Our leaders, last week, reacted with shock and emotion to the images of hundreds of civilians massacred in Boutcha and other suburbs of Kyiv. Emmanuel Macron: "The images that have reached us from Boutcha are unbearable". Olaf Scholz: "Terrible and horrible images". Antony Blinken: "A punch in the stomach". They are absolutely right. But one has the distressing impression, listening to them, that this is the first time they have seen such images: images of civilians murdered by Russian soldiers. But we have been seeing such images for twenty-two years, precisely such images. Simply, the corpses that we were looking at with a distracted eye, all these years, were Chechen, Georgian, Syrian, Central African, Libyan corpses. It was disturbing, but not enough to question our policy of rapprochement with Vladimir Putin, our policy of constant "reset" in the face of his provocations and crimes.

-- Jonathan Littell, le Figaro, 13/04/2022

As I said, ssu would be in a better position to answer this question. I would guess they are now more scared of a possible invasion than they were before the war in Ukraine. — Olivier5

When the Russian army is getting is ass kicked in Ukraine and has massed it's troops there, what better time to join NATO?

You know, it's quite telling that Isaac now takes up this issue about this issue when I and @Christoffer already discussed the matter a month ago and then discussed the frantic communication between Stockholm and Helsinki and the shuttle diplomacy before this. But of course, the topic is now in headline news and so now the issue comes up. Well, people can talk here about issues that have not yet come up in the media yet in this forum.

So I would refer to what I said a month ago here. It's also useful to listen to the comment of an Finnish ex-prime minister who tells our position quite well and the what is left of the idea of Finnish "neutrality". After all, Putin is both against the EU and NATO.

But I guess there's no worth to discuss it if the response is just rants and ad hominems and the only correct topic are the evils of the US.

Just how off the discussion is among some commentators here can be seen from an excellent historical commentary made by Indy Neidell and Spartacus Ohlssen:

(Starting from simple facts:)


The video series (few of them) is worth watching as it gives a good historical perspective for the events in Ukraine.

When the Russian army is getting is ass kicked in Ukraine and has massed it's troops there, what better time to join NATO? — ssu

Yes, there's that too, I guess: an opportunity to seize now -- when the Russians cannot do much about it, busy as they are elsewhere, can't even argue credibly against Finland's need for protection, and when the Finnish people support it -- or perhaps never.

> My point requires only that the policies of the ruling classes cause some deaths among the working classes

I don’t think so. First of all your claim was “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another.” Second, you were neither clear about what oppression means nor how to evaluate it (here you take as a metrics “death” elsewhere you were talking about economic oppression “It is an economic fact that the working class are oppressed by the elite classes”). Third, you weren’t talking about “some” oppression but “far more consistent” oppression: so if your metrics is “death” then you have to prove that the Ukrainian ruling class’s policies cause far more deaths than the Russian soldiers as working class are causing to Ukrainian families.

> I don’t see the point of your claim “defending one's nation' alone is insufficient as a moral reason” since the “insufficiency” qualification by comparison to other alleged more relevant moral reasons (e.g. fighting against the ruling class, which you admit can be unacknowledged by the oppressed) doesn’t question the fact that Ukrainians actually have an acknowledged moral reason to fight for defending their nation and therefore feel compelled to act upon it as they do. — neomac
Of course it questions that fact. If there's no moral case for defending one's nation then those merely 'defending their nation' have no moral case. It could not be more simple.

Doubt that. Let’s recapitulate your previous claims:
(1)“I’m arguing that simply 'defending one's nation' alone is insufficient as a moral reason because the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another.”
(2)“You could claim that one is morally more justified in fighting X over Y, because X is more oppressive, but that doesn’t equate to claiming that one has no moral reason to fight Y. — neomac
Yes. Which would probably be why I didn't make such a claim.”

(3) “how come that the Russian soldiers (example of working class) prefer to kill Ukrainian families (which surely include members of the Ukrainian working class) instead of killing or mass revolting against the Russian ruling class (Putin and his entourage) if they have greater interest in opposing their ruling class more than in opposing other people? — neomac
I didn't say they realised or agreed, I just said they had more in common with each other than their rulers and bosses”.

So, according to (1), Ukrainians fighting to defend their nation wouldn’t have a sufficient moral reason “because the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another”. Yet, according to (2), you didn’t claim that Ukrainians have no moral reason to fight the Russian armies to defend their nation, when saying that they have no sufficient moral reason to fight the Russian armies. So Ukrainians actually have a moral reason to fight against Russian invasion.
Now you say that Ukrainians have no moral case to keep fighting the Russian army.
So what on earth does it mean that Ukrainians have a moral reason to fight the Russian army to defend their nation, yet they have no moral case to fight the Russian army to defend their nation?! Concerning your “moral reason insufficiency”, I find it problematic wrt its prescriptive implications, especially in light of (3). To clarify this, here is a more trivial example: X is a charitable man and has a moral reason to help A, a very poor man but with no family to support (2) however his moral reason to help A is not sufficient only in the sense that there is also B who is a very poor man with family to support, so B’s case is comparatively more urgent than A’s case (1). Yet B’s case is totally unknown to X or X has reasons to believe that B is neither very poor nor with family (3). In this scenario, should X help A or not? For me it would make sense only to answer yes, but you would say no, right?
Finally, (2) looks in contradiction to other claims of yours (“fighting over a flag is always wrong”, “Fighting a war over a flag is without doubt immoral”) where fighting over a flag is no doubt always immoral: how can “fighting over a flag” be at the same time no doubt always immoral and still be a moral reason?!

> OK then what is the relation between Russian and Ukrainian rich people being in a luxury yachts, while Russian and Ukrainian children starve do death in their rubbish, with the fact that Russian soldiers are exterminating Ukrainian families and children? — neomac
Nor did I restrict my analysis to Russia and Ukraine. Are you going to go around the world adding one country at a time or are you going to have an honest conversation including the fact that America and Europe are deeply involved in this conflict?

