It's, in a way a natural evolution of traditional propaganda as developed in the early 20th century. We just so happened to develop the internet, and why wouldn't those power not use this to their advantage? — Manuel

It is, yes, but there's this element of a polarising effect with social media too that I think classic propaganda had begun to lose. Opinions can get so rapidly built up into 'movements', with so many people relying on only one news source and lay readers being so involved in building stories without checking fact like a journalist might.

I think up to the late 50s newspapers might well have been able to play the role social media plays now, of presenting a relatively polarised narrative (complete with only one side being the 'sensible' one and the other the 'mob'), but in the 60s to 90s I think that position became untenable. We saw a growth of counter-culture movements with intellectual support that presented quite a wide field of options.

That was, in my view, progress against the strength of propaganda, which the rise of social media has reversed. We're now back to the pre-50s era of two opposing narratives on everything (again where one is the 'sensible' one and the other the 'mob'). That should worry us from an analytical perspective, but even without analysis, it should worry us simply on its face that we're back to the situation governments found favourable in the 50s, the height of McCarthyism and cold war nuclear brinkmanship.

Yeah, It's a question of 'how scared do you want to be' that determines how deep you look.

The recent court filings from the Eric Schmitt lawsuit, reported in The Intercept make a particularly good horror story...

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.

There is ... a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use.

Used to great effect with the Hunter Biden Laptop story suppression...

According to records filed in federal court, two previously unnamed FBI agents — Elvis Chan, an FBI special agent in the San Francisco field office, and Dehmlow, the section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force — were involved in high-level communications that allegedly “led to Facebook’s suppression” of the Post’s reporting.

But sure...nothing like that would happen with any of the important issues like war and global health...

DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

Note here there's no concern whatsoever about disinformation relating to actual US cover-ups Guantanamo, Asange, NSA spying... Just the familiar stories we all know from the last few years...

But it's alright because it's the government intervening, and the government aren't going to lie are they...?

in a bid to influence voters prior to the election, according to former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge. U.S. officials have routinely lied about an array of issues, from the causes of its wars in Vietnam and Iraq to their more recent obfuscation around the role of the National Institutes of Health in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s coronavirus research.

Oh fuck.

I didn't talk about causation. — neomac

Your claim was...

ex-soviet regimes have done so, by joining NATO or EU — neomac

X achieves Y by Z.

So how does Z bring Y about if Z doesn't cause Y?

what would be the difference between causation and correlation in history — neomac

Really? A cause is when some action leads to another, a correlation would be when two actions are related, but one may have resulted in the other or vice versa (the matter being unclear), or the two events are co-caused by a third.

In your example, the Baltic States may have developed more open democracies because they joined NATO/EU, or they may have done because of their own internal political movements and joined NATO/EU as a consequence.

what would count as evidence of causality in history. — neomac

One event preceding another would help. There being some plausible mechanism by which the former event brings about the latter would be good too. Some documents, speeches, photographs... The usual.

The Minsk agreements are proof that diplomacy was tried. — Olivier5

Excellent argument. I should save that one up for anybody arguing that diplomacy hadn't been tried, they'll be absolutely trounced.

Any opinion on my actual argument that restructuring borders hadn't been tried?

If one war was just, others can be. Including this one. That's an argument. — Olivier5

Another corker. Anyone arguing that this war cannot be just will be absolutely quaking in their boots.

Any thoughts at all on my actual argument that supporting only a military solution is an inefficient and unnecessarily harmful solution to the border dispute?

The rest of your post is similar. Just saying no no no without any argument. — Olivier5

What arguments did you provide?

we with the 2 Minsk agreements — Olivier5

...is not an argument.

We are helping Ukraine protect itself, and ourselves by the same occasion. — Olivier5

...is not an argument.

Russia today is a dictatorship with an obviously racist agenda. — Olivier5

...is not an argument.

The death camps became known only much after and were never a motive for the war. — Olivier5

...is not an argument.

Happy to treat like with like.

