guarantors. So Zelensky who was talking about Russian genocidal war crimes even before the discovery of Bucha massacre (https://www.timesofisrael.com/proof-of-genocide-zelensky-rages-at-russia-for-bombing-ukraine-maternity-hospital/) may have felt even more pressed to address the Russian genocidal crimes after the discovery of Bucha massacres in negotiations with Russia contrary to the text of the Istanbul Communiqué. And indeed at the next round Zelensky revised the conditions of the Istanbul Communique in less conciliatory terms toward Russia:
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed in November 2022 a 10-point peace plan, consisting of:
1. Safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
2. Protecting food distribution
3. Restoration of Ukraine's energy infrastructure
4. Release of prisoners and return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia
5. Restoration of Ukrainian borders prior to the 2014 annexation of Crimea
6. Full withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukraine
7. Prosecution of war crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
8. Remediation of ecological damage caused by the Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam
9. Guarantees against future aggression
10. A multilateral peace conference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
Besides, the popularity of Zelensky among Ukrainians didn’t fall after negotiations were suspended, so Zelensky’s negotiation approach was approved.
And there is nothing surprising if Bucha plaid a role in Zelensky’s reluctance to pursue negotiations according to the Instanbul Communiqué AT ALL, if one sees how Israelis (the military strong) and Palestinians (the military weaker) react to wide and wild massacres over their civilians. Their first reaction is not: “All right brothers and sisters, let’s take a deep breath and then immediately negotiate a conciliatory peace-deal that would make brother Boethious and brother Tzeench happy, because no amount of killed, raped, decapitated of our own brother civilians and brother children should prevent us from making brother Boethious and brother Tzeench unhappy”. But more like: “Let’s smack the shit out of these genocidal motherfuckers! BTW… who the fuck are these two trolls?!”. That should be common sense, right?
So my understanding is consistent with what people Tzeench cited (Bennett, Chalyi, Arestovych), INCLUDING what Tzeench purposefully misses to mention to manipulatively support the claim that the peace deal was all but finished (and, maybe, the idea that the West is exploitatively dictating to Zelensky what to do and Zelensky executes as a coward, gullible, corrupt, servile lapdog of Western interests?… Just a wild speculation, of course). My understanding is also consistent with later Zelensky’s attitude toward the negotiation with Russia and Zelensky’s popularity trend. So I’m fine with my understanding so far.
And notice that the first to publicly declare that negotiations ”had turned into a dead end” 3 days after Boris visit was Putin not Zelensky! So I find it plausible that by timely and publicly declaring the negotiation as “turned into a dead end”, Putin was pressing Zelensky to either publicly reconfirm his willingness to pursue negotiations strictly according to the Istanbul communiqué or publicly renege it (and Zelensky did neither). Putin’s move was a convenient propaganda move by Putin to present Zelensky either as “a coward, gullible, corrupt, servile lapdog of Western interests” or as a honourable man which resisted Western illegitimate interference (to mess with Ukraine-West strategic alliance). Besides Putin could exploit such propaganda move to dupe the masses (and overlook the problem of Western security guarantees and Bucha massacre) for free, because Putin can count on the fact that Western “useful idiots” will never take Putin accountable for his own propaganda moves, ONLY the West.

Concerning the pro-Russian narrative over the Istanbul communiqué that I keep hearing in this thread, and which I find manipulative for reasons I already explained, let me see if I can even understand its premises:
- If Putin was so organsmic about the Istanbul communiqué (it was certainly conciliatory on the Ukrainian part, wasn’t it?) and the peace deal was “all but finished” why didn’t they call each other and rush into finalising the agreement in person? Two anonymous nobodies like Tzeench and Boethious PERFECTLY KNOW BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT that Zelensky OBVIOUSLY is a Western gullible/corrupt puppet SINCE EVER, how could Putin possibly not know that? Was he duped by the Western propaganda too? Is Putin, an ex-KGB spy and sovereign of the Russian troll factories, more easy to be duped by Western propaganda than two random anonymous nobodies on the internet?
- On the other side, if Putin PERFECTLY KNEW THAT BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT, then why was he so orgasmic about the Istanbul communiqué? Why the optimism? After all the Western puppeteers could easily sabotage it since Zelensky is KNOWN TO BE THEIR gullible/corrupt puppet SINCE EVER, couldn’t they? Western puppeteers hate Russia and want to exploit Ukraine as cannon fodder to destroy Russia, besides the Great Satan is treacherous as proven so many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many times, right? The Great Satan is blood thirsty because of the Military-Industrial complex, neoliberal blob, and remember Vietnam-Yugoslavia-Iraq-Afghanistan-Syria-etc? So why the orgasmic optimism of an ex-KGB spy and sovereign of the Russian troll factories concerning a slave of a treacherous and blood-thirsty Great Satan exactly?!
- But then if there was no reason for Putin to be orgasmic and optimistic AT ALL, and even less to be slow at closing the agreement, why the hell did Putin wait for Zelensky’s puppeteers to sabotage the deal exactly? Why not just profit from this opportunity to close the deal as speedy Gonzales fast as possible ONLY WITH ZELENSKY? It would have been also a formidable propaganda weapon against the Western puppeteers from the Russian perspective BESIDE obtaining what he obtained from the Instanbul Communiqué! Because either Westerners accepted the deal as fait accompli, so Russia could proclaim “Russia and Ukraine DID the right thing”! Or Westerners would have vocally protested over a FINALIZED agreement among SOVEREIGN STATE leaders which would have reinforced anti-Western narrative. And even if Westerns, later on, tried YET ANOTHER coup against Zelensky or political kill him with all sorts of fabricated scandals and bad press, this could have still plaid in favour of Putin’s anti-Western narrative while giving himself time to prepare better for the next political/military move, if needed. So, why not just profit from this opportunity and close the deal ONLY WITH ZELENSKY as fast as possible?
- BTW if Zelensky is so corrupt & gullible when he deals with the West, does that mean that Zelensky may still be corrupt & gullible when he deals with Russia as well? Or Zelensky is corrupt & gullible only when he accepts Western conditions and then he immediately turns into a fucking genius and man of honour when he accepts Russian conditions?