I have no idea what analysis you are talking about, I’m still waiting for one about the pertinence of your claim “I would have thought it pretty self-evident that people swanning about in luxury yachts whilst children starve to death in their rubbish was both unfair and cruel” wrt the fact that Russian soldiers are exterminating Ukrainian families and children.
The irony is that your excuse to dodge this task is that I interpret your unrestricted claims more strictly. Yet I did that precisely because they are unrestricted, not despite the fact they are unrestricted. It’s on you to analytically clarify how your unrestricted claims should be properly understood not on me to do the job for you.
Besides, I don’t see how one could possibly have an intellectually “honest conversation” in a philosophy forum without clarity and arguments. So until I see some effort in this direction from you, I can’t take your “honest conversation” proposal seriously. And apparently I’m not the only one who questioned the honesty of your approach in this debate, am I?

> What the situation is and what our choices are, are two different things.

Meaning? Spell it out more clearly and argue for it, if you can. If Zelensky’s choice (e.g. between keep fighting or surrender) should be morally/strategically assessed based on a de facto situation (Russian control over Crimea and some Donbas lands) as you claim, why shouldn’t your related choice (i.e. Ukrainian keep fighting or surrender to Russian demands) be morally/strategically assessed based on a de facto situation as you framed this war from a geopolitical point of view (i.e. “American expansionism vs Russian expansionism”)?

> Who said Zelensky was 'constrained' by the de facto circumstances?

I am, based on how you framed the negotiation best outcome, in line with Russian demands.

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

“you just repeated Putin’s demands and related blackmails without considering Ukrainian demands at all. — neomac
I know, that's why I said them. Those are the demands on the table at the moment, so of course they're Putin's. The argument was that they don't push Russian expansionism futher. They are the de facto positions already.”

> You introduced maths. Why does a multi-causal analysis entail that I should be able to carry out some mathematical calculation assigning degrees of blame? I can say party X is somewhat to blame and party Y somewhat to blame. That's multi-causal and involves no maths whatsoever.

Oh I see now how pointless your previous comment was: “You appear to be unfamiliar with multi-causal events, perhaps read up about the concept before pursuing this further”. Because the claim “party X is somewhat to blame and party Y somewhat to blame” is not a multi-causal event analysis nor necessarily requires one. Multi-causal analysis refers to the identification of a minimal set of causal factors (where the concept of “causal factor” goes beyond agency and intentionality) and each causal factor has a certain weight (statistical, i.e. depending on the stochastic correlation between causal factors and effects, or probabilistic, i.e. depending on the ratio between one factor and the total number of factors) in contributing to a certain effect. So you were loosely talking about multi-causality to refer in reality to multi-agency dynamics and related responsibility/blame attributions, as I clarified here (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/675364 , see comment about your vase broken example).
But if you want attribute blame based on multi-agency dynamics then, saying of the West, “recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral” looks preposterous as much as your example of the broken vase to explain this: the West is no real moral agent while your broken vase example is not an example of multi-agency dynamics. Besides, if you want to put “some” blame to some agent wrt others in a multi-agency dynamics, it would still be important to assess how much blame in order to allow a proportionally adequate response. For example, assessing how much Zelensky is blameful wrt Putin will morally justify a proportional support to push Zelensky to accept Russian demands or to formulate Ukrainian demands in a way that is more acceptable by the Russians. Now, if the Ukrainian patriotic resistance is morally defensible (at least as long as they are aggressed, as I argued), then the Ukrainians can not be blamed for that, nor can be Zelensky as the Ukrainian legitimate leader in times of peace and war (as I argued), while Putin & Russian soldiers bear all the blame for continuing this war.
So it’s on you to clarify why Zelensky bears some responsibility along with Putin for the fact that Russian soldiers are killing Ukrainian families, and how much Zelensky is blameful wrt to Putin for what happened.

> I made my moral assessment based on a posteriori comparative evaluation concerning how much Zelensky’s choices reflect what Ukrainians actually value (defending Ukraine from Russian aggression), how much Ukrainian values are closer to Westerners wrt Russians (Ukrainains are more open to westernization), how much proportionate Russian response to the claimed threat from Ukrainians was, how much Russian aggressive expansionism is an actual existential threat to the West (given the actual Russian cyberwar against the West, the actual nuclear threat against the West, the actual Russian aggressive expansion in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa, and Putin’s actual aspirations to a new world order), and so on, and my conclusion is that I have moral reasons to side with Zelensky’s resistance against Russia. — neomac
So a list of arbitrary preferences then…

> Yes I’m claiming there are moral reasons to back a particular strategy, and the particular strategy is supporting Zelensky’s resistance against Russian aggression. Does that sound new to you after all I already, repeatedly and extensively said? — neomac

No, but you've yet to adequately support any such reasons other than state some entirely arbitrary preferences and then declare alternative 'preposterous'. If you find the views of anyone who doesn't share your entirely arbitrary preferences 'preposterous' I suggest a debate forum isn't the best place for you.


What do you mean by “arbitrary”? I’m not judging based on my own preferences alone, nor am I judging without rationally processing a load of information which include people preferences among other things (for example, the feedback from different experts concerning the strategic stakes of this war). So my moral approach is the opposite of “arbitrary” as I understand the word “arbitrary”. Actually that’s the reason why I support this approach.
On the contrary, I find arbitrary your claim that fighting a war for one’s nation is no doubt always immoral, precisely because it doesn’t take into account what other people value, but only what you value (i.e. life) and prior to any rational processing of the situation at hand.

> if you contrast a Russian puppet government wrt Zelensky’s, praise the first and blame the second — neomac
Where have I done anything of the sort?

Here: “It’s not their lives. Zelensky (and his government) decide how to proceed. Western governments decide in what way to assist. Ukrainian children die. They didn't get a say in the matter. If you think that's moral, that's your lookout, but I don't see how. I don't see anyone asking the Ukrainian children if they'd rather lose both parents and remain governed by Zelensky, or retain their family and be governed by a Putin puppet”.
And now here:
“Option 1 - Long drawn out war, thousands dead, crippled by debt, economy run by the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of lobbyists benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue and yellow flag over the parliament Option 2 - Less long war, fewer dead, less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue, red and white flag over the parliament.”
This is called comparative advertising in marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advertising) and it explains how you strongly suggested your support for a puppet government over Zelensky’s patriotic government, without saying it.
So it is evidently plausible to say you are suggesting to replace Zelensky’s government with a puppet government, which is even more than what Putin asked in the scenario we discussed.

