↪neomac
You know we can just follow the link, right? You don't need to copy-paste the entire thing here. — SophistiCat

The second time I checked, the article was behind a paywall, so I just wanted to spare you all the hassle.

If you want to see something even more candid and unrestrained, read this article that was published about a week ago by the Russian state news agency RIA: What Russia Should Do with Ukraine (offsite English translation). It is a true fascist manifesto. — SophistiCat

Thanks for the link!

https://www.corriere.it/economia/aziende/22_aprile_08/we-are-at-war-with-the-west-the-european-security-order-is-illegitimate-c6b9fa5a-b6b7-11ec-b39d-8a197cc9b19a.shtml


«We are at war with the West. The European security order is illegitimate»
Federico Fubini
16-21 minutes

«We are at war with the West. The European security order is illegitimate»

Sergey Karaganov has served as a presidential advisor in the Kremlin both under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. He is still considered close to Russia’s president and foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. His recent proposals on Russian-speaking minorities in the “near abroad” are known as “Putin doctrine” and Professor Karaganov, who is honorary chair of the Moscow think tank the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, was first to come out publicly about an all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2019. President Putin has mentioned on Feb. 24 that Ukraine’s accession to NATO warrants Russia’s military intervention to prevent it. However, Ukraine didn’t even have a Membership Action Plan for NATO and Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz clearly stated accession was many, many years off.How can an attack be justified on such grounds?

For 25 years people like myself have said that NATO expansion would lead to war. Putin said several times that if it came to Ukraine becoming a member of NATO, there would be no Ukraine anymore. In Bucharest in 2008 there was a plan of quick accession of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO. It was blocked by the efforts of Germany and France, but since that time Ukraine has been integrated into NATO. It was pumped up by weaponry and its troops were trained by NATO, their army getting stronger and stronger day by day. In addition we saw a very rapid increase of neo-Nazi sentiment especially among the military, the society and the ruling elite. It was clear that Ukraine had become something like Germany around 1936-1937. The war was inevitable, they were a spearhead of NATO. We made the very hard decision to strike first, before the threat becomes deadlier.

But Ukraine was not about to become a member of NATO, not for at least many, many years. There was time to negotiate.

We have heard all kinds of promises by Western leaders throughout these 30 years. But they lied to us or they forgot about their promises. We were told at the beginning that NATO would not expand.

How can you think a non-nuclear medium-sized country like Ukraine would ever attack a nuclear giant like Russia? And how can you think this is a Nazi country with a Jewish president elected with over 70% of the votes? Ukraine was being built by the US and other NATO countries as a spearhead, maybe of aggression or at least of military pressure, to bring NATO’s military machine closer to the heart of Russia. We can see now how well their forces had been preparing for a war. And Nazis were not only about killing jews. Nazism is about supremacy of one nation over another. Nazism is humiliation of other nations. The regime and the society in Ukraine were going very much like Germany in the 1930s.

You say that NATO promised never to enlarge to the East and Russia was cheated on that. But former Warsaw Pact countries requested to be included in NATO themselves. And Russia signed up to the Founding Act on Russia-NATO relations in 1997, accepting NATO enlargement. No cheating there. It was the biggest mistake of Russia’s foreign policy in the last 30 years. I fought against it, because the Founding Act of 1997 legitimized further NATO expansion. But we signed it because we were desperately poor and we still were trusting in the wisdom of our partners. President Yeltsin probably thought that we would sneak between drops of rain, to no avail. As for NATO, it was formed as a defensive alliance. But when the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia was weak, I was shocked when I saw the rape of Serbia in 1999. Then we had an absolutely atrocious war in Iraq waged by most of the NATO members and then we had another clear-cut aggression in Libya, always by NATO. So we do not trust words. But we know that article 5 of NATO, stating that an attack on a NATO member is an attack to all, doesn’t work. There is no automatic guarantee that NATO would come to the defense of a member under attack. Please read article 5 of the Treaty. But this enlargement is an enlargement of the aggressive alliance. It’s cancer and we wanted to stop this metastasis. We have to do it by a surgical operation. I regret we were unable to prevent such an outcome.

We all agree the Iraq war was illegitimate and was a very serious mistake. Corriere della Sera came out against that war at the time. But one grave mistake doesn’t justify a second grave mistake. And the US people could elect a new leader, Obama, that was against the Iraq war and changed American policy. Can Russians have an opportunity to do the same? I don’t think that in the foreseeable future we will have any change of power in Russia, because we are fighting a war of survival. This is a war with the West and people are regrouping around their leader. This is an authoritarian country and the leadership is always very attentive to the moods of the people. But I don’t see real signs of opposition. Also, in the US or else nobody was really punished for the war in Iraq, so we have our doubts about the effectiveness of democracy.

Your parallels don’t seem to match. In Libya, Ghaddafi was bombing protest demonstrations from the sky. NATO enforced a no-fly zone that had been called for by a UN Security Council resolution and Russia did not veto it. Yes. At that time we believed the reassurances of our Western partners. But then we saw a clear-cut aggression devastating the country. That led us toward total distrust of Western countries, and especially of NATO.

As for the intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999, it was made to stop a war that led to over 10,000 deaths and a UN tribunal charged Milosevic for war crimes, deportation and crimes against humanity. The massive killings in former Yugoslavia happened after the NATO’s rape of Serbia. People were killed on all sides. It was a civil war. It was an unspeakable aggression. And the Milosevic trial was a sad and humiliating show by petty people trying to rationalize their previous mistakes if not crimes


It was a UN tribunal, not a EU tribunal.
We don’t acknowledge the right of that tribunal.

You said that the real war now is against Western expansion. What do you mean? We saw Western expansion happening, we see Russophobia in the West reaching levels like antisemitism between the world wars. So war was already becoming likely. And we saw deep divisions and structural problems within Western societies, so we believed that anyway a war was more and more likely. So the Kremlin decided to strike first. Also, this military operation will be used to restructure Russian elite and Russian society. It will become a more militant-based and national-based society, pushing out non-patriotic elements from the elite.

The bottom line question is: Mussolini did not recognize the international order that emerged from the Versailles Treaty in 1919. Does the Kremlin recognize the legitimacy of the European order that emerged from the fall of the Berlin Wall? Do you think this order is legitimate?
We should not recognize the order that was built against Russia. We tried to integrate in it but we saw it was a Versailles system number 2. I wrote that we had to destroy it. Not by force, but through constructive destruction, through refusal to participate in it. But after the last demand to stop NATO was again rejected, it was decided to use force.

So the overall goal of this war is to overturn the presence of NATO in central and eastern European countries? We see that most of the institutions are, in our view, one-sided and illegitimate. They are threatening Russia and Eastern Europe. We wanted fair peace, but the greed and stupidity of the Americans and the short-sightedness of the Europeans revealed they didn’t want that. We have to correct their mistakes.

Is the EU part of the institutions that Russia feels are illegitimate? No, it’s legitimate. But sometimes we dislike EU policies, especially if they become more and more belligerent.
You seem to believe that an escalation of this war to other countries is inevitable. Is that what you are saying? Unfortunately it is becoming more and more likely. Americans and their NATO partners continue support of Ukraine by sending arms. If that continues, it is obvious that targets in Europe could or will be hit in order to stop lines of communications. Then the war could escalate. At this juncture it is becoming more and more plausible. I think the Joint chiefs of staff of US armed forces are of the same opinion as I am.

Denazification is what Ukraine seems to have proven by electing a Jewish president. Demilitarization is the opposite of what Mr. Putin has achieved, as this attack led Ukraine to get heavy weaponry from the West. Plus, Germany and the EU are rearming too, NATO has moved troops closer to Russia’s borders, Western sanctions are now much tighter, while Europe and the US got closer together and Russia is becoming financially isolated. Would you say Putin’s military operation is proving a success, so far?
Nazism is not only about antisemitism. It is about hating and suppressing all other nationalities. And it was taking over Ukraine. We never know how the military operations end. Demilitarization means destruction of Ukrainian military forces - that is happening and will accelerate. Of course, if Ukraine is supported with new weapons, that could prolong the agony. We can only talk about “victory” in quotes, because there are many casualties on both the Russian and the Ukrainian side. The war will be victorious, in one way or another. I assume demilitarization will be achieved and there will be denazification, too. Like we did in Germany and in Chechnya. Ukrainians will become much more peaceful and friendly to us.

But so far the Russian military had to withdraw after keeping Kiev under siege for one month. It doesn’t look like the military operation is going so well, does it? It’s a large military operation, so it has secrets in the way it’s waged. What if the Kiev operation was meant to distract Ukrainian forces and keep them away from the main theater in the South and South-East? Maybe that was the plan. Moreover Russian troops have been very careful not to hit civilian targets, we used only 30-35% of the lethal weapons that we could use. If we had used everything, that would have meant the destruction of Ukrainian cities and a much quicker victory. We did not do carpet bombing like Americans in Iraq. The endgame probably will be a new treaty, maybe with Zelensky still there. Probably it would mean the creation of a country in South and South-East Ukraine that is friendly to Russia. Maybe there will be several Ukraines. But at this juncture it is impossible to predict because, of course, it’s an open-ended story. We are in the fog of war.
There is clear evidence that civilians have been targeted and killed by the Russian in Mariupol, in Bucha and elsewhere. These look very much like war crimes and crimes against humanity and they were deliberate. Should they be persecuted?
The Bucha story is completely fake-staged, it’s a provocation.

It doesn’t look staged at all.
I watched the pictures and I am 99% sure. But more in general there is a war and civilians suffer. We know that Ukrainian neoNazi forces have been using civilians as living shields, especially in Mariupol. We have different pictures with you.

It’s rather the opposite: the Russian army did not allow humanitarian corridors. We opened them. They were blocked by nationalist forces. I know how our military operates but, of course, this is a war. We face a tragedy.

Did you expect this level of cohesion between Europe and the US? Well, the cohesion will collapse because of the problems of the West. But for the time being they were organizing even before this conflict. The West is failing and losing its position in the world, so it needs an enemy – for the moment we are the enemy. I don’t think the unity will last, Europe will not commit the suicide by choosing to lose its independence. I hope our European neighbors will recuperate from this dizziness of hatred.