no one mentions Bucha much in any narrative — boethius

That’s false. Beside what Bennett and Arestovych (implicated in the negotiations with Russia) say about Zelensky’s reaction to Bucha, and you and your side kick conveniently overlook, here some more “narratives” mentioning Bucha and its possible impact on the negotiations:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/04/us-music-awards-welcome-ukrainian-president-a77202
https://english.nv.ua/nation/bucha-shuts-the-door-on-dialogue-with-russia-zelensky-says-50234254.html
https://nypost.com/2022/04/04/zelensky-visits-bucha-after-mass-slaughter-of-civilians/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/04/03/ukraine-russia-zelensky/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/russia-ukraine-peace-talks.html
https://www.axios.com/2022/04/16/zelensky-russia-ukraine-mariupol-putin
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/zelensky-says-russian-genocide-in-ukraine-make-negotiations-harder
https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/Ukraine-for-the-Wall-Street-Journal-the-bucha-images-caused-the-negotiations-mediated-by-Turkey-to-fail/
https://thehill.com/homenews/3258673-zelensky-visits-bucha-says-russian-atrocities-will-make-talks-very-difficult/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
According to a May report from Ukrainska Pravda, the Russian side was ready for a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin, but it later came to a halt after the discovery of War crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in particular the Bucha massacre on the 1 April. In a surprise visit to Ukraine on 9 April, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with," and that the collective West was not willing to make a deal with Putin. Three days after Johnson left Kyiv, Putin stated publicly that talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end”. Roman Abramovich visited Kyiv in an attempt to resume negotiations. Zelenskyy proposed negotiating two separate documents, one being a bilateral agreement between Ukraine and Russia, and the other involving Ukraine and the West. Ukrainian lead negotiator (at this point) Davyd Arakhamia stated in an interview on 24 November 2023 that the neutral status of Ukraine was the key Russian demand during the negotiations and that the western countries were aware of the negotiations and advised Ukraine not to rely on security guarantees. Arakhamia also denied that Johnson stopped Kyiv from signing an agreement stipulating Ukraine's neutrality saying that the Ukrainian delegation did not have the authority to do it

there isn't must solid evidence ether Russians even did it. Plenty of factions in Ukraine did not want peace and had the means and opportunity to stage such an event. There are of course plenty of factions in Russia that don't want peace either and likewise would have motive and opportunity. — boethius

And that’s not pro-Russian propaganda to dupe the masses at all, of course.
Here some sources for an instructive comparison:
- “Evidence of staged events in Bucha is multiplying“ (https://tass.com/politics/1436063)
- “War in Ukraine: 'There is irrefutable evidence of war crimes,' concludes Amnesty International investigation” (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/05/07/war-in-ukraine-there-is-irrefutable-evidence-of-war-crimes-concludes-amnesty-international-investigation_5982661_4.html)

However, any analysis by decision makers will also be weighted by what they have personally to gain, so the West's offer of providing hundreds of billions of dollars in the form of a slush fund may have also influenced analytical outcomes of influential people involved in the process. "Getting close" to a deal with the Russians is of course leverage to extract more mulla from the West.

That is another way, a more free and capitalist way, to approach things where profit is the main driver of incentives. — boethius

That could be an interesting point, once we remove the biased framing. The Ukrainian decision makers can very much calculate their moves wrt Western (as much as Russian) expectations and dispositions while pursuing their political agenda, whatever their personal motives are. Like “getting close to a deal with the Russians” as a leverage to solicit more aid from the West and/or as a way to buy time against Russia (as Merkel’s case may suggest). And then Russians and their Western "useful idiots" can exploit such circumstances to spin anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western narrative to dupe the masses.