> Option 1 - Long drawn out war, thousands dead, crippled by debt, economy run by the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of lobbyists benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue and yellow flag over the parliament.

Option 2 - Less long war, fewer dead, less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue, red and white flag over the parliament.
Option 2 has fewer dead.

First of all, I see “regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor” in both options. So since it doesn’t make any difference, what was the point of putting it? Second, what does support your claim “less crippled by debt” and “less in thrall to the IMF”? Actually there are reasons to doubt that if Ukraine loses Crimea, part of the Donbas region, and has a Russian puppet regime, it will recover more easily from its debts, since its economy will be badly crippled (due to the economic, energetic and industrial importance of those regions) and its dependency to Russia might suffer from the sanctions the West imposed on Russia as well. So their economy could go shittier than the Russian economy is right now (especially if Russia doesn’t make any reparation payment), and still under shittier Russian ruling class who cares about the Ukrainians even less they care about the Russians. They should give up on their hopes to join the West as they wanted, see their culture repressed along with persecutions of dissidents and rebels (which might be as bloody as in Bucha). They could also be involved in other Russian expansionist criminal wars as much Belarus was.
For the West the chances of another war against Russia can only grow bigger if option 2 was the case, and Russia pushed further its geopolitical agenda (so again more deaths and destruction also for the Ukrainians if the war will involve again Ukraine, this is also what buffer states are for right? ). Indeed Sweden and Finland are thinking to join NATO. So provocations are not over yet right?

> Why? People are not normally required to avoid all risk to others in order to avoid being labelled immoral?

Let me remind you of what you claimed “Zelensky bears some moral responsibility for the deaths if he chooses to continue fighting when he could have take a less harmful other option. That's just a statement about how moral responsibility works. It doesn't require me to do any maths. If you don't agree then you'd have to offer an alternative theory of moral responsibility; one in which people can make decisions without any blame accruing to them for the foreseeable outcomes.”
So your point is that Zelensky’s choice is somehow immoral right?
Now compare the previous claim with this one: poor bear some moral responsibility for the deaths/misery/starvation/disease of their children if they choose to give birth to their babies when they could have taken a less harmful other option, namely not having babies.
It’s a similar line of reasoning as the previous one, right? So the choice of having children by the poor is somehow immoral right?

> What are the other solutions you are talking about? — neomac
I'm not answering these stupid questions. Either have a serious conversation or don't bother replying.

Why stupid? Depending on your answer I can better assess the consistency of your reasons, precisely because I doubt they are consistent. BTW, enquiring about your reasons should not look that stupid to you if you want to be consistent with your claim: “All we can ever do on a site like this is enquire about people's reasons for holding the views they hold. The entire enterprise if pointless otherwise”.

> What is the point of such claims, in particular the part I put in bold? I see none. — neomac
Seriously. You don't see the point in ascertaining who I'm talking to? What garbage.

No I don’t see the point, for precisely the reasons I explained and you didn’t address, which again doesn’t sound consistent with your claim: “All we can ever do on a site like this is enquire about people's reasons for holding the views they hold. The entire enterprise if pointless otherwise”.

> I have no idea what “the outcome continued war is compared to matters.” is supposed to mean. — neomac

Option 1 - Long drawn out war, thousands dead, crippled by debt, economy run by the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of lobbyists benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue and yellow flag over the parliament.

Option 2 - Less long war, fewer dead, less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue, red and white flag over the parliament.
Option 2 has fewer dead.

That doesn’t answer what I previously asked: “for the third time, wouldn’t this line of reasoning of yours simply support whatever the status quo is (ruling class oppressing working class is a de facto situation right?), since no power (especially authoritarian) can be radically challenged without risking one’s (and often beloved ones’) material well-being and life?”
And then asked again:
“How else do you see the oppressed poor get better condition from an authoritarian ruling class without fight (history is plenty of violent revolutions and civil wars where the poor tried to fight against an authoritarian ruling class to improve their conditions), and therefore risking one’s (and often beloved ones’) material well-being and life? I’ll remind you that you keep talking about the importance of ruling class oppression which is far more consistent than the oppression between nations, so would you exclude fighting against an oppressive ruling class (like the Ukrainian peasants’ revolts against the Stalin’s forced collectivization) as morally defensible for fear of worse consequences (like the Holodomor which is worse than what Russia has done so far in this war against Ukrainians)?”
It’s important you answer those questions because you are the one who claimed “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another” and believes it’s pertinent in the debate about the war in Ukraine.

> P1. If, in the Ukrainian-Russian negotiation, demands are unacceptable [p] or the assurances aren’t enough [q], then the negotiation fail [r]
P2. In the Ukrainian-Russian negotiation, negotiation demands were unacceptable [p] and assurances weren’t enough [q]
C. The negotiation fail [r] — neomac
Well then C doesn't follow because you've not demonstrated P2.

You evidently lost track of what I and you were previously talking about. On my side, the point wasn’t to provide a conclusive demonstration concerning the question of the negotiation failure due to the lack of assurance, but only its plausibility based on the available evidences: “Negotiations failed, so either the demands were unacceptable and/or the assurances weren’t enough. Since I wasn’t there at the negotiation table, I can only guess from available evidences and plausible reasons that support either cases. I already provided some for both cases. So if assurances weren’t enough at the negotiation table (which I find plausible due to evidences and reasons), then the mistrust was too much.”
Now, while this last objection of yours is related to P2 (which you claim I didn’t demonstrate), the previous one was more related to P1 (“That doesn't follow at all. Two parties could trust each other 100% and still not reach agreement on the deal because neither side thinks they have the concession they were looking for. It need have nothing to do with trust”). And in both cases you repeated the same complaint “that doesn’t follow (at all)”.
Yet my argument is logically valid (the conclusion correctly follows from the premises and I hope you know the distinction between valid and sound deductions), I didn’t ignore the case you were mentioning (100% trust but no satisfactory concessions), I provided evidences to support not the truth but the plausibility of P2 as expressly intended, so your objections either are wrong or missing the point.