When you're making up your own definition of racism to avoid the charge you should probably stop digging.

ex-soviet regimes have done so, by joining NATO or EU (in around 15 years) — neomac

Distinguishing correlation and causation is pretty basic stuff. What proof do you have that joining NATO/EU was the cause of the changes and not a consequence of them?

“Racism”, as I understand it, refers to beliefs (typically unproven) about biological traits (the “race”) which encourage a social discrimination (typically morally questionable). — neomac

Then I suggest you educate yourself on the matter.

In the Equality Act, race can mean your colour, or your nationality (including your citizenship). It can also mean your ethnic or national origins, which may not be the same as your current nationality. For example, you may have Chinese national origins and be living in Britain with a British passport.

Race also covers ethnic and racial groups. This means a group of people who all share the same protected characteristic of ethnicity or race.

A racial group can be made up of two or more distinct racial groups, for example black Britons, British Asians, British Sikhs, British Jews, Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers.

You may be discriminated against because of one or more aspects of your race, for example people born in Britain to Jamaican parents could be discriminated against because they are British citizens, or because of their Jamaican national origins. — https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/race-discrimination

Yes, and both are targets of Russian imperialism. With the case of Chechnya it was trying to free itself from the Russian federation. Yet Chechnya was colonized only in the 19th Century to Russia. — ssu

So? Both were soviet systems. You said the system couldn't change. It did.

Russia and Russia can surely be a democracy that doesn't have imperial ambitions. But Putin's dictatorship has those, which you cannot deny or just brush aside as you try to do. — ssu

Right, so there's absolutely no justification behind @neomac's claim about "generations" of abuse in future. Russian are perfectly capable and likely to change regime-type and approach to war. Other ex-soviet regimes have done so. There's therefore no reason whatsoever to assume that Donbas in Russian hands would yield "generations" of abuse.

he extreme-right suffered a defeat in the elections in 2014 (which the Russian propagandists forget) and afterwards there have been other administrations. — ssu

Exactly. You're claiming with Azov that it can (and did) change it's attitudes within the space of a few years, yet you're claiming with the Russian army that the attitudes are systemic and unlikely to change. That's just hypocrisy.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-azov-battalion-mariupol-neo-nazis-b2043022.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30414955

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/09/ukraine-must-stop-ongoing-abuses-and-war-crimes-pro-ukrainian-volunteer-forces/

So have we with the 2 Minsk agreements — Olivier5

They're not the same, and they don't relate to the 2022 invasion.

We are helping Ukraine protect itself, and ourselves by the same occasion. — Olivier5

But we didn't declare that we would in advance as a means of preventing the war.

at the time what was at war with Germany was not a democracy by any measure, but an empire, the British Empire, which had its fair share of concentration camps and racially-based apartheid. — Olivier5

Nonsense. England was a full democracy by any standard that somewhere like Ukraine might be measured, certainly nothing like Germany was at the time - the two were miles apart. As to the British Empire, I agree, but that didn't affect the people living in Europe. The point is purely about how to bring about the best humanitarian ends. Germany was invading Europe, so the question was whether war with Germany was going to bring about better humanitarian ends to the people of Europe than simply agreeing to the change of border. The former would bring way more mass death and destruction than they currently were experiencing, but so would the latter. In the case of Ukraine, it's not so clear. War to move the de facto border back again will bring way more mass death and destruction than they were experiencing, but it's nowhere near so clear that simply moving the border would.

Russia today is a dictatorship with an obviously racist agenda. — Olivier5

No it isn't. It's an authoritarian democracy where the leader is able to manipulate election results. It has no specified racist agenda.

So Hitler was less prone than Putin to entice civil wars in neighbouring countries. So what? — Olivier5

So it makes our intervention much more justified. Virtually 100% of Poland did not want to be ruled by Hitler. This is not so in cases of civil war. We should not intervene on one side or the other of civil war (other than for humanitarian reasons) because by it's very nature the people there are divided.

The death camps became known only much after and were never a motive for the war. — Olivier5

You don't know what the motives are and no, the death camps were not know about much after. Hitler was actually being arranged for war crimes by 1944.