Again this pro-Russian dude is forgetting EVERYTHING ELSE the people he cites are saying: security guarantees from the West and Bucha. — neomac

"Security guarantees" have been discussed for dozens of pages.

The fact that no contract is ever actually "guaranteed" as some sort of ontological status is not a reason to not enter into contracts. — boethius

The word "guarantee" is meaningful only in the sense of being another word for promise, but it is not meaningful in the sense of some necessity a promise will be fulfilled. A guarantee in this context is simply a promise and like any other promise they are not necessarily kept. The word is purely ornamental in agreements between states. — boethius

To me that’s just a straw man argument: first, you didn’t provide evidence that relevant Ukrainian, Russian, American politicians take “ ‘guaranteed’ as some sort of ontological status” whereby promises are necessarily kept as a reason to enter or not enter into contracts. Second, the word “guaranteed” is not ornamental at all, since it labels a difference in the legal and functional design of the agreement: indeed, its legal meaning is to be contrasted to the “security assurances” that have been provided to Ukraine in the Budapest memorandum (as well as to other failed agreements like the Minsk agreements). So if Ukraine (and Russia too, for that matter) is looking for “security guarantees” that means Ukraine wants them to be something else than the “security assurances” provided in the Budapest memorandum (and Russia likely wants them to be something else than the Minsk agreements). And this legal and functional difference is what deserves to be discussed not the ontological status of “security guarantees” you are blabbering about. For that matter, even NATO article 5 or the contract of any employer are not “guaranteed” if that word is taken to express an ontological necessity.

Where guarantee in a contract is not ornamental is in agreements between parties subordinate to state power (or some analogue). There is first the other meaning of guarantee as in a warranty, which has to do with additional promises of maintenance or replacement if something breaks. In terms of simply embellishing promises, at issue here, again guarantee does not mean promises are somehow necessarily kept if they are "guaranteed" but a judge would take such wording into account in determining liability. You are arguably less liable for breaking a simple promise compared to a "super duper promise" that includes the word guarantee. — boethius

Besides you even contradict yourself because after insisting that “guaranteed” is ornamental because it doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept if they are "guaranteed" and this would hold for contracts between states and work contracts between individuals, later you deny that the term “guaranteed” is ornamental “between parties subordinate to state power” even though that still doesn’t mean that promises are somehow necessarily kept.
And if “guarantee” can mean different things other than ontological necessity then “guarantee” can also mean whatever is taken by Ukrainians, Russians, and the West to decisively differentiate requested “security guarantees” from the Budapest memorandum “security assurances” and Minsk agreements. So if the label “guarantee” points to a decisive difference for all involved parties then it is not ornamental at all.

This should be common sense.

That any given company may go bankrupt and have zero assets and be unable to make good on any promises whatever is not a reason to not enter into agreements with said company.

We enter into agreements because it changes probable outcomes.

The reason to enter into a peace agreement is not that someone that elevates promises to some ontological necessary status, but because probably the outcome of a peace agreement is preferable to further fighting. — boethius

Formal agreements signal and codify commitments between contractors with implied reputational and material costs/hazards (as well as benefits and/or opportunities) and which can shape contractors’ expectations. To that extent, they can change the perceived likelihood of an outcome. So a plausible reason why the Instabul communiqué ("a protocol of intentions") was problematic is that the design of such security guarantees between Ukraine, Russia, and the West may not be convenient for all three parties AT THE SAME TIME due to their implied reputational and material costs/hazards (as well as benefits and/or opportunities). That is one relevant point that the “alleged” peace deal between Ukraine and Russia which “ was all but finished” intentionally or naively overlooks because even if there was an agreement between Ukraine and Russia but such agreement requirs a third party agreement (e.g. the West as security guarantor), the agreement can’t be considered as practically finalised if the third party doesn’t agree. That should be common sense!
It’s like me and my landlord agreeing that my bank will pay for my rents if I don’t pay. But what if my bank neither is nor will be committed to perform what our agreements established? And, in this case, what would be the point of protesting that my bank blocked the agreement between me and my landlord which was all but finished?! It would be a disingenuous or idiotic protest, yes?

The main reason for Ukraine to enter a peace agreement, especially before the war or then in the beginning are:

1. Ukraine cannot prevail militarily over Russia even with Western support (that the West is likely willing to provide; so not nuclear weapons, for example).

2. A long war maybe of some harm to Russia but will be absolutely devastating to Ukraine, and not serve the interest of Ukrainians.

3. The West's promises are not "guaranteed" either, if we're talking about some ontological necessary status to the promise, therefore the ability to sustain a long war, even if desired, is cannot be counted on.

4. Russia has pressures to maintain a peace if Ukraine commits to neutrality and repudiates seeking NATO membership and cooperation. One such pressure is the diplomatic cost of breaking a promise, but there would be bother international and domestic pressures that would impose costs on Russia to reinvade.

If one evaluates all 4 points as likely true, then the choice to negotiate a peace agreement is extremely well supported.