You speak like some other country started this war, in fact Russia started it. I was not for this particular scenario, but it happened. And I support my country. The West committed several aggressions. We are now on the same moral level, we are equal, we are doing more or less like you. I regret that we lost our moral superiority. But we are fighting an existential war

Sanctions are getting tighter. Will Russia become more dependent on China? There is no question about that: we will be more integrated and more dependent on China. It has positive elements but overall we will be much more dependent. I am not very much afraid of becoming a pawn of China like some EU states became pawns of the US. First, Russians have a core gene of sovereignty. Second, we are culturally different from the Chinese, I don’t think that China could or would like to overtake us. However we are not happy with the situation, because I would have preferred to have better relations with Europe. But Chinese are our close allies and friends and the biggest source of Russian strength after Russian people themselves. We are a source of their strength. I would prefer to end this confrontation with Europe. My calculation was to create a safe Western flank to compete more effectively In the Asian world of tomorrow

You declared that China, not Russia, will emerge as the victor in this war. What did you mean? We will be victorious because Russians always are in the end. But in the meantime we will lose a lot. We will lose people. We will lose financial resources and we will become poorer for the time being. But we are ready to sacrifice in order to build a more viable and fair international system. We are talking about Ukraine, but we really want to build a different international system than the one that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union and, in turn, is now collapsing. We all are sinking into chaos now. We would like to build Fortress Russia to defend ourselves from this chaos, even if we are getting poorer for this. Unfortunately the chaos could take over Europe, if Europe doesn’t act according to its interests. What Europe is doing right now is absolutely suicidal.

Is that a threat? Don’t you think nuclear deterrence still applies? I know that officially under certain circumstances the US could use nuclear weapons for the defense of Europe and they allegedly could fight for the defense of Europe against a nuclear superpower. There is a 1% chance this might happen, so we have to be careful. But if a n American president takes such a decision inviting devastating response it would mean he is insane.

This war doesn’t look sustainable, including for Russia. It can’t go on for long. What are the elements to agree at least on a real ceasefire? First, Ukraine must be a completely demilitarized neutral country – no heavy arms, for whatever of Ukraine remains. This should be guaranteed by outside powers, including Russia, and no military exercises should take place in the country if one of the guarantors is against it. Ukraine should be a peaceful buffer, hopefully sending back some of the arms systems deployed in recent years.

Ukraine needs security guarantees, it needs to be able to defend itself or it will not be a sovereign country anymore.
I am sorry but Italy and most European countries cannot defend themselves either.

They belong to NATO…
They have been saving on security. That is how they got themselves into this awkward position that Europe is not considered to be a serious actor in the world. Switzerland and Austria are neutral, but are safe. So can Ukraine.

Do you realize that after what you just said, the debate in Italy will move towards investing more on defense? You are welcome. One of the grave mistakes of the Europeans in the last decades is that they didn’t invest in their security, under their ideal of eternal peace. But I think European nations should be able to defend themselves, because they have real threats coming from the South and the world is becoming a very dangerous place as international relations are collapsing. The question is more against whom Italy would like to arm. Against Russia? Well, that would be insane. But you need a more robust military force. You are living in a very dangerous place in the world. If you depend on America, you are selling out your own security and sovereignty because the Americans have their own interests.

The EU seems to be moving towards cutting dependence from Russian energy – first coal, then oil and finally natural gas. Did you expect that? I hope you are not suicidal. Of course that would damage Russia, too, but Europe would undermine its economy and its social situation. I hope it will not happen, because you can calculate your own interests. If you don’t want our coal, we will sell it somewhere else. If you don’t want our oil, after a time and some losses, we will sell it elsewhere. And if you don’t want gas, well, well, we can also eventually redirect it after some suffering. Russians support Putin at 81% now, people are ready for a rough period.

Do you think Italy and Europe could do something to broker a deal? Not easy, given the situation. But what they could do is try to stop this Russophobia, akin anti-semitism of the previous centuries, this satanization of Russia that would lead us eventually to a worse confrontation than we have now. Even Russian culture is being erased in Europe by a new cancel culture.

> There is an anthropological fact ... Nationality is one way we understand our social identity. — neomac
That's not an anthropological fact, it's an anthropological theory.

This is another good example of misquotation. This is what I take to be an anthropological fact: “There is an anthropological fact that grounds my moral reasoning: social identities are part of our personal identities and they are rooted in our communal life with other individuals in a given environment”. All human societies (independently from geographic and historical latitudes) have ways of identifying human groups and individuals based on group membership. This is an anthropological fact.
Some societies use “Nationality” as a way to identify social groups and individuals as members of those groups: nation states, national languages, national flags, national passports, national money, national sport teams, national customs, national cuisine are examples of ways we identify groups and individuals within groups based on nationality.
Some value or pretend to value nationality in highest degree and shape their political views or actions accordingly, like Putin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Russians_and_Ukrainians), Sergey Karaganov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Karaganov), the Izborsky Club (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/russ.12106), Vladimir Solovyov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Solovyov_(journalist)), Dmitry Utkin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Utkin), the Night Wolves (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Wolves).


> So now I'm to provide 'evidence'

When discussing topics, I don’t expect people to provide evidence in advance for everything they say, especially for what they take to be obvious or common knowledge. Yet if one needs evidence, one can ask. And I’m asking you now what evidences you have about this claim “The working class in both societies have more common interest against the ruling classes of both societies than the entire population of one has against the entire population of another”. I’m asking this precisely because I gave you what looks to me evidence to the contrary yet you didn’t address it at all. So once again: how come that the Russian soldiers (example of working class) prefer to kill Ukrainian families (which surely include members of the Ukrainian working class) instead of killing or mass revolting against the Russian ruling class (Putin and his entourage) if they have greater interest in opposing their ruling class more than in opposing other people?


> What they have in common is oppression. Something I though you were all in favour of fighting against.

Indeed I addressed that too: “Keep also in mind that I didn’t question the value one can put into class struggles, nor claimed that is always immoral” . Yet I’m not sure you understood my assumptions. Oppression is one, not the only element that I would take into consideration for moral assessment. Indeed “oppression” is a word with a moral connotation but I don’t take it to be necessarily negative, so its moral implications depend on the context: e.g. oppressing the Nazis, Isis, communist terrorists, organised crime would be morally defensible.

> It is an economic fact that the working class are oppressed by the elite classes, but apparently, that oppression doesn't qualify for you support.

If the word “oppression” has a moral connotation, then “working class are oppressed by the elite classes” is not a factual claim but a moral claim. If it has no moral connotation, what do you mean by economic oppression?


> If someone orders (or even supports) continued fighting, they bear some moral responsibility for all the foreseeable consequences of that decision. One of the foreseeable consequences is that more Ukrainian children will die. I don't understand what's so hard about that.

What I find hard to understand about that is how you identify the links between facts and moral agents to assess responsibility. For example you talk about some moral responsibility. Now, since you like metrics, I’m asking you: how much responsibility bears Putin and Russian soldiers for the fact that Russian soldiers are killing Ukrainian children wrt Zelensky, Biden, me, what is the math you are doing based on your still clandestine multi-causal theory? That’s necessary (yet not sufficient) to estimate what the most adequate morally response is.

> Not getting a literal 'say' is not the same as not having their interests considered.

Do you mean that Russian soldiers and Putin should have considered Ukrainian children’s interest before killing & bombing them?

> Where did I write anything even remotely related to deposing Zelensky?

Here, “It's not their lives. Zelensky (and his government) decide how to proceed.” and “I don't see anyone asking the Ukrainian children if they'd rather lose both parents and remain governed by Zelensky, or retain their family and be governed by a Putin puppet.” These 2 claims strongly suggest that the issue is with Zelensky government and things would be better with Putin puppet.


> the flaw in your reasoning lies in the fact that your moral claims do not take into account what Ukrainians value, as I do. For example, if I were Ukrainian... — neomac

Are you serious? Your evidence for you taking Ukrainian values into account and me not is that you've thought about what you would do if you were a Ukrainian? Do you not realise how ludicrous that sounds?

This is another good example of misquotation. My thought experiment wasn’t intended to provide evidence for what “Ukrainians value”, but to contrast my expectations against others’: for example when you claim “I don't see anyone asking the Ukrainian children if they'd rather lose both parents and remain governed by Zelensky, or retain their family and be governed by a Putin puppet.” you seem to expect some behavior from Ukrainians, like giving up on Zelensky instead of exposing their own children to the risk represented by Russian murders. And my point was precisely that we shouldn’t rely primarily on our expectations for moral assessments about Ukrainians’ behavior, but on what they value. Indeed you didn’t even need to do any guess work, because I made this point clear immediately after the thought experiment: “The point is that my moral claims concerning this war take into account what the Ukrainians value as this war concerns them in the first place (but ultimately not only them). And since I do not have direct access to what they want collectively, then I would take Zelensky as their chosen representative in times of peace and in times of war, until I’m proven wrong. BTW Zelensky support among Ukrainians is confirmed to me by some good feedback from expat Ukrainian friends and foreign reporters on the ground”.




> So I was asking you how you measured the degree of mistrust on this occasion to be 'too much' mistrust.

Negotiations failed, so either the demands were unacceptable and/or the assurances weren’t enough. Since I wasn’t there at the negotiation table, I can only guess from available evidences and plausible reasons that support either cases. I already provided some for both cases. So if assurances weren’t enough at the negotiation table (which I find plausible due to evidences and reasons), then the mistrust was too much.
Now it’s your turn: how do you measure the degree of mistrust on this occasion to assess if it’s 'too much’ or not?

> America and Europe entering into negotiations with Russia.

What are the reasons you have to support America and Europe entering into negotiations with Russia? What do you expect them to do?


> You've not answered the question. Does supplying weapons help?

I’m not sure about the answer. I suppose they do help in the sense that Ukrainians are using these weapons to counter Russian invasion (Putin didn’t reach his declared goals within 2 days nor 2 weeks), but maybe it's not enough and that’s why Zelensky is asking for more.


> So intention has nothing to do with morality? If I intend to murder someone, but end up accidentally helping them, that's exactly the same, morally, as if I intended to help them all along?

When I’m talking about moral reasons to act, I’m not talking about someone’s intentions to act according to those reasons, as you did in your example. So you simply misunderstood what I was saying. Concerning intentions I already made my point so you can address it, if you wish so.


