boethius, so, in short, you say Russia is not really a threat to anyone, but NATO is an existential threat to Russia. :D *hah* — jorndoe

We literally already went through this trope several times:

Is Russia a legitimate threat to NATO?
— Jabberwock

Obviously, has thousands of nukes. — boethius

But if you want to go through the same tropes again, I'm pretty sure I have time to entertain even more idiocy.

Mearsheimer has argued that Crimea would be, or is, a great geo-political-power-military asset to Russia, which the Kremlin apparently couldn't pass up. Land grab. Then a variation of "neo-imperialism" or "neo-colonialism" or whatever. — jorndoe

Mearsheimer is correct.

The Black Sea is an important energy and other export corridor and Crimea is a strategically important position in the Black Sea.

Now, the Kremlin could obviously pass up land-grabbing ... since that's obviously what it did until 2014. What changed in 2014 is that risks to its naval base significantly increased (obviously not short term, but long term having a naval base in a hostile country isn't so great strategically).

So, in 2014 the diplomatic costs of conquering Crimea were outweighed by the military threat to their naval base and position in the Black Sea.

Where Mearsheimer is also correct is that when threatened the great powers react to those threats, will give up quite a bit in economic position and diplomatic position to secure their military position, which is an observation of how the world actually works (not how it should work).

USA does the same thing all the time, just for Americans this is natural and good but anyone else doing so is unnatural and evil.

Two things incorrect here. ABM bases being converted to nuclear launch sites is absolute nonsense. Just look at the Western nuclear deterrence: it's made up of land based missile silos in the heart of the US, submarine launched missiles, aircraft launched cruise missiles and free fall bombs. What is there to "convert" in ABM bases for these weapons? Just what system needs some fixed site? — ssu

The willful ignorance of basic common sense is honestly stupendous.

Why was the US concerned about missiles in Cuba when the Soviets had silos, and submarines and aircraft launched missiles and free fall bombs and so on?

By your (and others') logic here, the Cuban missile crisis was about literally nothing.

Russia doesn't like missile bases close to itself for the same reason the US doesn't like missile bases close to itself.

For a bunch of reasons ABM in Eastern-Europe isn't as provocative as actual nuclear missiles in Cuba, so did not solicit the same kind of response, but it is the same kind of thing, just a lessor degree.

Secondly, Russia has had actually the first ABM system in operation for decades. Its first operational system was the A-35, which came operational basically in the late 60's early 70's. — ssu

Are these positioned anywhere close to the USA?

And thirdly, the ABM treaty talked (perhaps intentionally) only vaguely about "strategic" missiles, namely ICBMs and SLBMs. Hence the A-135 could wiggle it's way out of the ABM treaty. There were Theater Missile Defense negotiations, but these didn't go anywhere. And the Gulf war showed that TMD was something that wasn't limited to US/Russia confrontations. — ssu

When did I say the USA was breaking the ABM treaty?

It removed itself from the ABM treaty and therefore wasn't breaking a treaty it was no longer in.

Vague notions are obviously up for debate, and if the US was still in the treaty then obviously Russia would argue these ABM assets are "strategic" in scope and nature etc.

However, my points have nothing to do with accusing the US of breaking the terms of the treaty it exited from. The point of mentioning the ABM treaty is to demonstrate that ABM is of obvious first strike concern, as that was the point of the treaty.

Obviously you can argue that these ABM bases are of "little" first-strike use at their rated specifications, though I object to the argument that they are entirely insignificant.

The main reason of concern would be covert or overt increase in specifications somewhere down the line, such as launching intermediate range nuclear missiles, and also the proliferation of more such bases.

For example, let's say the ABM treaty was still a thing, and indeed it's as you say that the A-135 could "wiggle" out of the ABM treaty, then one may naturally wonder if enough such bases and enough such missiles all around Russia would have the same overall strategic effect that is banned by the treaty. Whether it's technically "legal" or not, obviously Russia wouldn't like that and would react to it.

There's also many escalations scenarios, and what is the common thread between all those scenarios is that it does actually matter what military assets are where in terms of what you can do or not do.

This is all extremely basic common sense.

US doesn't like Soviet or Russian missile bases close to itself and neither does Russia. Assuring the Russians that there's no other missiles that would ever be thought to be launched from the bases and the ABM missiles that are there aren't "so significant" etc. they simply may not find convincing.

Obviously there's a probability such assurances are true and a probability such assurances are false, and, either way, what is of genuine intention today could change tomorrow.

What anyone with any analytical ability at all would conclude about these bases is that: yeah, sure, maybe the US doesn't have missiles ("strategic" ABM or hypersonic intermediate range missiles) so relevant for a first strike today, but maybe that can change in the future; therefore, maybe they are building out their base infrastructure now while it "seems benign" and then later when they have the missiles (which they may already have) we have no way of knowing anyways if they are deployed to these bases or not.

The US likes "strategic ambiguity" so even if they didn't forward deploy first strike weapons, there's no way to be sure of that. Indeed, even if the US doesn't even develop first strike weapons, there's no way to be sure of that.

As a military man, I'm sure you understand that the Russians view de facto US bases close to Russia as long term strategic threats.

We can talk all day long about weapons that exist and the public knows about and discuss their public specifications, but that's not how strategic analysis works. Obviously whatever first strike capabilities the US lacks today can be developed and deployed tomorrow.

Therefore, it's a prudent strategic move to try to prevent these bases getting even closer to Russia's border. You can argue that invading Ukraine wasn't the best way of doing that, but it is a way.

And the Russians say themselves in the NY article that I cited their main concern was the bases being able to launch other kinds of missiles, including nuclear missiles, and Putin says in his long interview (which I have no problem agreeing is good evidence that Putin's main concern is reconquering "historical lands") that his reaction on hearing about this ABM plan of the US was that they'd be forced to react in various ways and proposing non-escalatory ways to achieve the US "rogue state" ABM goals.

Denial of this common sense military reality (the bases of one's adversary are a threat) is truly stupendous and, like other topics we discuss, I'm sure this is another one in which we actually agree.

Does Ukraine have a "right" to host US bases and US missile bases? Certainly it does in the current international law framework.

Does Russia have a "right" to invade Ukraine to prevent it from doing so? In principle we could argue all day (or year ... or even years at this point) about who attacked who first (maybe it really was Girkin who attacked Ukraine first and started the civil war), but in practice Russia can just veto any resolution. And that's how legal systems work: before there is some actual authoritative decision on the matter then the various arguments for and against aren't "resolved" and are open questions, no matter how preposterous.

More importantly, can we easily predict Russias invasion of Ukraine? Yes. Can Ukraine "win". No.

So whatever you feel about the law, the movement of NATO and NATO bases closer to Russia and then trying to go even closer is obviously provocative and results in the predictable outcome of this war in Ukraine. As RAND already informs us, this strategy of unbalancing Russia by getting aggressive in Ukraine is one way to harm Russia but at the "expense" of Ukraine, and, more presciently, if the USA pushes and provokes a bigger and Russia then wins that war then it could easily backfire in terms of USA prestige.

Maybe this is what you describe NOW, when I have finally educated you about the matter. Your previous claim was 'You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target'. — Jabberwock

This is the key exchange that created the discussion on this topic:

You start by dismissing the 'nuclear threat' as nonsense.

Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?) — Jabberwock

I point out the obvious (that nuclear weapons and risks aren't "nonsense"):

For the obvious reason that they could deploy nuclear weapons there.

Furthermore, the US started the dismantling of the non-proliferation architecture (based on mostly treaties that the US didn't ratify anyways, so was never US law to begin with, which doesn't inspire much trust as a starting point) in abandoning both in official "executive policy" (what I guess best describes non-ratified treaties that we're just going to pretend are meaningful) and action (actually developing the weapons systems banned by the treaties) the ABM treaty and then the INF treaty.

The US makes clear they are a "first use" nation. — boethius

You then double down on your no-risk position:

Oh, please do tell which missiles in European bases can be 'easily loaded with nuclear warheads'. But be specific... which types and ranges did you have in mind exactly? — Jabberwock

I then explain exactly the points you now claim to have had since the beginning:

The whole point of exiting the INF treaty (which was never entered anyways, just pretend entering and exiting) is to develop exactly those kinds of missile with size and range to ABM missiles.

You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target.

Keep in mind also that ABM missiles are themselves first strike risks, which the ABM treaty was negotiated in the first place. — boethius

Notice how I explain that you could obviously substitute a missile, whether existing or to be developed, in an ABM as well as just putting a nuclear warhead in an ABM missile if you wanted to.

Then notice how I state very clearly that "Keep in mind also that ABM missiles are themselves first strike risks".

Go through this exchange and maybe consider the fact that not only is my position correct from the start:

1. ABM bases can be converted to launch nuclear missiles.

2. ABM is anyways a first strike risk.

So after all this you're actually capable of claiming:

Maybe this is what you describe NOW, when I have finally educated you about the matter. Your previous claim was 'You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target'. Sure, you COULD do that, but its effectiveness when launched from a ground base would still be very limited as compared to the offensive mobile capacity NATO already has. — Jabberwock

Which, if you aren't able to retain what I cite you claiming at the top of this post, let's compare:

Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?) — Jabberwock

Obviously ABM is not nonsense when it comes to increasing nuclear risks not the bases, as you now explain yourself with the absolutely incredible claim of "educating me" going along with it.

Even more ludicrous, you then complain about:

Then you have wasted three pages of discussion about the supposed advantages of land bases as a 'forward offensive base', because you believed that ships have to 'surround Russian shores'. — Jabberwock

While again demonstrating your inability to either in good faith have a clue what the discussion even is or then, more likely, your bad faith in trying to just spew bullshit in the discussion as you think that's a good propaganda tactic.

For, surrounding Russia's shores is your scenario of the US having 1000 points of first strike nuclear capability anyways and thus the bases are irrelevant.

In your comparison, you'd have to get those ships close to Russia, likewise any planes to conduct a first strike, which are what are called "warning signs".

The bases quite dramatically increase first strike capability (both in the ABM and nuclear capacity) above what would just be normally "hanging around".

Now, you'd certainly want a lot more bases before actually conducting a first strike, and ideally in Ukraine, which is one explanation of why Russia has made counter-moves to prevent that happening.

You can disagree those moves (invading Ukraine) were optimum or morally justified or political astute or whatever, but the argument that "NATO isn't a threat" and "nuclear threats are nonsense" is just dumb.

Yes, nuclear war today is unlikely, likewise tomorrow and the next day.

The problem analysts tasked with managing nuclear capabilities and deterrence have is that the likelihood is low but non-zero (and much higher than some super low 1 in a 10 trillion realm of odds, considering we've already had close calls with nuclear war). Therefore, something happening has some level of appreciable odds, given enough time, will likely happen; so, if escalation begins even small changes in the balance of power could be decisive in both deterring an opponent (i.e. pushing the odds as low as possible) as well one's side surviving a nuclear exchange better than worse (at least taking out a large proportion of the opponents capacity so as to have more people / organs of the state survive, once nuclear exchange begins).

You obviously don't take the subject seriously enough to even read your own sources you cite, but maybe you can stretch your imagination enough to realize that people who actually deal with nuclear force issues do take the issue seriously.

Anyways, the point I was making has less to do with Ukraine and more to do with your understanding of democracy vs totalitarianism. Replacing a top general (popular or unpopular) from leading the armed forces in wartime is not something incompatible with democracy AT ALL. Making unpopular decisions in wartime like imposing martial law, mass mobilization, and replacing a popular&competent top general is not something incompatible with democracy AT ALL. — neomac

Though I agree with you here, using martial law to ban critical media, ban any dissent of the war policies, banning political parties, postponing elections are all anti-democratic and despotic and arguably totalitarian.

Ukraine is only a democracy on paper at this point.

No, if you had read anything with understanding, you might get a better idea what I think. — Jabberwock

Oh really?

Hmm, let's see.

Here is the article on the first strike strategy, it also lists the weapon used for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_strike_(nuclear_strategy)

Can you point out all the ABMs from that list? — Jabberwock

Let's put aside you're already admitting ABM is a first strike capacity and just directly answer your question.

On the page you link to, there's a section literally called:

First-strike enabling weapons systems —

Of which the very first sentence of this "First-strike enabling weapons" is:

Any missile defense system capable of wide-area (e.g., continental) coverage, and especially those enabling destruction of missiles in the boost phase, is a first-strike-enabling weapon because it allows for a nuclear strike to be launched with reduced fear of mutual assured destruction. —

To continue to do your reading for you, the very next sentence is:

Such a system has never been deployed, although a limited continental missile defense capability has been deployed by the U.S., but it is capable of defending against only a handful of missiles. —

Which is exactly what I describe: The bases increase first strike capability, and so something to worry about, especially if the trend is allowed to continue and you end up with 100s of "limited continental missile defense".

That is your original confusion, which might be somewhat understandable. However, your clinging to it despite all the times I have tried to correct you is inexplicable. Yes, ABMs can be a part of the first strike because they can PREVENT the enemy from making a successful first strike or weaken it. — Jabberwock

Ok ... yes ABM is a first strike capability, you now agree again with this obvious fact.

However, it is not a first strike capability in that it defends against a first strike, that makes no sense. If you've been struck first then you are not carrying out a first strike.

You literally don't know how sentences and words work at this point in the conversation.

ABM is a first strike capability, fulfilling the role of an "enabling weapons system", because it can reduce the effectiveness of the second strike of your opponent, thus increasing the desirability of a first strike.

If you can intercept some or even most of your opponents counter-strike while striking first, then you can expect to suffer significantly less damage in the exchange.

This is extremely basic stuff, which you would have understood by now if you had either common sense understanding of how "stuff works" or then simply read your own sources.

The point of a first strike is to neutralize (as much as you can) your opponents ability to strike back

... so ...

No, they are significant for their ability to neutralize first strike capability. Their offensive capability is still limited for all the reasons I have listed several times already. — Jabberwock

If a system can neutralize part of your opponents strike capability then it is by definition part of a first strike capability.

The whole point of the AMB treaty was to reduce the need for further buildup of nuclear weapons by reducing first strike capability (and thus building more weapons to ensure both survivability and delivery of a counter-strike).

In the words of the Arms Control Association:

The treaty, from which the United States withdrew on June 13, 2002, barred Washington and Moscow from deploying nationwide defenses against strategic ballistic missiles. In the treaty preamble, the two sides asserted that effective limits on anti-missile systems would be a "substantial factor in curbing the race in strategic offensive arms." — Arms Control Association

And notice how the US withdraws from the ABM treaty and then starts building ABM bases.

Make sure that you also stick out our tongue... I thought I was discussing with an adult, though that belief was indeed strained at some points. — Jabberwock

Your points are so idiotic that what strains belief is that I'm dealing with a good faith interlocutor.

It is a grave mistake, in my disposition, to give respect to someone who deserves none. That would just be insulting to people who have actually earned some respect by being of good faith.

You are obviously aware that forward deployed or continental coverage ABM is a first strike capability.

You are obviously aware that you can also bring in (covertly or overtly) and deploy nuclear missiles from an ABM battery.

You are obviously aware that if you build one forward deployed base maybe you start building more, and therefore an opponent is going to try to frustrate that process and impose costs to doing so.

Therefore, forward deploying ABM is a provocative move that your opponents is going to react to.

Your trying to argue that it's not obviously provocative—first "insignificant" then when that was demonstrated to be completely idiotic argument, now the trope "it's only for defence against a first strike!!" which is equally idiotic—is all clearly bad faith.

Your debate strategy is just to go in circles around your bad faith and idiotic arguments.