However, points 1 through 4, each in itself, would be sufficient reason to accept most kinds of peace deals. The likelihood of each point would inform what would be reasonable to accept. — boethius

I would question all your four points: point 1, it depends on the military objectives; point 2, it’s up to Ukrainians to decide what is convenient to them not to me or you; point 3, straw man argument; point 4, involved parties may consider also other reasons and means Russia (which has already turned to a wartime economy) can military and politically threaten the West and Ukraine to pursue hegemonic goals.
But, as far as I’m concerned, what your analysis is most evidently failing to take into account is that if the security guarantees concern Ukraine, Russia, and the West (or the US, if you prefer) then one has to take into account the INTERESTS OF THE WEST AND THE US in such security guarantees. If the interest of the West/US is to WESTERNIZE Ukraine (i.e. to take and keep it OUT OF Russian sphere of influence for political, security and economic reasons) AND the interest of Ukrainians is to be WESTERNIZED, then the Ukrainians must take into account Western conditions for such westernisation with all implied costs/hazards (as well benefits and opportunities), also for years to come. And without overlooking the circumstances of a profound mistrust due to past failed agreements, a declared defiant attitude by Russia against the Western-led world order, and all the current/incumbent international instabilities (also arguably linked to the Ukrainian war).

As for Bucha:

This is war. It is combat. It is bloody, it is ugly, and it's gonna be messy, and innocent civilians are going to be hurt. going forward. — Biden White House


The choice to continue the war is the choice of continuing a bloody, ugly and messy process where innocent civilians are going to be hurt.

Being upset that has happened already is not sufficient reason to continue the war, thus causing more of the same.

X implies Y, I don't like Y, therefore I will insist on X ... is not a valid argument form. — boethius

That’s irrelevant wrt the point I was making. The argument I was making is that people Tzeench cites mention that Zelensky’s attitude toward negotiations changed after Bucha, so claiming that the peace deal was all but finished but the West blocked it, is twice manipulative:
First, because the “blocking” may have to do with a problem of the security guarantees (actually also the status of Crimea could have been a problem, as one can also guess from Arestovych speech), so it’s matter of Zelensky’s political calculus, not of Zelensky’s knee-jerk subservience to a Western diktat.
Second, because Bucha may have also changed the Ukrainian sentiment about the war in some relevant sense no matter if you deem Zelensky’s choice as whimsical.
Besides, I’d also question the idea that Zelensky’s choice was as whimsical as you wish to depict it: indeed, Bucha may have reinforced the perception of the genocidal nature of Russia’s aggression and to the extent the memory of Holodomor and the Ukrainian patriotic sentiment is in Ukrainian bones (as much as it could be in Ukrainian leaders) that’s a big issue for any Ukrainian leader. So this may have very well introduced additional political costs to Zelensky’s choice of pursuing over-conciliatory negotiations with Russia.

Of course, it is still up for debate if Zelensky’s choices were based on political miscalculations. For now, my point is simply that no compelling evidence/argument has been provided to support the claim the West has blocked an agreement which was all but finished, or the claim that Zelensky’s choice was whimsically discounting the Ukrainian national interest (at least as perceived by the Ukrainians back then), or the claim that the word “guarantee” in “security guarantees“ is anything but “ornamental”.

All right. I would still add that for both Palestinians and Israelis the problem is not just the idea of being historically wronged and dispossessed but also the pursuit of a political status, that of a nation state (very much a Western idea). And nation state formation has been historically proven to be very bloody, if not genocidal. Besides there is the clash of religious factions that is complicating things from biblical times, so not strictly related to the wrongs that the Jewish people suffered in their recent history or Palestinians suffered from the recent history of the Zionist project.

It’s a moral argument. An argument about the concept that the Jewish people have been wronged by the world (civilisation). That the current conflict is a symptom of this wrong and that to resolve this crisis this wrong will need to be put right in some way.

“Modern civilisation” for me is the human world of the last 2000yrs or so. Or perhaps from the point of the exile of the Jews in 800 BC, or thereabouts*. This whole period of civilisation was involved in the wrong and the evolution of the psychology and narrative of the state, or geopolitics of this time. — Punshhh

As I said, I’m more into conceptual analysis, so I can be very picky about semantic ambiguities depending on how claims are worded. In your case, it seems you are semantically equating “world” and “(modern) civilisation”, and take both as referring to some appropriate subject of moral assessment. But first questions that come to mind are: which Mongol, Peruvian, Islander, Lapp, Inca, Sumerian, Japanese, Congolese, Sri Lankan, Cherokee, Gypsy morally wronged Jewish people, if they are part of the world or civilization? Which American, German, Russian, Arab, Iranian, Palestinian, Swiss, French, Spaniard, Irish, Pole did morally wrong the Jewish people exactly, if we are all part of the world or (modern) civilization? How did I myself and you morally wrong the Jewish people exactly, if we are all part of the world or (modern) civilization? How did the Jewish people morally wrong themselves exactly, if they are all part of the world or (modern) civilization?
Folk sociological claims (descriptive or normative) concerning groups (and their members), like "the Jews have been morally wronged by the world or (modern) civilization", are sorts of claims we all often make in political debates. But they are full of ambiguities about their intension and extension (to me, absolutely worth investigating). One remarkable trait of such claims is that they are often provided and/or consumed not just or primarily to the extent they accurately inform us about what they refer to, but to the extent they accurately inform us about who is making such claims. In other words, they are taken as tokens of some social identity. For instance, claiming that Israel is genocidal, may more accurately inform us that the one claiming it is pro-Palestinian, than that Israel is actually genocidal.