> Seriously? You want me to re-post all of my comments with the names edited. Are you retarded? Can you seriously not handle the task of simply reading one for the other?

Yes seriously. There are two reasons why I ask: one, to more comfortably quote individual claims of yours (which would also reduce the risk of misunderstanding). Second, depending on the way you formulate the question, I could ask you to be more specific (indeed some of your questions were ambiguous or unclear about what they are referring to) or to argue for its implied assumptions (e.g. if I don’t see evidence to support what your questions assume to be the case).
Don’t start calling names, dude, your position is in such a bad shape already that you do not really need to worsen it.

> Option 1 - Long drawn out war, thousands dead, crippled by debt, economy run by the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of lobbyists benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue and yellow flag over the parliament.

Option 2 - Less long war, fewer dead, less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue, red and white flag over the parliament.
Option 2 has fewer dead.

I'm not saying anyone has to do anything.

You are not saying it, yet you are suggesting it. If we are talking about moral, defending a line of reasoning to support a certain moral position has a prescriptive force related to what people should do e.g. supporting or not Ukrainian resistance against Russian invasion (“whether negotiations are taking place is not the question. Whether you support them is the question”). So if you say that “fighting for a flag is no doubt always immoral”, that implies that people should never fight for their nation. It doesn’t matter if you phrase it that way.

> I’m pointing out that the terms offered by Russia are in this specific case, not applying to every single case in the world (which you bizarrely assumed), are such that it's not worth thousands of lives and huge indebtedness just to avoid them.

I didn’t make any such assumption. When one argues in support of one’s claims one can rely on some more general beliefs and/or more specific beliefs. While defending your position, you too seemed to rely on some more general beliefs (“fighting for a flag is no doubt always immoral” or “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another”) and other more specific (like when you talk about “less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF”) so I addressed them differently depending on their level of generality.

> I choose the experts whose opinion align with the narratives I prefer. I have world views I find satisfying and if an expert opinion aligns with those I'll choose to believe that expert rather than one whose opinion opposes them. all this assuming the expert in question has sufficient qualification and no obvious conflict of interest.

Let me notice first this: you talk about your personal preferences (+ some comparative criteria) in trusting some experts and yet you do not take this to be arbitrary right? But when I talked about preferences (not only mine! + some comparative criteria) in my approach to moral assessments you dismissively said “a list of arbitrary preferences”. That doesn’t sound fair, does it?
Besides your additional criteria (“sufficient qualification and no obvious conflict of interest”) look neither better than mine (“double-check based on what I find logic or consistent with other sources and background knowledge”) nor incompatible with mine. They are not better than mine because even if conflict of interests and titles are certainly pertinent parameters among others when assessing experts, yet they are neither conclusive nor sufficient per se: during the covid crisis there were experts (like Luc Montagnier) with titles and no evident conflict of interests but whose reliability when talking about covid was still pretty dubious. They are not incompatible with mine because e.g. I don’t even know how you would assess “sufficient qualification and no obvious conflict of interest” without adequate background knowledge. Yet oddly you didn’t accept mine as good response to your question, God knows why.
At this point I could try to complete my previous answer as follows. First of all, my understanding of the strategic implications of the war in Ukraine results from processing information from different sources, including experts (more than I can remember) on different fields and with different views (including Mearsheimer, Kennan, Kissinger). So it’s not like I have my moral or strategic understanding of this war and then I look whoever expert is confirming it. Secondly, as far as trust is based on implicit background knowledge (which include one’s personal encyclopaedic baggage of notions and cognitive habits), it doesn’t even make much sense to ask why I trust an expert. It would make more sense if I were to compare the opinion of the expert X wrt to the opinion of the expert Y (because I can compare for example their titles or their arguments or how much they converge with the opinion of other experts, etc.), or if I were to re-assess X’s opinion in light of some putative discrediting evidences (like a conflict of interests). With political leaders things are complicated by the fact that there might be discrepancies between what they say and the reality, or what they say and what they do as we commonly and widely experience (so it’s harder to assess what is physiological and what dysfunctional or how much a leader is reliable).

> Seeing this crisis as a random outburst from an unprovoked madman who the US can stamp on with it's shiny military is useless. It achieves nothing.

It is incorrect to say that it achieves nothing if it strengthens Western consensus in support of resistance/containment against Russia. You probably mean nothing you value for the reasons we are discussing.
On my side, I never talked about “a random outburst from an unprovoked madman”. Some give credit to the idea that Putin is victim of his own delusional propaganda and his paranoiac mentality, typical of a cranky single dictator surrounded by yes-men and pressed by the events, which may have some plausibility, even if the geopolitical competition between Russia and America can definitely not be reduced to Putin’s mental state.
What I also find interesting though is that the most vocal non-Ukrainian subjects about the importance of supporting Ukrainian fight against Putin I’ve heard so far are Russian personalities (like Andrey Illarionov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl_nWwx2B7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfYVX5ZWxBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDmEPFO_hd0

> Seeing this crisis as an inevitable result of capitalist imperialism lend support to the fight against capitalist imperialism, which is a good thing.

That is why you want to help Russia win against American capitalist imperialism, because American capitalist imperialism is the greatest Evil. This is what I was trying to get from you when I was asking you about your preference between Russia and America, or America and Isis. As long as Russia and Isis win against American capitalist imperialism it’s a good thing, right? You see there was no need to talk about third strategies or opposing Russian expansionism, after all. You just wasted our time on your pointless and poorly argued side issue.
Anyway, since we are in a philosophy forum, here is a thought experiment for you: if it was the American army invading and bombing some country (say Mexico) the same way Russia is doing in Ukraine, with similar results of Russia in Ukraine, with similar indirect military support from Russia as Ukraine gets from the West, and with similar negotiations conditions from America as Ukraine gets from Russia, and all else equal, then would you have more likely supported those fighting a patriotic war against the American imperialistic capitalism (as well as Russian indirect military support) or would you have more likely supported surrender to the American imperialistic capitalism?