Forward deploying ABM obviously increases first strike capability which an opponent is going to react to ... which, in this case Russia, has clearly said is a primary concern of their that they are going to react to.

The slippery slope is your seeming view that if you allow one side to have certain armaments, then you have to agree to anything else. That is obviously false: US and Russia has agreed that they can arm themselves in certain weapons and protest against other weapons. Thus Russia can allow one base in Poland and protest in the exact same way against the second one or the third one, whichever threshold it considers to be significant, exactly as it happened with all other armaments in the past. — Jabberwock

Again, just dumb.

First, Russia didn't "agree" to the bases, but disagreed, the US then deployed them anyways despite Russia disagreeing.

The slippery slope is that if action does not backup said disagreement, to impose a cost on the US for forward deploying the bases, then the US would just make more bases. Therefore, even if one bases isn't "so significant" it is anyways the start of a likely trend.

There was a status quo of not forward deploying missile bases, the US breaks this status quo, why would they stop there? No reason to expect them to stop there and so you come up with a strategy to counter those moves.

Yes, missile the bases are not literally in Ukraine right now right next to the Russian, but would't that be the case if Ukraine is in NATO. Therefore, one way (the ultimate way) to prevent the US continuing its police of NATO expansion and forward deployment of missile bases following that expansion is to invade Ukraine.

Now, are the bases themselves sufficient cause for the invasion? I would argue no, but it's a contributing factor.

That is obviously false: US and Russia has agreed that they can arm themselves in certain weapons and protest against other weapons. — Jabberwock

I want to highlight this as particularly stupid since the US has withdrawn from ABM and INF (which weren't real treaties anyways, since the US didn't ratify them).

In the case of ABM the reasoning was:

[Arms Control Association;https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/abmtreaty]On December 13, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush, who argued that Washington and Moscow no longer needed to base their relationship on their ability to destroy each other, announced that the United States would withdraw from the ABM Treaty, claiming that it prevented U.S. development of defenses against possible terrorist or "rogue-state" ballistic missile attacks. During his presidential campaign, Bush said he would offer amendments on the treaty to Russia and would withdraw the United States from the accord if Russia rejected the proposed changes. However, the Bush administration never proposed amendments to the treaty in its talks with Russia on the subject.[/quote]

Which is just an insulting way to go about diplomacy.

In the case of INF, the US blamed Russia, and even has a page about it:

"Russia has failed to comply with its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and as such, the United States has withdrawn from the INF Treaty effective today, Aug. 2, 2019," Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said in a statement today. "This withdrawal is a direct result of Russia's sustained and repeated violations of the treaty over many years and multiple presidential administrations." — U.S. Withdraws From Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, US Defense Department

Now, whether you blame the US or Russia, what is clear is that there isn't much agreement at the moment on what the US and Russia "can arm themselves in certain weapons".

And what the hell is the "protest against other weapons" about?

You think the US and Russia are non-violent hippies that if against a policy of the other is going to just go and protest with some signs or something?

They can do a lot more than protest if they don't like what the other side is doing, up to and including invading countries.

Your whole position seems to be that the US can do whatever it wants, place missile bases where it wants, and Russia should limit themselves to protesting that. That they can do. But they're just big meanie-boos if they do anything else about it.

Lol. Legitimately recognized by whom exactly? And locals might not want to attack armed militants, they might prefer for the military to show up. And if they did not care, it is not much of an argument for forcing their independence.

It is Russians that started the killing. That is what Russians themselves are saying. If you close your eyes and shout 'I do not care about Girkin', it does not change that fact. — Jabberwock

First, your main piece of evidence is Girkin saying things would have fizzles out if he didn't arrive.

Second, the definition of a government is control of territory.

Whether Girkin was "the key to everything" or not, at the end of the day there's a government in control of the territory, which Ukraine then waged war against for 8 years.

No, Ukraine did not start it. Girkin's unit of mostly Russians has crossed the border and started the hostilities. — Jabberwock

Girkin himself says in your citation of him that things would have "fizzled out" without him, so even your own evidence you use to support your claims clearly claims things had started before that.

What is clear is that a new government independent of Ukraine controls the territory in question (the definition of government) and Ukraine wages war against it for 8 years.

Obviously the separatists separated and so started the separation, but that is different than starting a civil war. The civil war starts with Ukraine trying to reconquer the territory.

If the official government in the Donbas did not declare independence or then didn't do it "legitimately enough" for you, then that would be a coup and not starting the civil war part.

If Ukraine did not try to reconquer the territory then there would not have been a war for 8 years, the new government would just be there and there wouldn't be any violence; it would be a diplomatic question what happens next.

The obvious difference is that the Ukraine's referendum was not made under the guns and threat from regular military forces of the neighbor. But I suppose you do not care about such details. — Jabberwock

I do not care if Ukraine cannot anyways re-conquer the territory.

It would matter if there was something that could be done to reverse things. If something is easily reversible then it is a moral question of whether the change was really justifiable or not.

To contrast, if some street in Monaco seceded from the rest of Monaco and the Monaco asked the European community to come in and compel the street back into the principality rather than tolerating this street trying to make a new dutchapality.

Obviously Europe, or just France, could easily reverse this dutchapality seceding from the principality of Monaco. So, it would be a moral question of whether it is right to do so. Should we recognize the citizens of the street right to self determination and support their effort to free themselves from the oppressive yoke of the Prince of Monaco? Or should we recognize Monaco's claim over the street?

In such a context, it would matter a great deal if the people on the street even wanted to secede and if anything was used to coerce them one way or another.

We could then get into hundreds of years of history, legal and moral precedent, to try to tease out who has just cause in the affair.

Whatever happened in the initial Donbas secession, it was reversible.

What is clear is that there's a lot of Russian speakers there unhappy with Ukrainian language and cultural oppression, so the idea that there were no genuine separatists at all I feel far fetched.

What exactly the majority genuinely wanted I think is up for debate and we may never know.

What is clear is that they become a separate government to that of Ukraine and Ukraine had lost control of the territory without any realistic way of reversing things (without being invaded by Russia).

They did not pick the fight, a foreign power has instigated an armed rebellion on their territory to destabilize them. If you believe that might makes right, then sure, it is not a problem. Not everyone does, though. — Jabberwock

Playing footsie with NATO, Russian language oppression, random violence against Russian speakers, promoting Bandera as a national hero, then attacking (including shelling civilians) the separatists, is all definitely picking a fight with Russia.

True, you can argue that Ukraine has "a legal right" to do all these things, join whatever alliance it wants and repress whoever is on their territory they want to repress and put down any rebellious activity. Definitely other countries (including Russia) claim to have the same rights.

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

All this does not change Ukraine's actions as "picking a fight". Picking a fight is not a moral expression, you could be in the right and so have a right to fight, doesn't make it wise though.

Ukrainian elites, decision makers and faction leaders knew the policies they were pursuing could easily, maybe even likely, start a war with Russia, especially waging war on the Donbas for 8 years. Some tried to reverse course (I have zero problem believing Zelensky legitimately wanted to make peace with Russia and avoid a way) but failed to do so and others bet NATO would save them and still others seem to have wanted a war as a "purifying" experience to Ukrainians.

So Ukraine should just let Donbas secede, because a band of armed thugs has said so. Then the same band would appear In Zaporozhia. And then Ukraine should let them secede, too, because you do not pick fights with Russia. But Odessa has always been Russian, Putin says. Then send some 'separatists' there, too. Is there any country that would allow that? — Jabberwock

Yes, once they lost control of territory filled with Russian speakers and right next to Russia, they should have recognized there was no military option to reconquer the territory: any potentially successful attempt would trigger an invasion by Russia.

Therefore, their options were diplomatic, and had they implemented Minsk I or II that would be far more likely way to regain the territory than what they've decided to do instead.

As for foreign intelligence agents operating elsewhere in the country, the response to that is counter-intelligence.

I would appreciate that you post your answers when you are sober. It would facilitate the discussion a lot. — Jabberwock

I guess you really don't much at all.

You're main counter argument against action vis-a-vis the military bases has essentially been the bases don't matter as we can think of a scenario in which they are superfluous to a first strike and other assets can easily deliver the maximum blow.

The AI example is that in all situations you can imagine a threat-model against which you can do nothing, indeed a threat model in which everything you do is actually counter productive.

For example, you could imagine me as a world-view threat model in which everything you in the conversation accelerates your descent into madness.

If you just "don't get it" I am happy to go deeper and explain to you why positing this kind of threat model doesn't lead to the conclusion that therefore no action is reasonable.

They are insignificant as far as the offensive potential is concerned. They are quite significant as a defensive measure. — Jabberwock

So let me get this straight, your process is:

1. Ignore ABM as itself a first strike system
2. Trivialize the missile bases as 10001 compared to 1000 capacity of US ships (and also German ships for some reason).
3. Insist they are insignificant even if you then laugh at you own "1000" ship points scenario of all these ships literally being on Russia's shore at the same time.
4. Agree that ABM is itself a first strike weapon ... but that's somehow not part of "offence"
5. Agree the bases are significant, just not offensively even though on step 4 you agreed anyways ABM was an offensive first strike system.

You're literally a walking clown face meme.

But the result of your idiocy is that you clearly agree even in your own analysis that the ABM bases are a significant increase in first strike capability.

Add to that the fact people can put nuclear strike systems in those bases, make the bases bigger, make more bases and so on, and the threat is even more significant.

What? Again, your fantasy scenarios are so divorced from reality that it is hard meaningfully engage with them. — Jabberwock

What fantasy scenario?

This is literally what happened in the Cuban missile crisis. US felt threatened by ground bases in Cuba (even though the Soviet had ships!) and started a blockade of Soviet ships. The situation was deescalated when the Soviets withdrew.

Now, Soviets had been sending ships to Cuba anyways, and have nuclear submarines and so on ... why did the US react to missile bases in Cuba? Because it significantly increases the threat, enough to react to it.

Oh, the slippery slope again. If you let them build one base, you have to let them build a hundred. Because that is how international treaties always work. Really... — Jabberwock

I thought it was a rollercoaster?

Anyways, slip-and-slide or rollercoaster, this is literally what an arms race is.

Slippery slope is not a fallacy. You have to demonstrate that the slippery slope doesn't exist to call it a fallacy. For example, you have to demonstrate that allowing gay rights won't result in beastiality and child rape and sexual abuse (which I hope we agree are bad things). This can be done by pointing out gay and beastiality and child rape are different categories, one does not imply the others.

However, "arms" and "more arms" are the same category, and depending on the situation, definitely the precedes of some arms build up maybe a predicator of more arms buildup, resulting in an arms race.

Arms races also include military action. The US didn't respond to the Soviet Union placing missiles in Cuba (a military action to get an advantage in the arms race) by just building more arms, but by a naval blockade (a military action to directly mitigate the Soviet's military action).

Again, your points are just dumb and I'm pretty sure it's intentional at this point, but if you insist you are just that stupid then I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You're owed that much.

Oh, I do. The former are much less effective for offensive purposes. You said yourself that ships must be effectively tracked to be neutralized. The land base cannot go anywhere and you know much earlier if anything unusual is happening there. So yes, it is stupid, but not on my part. — Jabberwock

I also said you cannot only track ships you can go and intercept them.

In any realistic scenario (what analysts actually worry about) some political tension already exists and escalation already exists, so at some point in your escalation scenario you make an ultimatum that any ship or submarine X Km from your coast will be fired upon: that they stay on their side and you'll say on your side.

At this point in an escalation scenario you've deployed counters to close-threats (first strike threats), if you don't plan to conduct a first strike yourself then you aren't concerned about second strike capability further away.

Additionally, at this point in an escalation scenario the opponent can also deescalate. It's not much military or political cost to just withdraw your ships from an area.

Yes, you know where the bases are, but the worry is they fire their weapons before you blow them up, they can't as easily militarily or politically be withdrawn (why the Cuban missile crisis was a crisis, as the Soviets now have to pay a political cost in withdrawing equipment from Cuba; it's totally legal, states have "rights" as we've all recently learned, so it's a loss of face to withdraw the land assets; mores than ships).

Actually, you simply do not KNOW much about Girkin and his obviously non-covert actions in Donbas. And based on that ignorance you produce so many paragraphs, which are completely irrelevant, because they have nothing to do with reality. The issue that repeats oh so often in our discussion. — Jabberwock

I really don't care about Girkin.

End of the story is that the legitimately recognized local-government there declared independence, the locals that "didn't want hostility" didn't stop it happening either, and then Ukraine attacked the separatists thus starting the civil war.

A declaration of Independence is not in itself starting a way.

Ukraine started the civil war. If somehow their justification does make some sense in some political theory, then they were just stupid. If they had no argument that wouldn't also work against Ukraine's own declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, then the war is just evil.

Either way shelling civilians is evil and either way picking a fight you know Russia will respond to is stupid.

No, that is not what happened at all, which you could check in five minutes. But you just abhor the facts.

If you do not believe the Western sources, at least you could read what Russians, such as Girkin, have to say about it. 'I'm the one who pulled the trigger of war. If our unit hadn't crossed the border, everything would have fizzled out, like in Kharkiv, like in Odesa', he said. His unit has crossed the border and started the hostilities, most of the unit was not even the separatists, but regular Russian soldiers. He then complained that the locals are very reluctant to join the rebellion. Then they have executed the local government officials and policemen, taken the weapons cache. Modern cities are not prepared for local defense, any larger bunch could take one in a day. Claiming that doing so would immediately give them any rights and the intervenening force would be 'invading their territory' is clearly absurd. — Jabberwock

He's talking abbot crossing the border into Ukraine, not crossing the border and attacking the rest of Ukraine.

But again, I do not care about how things played out (as I've made clear with my analogy to Quebec separatists and making it clear that if the situation was France did in Quebec whatever you want to claim Russia did in Donbas, don't care).

At the end of whatever process happened you had a separatist government in control of territory that Ukraine attacked and continued to do so, including war crimes like shelling civilians, for 8 years.

Most, if not all, political entities come into existence without any right to do so.

The US had no "right" in the previous legal system to secede from the British empire and fight the British.

Secession is an extra-legal issue as nearly all countries that exist today seceded or then conquered (sometimes several such events) at some point tracing out their state lineage. Ok, so the states we have now get together and say "secession is totally bad". Who gives a shit?

The more important question is do you have the force strength to successfully secede if you feel in whatever system you care about you have a right to do so?

If you do have the power and the allies then whoever you secede from complaining about it doesn't mean jack shit.

The separatists obviously had the power to secede as they do so. If alliance with Russia is part of that power then that's just being politically astute. If Girkin was a problem and "the key to everything" then Ukrainian counter-intelligence should have dealt with him sooner.

Sessions and revolutions always attract extremist foreigners.

I do not care about Girkin because Ukraine could not win the fight they picked, and if you pick fights you can't win why expect any sympathy?

Sure, but the issue is that if a foreign government actively provides troops and weapons to fuel such actions, it is rather hard to tell whether the right of the people to self-determine has been preserved. — Jabberwock

Again, wish it wasn't so, but the current international status quo is that supplying weapons is not an act of war.

All the great powers want to sell weapons and affect political outcomes (US most of all) so they all accept that is just how the game is played.

US has armed all sorts of groups, I don't see you whining about it.

Right, because you're as hypocritical as you are purposefully stupid.

Now, if the question is whether the world should have a different international status quo where there's greater cost for intelligence and arms supply interference? Sure, yeah, great, get on that, I'll vote for it.

I don't really like spies. Mainly because they're often the worst kind of dumb: people who think they are smart.