If one doesn’t accept this moral argument then we are not anymore addressing the moral argument applicable to this crisis. That’s fine, but we will be ignoring an important facet of the issue. — Punshhh

To me it’s not even clear what such moral argument is supposed to be. Once it is enough clear we can investigate its grounds. So my challenge to you is the following: instead of expecting me to be charitable in understanding your moral argument, try to formulate it as precisely as you can. You’ll eventually see, I think, that’s not easy task at all, to put it mildly.

The problem I would focus on is not the horror of zillions of Palestinian kids exploding under Israeli bombs or the historical traumas of the Israelis, but why we are powerless over this conflict.


Quite, and what do you put it down to?

* I accept that civilisation over the last 2000yrs or so is complex with a dynamic geopolitics and is not confined to The West. However I would argue that this whole period is involved in the development of the current global zeitgeist. — Punshhh

My bad, I should have written “why we feel so powerless over this conflict” (let’s call it “emotional claim”) instead of “why we are powerless over this conflict” (let’s call it “factual claim”). Yet there is a link between the two claims. I would argue that the factual claim is very much related to what you yourself pointed out, the complex dynamic of geopolitics. But the emotional claim best hints at a clash between expectations and reality. So one may wonder about the genesis of such expectations. My suspicion is that we are inadvertently tempted to infer factual expectations (how people would act in certain circumstances) from prescriptive claims (how people should morally act in certain circumstances). And the problem is that if prescriptive claims can fail in guiding our expectations about reality, aren’t our moral beliefs blinding our understanding of reality? So how can we better deal with reality (in a moral sense), if morality doesn’t help us understand reality in the first place? Aren’t we maybe getting the whole point of moral reasoning wrong? I would argue that THIS ISSUE is what makes the complex dynamic of geopolitics morally problematic more than ANY PLAUSIBLE AMOUNT OF cynical exploitative greediness of evil elites, imperialism and military-industrial complex.

In other words, a big step toward nothing but enough for pro-Palestinians to claim there is reason to believe Israel may be is actually planning and/or perpetrating a genocide?

Again this pro-Russian dude is forgetting EVERYTHING ELSE the people he cites are saying: security guarantees from the West and Bucha. And that the Istanbul communiqué was just "a protocol of intentions" not a peace deal which was all but finished.

Do you mean that the pro-Palestinians can be happy for such ruling? It didn't demand an immediate ceasefire nor it condemned Israel for committing a genocide.

BTW, remember when the pro-Russian in this thread were rambling on how vital was Crimea for the Russian Black Sea Fleet ? And how obsessed they are about the Ukrainian land offensive failure ?

And yet...

It fired cruise missiles into Russia’s Black Sea fleet headquarters in Crimea’s Sevastopol in September, causing extensive damage and prompting Russia to relocate vessels to other ports including Feodosia and Novorossiysk.

The raids have proved so effective that they’ve helped Ukraine to break the Kremlin’s efforts to block its grain exports through the Black Sea after Moscow in July abandoned a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey that had ensured safe passage for ships. Ukraine shipped 10 million tons of commodities, mostly grains, through the passage since August.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-forced-relocate-ships-crimea-050013706.html

That's because "security" is the fig leaf for illegal land grab. — Benkei

Like for Russia, "security" is the fig leaf for illegal land grab, right?

Ukrainians and Russians settled the points ("a protocol of intentions") for a negotiation between Zelensky and Putin, but these points involved necessary security guarantees from third parties, including the West. Ukraine can establish whatever agreement with Russia without any security guarantees from third parties. There is no proof that the West is preventing Ukraine from doing that.
Besides what the Ukrainian former officials (along with Bennett) mentioned is also how Zenesky's attitude toward negotiatons with Russia changed after Bucha .

from min 36

Dude, what you actually claimed is the following:

The peace deal was all but finished when Boris Johnson flew in to announce Ukraine would not be signing any deals with the Russians. — Tzeentch

"

To such rhetoric manipulation of yours and your sidekicks I commented:

Russia and Ukraine can agree on whatever ceasefire proposal, but if this proposal requires security guarantees from foreign guarantors, and foreign guarantors are not willing to provide them, then there won’t be a deal. — neomac


Concerning the Istanbul Communiqué, two points remain predictably uneasy to settle: the territorial claims over Donbas and Crimea, the security guarantees. Concerning the security guarantees, either they exclude Russia so they become a version of NATO which Russia couldn’t possibly like if that’s Putin’s issue, or they include Russia (the aggressor) which can at the very least sabotage any effort of Ukrainian Westernisation (as much as it happens with resolutions that go against Russian interest in the UN) while being spared economic and diplomatic sanctions. — neomac — neomac

The complaint from Tzeench is completely idiotic since this proposal from Ukraine and Russia was STILL TO BE DISCUSSED WITH PUTIN, and needed a third party contribution (the security guarantors). Ukraine could find whatever agreement with Russia without any security guarantees from third parties.

