Update: Iran is sending trainers to help with drones they are not providing

Doesn't the factor of increasing Iranian involvement decrease the chances that Israel is simply being pressured by the U.S. to give up on a 'good deal'?

Beyond this question of Realpolitik, I wonder if Lavrov's riff about Hitler possibly being a self-hating Jew might be playing a part. Apologies were given. But that is a deep cut.

Who is stalling? Iran to admit that it is selling weapons? Or Israel because it does not want to change deals?

My point is that if Iran starts to profit significantly from selling arms to Russia, that will be the motivation to change course.
So, maybe not so happy.

Thank you, I tried to do that the first time but did not put in the needed extra convolutions.

What a tangled web is weaved:

Russia's help in fighting Assad in Syria versus stopping Iran from becoming a go to arms dealer and producer. And the old Russian Bear is not looking so good. Las Vegas is giving different percentages.

Edited for clarity.
Edit was a botch. SophistiCat fixes brain fart below.

The pleasure was mine. I will check out Oppenheimer.

Well, that reply helps me distinguish your view from some kind of hyper libertarian credo.

The emergence of 'egoism' is where I question how the 'contract' is one that can be accepted or declined as an available option as you have described it. To have declined it at the beginning would mean continuing life lived as the 'natural man', antecedent to both ancient and modern societies. The life of the "mass man's" relation to the state is a modern problem. Rousseau, however, frames a theoretical origin of society in an inaccessible past.

That inquiry into the prehistorical brings out the contrast between such an initial contract and your speculation: "Perhaps the State is all that holds them from returning to some state of nature, like beasts." The ideology that supports a particular state is not the only form of association. If humans were dissolved back into a prehistory where all the agreements had to be made all over again, the 'statism' you describe would not be one of the options. The exchange for absolute liberty for life in a community could only be declined by a life of perfect solitude. We come back to where Aristotle said the only creatures that can live alone are either beasts or gods.

As the emergence from prehistory is not available to us as a given fact, speculation about it becomes a collection of origin stories. Rousseau's story intimates that there is something like a god in the natural man that is still alive even when in bondage. Locke speaks of an original politic that is available to us if we make the right conditions. Hobbes says that we only developed our better natures through association.

This conversation is reminding me that I haven't read Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality in over twenty years. I am going to give it another go.

Yes, things are trending that way.

Add the brain trust fleeing the country in spring to the young people fleeing mobilization, they should be able to pound that number down to zero.

I’ve never read Ayn Rand. That’s the hilarious part of the accusation. — NOS4A2

There is a strong resemblance between your views regarding what amounts to the 'collective' and how that is opposed by an ethos of the individual as the measure of value:

Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is the duration of one's lifespan, it is a part of one's life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from. — Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Concepts of Consciousness

What I can gather from your exposition goes further than this ethos and calls for a change in the future world order, perhaps something along the lines of: The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age

Or perhaps your view of the state as an ideology is a peculiar interpretation of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals

The way that you phrase it, 'why must you be governed' presupposes it is personal choice rather than a condition that is either necessary or not. You have yet to explain how this came to be a matter of choice

Yes, that is why so many ultra conservatives and alt right thugs have had a crush on Putin for years. But Putin used to play footsie with the world order they wish to dissolve. Putin liked getting invited to parties while attending G8 meetings and having his gang launder money in London. That activity does not mix well with the Dugin war against the West.

So this thread is just a guise for parroting Ayn Rand. Got it. — Mikie

They do share the ethos built on the centrality of the ego. But Ayn is cool with institutions like Banks to keep her money. You need a government for that. Handshakes, winks, and nods just won't cut the bacon.

товарищ, I see that you have to have joined the party of Александр Дугин:

Dear Russian people! The global American empire strives to bring all countries of the world together under its control. They intervene where they want, asking no one's permission. They come in through the fifth column, which they think will allow them to take over natural resources and rule over countries, people, and continents. They have invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Syria and Iran are on the agenda. But their goal is Russia. We are the last obstacle on their way to building a global evil empire. Their agents at Bolotnaya Square and within the government are doing everything to weaken Russia and allow them to bring us under total external control. To resist this most serious threat, we must be united and mobilized! We must remember that we are Russian! That for thousands of years we protected our freedom and independence. We have spilled seas of blood, our own and other people's, to make Russia great. And Russia will be great! Otherwise it will not exist at all. Russia is everything! All else is nothing! — Alexandr Dugin

You guys seem enthusiastic. Not sure where you going to receive income after you win your war.

