Please, do not forget my country and Poland and Sweden and Lithuania and... the goddam 30 countries or so involved in this! — ssu

All of those are part of the EU and/or Nato, so from the perspective of Russia it does look like its rival is in the process of overwelming them... that's what Thucidides traps is about.

And sure reality is allways more complex, it's just a model of how these situations tend to evolve, and can help us to think about these situations in more long term strategic ways.

I'm not claiming that it is our fault exclusively, I'm only claiming that it isn't Russia's fault exclusively.... it is the relation, the dynamic between to two, that got us to where we are. And it is that relation that you have to manage if you want to make some progress in a better direction.

Everybody caught in information bubbles left or right. Look at how much confusion there is, there’s a source for every diverging fact. I think the actual facts of the matter are less important than the future we aspire to. If everybody just keeps looking back to figure out which way the future is going, then there’s nobody looking ahead to create the future we want.

Well, I like to call it the confederacy that desperately wants to be an union. Member states aren't anything like the states in the United States or somewhere else. These are sovereign nations states with distinctive unique cultures, languages and history. They naturally have different objectives and agendas as they are situated politically and geographically in different situations. If the English could lure the Welsh and the Scots to all unify under being "British", there is no program of making a German, an Italian, a Greek and a Swede to be similarly "European" as being British. — ssu

The point of Thucydides trap is that it's not about how we view ourselves, but about how the rival percieves us. Sparta felt threathened by rising power Athens building a defensive wall... we expanded the EU and NATO, a defensive alliance.

I'll write a plan for Europe tomorrow.

Europe, the EU, after the fall of the Iron curtain.

We are the rising power.

Thucydides Trap

Ok I see, I was originally talking about ideologies and what policies they tend to go for in practice (and the implications of those policies in relation to the OP), as a description, not as an attempt to find alignment in goals, and/or policies.

One of the main goals will allways be, to be the ones in power, so they have diametrically opposed goals from the start, no?

Ideologies are designed to give simple answers to complex questions in an appealing narrative, to get as much people to vote for you. What gets parroted arround is usually some form of that, that's right.

But then you have these ideologies in peoples heads - that weren't really meant as real solutions but more as propaganda - creating expectations that you have to take into account when choosing policies, because it's on these created expectations that you get evaluated as a politician in elections.

The space for alignment of goals and policies is already resticted by ideologies and the political proces, is what i'm getting at.

On the other side of the argument is the idea that NATO expanded eastwards. Which brings us to the argument of whether peoples should be able to choose their own futures. All the countries that joined NATO following the fall of USSR asked freely to join, for purposes of defence. Because they as small states would be vulnerable to defeat by a strong Russia. Why would European countries deny them this opportunity to secure their safety and future as free countries? — Punshhh

Because we said we wouldn't do it. And because Russia allways has signaled that they view eastward NATO expansion as a thread to their security. And to me that seems reasonably because NATO was an alliance against Russia afterall. That's how you build up good diplomatic relations, by taking into account each others concerns.

Liberal democracy isn't much better than communism on the imperialism scale. Both claim universality, because they are both offshoots of Christianity... it was all Jesus fault!

Because the world ultimately revolves around geopolical power and spheres of influence? Should Canada freely have wanted to become a communist country and ally itself with Russia in the cold war, the US would have never allowed it. Why is that? It would seem that soevereignity is a bit of a pretence that we use when it suits us.

I think the methodology you are proposing is not the right one, because if you lift out one policy or one goal, and look at it in isolation, you are missing something important. These things hang together in whole worldviews and ideologies, which includes ideas about what groups should be in power etc.

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said, but I do think one should add to that, that on the other side the plan of the US was allways a unipolar world, total dominace.. and so they tried installing favorable regimes all over the place close to Russia, in Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine.

So was Russia imperialist, or was it reacting to the US being imperialist? Probably both, but one has to note that Russia was not the one meddling in other countries affairs on the other side of the globe.

From what I gathered from sources that seem reliable to me - and boy is it hard to find information that isn't extremely biased on one or the other side at the moment - we do seem to have managed the relation with Russia very badly. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because Putin is indeed a ruthless dictator, but you don't know if you don't really try.

And that is the logic I want to counter a bit here. If we have already decided that Putin is the devil incarnate that will break any agreement we sign with him anyway, then there is no reason to try diplomacy or negotiations, and if we don't try that you can never have peace... the only option left is to fight until one party is destroyed, or both in case of use of nuclear weapons.