They will understand that life in a large common state, which they do not like very much now, is better than death. Their deaths and the deaths of their loved ones. And the sooner Ukrainians realize this, the better. — Dmitry Medvedev · Jan 17, 2024

The best argument in favor of slavery and imperialism. Those who do not accept this obvious truth are submissive idiots or coward exploiters. As Pro-Russians in this thread keep repeating. And the discours drammatically changes when the Palestinians are the aggressed and Israel is the aggressor. Palestianian resistence will win in the end, some day, no matter how much territory and lives they are losing for decades, no matter that they are led by an Islamist party (as totalitarian and brutal as nazis can be), no matter if they are idiots exploited by Iran and other powers hostile to the West.

Our modern civilisation has a duty here, for global security and to right the wrong of the exile of the Jews and the subsequent exile of the Palestinians. — Punshhh

I’m quite skeptical about your last claim. Whom/what is “modern civilisation” referring to? Why does “modern civilisation” have a duty “for global security and to right the wrong of the exile of the Jews and the subsequent exile of the Palestinians”?

As far as I'm concerned, my understanding is that the conflict between Israel and Palestinians has to do with state-nation formation over the same piece of land, by two competing nations historically bent on preserving their national identity and security at the expense of the rival nation. So either the feud continues forever or one succeeds in being genocidal against the other, i.e. it expels or exterminates the rival nation, or one nation dominates the other by assimilation or partial citizenship (Jews have historically experienced all these solutions on their skin). Other powerful states can intervene to impose a solution which is convenient to them (because the instability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is detrimental to their interests), but without hegemony or international cooperation (and today the US hegemony is weakening while the wished cooperation of the multipolar world hasn’t materialised yet) the possibility to internationally impose a solution on this conflict is compromised. UN and IHL tribunals will fail to be effective. The problem I would focus on is not the horror of zillions of Palestinian kids exploding under Israeli bombs or the historical traumas of the Israelis, but why we are powerless over this conflict.

I’m thinking more of anthropology rather than mysticism here. — Punshhh

By “mystification”, I simply meant referring to the intellectual obfuscation over core notions that are taken to be clear, obvious and shared. But maybe they aren’t.

A study of human nature and how humanity and civilisation come to terms with human nature.

These terms include the trauma of this realisation and the post traumatic psychological effects.

Regarding the Jewish people they have struggled with exile for at least 2,900 years. This trauma has been repeated and reinforced numerous times since.

In terms of civilisation ‘a people’ is associated with a homeland. A land where their identity and sense of belonging in a world of people’s is rooted. — Punshhh

I’m more into conceptual investigation than into psychological investigation, but I too think that there is a historical trauma that “has been repeated and reinforced numerous times” for millennia in the case of the Jews. Still I find also fascinating to notice how the Jewish culture processed this trauma and by this way influenced the West more than what we are ready to acknowledge. The Jewish world may have contributed, more evidently, to Western cultural universalism (Christianity is a branch of Judaism founded by a Jew under the Roman rule, Communism as founded and elaborated by 2 Jews like Marx and Trotsky) and, less evidently, to the Western notion of national identity (as linked to the notion of State-Nation, and later at the core of the Zionist project in Israel). So it’s not surprising that among the greatest critics of Zionism there are other Jews (like Chomsky).
But also the West has its own traumas (like 2 World Wars and a Cold War under the constant threat of a nuclear escalation). So our emotional reaction to what is happening in Israel may also depend on our traumas and their backlash (like Holocaust and colonialism, in the case of the US, colonialism is part of its state formation as much as it is for Israel).

We have to wade through propaganda, vested interests, media control and bias and try to remain unbiased ourselves. — Punshhh

The first thing I would do, it's not to give for granted my understanding of their meaning. So I will ask myself: how would I identify and discriminate "propaganda", "vested interest", "media control", "bias" wrt what it is not "propaganda", "vested interest", "media control", "bias" in concrete cases? Does my interlocutor share my understanding of such notions? If my understanding of such notions is not clear enough and differs enough from my interlocutors' understanding of such notions, then we will likely fail to understand each other while discussing topics that presuppose a shared understanding of such notions. And this is very common in heated political debates like this one.