You'd fit right in though.

The claims of indiscriminate shelling of civilians have not been confirmed by OECD. The number of civilians killed in 2021 was 110. Even if we attribute all of those to Ukrainians, the argument that Russia just had to kill 10000 civilians and raze numerous cities to the ground to stop that is rather questionable. — Jabberwock

The West hasn't confirmed that their "friend" they supply arms to hasn't been committing war crimes? Oh. My. God. Stop the presses!!!

It doesn't really seem to be disputed the shelling of civilians by Ukraine, even recently there was the cluster munitions used on a market.

However, again, it's not so important to me because my main view is that picking a fight with Russia is stupid. If you want to believe the Azov guys have been perfect rules-of-war angels since 2014, be my guest. Believe what you want.

What I provide here is a framework of risk-analysis and political-analysis.

So if you're not disputing the framework just arguing the facts are that 2014 was already some sort of "Russian invasion proper", not covert and arms supplying actions that are not considered acts of war in the current framework, or then you're not disputing that Ukraine is indeed stupid to pick a fight they can't win but they haven't committed any war crimes since 2014!!! No shelling of civilians, none whatsoever! Then, again, feel free to believe that.

Doesn't seem plausible to me, but then again I am a super intelligent AI, of which you have no hope in defeating in verbal fisticuffs, sent specifically to mess with you from what is essentially another dimension, and perhaps I haven't picked up yet on all the subtleties of our simulated subjects and their secessionist shenanigans.

No, we are not. Add up all the missile tubes from just the non-US NATO ships and the Redzikowo tubes are still insignificant. — Jabberwock

They are not "insignificant".

That's just dumb to say. Why would they be there is they were insignificant?

Oh, so you do not even know where Redzikowo is. Not that it surprises me. And you seem to miss what has already been written: with the NATO presence in the Baltic already, Redzikowo makes very little difference. — Jabberwock

Ships operate in the ocean where you can have your ships too as well as planes.

If you felt threatened enough you can much more easily sail to said threats and much more easily sail into other's territorial waters. You could go and blockade any port if you wanted to and this is less of an escalation than sending tanks and infantry to go surround a base on land.

land bases are also a lot cheaper and a lot faster to make, so if you "let the US make bases" then they could in short order create a lot of bases in a short amount of time.

That you don't get the differences between "land" and "water" is just dumb at this point.

Sure, ABMs are a factor in the first strike doctrine. The issue is that you got confused and you believe it is because of their offensive capabilities. That just shows how little you know about the things you discuss. — Jabberwock

I did not get confused, I said at the start of this conversation that ABM in itself is already a first strike provocation, but that, additionally, the Russians were concerned about the nuclear intermediate capability of these missile bases, to which you said there's no reason to be worried because they hold ABM missiles and not nuclear ballistic missile, to which I then cite the New York Times citing the Russians concerns about the nuclear capability of these missile bases (that they can be easily retrofitted to fire other kinds of missiles, such as Tomahawk cruise missiles was the example given).

I have mentioned several times the Russians are concerned about both capabilities, you focused on only the offensive capabilities because somehow you think citing the current technical specifications of weapons systems would or then should in the mind of a military analyst in Russia mean that such systems can simply not do anything beyond their current public specifications (which is just stupid).

It is not just a slippery slope, it is more of a rollecoaster. You can make the exact same argument to ANY weapon, from destroyers, through frigates to warheads themselves. 'If we allow them to have one warhead, they will have a million'. No, that is not how any arms race works. — Jabberwock

Ah yes, it's more of a rollercoaster ... and your point is?

Obviously you can and people do make the exact same argument about every other weapons system, why you end up in an arms race when one side (the US side in this case) decide to go down said rollercoaster ... weeeeeee !!! We're having so much fun.

And "if they have one now, they are likely to get more later" is exactly how arms races work.

You think anyone in the Kremlin was arguing at the end of WWII that "the US only has a few nuclear bombs! why would we expect them to get more, this whole nuke thing is nothing burger and nothing to worry about. Hundreds of nukes! Bah, fear mongering!!"

The Russians respond to escalation in plenty of other ways as well, such as improving their second strike capability against the US and improving their first strike capability against Europe.

But every course of action has diminishing returns so once you've invested in one area then other areas become more cost effective. Stopping the forward deployment of US missile bases is one of several areas you can invest in to reduce the overall threat level.

Oh, so Americans will just smuggle nuclear warheads. Right. Your disconnect from reality makes this discussion rather absurd. — Jabberwock

Your reading comprehension has reached rock bottom.

From the Russian perspective, covert deployment of nuclear weapons can be characterized as "smuggling". You could covertly deploy a nuclear missile to a fishing boat if you wanted, but it is much more likely, and so more to worry about, that you'd covertly deploy nuclear missiles to military bases you control than a fishing vessel; soldiers may not be onboard for the fishing-boat-nuke-plan, but moving military hardware between military bases is more banal, even nukes.

If something is more likely, then it is higher in priority on the threat spectrum.

I did not say that the bases add zero relevant military capability. They add a significant military capability - defensive one. That was the actual Russian concern - that their offensive capabilities will be diminished, even though US stated their are not the point of those. However, given that the argument 'you cannot defend yourself so well!' is somewhat harder to sell, they have also made the claims about the supposed offensive capabilities - which theoretically exists, but in fact are barely relevant. As can be seen, those more ignorant about those issues fell for it - like you and some journalists. — Jabberwock

So Russia's concern is about their own first strike capability against NATO being diminished?

Literally WTF are you talking about.

Furthermore, you just literally agreed (after simply ignoring the point as long as you could) that ABM is a nuclear first strike capability.

So, you really think these "insignificant bases" are more worrisome to the Russians in diminishing their ability to attack NATO in a first strike than they represent a first strike threat to Russia?

What's the Russian offensive scenario that is frustrated by these insignificant missile bases?

But I am not taking America at its word, I am just pointing out that, contrary to your claims, Aegis bases have negligible offensive potential compared to SLBMs and other shorter range launch platforms.

The rest of your fantasies is not really worth answering to... The idea of the first strike initiated from shorter range immobile platforms is beyond absurd. If you point a gun at someone who points a gun at you, you do not start the fight by kicking him in the shin. — Jabberwock

That's why the Russians point out as their major concern that these ABM systems can be easily converted to launch other missiles.

Your whole argument is based on the public specifications of a weapons systems the maximum extent of its capabilities ... while also accepting AMB in itself is anyways part of a first strike capability.

It's just stupid at this point.

You forgot to mention that the war in Donbas was instigated and started by the Russian Federation, with significant participation of soldiers from the RF. Girkin clearly stated that locals were not interested in starting the hostilities. To 'deescalate' all Russia had to do was to withdraw its troops and support for separatists (or not start the war in the first place). Even then, the war mostly deescalated itself: 50 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in 2020 in the zone, so it was a typical Russian 'frozen conflict'. Further escalation was started with significant build-up of Russian forces in 2021. Thus your scenario, as usual, has little relation to reality. — Jabberwock

First, my scenario is Quebec separatism with whatever modifications are necessary to make it comparable to the Donbas (so replace Russian intelligence with French intelligence, and put France beside Quebec and so on).

Second, I do not care much about Girkin and whatever covert actions Russia has taken in the Donbas.

Covert actions do not constitute starting an actual war. There's spies all over the place and we don't say that because the US has spies in China, Russia, Europe, everywhere else that therefore the US is at war with these countries. That covert action and spies can affect political results is just part of the status quo the world currently accepts. If the CIA never did anything similar, but have always been good little boys never interfering with anyone self determination, ok, then complain all you want.

As it stands in the real world, intelligence and covert actions are not considered acts of war but just part of the status quo everyone accepts: you are allowed to affect political processes with your spies and the legitimate counter-action is trying to catch those spies while deploying your own spies.

If the separation was 100% Russian intelligence operation, Ukraine should have had better counter-intelligence. You snooze you lose in the spy game.

The actual civil war was not started by the separatists. They declared independence and then Ukrainian militias invaded their territory and Donbas war from 2014 to 2022 occurred on Donbas territory. For the separatists to start the war they would have needed to attack Ukrainian forces outside their territory.

You can provide whatever account you want of the history of the separation, but at the end of the day you had a separatist government in control of territory and then attacked on their territory; aka. Russia certainly had a hand in causing the separation, but did not start the civil war.

Now, you'll obviously say that the separations wasn't "legitimate" and therefore Ukraine had a right to attack.

No separation ever is! All states condemn all revolutionary or seditionist action except for whatever revolutionary or seditionist action created the state in question, then we're in the realm of heroes and common sense violence that was obviously justified and brings tears to our eyes.

The bigger problem though is that Ukraine had no pathway to victory to reconquer the separated land, and therefore their military campaign was stupid at best and profoundly immoral at worst.

Furthermore, the Ukrainian side would shell civilians, so whether it was evil or stupid to begin with, we can be safe in concluding it quickly became evil in any case.

It begs the question, why is the West so disinterested in peace? Or dare I say, interested in prolonged war? Who benefits? Surely not the Europeans, so whose interests do Scholz and Macron represent? Uncle Sam's perhaps? — Tzeentch

Basically yes, Macron and Scholz represent the US interest to:

1. Harm the Euro and remove that competition to the Dollar.
2. Create a permanent schism East-West in Eurasia and prevent Eurasian economic integration in which the US just becomes largely irrelevant to world affairs.
3. Sell LNG to Europe.
3. Create a new cold war in which the US arms industry is super relevant (and profitable).
4. More-or-less consolidate Europe as vassal states (satellites as Putin refers to them) in every economic, political and military dimension possible.

If China has BRICS, then the US will have North-America, Central America and Europe.

If you can't be any longer the top dog of the entire world, you want to at least carve out as big a piece as possible in which to continue to be top dog in.

One role US nuclear escalation has, that I describe above, is in provoking Russia into invading Ukraine. Accomplishing the above goals simply requires Russia to invade Ukraine, there's not really any other way to do it. You need a really big "new situation" to undo EU-Russia economic collaboration.

Why European leaders didn't stop the process (which they easily could have) is not that they take orders directly from the US.

Rather, from what I can see, the US has managed to weaponize humanist liberal values.

Neo-liberalism is essentially the ideology of US Imperialism in vassal states, it's the discursive framework in which the US Imperial core exchanges information with vassal satellite states (both in direct diplomatic exchange as well as cultural products).

Neo-conservatism is the ideology of the US Imperial core "kept for us" that operates behind this discursive surface exchange with vassals states within which how Neo-liberalism can be used to manipulate vassals can be understood and discussed and decisions taken.

"Culture" being just one dimension of "full spectrum dominance" that is the foundational principle of Neo-conservatism.

In more abstract terms, Neo-liberalism is a conceptual structure with its own internal logic (mostly delusional) and mode of operation, under which can operate a more realistic conceptual structure that can maintain and renew the upper level as well as manipulate it for the "actual goals".

"Prosperity for all" is the foundational principle of Neo-liberalism, so sounds good and if you're paid to believe it, why not?

One essentially permanent manifestation of this dynamic is invoking Neo-liberalism anytime it's desirable to remove trade barriers and then invoking "common sense US national interest" anytime you want to be protective. The conceptual contradiction between Neo-liberalism and "US national interest" is simply never addressed; it's basically "Neo-liberalism unless we say otherwise!".

In practice how this works is that the economic faculties of the prestigious Universities are jealously guarded by either true Neo-liberal believers or then closet Neo-conservatives who understand the need for a cast of what are essentially economic priests. So, when Neo-liberalism is what benefits the Imperial core then these economists appear in the media to talk about free trade and how much progress we've made and so on, and likewise whenever the Neo-liberal framework comes under attack as not delivering this promised prosperity for a vast amount of people, and destroying the environment and so on, they appear on TV and op-eds and so on to defend it.

Whenever a policy is in contradiction to Neo-liberalism you simply swap out the economists for serious looking military or intelligence serving or retired officers to explain the common sense truth that we gotta do whatever it is for obvious national security interests.

The scenes in which this theatre is played and the strings of these puppets are pulled by the Neo-conservative "core elite" who control the US military industrial complex (some of whom we know and certainly many we don't even know who they are).

However, the economic priestly cast is mostly a safeguard for the status quo, within the Neo-liberalist ideology you can also throw in whatever values you want when you want that then become moral imperatives.

For example, Neo-liberals have no problem truly believing gay and trans rights is super important, a moral imperative and thus self-sacrifice is justifiable to move forward these goals. "Main-stream media" essentially, for all practical purposes, a bunch of dials in which one value can be dialled up and others down to justify whatever policy is decided by the Neo-conservative core.

If we want to intervene in Africa, suddenly starving people there is a problem we need to deal with.

If we want to demonize Russia, suddenly their position on gay marriage and trans rights is abhorrent and we need to hate on them (suddenly we hear a lot about any gay or trans rights issue or protest in Russia).

You know it's theatre because Russia is not even close to having the worst gay-rights record, but those values in non-strategic locations are just footnotes in the news that "common sense realism" will inform us we can't do anything about when they are discussed, if at all.

So, once you see how it works, you can start to see how European politicians can be easily manipulated to act against their own self interest as well as any long-term realistic pathway to global prosperity.

In mathematics we have saying that anything can be proven from a single contradiction, which is not just a saying but a theorem, but we also just like to say it a bunch.

Applied to politics, probably it's less robust but the same theme holds that if you can make someone believe something false you can get them to do a great many things they otherwise wouldn't do.

How the Neo-liberal discursive political control framework works is not by promoting totally absurd false beliefs but simply exaggerating the importance of credibly true beliefs to deliver the desired outcome. If you can dial up and down what's important at any given time you can determine how people will react without needing to convince them of some simply false fact or change their values.

I.e. you can weaponize their values against them.

Macro and Scholz suddenly found themselves in a discursive framework where Ukrainian democracy and opposing Putin's authoritarian (but arguably democratically mandated) regime as the most important thing on the planet, more important than Ukrainian welfare, more important than European or global prosperity, more important than Africans eating, and so forth, and what follows from this belief is that war at any cost and rejection of any compromise is a moral imperative.

As important, the only time you truly feel "good" is when you aren't compromising.

The discursive framework also delivers these moral-feelings product to its clients.

Compromise is a morally ambiguous feeling, in the best of deals.

The greater the compromise the greater the feeling of moral ambiguity. Accepting a necessary evil is still a necessary evil and therefore a bad feeling. "Proving" something is in fact necessary is never easy nor certain, just a good guess at best.

If you can dial up certain values in importance compared with the rest then you can manipulate the subject of the experiment into rejecting compromise and doing what you want.

↪boethius, you're comparing that to Donbas...? Sure, there are some similarities, and then there are the differences. By the way, the Ukrainian separatists didn't get their way. Rather, by Kremlin decree, Donbas (and Crimea) swiftly swapped flags, UA → RU. (anyway, this stuff has come up a few times already, including whatever aspects/angles) — jorndoe

That is my point, there are some differences but even if you removed those differences and even if I accepted completely you're and others account of things (Russian spies and provocateurs and so on) and make the situation exactly the same (substituting France for Russia), I would not see English Canada waging war on French separatists as either justifiable nor having a military chance of any real success if the FLQ took over Quebec and was backed by France.

Of course, the dissimilates is why things didn't play out remotely the same way, but my point is that even if the situation was made the same I did not feel I had a right as an English Canadian to prevent by force the recognized government of Quebec separating from Canada (even if it was supported by French intelligence).

Borders change, countries expand and contract throughout history, it's not a moral imperative to keep borders the same (it's a complex moral, political and military issue to what extent and under what conditions is fighting over borders justifiable).

