According to one commentator, the Kremlin's push is like a Trojan horse.

• would buy them time
• would give them an easy excuse to withdraw from negotiations at any time
• besides, they could always claim that such an election was illegitimate — jorndoe

Sounds plausible, but let's not forget that amongst the Russian declared objectives for the war, there was/is the denazification of Ukraine, namely, the removal of "the “drug addicts and neo-Nazis” who purportedly govern Ukraine. So acknowledging Zelensky as legitimate counter-part for a peace deal would be likely seen as a concession.

Reality and facts is not "pro-Russian propaganda”. — boethius

I do not take propaganda as the opposite of reality and facts. As I said many times propaganda can also be grounded on facts and reality. What makes political propaganda propaganda is the fact that people are pushing the audience to take political decisions based on a certain narrative about (actual or putative) reality and facts. And what I find questionable about certain propaganda is not necessarily about facts and reality per se, but about how propaganda selects and connects them to get to certain ideologically-motivated conclusions.
Once one is content with a narrative over facts for whatever reason then one can push it to the wider audience for political purposes by repeating and spreading their “gospel”, which is what you do and expressly intend to do. So yes you are a propagandist.
And also pro-Russian because OBJECTIVELY your narrative discrediting the West favours more Russia than the West, so much so that your narrative is parroting on many points Russian accusations and justifications against the West.
So, you are literally a pro-Russian propagandist. And my claim should not be taken as denigratory per se.

If the fact is that Russia can defeat Ukraine because Russia is bigger than Ukraine, and the fact is the West leaving Ukraine to fight the Russians alone is called appeasement, and the fact is the West has committed a disturbingly large amount of genocides and is committing genocide right now as we speak (arguably more than one), those are just the facts. — boethius

Let’s review your facts:
- The possibility of a military defeat. Its plausibility depends on many factors including the military capacity of Ukraine and Russia. One has to see the cost/benefit calculations as the war evolves and how other actors are moving wrt the conflict are other factors. Besides a military defeat or occupation do not fix political issues per se, especially in the long term.
- What people call “appeasement”. I think that your rendering doesn’t really capture what people mean by “appeasement” in the context of the Ukraine-Russia conflict which is more something like “the policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to Russia in hopes of avoiding further escalation or conflict, often viewed as placating Russian aggression at the expense of Ukrainian”. In some sense the Ukrainians want to fight alone in the current conflict, they do not need boots on the ground from other countries. They need a military, economic and humanitarian support at the expense of Russia. And this request is rationally compelling as long as Russia is perceived as a threat to European countries and the US.
- Dramatic events like genocides. To my understanding, there is a legal usage of the term “genocide”, there is a historical usage of the word “genocide”, and there is a political usage of the word “genocide” which can overlap to some extent but do not coincide. So we can still debate in what sense you talk about “genocide” and about its explanatory power.

Now, once we converge on a certain understanding of basic factual assumptions , we can then debate of what follows from them.

But propaganda can get in the way and use manipulative rhetorical tricks instead of offering clearer, more consistent analysis of facts and realities. I find that particularly nasty when careful analysis would be not only welcome but also kind of expected, as in a philosophical forum. Unfortunately, one can find early signs of such rhetorical manipulation even within your quotes.

In terms of absolute amount of suffering caused, definitely the West is the most evil in History, due to scale. — boethius

I don’t know how you made this calculation. But if I were to assess something, I would evaluate bad and good, costs and risks. Not just bad as you seem to do.
Talking about “causing” is ambiguous because it can be used both to explain without attributing responsibilities and then also to attribute responsibilities. So it is possible that the West in some explanatory sense has “caused” certain things, still it could be debatable if the West was responsible for it just because it “caused” them.

And definitely we Westerners should feel bad about that suffering. — boethius

OK your claim here is prescriptive not factual. Again I find it debatable, because the chance of following prescriptive claims depend on behavioural dispositions in human beings like the following: feeling bad about certain choices does not necessarily mean regretting those choices.
I’ll give you a dumb example: if I SHOULD save kid A and B from drowning and kid A is my son while kid B is your son, and I can’t save both. I will save mine and sacrifice yours. Would I feel bad about it? Sure. Would I regret my choice? Most certainly not.
In the same vain: if I SHOULD save kid A and one zillion of Palestinian kids from drowning and kid A is my son while one zillion of Palestinian kids are not, and I can’t save both. I will save mine and sacrifice one zillion of Palestinian kids. Would I feel bad about it? Sure. Would I regret my choice? Most certainly not.
What’s more is that even if you and many others feel differently about it, still there could be people whose feelings are of the kind I just described. And here is the political conundrum: politicians’ policies should be based on what people SHOULD feel or on what people ACTUALLY feel? Politicians are more credible and supported if they approve policies based on what people SHOULD do or on what people ACTUALLY do?

We should feel bad about the suffering of the Palestinians suffering a brutal genocide with on camera rapes of prisoners, burning and blown apart children, rapes of children we know about, starvation; really the most horrifying and humiliating conditions possibly in history, due to the essentially live-broadcast nature of the documentation of the horror. — boethius

This argument is good for moral appeal, not for clear analysis.
History is replete of brutal ethnic conflicts (which were perpetrated not only by the West) and probably that’s because human beings do not only feel the need for peace, but also because they need social identities. Unfortunately social identities come with all sorts of social discrimination between groups. This is a potential source of conflict that can spiral into a vicious circle and very easily so, since any defensive move against actual or potential hostilities by other groups can be perceived as aggressive by those groups. This vicious circle can escalate the conflict to brutal and disturbing consequences.
So if one wants to minimize their frequency and intensity everywhere one would need OVERWHELMING DISPROPORTIONATE POWERFUL means to ENFORCE peace and preserve/fuel such powerful means as long as possible and against competitors everywhere. What historical form could this situation take?
For example, once an international order of very powerful countries (NOT only the US) are committed to support and enforce human rights everywhere (starting from their own countries) then I can find it plausible that genocides will become less likely than otherwise.
“Genocidal” conflicts happen both in Palestine and in Ukraine. However the difference is that Russia is not fighting its war for the acknowledgement of its sovereign state by the Ukrainians. Russia aims to have its own sphere of influence beyond its borders, be influential on a global scale, be treated as a peer by the US (BTW if the US is an empire and Russia wants to be treated as a peer by the US than Russia wants to be treated as an empire too, right?). Israelis and Palestinians do.

Likewise, we should definitely feel bad about having bribed the Ukrainian elite into doing our dirty work to ensure the US can sell LNG to Europe at the cost of over a million dead Ukrainians (some estimates are approaching 2 million dead).