Why was the UK resistance to Nazi Germany not an "absolute fucking insanity"? — Olivier5

1. Parts of it were. The bombing of Dresden was a disgrace.
2. We'd tried a peaceful resolution to the border disagreements, it hadn't worked.
3. We'd previously promised to defend Poland (again, in an attempt to avoid war), we then did.
4 England at the time was a fully fledged democracy and had been for decades. Germany was an open dictatorship with openly racist agendas.
5 Hitler's invasion of Poland wasn't a stage in a protracted civil war with Pro-Nazi insurgents in Poland.
6 We now know that some of Hitler's intent (and practice) with regards to concentration camps was known to the allies. Concentration camps (and the like) are industrialised killing. One of the few methods of genocide which have a faster kill rate than war. Going to war to prevent genocide, on that scale, may be appropriate simply by necessity.

The details are not important. I might be wrong about 1938. I'm not an historian. The relevant issue is that whether there was an alternative means to achieve the same humanitarian goal determines whether a war is just. The borders are still irrelevant, it's about preventing the people within them suffering harms. If the only way to do that is war, then war is just.

And yet you can understand the UK resistance to Nazi Germany. So what gives? — Olivier5

We've already talked about that. You embarrassed yourself by claiming that the difference between Nazi Germany and 1930s England was about the same as that between Donbas and Russia. I don't see the point in putting you through that again.

Even with Nazi Germany we attempted a peaceful rearrangement of borders first. As was entirely right. Hindsight bias is a curse.

The fact is that the Russian armed forces is a direct descendant of the Soviet Army and hardly has had much actual reform. — ssu

once you have this kind of system, that system and it's violence prevails. — ssu

You do realise both Ukraine and Chechnya were part of that same system, right?

So is it impossible to change, or isn't it? Ought we be suspicious of ex-soviet systems or oughtn't we?

It's all just convenient narrative building. When you want to justify anti-Russian racism you'll claim that systemic institutionalised attitudes are unlikely to change...

So what about Azov?

Oh no, Azov only used to be brutal neo-nazis, they've all changed now. New narrative, new rules. Now it's super easy for a brutal institution to change its ways overnight... Because it's convenient for your preferred narrative.

you can come up with no actual alternative on how to govern human affairs. — Olivier5

Why would I need to come up with an alternative? I think dividing the world into lines of nations and electoral districts is an excellent way of administering representative democracy.

I think sending thousands of men, women, and children to their bloody deaths over where those lines are is absolute fucking insanity, and cheerleading such reckless inhumanity from the sidelines is morally decrepit.

So when Russian army has done atrocities, then accuse of those being racists who point these out? — ssu

Yes.

The claim I disputed was...

Others do. Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and Chechens lament centuries of oppression and/or persecution from Russia. — neomac

In support of the claim that...

if Russians mange to annex and see acknowledged the Donbas regions, it's likely that the Russians living there are not going to suffer from alleged genocide and persecutions for generations to come. — neomac

It's absolutely racist to suggest there's any link whatsoever between past war crimes ("generations" ago) and a current or future propensity to commit war crimes on the basis of shared nationality.

That's exactly the claim that was being made. It's a racist claim. It's nothing whatsoever to do with merely "pointing out" war crimes. It's pointing out past war crimes and additionally saying that because they were committed by Russians they have some bearing on the likelihood of future Russians committing similar crimes.

What followed was a load of nationalistic horse shit designed to double-down on a position which should have just been dropped.

The fact is that many Russians are totally similar to us and would want Russia to be a democracy and a justice state, however once you have this kind of system, that system and it's violence prevails. People are one thing, the system and how the government operates is another. Hence it was quite easy to anticipate that similar actions that happened Chechnya or Syria would also happen in Ukraine. — ssu

So now explain how simply moving the geographic location of this monstrously awful system in any way makes the world a better place.

To my mind, it's hard to have nations without borders, and hence without getting occasional wars over these borders. — Olivier5

If you have anything to say about nationalism then why not join the conversation? Otherwise I'm not sure what your rambling on about the practicality and consequences of having borders has to do with anything being discussed.