> I took that to be a claim that you value the economic dominance of the US over the territorial dominance of ISIS (a more extreme example you used in our discussion about Russian tactics).

If and when a form of dominance increases the chances of refilling my belly more than having my head decapitated, that’s something I would personally take into account, also for morally establishing what is the lesser evil in the given circumstances. But I don’t have one dimensional and decontextualized moral claim to make about great power politics. My example that you extrapolated from its context, was simply meant to address your preposterous moral claim that fighting over a flag is no doubt immoral. And you never addressed it as such. So once again, if you were to choose only about these 2 options, would you prefer to be dominated by Isis or America? And between Russia and America?


> Why? If not the death and destruction these actions cause, then what is the moral force?

Death and destruction against the Nazis or Isis was morally defensible.
Moral force should be assessed based on what people actually value. Putin and Russian soldiers are destroying Ukrainians’ life because they do not want to submit to Putin’s criminal demands disrespectful of what Ukrainians value for their own sovereign country. So if Putin and Russian soldiers kill Ukrainians are immoral, if Ukrainians kill Russian invaders and murderers are moral.


> I was referring only to these parts: — neomac
The parts that support your statement - not the parts that don't. Cherry-picking, in other words.

Well cherry picking is just fine when one really wants to eat cherries right? I don’t ignore the differences (indeed these are probably taken into account by Western administrations and the problem with homosexuality is present also in part of the Western societies), I simply claimed that relative value proximity has its relevance in moral considerations. And in the case of Ukraine there is some value proximity with the West (like their attitude toward Europe) that Russia is lacking. Yet I didn’t say that is the only thing that counts nor that is the most important thing nor I mean to idealise Ukrainians. The point is that I’m not looking for perfection, but again for lesser evil.
Not to mention the fact that you are supporting Russian murders’ demands against the Ukrainians even if you claim to value the life of the Ukrainian children that Russian murderers have killed, because accepting Russian de facto dominance is a lesser evil. So you too don’t seem to strive for perfection either right?


> I assume Ukraine demand that the invasion stops.

This is one thing they demand, not the only one though.

> Putin is currently consolidating his power. So should we stop sanctions on those grounds?

Would stopping sanctions oppose Putins’ power consolidation more than preserving them for a good while or making them even stronger? Or would Putin be more ready to significantly soften his demands before we removed those sanctions?

> You seem to be just appealing to whatever notions happen to support your already chosen course of action.

And you seem to be just making random attacks ad personam based on a poor understanding of what your interlocutor has expressly, extensively and repeatedly said.
Since you feel in the mood for such confessions, then there is something I too find really off about your dialectical approach to our discussion: you often make claims with little pertinent context often forcing one who doesn’t share your views to guess your assumptions or your line of reasoning, while I do the opposite and yet you keep misquoting or extrapolating my claims from their context.

> There's no reason at all to assume that agreeing to terms would increase Putin's power any more than not agreeing and losing the war. Or not agreeing and having NATO have to step in and win the war - both of which might end up increasing Putin's power, cementing his alliance with China and worsening the global political balance of power.

Agreed, but that has to do with geopolitical risk assessment that all great power politics must face in similar daring circumstances. And undoubtedly Western & Ukrainian leaders are not assuming anything for granted. However the situation looks to me much worse now, since Putin and China (as Putin and Xi Jinping talked about new world order) could take any concessions as a sign of weakness.



> You're assuming war is the only way to oppose expansionism. I disagree with the US using war to oppose Russian expansionism. I don't disagree with it being opposed in other senses.

If we are talking about Great Power politics, the only pertinent sense of opposition is how geopolitically meaningful such an opposition is. And, once again, to assess opposing strategies one should consider the views and demands of all competing powers, not the views and demands as framed by only one power, as you did.


> What standard of living to anticipate Ukrainians having after the US has finished drafting the terms of its loan agreements? Cuts to welfare spending, opening up markets to US competitors. You think those policies are going to benefit the poor in Ukraine?

I’m not sure. Yet after the Second World War many European countries were able to enjoy prosperity, democracy and welfare under the US dominance.
Besides Russia was happy to open its market to the West and its companies before this war, wasn’t it? How about now, with western companies gone and all the sanctions, is this war benefiting the Russian poor?
We should also clarify another issue concerning our discussion. I’m engaged in it, primarily because I have reasons to question 2 preposterous moral claims of yours: one about fighting over flags and the other is about Western responsibilities in the genesis and perpetuation of this war. One of the assumption I argued for is that we should not confuse strategic reasoning (especially if we want to talk about geopolitical power politics) with moral reasoning. Related to this, we shouldn’t ignore that the cognitive effort required in both cases is not the same: our capacity to provide a strategic analysis about Great Power politics is constrained by our non-expert understanding of a limited, second-hand and uncertain amount of available evidences. So for what strategy is concerned I tend to defer more to the feedback of experts and leaders, and then double-check based on what I find logic or consistent with other sources and background knowledge. In other words, on my side there isn’t much intellectual commitment you could challenge wrt “foreseeable consequences”, “metrics”, “de facto”, “help”, while on your side I don’t see much compelling strategic insights wrt “foreseeable consequences”, “metrics”, “de facto”, “help” to challenge what I understood about the stakes so far. That’s why I limited myself to support some moral claims (like a “carrot&stick” containment strategy by Western leaders was morally more defensible than a “murder&destroy” strategy by Putin or the continuation of this war is morally defensible depending on what Ukrainians and Westerners value) wrt all strategic understanding I could intellectually afford.


> Why would I ignore what the terms are? I've never even mentioned "whatever it takes". The terms here just so happen to be the de facto state of affairs. fighting over them is a waste of human life. Fighting over other terms might not be as they may be more immiserating than the war.

So you are saying that Palestinians should accept Israeli de facto settlements in the West Bank because they are “de facto”? The Talibans didn’t accept any “de facto” Afghan puppet government and took back their control over Afghanistan eventually. The expression "whatever it takes” simply refers to the fact that, in geopolitical strategy, demands and options are not assessed by one party the way their competitor frame them as I said repeatedly.
BTW, and once again, wouldn’t this line of reasoning of yours simply support whatever the status quo is (ruling class oppressing working class is a de facto situation right?), since no power (especially authoritarian) can be radically challenged without risking one’s (and often beloved ones’) material wellbeing and life?


> Do we have free reign to oppose Putin's expansionism by any means possible. IF torture would stop Putin's expansionism could we torture? If not, then the moral opposition becomes irrelevant whilst we're discussing methods, because the morality of the method is primary.

Methods are important sure, but they are just one dimension of a moral evaluation to me. The one who was dismissing talking about methods was you (“How many people have the 'stick' immiserated. That's the metric we're interested in, not the method.”).
Concerning the question “if torture would stop Putin's expansionism could be morally defensible?” my answer is yes, if for example we are talking about torturing Putin.


> The war is financed, given military and strategic support, and politically influenced by the US and Europe. You can't just bracket them out as if they had no relevance.

I’m not bracketing anything out. This is a proper starting point to morally reason about this war as I already argued. And will always start from there when questioning your preposterous moral claims about this war.

> If you find it morally defensible and I don't, I don't see how much further we can go as there are few arguments that can profitably be brought to bear.

There is an anthropological fact that grounds my moral reasoning: social identities are part of our personal identities and they are rooted in our communal life with other individuals in a given environment. Social identities evolve with the size of the population and are passed on through generations and they matter to individuals as much as material conditions. Some traits of our social identity matters more than others (for whatever personal reason) and this brings with it selective criteria (who is part and who is not part of the community) and related understanding of interests, duties and rights. Nationality is one way we understand our social identity. And to some that matters, even more than class division. Russia is a good example of such nationalism with Putin as its revanchist herald.

> The working class in both societies have more common interest against the ruling classes of both societies than the entire population of one has against the entire population of another.

Common in what sense? What are the evidences to support your claim? And how do you explain the fact that Russian soldiers (example of working class) are killing Ukrainian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians instead of killing Putin and his entourage of oligarchs, generals, orthodox patriarchs and mafia friends (example of ruling class)? And why ordinary Russian majorities support Putin’s criminal and murderous war against the Ukrainians (who Putin claims are one people with Russians, so it’s as if he’s killing his own people)? Why do you support Russian expansionism given that the combination of nationalism and authoritarian regime present in Russia consolidates and perpetuates the subordination of the masses to the ruling classes in ways that are even hard to conceive in the West?
Keep also in mind that I didn’t question the value one can put into class struggles, nor claimed that is always immoral. While you made some radical moral claims about fighting over national identity and independence: indeed one thing is to claim that class struggles are or can be morally more defensible than fighting over a flag, another is to claim - as you do - that fighting over a flag is no doubt always immoral. Such a radical moral claim of yours sounds preposterous to me on anthropological grounds.

> It's not their lives. Zelensky (and his government) decide how to proceed. Western governments decide in what way to assist. Ukrainian children die. They didn't get a say in the matter. If you think that's moral, that's your lookout, but I don't see how. I don't see anyone asking the Ukrainian children if they'd rather lose both parents and remain governed by Zelensky, or retain their family and be governed by a Putin puppet.