We manipulate and prop up the Ukrainians to take an absolutely brutal beating, dangle prospects of real help sometimes (like all that "no-fly-zone" talk, if you remember that) and the hypothesis is supposed to be we should feel good about that because we morally excoriated the Russians for following the exact same policies of Imperial domination we follow (just a lot more nobly due to pretty close adherence to the laws of war and not doing things like a genocide and starving civilian populations and lacking things like raping prisoners, even recording the rapes but defending the rapists)? — boethius

See, you started with some facts you likely believe to be “unquestionable” and then you conclude with facts which you can’t possibly believe they are “unquestionable” since they have been questioned. The idea that the Ukrainian have been propped up and bribed by the West has been repeatedly disputed (by me too). If one takes into consideration the historical evidence of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, one can find it rather plausible that Ukrainians had reasons to fight the Russians INDEPENDENTLY from any propping and bribing. This historical trend is not even unique to Ukraine, and it can be seen in many other neighboring countries of Russia. Ukrainians and many other Eastern European countries find Russia more oppressive than the US and act accordingly. And the war simply may have confirmed this perception. On the other side, the imperialist ambitions of Russia have also solid historical evidences (even prior the existence of the US) and are still cheerfully supported by Russian elites and intellectuals. So the propping and bribing by the West may not have enough explanatory power you seem to attribute to them. But you are less interested in analyzing facts and more interesting in judging and pinning responsibilities by carefully selecting certain convenient facts and overlook the rest.
From a geopolitical point of view, since Russia and Ukraine are not the only countries in the world, we should see how other countries position themselves wrt this conflict given their national interest. More powerful countries will likely approach the conflict in instrumental ways that are convenient to preserve or increase their power status for their security and prosperity, possibly at the expense of other rival powers. Now, since Russia can and did prop-up and bribe Ukrainians to make Russia happier the US is compelled to do the same to neutralise the asymmetric advantage Russia would otherwise have. Bribing and propping-up are tools politicians may need to rely on to beat rivals, still that’s not enough to explain certain historical trends or, even, to pin responsibilities.

See, so far my counter arguments are non-moral. They are grounded on what I believe “unquestionable” historical and anthropological facts, and neutral/pragmatic geopolitical reasoning. Even pro-Russian like you should be able to understand these arguments. And they should feel free to question them on their grounds which they typically avoid to do, because these arguments interfere with their rote counter-propaganda against the Great Satan. Their “analysis” is at best to find creative ways to link facts to the evil intentions of the Great Satan whatever they are. And then they call it critical thinking.
So my philosophical question to you is: should moral reasoning over the conflict between Ukraine and Russia take into account the anthropological and historical facts, and geopolitical reasoning I was referring to or not? If not, what is your argument? If yes, how?

allied participation in WWII being about pursuing Western imperial interests that include plenty of genocide bother before and after WWII and still today! — boethius

And the subtext of your subtext is that being the American-European lead West the greatest evil in history we Westerners (?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) should help Russia end American-European-lead West by spinning pro-Russian propaganda, right? And that's rational, right?

"Hours Ahead of Meeting Putin, Trump Calls Kremlin’s Closest Ally"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/world/europe/trump-belarus-leader-call-putin.html

https://x.com/BelarusMFA/status/1956374401642865068

"Lukashenko says not going to run for reelection"
https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/113157/

What's the orange president cooking in Belarus?

What these imbecile claims keep predicting is in reality nothing more than a theory of the INTENTIONS behind plausible but still uncertain consequences of certain political decisions made by involved parties. And interpret everything in light of these alleged intentions no matter what the actual facts are.
They found a way to connect whatever fact to such evil intentions, those of the Great Satan. And yap about it. As simple as that. Pardon, as imbecile as that.

Meanwhile: "Dramatic Rise in Republican Support for Ukraine"
https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/dramatic-rise-republican-support-ukraine

The story people tell themselves about Ukraine deserving a better deal is just a coping mechanism to wash their hands, because a better deal is not coming and things will only get worse. Doubly so if the US ends up using failed peace talks as an excuse to walk out on the conflict altogether - Ukraine is really screwed then, and will probably not survive as a country. — Tzeentch

So this clown and others kept repeating in this forum since the beginning of the conflict that the Europeans are slavish vassals of the US, that the US foreign policy is the BLOB everywhere (from Ukraine to Israel, from Biden to Trump), that Zelensky is a corrupt clown put there by the BLOB to screw Ukraine AND still the US can't get what they want from their slavish vassals and corrupt clowns?!!!

I have to say that it's somewhat amusing to witness the response to this collective reality check. :lol: — Tzeentch

That's what you call your wish list now?

People trying to "boycott" peace out of sheer spite for Trump is probably one of the funniest things I've seen on this forum. — Tzeentch

Shouldn't you too? Trump is Biden 2.0 , the Blob, and other imbecile buzz words of yours and your brain doubles.

As Nietzsche said, a man's worth can be determined by how much truth they can tolerate. This forum appears to be capable of tolerating very little. — Tzeentch

You mean the dude who died crazy?

Facts on the ground in Ukraine do not settle political matters. Land grabbing is a political issue worldwide and occurs in many regions where American national interests are involved, such as in the cases of Palestine and Taiwan. Acknowledging land grabbing would severely undermine the Westphalian principle of territorial sovereignty, which underpins international relations among modern states. So any fallout of what happens in one region can impact other regional conflicts as far as territorial sovereignty is concerned.
However what I also find worth highlighting is that in Ukraine the political issue arises from the clash between Ukrainian nationalism and Russian imperialism. In Palestine, the conflict is between two nationalisms, the Israeli and the Palestinian. In Asia, the conflict is between Chinese imperialism and Taiwanese nationalism.

What’s the ideological point of declaring a war over when armies are still fighting, people are still dying and no agreement even over a truce has ever been achieved?
What moral authority do such comments have, coming from those who haven’t been involved, towards those who have skin in the game?
What intellectual depth can there be in remarks that overlook the complexities of international collective dynamics and the long-term strategies of political leaders?

More on Baiden 2.0 provoking innocent Russia which has already won the war since day one as everybody knows:
Trump, escalating war of words with Russia’s Medvedev, mobilizes two nuclear submarines
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/01/trump-escalating-war-of-words-with-russias-medvedev-mobilizes-two-nuclear-submarines-00488493

Ukraine sees first major anti-government protests since start of war, as Zelensky moves to weaken anti-corruption agencies
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/23/europe/ukraine-corruption-agencies-protests-intl

For those who appreciate sarcasm:

Interesting reading:
Chartbook 396 Strangelove in the Middle East - or how the markets learned to stop worrying and love Israel's rampage
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-396-strangelove-in-the

strategic tolerance is motivated also by a perceived common ideological enemy: Christianity and Capitalism can ally against Communism, progressive socialism and conservative nationalism can ally against Capitalism, etc.

But there's more than thinking involved in ideology. Praxis is also very important in understanding what it means. — Ludwig V

Sure, but the reasoning is still the same: actions are understood not as function of their expected and actual results, but again as markers of social grouping. And this likely becomes more clear in symbolic gestures ideologically inspired. On the other side ideological thinking can stir, guide, justify political mobilization (peaceful protests, violent revolts, electoral choices, social media propaganda, etc.).
But notice also that even the distinction between praxis and theory can be ideologically loaded.