Again, very reminiscent of how mass propaganda was discovered in WWI, turning an isolationist nation to a war crazy society in a short amount of time.

And we still have to say, that what Russia is doing to Ukraine is criminal. Because that's not obvious. If we survive this, be ready for the demonization of China, which has been developing a good deal since Trump and not slowing down with Biden. — Manuel

Yes, it's truly terrifying. What I think is most frightening about it is that there's so much less human involvement in social narratives these days. Algorithms polarise viewpoints then the political classes respond to the newly polarised viewpoints to push their agendas and under pressure, those same companies who run the algorithms then censor content according to the whims of the very veiwpoints their own algorithms created. As Katie Paul at Reuters put it recently "driven as much by business considerations and news cycles as by principle". Meta algorithms make the news cycles, then Meta censoring staff respond to them as if they were naturally occurring features of society.

what's wrong with nations, exactly? — Olivier5

Nothing. Who said there was anything wrong with nations? They're a very efficient means of administering (hopefully) enfranchised populations. Same for electoral districts of any size. A very pragmatic solution to the problem of representation.

Nationalism is not the mere acknowledgement that nations exist. Do I have to explain nationalism too?

the claims I (and others) made here about "Russians" (like "Russians oppressed Ukrainians" or "Russians are oppressing Ukrainians") are not meant to convey nor suggest such racial stereotypes, and related forms of social discrimination. — neomac

As I said. Lazy racism is not an improvement on carefully thought out racism. Absolutely nothing that happens today is justified by the actions of people from generations past, or those who happen to share a passport. No wars, no animosity, no ethnic violence...nothing.

There's no "historical, military, cultural and political context" in which becomes OK to extend the crimes of some people to all who happen to share a passport, just as there's no "historical, military, cultural and political context" in which it would ever become OK to say "Blacks are criminals, or "Jews are greedy".

There's no "historical, military, cultural and political context" in which the oppression of some people who happened at the time to be Ukrainian by some people who happened at the time to be Russian has any justificatory weight whatsoever on decisions made today about the current group of people who happen to be Ukrainian and the current groups of people who happen to be Russian. They are completely different groups of people.

A coincidentally topical piece by David Bromwich in The Nation

Ukraine is a country we are just getting to know. What is more important is to hate Russia: an emotion in which Americans have been well trained. Media workers and the experts they interview, one notices, can’t help stumbling occasionally: “the Soviet Union – I mean, Russia.” A history of contempt takes us back to an entity at once exotic and primitive, suspended in time and space.

Eight years later, in his column on October 7, Will averred that “the behavior of the Russian army in Ukraine demonstrates…a centuries-old continuity: a culture of cruelty.” The reports of atrocities in Bucha are now proof of “Russia’s endemic cruelty” – in short, to be Russian is to be cruel. The diagnosis is medical: “Putin’s Russia has a metabolic urge to export its pathologies.” But consider now the implications of the “metabolic urge.” It resembles what used to be said about the desire by men of the darker races for white women – that, too, was an ingrained and irresistible reflex. Combine the biological tinge of this amateur analysis with the word “endemic” and you are inhabiting a well-known frame of mind: nation-as-race, race-as-virus. There were people in the 1930s who called the Jews a “bacillus.” Hatred is an extraordinary passion.

Fucksake, it's not about the fucking numbers. Even if some black people are criminals it's not OK to say "blacks are criminals"

If a group exists, called the Russians, and defined by their nationality, is that a bad thing because hey, nationalism is caca? — Olivier5

Do I seriously have to explain racism to you.

"Black people have dark skin" - fine.
"Black people are all criminals" - not fine.

"Russians have Russian passports" - fine.
"Russians oppress Chechens" - not fine.

"Roma mostly come from Europe and Anatolia" - fine.
"Roma are all drug addicts" - not fine.

"Russians mostly speak Russian" - fine.
"Russians are responsible for the atrocities of 50 years ago because they live in the same place" - not fine.

This really isn't the place for this, there are courses you can go on if you need help.