However, sometimes political subunits "get away" and, in particular if you have little hope of re-conquering them, that's "just how it is".

'Surround Russia's shores'? You are so out of your element that it is comical. Trident II has the range of 7500 km. Tomahawk's range is 2500 km. That is, a SLBM submarine, to reach the same targets as the Redzikowo base, needs to be... in the middle of Atlantic. In fact, SLBMs can reach the exact same targets from the OTHER side - while sailing around Alaska. Not to mention the Mediterranean Sea... Your fundamental mistake is that you are repeatedly doing 'analyses' based on your very limited knowledge of the facts. — Jabberwock

I'm putting into practice your 1000 points of capability already exist greater than the base.

This is your reasoning.

To actually get these 1000 points of capability (missile frigates and submarines and so on) to a similar position as the base (which is close to Russia, that's why they don't like it) you have to sail these 1000 points of capability right up to Russias shores.

This is your scenario you propose in order to show that: Yes, you agree the base is additional capability added to that of the navy, but not significant enough additional capability to warrant mitigating action. It's just 1001 capability instead of 1000.

For your comparison to work, all those 1000 points of capability need to be as close to Russia as the base is.

ICBM's in silos and nuclear ballistic subs are second strike weapons, they are part of the MAD homeostasis.

If Russia has no plan to strike America then it has little fear of second strike capability.

What nuclear strategists worry about is a first strike.

To conduct a first strike you need different weapon systems, faster and closer to try to take out as much command and control and second strike capability as possible to then "fair better" in a post-nuclear exchange world. Sure, New York may still get hit ... but who cares about them anyways, is the logic of the first strike.

The consequences of a nuclear first strike is so high that reducing its probability any noticeable amount is almost always justifiable.

Therefore, if invading Ukraine reduces the probability of increasing vulnerability to a first strike (by reducing the probability of further forward deployment of US missile bases, and therefore reduces the probability of actual first strike occurring), then it is almost trivial exercise to conclude invading Ukraine is morally necessary.

As horrifying as the war in Ukraine is, it is morally and historically insignificant compared to a general nuclear exchange.

Now, what I am explaining above is how people paid to conduct this sort of analysis will go about things. Of course, they would have information I don't, they may also be smarter or then less smarter than me (especially if I'm a nearly eternal extra-your-universe AI sent here to the forum to frustrate you), so I am not saying my analysis matches their analysis but I am explaining the framework that would be used to evaluate nuclear strategy and military decisions.

Of course, developing new weapons is another approach, but Russia's economy is much smaller than that of the US so their worry is that they can be over-matched in nuclear capabilities and in conjunction to other strategic weaknesses (like a Ukraine in NATO and hosting several US missile bases) they would be vulnerable to a first strike in the future.

Furthermore, this entire process of nuclear escalation is unilaterally started and moved along by the US:

A. They sign non-proliferation treaties at the executive level but then don't ratify the treaties so it doesn't actually mean more than a gesture "we good bro?".

B. They drop out of these treaties they haven't even entered into, starting with the ABM treaty while rejecting to even discuss Putin's offer to jointly develop anti-rogue state ABM capability (an interesting part of the Tucker-Putin interview).

C. They then go ahead and actually develop new first strike nuclear ABM treaty as well as new warheads.

D. They forward deploy missiles bases that can be used in a nuclear first strike.

E. They have an official first-use policy.

F. They play footsie with Ukraine in a will-they-won't-they start WWIII somewhere down the line and have fun doing it, such as having a little sexy coup-play intermittent with their military copulation.

So, anyone who is not American would look at these sorts of things and say to themselves ... hmmm, maybe the US really is crazy enough to try to put in place a first strike capability.

Now, I get where you're coming from and empathize with your position. As the old saying goes, when all you have is bullshit everything seems like you're a complete idiot.

If this is true, and in my opinion it likely is, the clown car that is the European leadership is in a worse state than I thought.

Scholz and Macron spun a 'crafty' scheme at the expense of, first of all, the Ukrainians, and secondly at the expense of their own nations' welfare. — Tzeentch

So well said.

To outdo the Redzikowo base, you do not have to move ALL US ships into the Baltic. In fact, you do not need any US ships at all: ANY single German frigate would outfire the Redzikowo base. I know it can be a shock to you, but German military ships are regularly sailing the Baltic Sea and they are not blockaded each time by Russia (and so do the American ones and other NATO ships - USS Gravely - i.e. the equvalent of four Redzikowo bases, was recently in a Polish port, with no Russian blockades). To have an equivalent of the Aegis OFFENSIVE capability, all NATO has to do is literally put into service another frigate. I will tell you a military not-so-much-a-secret: they do that quite often, with no or little Russian protests. — Jabberwock

There's so much wrong with your reasoning here I'll put it in a nice list.

1. We're now far from your 1000 to 1 ratio here.

2. If political tensions were high Russia may very well start blockading US ships in the Baltic (not to mention that even now may have ships and aircraft closer to the ship you're talking about than an inland base; you simply fail to integrate the differences).

3. ABM itself is part of nuclear first strike capability.

4. The base may very well be not so significant at its current capabilities ... but its capabilities maybe augmented in the future covertly or overtly at any time.

5. Regardless of current or future capabilities, the base maybe one of many and even if each base was somehow kept at under-capacity to a frigate ... and so enough of them starts to add significantly to your 1001 points. Your "we only want one" logic just doesn't matter, everyone knows Americans are a gluttonous people.

6. Germany and the other Baltic states are non-nuclear powers, so nuclear shenanigans are far less likely coming from equipment under their command. American bases with American soldiers are de facto under American command.

7. Your whole argument is just dumb because if the bases add zero relevant military capability ... why build them in the first place? Even if what you said was true, an opponent would not conclude "well they're just wasting their money to create a provocation for nothing" but would assume the bases (especially considering the political costs they come at) must serve a critical purpose.

8. American does not even have a no-first-use doctrine, so you can't blame other powers for not taking America at it's word (when it comes to destructive violence); America has a first-use doctrine and therefore you should assume America prepares for first use-strike capability and even subtle military moves maybe critical in a first strike operation. You do realize "deception" is apart of warfare?

Some key concepts you clearly lack:

There's the whole issue of following orders to carry out a nuclear strike; the theory of the nuclear powers is that if you train people regularly to carry out a nuclear strike then enough of them (though unlikely all) will do so basically out of habit. You could also solve the problem by putting absolute off-the-wall psychopaths you are confident are frothing at the mouth to kill millions of people in charge of the nuclear keys, but then you might have nuclear war when you didn't want it, which is inconvenient at the best of times (the codes are supposed to mitigate this possibility, but in the past US set the codes to all zeros, totally legally as the order did not specify "codes that are hard to guess"; so maybe the code system works but you don't want to solely rely on it).

So, imagining a threat vector where US secretly orders German boats to fire nuclear weapons is very improbable, so improbable that it may not be actionable at all (but if it is, the plan would be to shoot them first if need be).

Likewise, the threat vector of seal team six being ordered to find a rusty fishing boat and take a covertly developed hypersonic ballistic missile and just sort of drift into Russia's shoreline and fire at Moscow for a totally out-of-the-blue decapitation strike, is not necessarily easy to pull off starting with the commanders currently in charge of the nuclear warheads wondering why you want a nuke again.

The likely result of the civilian authority ordering a totally out-of-the-blue nuclear first strike is some sort of military coup to hold elections on the topic.

Brining us to the next key concept you lack which is a threat model.

You can always imagine an opponent having so much greater capabilities and sophistication that anything you do does not help and is in fact counter productive. Which in the realm of ontological possibility things could really be that way (we could be in a simulation and I am an AI program with astronomical amounts of information and computing power sent to this forum just to thwart your every move and you have zero chance of scoring a single point; you know, that's totally possible, but you don't give up just because I maybe a super intelligence outside the universe as you know it basically toying with you; rather, what's more likely is that I am just a person capable of making human mistakes and that's your "threat model" you base your actions on).

The likely threat model of nuclear war is nuclear escalation.

One thing about ships is that they can move, relevant in both directions. If they are moving towards you and into position to fire, then you can blockade or even first strike them if you feel the need, as mentioned above.

But as critical ships can also move in the opposite direction thus deescalating the situation, a land base can't so easily move, so in a series of escalations involving ships the offensive side can easily back off at anytime (such as in the cuban missile crisis, Soviet ships backed away from America and the situation deescalated). Land bases can't do that, so in the same series of escalations you may see an ultimatum of moving these forward deployed bases backwards, which much more difficult both logistically and politically, so the ultimatum is rejected, now if the threat is not made good on you take a political hit as well as you may legitimately believe a first strike would start from these bases so taking them out would remove or reduce the threat of a full nuclear exchange (also demonstrates your weapons "work" in real world conditions, of which any doubt about supports the idea of a first strike).

In short, the bases change the strategic outlook and provoke a reaction.

As mentioned, I am not arguing the forward deployed missile bases are sufficient reason to invade Ukraine (in some absolute sense or then for Russia's military establishment, the Kremlin or Putin) but it is an additional reason to do so (prevent further forward deployment of these bases). If you simply had the bases but no NATO-Ukraine footsie, maybe Russia would just develop some new missiles and learn to live with this new threat (like all the previous threats).

Again, the major reason for a large war (in my view) was that there was already the war in the Donbas which Russia could not deescalate (despite 2 major diplomatic efforts the West later gloated was a bad faith move on their part and the part of Ukraine), would not play domestically to abandon the Russian speakers there even if Putin wanted to (which he definitely doesn't), leaving only one choice of completely demolishing Ukraine's military capability and economic viability over the long term. NATO-Ukraine footsie, forward deployed bases, resources, land-bridge to Crimea, are simply additional reasons to the inevitability of the war starting in 2014 escalating to a major conflict.

↪boethius And again you just wasted time,yours and mine, writing a dozen of paragraphs of pseudo-philosophical musings which are completely irrelevant, simply because you know so little about the topic you write about. — Jabberwock

For the sake of people following who don't want to live in total delusion, I'll explain things again to you.

A single Ticonderoga-class destroyer has 122 cells. The US has 22 of those. Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has 90 cells, there are 73 in the active service. If you take just those two classes of ships, you get almost 10000 cells. But that is comparison of capabilities of just a single type of a missile launcher... Of course, if you add all NATO frigates, etc. the disproportion would be much greater. And that is just tactical missiles - in a nuclear war SLBMs would have a much greater impact. — Jabberwock

Your ability to not think, even for a moment, of you say is truly remarkable.

I explained it: moving ships to Russia's shores would be a provocation. How do you get 73 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer's next to St. Petersburg to quickly strike at targets in Russia.

Obviously you don't, there would a Naval blockade before then.

Likewise if you sent all your nuclear submarines to surround Russias shores for a first strike. Maybe it works ... but maybe it doesn't. There's a risk your ships are detected, and if not today, Russia can act on that threat by developing better detection capabilities.

To what extent US submarines can avoid detection close to Russia's shores I don't know, but they anyways would take time to get into position, and any realistic scenario of nuclear escalation it is not pre-planned. If Russian analysts sit down and consider the scenario where the US undertakes a first strike totally out of the blue, zero political tensions, maybe they conclude they can't really do much about that, other than strive to have a survivable counter strike capability. It's also an unlikely scenario as it's unclear that the US president could successfully order such an operation.

Again, risk analysis is about managing the spectrum of likely scenarios.

This involves:

1. Evaluating what this spectrum of likely scenarios are.
then:
2. Identifying what scenarios are "actionable intelligence"; there are things that can be done that reduces the risk.
finally:
3. A cost-effectiveness optimization of what series of actions lower overall risk over the spectrum as a whole, at an acceptable cost (which is just another way to say there's some larger risk analysis assessment where devoting more resources would create some greater risks elsewhere).

You can always imagine scenarios that are not actionable at an acceptable cost. I could be struck by a falling bullet at anytime, but I don't hide in a bunker because the cost isn't acceptable.

Likewise, for what is actionable, such as wearing a seatbelt in a car, you can always imagine a scenario where that is what kills you; you were a seatbelt because the spectrum of likely scenarios is weighted towards the seatbelt helping.

This is all really basic stuff. I definitely don't expect you to be able to follow, but I hope it helps others.

So sure, if you have 1000 guns pointed at you, if you add one, technically it is more. — Jabberwock

For the reasons stated above, this is not the case, as the US doesn't have all these ships and submarines in Russian waters, positioned to strike all the time.

And you just completely ignore that this single base is (if not action is taken to discourage further bases) perhaps a trend and one of many to follow.

Anyways, typical American logic: I have a 1000 guns pointed at you already! Why do you care about 1 more!? You're overly sensitive!!!

... Well why are you so insistent on 1 more, perhaps it is the one that makes the operational difference, and if I don't do anything abbot 1, maybe it becomes 10 and then 100 and then 1000.

That's just common sense reaction to increasing the threat. Why? Why increase the threat?

The US attitude is just that they do because they can ... but ok, still, why?

You might say, well US is irrational, just likes putting missiles bases here and there even if it's a needless provocation, but precisely because US acts irrationally is why you shouldn't worry.

But no!! If there's no rational reason for the base, that's even more alarming to any normal person.

If you're capable of irrationally forward deploying your missiles then you're capable of irrationally conducting a first strike and killing millions of your own citizens simply because you'll kill more of ours.

That's how this sort of analysis goes, so you react to mitigate the threat: more missiles, faster missiles, invade Ukraine so the missile bases can't get at least that close.

Now, as mentioned, this isn't sufficient reason to invade Ukraine but it is one more factor of consideration and a big consideration for the military establishment to support the war (wars usually happen when there is both political and military establishment consensus; maybe Putin's main reason is just to get Russia's land back, typical political ambition, but then the military looks at it and says and says "NATO is forward deploying so it is the time for action").

You're fundamental mistake is thinking that just because you don't think nuclear escalation is likely and so there's no action to take about it, that therefore military analysts and military decision makers reason the same way. I can guarantee you they don't, they are paid and trained to analyze the military situation independent of any political consideration. Military people don't care that they don't think there's a political situation today that would result in a war, they are paid to prepare for any likely war anyways (if the likeliest war isn't very likely, non-evil soldiers are happy about that ... but they prepare for it as a first priority anyways).

When the US forward deploys military assets the opposing militaries, in this case Russia, start planning and routines and conduct war games to destroy it. The very fact you're developing various plans and position forces to destroy something is convincing evidence that it's a threat to you.

The fact no civilian believes it is a "actual threat" is not how soldiers operate. It's there, it could shoot us, therefore we will plan to shoot it first if ordered to do so.

↪boethius, the Canada-Quebec and Ukraine-Donbas situations differ. Adding to ↪neomac's comments, a difference that matters has come up a few times in the thread.

The Kremlin sent operatives into Donbas to organize propagandize stage insurge arm shoot for years (eventually culminating with the invasion). Standard playbook. Oddly enough, they employ extremists of the sort they claim to be after in the first place (2023Oct8). — jorndoe

Guess what!

The Front de libération du Québec[a] (FLQ) was a militant Quebec separatist group which aimed to establish an independent and socialist Quebec through violent means.[3][4] It was considered a terrorist group by the Canadian government.[5][6] Founded sometime in the early 1960s, the FLQ conducted a number of attacks between 1963 and 1970,[7][8] which totaled over 160 violent incidents and killed eight people and injured many more.[8][9] These attacks culminated with the Montreal Stock Exchange bombing in 1969 and the October Crisis in 1970, the latter beginning with the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Cross. In the subsequent negotiations, Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and murdered by a cell of the FLQ. — Front de libération du Québec

Extremists also were in the FLQ, later sheltered by Cuba (maybe supported by Cuba or then the Soviets all along!?!?! who knows).