Zizek is wrong. Some American PoW's in the Korean War switched sides. I've seen one interview (which doesn't make a summer, I accept, but..) in which an American ex-PoW switched sides because he came to see American ideology through Chinese eyes - no force was required. The fundamental point was that the Chinese treated him better than the Americans. There's more to the story, or course, and I'm sure Google will find it for you if you want. But I don't accept what Zizek is saying. Seeing through one's own ideology is not easy, but it can be done. — Ludwig V

I don't think Zizek is denying the possibility of changing views. He just remarks how painful it can often be and how often that this change can hardly come by our own intellectual initiative. Indeed, that's hardly surprising as ideological thinking can be also matter of mental habits, which we can find rather uncomfortable to change as any other habit, also when we would have reasons to believe they are bad. The example you gave of the American prisoners of wars is hardly a counter-example: since their traumatic experience during the war may have been the painful trigger for a revision of their own ideological views.
I don't think however that any of such considerations clarify the nature of ideological thinking and how it epistemically compels us.

Why are these the only two options? — Joshs

My bad, I was too hasty in drawing that conclusion. What I should have said instead is that once persuasion is not achievable on shared normative/epistemic assumptions, one can try to induce a compliant behavior in others by other means and incentives, which can include also brute force. But, I guess, this is still far from what you are hinting at in the following quote.

Why couldn't I teach someone a different way of looking at world, the way which grounds my own arguments and facts, so that they can understand the basis of my criteria of justification? It would not be a question of justifying the worldview I convert them to, but of allowing them to justify the arguments and views that are made intelligible from within that worldview. — Joshs

I have no problems at admitting this possibility too. We acquire ideologies mostly through education (aka Althusser’s ideological apparatuses) and my argument doesn’t concern our educational dispositions as learners or teachers. We shouldn’t also discount the fact that training others to view things differently may include also pain and coercion (BTW Zizek, in that video, is giving a psychological explanation for why liberation from one own’s ideology needs to be forced on people). And history, up until nowadays, has offered abundant examples of coercion ideologically induced.
Nor am I questioning our capacity of non-ideological thinking. And our intellectual dispositions to adopt a reflective, critical or theoretical approach toward our own ideological views.
Nor am I excluding many other factors contributing to ideological shifts in a population: like material and technological evolution, demographic and generational change, historical traumas, etc.
To me these are all interesting empirical questions, focusing on cultural shifts or cultural sophistication.
My argument however is more conceptual (what is “ideology”?). In particular, my conception provides a certain understanding of the link between “necessity” and “irrationality” of ideological thinking as discussed in the opening post, and distances itself from more psychological understanding of ideologies (evil intentions, stupidity, comforting delusions ) which I find rather misleading (if not even, ideologically motivated!). The problem ideologies respond to is very basic and very unescapable. Societies are elusive entities not only because the complexity and dynamism of social interactions and their aggregated results can vastly exceed our direct personal experience and computational capacity as individuals, but also because with our actions and beliefs we are integral part of society (aka there is no separation between subject and object of knowledge). So ideology is the most basic form of coordination for social grouping to support a given informational flow within a society and political mobilisation. Under enough social pressure, anybody can be compelled to engage in ideological thinking whatever their intellectual, moral or emotional dispositions may otherwise be.

One dictionary definition of ‘refute’ is: to prove (a statement or theory) to be wrong or false; disprove. If you accept this definition as consistent with your use of the word, then to refute is to access a vantage beyond ideology, an objective meta-position that transcends bias — Joshs

.

The definition of “to refute” doesn’t tell us what beliefs are true or false, proven or unproven, biased or unbiased. It doesn’t even offer us a method for proving anything.
Nor claiming something to be proven to be right or wrong, refuted or validated makes it right or wrong, successfully proven or refuted.
What I’m contending is that ideological thinking consists precisely in validating and refuting (potentially any) normative or factual claims in light of social affiliations that such normative or factual claims hint at. This way of thinking MAY be claimed to be biased having in mind stricter procedures oriented to maximise factual knowledge (scientific, legal, professional reporting, etc.) instead of grouping living social interactions. Yet I’m contending that NONE of such procedures can replace ideological thinking to the extent ideology is the pre-theoretical form of social grouping. On the contrary, scientific, legal, professional reporting practices presuppose supporting ideologies for such practices to thrive and inform social life. Indeed, all these procedures can as well be compromised by ideological struggles.

In the philosophical literature one can find critiques of ideology from the left and the right. Critiques from the left tend to locate the concept of ideology with Marxist discourses. One can find such critiques among postmodern and poststructuralist writers. What they object to about the analysis of social configurations of knowledge in terms of ideology is not its assumption that knowledge is socially constructed, but that it can be totalized on the basis of a logic of development, that it moves toward an ultimate end — Joshs

.

My readings about ideology mainly include De Stutt, Napoleon, Marx, Althusser and Mannheim. I think Althusser is making a similar point. But I don’t find his way of arguing sharp enough.

What the leftist critics of ideology keep from Marxism ( and Hegelianism) is the notion that knowledge is only produced within social formations, and the development of these formations does not proceed by way of refutation but revolutionary transformation — Joshs

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That is not in conflict with what I said of ideology. Indeed, if refutation is based on non-shared assumptions there is no way to dialectically persuade those who do not share those assumptions with arguments based on those assumptions. Under this predicament, if we want them to act in accordance to our views, then we are left with the only option of imposing our views on them by brute force (or treachery?). But if we feel JUSTIFIED in doing this, this is because we take our views to be the valid ones, and their views the invalid ones.

Common to Wittgenstein’s forms of life and hinges , Heidegger’s worldviews, Foucault’s epistemes and Kuhn’s paradigms is a rejection of the idea that social formations of knowledge progress via refutation — Joshs

.

You read my posts having in mind certain views of knowledge progress and related ways of phrasing the issue. But those views do not seem to me really focused on what I’m focusing on, not even relevant to question anything I said.

It sounds like your critique of ideology is from the right, which places it as a pre-Hegelian traditionalist thinking. — Joshs

No idea what you are referring to. Feel free to quote those pre-Hegelian traditionalist or critique of ideology from the right you find closer to my views.

More orangy claims from the orange president:
Trump pledges weapons for Ukraine, threatens secondary tariffs on Russia
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/live-blog/trump-patriot-missiles-ukraine-russia-immigration-tariffs-live-updates-rcna218469
And despite the fact that Putin has already won the war as every "smart" people in this thread - namely those who love to smell their own intellectual farts - knows.

I was, rather, suggesting that what we can agree on might be a basis for working out a way of co-existing in spite of the things we do not agree on.
After all, different ideologies will either compete or co-exist, and we might all do better if we worked as hard at co-existing as we do at competing. — Ludwig V

I just realized I missed a comment of yours to my quote. I do not disagree with your general claims but they do not offer any concrete path toward peaceful coexistence. And even the belief of the possible co-existence of potentially competing ideologies can be trapped in ideological struggles. Often competing ideologies can converge when there is a third ideology perceived as common threat (like extreme left and Islamism occasionally converging in their criticism against Western capitalism, or christianity and capitalism converging in opposing the communist ideology, etc.).