A discussion is not my claim, and your exegesis of what I claimed in a discussion is not my claim. Period. And that's important to expressly acknowledge precisely because your exegesis might be pretty shitty. — neomac

Of course. The solution is to correct that shitty exegesis, not demand proof of it. Thus isn't an exam, it's a discussion. If my exegesis is incorrect, just correct it.

And that's not the first time I (and others) noticed it. You are prone to strawman your interlocutors. — neomac

People's propensity to use accusations of this sort to avoid uncomfortable arguments is neither here nor there. I doubt there's a single person on this forum who hasn't been accused of strawmanning or similar rhetorical devices. Certainly everyone that has accused me of it has also been accused of it themselves in turn. It's quite a common trick. A rhetorical device, ironically, that, despite being extremely common, people seem to think is very clever and conclusive.

"Virtue signaling" is just another name for ethics. — Olivier5

No it isn't. Look it up.

If there is no such group as "the Russians" — Olivier5

I never claimed there's no such group. My claims are of the form "there's no such group as "the Russians", which...". It's about the properties of any such group. The group 'the Russians' shares the property of having Russian passports. No other.

You didn't quote me. Neither selectively nor entirely. — neomac

That's right. One cannot 'quote' the entirety of a discussion. I cannot 'quote' your entire position. I paraphrase it supported by selected quotes. It completely normal procedure, exegeses are not composed entirely of quotes.

Then this claim of yours is a lie: neomac's false claim that there was some contiguous entity called 'The Russians' which deservedly had the hatred of because I never made such a claim, and you knew that. — neomac

I said...

There's no such claim, it was a long discussion. I'm not citing the entirety of it again. As I said, people can read it from the links in the quotes provided. — Isaac

If you dislike people selecting partial quotes to make a point you might want to set a better example.

I think that you do not have the conceptual tools to make such distinction rationally compelling for the discussion at hand. — neomac

What?

Mr Strawman inventing his own topics of the discussion, it seems. — ssu

You can read the discussion from here if you're confused

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/752250

Quote the claim of mine where I stated "there was some contiguous entity called 'The Russians' which deservedly had the hatred of..." — neomac

There's no such claim, it was a long discussion. I'm not citing the entirety of it again. As I said, people can read it from the links in the quotes provided.

You know perfectly well that I meant Russians forces in Ukraine and their allies, not the population of Vladivostok, Moscow or St Petersburg. — Olivier5

Then what you said was completely irrelevant, as shown by the context I provided. The discussion started with a comment about how 'Ukrainians' deserved a say in the control of Donbas. I disputed that such a group existed with that right. If you just want to spout off more virtue signalling about how much you dislike what the Russian forces are doing, do it in someone else's discussion, don't respond to me to do it.

So is racism plausible or no? — neomac

You have to ask?

It's disgusting. — Isaac


I find seafood disgusting others don't. But I don't insult people for that nor object against that. — neomac

Seriously? You think a dislike of racism is akin to a dislike of seafood?

Putin started his career extremely likely with a false flag operation killing ordinary Russians, perpetrated what could be said to be a genocidal war in Chechnya, has been against any grass roots organizations like the Memorial. And then has started this mindless war that surely will kill a lot of people.

And for Russia to lose the unfortunate fact is that Russian soldiers are going to die. But it's not Russian civilians. Ukraine isn't making retaliatory strikes against civilian targets in Russia as Russia is doing in Ukraine. — ssu

So?

What has any of that got to do with the discussion about the realism of ethnic groups?

You need to creatively rephrase my claims to make a point, otherwise you would quote me. — neomac

I did quote you. That's what the quote function does. People can read the full posts, they're linked to the quote in question for that reason. I'm not re-pasting the entire discussion.

We were clearly talking about national identities. Anyone can read as much from simply looking back over the posts that have been linked to by the quote function.

Besides my or Olivier's position would still be plausible, even if it were false — neomac

So? I don't give a shit about plausible. I'm talking about racism. I'm talking about the perpetuation of the notion that there are distinct 'ethnic groups' of humans who have characteristics which are inherited, who can be held responsible for the crimes of their previous generations, who can be seen as more likely to repeat those crimes, who can be 'taught a lesson' as if en masse.