Are we dealing with a traumatised psyche, not just of the Jewish people, but of civilisation as a whole. Why is the concept of genocide so worrying? It must have happened many times in prehistory, prior to modern civilisation. — Punshhh

This issue (the word "genocide" was coined by a Jew and arguably an ardent Zionist http://www.aapjstudies.org/index.php?id=110) touches on several Western core assumptions, the first ones that come to mind: universal right to life and freedom, universal right to national self-determination, fight against ignorance and error (e.g. racial prejudices), land ownership, international legal order, jus in bello, democracy (to what extent does Netanyahou represents the Jews?). All these core assumptions deserve to be investigated and questioned as applied also to the conflict we are discussing. They all are potential sources of mystification.

I scrolled through p. 76 twice. didn't find you there. Try again? And how does it happen that listening to both sides - or trying to - attending to the news, and thinking about it, is crap? — tim wood

People in such political threads, even mods, often forget that we are in a philosophy forum and at the very least philosophical investigation goes along with not taking one's own OBVIOUS truths for granted. So one can't possibly think to score points by venting their frustration at interlocutors when they bring up arguments that question their obvious truths. It's not matter of not losing humanity, it's matter of what one takes to be a philosophical investigation as applied also to political issues, I'd say especially to political issues (think of Socrates' philosophy in a period of democratic turmoil and how it ended up). Philosophical investigation is not an ideological/moral/emotional contest. It's about investigating and question our core reasons for our beliefs.

Not all Zionists agree with what Netanyahu is doing in Gaza:
https://readerwall.com/zionists-in-tel-aviv-protest-to-topple-netanyahu-administration/

How can we call "the good Jews" and "the bad Jews"? They are both "Jews"! Very thorny philosophical problem. In the literature it's known as "the hard problem of calling the Jews".

↪neomac
Your argument against my argument was even worse "but who cares about the wording of the law, we should only care about how the west interprets the law to exploit the middle east!" — Vaskane

Thus spoke the self-deprecating Westerner. You shouldn't feel alone though: Mikie is so excited to invite you to his information bubble, you lucky boy!

frankly, not as terrible as your arguments. Ba dum tsss.

Why would I want that? Pity persuades to extinction — Vaskane

Signed, der Gekreuzigte.

↪neomac
You do realize I read about the first few sentences then ignore the rest of what you write right? of course it's a strawman, — Vaskane

You do realize that I have no pity for you, right?

↪neomac
You're the one saying Law of Proportionality doesn't allow for states to kill innocent civilians — Vaskane

That’s a clamorous straw man, I didn’t claim anywhere the Law of Proportionality doesn’t allow states to kill innocent civilians, indeed you can not quote me claiming this. Of course the Law of Proportionality allows it (that’s my point too !), but also it restrains it through the notion of “proportionality” which must not be understood in terms of casualty comparisons between Palestinians and Israelis.

You're literally here defending Israel's wonton mass murder via bombardment. — Vaskane

That’s another calamorous straw man argument. As repeatedly stated, I’m questioning your claim that the law of proportionality is “so effed up and ambiguous that Hamas could technically interpret all of Israel as legal targets”.

And you're doing so because you're an emotional toad who thought my first comment replying to you was attacking you when it was literally, for the third time, attacking the law of proportionality. — Vaskane

Yet another straw man argument, a childish one. It’s me who is complaining about you complaining about the law of proportionality, as I stated, and I argued accordingly with pertinent reasons.

Well, let's hope people you're friends with aren't killed by Israel's wonton bombardment. That is if you even have any friends from that part of the world.

Try reading an account of the 50 years of occupation: https://ramseyhanhan.org/

"Born in Palestine ‘on the “wrong” side of the border,’ Sameer finds his way to America to rebuild his life. His immigrant experience in post-9/11 America is laced to the ongoing conflict at home with the common threads of school shootings, police violence, human rights abuses, activism, and walls. For the sake of his daughter, he decides he must do something." — Vaskane

Are you crying, dude? Do you want a hug?

↪neomac
The IHL Laws that were created AFTER Israel — Vaskane

So what?

and hundreds of other states determines what is a state? — Vaskane

What is a legitimate sovereign state in interstate relations, it’s established by sovereign states, obviously.

According to the King-Crane commission of 1919 the sentiment for the Zionist program within Palestine was roughly 9/10ths of the population against the concept of Israel. And Palestinians never gave away their land freely. To which you completely ignore the catastrophic consequences of the 1948 Nakba cause by Israel. So you know what Nakba means?
According to Palestinians, "The Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society." Israel represents the Nakba, of course you and your shit reading comprehension will take that to mean Palestinians cheer and prop up Israel as legitimate, rather than as a "catastrophe," that happened to their people.
Since Israel represents catastrophe, and 9/10ths of the Palestinain population were against it at inception, it's definitely safe to assume Israel as illegitimate. — Vaskane