I.e. common sense (socialization aka "ideology") can be corrected, or coarse-grained, by science (observations + experiments) that in turn, through reflection (critique / dialectics), can be corrected, or biases exposed, by philosophy. "And so on and so on ..." :smirk: — 180 Proof

I disagree with both you and Zizek.
Science can correct beliefs to the extent there is TRUST in science and within science, but science can be easily trapped in ideological struggles as well, as we have seen in the debate about covid and climate change. As I argued, ideologies have less to do with knowledge of facts and more to do with knowledge of social groups.
What you call reflection, critique, dialecticts, "And so on and so on ..." is often nothing more than validating or refuting the ideology of somebody else in light of the ideology one supports.
Also the psychological understanding of ideology offered by Zizek is missing the point. Ideologies are not glasses that distort reality accessible without glasses. Social groupings are inaccessible without ideological glasses.

If another group’s norms and beliefs don’t ground our system of validation, then we can’t refute those norms and beliefs because we won’t be able to understand them. — Joshs

Adopting certain beliefs and norms as conditions for validation, already implies refusing to adopt other beliefs and norms as conditions for validation. And as long as beliefs and norms do not enjoy a special status of conditions for validation, then they can be scrutinised in light of beliefs and norms adopted as conditions for validation, and possibly refuted. So I get that mutual understanding presupposes shared assumptions. But ideological refutation is based on non-shared assumptions, so shared assumptions is not a requirement for ideological refutation. And any attempt to consider alternative beliefs and norms as ground for validation is taken to be a form of “rationalization” or “opium” (lack of loyalty is sort of conflated with lack of intellectual honesty).
To be more clear, what is peculiar in the case of ideology from an epistemological point of view is that there is a double epistemic shift: epistemic target (we are not interested in what claimed beliefs tells us about facts, but what they tell us about the subject making those claims, and not even as individuals but as group representatives) and of method of validation (a claim is validated or refuted in light of group affiliation) both of which are inherent to social grouping.
Let’s discuss concrete examples: to me, beliefs such as “the US has provoked Russia into the Ukrainian conflict” or “Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza” or “Western Capitalism is the cause of social inequalities in the World” or “owning nuclear bombs is in the best national interest of Iran” or “Trump is a real patriot” are ideological NOT to the extent they (in)accurately describe or assess certain facts. Their ideological value is not grounded in their accuracy (their accuracy may even contribute to a loss in ideological relevance) but in their aptness to work as polarising social markers for an in-group vs un out-group discrimination (which doesn’t even need to pre-exist!) and possible mobilisation. Thinking ideologically is engaging in a primitive game for social grouping. Its necessity comes from being integral part of our social life, especially beyond interpersonal relations. Its “irrationality” comes from the fact we are capable of thinking non-ideologically as long as we do not feel pressed by social life.

Your long, tedious posts are an automatic “ignore” for me. You’re just way too stupid. But thanks anyway. — Mikie

I'm not writing for you. I enjoy hitting your imbecile claims hard. You deserve no pity. Don't waste time begging for mercy. Suck it up and move on.

Here's a slightly different way of looking at things.

01 - Ideology as “a system of ideas and ideals that form the basis of economic or political theory and policy"

if ideology is a “system” of ideas and ideals, where ideas are about how things are (beliefs) and ideals about how things should be (norms), then those beliefs and norms are somehow interdependent. If ideology is the basis for economic/political theorising and policy, then ideology is a pre-theoretical system of ideas and ideals relevant for economy and politics. — neomac — Metaphysician Undercover

Where is it stated that there is no distinction between ideology and facts?
Claiming that Ideology is “a system of ideas and ideals that form the basis of economic or political theory and policy" doesn’t imply any equation between facts and ideology.
“Facts” refers to what ideological beliefs are about.

Under this definition, we accept that there is division, disagreement as to the facts, the truth, and this division manifests as distinct social groups.

With this way of looking at things, the two definitions are consistent, and not actually describing two different things — Metaphysician Undercover

No idea what the purpose of your remark is since I never claimed that the 2 quotes talk about different things or about the same thing but inconsistently.

What I was trying to do is to elaborate those 6 points reported in the opening post to offer a certain understanding of the link between the “irrationality” of ideologies and yet their necessity. Ideologies shape our pre-theoretical beliefs and norms in ways that are functional to social grouping and collective action. That’s why the value of ideologies is NOT in their offering a unique and consistent set of beliefs universally shared by those who adopt a certain ideology (that’s why “falsity”, “inconsistency”, “partiality”, “indeterminacy” are more easily tolerated). Which, in turn, offers a criterium of epistemic validation that bypasses those methods considered “rational”.
Indeed, even those “rational” methods presuppose ideologies (like that one of the Enlightenment) if they have to be promoted at social level and inform communities.

If the method of validation is grounded on a set of norms and beliefs, such norms and beliefs can not be refuted, since the refutation must presuppose them (like Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions). — neomac

That is a most uncomfortable thought. What Wittgenstein regards as our ground turns out to be something quite different. My form of life, my facts turn out to be the other guy's ideology.
I'm consoled by the thought that what Wittgenstein was gesturing at was something shared by all human beings. If we could delineate that, we might, just might, find a basis for unity (within diversity, of course). — Ludwig V

The fact that there are beliefs universally shared doesn't spare us from the predicament of non-shared beliefs. And attributing these non-shared beliefs to evil intentions or stupidity (or ideology, in a derogatory sense) shows an ideological attitude which can suffer from analogous accusations.

Russia has no interest in conquering Ukraine, and never did— despite the assurances of our media and their parrots online — so whatever territory has been taken (illegally) they will keep and defend for years to come. — Mikie

Your post is questionable on many points (“Trump is now basically Biden 2.0”, really?!) but I’ll comment just this snippet.
A part from the fact you are not in Putin’s mind so what interest Russia has is matter of speculation and trying to downplay the evidence that goes against your narrative won’t change the fact that your conviction is parroting pro-Russian biased speculations. And a part from the fact that counter-propaganda against Western media is totally instrumental to Russia as more propaganda against the West, no matter how pro-peace, pro-life or impartial you want us think you are.
You are completely missing the whole point: annexing territories (like in the case of Israel), no matter how small, it is a very concerning violation of the international order to all geopolitical actors. Even more if they have territorial claims or are exposed to other actors’ territorial claims. Besides the annexed territory may be more or less relevant for a country to increase its sphere of influence in a wider region in terms of security and access to resources. And geopolitical actors act also on anticipated moves even independently from stated intentions by political leaders. So OBVIOUSLY hegemonic powers like the US and China are compelled to take position wrt Russia has done. And cornered itself to keep doing.
Putin’s DECLARED goals concern what OTHER COUNTRIES (especially, the Western alliance backing Ukraine and Ukraine) must do: neutral status of Ukraine (e.g. rejection of Ukraine's NATO membership or ambition), demilitarisation, denazification of the Ukrainian regime (i.e. regime change), recognition of the annexed territories (+ some more which is not even occupied). Literally NONE of them has been reached so far, after 3 years of war that Russia has INITIATED with estimated hundreds of thousands of death between soldiers and civilians (+ 8 of illegal occupation of Ukraine).
And it is very much questionable the idea that Russia has increased its sphere of influence in its near-abroad just because Putin has occupied some Ukrainian territory "(illegally)" as you say.