In short, the kind of racism you're peddling here with your stories about how 'Chechens' or 'Ukrainians' have been oppressed for generations by 'Russians'.

All the people involved in the Holodomor are dead. All the people involved in the Caucasian War are dead. Virtually all the people involved in Operation Lentil are dead. The current crop of people living in Russia, Ukraine, Chechnya have nothing whatsoever to do with those crimes - they're not responsible for them, they're not 'ethnically' more likely to commit them again, they're not genetically predisposed to that sort of thing. They are utterly irrelevant. Bringing them up perpetuates exactly the kind of ethnic animosity that drives these wars. It's disgusting.

Here's the discussion we were having - the context

if Russians mange to annex and see acknowledged the Donbas regions, it's likely that the Russians living there are not going to suffer from alleged genocide and persecutions for generations to come. — neomac

Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and Chechens lament centuries of oppression and/or persecution from Russia. — neomac

'The Chechens' haven't suffered centuries of persecution by 'The Russians' because there's no such thing as 'The Chechens' or 'The Russians' there's just people.

And in what way does changing a border solve any of this? Confining the genetically evil 'Russians' to a smaller unit? Better just to erect a massive fence to keep the bloodthirsty Orcs Russians in their place. — Isaac

Impress on them the idea that others matter and can fight back when attacked. If they fail to understand the message, kill some more Russian until the message is understood. Like done with Germany and Japan. — Olivier5

We were talking directly about @neomac's false claim that there was some contiguous entity called 'The Russians' which deservedly had the hatred of the another such entity called 'The Chechens', and you responded that 'The Russians' ought be killed until they got the message.

No mention of armies, nor invading forces. Just racist bullshit.

They too are welcome to surrender, if they don't want to die. — Olivier5

Not what I asked.

I asked why you didn't mention those nationalities if your target was the invading forces, not the Russian people.

Russian troops ought to die. — Olivier5

And Chechen troops? Syrian troops? The mixed nationalities of Wagner and Rusich? The Ukrainians fighting on Russia's side?

You can't slither out of it that way. You said "Russians", you meant "Russians". If you meant 'invading armies' there's already a term for that.

It's just racism. Lazy racism isn't an improvement on properly planned racism.

It's like discussing with three year olds...

I don't understand how any of that is a response to the point I was making.

I'm merely calling out @Olivier5's disgusting use of calls to nationalist violence. More disturbing still, now it seems everyone is basically fine with someone on this forum calling on people to "kill some more Russians"

I've flagged the post but clearly calling for the killing of people based on nationality is something the forum's moderators are fine with.

I somehow think a call to "kill more Americans" would not have met with such moral decrepitude.

Yes. It's horrific that such a phenomenal group have been persecuted by Putin. They were dissolved in late 2021. No one gave a fuck...

...until now, when its conveniently trotted out to justify a proxy war. No. Back then we were still happy to buy the bastard's oil and gold, still happy to have his cronies prop up the London property market...

https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/articles/nobel-peace-prize-for-2022

Sure hope these guys get what's coming to them too. Bloody Russians.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/russian-anti-war-vigilantes-bomb-key-rail-route-to-belarus/

Some great work by the people @Olivier5 encourages us to

kill some more — Olivier5

of.

I knew you were a dick, but...

"

kill some more Russian — Olivier5

Fuck off.

the revival of nationalism, not only in the West (e.g. the patriots in America), but especially in the rest of the World at large including Russia, China, India, Brazil. — neomac

Yep. Very popular. So's football. What's that got to do with morality?

Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and Chechens lament centuries of oppression and/or persecution from Russia. — neomac

There have been considerable tensions in these regions for centuries, yes. Largely because of the same racist shit that you and others here are peddling - that it's 'The Russians' who have been oppressing 'The Chechens' or 'The Tartars' or 'The Ukrainians'' all this time, as if there existed one contiguous entity which all born there become that must be expelled or blamed for all it's past expulsions. It's all bullshit. There's just people. Some of them are monstrous cruel, others saints. Most somewhere in between. 'The Chechens' haven't suffered centuries of persecution by 'The Russians' because there's no such thing as 'The Chechens' or 'The Russians' there's just people.