I said there were not circumstances in which I viewed a war against Quebec as justified due to separation. They want to separate, their provincial government declared independence, I would not view it as justified to have waged war against Quebec to subjugate them, even if there were Cuban or Soviet agents involved, and violence and extremism.

I specifically gave the example of a scenario in which France was physically next to Quebec and did whatever Russia did in the Donbas.

Countries breaking up has has happened a lot throughout history, it isn't "the end of the world", so if Quebec didn't attack us English Canadians I would not have, and still don't, view it as justified to have waged war on Quebec to maintain some sort of "Canadian pride" or whatever. It would be time to negotiate with this new political entity (whether controlled by the blasted French or not) and learn to live together. What would shelling Hull across the Ottawa river accomplish?

Furthermore, France was (and still is) a far more powerful country than Canada, so how would provoking a war with France have served English Canadian interests?

Canada is big so maybe France couldn't completely defeat us, but they'd do far more damage to us than we'd do to them, we wouldn't get Quebec back ... so what would be the point of the war?

I went through NATO training (in Canada) and one of the rules of war explained to me is that military action must have a military reason. Officer went through a long history of warfare with the catch phrase "then history evolved!" to explain each new rule we were expected to follow compared to the days of literally launching diseased corpses on catapults over city walls.

Military action must reasonably serve attainable military objectives, independent of the political situation and the political goals. Political justification of the goal does to justify a military campaign if it has no reasonable chance of attaining the military objectives.

We were instructed to surrender when further military objectives could no longer reasonably achieve the military objectives and further fighting would simply cause further loss of life without the potential of changing outcomes. Of course, reasonable chance in this context can be a small chance, depending on the impact of the goal in question in the context (i.e. fighting a hopeless rearguard action is justified in allowing the escape of a larger part of the forces); so actual analysis can be very complicated, but the basic point is that it is against the rules of war to fight on principle alone. Some wars are won, some wars are lost, the principle of minimizing harm reduces the likelihood of spirals of escalating violence (which we now see in Israel-Palestine can escalate all the way to genocide; overwhelming force being just as unreasonable in attaining a military objective as too little force to matter, which is why the other foundation of the rules of war is proportionality).

And guess what's totally not allowed?

Shelling civilians in Donetsk.

So I don't have much sympathy, on simply a soldier to soldier basis, for the Ukrainian forces.

Even according to our own Western civilians, Russia has killed less civilians in nearly 2 years of war than Israel has in 2 months ... yet Putin is Hitler and what Israel is doing is ugly but just the "reality of war".

The West has no moral high ground at the moment.

I wish it weren't so.

It is not a point made by 'experts' — Jabberwock

The point experts made was just noting the distance to Russia (which you shouldn't need experts to point of the obvious, but in our conversation it seems to be necessary), you then take the point that literally follows:

And what is the key concern The New York Times brings up? — boethius

... Which is pretty normal they would cite Russias concerns as according to Russia.

Again, you are so ignorant of the topic that you are not worth discussing except as an example of just how extreme people's ability to gaslight themselves and others really is.

Actual experts would point out that locating an offensive base within such range from Kaliningrad and Byelarus would not be optimal, to put it mildly, given the interception times. Moreover, their offensive capabilities, given the range and flight time of the relevant missiles, would be rather limited - you could get the same effect with a frigate in Baltic, which for the offensive purposes would have the advantage of not being in the same heavily observed spot. So much for your 'factual knowledge'. — Jabberwock

Oh, so you're saying it would be even better for NATO to move it's infrastructure even closer to Russia, like say in Ukraine?

You're literally making my points for me.

Now, yes, you can launch a missile from anywhere, but as I've explained that's not how risk analysis works.

You don't start risk analysis with "well, anything could happen really so therefore there is nothing in particular to pay attention to".

For example, take ships or submarines, trying to equate them with ground bases ... therefore there's no additional risk, is first simply a straight invalid argument form.

Even if we assumed the risk was the same ... then that's just more of the same risk. Russia and the US don't just have 1 submarine each that can end civilization, they have whole bunch each! So, if you wanted to consider missile bases on the ground the same kind of risk as a submarine, then the US is simply adding more submarines to their fleet inviting a response from Russia.

How an actual nuclear strike would occur is not some sneak attack, but a series of escalations in which one side concludes they have an "edge" and their best move is to strike first. Gaining an edge is about number of missiles (enough missiles to completely obliterate the opposing side as well as intercept a large number of the opposing missiles - some will certainly still get through but there's a difference between 10 nukes landing on your cities and 1000), which is why arsenals grew to such stupendous amounts at the height of the Cold War: enough nukes to target all their nukes (ideally multiple times), and then enough to survive both first strike and ABM interceptions and so on.

Of course, neither side in the Cold War could actually get to this comfortable position of having literally 10x more nukes than the other side, and a MAD balance of forces just requires missile parity (therefore it was rational to negotiate a reduction in the arsenal to avoid the chances of an accidental nuclear war).

However, in climbing down from the stupendous amount of warheads at the height of the Cold War, with the addition of advanced intelligence, targeting and ABM systems, you can start to come up with plans where you can (potentially) tactically outsmart your opponent in a first strike.

Of course, the US claims that it needs to develop these systems to protect itself from rogue actors, but all these systems have duel first strike use.

And that is simply in equating the risk of missile bases and submarines, doing so is anyways simply factually incorrect.

You can try to find ships and submarines on the high-seas, which if you do provides early warning.

A first strike is unlikely to be completely by surprise and out of the blue, as you'd still be likely killing tens of millions of your own citizens, but is much more likely in a series of escalations and the more missiles one side has closer to the other, the more likely they'll conclude they'll be better off after a nuclear exchange; likewise, because of this, the more likely the side at a disadvantage will first strike those bases leading to further unintended nuclear escalation.

In such a scenario the Americans would be like "Why'd you blow up the bases!" and the Russians would be like "We got scared so we blew them up!" and then the Americans would be like "They were totally there only for missile defence Iran, you just killed thousands of people for nothing, now we need to blow something up of yours!" to which the Russians would respond "You better not you Imperialist dogs!"

It's in these sorts of war games where you conclude that the more missiles closer to your border is very much a bad thing and therefore if you do not respond to NATO forward deploying missile bases then they'll just keep doing more of that.

The next thing you do is renew your ICBM capabilities and develop hypersonic intermediate missiles to be able to strike all the forward operating bases (either with conventional or nuclear weapons).

The argument that "well, the US is good and wouldn't hurt a fly so no one should worry about their weapons and where they are" is just stupid.

If I take out a gun and point it at you, you do not need to be convinced I intend to kill you to recognize the threat and react; if I then come closer to you with my gun drawn and slowly approaching your head ... the fact that I say I mean you no harm is not so reassuring. Would you let me do this if you had some chance of reacting and reducing the threat before I get my gun pressed up against your head? You have no evidence I intend you any harm: Maybe it's just a joke or Iran is hiding behind under your hat and I might have to take them out? Why does what I physically do with my weapon matter to you?

I'm honestly not sure you have the analytical ability to answer the question, so I will go ahead and do it for you. The reason you react to the threat is because the impact of me shooting you in the head (even by accident) is very high and therefore the risk that I do intend you harm or the gun goes off by accident warrants whatever action you can do to reduce the risk, such as drawing your gun and pointing it at me and telling me to back off, it's not funny and if Iran did actually live under your hat you'd blow your head off because you're a patriot.

No, because Russia had a clear intention of deploying actually existing missiles. — Jabberwock

You are so ignorant of the key issues that you are basically not worth talking to.

I will continue to do so, however, as I think you are well representative of the general ignorance of Western society.

There's literally a New York article entitled:

On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk — Title of the article

What is the very next sentence in the subtitle of the article?

A U.S. missile facility in Poland is at the heart of an issue animating the Kremlin’s calculations over whether to go to war against Ukraine. — Sub-title of the article

What are the points (made by experts) in said article?

As he threatens Ukraine, Mr. Putin has demanded that NATO reduce its military footprint in Eastern and Central Europe — which Washington and European leaders have flatly refused to do. Mr. Putin has been fuming about American missiles near Russia’s border since the Romanian site went into operation in 2016, but the Polish facility, located near the village of Redzikowo, is only about 100 miles from Russian territory and barely 800 miles from Moscow itself. — On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk

And what is Putin quoted as saying?

“Are we deploying missiles near the U.S. border? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its missiles and is already standing at our doorstep,” Mr. Putin said in December at his annual news conference. — On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk

And what is the key concern The New York Times brings up?

The Polish base, the heart of which is a system known as Aegis Ashore, contains sophisticated radars capable of tracking hostile missiles and guiding interceptor rockets to knock them out of the sky. It is also equipped with missile launchers known as MK 41s, which the Russians worry can be easily repurposed to fire offensive missiles like the Tomahawk. — On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk

Again, what is the fantasy here is that some bullshit that will work handily in some Western echo chamber matters in the real world.

You actually think people doing actual risk analysis are going to be like "hmm, well today there's is not a missile that is produced that is literally labeled as 'Aegis Ashore compatible' so therefore there is nothing to worry about".

You really think switching out warheads in even the ABM missiles are some insurmountable task?

Risk analysis is about what people can do, what they might be motivated to do in the present as well as future scenarios ... not what some troll on the internet claims is not 100% already done, signed in blood, deployed in the tubes today, US forces themselves photographed and geolocated the nukes in the tube and the president of the United States already did a press conference with the photos, standing beside the missile bases with the nukes, assured everyone that the nukes are definitely in those tubes and, to make sure he couldn't be misunderstood, had already ordered several of the nukes to be fired to remove all possibility for doubt.

Again, as I said, plausible deniability, no matter how thin or implausible, in echo chambers is a great way to masterbate with fellow sycophants about whatever your point du jour is. It is not a serious framework for analysis.

Had the Soviets only deployed "missile bases" and "we don't know which missiles are in the missile tubes, tee hee hee" and "we haven't literally developed a missile called 'Surprise Mother Fuckers' and published the specification" and had some plausible deniability bullshit ... you're position is "well of course the US wouldn't have been concerned in the least".

And guess what!! The Soviets initially denied the photo evidence represented actual nukes. Did the US have "actual proof" the nukes were in what appeared to be missiles? No.

Plausible deniability does not matter at all in this sort of analysis or decision making.

Again, I repeat, analysis based on the idea that NATO bases and infrastructure does not represent a threat to anyone, is just dumb.

Your comments and your like-minded interlocutors, are relevant only as an example of how people gaslight themselves as well as can feel so confident to speak about subjects they don't even have the most basic factual knowledge of. Truly remarkable.

If we are in fantasy land, the US could deploy the nukes everywhere - in Ukraine, whether it was in NATO or not, in Alaska, or in Greenland. — Jabberwock

Yes, obviously, that's why all the focus on nuclear submarines.

However, in any large scale nuclear war, you need a lot of nukes so forward operating missile bases significantly increase the amount of nukes that can be deployed in a short period of time, and if from a short distance that's a big strategic threat.

It's called reality, not fantasy.

US reacted so strongly to nuclear weapons in Cuba because it was close.

You ever hear anyone in the US administration (of on the entire planet) having said "If we are in fantasy land, the Soviets could deploy the nukes everywhere" ... to minimize their deployment to Cuba?

You'd really have the same analysis of the Cuban missile crisis as you have here?

You'd get up in front of your class and be like "the Cuban missile crisis was a big nothing border and all the US intelligence agencies and military and administration and the president were living in fantasy land and totally overreacted because the nukes could have been deployed anywhere anyways".

As I've said, this level of analysis is dumb and almost not worth replying to.

Oh, please do tell which missiles in European bases can be 'easily loaded with nuclear warheads'. But be specific... which types and ranges did you have in mind exactly? — Jabberwock

The whole point of exiting the INF treaty (which was never entered anyways, just pretend entering and exiting) is to develop exactly those kinds of missile with size and range to ABM missiles.

You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target.

Keep in mind also that ABM missiles are themselves first strike risks, which the ABM treaty was negotiated in the first place.

If you're doing actual analysis you care about risks.

There's a risk a combination of ABM and forward deployed missiles (and airplane deployed and sub deployed) could be used in a first strike (that may involve weapons or retrofitting of weapons you don't even know about).

There's a risk the US would want to execute a first strike.

There's a risk of geopolitical tensions going out of control and the US believes they're being, or about to be, first striked.

And so on.

In actual analysis that isn't on the level of "stupid" you list risks and start categorizing those risks and then evaluating those risks.

If you were a no-first-use nation and you evaluated the risk of a first strike on your territory as 0 then you wouldn't have nuclear weapons. Why would you develop a second strike capability to deal with a scenario that is 0 probability. You wouldn't.

Obviously when this sort of risk analysis is done, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange is quite low, but non-zero.

The other aspect of risk analysis (other than evaluating risk) is the impact of the events under consideration. It is risk multiplied by impact that determines actionability mitigation steps. The impact of a nuclear first strike is quite high, therefore the risk can be very low but still yield actionable motivation steps.

Is forward missile bases, either nominally ABM sties that could be fitted with nuclear weapons now or in the future (or then straight up abandoning "we're only concerned about Iran, tee hee hee" and simply overtly forward deploying nuclear missiles), in itself sufficient reason to start a giant war.

Now we know the nuclear first strike risk of these bases was worrisome enough to warrant actionable motivation steps by Russia, as they spent some diplomatic effort to try to stop that happening and then negotiate them being un-deployed and so on. So, obviously this forward deployment of missile bases enters into the Russian calculus.

The second thing any actual analysis of the situation would arrive at is that Ukraine is not such a stable place fill with people who only want peaceful relations with Russia.

It's unstable, so Ukraine entering NATO could lead to a series of escalations that lead to the US forward deploying nuclear weapons because they feel it is "needed" even if they didn't intend to do so from the outset.

Things change, and any analysis of these sorts of issues will go decades into the future. What can we expect the future to be like?

Could be more stable and happier than it is now.

... But ... there's a risk it's much less stable and a lot less happier than it is now.

Any risk analysis will go into those situations and, circling back to the missile bases, conclude it would be better if there was less of them and farther away.

Is nuclear risk the only analysis the nuclear powers do to inform decisions? Obviously not. But it is one dimension that informs their decisions and in particular military decisions (military institution of nuclear powers will have quite a lot of analysis going into nuclear war issues, as that's really the only way they can "lose" a big war and the consequences are much higher than simply losing a war, so it absorbs a lot of attention).

So you agree that denazification was basically Putin’s propaganda to dupe the Russian masses and the pro-Russian “useful idiots” in the West. — neomac

Each side is going to use information to make their case and mix both truth and untrue information to do so.

Israel has used October 7th to justify their actions, they've lied and exaggerated plenty of things about it, did they therefore "dupe everyone" because they've also used false information?

If you're pro-Israeli genocide then you'll just say "of course they exaggerate and add in some lies where they can!!" they're fighting a war and also fighting an information war!!

Likewise, Ukraine has been caught with a long list of lies and if you're pro-Ukraine you'll just say the same thing.

If you're interested in reality, then separating the fact from the exaggeration and deliberate lies is one first relevant step. An additional step is understanding what impact this information, both true and false, has.

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; so, at minimum, the same kind of security concern as armed groups who have no problem chanting "death to America" is to America), but far greater military concern is NATO (a bunch of terrorists are mostly a nuisance to powerful nation states, but where terrorist organizations, such as Azov, can have an outsized impact is in starting a war with another nation state).