> If you can suggest military and foreign policy experts or political commentators that disagree with my views or support your views, I’m open to have a look at them, of course. — neomac
I already have.

Following your link “https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/671136” I couldn’t find any reference to the fact that your option 2 is the best one as you suggest. Besides claims and advise of some of those experts you suggested do not seem to converge with your views in some relevant aspects. E.g. Kissinger advises “It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. […]. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea ” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html). While Mearsheimer concludes that: “The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.” (https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf).”

But I guess there's no worth to discuss it if the response is just rants and ad hominems and the only correct topic are the evils of the US. — ssu

Such self-flagellation by affluent yet guilt-ridden westerners would be entertaining and even occasionally rightful, if it wasn't also worrying in terms of collective security. As Soljenitsyne reminded us in his 78 lecture to Harvard, courage is necessary for survival.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. [...]

Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?

https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart

So I would refer to what I said a month ago here. It's also useful to listen to the comment of an Finnish ex-prime minister who tells our position quite well and the what is left of the idea of Finnish "neutrality". After all, Putin is both against the EU and NATO. — ssu

I remember that earlier discussion. For Finland and Sweden, the benefit of joining NATO is deterrence. So will they join now?

Yes, there's that too, I guess: an opportunity to seize now -- when the Russians cannot do much about it, busy as they are elsewhere, can't even argue credibly against Finland's need for protection, and when the Finnish people support it -- or perhaps never. — Olivier5

Yes. Basically we have simply lied to ourselves that we can have NATO membership as an option and also have good ties to Russia. Well, Putin doesn't care about having good relations.

Such self-flagellation by affluent yet guilt-ridden westerners would be entertaining and even occasionally rightful, if it wasn't also worrying in terms of collective security. — Olivier5

Bravo. :100: :cheer:

And who believed Solzenitsyn or at least made similar conclusions?

I think that Vladimir Putin did this. If he has extrapolated from the West's past actions when he has invaded countries earliers, it's not surprising that he could have thought invading Ukraine would be a great idea.

The West isn't weak. The people simply aren't asked to be brave or anything else than to pay taxes. It's a mirage that democracies put up actually unintensionally, as public discourse in our societies can veer of to some bizarre "woke" nonimportant issues. So we can discuss the topic of gender neutral bathrooms or something. And when Noam Chomsky's of the World criticize the West's actions, the authoritarian regimes think this shows the weakness of the West. Dictators who manage what is talked about in their countries don't understand this: they assume that the public discussion is similarly lead by the rulers of Western countries. Russia's homophobia and thoughts about Western decadence show this.

For totalitarian regimes democracies look inherently weak. They aren't. But some dictators are fooled again and again by this. Self-criticism is important if it meant to improve yourself, not to despise yourself. And I think the vast majority understand the difference.

I remember that earlier discussion. For Finland and Sweden, the benefit of joining NATO is deterrence. So will they join now? — frank

Likely they will ask to join.

Likely they will be admitted and likely the countries will be in NATO in the end of this year or so.

But of course, surprising things can happen. We live in interesting times.

This might be a likely way the attack happened against the Moskva. History books certainly will tell it later the facts. But the fact that Russian reported that all crew were evacuated obviously means that the cruiser sunk. I don't think that the Russian Navy is so incompetent, but what is fact that it can have difficulties to track multiple targets as it was an old Soviet era ship. So now the "Slava"-class cruiser joined the "Slava Ukrajini"-class of ships.

The West isn't weak. The people simply aren't asked to be brave or anything else than to pay taxes. — ssu

And to produce and consume material goods. It's now a fully materialist world, in which one measures quality of life only by the amount of stuff folks can accumulate. And from this POV, freedom and independence do not matter. Hence our contradictors here tend to measure the value of several options -- say resistance vs submission to military invasion -- only by the yardstick of physical comfort.

It's now a fully materialist world, in which one measures quality of life only by the amount of stuff folks can accumulate. — Olivier5

Yet the people aren't actually as materialist as they even think they are. Put them into a tight spot and actually those old values that everybody thought nobody cared are important.

Likely they will ask to join.

Likely they will be admitted and likely the countries will be in NATO in the end of this year or so.

But of course, surprising things can happen. We live in interesting times. — ssu

And now I don't understand why Ukraine didn't join earlier.

I agree. I see modern materialism as little more than the fear of ideas, after a rather ideological XXth century, at least the first half of it. The fear of being wrong when one postulates that something else matters beyond physical comfort.

As stated by Noir Désir in Europe:

[We are] Materialist, so at least we're sure
Not to be mistaken, and dwell in the tangible until indigestion
In the rational, until we die of it



(full text: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/493232)

BTW, I take exception to this. I appreciate Russian culture and folks. I've read Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Andreï Makine, Nabokov... Nothing in my comment pertained to a supposed Russian race or ethnicity or even to their culture. When I speak of 'the Russians' I mean their army. — Olivier5

Where in that reply did I suggest this? I was just pointing out your choice of words were poor even though I quite clearly understood your meaning.

The sinking of the Moskva could mark a serious escalation in the conflict. And I think as long as the West is content with its role as cheerleader, happy to "fight until the last Ukrainian" it will not bode well for Ukraine.

What you say is true.

And of course, this is a reaction to Russia's war. But I'm not sure it's a smart move. This war has been a really bad mistake (crime) on Putin's behalf.

Everything he wanted to avoid got magnified times twenty, so to speak.

when I and Christoffer already discussed the matter a month ago and then discussed the frantic communication between Stockholm and Helsinki and the shuttle diplomacy before this. — ssu

We've discussed a lot of things that then happened. For example, war crimes occurring. Generally, the Russian apologists deny on repeat until things actually show up as facts and then move on to the next thing they can nag about until that is settled and so on and so on. Instead of doing any induction of actual facts and reports.