Not sure what your wiki reference is supposed to add here. So, it's a Hong Kong newspaper with a dubious reputation. The journo is referencing anonymous sources. — SophistiCat

If a Chinese source like SCMP controlled by the Chinese authority validates a report to me that's enough relevant evidence of what the Chinese authority wants the audience of SCMP to believe. At least, until it is not officially disclaimed by the Chinese authority. It's not even that SCMP echoed some Western report. They were the primary source as far as I can tell.

What makes me say that is that diplomats don't talk like that, least of all, Chinese diplomats, who are known for their exemplary circumspection. — SophistiCat

Sure. Until they start making blunt and frank declarations. Tensions between China and EU may be the background circumstances which could motivate a more assertive posture by China, also in the Ukrainian conflict. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/marktemnycky/2025/07/11/european-trade-tensions-rise-ahead-of-the-july-summit-in-china/)

the contention that China's top diplomat made such a blunt and frank declaration to the EU's top diplomat sounds extremely implausible — SophistiCat

If you are serious, what makes you think that? The source I'm quoting is SCMP:

The South China Morning Post (SCMP), with its Sunday edition, the Sunday Morning Post, is a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper owned by Alibaba Group.

Since the change of ownership in 2016, concerns have been raised about the paper's editorial independence and self-censorship. Critics including The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Atlantic have alleged that the paper is on a mission to promote China's soft power abroad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Morning_Post

"Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat on Wednesday that Beijing did not want to see a Russian loss in Ukraine because it feared the United States would then shift its whole focus to Beijing, according to several people familiar with the exchange.

The comment, to the EU’s Kaja Kallas, would confirm what many in Brussels believe to be Beijing’s position but jar with China’s public utterances. The foreign ministry regularly says China is “not a party” to the war. Some EU officials involved were surprised by the frankness of Wang’s remarks.

However, Wang is said to have rejected the accusation that China was materially supporting Russia’s war effort, financially or militarily, insisting thatif it was doing so, the conflict would have ended long ago."
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3316875/china-tells-eu-it-cannot-afford-russian-loss-ukraine-war-sources-say

On the 4 Jul 2025, apparently China still doesn't know that Russia has already succeeded in its goals in Ukraine. How imbecile is this Chinese minister? Where are your emojis @Mikie? We need them.

If moral norms refers to prescriptions and cooperation refers to factual patterns of behavior (where individuals' payoffs are de facto greater when they coordinate their action then when they do not), then one would be committing a logic mistake by conflating them.
On the other side adopting moral prescriptions is in the domain of facts. If such adoption promotes cooperation this should be matter of empirical investigation.
And there is a sense in which I find this plausible: by following through words and actions moral prescriptions on one’s own initiative, one can signal to others their willingness to preserve this behavior at least if/until others do the same. And once this behavior is shared and habitual it grounds further forms of cooperation like collective production and exchange of goods and services.
There are three problems however:
1 - it is conceptually possible for an individual to act and speak in line with moral principles while being totally indifferent to how the others respond (a sort of ascetic example of morality).
2 - cultural norms, like moral principles, are acquired through education since we were kids. The source of such education is a mix of oral indoctrination, exemplar behavior, positive incentives and negative incentives. Our default moral code is never adopted as a conscious choice. So it’s education that promotes cooperation in individuals whatever cultural norms there are (see if someone is educated to become a mafia member)
3 - moral norms are taken to be universal in the sense that they must apply to all human beings anywhere and anytime. Take for example the moral prescription “do not kill others”, does that mean that we should exclude euthanasia as moral? What about killing for self-defense? Or death penalty for a mass-murderer? Or killing enemies invading one’s own country? Notice also that prescriptions like “do not kill” can be also applied to a stricter scope e.g. “do not kill member of your community”. So if moral prescritions are taken to be universal, then they can promote cooperation in the sense of making it wider than prescriptions that would hold for in-group members but wouldn’t be as categorical for out-group members. Yet I’m not sure if “universality” can fully accommodate our intuitions about morality since we find more morally outrageous to kill one’s own children than killing a random old dude in coma in a terminal state of a deadly disease or a serial mass-murder. But if universality is not part of our understanding of moral prescriptions then morality can’t be be said to promote cooperation (between in-group members) more than competition (between in-group and out-group members)

Maybe you didn't get the sarcastic tone of my post.
Whatever plausible point Tzeench has, it is then elaborated through his personal ideological glasses and with such an arrogance that it exposes his own arguments to easy dialectical retorts. Discrediting interlocutors and silence treatment are the next predictable steps from his part since he feels defenseless against such dialectical retorts.
Said that, I would add that in political debates ideological views are part of the game but also part of the problem to the extent they nurture conflicts. So in a philosophy forum like this one it would be more suitable (expected? beneficial? fun?) to take a philosophical approach about political debates, take a step back and resist the temptation to (explicitly or implicitly) reason in terms of what is right or wrong (which is still political propaganda) but in terms of what one wants and what on can get in a way that equally applies to ALL ideological conflicting views at hand (INCLUDING the ideological views one supports).

Hear audio from 2024 fundraiser where Trump said he threatened to bomb Moscow and Beijing
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/08/politics/video/trump-fundraiser-threats-moscow-beijing-src-digvid

Europe willingly subjugated itself to the US (it didn't have a huge amount of options post-WII) — Tzeentch

As Ukraine should willingly subjugate itself to Russia. What other options does Ukraine have? Neither Europeans nor the US are offering other options to Ukraine than subjugating itself to Russia, right? That's why Europeans and the US are helping Ukraine fight against Russia, instead of supporting Russia fight against Ukraine, right?

and when a part of the world willingly throws itself in your lap that is of course a geopolitical wet dream. — Tzeentch

Why should Europeans and the US deny such wet dreams to Russia which wants to annex only a small portion of Ukraine, not the entire Ukraine, just a small portion that is directly linked to the control of the Black Sea? Europeans and the US should serve Russia's wet dreams, right?
If that means sacrificing Europeans and the US geopolitical wet dreams, that's not an excuse for denying Russia's wet dreams, right?

That's a unique situation and not something that is easily replicated - especially not in the Middle-East. — Tzeentch

But if it is difficult for the US than it is difficult for Russia and China too, right? And if Russia and China are meddling anyways in the Middle-East, why shouldn't the US?

In terms of wars being "expensive", this entirely depends on the ways in which the war is profitable. — Tzeentch

Let us know about the ways the war is profitable to Iran, Russia and China.
After you finish with the US and Israel, of course. Take your time.