So, 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, obviously they are one military concern, but, objectively not as big a concern as NATO.

There are a lot of reasons to go to war of course. A lot of analysis will go into including offices who make long term strategic analysis (which will focus a lot on nuclear weapons as they are "the threat" in any long term view of the position of any of the great powers; hence the resources spent on them).

Of course, resources and spheres of influence and so on are considerations too.

If you bother to read what I wrote, I did not dismiss the idea Russia would have invaded Ukraine come-what-may, I simply put down my reasons why I think that's unlikely (if Ukraine doesn't pose a threat, it's strategically far more advantage to "keep the spice flowing" to Europe; Ukraine really has to create a lot of problems to become a higher strategic priority than the spice flows).

So we can do the analysis and easily come up with most, if not all, the priority considerations in the decision to go to war.

The Nazis are definitely one important consideration.

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.

However, the Nazis also obviously play a role in both Russian legitimate reasons to wage war as well as propaganda to wage the information war.

In this, Ukraine and the West, simply gave Russia an incredible diplomatic and information-war gift.

The Nazis are obviously a much bigger emotional trigger compared to a lot of dry analysis that may require declassifying information to really make the case (information, such as vulnerability to a first strike by the US from Ukraine territory, that would never be declassified).

So, we can understand the Nazis are really there based on top-notch Western journalism before anyone got the memo that the Nazis were the good guys now and of course you need some colourful characters if you want to win!

However, we can also understand that if one side tolerates and basically promotes Naziism then the Russian side is going to be really angry about that and those facts on the ground will be very motivating a lot of Russian and also help consolidate the home front as "we're fighting the Nazis" is an easy argument to make (especially if you have Western journalists on YouTube interviewing those Nazis and there isn't really any doubt the Nazis are there and what they represent).

With they take what's factually true and exaggerate for the purposes of waging the information war, obviously, as does Zelensky and "Ukrainian Intelligence", as does Bibi and the IDF, as does Hamas.

So, in summary, parts of reality are simply necessary to understand a bigger part of reality and a single part can have multiple connections to other parts in different ways and on different scales.

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, or then it boils down to whether you think the war effort is justified.

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".

Actually determining who's justified in doing what is a complicated task, especially between nation states with a long history of conflict, and I have made it clear over the course of this discussion that I haven't done that analysis nor likely to.

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.

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.

Ukrainian justification is secondary to whether they can win or not, and at an acceptable cost or not, in my view.

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.

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).

Hmm Shouldn't really need a side-track to (genuinely) try answering the inquiry. Anyway, irredentism and such has come up among others, promoted by the Kremlin circle as justification. But the Kremlin doesn't want Zelenskyy or his government in Kyiv despite having been elected, maybe it was different once. (Euromaidan...?) — jorndoe

I literally have no clue what you're trying to say and how it relates to the conversation.

You state they "covered their bases" and answering that is a side track? Or then you could just answer directly but are deciding to side track? Or is my question a side track?

You make no points, you just spam your articles. Pretty much all your questions are just "maybe this, maybe that" and then spamming all your preferred news sources. That's not arguing any points and thus participating in a dialogue, but just basically microblogging in an inappropriate place.

I honestly don't see why the moderators tolerate these kinds of comments, which I don't say often.

Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?), — Jabberwock

For the obvious reason that they could deploy nuclear weapons there.

Furthermore, the US started the dismantling of the non-proliferation architecture (based on mostly treaties that the US didn't ratify anyways, so was never US law to begin with, which doesn't inspire much trust as a starting point) in abandoning both in official "executive policy" (what I guess best describes non-ratified treaties that we're just going to pretend are meaningful) and action (actually developing the weapons systems banned by the treaties) the ABM treaty and then the INF treaty.

The US makes clear they are a "first use" nation.

The US Is the only country to have dropped nuclear bombs on cities. More importantly, US policy makers and citizens aren't too phased by it.

The sort of bullshit you're spinning in your comment definitely works in Western echo chambers (how dare they say our nuclear weapons and expanding our territory are threatening!!) but in the real world outside those echo chambers, people, especially people that US policy makers continuously refer to as "rivals" and "enemies", don't just go ahead and assume US nuclear weapons are not a threat and of course "they would never use them".

Facts on the ground can change. Russia really didn't like the forward positioning of US missile bases in Europe (that can be easily loaded with nuclear warheads). You can say all you want "But they would never load them with nukes!!! It was needed to counter Iran!!!" but what are those assurances worth?

Absolutely nothing.

Of course other powers are going to view US military hardware (of any kind) moving closer to their borders as threatening and will take action to mitigate that insofar as they can.

Additionally, with a long contiguous border with NATO where on the other side there's all sorts of "extremist nationals" anyone charged with analyzing the risks will come up with scenarios where small factions (who have no problem saying their goal is to start a war with Russia) could basically start some shit that then escalates.

It's so incredibly delusional to minimize the weight the threat of nuclear weapons and the potential for nuclear escalation impose on decision making that it's almost not worthy of retort.

It's literally "get a clue" level of delusion.

Even stupider is the circle people go in of "of course Ukraine wants to join NATO and be protected from Russia!" and then when it's pointed out that Russia will obviously react to that (regardless of whatever moral speech you may have about it) switch to "Ukraine declared neutrality!!"

It's just dumb.

↪boethius, that was a question, inviting responses (preferably evident/justified), it was even emphasized. :D Get your glasses, try again. — jorndoe

Ok, the context of your question was:

"""
Switzerland and Sweden have a tradition of neutrality, or at least had. Moldova has a constitutional neutrality clause, though sort of impaired by Transnistria. The Baltics have their own stories (2023Jul8).

Similar to what's come up before (2022Mar13, 2022Jul21, 2022Oct8, 2022Nov9), suppose that Ukraine had ... ▸ declared neutrality with respect to international military alliance memberships, formally on paper / constitutionally (2022Mar8, 2022Mar9, 2022Mar11); ▸ retained right to self-defense, e.g. from invaders (shouldn't be controversial), including foreign training and/or weaponry as the case may be; ▸ explicitly stated that others respect sovereignty, self-determination, freedom to seek own path (shouldn't be controversial); ▸ actively pursued EU membership, and perhaps sought other such cooperation ... Something along those lines.

The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then?
"""

(↑ for an intact Ukraine) — Sep 26, 2023

... "something along those lines" ... "The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then?"

What bases?

Now, if the point of your comment is that somehow Ukraine "was neutral all along!!" we're already discussed that. Ukraine's definition of neutrality was ... doesn't exclude joining NATO which they were trying to do.

If your question was what would Russia have done if a peace agreement was reached, I note above the reasons to expect Russia to follow a peace deal (pre-blowing-up-Nord Stream) is the incentive to keep selling gas to Europe and so if the issues were settled, neutrality and the ongoing Donbas war, then my expectation would be that Russia would not re-invade simply because the risk would be gone and the costs outweigh the benefits (Crimea is important vis-a-vis oil transport across the Black Sea, but there's not really anything else in Ukraine that is worth more than the European gas trade; if that doesn't matter, only conquest, then I guess it's possible to have some convoluted plan to invade, get a peace deal and then reinvade later, but Russia also has other security concerns so I just don't see how invading Ukraine would come back as a priority if the strategic risk is gone).

That would be what I'd expect from the Kremlin if there was a peace deal at the moment in question.

However, for me, the more important question in deciding to fight a war is the ability to win the war. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you're conquered and sometimes you're liberated, throughout history. For me, everyone dying on principle is not sufficient reason for many, many, many deaths.

When you say Ukrainian sovereignty shouldn't be controversial, well neither should Iraq's, Afghanistan's, Syria's, Lybia's, and so on.

More important, "isn't controversial" is not what actually matters, but rather "important enough to send our own troops to defend Ukraine".

The policy I have issue with is sending weapons, which scholarly work on the subject indicates simply causes vastly more deaths without changing outcomes of conflicts. If it's important, we should go fight for it, do the "standing up" and have ourselves a little nuclear standoff and see what happens. If it's not important, but we like to say it is, sending weapons in lieu of honour is a cowards move.

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...

If all that Putin had wanted is Ukrainian neutrality, all it would have taken is for those troops to stay on the border and never invade Ukraine. And oh wait, he actually did get those promises from Germany that Ukraine won't be in NATO.

Yet Ukraine was ready to fall in a few days, just like Crimea had been taken. Without a shot, or just a few.

But that fact isn't your line. Nope, bad boy US had it's evil intensions. :smirk: — ssu

I'll go ahead and assume you're responding to me.

It's literally raining straw these days.

I've spent several long posts (and many dozens at previous junctures in the conversation, explaining the same thing) that precisely you would not simply "trust" Putin to hold hands and sing Kumbayah.

You would assume the peace deal is not worth much more than the paper it's written on and that Russia would reinvade if there was interest and pressure to do so.

However, that is the case in all treaties and other deals between states and obviously is not a reason for states to reject treaty negotiations.

The 4 points I outline are the main points of consideration.

Indeed, you may find it very probable that Russia would just invade later anyways, but you still have to be confident to be able to win the war with Western support (and be confident in that lasting) to justify fighting the war at hand (and also that it would not be over some threshold of acceptable cost to "win").

There is a whole bunch of points needing consideration to justify sending men to die and absolutely wrecking the countries economy and demographics (which were already quite bad, and millions of young people who left as refugees are unlikely to return).

Which should not be a controversial position that wars should be based on more than whims and "bah! Can't trust Putin!"

Now, if you conclude it's probable that Russia would keep its word, it would not be based simply on the fact that they gave their word, it would be based on a projection of the political situation in which one expects Russia to have various reasons not to re-invade.

For example, had there been a peace relatively quickly, the gas flows to Europe would have likely restarted, a "peace dividend" everyone would have been happy to collect. So, this would be one reason putting pressure against Russia re-invading. Likewise, if Ukraine became neutral and wasn't a nuclear threat (of hosting NATO missiles) and Russia obviously kept Crimea, which was and is the major strategic consideration in terms of land, war in the Donbas resolved, and there wasn't really any "problems" anymore, then one may project out that the diplomatic and economic cost of restarting the war is simply far higher than anything Russia would have to gain in re-attacking a Neutral Ukraine.

I point out that Russia may have no interest (or at least one predicts that as likely) in re-invading a neutral Ukraine and so maybe very unlikely to do so for various reasons in addition to having signed an agreement, and you turn this into me saying that Putin wanted to "hold hands and sing Kumbayah".

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. — neomac

Again the Nazi's are definitely there and definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine).

One of those problems I, and others, explained at length was the Nazis are a problem also because they are excellent propaganda material for Russia, which will of course (regardless of the number of Nazis in Ukraine and their actual power) they will be exaggerated by Russia for propaganda purposes as well.

Ukraine and the West tolerating, arming, training, supporting and apologizing for these Nazis is an immense military and diplomatic gift to Russia.

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).

Back to the issue at hand, you're ask was:

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

I provide this evidence.

Instead of being like "oh, my bad, my reading comprehension is indeed pretty low considering we already went over this very topic", you then try to put the words of the Ukrainian negotiator in my mouth.

Obviously in any peace deal (at the start of the war at least) "denazification" would be cosmetic political seasoning as there's no peace agreement Ukraine would accept where banning Banderism or Azov Brigade and implementing that practically is not really feasible anyways.

The Nazis are a critical element to understanding the war, both understanding Ukrainian internal politics as well as understanding Russian internal politics.

A major reason I predicted there would not be a "collapse of moral" or major internal opposition to the war, as many were predicting at the start, because "we're killing Nazis" is a pretty good argument in favour of sufficient reason to prosecutor the war for the average Russian soldier or citizen: are the Nazis there? Yes, even according to the Wests own media!

It's basically their version of "support the troops".

Now, now where have I stated that fighting the Nazis in Ukraine was sufficient reason for Putin or the Kremlin to prosecute the war. Political and military leaders would need more reasons than that: NATO is one, resources another, as well as many other considerations may have gone into the decision (for example doing the war before AI gets out of hand and changes the power dynamic in unpredictable ways could have been one reason to do the war sooner rather than later).

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).

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".

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.

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.

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.

Unless you're arguing that they sat down and said: "Ok, ok, ok, war game hats, focus, focus we'll go on an offensive that will take a bit of land back on the flanks, then go on another disastrous offensive later that achieves nothing, then our army will be significantly diminished and we'll be at risk of the collapse of the front and the collapse of the government: Let's do it! Break! Hut! Hut! Hut! as our American friends say".

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.

It's all very obvious.

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. — neomac

Truly remarkable.

Intellectual hobbits. You can learn all their ways in a month, and yet after a three hundred lives of men, they still surprise you.

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

It's honestly difficult to keep up and I don't have an over abundance of time at the moment.

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.

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

The interview in question:



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.

I do understand your frustration in trying to hold together your teetering tower of plausible sounding (to at least yourself anyways) alternatives to, if not the obvious facts, what is clearly very likely to be true.

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.

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?

What is propaganda is stating the reason to reject the peace deal is a lack of trust.

It sounds like a good reason: We don't like Putin (he's invaded the country after all", he's the enemy, therefore he can't be trusted, therefore it is justified to reject the peace deal.

What I am explaining is that the basic lack of trust between states is always at all times (the US literally got caught spying on Merkel), and relationships between states are not and never all trust based.

Relations are pressures and interest based. Notably, pressures and interests are not the same thing. Your interest can be one thing but I can pressure you to do another.

When states collaborate closely, are "friends", it is not because of simple word giving, but because there are pressures and interests that keep them aligned.

"Saying this peace deal is otherwise good but we can't accept it due to a lack of trust" is simply insufficient reason. No country trusts any other country, yet deals are made all the time.

To give a non-state example, prosecutors cut deals with criminals all the time. Do they trust the criminals? No. If trust was a necessary condition of deals there would by definition never be deals between prosecutors and criminals. What's the basis of the deal from the prosecutors perspective (i.e. why does the prosecutor bet the criminal will stick to the deal)? Pressure and interest.

Why the Zelensky regime requires this myth that "Putin can't be trusted" is because:

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.

Obviously case 1 is more honourable, but they were obviously wrong and admitting that would undermine belief in their competence and fitness to lead. Case 2 is less honourable, but as has been repeated in the media a lot lately, Ukraine does struggle with corruption.

For, if you reject a reasonable peace deal (i.e. not something like "rape all the babies" as a concession), sufficient reason still requires being able to win the war.

This should all be quite obvious. 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.

Now, if I think you're going to shoot me anyways if I give you my wallet (or the keys to the vault or whatever it is that you want), then that obviously changes the calculus.

The difference in relations between states is that losing a fight does not imply the deaths of all your citizens. It could, such as Genghis Kahn intent to make an example of your defiance, but that's not the case here.

One must evaluate all the potential outcomes, and their respective likelihoods, of battle, as well as the cost of battle, to determine the wisest course.

Simply because the West treats Ukrainian lives as expendable without a second thought does not entail that their worth really is expendable without a second thought.

The question is what might we then have expected from the Kremlin. Seems like they covered their bases, but what might have transpired then? — Sep 26, 2023

It's really unclear what your point is.

What I'm pointing out is that evaluating the likelihood for Russia not reinvading Ukraine later if a peace deal is reached would be based on a bunch of factors, one of which is the diplomatic cost of breaking a "guarantee".

You are entirely free to argue that Russia would reinvade later even if Ukraine is neutral. Of course, this is only 1 of the 4 points I mentioned that need evaluating.