I find your claims quite preposterous for the following reasons.
1. Where you write “Ukrainian children die”, I would have written “Ukrainian children are killed by Russian soldiers”. Why such a difference? “Ukrainian children die” may be seen as an effect of your multi-causal grand theory, I get it, yet you didn’t offer any multi-causal theory to prove your point and secondly if all is literally causal then we leave in a deterministic world, and there would be no responsibility not even for the ruling classes. So to talk about responsibility you need agency. And with your analysis you should still prove Zelensky’s responsibility from “Ukrainian children are killed by Russian soldiers” and not from “Ukrainian children die”, if you want to make sense to me.
2. Children don’t get a saying in anything because they are children. When working classes and slaves were exploited or made insurrections didn’t consult their children, yet their children could get exploited or killed in a bloody repression. Did Putin consult Russian children’s before starting a war, since they are going to suffer anyways the consequences? Did Putin consult his soldiers (who are children to Russian parents) before sending them to war? Did the Russian soldiers or Putin consult the Ukrainian children before killing them? No they didn’t. So nobody can do much with such a poor premise of yours. I’ll suggest you to present your moral claim as follows: “Putin is ready to let his army kill, rape and burn Ukrainian children and their parents as he already did for the Russian flag, so Ukrainians should submit to Putin and get rid of Zelensky, if they want to prove me that they care about their children, families and homes more than I do, otherwise they are more immoral than Putin”. It’s simpler and straightforward, and it spares you the embarrassment of defending preposterous moral claims and clandestine multi-causal analysis.
3. So you wanted to suggest a third strategy opposing Russian and American expansionism and now you want Zelensky gone, which is more than what Putin officially demanded?! Even Putin might cringe over your overzealousness.
4. If Ukrainians who lost their families in this war oppose the continuation of this war and want Zelensky gone because they take him to be responsible for what has happened, I can’t exclude that could be a morally defensible choice, of course! Yet, from my perspective, the flaw in your reasoning lies in the fact that your moral claims do not take into account what Ukrainians value, as I do. For example, if I were Ukrainian and had my family exterminated by Russians, I wouldn’t care about Zelensky, no matter how much responsibilities you would ascribe to him based on your clandestine multi-causal theory, I would simply go fight the Russians to death. Besides if I heard anybody trying to convince me out of it with your kind of reasoning, I would have beaten the shit out of him. But maybe someone would have acted differently, I don’t know. The point is that my moral claims concerning this war take into account what the Ukrainians value as this war concerns them in the first place (but ultimately not only them). And since I do not have direct access to what they want collectively, then I would take Zelensky as their chosen representative in times of peace and in times of war, until I’m proven wrong. BTW Zelensky support among Ukrainians is confirmed to me by some good feedback from expat Ukrainian friends and foreign reporters on the ground.


> all get’s compromised when parties start from such a position of mistrust as in this case. — neomac
I don't see how. How are you measuring 'mistrust' and why say it's too high here?

I didn’t measure “mistrust”. There are unavoidable evidences and compelling reasons for mistrust. Negotiations stalled: so either the demands were too hard to digest or there weren’t enough assurances or both. That Russian demands are already over the top is clear as I explained, and that Putin has lost his credibility to Ukraine is obvious having violated the Budapest agreement. And notice that Ukrainians do not blindly trust the West either, because they too didn’t stand by the Budapest agreement. While Putin, from his point of view, could justify this war precisely because he didn’t have enough assurances from the West either (https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/we-dont-want-conflict-but-we-need-assurance-putin-tells-nato-41179711.html). And if before there was mistrust now it’s so much worse. For example, if Ukraine agrees to be out of NATO what ensures that Ukraine will not be attacked again by Russia? Putin’s word? Lavrov’s ? Yours? Out of NATO, Ukrainians need either the binding guarantees from Western countries to intervene militarily (and notice that according to the Budapest memorandum the UK and the US should have intervened!) or their own full-fledged military defense which should be enough deterring, yet not too threatening right? And who is going to provide such military defense? Putin? The West? China?
“The harsh reality is there is currently no risk-free exit from this situation because the logical extension of ‘not provoking Putin’ is to agree to every single Russian demand with nary a sanction in response, as any pushback or slightest criticism simply raises the ‘nuclear question’ again. But in that scenario, nowhere is off limits to Russia – certainly not other former Soviet states, such as the Baltic states and ex-Warsaw Pact countries. Threats, no matter how apocalyptic, must be absorbed calmly and assessed on their true merits, not based on hysterical reaction. Precedent shows de-escalation and a willingness to negotiate only convinces Putin he is on the right track, while appeasement spurs him to make further demands.” (https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/03/negotiated-peace-russia-fraught-danger)
By starting this war Putin made clear that he himself is an existential threat not only to Ukraine, but to the entire West, and diplomacy doesn’t fare well with him.


> I'm not talking about Russia and Ukraine, I'm talking about all parties. That should include the US and Europe who are funding the war. they can't pretend to be innocent bystanders. Notwithstanding that, whether negotiations are taking place is not the question. Whether you support them is the question.

OK what do you mean by “support”? Show me how you would apply it to your position.


> That assumes the power in America lies in the various ventriloquist dolls chosen to act as mouthpieces for the vast industries which run America.

I don’t know exactly where the power lies: surely there are all kinds of powerful lobbies pulling strings and poking, in the US as anywhere else. The point is that depending on the power structure decision makers concentrate more or less power in their hands. This in turn affects the range of options they have and their capacity to put their decisions into effect as intended. That’s also why responsibility is easier to assess in the case of Putin, since the concentration of power in his hands is greater than in any western president, America included.


> Again, whether they 'try to help' is what's in question.
> Does a supply of weapons help?

Well Zelensky is asking for military assistance to the West, and the West is supplying it. And it’s primarily up to the Ukrainians to assess if they get enough help.

> Is there any evidence that that's even the intention?

That’s irrelevant. I’m talking about moral reasons to help, not about intentions. Concerning intentions, what counts here is how fair and reliable commitments are for all the parties involved in a negotiation, partnership, alliance. If there are second, third, fourth interests is up to political actors to guess and to work with or around with.

> A supply of weapons certainly boosts the profits of one of the most politically powerful industries in the world. Are you arguing that that's a coincidence?

What did I say that made you think that I’m arguing that if a supply of weapons boosts the profits of one of the most politically powerful industries in the world, that’s a coincidence? What are the moral implications of such observation? Can you spell them out?

> You seem pretty clear that Putin's tactic (a gross brutish bombs-and-guns approach) is morally worse than, say America's (a more sophisticated economic domination causing death by famines, ill-health, and 'collateral damage' in their proxy wars).

Quote where I said that. Or show me how you could possibly infer such a claim from what I said.


> Then by what standard are you measuring?

Metrics are relevant wrt what people value. The death toll in a war counts, I don’t deny that. What I deny is that death toll is all that counts for moral considerations or that is what necessary counts for moral considerations (in the sense that we can’t take legitimate moral position until we know the number of the victims). Bombing hospitals, civilians and children is not morally defensible, giving stingers and javelins to Ukrainians that want to continue to fight against Russia also with stingers and javelins is morally defensible.



> https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/03/04/are-ukrainian-values-closer-to-russia-or-to-europe/ — neomac
That's better. I don't see in there evidence that Ukraine clearly has more open views on standards of life than Russia. I see a complex picture. Views on homosexuality, for example.

I was referring only to these parts:
“In Ukraine (8.25), which is closer to European attitudes (see the 9.1 in Poland), there are very pronounced European aspirations;
[…] while in Russia there are, by comparison, less high aspirations for a well-functioning democracy, Russians are relatively satisfied. In Ukraine, aspirations are higher, but satisfaction is lower. It is precisely this discrepancy that may call for deep reform, something President Zelensky was confronted with during his presidency.
[…] To what extent can Europe ‘buoy’ Ukraine? Here we see precisely that Ukraine, which is not a member of the EU, has relatively high confidence in the European Union (2.4 on a scale of 1-4). This puts the country at the same height as Poland (2.4) and Belarus (2.3), and even higher than the Netherlands (2.2). It leaves Russia far behind (1.9)”.

These facts support relative value proximity between Ukraine and the West wrt Russia, and this is relevant too for my moral assessments.


> you just repeated Putin’s demands and related blackmails without considering Ukrainian demands at all. — neomac

I know, that's why I said them. Those are the demands on the table at the moment, so of course they're Putin's. The argument was that they don't push Russian expansionism futher. They are the de facto positions already.

If we are talking about a negotiation between 2 parties, a third strategy that is opposing both should take into account what both parties demand, which you didn’t. Besides these negotiations depend on great power politics, right? Then again if we are talking about a geopolitical competition between 2 great powers, a third strategy that is opposing both, should take into account both strategic objectives (and longer term objectives are more relevant than shorter term objectives), which again you didn’t. And since accepting Putin’s demands (as they are) will empower Putin, then there would be more risks against the West, this is what needs to be opposed. Why? Because no great power politics pursues expansionism based on number of deaths, pieces of land, or who is the president per se but wrt increment of power relative to competitors. Besides, from that point of view what “Russia could get more” or “de facto positions” mean, depends on power costs/benefits calculi that take into account the Russian actual capacity to get more or preserve de facto positions, not how Russia is framing their demands. So no, you didn’t offer any third strategy, you just support Russians.


> It's not about 'sides' it's about tactics. It's not possible to support a nation (like Russia, or the US or Ukraine). There are 41 million people in Ukraine and they have different opinions. You can't support them all. You're picking a method and supporting that.

> Therefore you do not care to offer an opposing strategy against Russian terroristic expansionism — neomac
Why would that lead from caring more about civilian lives?

> Again, it's methods, not reasons. Just because we have a moral reason to oppose Putin's expansionism, doesn't' give us free reign to do so by any method available.

From your claims what I take your line of reasoning to be is in short the following. Your method to decide which expansionism to support is based on counting deaths, directly or indirectly provoked by expansionist activities (whatever they are). So since the US has indirectly provoked more deaths in Yemen than Russia has directly provoked in Ukraine, then we should side with Russia.
If that is in short your line of reasoning, then let me stress once more that, from your own way of framing things, you are not opposing 2 expansionisms, you are supporting Russian expansionism as much as I support American expansionism, based on who/what we take to be the lesser evil between the two. And, always according to you, I would be wrong because I didn’t do the right math roughly based on the death toll metric.
Now to the point: I find your way of framing the moral dilemma (who is the lesser evil?) conceptually flawed. America and Russia as geopolitical agents are theoretical abstractions useful for historical and strategic thinking, they do not possess real agency and therefore they do not bear responsibilities, they are beyond good and evil. They represent self-preserving power structures that reacts to perceived threats to their expansion or to pursue expansion in competition with other self-preserving power structures, and we can assess how they perform based on the relative quota of power. And we should be vigilant about the ambiguities inherent in anthropomorphic talking about geopolitical agents as actual moral agents, or in conveniently assimilating geopolitical agents to their current political leaders or administrations.
A moral landscape however is not composed of geopolitical agents, but of moral agents with the actual capacity of taking informed decisions based on moral principles and things they value, and putting their decisions into effect based on available resources and means. So to decide what/whom morally support, my method is to identify the moral agents, see what they value, the proximity of what they value to our/my values, what means they have chosen and how they chose them, how much of the consequences ensuing from their actions was intentional, etc. assess moral reasons and take side accordingly.
Since you place responsibilities to power structures instead of real moral agents and assess moral costs based on a priori metrics (like death toll) without taking into account what people actually value, your position is simply preposterous in this case. And that’s all from my own assumptions.
But within your own assumptions, there are still lots of things to clarify. If expansionism is a causal reaction to threats, since there are always direct and indirect multi-causal links between competing powers’ perceived security threats and reactions then all powers in competition are potentially causally accountable of not some but all current deaths provoked by power struggles, so there is no reason to side with one or the other based on death counts. You could still claim that it's not matter of taking side anyways, just matter of supporting whatever it takes to end the war in the shortest term, but then would you support as well Palestinians submitting to whatever Israeli demands are and Yemeni submitting to whatever Saudi Arabian demands to end hostilities as soon as possible? Wouldn't this line of reasoning simply support whatever the status quo is, since no power can be radically challenged without risking meterial wellbeing and life? Besides, what if this “whatever it takes” for peace will likely increase the chance of more or greater wars around the world in the near future and so more deaths and misery? Multi-polarity indeed increased the probability of proxy wars, as the Cold War proves, if not wars, as the 2 past World Wars and colonial wars prove. Finally, I don’t even get why your moral assessment of competing great powers should be limited to the number deaths or misery provoked in proxy wars and not also in the standard of life and prosperity within their established sphere of influence. Why aren’t these metrics worth taking into account for moral considerations?