At some point we will have to try to de-escalate. And that's why Trump pushing for peace isn't the worst thing IMO, whatever else one may think of the man, it at least creates some space for something other than an ever escalating cycle of destruction and violence.

They think AGI will land in Trumps term, another wildcard.

No that's not exactly what I'm thinking. To me it seem wildly unstable right now, because they are so disruptive you would expect a backlash eventually. In a more hopefull scenario they are just a transition, a slegdehammer that creates space for something new. And I do think there needs to be something new, not just reform of the same.... because the direction we were going was never going to work, it was the direction to the last man.

We probably won't yeah... it's a damn shame.

But Chattering Monkey, what dost thou sayest, that up is now down and left now right? How can that be?

Brethren, stop looking down at thou tracks in the sand, and lift up thy heads. Hast thou not seen that the night sky has shifted, around a new axis the world will churn.

I tell you brethren, out of the old world we were born, towards the new world we must turn. Verily I ask you, stop chasing the dimming light, the other way is the rising sun.


Or maybe I read to much Nietzsche.

The history of the West, a footnote to Plato.

Have you followed the discussion JD Vance had with Rory Stewart about Christianity On X?
·

Jan 30
JD VANCE: There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world

Rory Stewart
@RoryStewartUK
A bizarre take on John 15:12-13 - less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love… — X

I don't know how deliberate all of this is, but he's essentially trying to remove the platonism, the universality from Christianity.

I'd say the opposite is true. Christian morality, especially the protestant version, is uniquely personal. All morality has some claim to objective and universal application. Indeed that's a common definition for morality — Echarmion

That's how we typically view morality because of the Christian origins of our culture, And chirstianity took its inspiration from platonism that was in vogue in the Greek Hellenistic world at the time of its devellopment.

Instead of morality being tied to a certain group living in a certain place, it became abstract and universal, applicable to everybody (Plato's ideal forms).

Russia has 6000 nuclear bombs, but sure let's just brush away the stability of the region like it's a nothing burger.
— ChatteringMonkey

The region has no stability. A Putin-Trump divvy will not provide one. What the hell are you on about? — Vera Mont

You know you really have to look at this in a bit of a wider context. We are part of the reason why the situation has evovled the way it has because we excluded Russia from participating in the western world after the second world war. We stabbed them in the back after they had lost millions of people fighting on our side... because communism became the new big bad. And after the Iron curtain fell there was another chance to normalise realtions with them, instead we just pushed NATO (an alliance specially designed to keep them in check) up to their border, breaking our word that we wouldn't do it.

Maybe it's time to rectify that mistake? You have to create the conditions for stability, if we never try we will never have it.

Where do you get the idea that a uniquely defining factor of Christian morality is that it's objective and universal? — Echarmion

It's a offshoot of judaïsm, To belong to Judaïsm you had to be ethnically a jew, the rest were gentiles. Christiany broke that open and made it universal by allowing everybody in the religion and making it appicable to everybody. Even pagans go to hell if they disobey a God they don't believe in.

The other unusual feature, which they inhererited from Judaïsm, is monotheism, there is only one God (one set of values and morals). Pagan religion in the Roman empire used to allow a whole panteon of Gods, where every city has some different particular God or Gods they were allowed to worship. They didn't shun or exclude other religions, but incorporated them into their pantheon.

Christianity also was instrumental in colonising the world. Judaïsm for example never had this same religious conversion fervour.

It does not follow though that it did not also foster actual liberal values and actual democracy. — Echarmion

No that's right, but then that is only a good thing if you already assume that liberal values and democracy are the values one should aspire to, which other societies clearly do not.

Let's just spell it out as clear as possible so anyone who wants to see it can see.

Liberal democracy has been the ideological underpinning of the expansion of the US empire. It is uniquely suited for that because it's an offshoot of Christian morality that holds that morality is objective and universal. That means that any country not adhering to those values is objectively wrong, and can therefore justifiably be undermined and fought until they do adhere to those values. And that's essentially what the US has been doing the past 70 years, toppling regimes left and right, and invading countries because women can't wear miniskirts.... usually leaving a huge mess in their wake.

Thrasymachus was allways right folks, justice is the interest of the stronger... the liberal democratic world order was there to serve our interests.

Alas it's hard to convince true believers.

Deus vult!