If you want to actually participate in the discussion you need to present actual arguments. Just linking to stuff is not a form of argument; you're basically just spamming with your preferred sources while not making any arguments.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The reason no one mentions Bucha much in any narrative is because 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. The evidence available does not actually resolve the issue, so best to forget about it, especially as we've learned since that war is so messy and ugly and turns out civilians get hurt in wars all the time.

If the Ukrainian leadership wanted a peace deal (as they had some analytical framework analogous to what I propose above and the calculus was clearly in favour of peace) they would have worked out the deal.

Fact is they either considered the relevant points, in my framework or some comparable framework, and decided they really could "win" or then fight to a better negotiating position at acceptable costs.

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.

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.

Agreements change probabilities of future outcomes. "Probably" if you sign a contract with an employer and show up for work and do the work you'll get paid as agreed, but there's no "guarantee" that will happen. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The West, especially the US, wouldn't have at all liked the idea. Hence Ukraine would have become a pariah state thanks to it's strange obsession of having a nuclear deterrent. — ssu

I literally stated:

US didn't want Ukraine to have nukes either and an additional proliferation concern so trying to keep the nukes would have resulted, at best, in international pariah status even if we imagine there wasn't the above problems. — boethius

After explaining all the military and intelligence problems of trying to keep and reverse engineer the nukes while developing a long term nuclear program.

Even if Ukrainian leaders wanted to keep the nukes and didn't believe in non-proliferation as a moral imperative, they were faced with a long list of practical problems and risks of keeping the nukes as well as developing new ones, and then (turns out we both agree) the best case scenario would be pariah status as both the US and Russia would be agreed on the policy.

So, it is was not a matter of "political will".

Nonsense. What Ukraine lacked is simply the political will. If a dirt-poor North Korea can create a nuclear deterrent, obviously Ukraine could have done that far more easily with already existing material and know how. — ssu

The opinion experts on the subject, as cited by Wikipedia, as well as the common sense reasons behind those opinions is "nonsense".

No, it's not nonsense.

I did not argue that Ukraine could not develop a nuclear program, I argued that doing so would risk Russia invading / nuking Ukraine before it could complete the task.

Where you have countries developing nuclear programs, they cannot be practically invaded / nuked by the countries displeased by the development. Both Iran and North Korea are mountainous countries that are difficult to invade.

Furthermore, both Iran and North Korea are very far away from the United States. Although anti-ballistic missile systems don't mean much against a strategic strike by Russia that has a viable triad, such systems could likely deal with a strike by a rogue state.

Remember the Cuban Missile crisis, how the US reacted to nuclear missiles right on its doorstep?

Russia's concerns about nuclear missiles in Ukraine would be exactly the same and the logical choice when faced with that kind of threat that you can do something about is to lower the threat level before it becomes a problem.

Ukraine is not mountainous and is right next to Russia, so it's a totally different scenario.

You're also just skipping over the endless talk of invading North Korea (which could very likely happened); it's not like the US position was "well ... whatayagonnado". The North Korean gamble worked, but arguably just barely and the factors in its favour are a long list compared to Ukraine (China doesn't want North Korea occupied and North Korea only exists because of that Chinese policy).

Likewise the talk of invading Iran that is still ongoing today.

It would also be a difficult sell in the 1990's for Ukraine to ask Ukrainians to fight a war to defend the right to develop nuclear weapons to avoid the war that they would be currently fighting. The former Soviet countries wanted to simply Westernize and get essentially what Westerners had and live in peace with the West ... fighting each other was even farther from any ex-Soviet citizens mind.

In similar vein, no one wanted nuclear war back then, the global mood was full of hope (except maybe in Russia and Ukraine that was spiralling into a corrupt kleptocracy): the great hope was arms reduction and for humanity to pull ourselves back from the spectre of nuclear annihilation in which the peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw pact was seen as a major step in that direction and peaceful coexistence.

No one was thinking "you know what would be cool and a good thing, a lot of small states having nuclear weapons deterrence capabilities in the event larger states decide to invade them in a few decades".

Except for Mearsheimer!! Which I admit is both as prescient as it is ballsy to hold that position.

I disagree with him on this point, as bad as the war in Ukraine is: not only is nuclear war worse but increasing its probability I would argue is worse than an actual destructive conventional war.

The lack of political will in the situation at the time was to fail to fulfil the above aspirations (a failing we can attribute to peoples, factors and processes both within and without Ukraine and Russia) and create a prosperous social democracy: instead of keeping all of the corruption of the Soviet Union without any of the communist handouts while achieving an actual decrease in longevity and quality of life.

As to the subject of nonsense.

The logic of "let's very likely cause a war so as to do something to protect us from war" doesn't make any sense.

Such as "let's try to reverse engineer these nukes so as to very likely cause a war to prevent us from successfully doing so, so as to deter wars". This is the nonsense position.

Likewise, "let's try to join NATO (even though they won't have us) and thus very likely cause a war in which joining NATO would have the purpose to protect us from" likewise is nonsense.

But as Ukraine, or it's leadership at least, clearly believed in the promises from Russia (and from the Western states) in the Budapest memorandum, creating an own nuclear deterrent was out of the question. Not only would it have deeply angered Russia, the US would have been extremely angry too! — ssu

Unlikely.

People with even a little bit of political experience know these sorts of deals aren't eternal.

They got money (that they laundered a bunch to themselves and their friends) and they avoided a war in the short term. The same decision without the corruption we would likely view as just the common sense and essentially default position of every small nation that has joined the non-proliferation architecture.

Moreover, to what extent any of the Ukrainian leaders and policy analysts were confident in a perpetual peace, they certainly did not have in mind "great, we can just go ahead and join NATO" and they all could have easily explained that existing at peace with Russia would be contingent on not doing a few things.

Even if extremely corrupt, corrupt people are generally astute realists that have little trouble understanding and navigating actual reality; the trouble with corrupt kleptocrats is they put their understanding of people, systems and the world to evil purposes.

How bad was it for Ukraine to hand over the nuclear deterrent to Russia? And believe that Russia would keep up it's promises made several times? — ssu

The issue of the nukes is far more complicated than you say here.

Let us consider first just the military aspects.

Ukraine didn't have the arming codes and ability to maintain the nukes.

They would need to develop a nuclear program, where certainly having a bunch of nukes already would be a head start, but this would take a lot of resources.

So, let's assume Ukrainians do that, well to be an effective deterrent then Ukraine would need to likewise develop a nuclear triad of silo, air and sea delivery capability.

And this is where Ukraine clearly just doesn't have the resources to pull that off.

In this alternative history scenario, the more the Ukrainians would try to develop an effective triad, let's say even just 2 of the 3, the more nuclear weapons would be pointed at essentially all of Ukraine on a hair trigger.

Ok, imagine Ukrainians succeed at developing enough of the triad to be just barely effective ... what if it's compromised by Russian intelligence?

It's not as easy as just "we have some nukes lying round", you need a multiplicity of delivery systems that are not likely to be compromised all at once, otherwise you are inviting a first strike to take out your capability.

There is almost no end point we could imagine where Ukraine would develop a robust triad, or part of the triad, to be a deterrent.

To make things worse, developing these systems would take time: would Russia have allowed Ukraine to fiddle around with the triad until they got things working well enough to deter Russia?

So, it's not as "slam dunk" a case as Ukraine should have kept the weapons; had they refused the likely outcome would have been immediate war with Ukraine to retrieve the nuclear weapons before Ukraine could figure out how to hack or rebuild the nukes and setup effective delivery systems. My understanding is also that the nukes Ukraine had were guarded by Russian military personnel, so options were limited.

The deterrent value of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine was also questionable: while Ukraine had "administrative control" of the weapons delivery systems and had implemented measures to prevent Russia from using them, it would have needed 12 to 18 months to establish full operational control. The ICBMs also had a range of 5,000–10,000 km (initially targeting the United States), so they could only have been re-targeted to hit Russia's far east. The Soviet air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) had been disabled by the Russian military during the collapse of the Soviet Union, but even reconfigured and made to work by the Ukrainians, they would probably not have had a deterrent effect and had Ukraine done so, it would have faced sanctions from the West and perhaps even a withdrawal of diplomatic recognition by the United States and other NATO allies, and likely retaliation from Russia. Ukraine would also have struggled to replace the nuclear weapons once their service life expired, as it did not have a nuclear weapons program. Ukraine received financial compensation, and the security assurances of the Budapest Memorandum. — Ukraine and weapons of mass destruction, Wikipedia

Then there's proliferation, the US wasn't thinking: hmmm, maybe in 3 decades we want to prop up Ukraine as a proxy force to damage Russia ... while at the same time claiming it's all about Ukrainian sovereignty so what would be compatible with our proposed categorical imperative in 3 decades (Ukrainian freedom is all that matters) we should push for Ukraine to keep it's nuclear weapons and let them, if not help them, develop as much of the nuclear triad as they can ... yeah, that's what we need to do to be men of our word.

US didn't want Ukraine to have nukes either and an additional proliferation concern so trying to keep the nukes would have resulted, at best, in international pariah status even if we imagine there wasn't the above problems.

Ukraine's options were: dash for nuclear weapons and likely be invaded and nuked tomorrow ... to avoid getting nuked, or give up the nuclear weapons in exchange for some things. Ukraine was not in a good strategic position vis-a-vis the nukes.

Furthermore, as the wikipedia article notes, the Russians disabled the cruise missiles and were obviously concerned about the nukes, and certainly had a plan to recover the nuclear weapons by force if need be.

This was not a case of: you can keep the nukes if you want, we don't mind, but we're offering you this deal which maybe you'll take ... but if things go bad later you'll certainly regret it, totally you're choice though, we cool.

The facts are that in 2008 Germany and France blocked MAP, which put Ukraine on hold indefinitely. Then Ukraine declared independence from military alliances and put in its constitution. Then Russia has invaded it anyway. These are the facts, which you again seem unaware of. — Jabberwock

First a "holding pattern" is not a stop.

Ukraine declared both simultaneously that it was neutral and also intent on joining NATO, and that also their definition of neutrality didn't exclude collaboration with NATO.

In your delusional world where real world consequences don't matter, this sort of bullshit is enough to be totally convincing that NATO and the US was therefore doing absolutely nothing in Ukraine, whatever it was doing doesn't matter, and also Frand and Germany put a definitive stop to Ukraine joining NATO.

What the facts and reality actually is that exactly what I describe, a game of footsie a "will they won't they" relationship where everything is declared simultaneously. In the "let's rewrite history league" all the nonsense, such as claiming military collaboration with a military alliance is "neutral", was abundantly clearly not encroachment.

In the real world, what playing footsie indicates to any outside observer is "they might, they really might".

Ukraine's play was "keep thing ambiguous and hopefully jump into NATO one day". The play didn't work. You can argue Ukraine had a right to make such a play. Sure whatever. You can also argue that the play was the best move but unfortunately hasn't worked out so good; sometimes to the best move is foiled by bad luck. I have no problem recognizing people have a right to do stupid things, so the first point is not a problem for me, but definitely I would argue the second point is just plain wrong: if you are situated right beside a much larger power, you need to deal with that and not look to a large power thousands of kilometres away to save the day and protect you: you can play footsie with distant powers all you want, they'll certainly find that flattering and entertaining, but they're never going to be your partner unless there's some massive benefit that is worth the risk; that's just how reality works.

as you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Hint: Germany and France did block Ukraine's accession, hint 2 — Jabberwock

This oscillation is honestly stupendous.

One moment of course Ukraine has a right to join NATO and has a right to form closer military partnerships with NATO and NATO countries, bring in NATO arms and training and so on, all this is just exercising sovereignty and common sense moves of trying to get out of the yoke of Russian sphere of influence.

And the next moment, recognizing NATO is obviously a legitimate threat to Russia, apparently Ukraine would never join NATO so NATO isn't really a threat after all and NATO claiming Ukraine would join one day, and all the military collaboration, and Ukraine putting joining NATO in their constitution was just fliff fluff that meant nothing ... well if it means nothing, the statements and collaborations and arming on the ground, why do it? Why put joining NATO in your constitution if "everybody knows" Ukraine would never join NATO and it's nothing to worry about for Russia.

It's literally schizophrenic levels of delusional contradiction.

What are the facts, NATO declared Ukraine would join, and then Ukraine made a clumsy play to join NATO thinking that would solve its security problem and NATO certainly would need to keep its word ... oh, some day.

The play didn't work and the the thing joining NATO was supposed to avoid, being invaded by Russia, was provoked by the play: exactly the risk such a play entails.

NATO could have saved the day anytime since decades and just marched in and "stand up to Putin" on Putin's own border, but NATO didn't. Why? Because no one in NATO wants to actually pay any cost to "have Ukraine". Why? Because Ukraine isn't important strategically or economically or in any other way for the West to pay an actual cost. Hundreds of billions of dollars (much of it a direct subsidy to the war industry) you may say is a cost? Ha!! 4% of a single 7 trillion bank bailout! Those are rookie numbers.

You gotta get those numbers way up for it to be some real cost to the West ... and who just announced no more dollaridoos, not a single one left, for Ukraine?

Could be they're just working on it ... or could be further support may actually feel like a real cost, and who in the West wants to pay a real cost in Ukraine?

That is hilarious from someone urging me to 'live in the real world'. You clearly have no idea how the real world works... Ukraine joining of NATO required consent of all it members, some of which (mostly Germany and France) blocked it in 2008 (not for fear of Russian reprisal, but due to quite lucractive business going on, not to mention subversive influence of Russian on European politics which is only now being disclosed). — Jabberwock

In other words ... what you're saying is ... in the real world Ukraine is not important enough to NATO for NATO to let Ukraine in ...

Congratulations on expounding on the reasons why Ukraine is not important strategically to NATO.

But lets say Ukraine was strategically important to the US and the UK and not Germany and France, well first note that's another way of saying Ukraine is not important enough to NATO for NATO to let it in, but even then the US and UK are big boys, they could just go and make a bilateral defence agreement, such as the UK made with Finland to cover the ascension process.

US acts unilaterally all the time, so if Ukraine was somehow strategically important to the US, the US would just march right in, make some bases: as it does everywhere else it says it has "strategic national interest" in.

(mostly Germany and France) blocked it in 2008 not for fear of Russian reprisal, but due to quite lucractive business going on — Jabberwock

Is literally just straight up saying "Important members of NATO weren't afraid of Russia in the slightest, didn't even view Russia as a military rival, and just wanted to do business!!"

Not even fearing reprisal is as far as possible as you can get from some strategic military asset required for credible defence.

No, that is not the reason there is a war. The reason there is war is because most Ukrainians, as the constant majority of votes shows, want to get out of the Russian sphere of influence, just like Poland and the Baltics did. — Jabberwock

This is probably true, sure, but most Ukrainians also wanted to avoid a war with Russia in such a process, and so why they kept on voting for compromisers, including Zelensky advertised himself as a compromiser.

Likewise, certainly a majority of Ukrainians would like to be in NATO as a way to avoid being invaded by Russia.

The problem is that NATO doesn't let Ukraine in.

If you put it to Ukrainians anytime in the decades before the war that "would you like to play footsie with NATO for decades, be in a 'will we, won't we relationship' and all cute and shit, but never actually get into NATO and likely be invaded by Russia and the country ruined, millions of Ukrainians permanently leaving, the already terrible demographics totally shot ... oh, and hundreds of thousands of heroes dead or maimed in a war they can't win?", you really saying most Ukrainians would be like "oh! sign me up! Glory to those soon to be dead heroes!".