The US successfully created failed states all over the world to deny resources, bloc power and trade corridors — Tzeentch

On the contrary Russia and Iran created successful states all over the world to grant those states resources, bloc competing powers and trade corridors.

More on the orange president fixing the war in Ukraine in one day:
"We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin," Trump said during a meeting with cabinet officials at the White House.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-says-not-happy-russias-163357554.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABxuYhHS9Ol6enuivxctaFxdKEwyAAe6q5u7vVuAuD8hnvPBR5qhWPaV6V8sdg76U2pO-EdfGCabRxTL7fjXVgYIVCBZ1oyLoOprugJStwv8nVGHSeG3SAvuYWexrmKBhjZYJk2o0SCv2M4u9GdQMhqt-8gyRf-EROnbO9Rju6EW

More on Russia re-asserting its sphere of influence in its near abroad:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-azerbaijan-putin-aliyev-tensions-relations-627104d770071082be26c189161b1ac9

More on Israel being doomed due to the Palestinian "genocide, international isolation and, especially, the holy wrath of the Arab world in the name of the Palestinian cause:
Five of the most prominent Arab sheikhs in Hebron—yes, Hebron, the heart of biblical Judea—just declared that they want to join the Abraham Accords, recognize Israel as the Jewish state and break away from the Palestinian Authority.
Not as part of some negotiated peace process. Not as part of a “two-state solution.” But as a rejection of the entire Palestinian nationalist cause.
https://www.jns.org/hebron-arab-leaders-back-joining-abraham-accords/

I was tempted to open a thread on the same subject until I found this one. Let me revive this very old topic which I find extremely interesting.

There are some points that I gathered from the opening post and would like to comment on:

01 - Ideology as “a system of ideas and ideals that form the basis of economic or political theory and policy"

if ideology is a “system” of ideas and ideals, where ideas are about how things are (beliefs) and ideals about how things should be (norms), then those beliefs and norms are somehow interdependent. If ideology is the basis for economic/political theorising and policy, then ideology is a pre-theoretical system of ideas and ideals relevant for economy and politics.
However the pre-theoretical attitude poses an issue about their determinacy and coherence. To what extent each system of ideas and ideals can be translated into a unique list of coherent and determined beliefs and norms? On the other side, isn’t it possible that ideology as a system of ideas and ideals owes its appeal and unity not to a unique list of a determined and coherent beliefs and norms, but on something else and then we arrive at this system of ideas and ideals via abstraction from a set of a determined and coherent beliefs and norms? But doesn’t this abstraction correspond to a theoretical task or to a convenient codification which fails to account for the pre-theoretical aspect of ideology?


02 - "The set of beliefs characteristic of a social group or individual"

If ideology is characteristic of a social group, then ideology is not only a shared system of beliefs, but something that helps us identify social groups.
We can group people by their age, sexual gender, the colour of their skin, their economic status, etc. but we can group by their ideology.
But here is a link to the previous question: how far do individuals share exactly the same unique list of a determined and coherent beliefs and norms? Are people grouped by ideology after surveying their approval of a unique list of a determined and coherent beliefs and norms? Do people typically show their ideological affiliation by offering the unique list of a determined and coherent beliefs and norms which their ideology consists in?


03 - an ideologue is identifiable by their rejections out-of-hand of conflicting evidences or logical critiques. Typically in preference they will attack their detractors' ethical integrity. These ad-hominum reactions can vary across a wide spectrum: From thought-blocking clichés (e.g. of "political correctness" and “bleeding hearts” from the Right) to name-calling (from "sell out" to "counter revolutionary" from the Left) to lethal violence (Fatwa-approved assassinations or the most brutal execution of heretics, by those of a more pious inclination)

Ideology as a system of beliefs and norms resists refutation (via evidence and logic criticism) and it is “thought-blocking” (like powerful emotions), and it accompanied by intellectual or physical ad-hominem attacks. Yet even though claiming that certain beliefs or norms are refutable are not an attack ad-hominem still can challenge the credibility of the attacked. So the thought-blocking factor that accompanies ideologies seems to point to a shift of focus in the ways a set of beliefs and norms is scrutinised: from empirical evidence and logic to the credibility of the interlocutors. So not only a change in the epistemic focus but also a change in method of validation. Beliefs and norms are validated as function of the interlocutors’ credibility, in light of their interest. And the interest is identified via the system of beliefs and norms under scrutiny as convenient rationalizations of self-serving interests.

04 - It seems then that ideology is not merely a framework of ideas supporting ideals and beliefs, but is actually constructed as kind of fortress against reasoned objection, and by extension, against reality itself. While not all ideologies are so malignant, it seems that as intrinsically anti-rational constructions

Being against refutation, thought-blocking, close minded ideology is then considered anti-rational. But what do we mean by anti-rational? If the method of validation is grounded on a set of norms and beliefs, such norms and beliefs can not be refuted, since the refutation must presuppose them (like Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions). But if we do not share such norms and beliefs, and they do not ground our system of validation then of course we can refute such norms and beliefs. How do we know if we share beliefs and norms grounding our method of validation for people’s credibility?


05 - 'Ideology' has become a derogatory term, a brickbat thrown at one's opposition.

The anti-rationality of Ideology turned “ideology” into a derogatory term which is used for ad-hominem attacks against one’s opposition. So even the word “ideological” can be used ideologically! Accusing others of being “ideological” not only doesn’t make somebody immune from receiving the same accusation, but it hints at it since the subjected shifted to credibility of the interlocutor.


06 - Too bad it went sour, because it would otherwise be a useful word, to describe the necessary set of ideas and ideals one needs to organize one's life.

Interestingly, ideology despite being considered “anti-rational”, it can be also seen as accomplishing a positive function, namely offering “necessary set of ideas one needs to organise one’s life”. One may wonder why “necessary”? And how does this necessity relate to anti-rationality? Do people act anti-rationally because this set of ideas is necessary however refutable? Or considering this set of refutable beliefs as necessary is already anti-rational? “Necessary” to organise one’s life in what sense?


I think that there is a key to address my questions which would help understand ideology as something more than just an irrational behavior or derogatory term, without denying such side effects. The point is really to better understand the positive contribution of ideology in somebody’s life beyond misinformation and evil intent.
Indeed, there is a pre-theoretical dimension in everybody’s life that would make a set of beliefs and norms relevant for economic and political investigation and a the same time necessary: that’s social life. The need for trustable sociable networking in which we can fit in is what makes possible to somebody organising their life, as long as we live in society or we think ourselves as social creatures.
The need of trustable networking helps us understand better many of the features attributed to ideology:
- Ideology as a system of ideas and ideals but not in the sense of forming a unique set of beliefs and norms because for a network of people which do not necessarily share same and coherent and deep understanding of beliefs and norms what is important is to “popularize” affiliation markers like slogans, symbols and gestures that testify their “trustable” ideological affiliation (no matter how overlapping the justifications are).
- Ideology as a anti-rational behavior is clear when the issue is not to know things but to maintain the trustable network
- Ideology as an epistemic shift: credibility is important for social networking and interlocutors are provoked into taking position wrt trustability. Here the epistemic method doesn’t only change focus but also method of validation in the sense that evidence is provided through provocation (resistance from refutation and attacks ad hominem), that interlocutors provoke each other to test their trustability, their fidelity to their social network.