> Do you support those who do?

No I don’t support those who throw innocent civilians under tanks. Do you support the Russian soldiers who drive tanks to kill Ukrainian civilians ?


> Just because we have a moral reason to oppose Putin's expansionism, doesn't' give us free reign to do so by any method available.

So what?

> Yes, but that's why the US's tactics in Yemen matter, because you're claiming to "take them into account”.

> Where have you 'taken into account' the fact that the US and Europe are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths too?

Nowhere obviously, because I’m talking about the war between Ukraine and Russia. As I said, if you want to talk about the West and Yemen, open a thread, try to prove this claim “the US and Europe are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths” and I will give you my feedback. My "take them into account” is focused on the topic under discussion, the war between Ukraine and Russia, not on any topic that comes to your mind based on your assumptions, which I’m still processing, and probably reject due to my assumptions.

Thanks Manuel, but going back and forth when there are too many quotes to comment on and little/scattered spare time to dedicate is unpractical to me. So before commenting, I often copy the entire target post somewhere else and then I comment inline whenever I have time.

> The part in parentheses was "even if sometimes only figuratively", Ie not necessarily referring to an actual flag. The flag represents control by the government of that country. Control over some aspect of Ukraine's government (either by having them sign a binding agreement, or by installing a friendly 'puppet' governor in some region) would reduce their risk from foreign influence.

Now it’s clearer. I disagree with this claim “The flag represents control by the government of that country” even when this can be a plausible conversational implicature. National flags as Ukrainian and Russian flags (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_flag) are symbols of a nation not of their governments. Governments can change and yet the flag and the nation that the flag represents can remain the same. I’m not saying this to be pedantic, but for its motivational implications as well as strategic and moral. People who are fighting against a puppet governments of some foreign power (as Yanukovych was to the Ukrainians) in defence of their national identity and independence are not fighting against their flag, but for their flag as expression of their national identity and independence. And I find this kind of fight morally defensible.


> Well then your agreement is nonsensical. I don't know what more to say. Either fighting over national identity is wrong or it isn't. It doesn't become wrong or right based on the interpretation of some specific historical event. If your agreement that "fighting over a flag is always wrong" is dependant on how the Ukraine war is interpreted, then how did you decide before Russia invaded Ukraine?

First of all, my agreement was conditional and you should have reported as such, as I explicitly asked. If you found my conditional agreement nonsensical or confusing, you could have protested or asked for clarifications, instead of misinterpreting it the way you see fit and move on. Secondly, I formulated my conditional agreement to address an ambiguous theoretical assumption of yours that could be interpreted in different ways. Indeed, to avoid confusions about my position I also immediately explained what I meant in that post, and reiterated in the following posts. If fighting a war over a flag literally amounts to fighting over a piece of coloured fabric as an ornament of a building, then I find it preposterous and 100% immoral. If it’s understood in a metaphorical sense (which is the opposite of talking about “the insignificance of flags”), then we should clarify the metaphor and if you take the national flag to represent a government (yet this too could be morally defensible, for example if the alternative is between a democratic and mafia government), then I disagree with that reading too for the reasons I explained previously. Finally, each of us is presenting and tentatively defending a certain understanding of this war based on moral and strategic assumptions and their implications, so it’s on us to clarify how to understand our metaphors as well as our examples wrt to the issue at hand.
Concerning your alternative “Either fighting over national identity is wrong or it isn’t” is that fighting over national identity is morally defensible (even through war) because people can morally value things more than their own lives, like national identity and independence and unlike a piece of colored piece of fabric on top of a building or a puppet government.


> So you'd have to forward some argument to that effect. It's no good just saying 'for me' at the beginning and expecting that to act as an excuse not to supply any reasoning at all.

I have no such expectations. My expectations are instead that you ask for clarifications, if interested, as I did when I needed clarifications from you. Notice also that I had to reiterate my request for clarifications to you (for example wrt your alleged third strategy or your understanding of “fighting over a flag”).

>Why do you see it as a matter of Ukrainian national security vs Russian oppressive expansionism. Why not, for example, a matter of American expansionism vs Russian expansionism? To quote from the article @StreetlightX posted earlier…

Indeed the war between Russia and Ukraine can be seen in both ways, namely as “American expansionism vs Russian expansionism” and as “Ukrainian national security vs Russian oppressive expansionism”, the reason why I privilege the second depends on genealogical and moral considerations. The clash between American and Russian expansionism in Ukraine is shaped as it is because it is nested in a more ancient clash between Ukrainians and Russians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_nationalism), which echoes in the chaos of narratives about the Ukrainian national identity among Putin and Ukrainian authorities, academics and society at large (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Russians_and_Ukrainians#Reactions, https://uacrisis.org/en/55302-ukraine-identity, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations#Popular_opinion_in_Ukraine). Indeed the clash of empires doesn’t really become meaningful to people (at least ordinary people) until it resonates within their moral landscape and personal experiences: knowing that in this war USA and Russia are fighting a proxy war in a piece of land called Ukraine for human and material resources, doesn’t tell me enough to decide whom I have to side with in this war. Knowing who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed, knowing that the oppressed is fighting for something I would value too at his place, knowing that this fight is a conventional war with its toll on civilians and their homes, etc. all this is more relevant for me to decide if one should support America or Russia or neither.


>Diplomats are not the arbiters of whether a negotiation has worked. If a process stops the war, everyone can see that it has worked, we don't rely on diplomats to tell us this.

You didn’t get my point. Negotiation is a practice based on complex and institutionalised speech acts like making offers and requests, give assurances, cut deals between participants. As all speech acts , they are governed by conversational maxims, one of which is sincerity. So if all diplomats would always lie to each other during the negotiation, all negotiations would fail and the practice wouldn’t even exist. Surely diplomats my occasionally lie, and lie to the public is much easier than lying to other diplomats, yet all get’s compromised when parties start from such a position of mistrust as in this case.


> I'm only claiming that it might. I only need to demonstrate that it is possible in order to substantiate that claim. Those who argue that Ukraine shouldn't negotiate because Putin lies, have the much harder task of demonstrating that such a process never works, otherwise it'd still be advisable to try.

I see no need for such a demonstration to support the idea that is not worth negotiating with Putin, were this the case. If successful negotiations are generically possible and we may have case studies of successful Russian or Ukrainian negotiations, yet negotiations may also fail also due to deep mistrust: indeed, what credible assurance could possible give Putin to not attack Ukraine again if Ukraine gives up about NATO given that Russia has already broken past agreements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances) ? The same goes for Putin, if Putin thinks that the Ukrainian diplomats are too influenced by the US who want this war to continue, then Putin would have no reason to go for a negotiation unless for taking time to better supply his war machine?
And, interestingly, they both could be right while the negotiation will stall.


> That matter is undeniably secondary to actually partaking in negotiations. The parties involved must actually be negotiating in order for it to even be a question.

At this point partaking is not the problem, because there have been many negotiation sessions between Russians and Ukrainians, but they got stalled.


> ...that you find some arguments persuasive is irrelevant to this claim. Your claim is that arguments of America's culpability are not supported by an objective analysis of the facts. I asked how you justify that claim when so many experts, after having made an objective analysis of the facts, reach a different conclusion.

> I don't see what difference this makes if those decisions all tended in much the same direction.

The experts you are referring to (like Kennan, Kissinger and Mearsheimer) converge enough in the analysis of the genesis of the current crisis and claim how wrong the West effort to expand east-ward at the expenses of Russian strategic interests was. I can get how insightful they were on the assumption that the end of the Soviet Union didn’t mean the end of the cold war mentality, especially in the Russian political/military elites from that generation (as Putin is). Yet their claims and advise do not necessarily converge with your views in some relevant aspects. E.g. Kissinger advises “It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. […]. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html). While Mearsheimer concludes that: “The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.” (https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf).
Anyway, as far as “great powers” politics goes, I can get that there are many good reasons to consider antagonising Russia a “strategic blunder” for the US: Russia is not a strategic threat to the US as much as China since Russia is a declining power anyways, normalising relations with Russia could have helped turn Russia into an ally against China, getting NATO involved in a war useless to the US will ruin whatever is left of NATO’s reputation if Ukraine is lost to Russia. So too much at stake for little reward on a lower priority strategic front for the US. On the other side, one big concern for the US is to preserve their long-term influence over Europe against the ambitions of Russia and China, or against Germany becoming more assertive (https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ICS-USEU_UNCLASS_508.pdf, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/could-europe-fear-germany-again) and for the EU (especially for the easter European countries) the concern is to preserve NATO’s protection against any military threat especially from Russia. So the US can not overlook the national interests of its partners and allies in Europe, as much as in Middle East as much as in Indo-Pacific. Even more so, given the technological and economic power concentrated in the EU. Additionally this war is a tragic but maybe necessary wake up call for Europeans against the existential threats coming from authoritarian geopolitical powers and the risks of relying only on the US military support.
And we could go on by wondering what a “strategic blunder” was for Putin to start a war in Ukraine, etc. And it wouldn’t be over yet, because we should also strategically analyze the possible outcomes of this war, etc. and how the rest of the world could react to each of them.
While all this is certainly precious feedback from experts and governmental advisors, yet government foreign policies and foreign policy trajectories over decades are the result of such an overwhelming informational and motivational selective pressure on decision makers (or generations of decision makers) and executive branches by all kinds of teams of experts, lobbies and world events that no strategic analyst could fully rationalize within their theoretical framework, I’m afraid.