I'm really fed up with references to "the war" as if the Ukrainians had any choice in the matter. This is not a two-sided conflict: they were attacked and have been defending themselves. The "stability of the region" was not endangered by Zelensky or his people and they are not responsible for restoring it by letting themselves be subsumed in Putin's empire. — Vera Mont

But it is a US-Russia proxy war. Regime change has been a standard practice of the CIA and policy especially of the democratic party for decades all over the world. Without the supplies and military assistance of the US and Europe Ukraine wouldn't have stood a chance... we can hardly be more involved, and yet here we are pretending like this is just a matter of Ukraine defending itself.

Of course nobody will hear this, because if you say something that doesn't conform to the Western mainstream narrative it must be Russian propaganda.

Shall we ask the Palestinians to seek refugee status in Greenland in order to maintain Nyetenyahu's 'stability'? Who's next to be required to give up their freedom and their home for stability in some region? — Vera Mont

Russia has 6000 nuclear bombs, but sure let's just brush away the stability of the region like it's a nothing burger.

Yeah I don't agree with that, it's also about the stability of the entire region.

And if he decides it's a good idea to stay in the war, do we just support him no matter what, effectively delegating our foreign policy to him?

Do you think Zelenskyy should return home to the Ukrainians and the Rada with "Trump's peace"? — jorndoe

Do you think it would be better to send thousands of Ukranians more to the grave for nothing?

Do we have to think about consequences at all, or do we just have to rush in whatever the consequences because it's a just cause?

What, if anything, would convince you that it's a bad idea eventhough it's a just cause?

Well, maybe it's time for democracy to concede or give way to aggressive-regressive authoritarianism? — jorndoe

That's not what i'm getting at. I think one should pick their battles a bit more carefully. The war was going nowhere, and not likely to go anywhere without the US, at some point you have to deal with the reality on the ground.

The world is indeed changing, dramatically. I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
Who is this 'outside world', who is 'we'? — Amity

The ouside world are the ones not caught in the mainstream western information bubble. 'We' are the ones in the bubble. Maybe an example can help :

In the western media: Russia has invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked act of aggression because Putin is an evil dictator.

Ouside of it: Russia has invaded Ukraine as a reaction to the US pushing it to far in trying to expand its sphere of influence.

It doesn't just look like there is a pact with Putin, it is obvious from Putin's positive reactions that there is a deal going on... — Amity

I was referring to a more formal alliance. I'm sure they make personal deals, but that doesn't mean they can formally commit their countries.

For what purpose?

Overall, the actions taken are not those of a peace-maker. A deal-maker and breaker, perhaps. But only for the benefit of himself, the oligarchs and authoritarians, not for the people. He couldn't care less. — Amity

Isn't the fact that we get peace more important that what the motivations are?

Who are we trying to convince and why? — Amity

I'm trying to convince fellow Europeans so Europe doesn't make what I think would be the biggest strategic blunder in recent memory. It isn't going that great.

Don't listen to what he says, but look at what he does.

Usually his words aren't meant to convey literal meaning, but rather to ellicit some effect.

Likely Trump doesn't understand just how against this goes his allies, if we can call them those, who aren't for this kind of decision making. Above all, any meeting of this kind would be either a nonevent or at worst, a total disastrous for the US as Trump is really a bad negotiator. If he would have written himself the Art of the Deal, he maybe a negotiator, but he isn't. Everything from surrender deal made to the Taleban to the castigation of Zelenskyi shows this. — ssu

I don't think I agree entirely. He's not a good diplomat in the sense of fostering good long term relations maybe, but I think he does have a very good sense of where the leverage is, and he's using it to get what he wants. And I think that is the problem for Europe, he has a lot of leverage on us because we have let ourselves become dependant on the US... and so i don't think he's particulary worried about alienating Europe because of that.

With Russia I think he knows there isn't much leverage considering how the war is going. If he wants out and end the war, he probably needs to get closer to their position to get it done.

It's not a question of pragmatism, it's a question how close Russia is to you. Let's remember that Russia wants NATO to withdraw from the Baltics, from Sweden and Finland, from Poland, from Romania. So for a lot of NATO countries the support for Ukraine and spending more on defense is quite pragmatic and logical approach. Not perhaps for Portugal.