Sure, the state of Israel is/was widely perceived as illegitimate by the Palestinians (yet “The Palestine Liberation Organization is a Palestinian nationalist coalition that is internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people” In 1993, the PLO recognized Israeli sovereignty with the Oslo I Accord, and now only seeks Arab statehood in the Palestinian territories (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organization). Who needs to deny that? Even if all Palestinians considered Israel as an illegitimate state now and forever, so fucking what? State recognition doesn’t depend EXCLUSIVELY on what Palestinians claim to be legitimate AT ALL, indeed they may very much need to fight for international recognition, including for recognition from Israel. Political recognition is what results from peaceful or violent political processes, and there is no reason to take the ideological assumptions of Palestinians (or the Israeli ideological assumptions for that matter!) as a premise to assess if the IHL law of proportionality or the legal notion of “human shield” are ambiguous. That would be an epic non sequitur, indeed.

Just because Britain didn't want to be a part of the headache anymore and just allowed Israel to happen doesn't mean the Palestinians wanted them there. Hence the Israeli Arab war of 1948 dumbass. Which apparently you think is just a celebration of the formation of a "legitimate" Israel. — Vaskane

The problem you are pointing at is ideological and political, not related to the semantic ambiguity of the IHL laws. And again the perceived illegitimacy of Israel by Palestinians may very much hold INDEPENDENTLY from what the IHL laws and IHL tribunals establish. On the other side, Hamas may look into what IHL laws state and IHL tribunals have established to turn the international community against Israel. So your questionable legal claim (the law of proportionality is “so effed up and ambiguous that Hamas could technically interpret all of Israel as legal targets”) has also very questionable explanatory power.

The fuck do I need to provide proof when that's literally what the whole fucking conflict is over? It's called common fucking knowledge. — Vaskane

What is common fucking knowledge? That the law of proportionality is “so effed up and ambiguous that Hamas could technically interpret all of Israel as legal targets”? That Israel has used its civilians as human shields in the massacre of October the 7th? Because that is what I’m questioning on legal grounds. And for these claims I need more than just you claiming so. BTW if it so common fucking knowledge why can’t you provide evidence from IHL experts, ONG investigators or even Palestinian/Hamas sources claiming that Israel was using its civilians as human shields by IHL laws in the massacre of October the 7th or in any other massacre, for that matter? Israel and IHL experts claim that Hamas is using Palestinian civilians as human shields, ONGs claim that Israel is using Palestinians as human shields. Yet nobody seems to claim that Israel is using Israeli civilians as human shields even though the IHL laws are so fucking ambiguous to making it an obvious successful accusation against Israel based on common knowledge. That's quite remarkable, innit?

You make no sense, dude.

Hamas feels Israel is an occupation state, thus viewing all of Israel as legal game, as per the LETTER OF THE LAW. — Vaskane

If you consider Israel a legitimate state ...
THAT'S BEGGING THE QUESTION ... which assumes several fallacious premises. — Vaskane

Not begging the question at all, since the legitimacy of a state either is established by IHL laws (and I doubt that is even possible because the IHL doesn't establish if states are legitimate, just what it is permissible during war!), then you should show me the IHL international tribunal legally establishing that the Israel state as a whole is illegitimate to have legal effect or relevance which again you didn't provide. What international tribunals have established is that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories), not that the whole Israel or the territories that Hamas as attacked in October the 7th are illegally occupied!
Or the legitimacy of a state is established by states (NOT ME, YOU TOAD!), so for all those states which acknowledged Israel as a legitimate state then Israeli is a legitimate state, and there is no IHL laws that can establish otherwise.
You are conflating political/ideological claims with legal claims (beside conflating different legal claims) hoping that the appeal to the word of a single law (IHL 51-7), as you understand it after extrapolating it from its legal context, would support your belief that the law or proportionality is "so effed up and ambiguous that Hamas could technically interpret all of Israel as legal targets."
Besides you didn't provide any proof that Hamas or Palestinians take Israel as a whole as illegitimate because that's what they are compelled to believe according to IHL laws as YOU understand them. Hamas or Palestinians may take Israel as a whole as illegitimate no matter what the words of the IHL laws say.

Yours are just self-serving arguments which beg the question and add nothing to strengthen your argument. Indeed, you didn’t bring any independent IHL sources to support your claim and that is already enough to me. But since you want to talk the merits of your interpretation then I’d add that you offered an uncharitable interpretation of IHL 51-7 that not only contradicts IHL 51-6 and the IHL principle of distinction, not only it makes it redundant with other IHL rules, but also it betrays the spirit of the IHL as if it was meant to encourage civilian killings instead of restrain it.
If you brought Palestinian/Hamas sources or massacres in illegally occupied territories according to IHL (which is not the case of October 7th) you might have had a chance to at least score a point however INCONCLUSIVE to support your original statement (i.e. that the law or proportionality is "so effed up and ambiguous that Hamas could technically interpret all of Israel as legal targets."). You didn’t even do that.
Catastrophic and you wanna even brag about it. Now, tell me: why should I have pity for you? Why?