But the major problem is the unresolved logic tension between strategic view and moral view. If you want to talk about morality and moral responsibility you need moral principles and agency (capacity of making and executing free informed decisions). Now from great power politics, however morality is relative (“national identity is just a flag”) or instrumental and agency is always reduced to “causal” reaction to perceived existential threats or opportunities (which sounds as an oxymoron wrt so-called realist view in geopolitics), so preventive moves to increase deterrence, reciprocal threats and ping-pong blame game are structurally embedded in this view. Indeed the competition between Russia and NATO didn’t begin with NATO enlargement’s provocation simply because it never really ended with the Cold War (https://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/96-98/cottey.pdf, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/09/21/yeltsin-vs-clinton/442ba04d-23c7-4d8b-9732-2dda43e1544b/).
And geopolitical agents are theoretical abstractions that may hide very different situations for real political agents. Putin’s dictatorial power extends over the last two decades so he could take all his time to prepare for this war and take effective decisions consistent with his goals, meanwhile in the US there have been five different administrations (including a philo-Putinist Trump) in loose coordination with an even greater number of changing and politically divided EU leaders and governments, decided also thanks to a growth of anti-globalist populism that Putin contributed to feed with his money and troll armies. So not exactly the same situation for responsibility ascriptions.


> The west is delivering weapons to the oppressed. Whether that's 'helping' them depends entirely on your analysis of their options.

Sure, then again the West tries to help the oppressed by delivering weapons instead of trying to help the oppressor.


> So? How many people have the 'stick' immiserated. That's the metric we're interested in, not the method.

We who? I’m interested in the method too though. You are interested in metrics? No idea of the number of victims on both sides. Do you? Nor have I an idea about the weight you would assign to each causal factor of your multi-causal analysis. Do you? Out of curiosity, can you give me a rough idea about what your math to calculate the Ukrainian misery based on your multi-causal analysis would look like ? Can you list, say, 3 causal factors and tell me the weight you would assign to each of them and why?



> 4. Ukraine seems more open to share our views on standard of life and freedoms than Russia. — neomac
What am I supposed to do with that? What evidence to you have?

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/03/04/are-ukrainian-values-closer-to-russia-or-to-europe/


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

A perfect summary of Putin’s negotiation tactics, well done. Yet this tactic didn’t sound that convincing so far and BTW also the US had a de facto puppet government in Afghanistan for 20 years. So no, you didn’t offer any third strategy equally opposing the West and Putin, you just repeated Putin’s demands and related blackmails without considering Ukrainian demands at all.

> 2. I care very little about Russian expansionism when compared to the lives of thousands of innocent Ukrainians.

Therefore you do not care to offer an opposing strategy against Russian terroristic expansionism, (worse than any Islamist terrorism has been so far to the West).

> If you want to throw them in front of the tanks to prevent it, that's on you, but I'm not going to support that.
> Now explain how it's morally acceptable for us to throw Ukrainian civilians in front of Russian tanks to help us achieve these goals.

Who is us? I didn’t throw anybody under tanks. And the antecedent of that conditional is false. Nothing to explain here.


> What 'moral reasons'?

Putin is a murderous and criminal oppressor of innocent Ukrainian civilians. This claim is intelligible without any multi-causal talks and arguments ab auctoritate. So Western leaders have moral reasons to contrast Putin offensive expansionism the best they can, as long as they can.


> We're talking about the US and Russia here, not Isis. The US 'method' is causing more deaths in Yemen right now than are being caused in Ukraine by the Russian 'method'. And Yemen isn't even the US's only theatre of war as Ukraine is Russia's.

Sure, but your preposterous claim about the immorality of fighting over a flag or national identity was general. And so I offered you another counter-example to make my case even more clear.
If you want to talk about the US and Yemen open another thread. Concerning “methods”, I simply claimed they have moral implications and therefore I take them into account: a stick and carrot strategy (a mix of incentives and deterrence) may be morally more defensible than a full blown-war as in this case.


> Care to expand on these clandestine 'personal preferences’?

Well it was a minor point of a general consideration, but let’s say as a mere hypothetical example that Putin paid you with his precious rubles to support his propaganda in this forum against the meddling of the West in Ukraine. Prior to the war, I would have considered it just something I dislike, now I would consider it immoral.


> That just goes back to your disagreement that Russia had any reason at all to see NATO's actions as a threat (ie arguing that NATO weren't even shaking the table at all). The problem is, an overwhelming quantity of foreign policy and strategic experts disagree with you and you've not provided a single reason why anyone would take your view over theirs.

Indeed, I offered reasons mainly to question your 2 moral claims:
Recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral (as an accusation against the West).
Fighting a war over a flag is without doubt immoral.
And in this post I could complement my arguments with a few more comments about the experts you were alluding to. I didn’t do it earlier simply because I didn’t know whom you were talking about.

> So the Russian legitimate security concerns triggered by the West that led to this war ultimately consisted in whose flag is decorating the Ukrainian parliament building. Is this consistent with your claim that a legitimate security interest is an “interest some party might have about their security which actually relates to their security (as opposed to a connection made only for political rhetoric)”? It doesn’t seem to me so because a decorative component of a Parliament building has literally nothing to do with national security — neomac
Did you miss the parenthesised part or do you need me to explain it?

Yes, I need you to explain how Russia’s legitimate security concerns is at the same time actually related to Russian security and to a flag on top of the parliament building in Ukraine based on your “parenthesised part”.


> IT was the bit where you said…
I 100% agree with you — neomac
...just after I'd been talking about fighting over nothing but national identity. Is it that you misunderstood what I was saying

You not only misunderstood what I said but also missed to fully quote me, as I explicitly asked. So here is the full quotation: “I 100% agree with you, if the independence war Ukraine is fighting against Russian military oppression, can be reasonably rendered as a fight over an ornament of a Parliament building. ”
My agreement was conditional. And the antecedent of the conditional doesn’t hold to me, indeed I find it preposterous. I also explained it a few lines later that “For me it’s matter of Ukrainian national security vs Russian oppressive expansionism”, so the issue has nothing to do with a flag as piece of colored fabric decorating a building, unless you take it in some metaphorical sense (the flag as symbolic equivalent to national identity and independence). But also in this case, the problem is that the metaphor, while intelligible, is analytically useless in that e.g. it doesn’t distinguish foreign oppression from fighting against foreign oppression, which I consider relevant for moral assessments and responsibility attributions to geopolitical agents.


> My point is that it must be perfectly possible to negotiate even in situations where your counter party is going to lie because diplomats lie all the time and yet negotiation works. All that's necessary is for each side to think they have the better deal by ending hostilities than by continuing them. That can be achieved through lies, bribery, honesty, threats, concessions...it doesn't matter. That's what statecraft is.

I find your claim questionable for the following reasons:

• if “it must be perfectly possible to negotiate even in situations where your counter party is going to lie because diplomats lie all the time and yet negotiation works” expresses a logic claim then it can not be grounded on empirical claims (like “diplomats lie all the time and yet negotiation works”). Besides it is probably inconsistent: if diplomats lie all the time (which already sounds as an exaggeration) they lie also when they claim to have found an agreement at the end of their negotiation sessions, so no negotiation agreements would be reliable and the practice itself would be pointless. If “it must be perfectly possible to negotiate even in situations where your counter party is going to lie because diplomats lie all the time and yet negotiation works” is an empirical inductive generalisation and “diplomats lie all the time” just a gross exaggeration, it can be statistically true, and yet lead to fallible predictions in the given circumstances: indeed there are negotiations that fail because one of the party perceives the other as too unreliable (see also the current negotiations between Russia and Ukraine). And I doubt that such statistics are relevant for the parties directly or indirectly involved in the negotiations. But probably the specific case studies of Western/Russian past negotiation strategies may be very useful in the negotiation process maybe more than in predicting its outcome.
• “All that's necessary is for each side to think they have the better deal by ending hostilities than by continuing them” sounds true because that’s how negotiations are supposed to work, but it’s also empty of interesting moral/strategic implications. What is morally/strategically interesting is precisely to understand how geopolitical agents come to think “they have the better deal by ending hostilities than by continuing them”, especially on the issue at hand, the war between Russia and Ukraine. Indeed geopolitical actors need to do their calculations as reliably as possible based on what they strategically and morally value, and than get reliable assurance that the agreement will be honored as they expect to be by the other parties, especially if there is such a level of mistrust between parties.

> I assumed you were following the thread. I haven't time to have the same conversation separately with every interlocutor I'm afraid. If you also haven't time to keep up with the whole thread then then we're stuck. Why don't we compromise and you tell me which experts are saying that the US is blameless and why you find their arguments persuasive. That's something you've not yet done so you wouldn't be repeating yourself.

I’m not relying on any specific expert’s views, and more importantly I already provided to you some of the main arguments I find persuasive. I must add that I didn’t claim that the US is blameless (whatever it’s supposed to mean), I just gave you my reasons to question your accusations against the West: “recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral”. Putin’s ambitions are intelligible from a geopolitical point of view as well as western containment strategy against such ambitions. Yet from a moral point of view about the issue at hand I would take into account the distinction between oppressor & oppressed, the nature of the oppression (also wrt its triggers), the nature of the decision process and the value proximity: 1. Ukraine is the oppressed and not Russia, and the West is helping the oppressed not the oppressor 2. Ukraine & the West adopted a more “stick & carrot” containment strategy while Russia opted for an invade and wreck aggressive strategy 3. Whatever action is taken by the West is not coming from the decisions of a single dictatorial leader but of a bunch of democratic leaders with problematic coordination, we can not say the same of Putin 4. Ukraine seems more open to share our views on standard of life and freedoms than Russia.