Many continue to position that Ukraine might be in a dire position, but so far Russia has lost so heavily that I'm not so sure they could manage a new effort. While Russia, with a cut-down economy and no technology to repair what they have, and elite troops killed off, generals killed off, Putin jailing his FSB comrades, Moskva gone, Istanbul locking entrance to the Black Sea for further Russian ships, enormous losses of soldiers, pressure about war crimes, pressure about supposed acts of genocide, convoy after convoy cut in half etc. etc. Even if they scramble together recruits without experience, it will just be new stupid and uneducated kids not knowing what they sign up for and with less experience than troops so far. All while if we join Nato, the pressure from the north will make Putin sweat even more while they default on payments and crash the economy even more.

So how on earth is the situation dire for Ukraine compared to Russia? As I've been saying a lot, Russia is all muscle, brute force and toxic masculinity with no brains, the equivalent of a group of hooligans screaming their way down the street. The only thing they have are nukes, without their nukes Russia would be gone in an instance. Maybe Anonymous could hack their launch codes and coordinates to self-deploy nukes on themselves in their silos, that would be the day. Of course, that's impossible, but I would have liked to imagine Putin's reaction if it happened.

And now I don't understand why Ukraine didn't join earlier. — frank

Join Nato? Because they had too much corruption up until just recently. They kicked out the pro-Russian people and started working against state and societal corruption. Nato demands a core focus on democratic stability so they couldn't have joined earlier. And this is probably one reason why Putin acted to invade now, the timetable became shorter, if not now, then never and he would never have had any chance of reclaiming Ukraine. The problem for Putin is that he sees Western standards as weak, so I guess he thought that when the pro-Russian people were kicked out, Ukraine would have sunken into the decadence of the west and would be easy to invade, but if he actually understood history, then he would know that people fighting for freedom are the fiercest of all.

The sinking of the Moskva could mark a serious escalation in the conflict. And I think as long as the West is content with its role as cheerleader, happy to "fight until the last Ukrainian" it will not bode well for Ukraine. — Tzeentch

Or it doesn't bode well for Russia. Not sure why big wins for Ukraine tend to make people say it's bad for Ukraine. The sinking of Moskva is a major blow to Russia and especially to the fighting morale that was really bad, to begin with.

Putin will most likely throw everything into Ukraine in the coming weeks, trying to get a win before May 9th. I don't think Russia can do much, they will keep losing. The only thing I'm scared of is if they use tactical nukes to level Kyiv just to show something to the Putin circle jerkers. But if that happens, Russia would be completely fucked.

you have to prove that the Ukrainian ruling class’s policies cause far more deaths than the Russian soldiers as working class are causing to Ukrainian families. — neomac

I have to prove nothing of the sort because I'm not the one claiming your position is preposterous. Look back at our conversation. Who made claims and who questioned them? I'm not trying to convince you of anything, I'm not so deluded as to think you actually arrive at your opinion via some rational argument. I'm critiquing your claims that the alternative positions are untenable, preposterous etc. To do that, all I need to show is that your dismissal of them lacks sufficient grounds. I don't need to prove they are more plausible, or more likely to be the case because you didn't make the original claim that you merely preferred your opinion, or found it more plausible. Your claim was that the alternative was actually 'preposterous'.

according to (2), you didn’t claim that Ukrainians have no moral reason to fight the Russian armies to defend their nation — neomac

(2) doesn't even mention 'defending one's nation'. Not to mention it's denying a claim I didn't make, not making a claim itself.

It’s on you to analytically clarify how your unrestricted claims should be properly understood not on me to do the job for you. — neomac

Again, I'm not putting claims out there for you to analyse. Why you'd think I'd want want some laymen off the internet to analyse my claims is beyond me.

I don’t see how one could possibly have an intellectually “honest conversation” in a philosophy forum without clarity and arguments. So until I see some effort in this direction from you, I can’t take your “honest conversation” proposal seriously. — neomac

This is not a mutual analysis of claims. As far as I'm concerned, claims are structured, cited and evidenced. Yours are none of these things. This is a social media site - you declare your allegiance to one of the available narratives and then defend that allegiance against the other side. I'm interested in the defences you use; you're, presumably, keen on having to provide those defences (otherwise you're in the wrong place) so it seems we have a mutually beneficial arrangement. But don't mistake me for someone presenting a case. If I present a case it will be at least in essay form and on a subject matter in which I have some expertise.

If Zelensky’s choice (e.g. between keep fighting or surrender) should be morally/strategically assessed based on a de facto situation (Russian control over Crimea and some Donbas lands) as you claim, why shouldn’t your related choice (i.e. Ukrainian keep fighting or surrender to Russian demands) be morally/strategically assessed based on a de facto situation as you framed this war from a geopolitical point of view (i.e. “American expansionism vs Russian expansionism”)? — neomac

Because they are two different de facto situations. I didn't say that Zelensky's choice should be based on the de facto situation simply because it's the de facto situation. I said it should be based on the de facto situation because he has the thousands of lives to consider in trying to make improvements to that situation.

> Who said Zelensky was 'constrained' by the de facto circumstances?

I am, based on how you framed the negotiation best outcome — neomac

None of that means Zelensky is 'constrained' by the de facto circumstances as some kind of rule 'one must always be constrained by the de facto circumstances' It just so happens that the actual de facto circumstances in this case are morally relevant because lives will be expended in trying to improve on them.

Multi-causal analysis refers to the identification of a minimal set of causal factors (where the concept of “causal factor” goes beyond agency and intentionality) and each causal factor has a certain weight (statistical, i.e. depending on the stochastic correlation between causal factors and effects, or probabilistic, i.e. depending on the ratio between one factor and the total number of factors) in contributing to a certain effect. — neomac

Here, for example is a paper on the multi-causal analysis of the conflict in Algeria from Oxford University. Either point out the maths that I've clearly missed in that paper, or take up with Oxford University, their evident lack of deference to your greater knowledge in this regard.

it’s on you to clarify why Zelensky bears some responsibility along with Putin for the fact that Russian soldiers are killing Ukrainian families, and how much Zelensky is blameful wrt to Putin for what happened. — neomac

I already have. He is partly responsible because he made a decision, knowing that would be the consequence where he could have done otherwise and the extent of his responsibility is 'some'.