The Ukraine war is a domino, a symbol against Western Hegemony that has exposed a myriad dormant resentments between the Western World and the Aspirational majority. — yebiga

Are you saying that Russia is the vanguard for this 'Aspirational majority'?

Is the Chechen society, as it exists now, a part of this group after decades of genocide?

Is Assad a paying subscriber to this majority?

Are the ultranationalists in Europe and the U.S., who have celebrated Putin as a champion of their cause, a member of this majority?

I am having trouble bringing your idea into view.

But you yourself frame your concept of 'statism' as a violation of a preexisting condition. It is at least as abstract as any idea employed by Locke.

Those political philosophers used the phrase 'state of nature' to distinguish it from life as a citizen with expressed rights within a state. They did not mean to suggest the latter was outside of what is possible by nature.

Your citing of Rousseau reminds me of Thatcher's view of society:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. — M Thatcher

Not much interest in the history of communities there.

Your description of a community formed through agreements amongst neighbors strongly resembles what Locke called the State of Nature. He takes up the question of how societies formed before explicit bodies of law appeared when he was challenged to show how the state of nature existed before civil structures.

100. To this, I find two objections made.
First: That there are no instances to be found in story of a company of men independent, and equal one amongst another, that they met together and in this way began and set up a government.

101. To the first there is this to answer---That it is not at all to be wondered that history gives us but very little account of men that lived in a state of nature. The inconveniences of that condition, and the love and want of society, no sooner brought them together, but they presently united and incorporated if they designed to continue together. And if we may not suppose men ever to have been in the state of nature, because we hear not much of them in such a state, we may as well suppose the armies of Salmanasser of Xerxes were never children, because we hear little of them till they were men and embodied in armies. Government is everywhere antecedent to records, and letters seldom come in amongst a people, till long continuation of civil society has, by more necessary arts, provided for their safety, ease, and plenty. — John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, Beginning Of Political Societies.

Locke joins Hobbes and Rousseau in using the concept of a state of nature to propose how we transitioned from a prehistory without politics to a life lived through polity. What is your account of the transition? Or was it born directly from the forehead of Zeus?

Is this assessment influenced by any partisanship? — yebiga

I don't think it would be partisan to note that Putin started the annexations with the hope of maintaining 'normal' relationships with Russia's trade partners. The land grab in 2014 did not bring a global response large enough to threaten that normalcy. The one in 2022 does.

Nothing about the progress of the invasion suggests it is going as planned for Russia. If it is a practice round, it is a very expensive one.

I grew up in a house where the red-lettered words of Jesus were distinguished from everything else. I get the claim for the centrality of those words compared to the other narratives.

Once I found out that the two elements could not be separated, it became difficult to understand any of it.

That is too simple of an explanation of what is going on but if that is the process, the Russians just blew their resources on a war game.

Explicit contracts are only possible through institutions established to recognize them. It seems you would have the discussion of what brought civic institutions into existence be preceded by the institutions themselves.

Unspoken agreements where different people accept a set of conditions for the sake of their mutual continuance does not require signatures.

Well said.

It spells out what I was thinking in my statement upthread that insisting that there can be only one overriding purpose is to ignore the reality of a confluence of purposes.

As conceived of by Hobbes and Rousseau, the social contract is not an explicit agreement signed before participating in it. Rather, it is a condition developed through people's interaction with each other. The development of law and judgement in societies probably did have something to do with events of wars and subjugation. But you, like Rousseau, imagine a condition of Man that was happily minding its own business before the State crashed the party.

Whatever brought these institutions into being, framing it as a transition from a state of nature to living in a man-made world is to seek out what is human nature against the background of his circumstances, to borrow from Ortega y Gasset.

Hobbes and Rousseau developed their views from sharply different visions of the qualities of natural man before civic institutions existed. What is your view of how those institutions appeared without a social contract of some kind?

If this 'statism' is a need for some and not for others, how did it get started amongst humans?

Perhaps the State is all that holds them from returning to some state of nature, like beasts. This bothers me because if the State were to collapse tomorrow, it is those that need to be governed that the rest of us would have to watch out for. — NOS4A2

According to Hobbes, the state of nature is a war of each against all others. The need for authority is not in order to satisfy a compulsion that some people suffer but others do not; it is to stop the violence of that war.

Rousseau saw the state of nature as the home of the 'noble savage' who was peaceful and moral as created. The social contract forced man into a way of life that lost this original goodness.

How the State is to be conceived as necessary or not is dependent upon competing notions of Human Nature.

Interesting survey. I was struck by how many times "none of the above" was the largest portion of responses. Looks like they need to add some more questions to the survey.