I can suggest you another compromise: there is no need “to have the same conversation separately with every interlocutor”, it’s enough to give me links to your posts where you mention and/or argue the views of the experts you rely on.


> It’s odd how, when I raise a specific issue about negotiation (Ukraine have lied too, so can't fairly expect Russia to be an honest negotiation partner), you switch to "hypothetical" mode to make your arguments, but when I make hypothetical arguments you won't accept them without specifics…

And what is the specific issue about negotiation you are talking about? Can you exactly quote yourself? Maybe I simply missed it. BTW I already put into account that Ukraine may have lied and be perceived as an untrustworthy party in the negotiation by the Russians: “For example, the Ukrainians can reasonably suspect that a call for negotiation from the Russians is to allow Russians to re-supply their war machine and continue the war. And the Russians can reasonably suspect the same of the Ukrainians. And one of them may be right. So my question is, in this hypothetical situation, are there any alternative moral principles that could tell us how the hypothetical party in “good faith” should proceed, when the other doesn’t seem to be?”
My hypothetical mode of thinking is focused on what we can apply to the case at hand. If you do the same in a way that is understandable to me, I don’t mind if you do it.



> The alternative strategy to arming Ukraine and fighting to the last man is negotiations. Ones involving not only Ukraine and Russia, but America (or NATO) and Europe (EU, or representatives) since the situation involves them too. Russia's existing demands are de facto the case anyway, so they would be a perfectly good starting concession for negotiations.

So you are for pushing Ukraine to concede to Russia all they have demanded (no NATO membership, acknowledgement of Crimean annexation, independence of a couple of Donbas provinces) in exchange to stopping the war. I fail to see how this is a third strategy as you have claimed (“It’s clearly possible to devise strategies which oppose them both”): in what sense is this strategy opposing Russian expansionism?
Anyways, there are many unavoidable reasons why such concessions are geopolitically very problematic for Ukraine, EU and the US, especially Putin’s territorial demands. Crimea is a hub of utmost strategic importance in the Black sea for commercial, energetic and military reasons, while the Donbass region is vital for industrial and energetic reasons. So this concession would not only empower Putin to further his expansionist ambitions (e.g. against other European countries), but it will threaten the EU economic security (due to the energetic and alimentary dependency on Ukraine and Russia as Putin’s blackmailing is proving). Not to mention that it will prove the weakness of the West to the world, from its enemies (starting from Russia and China) to its allies (the eastern and central European states).
So such concessions are not only the opposite of containment strategy. But likely a major breaking point for the entire World Order as we know it. In other words, the West and Ukraine have plenty of strategic reasons to keep fighting Russian oppression as long as they can and as best as they can.


> The 'legitimate security concerns' I believe I've already mentioned. Closer alliances with NATO could allow US or EU military installations in Ukraine. Such installations give Ukraine an advantage in any future negotiations (their meaningful threat level is higher), they act as levers to push Ukraine into further economic union with the EU (harming Russian efforts), and they make Ukraine the stronger opposition in any territorial dispute (such as Crimea) which may hamper further military strength in other areas (as it's a crucial port), finally, actors within Ukraine (such as anti-Russian paramilitaries) are given more strength by being able to shelter under the wing of the stronger Ukraine. It's not rocket science, it's exactly the same concerns NATO have.

Even if the concerns are exactly the same, which I questioned because NATO in this case didn’t expand through forceful annexations of other sovereign nation’s territory and this is a crucial point which you should address before anything else when you talk about Russian security concerns, then we should support NATO against Russian expansionism also for moral reasons in addition to the strategic ones. It’s a shame that the West didn’t handle better this situation and there are probably big mistakes done by the West, and now that the West is in such predicament the West can’t simply step back.


> I thought we'd just done talking about the insignificance of flags?

Only in the sense that I totally disagree with you. So if you take it as a premise of your reasoning, all your reasoning looks as bad as the premise. If not worse.


> China want influence in Taiwan. Their method might be to put their flag over the parliament. The US want influence in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen... Their method is to fight a war to install a US-friendly government under such crippling loan terms that they've little choice to accept US influence. The methods are immaterial here. Both cause massive destruction and loss of innocent life. Both lead their instigators to positions of power.

Well from an abstract geopolitical point of view you can call it influence, but from a more concrete and personal point of view there is a big difference in how this influence is deployed: e.g. Isis might want to put their flag in our decapitated head, while the US might want to put their flag on the sandwich we are eating. Do you see the difference? Because if you don’t, I do and I value it.


> Likewise, Russia could claim that about Syria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia or the Donbas regions.

Talking about this war, the Donbas region wrt Ukraine doesn’t enjoy the same international status as Taiwan wrt China. But even if we ignore this aspect, still geopolitics is not all what counts to me.
Russia can try to influence whoever they want the way they see fit to their geopolitical goals, yet I will react differently depending on moral implications and personal preferences.


> If there are, say, ten reasons Russia invaded Ukraine, all ten are collectively responsible. It doesn't change that to say "he would have attacked anyway with only five”.

I find this line of reasoning analytically too poor and misleading to support such claim about the West: “recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral”. I explained that to some extent here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/675364 immediately after your quotation “> No one argued he needed it. A vase doesn't need me to knock it over in order to smash, any number of things might cause that. This doesn't excuse me if I did, in fact, knock it over.”

> Yes, something like. Mostly 'security concerns' in terms of international politics come down to whose flag is over the parliament (even if sometimes only figuratively).

So the Russian legitimate security concerns triggered by the West that led to this war ultimately consisted in whose flag is decorating the Ukrainian parliament building. Is this consistent with your claim that a legitimate security interest is an “interest some party might have about their security which actually relates to their security (as opposed to a connection made only for political rhetoric)”? It doesn’t seem to me so because a decorative component of a Parliament building has literally nothing to do with national security: there could be no flags on top of any Parliament buildings and yet a nation could have security concerns when oppressed by a foreign nation.


> You'd just agreed that fighting over national identity was immoral

Did I? Can you fully quote where I agreed with that?



> ...then that's not 'good faith', is it? Simply assuming your opposite number is going to lie (whilst scrubbing the blood off your own hands) and refusing negotiation on those grounds is about as good a definition of 'bad faith' in the context as it gets. All diplomats lie, it's part of the job. There's no justifiable ground for one side to pull out of negotiations on the grounds that the other side lie. It's rank hypocrisy.

I take “acting in good faith” to mean acting with “a sincere intention to be fair, open, and honest, regardless of the outcome of the interaction”. Then I claimed and still claim that one could think to be acting in “good faith” while having reasons to doubt the other party acts out of “good faith”. In this case your moral principle ("at all times there should be a good faith and active commitment to bringing about peace through dialogue from all parties") wouldn't be satisfied. And your suggestion makes this case more likely: indeed if all diplomats lie then there might be concrete situations in which one party believes to be more trustworthy than the other during a negotiation. For example, the Ukrainians can reasonably suspect that a call for negotiation from the Russians is to allow Russians to re-supply their war machine and continue the war. And the Russians can reasonably suspect the same of the Ukrainians. And one of them may be right. So my question is, in this hypothetical situation, are there any alternative moral principles that could tell us how the hypothetical party in “good faith” should proceed, when the other doesn’t seem to be?


> Thus, you choose your expert and talk about why you find their arguments persuasive, and I choose mine and talk about why I find their arguments persuasive.

Indeed that is what I was asking. As far as I can recall, you didn’t tell me which experts you chose, even less why you found their arguments more persuasive.


> Yes, I understood that. It's erroneous in this situation because there are clearly not only two strategies. It's clearly possible to devise strategies which oppose them both.

No it isn’t erroneous. You may claim it doesn’t apply to your case, but you didn't formulate any alternative strategy to me to prove that it doesn't apply to you, even if I asked you explicitly.



>I didn't feel they needed explaining.

Still I’m explicitly asking you to specify these legitimate security concerns, now for the third time (I see I'm not the only one who addressed this claim of yours). What legitimate security concerns did the West trigger in Putin so that he felt cornered into waging war against Ukraine? Notice that you claimed that these concerns are “legitimate” so you must have a more accurate idea of what these concerns are, otherwise on what ground would you claim that they are legitimate? Unless you want to stick to the preposterous claim that Russia felt legitimately and intolerably threatened by the idea that Ukraine will keep a Ukrainian flag on top of the Ukrainian parliament building or so, of course.

>China has never attacked the US. It hasn't attacked anywhere at all for decades and the last war it fought in was on the same side as the US. So why has the US got security concerns? Because China could attack the US, or it's interests (in some capacity) and an increase in its ability to do so is a threat.

China has territorial claims over Taiwan. And it’s preparing to get it back forcefully if Taiwan resists. Taiwan is a partner of the US so if the US wants to protect Taiwan then the US should get prepared to counter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific and in the US precisely because China’s frustrated expansionist ambitions could lead China to retaliate against the US, with all the offensive means they are capable of (including cyberwar). These security concerns are legitimate in those who are threatened or have to suffer from expansionist aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine, and China is preparing to wage war against Taiwan if the latter wants to fight for its independence. Those two countries, Ukraine and Taiwan, are potentially or actually victims of aggression and whoever wants to support any of them to preserve their independence, should get ready for retaliation from the aggressors. Russia and China are not victims of any actual or potential aggression from Ukraine or Taiwan, and the support they receive from the West is defensive and not offensive.


> Neither of these contingencies excuse me from being part of the mob encouraging violence.

And what does this have to do with the war between Russia and Ukraine? I don’t mind if you want to talk about cricket, vases and mobs as long as you can prove it’s relevant for the discussion at hand. So for me the West is like the mob that is helping the victim (Ukraine) against the bully (Russia), it’s not the mob who is encouraging the bully (Russia) to abuse the victim. Isn’t the same for you? If not why not? What else should the West do to help Ukraine against the Russian bully.

> if you claim that Ukraine did anything that was threatening Russian national security, I would like to hear what that is and what proofs you have for such accusations. — neomac
I made no such claim.

Then how come that Ukraine didn’t threaten Russian national security and yet Russia is invading Ukraine? My answer is that Russia has expansionist ambitions and wants to take control over all or part of Ukraine. What’s your answer?