And in what way does changing a border solve any of this? Confining the genetically evil 'Russians' to a smaller unit? Better just to erect a massive fence to keep the bloodthirsty Orcs Russians in their place.

The deaths you're referring to here - Ukraine, Chechnya, Crimea - are all the result of disputes over fucking borders and of the kind of racism about so-called ethnic groups that you are so vehemently flag-waiving for.

Well, you argued otherwise upthread, saying that the soldiers were the primary actors — Olivier5

The primary actors and the primary decision makers are not the same thing. The soldiers could refuse to carry out orders, but they have no mechanism to devise and disseminate contrary orders. Decisions are made unilaterally by the Ukrainian government.

we agreed that a government at war needs the support of its people in the rear — Olivier5

We agreed no such thing. You argued that the US populace had no influence on government policy, then argued the exact opposite for the Ukrainian populace. I just pointed out the incoherence.

Note that the people does the fighting too. — Olivier5

What all 40 million of them? That's excellent news, Russia will be swamped within days.

Not sure if your distinction between ends and means wrt national identity is morally relevant.
For example I see no mention of such distinction here:
Article 15
Everyone has the right to a nationality.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality. — neomac

There's lots in the UDHR that is not about morality.

If you think nationalism is a moral cause then I can't stop you, but I don't think you'll find many people using the word that way.

if Russians mange to annex and see acknowledged the Donbas regions, it's likely that the Russians living there are not going to suffer from alleged genocide and persecutions for generations to come. — neomac

I don't see how. My knowledge of history is not exhaustive, but the longest actually genocidal regime I can think of might be something like the Khmer Rouge or maybe Stalin's regime. Neither lasted for "generations". I'd be broadly supportive of the idea that mis-governance is responsible for more death overall than war, but I can't see any evidence that the difference in treatment between any two governments is, in general, even in the same ball park.

I still fail to understand how you calculate efficiency: what's the formula you are using? — neomac

It's not that complicated. Mostly deaths, but a pretty standard notion of basic welfare - water, housing, security, freedom from abuse - basic stuff. I can't see how this is remotely complicated. Human welfare isn't an undiscovered planet, or some misunderstood facet of quantum physics. We've been around for millions of years, we know what we need.

what do you mean by "broadly humanitarian"? do you mean human rights as in universal-declaration-of-human-rights ? Or do you mean human rights as in universal-declaration-of-human-rights and pacifism (or rejection of war)? Or yet something else? — neomac

As I said, human rights are meant as a basis for law, they're not the same thing as humanitarian goals (though there's much overlap). I mean, just as above, the basic aspects of human welfare.

in the specific case of Ukrainian and Russian border, your generalisation doesn’t seem to hold, Russians could argue that moving the border is meant to protect Russian minorities in Ukraine from persecutions. Ukrainians could argue that preserving the border is meant to preserve all the material resources in that Ukrainian region which are relevant for the wellbeing of Ukrainians. — neomac

Yes. Hence the need for such arguments, as opposed to the unsupported generality that there's some moral weight to national identity alone. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

In the cases you describe, the moral weight is given to the objective (protecting minorities, or welfare needs). The actual method has no moral weight beyond an assessment of whether it actually works.

Moving a border at tremendous cost of human life is not an efficient, or conscionable method of either protecting minorities or securing resources. War has catastrophically failed to do either, in virtually all cases.

The weird thing this is that prominent dictionaries like marriam-webster, oxford and cambridge do not mention the word humanitarian in their definition of moral nor vice versa. — neomac

Yes, they all take the much more parsimonious route of simply referring to 'right and wrong'. I thought that would be an unnecessarily cumbersome intermediate step.

If you prefer, consider my use of broadly humanitarian or virtuous actions as being those that are considered 'right' and their opposites 'wrong'.