Except where Putin has succeeded in gaining a military victory: In Chechnya, the Chechen Republic. — ssu

Jesus. Can none of you read?

which strategy is most likely to quickly reduce the scale of war crimes. — Isaac

REDUCE. Reduce. Reduce.

Not sure if all caps, bolding, or underlining works on you people so maybe all three. We're discussing which approach might reduce the amount of death and destruction. Pointing out that there is still some war crime activity in occupied territories is not an argument that there is more war crime activity in occupied territories than there is in the actual war.

I get that there are actual psychopaths, but that's not what's usually happening. It's mostly walking wounded, trying to pass their wounds on to somebody else. — frank

I think the wound you speak of is the idea that politicians are all equally bad, and therefore that there can be no hope from politics. This idea is painful to hold, as it tells us we are powerless collectively. Especially so when one sees other folks still believing in a collective or another, and fighting for a cause.

It's cause envy.

No, no, no. Putin is an evil criminal, I’ll share with you some disturbing pictures instead of presenting an argument as to why Ukraine must not only kick Russia out but defeat them in war. And because they are evil, they will take it as the scum they are. They’re just bluffing with nukes. More casualties as a result of this? Doesn’t matter, they’re evil.

If you're not interested in a conversation, just say so.

think the wound you speak of is the idea that politicians are all equally bad, and therefore that there can be no hope from politics. This idea is painful to hold, as it tells us we are powerless collectively. Especially so when one sees other folks still believing in a collective or another, and fighting for a cause.

It's cause envy. — Olivier5

Raw nihilism trying to blot out what is perceived as hope, because it hurts too much to see hope killed one more time.

gulp

But speaking of western support for the war in Ukraine.

Would the West still be supporting the war in Ukraine under say, a Republican US president and a right-leaning (read, anti-EU) Europe?

I think Republicans (with the loose cannon maybe-maybe not exception of Trump) are even more hawkish than the Democrats. I don’t think the situation would change under the conditions you mention. What would make this a non-issue if is Russia did not have nuclear weapons at all. Then the support would be much more questionable. Yes we had the war in Yugoslavia, but I doubt Ukraine would be getting so many billions.

I'm not so sure. From what I've seen from Republican sources, they seem critical towards, for example, Ukraine joining NATO, which is essentially what started all of this.

REDUCE. Reduce. Reduce. — Isaac

Pointing out that there is still some war crime activity in occupied territories is not an argument that there is more war crime activity in occupied territories than there is in the actual war. — Isaac

Isaac the apologist seems to be on the roll, again.

When a war is over, there should be NO killings, no war crimes or human violations. But somehow when Putin is fighting the war, the killing doesn't end with the proclaimed victory.

In my view the two Chechen wars resulted in what can be described as a genocide or genocidal warfare. Remembering that Chechnya has a population of 1,4 million, the death toll is staggering.

According to the pro-Moscow Chechnya government, 160,000 combatants and non-combatants died or have gone missing in the two wars, including 30,000–40,000 Chechens and about 100,000 Russians; while separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov (deceased) repeatedly claimed about 200,000 ethnic Chechens died as a consequence of the two conflicts.According to a count by the Russian human rights group Memorial in 2007, up to 25,000 civilians have died or disappeared since 1999. According to Amnesty International in 2007, the second war killed up to 25,000 civilians since 1999, with up to another 5,000 people missing.

Somebody with that kind of track record might usually apply same methods that previously have been so successful.

nihilism trying to blot out what is perceived as hope, because it hurts too much to see hope killed one more time. — frank

I suspect it would hurt them even more if hope triumphed.

If you're not interested in a conversation, just say so. — Tzeentch

Did converse, like here, here. :shrug: (doesn't mean just running with your story and call it a day, this ↑ dismissal ain't it, responding "unknown" is fine too)

But speaking of western support for the war in Ukraine.

Would the West still be supporting the war in Ukraine under say, a Republican US president and a right-leaning (read, anti-EU) Europe? — Tzeentch

Who knows, but (again) ...

It sure ain't just some elites in Washington and Brussels.

Say, would ...

talks, diplomacy, more transparency, more bona fides signs

... be worthwhile?

What does Putin want...? To de-NATO and de-Nazify...? Hard to tell exactly — jorndoe

The demands couldn't have been clearer and were delivered pretty near the beginning of the war. No NATO membership, independent Donbas, Russian Crimea.

Unless Ukraine fight even harder than they have been (or NATO finally pull their finger out of their arse and get properly involved instead of just seeing Ukraine as a lucrative arms market) it looks likely that this is what they're going to end up with anyway... Just with thousands of innocent dead in addition.

If Ukrainians want to fight to the death for their flag, that's up to them. Doesn't make it morally right, nor advisable.

Really? I missed that. My impression of them is that they basically exist to critique Democrats, no matter what they do. I know Rand Paul is being more serious on this issue than others, but he’s a libertarian too.