You already are seeing how closely is the UK and Norway working with EU countries, so what is forming here is a "coalition of the willing". Likely the UK with France and Germany and Northern Europe, the Baltic States and Poland. Naturally all these countries want to keep the US in NATO, but you never know what agent Trumpov will do. — ssu

Here's a question for you ssu, wouldn't a normalisation of relations with Russia be better in the long term for the states close to Russia too? What are we trying to accomplish with fighting Russia untill the bitter end? Do we really want to keep playing this game until the end of time... hate breeds hate.

How about a synthesis: an unstable World were bunch of illiberal autocrats try carving up the World and others desperately trying to hold on to a rules based order. — ssu

Problem is the autocrats have most of the power. A rules based order only holds if you have the power to enforce it... the sheriff left town.

We aren't drowning, even Ukraine isn't yet. Those who think the MAGA-movement is the new geo-political wave might be the ones that will do the drowning, thanks to the wisdom of their awesome leaders like Musk, Trump and Vance. — ssu

I would agree that it's far from certain that the MAGA-movement will stay in power indefinitely, it can just as well swing back in the other direction. But there is damage that can't be undone, it has now become clear that no country should want to bet its security and future on a wildly oscillating 4 year election cycle... the gene is out of the bottle.

People really should wake up to see how insane these morons are. I can easily agree with Friedrich Merz that NATO won't last to it's next summit in the summer. Or perhaps there Trump walks out of it. Something that is totally possible. — ssu

NATO probably gets dissolved, as maybe it should have been a while ago. Russia isn't the same superpower anymore that needs a special alliance to contain. A European security arrangement where the biggest country in Europe is excluded from and its concern aren't taken into account, will allways lead to more tension. Maybe we should try to actually talk to them and see where we can accomodate each others security concerns?

Do you think he'll continue to have enough domestic support?
At the moment, it seems to be going down among the general population and officials.
When asked, some of Trump's voters wanted a cultural revolution in the US, "anti-woke", against homosexual marriage, etc, not an alliance with Putin.
Some fans don't care much either way about much of anything, but just want Trump; I'm guessing they're a (small) minority.

Maybe there's also a question of what Vance might do, and/or Johnson/others. — jorndoe

Yeah I think foreign policy isn't exactly what most American are worried about. The domestic policies musk is trying to implement at home seem a lot more problematic on that account.

It looks like he's making an alliance with Putin from our point of view because he's moved so much towards Russia's position, has similar authoritarian values etc etc... but I don't think that's actually what's going on. I think he really wants to make a peace deal, and realises that he will need to make these concessions to Russia to get it done. He would probably like more cooperation with Russia for economical reasons and maybe to drive a wedge between Russia and China, but that doesn't happen overnight because of geo-political realities. If he gets a peace deal I think the Americans will mostly be fine with that eventhough it was a loss and 'betrayal' of Ukraine... he can allways say all of this was Bidens fault (which it to a large extend was).

Vance is much more ideologically driven, but reduced US intervention in the world fits perfectly within that frame of regionalism, multi-polar world etc.

The piece is still written from within the liberal democratic paradigm we had been living in up to the beginning of the year until Donald burst the bubble.

It's important to realise we too have been living in a propaganda bubbel... both sides had their propaganda. A lot of the things that have been dismissed as Russian propaganda were actually true. This was a war instigated by the US trying to expand its sphere of influence, it was the US and Europe that have made negotiations and a peace deal impossible, Zelenski has been cultivating or at least using "blood and soil" nationalism to gather troops, etc etc...

So it's not that world has changed per se, it was allways clear to the outside world that what we were doing was not what we said we were doing... it just wasn't clear to us.

Liberal democracy had become the only viable alternative with the idea of 'nimmer weider' in mind, and that entailed exclusion of the far left and far right from political dialogue because that were the forces that let us to all these attrocities. So the natural tendency is to view violations of our values in these terms, i.e. Putin or Trump are the second coming of Hilter. But this isn't the thirties of last century, Putin will not conquerer Europe if only because he can't. That's not to say we shouldn't be vigilant, there was a certain reasoning behind the exclusion of the extremes, it could devolve into that again, but I don't think it necessarily allways does.

Yet it's always the ineptness of Trump that will backfire here. I gather that there's not going to be the Trump peace in Ukraine, just as the new shared friendship with Russia won't become the success story that Trump think it will be. Trump has already started the smear campaign against Ukraine. — ssu

I think Trump will organize a yalta-like moment where he sits down with Putin and maybe XI and/or Modi too, to settle the war, come up with the beginnings of a new plan for Europa and the middle east with less involvement of the US, so they can re-locate forces to the pacific to where the balance of power has shifted.