Withdrawal from international anti-landmine treaty is the new buzz of the summer :
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/30/why-is-ukraine-withdrawing-from-the-ottawa-treaty-banning-landmines
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/europe/article/2025/05/08/lithuania-s-parliament-votes-to-withdraw-from-landmines-treaty_6741049_143.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/estonian-parliament-votes-withdraw-landmines-treaty-2025-06-04/
https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/06/26/parliament-approves-polands-withdrawal-from-international-anti-landmine-treaty/
https://www.euronews.com/2025/06/19/finlands-parliament-votes-to-withdraw-from-landmine-treaty-due-to-russia-threat

Let's all thank Russia which is working so hard for a better world, free from Western imperialism

Why “however”? What do you want it to contrast to? — neomac


The use of the word "however" is to to contrast with the fact that parties seeking their own gain at the expense of some collective gain (family, organization, business, institutional, government, country, empire, or what have you) usually don't advertise that, but will present their plan as in the interest of the group. — boethius

In order to talk about “parties seeking their own gain at the expense of some collective gain” one has to establish how collective gain must be assessed. Adopting a normative standard for it. The problem I’m pointing out is that involved parties do not necessarily share the same understanding of collective gain. So before talking about dishonesty one has to discuss about views of national interest.
The fact that accusing government representatives of being dishonest about their claims or policies over national interest, not only suggests (without proving it) one’s own honest and/or non-exploitative attitude toward national interest (how convenient is that for powerless anonymous people whom nobody would hold accountable?), but that there is a shared view on what the national interest is. Unfortunately there are competing views of ”national interest” within a nation (see pro-Ukraine vs pro-Russian views within Ukraine, or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel views in Israel). And due to these competing views, whatever supporter of any of them can be accused of being self-serving and exploitative. Any propaganda has its counter-propaganda. Besides humans are generally more prone to detect the abuses they suffer from than the ones they inflict on others, and if offense is in the eye of the beholder, nobody can consider themselves immune from such accusations.
What I find peculiar to “national interest” wrt other concepts is that it is inherently subject to a perpetual ideological struggle with moments of greater convergence or divergence. This is what can be said, independently from what ideology one personally espouses or one side one picks.

So, party A pursues B and party C pursues D; however, party C will usually also claim to be pursuing B. — boethius

You mean, C can’t do both, pursuing B and D?
Your formula applies as well to negotiations. A sells bread, C seeks bread. If C tells A: “hey I’m here to buy some bread from you”, is C being deceitful or exploitative toward A because in reality C wants bread, not give money to A?
What is missing in your formula is what you wished to highlight: the deceitful/exploitative part.
Yet also the notion of “exploitation” can be more slippery than it looks at first. See, there are cooperative games where each player can maximise their payoffs by choosing to cooperate instead of refusing to cooperate. Yet the payoffs are unequally distributed among players. Is this enough to claim that the players who get the least are exploited by the ones who get the most? What if we also add that payoffs are not only unequally distributed but also uncertain or unstable over time? What if we also add that understanding of the payoffs and uncertainties, is not shared?

National interest is and can’t be anything else than what results from people’s self-serving interests on a national level AND given certain power relations between them. — neomac

It obviously can. You can easily have a situation where the "certain powerful people" self-serving interest would be to plunder the national treasury and make off with the winnings. This is obviously not in the interest of any sensible concept of "the nation". — boethius

Here some additional clarifications. If “nation” refers to a series of perceived common traits among certain individuals (e.g. shared language, geographic roots, ancestors, historical events, traditions, phenotypical traits, etc.) that supports a sense of collective identity and common fate wrt other nations, then each individual can form a certain understanding of what could be beneficial to the nation as a function of how representative of the nation one perceives himself (with his self-interest) to be and the kind of cooperation he expects to be likely among national fellows (given certain power relations).
Now multiply this by all the members forming a given nation. What you get is the number of views one nation can offer about their “national interest” , and we can’t simply assume they converge to the point of perfectly overlapping. So more or less competing views of national interest will struggle to become popular and politically represented. Hence my point: “‘National interest’ points at something that is the result of collective dynamics however inspired by individual expectations and wishes”. It’s a collective historical process that determines what counts as the national interest de facto, not what any isolated individual has in mind and calls national interest.
That’s where I find your focus on the honesty of powerful people about "national interest" conceptually misleading. Indeed the dishonest or exploitative intent of powerful people doesn’t necessarily compromise the fact that a policy can still be legitimately perceived in line with national interest. There might be reasons independent from the trustability of certain politicians for others to support these politicians' policies. Besides, lacking “moral” scruples in pursuing taking certain decisions and policies can’t be a-priori considered inherently unapt to achieve national interest. It’s very much human the predicament where people understand what needs to be done but lack the courage or the determination to do it, also for alleged “moral” scruples. Any society as the human beings that form it, have its own inertia due to cross-generational habits, entrenched self-serving interests and prejudices which make non-cosmetic change hardly possible for any national government. While dramatic change will likely trigger controversy and any side will invoke "morality" to rationalize their self-serving views (and "populist" views like yours are not immune from such risk either). Besides, a politician can exploitatively promote a policy which he honestly believes detrimental to national interest and yet be mistaken as much as a honest politician can be mistaken about what is beneficial to national interest.
My considerations should be hardly surprising since politicians do not take decisions in a void of collective expectations, lobby pressure, and collaborators’ advice that are integral part of a nation. Even more so where decisional power is institutionally constrained and distributed over a wider network of influential people. And things get even messier when one reasons strategically under uncertainty where the payoffs of political moves by one player are determined how all other players are moving. Also at inter-national level.
Whatever plausible moral hazard one pins on Netanyahu, Hamas leaders, Iranian leaders, Trump, Putin or Zelensky, all powerful and wealthy people, and all trapped in a conflict of interest between personal gains and their political functions, even more so in times of crisis (what unexpected is there really? How else could it be? is there any instance of power in human history immune from such suspects and fears of abuses?), is not this what I find it decisive to assess the alignment of certain decisions and policies with national interest. On the contrary, it can be misleading in making us believe e.g. that if it’s enough to remove Netanyahu, Trump, Putin, Zelensky, current Hamas leaders or Iranian leaders things will change or align better with national interest. Also discrediting them today as national catastrophes won’t preclude them from being revalued in the future as national heroes. See how Putin elevated Stalin as national hero (e.g. wrt Lenin), compared to previous presidents like Khrushchev, Yeltsin or even Medvedev. And how popular this has become amongst Russians now. Perceived national interest evolves.
It’s an entire nation that is historically engaged in determining what national interest is from within and outside pressure. And that’s why I agree with your following statement: “what exactly is the national interest, even for people trying to be genuinely focused on that, is up for debate”. However, it’s not just misinformation or evil intentions which make us debate and speculate over what’s best for national interest. It’s its inherently historical and ideological nature.