When a war is over, there should be NO killings — ssu

So not even all caps worked? Shit. I've run out of ways to communicate the word 'reduce' with any more clarity.

Would the West still be supporting the war in Ukraine under say, a Republican US president and a right-leaning (read, anti-EU) Europe? — Tzeentch

Yes.

Wasn't (or isn't) the current UK administration right-leaning (read, anti-EU)?

Who are against the support of Ukraine are usually the right-wing populists who have gotten money from the Kremlin. And those that have issues with the US (Turkey) or the EU (Hungary), for example.

It's scary how easily the caricatures are cemented into narratives which then build support for actual policy.

The evidence isn't even hard to find, the reports of Ukrainian human rights abuses, far-right violence, slavery, corruption and illegal arms trading are still online. It's not as if some shadowy cabal have hidden them away to rewrite history, they've just told everyone to pretend it isn't the case and that's enough apparently. Now Putin is the devil, Zelensky is a saint. It's always been that way. And that's that.

But then one quite corrupt, violent nation invading another slightly less corrupt slightly less militaristic one, as a story, doesn't sell weapons for nearly as long as the story of the world-dominating embodiment of evil invading the harmless Ewoks.

I never believe any of them. As per usual the war is a proxy war and reputation of the US will continue to decline in the eyes of Europe and the opinion of Europe will continue to decline in the eyes of Russia.

The wars in the middle east have been proxy wars to prevent pipelines going down. The US and Russia have been at it ever since the end of the Cold War. It will not end well for Europe as a whole unless … well, I do not see a way out tbh. I can easily see a tactical nuke being dropped and I doubt the US would do much … other than continue doing what they have done for half a century.

Personally I think if they want to fight they should do it over the ocean between their countries rather than playing tower defence across the whole of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Sure, Lockheed and others are making a killing, they love war. It’s very rare to have a good vs evil fight, unless you see a movie or something. We can find exceptions to this, WWII and so forth. But that’s why they are exceptions. Look I think Ukraine has a right to defense, absolutely. But now they’re talking about taking back Crimea. That’s not happening. Or someone kills Putin. If this attitude continues we may see the deadliest event in human history. And yet, we see escalations.

Yes, at best it can only be sold as a failed war aim. Earlier in the war Russia had opportunities to secure Ukraine's neutrality, which it ignored.

My argument is against the tankie delusion that the war was somehow a defensive response to NATO encroachment.

(as mentioned earlier, I'm not playing the game of resetting the 300-something-pages thread back to square one, oddly forgetting comments, speeches, quotes, statements, actions, history, whatever)

, so, your proposed "solution" to your question is to cease the foreign aid to Ukraine and see what happens. Or did I misread?

^{(I suppose this might be where those quotes of old have lessons to teach?)}

that's up to them — Isaac

Sure, as are their foreign affiliations other than Putin's Russia.

I suspect it would hurt them even more if hope triumphed. — Olivier5

Why?

Seems to me that nobody who's given up political hope for a long while would be able to appreciate its victory, against all odds. It would imply that they despaired too much.

And who said they never intended to use it? Maybe they did. — Tzeentch

Airports are important military targets, either for own use or denying them to the enemy. If a military force occupies an area of land, I would expect them to secure every single airport, regardless of their immediate intentions or use by the enemy. — Tzeentch

So there is a reasonable conclusion that this risky mission was warranted to secure an airbridge as part of a lightning attack and you can’t come up with reasons for why this would instead be the optimal move as part of a mere feint.

Who does such logic about Russian intentions serve? :chin:

So there is a reasonable conclusion that this risky mission was warranted to secure an airbridge — apokrisis

No. There is nothing reasonable about that conclusion. Airlifting in battalions worth of troops only several kilometres from the frontline when you even have a land connection available is quite the opposite of reasonable.

I would expect any kind of offensive, feint or otherwise, to include the capture of every possible airstrip in the area. It says nothing about their intentions regarding Kiev, which is what you tried to argue.

You are telling me all I need to know about your expertise and intentions here. :up:

I think Isaac took a page from Russian propaganda here. It's not a war crime if there is no war, and it's not a war if you don't agree to call it a war. There - done.

By that token, Belgian atrocities in Congo do not count - because Belgium was not at war with Congo at the time. Neither do Soviet and German mass killings of Poles count.

If you're going to have the indecency to talk about me in the third person at least read what I fucking wrote first.

The question was about the relative change in war crimes (or human rights abuses) following peace negotiations compared to those committed during the actual war in question.

Only a fucking moron could read that and assume the question was "does anyone ever do anything bad outside of war".

(Oh, and just to correct your historical inaccuracies, the Poles didn't negotiate a peace treaty, the Polish government continued in exile, the Polish army surrendered, but don't let any facts cloud your biases).