What do you mean by “arbitrary”? — neomac

I mean you've not given reasons for your choice of method. You've said you take into account what others value, for example. You've not said why you do that.

Here: “It’s not their lives. Zelensky (and his government) decide how to proceed. Western governments decide in what way to assist. Ukrainian children die. They didn't get a say in the matter. If you think that's moral, that's your lookout, but I don't see how. I don't see anyone asking the Ukrainian children if they'd rather lose both parents and remain governed by Zelensky, or retain their family and be governed by a Putin puppet”.
And now here:
“Option 1 - Long drawn out war, thousands dead, crippled by debt, economy run by the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of lobbyists benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue and yellow flag over the parliament Option 2 - Less long war, fewer dead, less crippled by debt, less in thrall to the IMF, regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor. Blue, red and white flag over the parliament.”
This is called comparative advertising in marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advertising) and it explains how you strongly suggested your support for a puppet government over Zelensky’s patriotic government, without saying it.
So it is evidently plausible to say you are suggesting to replace Zelensky’s government with a puppet government, which is even more than what Putin asked in the scenario we discussed. — neomac

Where, in that, do I "praise" a Russian puppet government?

First of all, I see “regime run by corrupt politicians in the pocket of oligarchs benefiting the corporations and immiserating the poor” in both options. So since it doesn’t make any difference, what was the point of putting it? — neomac

To point out that it's the same in both cases.

Second, what does support your claim “less crippled by debt” and “less in thrall to the IMF”? — neomac

War is costly, both in terms of weapons and reconstruction. The cost is being borne in loans from the US and IMF. These loans come along with stringent restrictions on the management of the debtor's economy.

For the West the chances of another war against Russia can only grow bigger if option 2 was the case, and Russia pushed further its geopolitical agenda (so again more deaths and destruction also for the Ukrainians if the war will involve again Ukraine, this is also what buffer states are for right? ). Indeed Sweden and Finland are thinking to join NATO. So provocations are not over yet right? — neomac

Remember, what I'm arguing against here is your claims that alternative positions are 'preposterous'. The fact that you can come up with scenarios which are plausible to support your position doesn't support that claim. You'd have to show that these scenarios were somehow the only plausible outcomes.

It’s a similar line of reasoning as the previous one, right? — neomac

'Similar' and 'the same' are similar, but not the same.

Why stupid? — neomac

Because assessing my alternatives is not necessary for a successful critique of your position. For your position to hold you'd have to support the claim that there literally are no alternatives. No solutions other than the one you prefer. That's ridiculous, hence a stupid line of argument. The point I'm making here only requires that other solutions exist and it's 'stupid' to deny that.

wouldn’t this line of reasoning of yours simply support whatever the status quo is — neomac

No, because the line of reasoning depends on the actual facts about the status quo. some status quos are worth fighting to change, other status quos are not.

It’s important you answer those questions because you are the one who claimed “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another” and believes it’s pertinent in the debate about the war in Ukraine. — neomac

Your argument relies on this not being the case, so it is incumbent on you (if you want to support your argument) to disprove it. I've not interest in supporting my case here (I don't even believe it's possible to support such a case in a few hundred words on an internet forum, and even if I did, I wouldn't make such a case as I've no expertise in the matter).

I provided evidences to support not the truth but the plausibility of P2 as expressly intended, so your objections either are wrong or missing the point. — neomac

The plausibility was never in question. The truth was.

Yes seriously. — neomac

Well no, then.

You are not saying it, yet you are suggesting it. — neomac

Yes. The point was that it's the result of the situation, not of some demand.

Let me notice first this: you talk about your personal preferences (+ some comparative criteria) in trusting some experts and yet you do not take this to be arbitrary right? But when I talked about preferences (not only mine! + some comparative criteria) in my approach to moral assessments you dismissively said “a list of arbitrary preferences”. That doesn’t sound fair, does it? — neomac

I am not claiming that your position is preposterous. You are claiming mine is. I've no need to prove that my position isn't arbitrary because I'm not claiming it to be anything other. You are claiming your position to be non-arbitrary (ie better than another in some metric) so it matters if it transpires it is founded on arbitrary assumptions.

during the covid crisis there were experts (like Luc Montagnier) with titles and no evident conflict of interests but whose reliability when talking about covid was still pretty dubious. — neomac

How so? If someone is sufficiently qualified and without any conflict of interest, you're not in a position to dismiss their conclusions as dubious simply because you don't like them or they're not what you expected. Your expectations and your preferences are not measures of what is the case.

I don’t even know how you would assess “sufficient qualification and no obvious conflict of interest” without adequate background knowledge — neomac

Really? If you were looking for a military expert you've no idea how to tell if they're qualified? Is there some compelling reason university tenure and/or doctorate-level qualification would be insufficient for you?

it’s not like I have my moral or strategic understanding of this war and then I look whoever expert is confirming it. — neomac

Yeah, right. You just conducted a completely impartial assessment of the evidence, sure.

I can compare for example ... their arguments or how much they converge with the opinion of other experts — neomac

How? If you're a non-expert, how can you meaningfully compare their arguments? And what relevance does it have how much they converge with the opinion of other experts?

That is why you want to help Russia win against American capitalist imperialism — neomac

Who said anything about helping Russia win?

since we are in a philosophy forum, here is a thought experiment for you: if it was the American army invading and bombing some country (say Mexico) the same way Russia is doing in Ukraine, with similar results of Russia in Ukraine, with similar indirect military support from Russia as Ukraine gets from the West, and with similar negotiations conditions from America as Ukraine gets from Russia, and all else equal, then would you have more likely supported those fighting a patriotic war against the American imperialistic capitalism (as well as Russian indirect military support) or would you have more likely supported surrender to the American imperialistic capitalism? — neomac

Interesting. What exactly did you expect to get from this? You fabricate a position you know full well I wouldn't admit to holding (that I support Russia) then ask a transparent 'thought experiment' the answer to which expects me to admit to the one position you already knew I wouldn't admit to. Surely you can see the flaw in that strategy?

Following your link “https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/671136” I couldn’t find any reference to the fact that your option 2 is the best one as you suggest. — neomac

So?