I don't think so. Rather, people in "less sophisticated" places, such as Ukraine, often put stock in word keeping, as that's the only way society has any sort of structure at all, and they are easily manipulated by more sophisticated civilizations that can see a bigger picture where their word meaning absolutely nothing is of greater benefit to themselves, over the long term; talk to the native Americans if this level of sophistications escapes your imagination.

When NATO started playing footsie with Ukraine, Ukrainians believed it: afraid, hesitant, maybe even disillusioned at times, but believed it enough to prance down the footsie path far enough of provoking a war ... and just guess if by this point on the yellow brick road, of a full scale invasion, Ukraine got their NATO medallion or not from the NATO magician?

Again, as I've said many times, I have zero problem with Ukrainian aspirations.

The problem is the West does not grant those aspirations, but rather cynically uses Ukraine, to its near total destruction, for its own purposes ... all while telling Ukrainians, and Western citizens for that matter, that "yeah, yeah, sure, sure, freedom".

↪boethius, I don't think you quite caught my drift with those couple comments. (Maybe try not to zoom in on individual verbiage while oddly forgetting the rest?) — jorndoe

Well what is your drift then?

If we agree that NATO isn't "making a stand" in Ukraine and no one, outside Ukraine, is actually "standing up for freedom or whatever" then what is NATO doing in Ukraine according to your alleged drift?

And what's your analytical methodology here, that if you say something obviously false (such as people outside Ukraine doing nothing remotely similar to "standing up" are in fact standing up to Putin) ... that I should just zoom out and see that you have some opposite meaning to your false statement?

I'm supposed to just blur my vision and get a general sense of what you're talking about by taking in all the letters as once and just "feeling you"?

How exactly am I supposed to understand your position if I don't zoom in on different aspects of what you say and challenge you on those statements or ask questions.

If your position is people should stand up to Putin, but no one's actually doing that outside Ukraine, certainly not yourself, that's very different to what you wrote initially.

Is Russia a legitimate threat to NATO? — Jabberwock

Obviously, has thousands of nukes.

The problem vis-a-vis Ukraine is that Ukraine is not a legitimate area of strategic defence for NATO.

If Ukraine was of legitimate strategic value to NATO, then NATO would have gone in the night to Ukraine at some point in the 20 years it's been playing footsie with Ukraine and just brought Ukraine into the alliance by surprise and then flooded the country with NATO troops, bases and equipment the next day.

NATO doesn't do this, before the war or even before declaring Ukraine would join ... oh some day, because Ukraine isn't important to the defence of NATO, certainly not the United States.

Therefore, it's irrational to risk nuclear escalation in order to secure territory that you don't care about.

So, why is there a war?

Well there isn't a war between Russia and NATO, that's clear.

There's a war because enough Ukrainians (though not the majority, going by any of the votes in which this was a major topic) are gullible enough to play footsie back with NATO and some of those even gullible enough to think NATO really will "stand up" for democracy and risk something real for themselves (aka. nuclear war) in order to "defend freedom or whatever".

The other reason we have the war is that the US elite saw strategic benefit in provoking tensions, as the RAND document literally entitled "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia" makes clear. Now, it's possible US elite weren't aiming for such a large scale war so destructive to Ukraine, but as RAND makes perfectly clear that is a risk (to Ukraine) of the policy.

Maybe try living in the real world for a couple of hours, the time at leas to review these events.

Sure, NATO can go play footsie with Ukraine and clearly threaten Russia with moving the NATO military system even closer to it and in a country that is unstable with all sorts of armed factions with their own agendas (risk of NATO in Ukraine is not the same as the risk of NATO in Finland, a stable and predictable country).

NATO can do that. Whether you want to argue it's a right or not, doesn't matter; they can do it, and there's real world consequences, whether you want to argue those real world consequences "shouldn't happen" or not, they happen.

Those real world consequences of footsie with Ukraine is Russia invades to, if not put a definite stop to further NATO encroachment, push the border back and severely weaken Ukraine economically and demographically thus structurally lowering the threat over the long term.

This just makes strategic sense in any longish view of history whatsoever and if I worked for the Kremlin I would have come to the same conclusion and recommended the same actions. The US has a history of starting and provoking wars to weaken its rivals, there's no reason it would stop that policy once Ukraine was actually in NATO or then further strengthened in arms and NATO training.

The question the US was putting to Russia was basically "you want to do business with Europe, you have to accept military encirclement on your Western border; you can do business, sure, but only with a gun to your head".

From the US perspective, it's also a good strategy. For, if Russia chooses to do business with Europe, then it does so under greater military threat and pressure and can be more easily controlled; the tension, in turn, would also help control European vassal provinces to the US empire. If it chooses to defend its strategic military interest then the US can completely cut Russia from Europe, weakening both rival centres of power (one economic and one military, and Europe is the greater threat to US power, so if the war turns out to actually benefit Russian military power, that's no biggy if European economic power is sucker punched in the process); Europe as essentially a stable, prosperous "peace vortex" in the land-mass centre of the world, is a far greater threat to US power than Russia and China combined; and what US strategists would fear most would be the EU breaking free of its vassla status and laying the foundation for global trade between Africa, Europe, Russia and East-Asia (stable financial, political and financial systems facilitate stable trade relationships; and Europe, until recently, had the opportunity to essentially leverage its political stability to become the arbiters of a new world trade relations; yes, that would include Russia, but a Russia trading peacefully with the rest of the world, and yes would include China but a China trading peacefully with the rest of the world, and everyone looking to European institutions to keep things relatively cordial and smooth, precisely because Europe has little strategic interest in renewed militarism).

So, a peaceful and prosperous Western Europe was good strategy against the Soviet Union, but a peaceful and prosperous whole Europe!!!! Including the former Soviet states!! Including Russia!!!! Forget about it!!!

We can easily make sense of the strategic decisions of both the US and Russia.

What does not make sense is the decision of Ukraine to be used as a proxy against Russia, completely ruining its economy and demographics and losing significant territory (including valuable industrial and resource territory), and likewise what doesn't make sense is Europes active participation of provoking the war which was easily avoided (plenty of European states in NATO that could have put the breaks on NATO enlargement to Ukraine and even expressed extreme hesitation and wariness, but the US said "hmmm, how about suck it" and that's what they did for decades) in addition to the EU being instrumental in provoking the 2014 coup, it was the EU ultimatum that was the casus belli for the CIA backed protests and then CIA backed coup. It was not in the EU's interest to purposefully create this sort of tension. The Ukrainians just voted in a compromiser with Russia and it would have been both the morally right and politically astute thing to do of letting this democratic mandate of compromise with Russia play out (that would have been respecting Ukrainian sovereignty). Now, the EU did realize its mistake and then rushed to work out a compromise deal between Russia, Ukraine and itself, which succeeded, but by the it was too late and the chaos could be transformed by CIA backed paramilitary forces into a violent coup.

So Russia takes Crimea in response to this uncertainty, an obviously wise strategic move.

Then there's this civil war in the Donbas that two rounds of diplomacy try to resolve, but we're informed later that the effort on the part of Ukraine and the EU states was entirely duplicitous and bad faith.

Then Ukraine elects another compromiser promising to make peace with Russia (as normal Ukrainians don't want a war with Russia that would be immensely destructive to Ukraine, in a best case scenario), and Zelensky is elected with a mandate to fight corruption and make peace with Russia. Zelensky literally said he would go on his knees to Moscow and beg for peace, that's how much of a self-effacing compromiser he was.

Now, I think Zelensky's words were genuine. The problem with Zelensky is he's an idiot without any political experience and easily controlled and manipulated.

1 - If the formation of a military block bordering with Russia on its eastern front was perceived by Russia as an intolerable existential security threat , this would hold for NATO as much as for a European military alliance. Even more so, if one remember that the US has NEVER EVER invaded Russia proper. France, Germany and Poland did. — neomac

Russia hasn't invaded a NATO country nor an EU country.

Ukraine is neither in NATO nor the EU.

Ukraine also (in the before times) owned Crimea which was home to an important Russian military naval base.

Ukraine is also politically unstable with plenty of armed factions willing to cause trouble and explicitly dedicated to the destruction of Russia.

Furthermore, and this responds to @ssu as well who seems often mystified that Russia views NATO as a threat, NATO is not just an alliance where parties commit to mutual defence, it is also a military hardware system.

Moving weapons closer to someone or something is by definition a threat.

If I put a gun to your head, you'd view that as threatening even if I was "promising" to not harm you and if fact only putting a gun to your head to defend myself!

Now, you can argue that Russia shouldn't invade Ukraine even if NATO is indeed a legitimate threat to Russia, but arguing NATO is not a legitimate threat is just dumb.

It is such an obvious legitimate threat that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was completely predictable if the push / game of footsie to integrate Ukraine into NATO continued.

Which makes that policy either completely idiotic or then entirely for the purpose of provoking Russia into invading Ukraine.

Since obviously NATO isn't going to risk any of its precious little soldiers to "defend Ukrainian sovereignty" and Ukraine has no hope of defeating Russia, the purpose of the policy is not the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty, preservation of Ukrainian lives nor really preserving anything "Ukrainian" whatsoever.

Now that the copium highs are wearing off, such as belief in the great counter offensive and "cutting the land bridge", I really hope cheerleaders for Ukraine fighting, repudiating any compromise whatsoever, rather than negotiating and compromising and really able to take a long honest stare at the dead so far and simply ask themselves if its fair that these people died on false premises and false promises.

What happened to the US promise of "whatever it takes"?

Oh right, it's turned into we've completely run out of funding for Ukraine ... but other people are to blame for that!

Everyone is a hypocrite, so what? Hypocrisy is an ad hominem charge. — Echarmion

Again with the marketing, never stops, but I'll unpack your commercial for the benefit of anyone following along.

An ad hominem attack is a fallacy in two cases:

1. When we're talking about timeless eternal truths, in which case the character of anyone doesn't matter.

2. In the case of contigent facts, when attacking the person proposing an argument rather than the content of the argument, when the argument is not related to their character. Character maybe relevant to contingent facts, but for the character of the speaker to be relevant they need to be making some claim to authority, either as some sort of expert or then a witness to events.

The classic example of the first case is mathematics. Obviously makes no sense to attack a mathematicians character to argue a proof they put forward is invalid.

In the second case, character is extremely relevant to all sorts of factual investigative processes (police and courts deal with this issue all the time), but, nevertheless, character needs to be relevant; aka. some sort of premise ("I am an expert so what I say is more believable than non or less-expert opinion" or then "I saw these things happen with my very eyes!") that is legitimate to attack and undermine. We may charge the expert with a conflict of interest and we may charge the witness to the crime with being an unreliable heroine addict.

Now, back to our own discussion.

First of all, pointing out the hypocrisy of US policy is not an ad hominem attack on @jorndoe, as perhaps you meant to imply a little slight of hand, but rather a ad hominem attack on US government policy and decision makers.

Evaluating the character of these actors in the conflict in question is entirely relevant to analyzing the situation and evaluating the intentions and likely future decisions of parties to the conflict.

One may even go so far as to say perspicacity requires having a clue of what you're talking about.

So yes, that US policy makers are hypocrites and aren't making any sort of "stand" in Ukraine is essential to understanding the conflict.

What we all have witnessed, regardless of our character, is weaponized enlightenment humanism.

The US military has always been both. The real rebranding is that of the European militaries, which suddenly have gone from necessary evil to integral part of the state again. — Echarmion

Ah yes, the US military has always been both corrupt psychopathic mass murderers as well as valiantly carrying the pillars of world peace on their backs.

I believe you mean to say that the US military has always been corrupt psychopathic mass murderers when it serves elite US perceived interest ... and corrupt noble and caring or whatever when that serves elite US perceived interests.

As for Europe ... what's the evidence of that European change in sentiments. A lot of people like cheering on the war in Ukraine, that's for sure, but the current protests spreading over Europe: Netherlands, Germany, Poland, France and so on, are not to insist on a mad dash to rearm to fight the Russians but on subjects like wages and the cost of living and fuel and so on.

And look on the bright side, you win too!

You get to engage in 2 years of moral masterbation at no real risk or cost to yourself, but rather live true heroism vicariously through the blood spent in Ukraine to "defend the West".

So many people need the war.

Just imagine the horrors of peace.

There should be antagonism towards that. There was towards the Third Reich. Was and is towards apartheid. And this. ... What would you think not standing up does? (Would that be cowardice, complicity, assent, something else?) — jorndoe

Russia is not comparable to the Third Reich.

And, as we've gone over a dozen times at least in this conversation, we are not "standing up" in Ukraine. Our soldiers are not there to do any "standing".

Rather, we are threatening Russia by trying to move arms (which are threats) closer to Russia, and we are supplying arms to Ukraine, but as you yourself seem to now agree, in a drip feed manner calibrated to ensure Ukraine is not a real threat to Russia, at an insanely high cost to Ukraine.

We are not making "a stand".

Furthermore, the sound bite of "making a stand" sounds good, but is not some sort of political or ethical theory.

There's plenty of evil in the world the West condones and profits from and there's plenty other evil any Western decision maker or policy analyst will giddily explain at some length how we don't have practical means to do anything about it and so "making a stand" would be counter productive.

The West has created a theatrical performance in Ukraine (at a severe cost to Ukraine) of pretending to be "standing up" to something, because it serves US interest.

And, to skip over your ignorant retorts, making Russia stronger servers US interests. The US needs enemies. Kremlin hardliners too, and in this both Russian and US hardliners are frenemies getting what they want out of the war.

Russia is building back its war machine.

The US has defeated the Euro as a competitor to the dollar, with plenty of money to throw at the defence industry in the process, which is also now rebranded as intrepid peace warriors almost overnight (rather than the corrupt military industrial congressional complex that ruined Afghanistan and then fled like cowards when it turned into a liability).

Everybody wins.

Everybody who matters anyways.

This is so typical, even in an Philosophy Forum.

Where does this eagerness come from to justify and hail one side from another when both sides could be criticized for disrespecting human rights or international laws? Why this desperate and naive intent to put countries to be either "the bad guys" and those opposing them "the good guys"? There's much criticize all Great Powers, but then again, they sometimes can have good policies too. Apparently this is too much to fathom for many. — ssu

Really, typical? It seems to me @boagie is literally the first participant in this discussion to present things as BRICS are good and America is bad.

@Isaac and myself and others, spent dozens of pages explaining that we're criticizing Wester policy because we are Westerners and therefore responsible first and foremost for the policy in our own Western countries and the political blocks they're a part of.

But, let's say America has some good policies ... does that excuse leading Ukraine to war and then having Ukraine sacrifice so many Ukrainian lives for American (elite) perceived interests, on false pretences?

As for the war "not being lost" yet, we discussed, you and me, t some length at the start of the conflict of how Ukraine has, based on information available to us, essentially zero chance of victory against the Russians.

Your only argument against this conclusion is that maybe Ukrainian generals know something we don't and have some sort of secret tactic, weapons or plan that may surprise us.

Seeing as I couldn't even imagine what that secret thing could even potentially be, I predicted "that not happening" and things going exactly as we agreed are extremely likely based on the available information (that Ukraine will not be able to achieve any significant offensive, such as cut the land bridge much less push Russia to the pre-war border, given Russias far greater capacities, Ukraine would simply have the same problems the Russians had in their Northern offensive, but much, much harder).

So, since that time has slipped away and hundreds of thousands of lives have as well, have you seen since this secret thing that could deliver Ukraine victory?

Because if you haven't, then everything is exactly on course according to your own evaluation sans secret move of some sort: Ukrainians are outmatched in every capacity and therefore are succumbing to attrition.