As I said you are framing a situation not in terms of competing interests, but in moral terms. This reflects your allegedly “impartial” (or “virtuous”?) interest. Yet your views are exposed to the same “bias” you are accusing others to be victim of or purposefully embracing: namely, viewing national interest in light of your self-interest. Your “populist” views are putatively aligned with those of the mass of powerless nobodies which are victims of the putative abuses of evil elites. — neomac


At this point in the discussion you are interjecting into, the debate with Tzeentch and @Benkei is descriptive of whose interest is even being served by recent policy.

@Tzeentch presents a description of the decision making process as coherent grand strategy since many decades, whereas @Benkei and I disagree the policy changes and decisions in the middle-east represent some sort of coherent US grand strategy over many decades. — boethius

Nice summary. I’m willing to accord Israel (and Ukraine and Europe) more decisional autonomy from US demands/instructions than Tzeench seems willing to concede. And I would even go further than you did: namely, even if the Israeli attacks against Iran ultimately benefits the US grand strategy, or aligns with a certain understanding of it, that wouldn’t prove that the Israeli attacks were due to the US initiative or consent.
My comment is however about something else, on purpose, no matter how tangential it looks to you. Your “descriptive” yet ideologically loaded analysis is based on certain assumptions of what national interest of the US is and how certain political decisions fulfill such national interest (“I disagree with @Tzeentch, I view the genocide in Gaza as absolutely terrible for US Imperial interests”), to then identify intent and later assess responsibility (“My analysis of the current situation is that Zionists "went for it” and tried to push the United States into a high-intensity war with Iran and the faction that stopped that from happening (for now) is the pentagon (because they know it conflicts with US imperial interest, represent far more costs than gains, have other regions they worry about, such as East-Asia)”). As far as I’m concerned, I find nothing philosophically interesting in adopting certain normative standards (e.g. genocide is bad), assess (not describe) if certain actions comply or not with held normative standards (e.g. supporting a genocidal state is bad), and then attribute intentions (e.g. the US can’t possibly have supported a genocidal state, if it wasn’t somehow forced into doing it), and later blame accordingly (e.g. sure the Great Satan is the evilest, but we can’t blame it for the initiative of Israeli’s attacks against Iran) be it in the moral or political domain. You as the others are engaging in a political debate and wish to be representative of certain political views, possibly contribute to amplify them and make them more influential (I don’t care how honestly). Good luck with that.
That’s the gist of politics and propaganda not philosophy, though. My engagement in political debates in this philosophy forum is finalised to do philosophy no to fix the world. The philosophical task, as I understand and enjoy it, is engaging in conceptual investigations. Hence my focus on the notion of “national interest” to challenge views like yours.

Here is where I do disagree with you:

In terms of how government decisions are made lot's of individuals representing explicitly and implicitly lots of mixes of interests go into these decisions.

However, all of them are going to say what they propose is in the national interest. — boethius

Why “however”? What do you want it to contrast to? What is there unexpected about the situation you are describing? Your expectations are based on reality or on your moral standards? National interest is and can’t be anything else than what results from people’s self-serving interests on a national level AND given certain power relations between them. Here what looks very ambiguous to me is the expression “self-serving”. In your views, I suspect, “self-serving” looks very much like a proxy for “selfish”, which in turn looks very much like a proxy for “I’m not as much selfish and I can honestly judge who are more selfish ad who aren’t, and I defend the interest of the powerless against the abuses of the selfish powerful”.
In my views, self-serving interests can simply be seen as a proxy for “competing” interests for both powerful and powerless players. There is no need to frame things with an allegedly “impartial” psychological analysis which is a surreptitious proxy for a self-promoting moral judgement and blame shifting. That’s why I’m reluctant to describe things in your self-serving psychological terms.

So, everyone is always talking grand strategy and sometimes that's in earnest (as earnest as they can, such as the authors of the Brookings paper discussed above) and sometimes it is obviously a lie — boethius

.

As I said you are framing a situation not in terms of competing interests, but in moral terms. This reflects your allegedly “impartial” (or “virtuous”?) interest. Yet your views are exposed to the same “bias” you are accusing others to be victim of or purposefully embracing: namely, viewing national interest in light of your self-interest. Your “populist” views are putatively aligned with those of the mass of powerless nobodies which are victims of the putative abuses of evil elites.

A "healthy" Empire, the plausibly objective interest of the Empire as such manages to assert itself over special interests that wish to plunder the Empire or otherwise consume its capital base (including diplomatic capital) for their own ends. An unhealthy Empire everyone comes to divide up the spoils and get away with their pickings. — boethius

What does “healthy” mean? Who is going to assess what is “healthy”? The slaves of an empire or the lords of the empire? What if they do not converge on what's "healthy"?
What you call “healthy” may simply be the fact that people within a community cooperate more effectively wrt people of another community, where “more effectively” means that the community’s perpetuation and prosperity benefits from such cooperation. But that doesn’t exclude stubborn and toxic competing interests within a community and amongst communities that can erode cooperation to the point of triggering a vicious cycle of suspicion and accusations.

"National interest" points at something that is the result of collective dynamics however inspired by individual expectations and wishes

However, even then, what they come to define as "US interest" is going to be shaped by more powerful players that may have self serving definitions. — boethius

I'm very skeptical about this approach. If you want to understand how things are, then why do we not start by taking powerful players (with their self-interest) as condition of the game and not in light of what the powerless people wish them to be (which again can be considered self-interested, namely based on the self-interest of the powerless players, no less hypocritical)? if we are talking about "interest" as in "national interest" of course a conceptual framework MUST take into account the interest of the involved subjects including powerful players. We are tempted to say: yes, but of all people part of "nation". Agreed, yet the nation includes also power relations between individuals. As national interest at interstate level must take into account power relations among states, so the notion of national interest MUST take into account power relations also within a nation. "Interest" is a very indeterminate notion per se if we do not assess costs and benefits, risks and opportunities that are de facto shaped by power relations. That's why strategic thought can impose itself and lead people and states to convergence independently from self-interest (see how people and states can converge on what is the perceived "common enemy").
Setting objectives that go beyond one's means is a problem for both powerless and powerful people. Powerful doesn't mean all mighty as much as powerless doesn't mean impactless (most certainly not, at a mass level). We disagree less on what is desirable (everybody happy rich healthy free fully-developed for all human beings and possibly animals and nature in the past present and future, on a universal and infallible just society) than on what is achievable.

In these decision making processes everyone uses strategic language. For example, if you represent the arms industry and all you want is to sell more arms and have more wars and tensions to sell more arms for short term shareholder value, you're not going to just say that; rather, you're going to translate your interest to sell more arms into grand strategy language.

It's called rationalizing. — boethius

Also psychologizing is a form of rationalization. Arguably the most hypocritical form of rationalization.