And now I don't understand why Ukraine didn't join earlier. — frank

Now here is the ACTUAL mistake that NATO did.

President Kuchma declared that Ukraine was seeking NATO membership in 2002. NATO basically responded that Ukraine could be a member "in the future", but not immediately. And then US President Bush blurted that both Georgia and Ukraine could become NATO members in 2008 (not a thing the US President can actually decide).

That was enough for Putin to have the Russo-Georgian War (even if it was the time of Medvedev) and later 2014 happened.

One really has to understand the logic here: ONLY AFTER the Russo-Georgian war for example any plans to defend the Baltic States were made. Before they were considered "too aggressive" for NATO to make. In the 1990's and well into this Millennium it was talk about the new NATO, something totally different from the old Cold War relic -NATO.

I agree. Even their war disinformation efforts appear amateuristic. — Olivier5

I was just pointing out your choice of words were poor even though I quite clearly understood your meaning. — Benkei

What choice of words are you even talking about?

You guys are grasping at straws now.

All while if we join Nato, the pressure from the north will make Putin sweat even more while they default on payments and crash the economy even more. — Christoffer

I think he (Putin) will portray this as he has been correct all along. See how treacherous Finland and Sweden have been? The West is out to get fortress Russia all along! That's the official line in Moscow. Old puny enemies are gathering up. So likely we will be portrayed as nazis too who discriminate ethnic Russians and are the worst scum on Earth. It's totally in a different reality. Of course the Western media isn't where it was in 2014, so that the good thing here.

But when he cannot do something, he cannot do it. And attacking EU member states with nukes wouldn't be a smart move. Perhaps that would be too thick even for the Chinese who have their patience with their ally.

But in reality you are starting to have serious discussions even in the media what the military options are for Russia. The the incursions to our (or your) aerospace and service-denial attacks are simply a nuisance. If they would be so awesome, why then is the net up in Ukraine?

Use your researching prowess.

Thanks for the info. I was trying to give a fair hearing to the idea that the Ukraine invasion was provoked or partially provoked by the US. The more I learn, the more absurd that seems.

Do you agree with that? Or do you still think provocation was part of the story here?

Russia seems to be getting a little irritated at our arms shipments to Ukraine.

Also:
Defence of Ukraine
@DefenceU

Ukraine government organization
The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine reminds the russian navy that the Black Sea straits are closed for entry only. The part of your fleet that remains afloat still has a way out.
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1514941186397683715

Comparably huge for the Black Sea fleet I guess. That or journalists not knowing what they are talking about most of the time. A ship with a 500 man crew sounds huge if you know massive oil tankers run with 20-30 people.

Could be the real story. Could be made up to show that the Ukrainian-made Neptune works as a way to deter future amphibious assaults. They did just get Harpoon missiles from the UK, although those are fairly antiquated, so the Neptune might be more likely.

I had seen the ship discussed by hobbiest sites before, with the main point being "it would absolutely suck to be a damage control team on a ship with that much ordinance packed in." You can do plenty of things to prevent missiles from going off in a fire, but nothing is fool proof. This seems like part of the issue. The much smaller Israeli Hanit was hit by a C-802 and sailed back to port ok. This seems like a cook off issue.

I don't know why Moscow thinks an accident sounds better. They could at least blame it on dastardly sabotage. It doesn't look good that their ships start going up in flames on their own as soon as they start using them, or that depots of crucial supplies on their side of the border "randomly" explode.



The Neptune is a Ukrainian built system. It wasn't used previously because they were being held in reserve in case of any amphibious landing attempts, likely around Odessa. Now that Ukraine has halted and reversed the Russian advance towards Odessa and is making gains in setting up the recapture of Kherson, they are more free to use the weapons. Also, British Harpoons mean they have more ordinance to use.

They were deployed in this case because a high value target stupidly sailed into the range of the system after engaging in a highly predictable patrol path for weeks, making the attack easy to plan.



Fair enough. I thought that was in reference to the rampant denialism of Russia's various 20th century genocides of ethnic minorities. Certainly, Ukraine has plenty of reasons for historical grievances, and Putin publishing a paper on how their ethnicity doesn't exist in the run up to the war doesn't help with fears of ethnic cleansing on their side.

I agree that the mass executions of civilians, rapes, and looting reported don't seem organized, and aren't on a scale consistent with the term genocide. It's more indicative of terrible discipline, maybe ethnically motivated in the case of some units, but that's impossible to say.

We'll see what happens if Russia keeps any land with large Ukrainian populations. I personally wouldn't be shocked by mass deportations as a means to "sure up" areas of control. Rhetorically, they've drifted in that direction, with the moniker of "holhols" for Ukrainians as a mocking reference to the genocide. The term predates Stalin as a slur, and so has the added benefit of not being too on the nose about the whole "genocide thing that never really happened."

The more I learn, the more absurd that seems. — frank

It is absurd.

Historical events don't happen for one reason, but for a multitude of reasons. Yet to argue that Putin needed to make a large scale attack on Ukraine in 2022 because of NATO enlargement when there was absolutely no probability of NATO enlargement is wrong. And simply to disregard practically everything that Putin has said prior and during the war and the fact that he annexed Crimea makes it all so obvious that to insist that this war happened only or largely because of NATO expansion is absurd. Is it one factor? Yes, but likely without NATO for Putin to conquer Ukraine would have been easy.

It is absurd, because Russia in Central Asia by diplomatic moves got the US airbases out from those countries without bullying or invasions, but has been close to the countries, had military exercises and even helped one government when it faced domestic protests.

:up:

I was trying to give a fair hearing to the idea that the Ukraine invasion was provoked or partially provoked by the US. The more I learn, the more absurd that seems. — frank

It is absurd. — ssu

It is absurd — ssu

Is it one factor? Yes, — ssu

I don't know why Moscow thinks an accident sounds better. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That they'd rather seem incompetent than vulnerable to military attack?

I was trying to give a fair hearing to the idea that the Ukraine invasion was provoked... — frank

Putin was mainly provoked by the fact that Ukraine was successfully independent.

Long interview with Zelenskyy published in the Atlantic Monthly