They will leave the war, whether Europe agrees with it or not. And then Europe will be faced with a decision to either continue the war, and face possible consequence of twarting Trump, or go along with it and agree to peace on his terms.

Now there's a lot of support for continuing the war, but I don't expect that to last when the consequences of it start to dawn on the more pragmatic elites in Europe.

And really you can look at it in two ways, 1) a bunch of illiberal autocrats carving up the world that must be opposed at all cost, or 2) the beginnings of a more stable organisation of the region without the US.

I think we should stop fighting the geo-political wave lest we drown, and try to ride it in a direction that actually has some potential.

A country at war is never pretty NOS.

But to answer your question, some have their own interest, a lot have Russofobia, and most really believe our own propaganda.

Here's the real issue though, and it hasn't a whole lot to do with Urkraine being Nazi's or some such, because Europe has outsourced its foreign policy and defence to the US the past 70 years, most strategic thinking in Europe has been lost... they've mostly just been following the line set out by the alliance, i.e. the US.

Europe is absolutely capable of defeating Russia in terms of war-making capacity. Russia, even at its more rapid pace of gains in recent months, would have to spend over a millennia at war to conquer all of Ukraine. They are down to sending out men to conduct frontal assaults with golf carts and passenger cars instead of armored vehicles. Their artillery advantage has shrunk dramatically, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would agree that it probably could defeat Russia given enough time, but it's not like we would be able to conquer back the territory to force the conditions we want any time soon. Maybe more important is the why of all of this. It's a war instigated by the US we initially didn't want (Merkel and Hollande were against it), and ultimately it isn't really in our long term strategic interest. What is most important is a stable European security system (without the US so they don't have to come bail us out every 10 or so years) which would have to include some arrangement with Russia if it wants to succeed. Fighting a bitter war until the end probably makes the prospect for that a lot more dubious.

And let's not forget the elephant in the room, they have a lot of nukes. Do we really want to see how far we can go before they use them?

What Europe lacks is the political will and courage to defeat Russia, and make the sacrifices that would come with actual wartime defense spending and actually cutting off Russian energy sales. German defense spending remains below half of pre-1990 levels, as does French spending. The more comparable situation, given an active war in Europe, would be the 50s and 60s and spending to GDP now is about 25-33% of those rates, which are more in line with active deterrence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a lot of political will at the moment, but yes the question is how much are people really willing to give up for it. The issue here is that there are a lot of issues that need to be dealt with. You have an aging population and low fertility rate, which means you probably need more immigration to get enough active working population to keep the economy somewhat going. But then immigration is allready causing massive political frictions all over Europe. This is the way this whole thing can really spiral out of control i.e. a drawn out war, more budget for the army, less budget for welfare and other nice things, which in turn creates more discontent, etc etc.

What is Michel Houellebecq's phrase on mainstream secular French culture, "a civilization that has lost its will to live?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the culture has become to negative or negating in that it has come to consist mostly of things not to do. A lot of mores, regulation and social distribution that keeps an open and diverse society reasonably ordered and sufficiently affluent. But it doesn't really inspire much.

They say culturally we're 5 years or so behind the US. I think we can expect something similar like what is happening now in the US. The particular thing in Europe is that those far right voices allways have been "contained" by keeping them out of governement, societal dialogue and media, which has left issues like immigration and identity undealt with. Now these parties have found their way to the young voters via social media and its changing the entire dynamic.

Any new stable security arrangement for Europe will have to involve some kind of agreement with Russia. If we keep making this a holy war against the big bad, effectively preventing diplomacy with Russia, then this will never end. We are in no position to defeat Russia anytime soon without the US, so the war will drag on, costing a lot of lives... and you end up essentially in the same place having the negotiate with Russia.

What's worse is that, we don't have the military industry to supply the war in the short term, so we will have to look to the US for that, no doubt on bad terms given the position we are in,... and that will make us effectively technologically dependant on them for decades to come.

The US instigated the war by pushing Russia into a corner, now they turn their backs on it, and we are just going to take up the crusaders mantle in an attempt to crush Russia like a bunch of zealots... it's all so dumb.

Russia isn't in the same position as Germany. It doesn't have the technological and economical dominance to conquer Europe like the Nazi's did.

I'll stop chattering if you stop beating the wardrums.

Right, so you agree.