It is also interesting how territorial stability and reduction of corruption scored so much higher than other concerns.

June was several light years away. I wonder what the survey would show now.

Good overview of the nuclear threat element. The breakdown of how multiple tactical nukes would turn into a strategic threat makes sense.

I was particularly struck by the observation that threatening Ukraine with the loss of entire cities is something that has already happened in places like Mariupol.

I did not mean to suggest it is simple. I was trying to relate how views of who is calling the shots shapes how negotiation is seen as possible. So the question could be asked in the other direction: Is it merely a proxy war?

The Ukrainians and their supporters all have their own agendas. They will not always align. The danger of simplicity comes from only permitting a single narrative.

I wish this statement was not so broad. As I have said before, I would prefer the response to a tactical nuke be the enforcement of a no-fly zone by NATO and cutting the supply lines into Ukraine from Russia. If a source should fire at Ukraine, then fire back at that source. Being discriminate gives more chances at de-escalation.

Those who say NATO is imperial through the process of inducting new members depict Putin as the one who is being attacked.

But it's not up to me. That's up to the people of Ukraine. No negotiation is going to be easy, and both sides will have to give something up. It cannot be that Russia simply gets everything it wants in exchange for peace, no. But then those aren't really negotiations. — Xtrix

It is the role of Ukraine in possible negotiations that has consumed so many pages of debate here.

For those that view the conflict as principally a proxy war being waged by the U.S., the terms are said to be ultimately between Russia and the U.S. For those who see Ukrainian's actions as directed by their own decisions and goals, their terms are seen to be central to any deal.

While it is obvious that the fighters cannot be decoupled from what supports them, treating Ukraine as merely a pawn in a geopolitical game is not going to lead to an end of the war.

The most scary thought is that if Putin would have stopped there, he might have gotten away with it. It might have taken a decade, but the likelyhood of the West accepting de facto the annexation of Crimea would have been likely. But a gambler doesn't know when to stop. He had to have that land bridge to Crimea and Novorossiya. — ssu

One of the elements that could have made that de facto condition become normal is that back then, Putin was skillfully engaged with European powers to become integral to their economies, as depicted in your post upthread with Putin hanging out at the G8.

As Russia keeps doubling down after each lost hand, the chances of that relationship returning is shrinking exponentially, no matter the outcome of the war.

One of the things Arendt focused upon was how international visions of a world fueled many local events. And thus, her distinction between mutual ethnic hatred from antisemitism as a phenomenon.

Why is it the US being castigated for Putin acting aggressively. — schopenhauer1

Having monitored this thread since its inception, I think the following axes of rotation are underway:

The argument over whether, and to what extent, the expansion of NATO membership is or was an existential threat to the Russian Federation.

To what extent or not is the conflict a proxy war to achieve U.S. objectives versus a fight for Ukraine for the sake of Ukrainians.

How much those first two issues reflect the element of 'globalization' and Russia's participation in it.

Who has done shittier things, Russia or other Nations, but especially the U.S.

It comes up a lot less in recent arguments but whether Ukrainians are more righteous than Russians, vis-a-vis rules of engagement.

So, your straightforward question has been diverted to other ones.

Being an anonymous source, it could have been intended to be leaked or done without authorization. If it was the latter, the motive could have been a desire to gloat.

Authenticity is not a question yet since there is no way to verify the report.

Washington Post has a similar report.

Yes. Surprisingly Ukrainians are not an homogeneous mass of one hive-like opinion. Some disagree with the war effort. — Isaac

It is unlikely that the leaked report was an anti-war statement when surrounded by all the celebration of the strike.

It is a break in established policy for either of the sources to speak of it. If it was an anonymous senior official, that could be an intended leak. I don't see the value in doing that since it helps the Moscow messaging.

Do you have a link from the Times story? I cannot find it.

I follow the New York Times and I didn't see such a claim published there. This would have been front page news everywhere if true. Notably, there is no link or any other reference. — SophistiCat

Yes, that would have been breaking news everywhere if confirmed. My second thought after reading the claim is that the Ukraine forces have been very disciplined about not saying stuff without approval. It would have been very surprising to have that fall apart on such an important issue.

The article's rhetoric was so infused with Lavrov descriptors that I double checked to make sure it was not a piece from the Onion.

Where is the verification of the following claim in the article:

"The Ukrainian special forces immediately admitted having carried out the attack to the New York Times."

Surely, there must be a distinction between listing motives for why somebody might have committed a crime and that such an event went down.

That the scenario exhausts what you are able to imagine is not an advance toward understanding what happened.