The point, for anyone with a post-kindergarten level of interest in the subject, was that there's no good reason to believe that atrocities would continue at the same level in Russian controlled territories. They haven't committed atrocities on this scale in other occupied territories, and most, if not all, peace negotiations have lead at the very least to a reduction in those sorts of human rights abuses.

Considering the enormous harms of continued war, anyone not playing out their Star Wars fantasies would need an extremely good reason to justify continued war. The idea that it will cause less atrocities isn't even a moderately good one on average. With this particular situation, where Ukraine are no angels themselves, it's hard to argue there'd be much difference. Look at the human rights reports on Donbas before the war. There's barely a hair between the abuses of occupying Russia and those of Ukrainian forces and militia.

Considering the enormous harms of continued war, anyone not playing out their Star Wars fantasies would need an extremely good reason to justify continued war. — Isaac

This is correct. Which is why we have to be clear about what we are fighting for.

I believe we ought to be fighting for a global order that accepts some set of basic human rights and which thus provides a productive framework within which sovereign states can freely compete.

The prevailing world structure was far from wonderful, but it made things like collecting crates of gold teeth beyond the pale. It accepts war as justified, but wants some sane rules around such contests.

This is a global compromise, but it is the best that can be hoped for. And of course the rules were largely written with a large dollop of US self interest after WW2. But who else was in a position to push some kind of understanding through?

The main problem with the US version of a global framework was it was all about fossil fuels and free trade. A new kind of competition to see whose national system could create the largest per capita ecological footprint. It wasn’t actually a sustainable vision under which to unite humanity.

So the big picture view of Ukraine - the true realist position - would factor in both Putin’s erosion of the old US global staus quo and some new world order that does a good job recognising the state of the world as it is fast becoming.

Human rights start to tumble down the list or priorities as our atrocities reach global ecological levels.

At this level of political realism, Ukraine is just a massive distraction. Putin must take full blame not just for the human atrocities he is responsible for, but also the disruption to the fragile world order and its willingness to battle climate change, or at least create some kind of equality in the suffering we’ve got coming.

The US also deserves all the criticism for its part in climate inaction. Big oil is a historical crime given that green tech - especially for America - was a viable option.

So sure, geopolitical realism demands that we make these cost-benefit calculations. Human suffering is coming in ways that makes crates of gold teeth chickenfeed.

When I see so much needless destruction of social and economic infrastructure, forgive me but I think about the ecological footprint involved in any rebuilding.

But the question here has been about Putin and his intentions. Are they large or small? Do they point the planet towards new solutions or drag us backwards in terms of a pragmatic global system of order?

The best commentary I have heard paints Putin as the head of a crime mob who has become stuck in escalation mode by his miscalculations. Partly Ukraine is just about staying domestically popular. But also, he actually does seem to have a personal and irrational hatred of the West’s imposition of a global rules framework, so would be happy to smash it.

Putin may not actually have planned to go further than smash the emergence of such order right on his own doorstep. Maybe Poland, the Baltic States, Finland, could all be left as no kind of real threat to the Russian kleptocratic, fossil fuel, crime syndicate at all.

Yet Ukraine does get to have a say in what its people believe. And the whole planet should find Putin worth stopping - but in the context of the degree to which he threatens the world order that we need to construct, rather than the degree that it protects the world order that underpinned a fossil fuel consumption based model of humanity these past 70 years.

Such a calculation is of course impossibly utopian. But that is what a philosophical discussion should be for.

Meanwhile stop with the bullshit about feints and Russian competence. Stop with the whataboutism when I don’t see anyone claiming the US doesn't act self interestedly. Anyone who has studied modern history knows that setting up a global free trade environment was as self serving for the US as it was altruistic.

And that is fine. The question now is who is going to lead the world towards its next as-altruistic-as-possible rules-base framework?

China put up its hand at one stage, Now we have Xi. But these are the interesting discussions to be had. Not repetitions of “Mearsheimer says Putin’s grievances are legitimate and pushing Ukraine to surrender is even in its own best interest.”

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1577752565839806472

There are others of these. Conscripts complaining of being given no training, no equipment, no food, and being sent to live outside on the border, old, sometimes non-functional weapons, and no armor.

Speed running the Russian Revolution, no joke. "Lets just force a bunch of men to leave their jobs and families, give them weapons, and then send them to live unsupplied in squalor. Then order them to fight for us. What could go wrong!?"

IDK, maybe it's all an advanced psyop, I'm sure that's the explanation being given either way. Or there are Wagner patches, so maybe it's a hit job in an internal fight with Russia.

Ahh, ok. Here we have some interesting material to talk about, very much pertinent to philosophy too. It's a solid post, some excellent points raised, others quite dubious in my eyes.

As you have taken your time to post that, I will do the same probably tomorrow. This is something worth exploring.