> Wars cause enormous harms, including to people who have no say in the decisions (children, future generations), so only the plausible avoidance of greater harms justifies it. Having a different flag over your Parliament building is quite obviously not such a greater harm.

I 100% agree with you, if the independence war Ukraine is fighting against Russian military oppression, can be reasonably rendered as a fight over an ornament of a Parliament building. So is this the issue for you? Is this the Russian legitimate security concerns you were talking about: a flag decorating a parliament building? For me it’s matter of Ukrainian national security vs Russian oppressive expansionism. So nobody talked about fighting over a flag decorating a Parliament building in the first place, until you did. I thought you meant something much more serious when talking about Russian legitimate security concerns threatened by the West to the point of provoking this war. And concerning morality, I’m talking about the morality and related civic duty to fight against the Russian oppressors by the Ukrainians as long as it makes sense to them to fight for their own national identity and security.


> I think at all times there should be a good faith and active commitment to bringing about peace through dialogue from all parties. I can't see any reasonable argument favouring war over dialogue on principle.

I 100% agree on that principle too. I still don’t see how you would apply it to the present case to justify your accusation that the West “recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral”. For example, if the West thinks that there is good faith and active commitment to bringing about peace through dialogue from them BUT NOT from the Russians, and Russians think that there is good faith and active commitment to bringing about peace through dialogue from them BUT NOT from the West, your principle doesn’t apply so how would you proceed with your moral analysis of the responsibility of the West wrt the Russian ones? Do you have any other moral principles that can help out?


> Then perhaps you could explain why so many experts in history and strategy have reached that exact conclusion.

I gave you my reasons to question your claims. And I don’t know who are the experts you are referring to (so it’s much harder to provide such an explanation, assumed I could), but what if I found experts that would disagree with the conclusions of your experts? Still we would need reasons to rely on the opinion of one expert instead of the other, when they disagree with their analysis or conclusions. Wouldn’t we? In other words, we would still need to have our own reasons to justify our own strategic and moral claims about this war. So I’m here to listen to your own reasons to justify your own strategic and moral claims about this war.

> You seriously can't think of any? Are you saying that the only two strategies you think are possible are Western neo liberalism and Russian anocracy?

The clarification I was looking for concerned your statement (“Only if you're weak-minded enough to see only two options”) in response to my claim (“If you are against advancing Western strategic interests and any logic of containment of its competitors that would risk a war, then you are indirectly supporting its competitors’ strategic interests, indeed of those competitors who are more aggressive in military terms, and therefore you may be rightly judged complicit in advancing them at the expenses of the West.”). I didn’t say nor implied anywhere that the only two strategies are Western neo-liberalism and Russian anocracy, if one can call them “strategies”. My claim is grounded on a simple & logic assumption: in a competitive game between N geopolitical actors with incompatible interests, if you act against (or more against) the strategy of only 1 of them, you are indirectly helping (or more helping) the remaining N-1 geopolitical actors. And this is the case, no matter if you do it knowingly/intentionally or not (yet I recon that it could be more problematic if you do it knowingly and intentionally).


> You're still assuming 'threats' can only come in the form of some military attack. Is there any plausible threat of military invasion to America? No Does America have legitimate security concerns? Yes. That should be all you need to know. There does not need to be an immediate threat of actual invasion for Russia to have legitimate security concerns.

You keep repeating that Russia has legitimate security concerns without explaining what they consist in. And actually I don’t even need to take as an assumption the idea of a military invasion of Russia by the Ukrainians as your misleading example once again suggests. It’s enough to consider the “threats” the Russian propaganda was trumpeting about: Ukrainian Neo-nazism, Russian genocide by Ukrainians, Ukrainian biochemical or nuclear weapons, and the like.

> You appear to be unfamiliar with multi-causal events, perhaps read up about the concept before pursuing this further.

Even if I read it, as you suggest, we could still disagree on how I and you would apply that concept to the case at hand. So if you really want to prove a point, you should actually argue for it.

> Why would they need to be provable? The illegality of Putin's attack is pretty much beyond doubt. We're talking about what was foreseeable, not what was provable.

And I’m talking about what one can foresee based on what can be proved. So if you claim that Ukraine did anything that was threatening Russian national security, I would like to hear what that is and what proofs you have for such accusations.

It’s significant how many contributors here use this subject as a pretext for questioning democracy generally. — Wayfarer

And the irony is that those who accuse the West of lacking critical thinking about their own corrupted and hypocritical democratic institutions, and warmongering/greedy imperialistic ambitions from the point of view of those who compete against the West (Russia, China, Islam) are just recycling criticisms originally coming from home grown and domestically popularised Western intellectuals: not surprisingly Osama bin Laden was an eager reader of Noam Chomsky.

> The link is to having reasons to post about it, not reasons to believe it. I know it's hard for the Twitter generation to understand but I don't feel compelled to post everything I think online.
[…]
I don't see why you're having such trouble with this, I don't have to provide a reason why I haven't posted something I think. It's quite normal to not post things one thinks.

Normal? Well that depends on how we apply conversational maxims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle) to the present discussion. Notice that if you are more vocal about one side of the story, and more reticent about the other side of story, that’s ambiguous. E.g. abstaining from saying that Putin is blameless while insisting that the West is blameworthy, is consistent with thinking that the West is entirely blameworthy, or more blameworthy, or equally blameworthy, or less blameworthy in comparison to Putin as far as the genesis and continuation of this war is concerned, so it’s unclear what the point made is and if it’s enough to justify a suggested course of action. Now, my initial claim concerning your dialectical approach (not only yours though) is that if we are discussing moral/strategic reasons behind this war, then one proves his/her effort to be more objective by articulating their views on both cases also to better assess them in comparison. This expectation has nothing to do with your personal preferences or a Twitter generation’s compulsion, but all to do with what a more objective strategic/moral analysis should look like.


> Is it immoral to fight for one’s own nation’s independence and/or for the freedom that one enjoys in such independent nation? — neomac
Fighting a war over a flag is without doubt immoral.

Why? Is this a basic moral principle of yours or did you deduce it from more basic moral principles? Can you elaborate on this? Of course nobody is fighting over a flag, literally speaking. If they do, that’s because they value some national identity that the flag represents, and that is deeply rooted into their personal history and upbringing within a certain community. In that sense, Israel for example has fought and is fighting over a flag against hostile neighbors. The same do Palestinians against Israel. The same did the Indians against the British colonial oppression, and the Algerian against the French colonial oppression. Are they all without doubt immoral?! I don't think so.


> Isn’t there any civic duty to fight for one’s own nation against the oppression of other nations’ tyrants? Don’t you really see any moral imperative in trying to contain the geopolitical ambitions of a ruthless tyrant even if at risk of total defeat? — neomac
Yes. I'm arguing against certain strategies, not the objective.

Do you mean that the only morally legitimate fight against a military aggressive ruthless tyrant is not through war but through economic sanctions and non-violent protests? Or what else do you see as morally legitimate strategy to fight against foreign oppression? BTW do you claim that strategy should be always constrained by morality also at the price of a more likely defeat?


> No one argued he needed it. A vase doesn't need me to knock it over in order to smash, any number of things might cause that. This doesn't excuse me if I did, in fact, knock it over.

I find this example more misleading than enlightening wrt what I claimed. Let's make one step back. My assumption here is that we are not dealing with some simple and mechanistic causal link between intentional action and consequences, but with intentional interactions involving geopolitical agents with strategic interests, means to serve them (including propaganda), expectations about reciprocal behavioral patterns (including proven ambitions and risk aversion dispositions) and limited rationality in processing the preferable outcome. And the other assumption is that one can assess responsibility wrt some pertinent and preeminent moral principle (where there might be potentially conflicting moral understanding of the situation) by agents capable of free and informed choices.
Now, from a strategic point of view, the idea that Putin was knowingly and recklessly provoked into a war by the West sounds plausible only if, on one side, we reason in terms of containment of the Russian military expansionism (not in terms of Russian national security concerns) but, on the other side, we overlook the nature of containment strategies to give more credit to fabricated national security concerns. Indeed the lack of a credible imminent threat from Ukraine to Russia (since Ukraine has neither nuclear weapons nor proved aggressive expansionist intentions) makes the West interference in Ukraine look as a provocation to Russia as much as putting rottweilers and cameras around a villa looks as a provocation to burglars. And since rottwailers and cameras usually function as a deterrent more effectively than their absence, we can reasonably predict that they should reduce not increase the likelihood of being burgled. So this alleged “provocation” is defensive and not offensive, preventive and not aggressive, and should reduce not increase the likelihood of an attack. On the other side, Putin proved to be a ruthless tyrant, very much inspired by the idea of making Russia great again, aggressive in foreign politics, admittedly averse to Ukraine national identity and independence from Russia. In fact he attempted at Ukrainian self-determination repeatedly at least since 2004, so a while before NATO membership became the new provocation, the simple manifestation of Ukrainian national self-determination was already an intolerable provocation. Therefore, if you add to that the disproportion of military capability between Russia and Ukraine, then you can understand that Putin constituted a real imminent threat to the Ukrainians and could have likely tried to impose his will against any Ukrainian resistance by military means even without Western interference, as he did in Chechnya. In other words, Putin was a threat to Ukrainian national security much much more seriously than Ukraine was to Russian national security. That’s why Ukrainians were and are looking for the western military support.
Moreover, actions and reactions between geopolitical agents are not a one to one correlation. Western interference in Ukraine at the expense of Russian expansionist ambitions was balanced by not admitting Ukraine into NATO (whose raison d’être was already in question in the West!) and preserving economic ties with Russia, which put together resulted in a sort of “carrot & stick” logic of containment. So, Putin wasn’t cornered into waging war against Ukraine in any strategically reasonable sense, even if the perceived threat from NATO was more serious than it actually was, as once again the Cuban missile crisis proves. Putin could have countered Western interference through sanctions or military agreements. Or through whatever “carrot & stick” strategy was compatible with his expansionist ambitions.
From a moral point of view, the moral principle of legitimate defense applies to Ukrainian case more seriously than it does to the Russian case. While the moral principle that one shouldn’t put in danger civilian’s life & well being nor increase such a danger applies under two reasonable conditions. The first condition is that it doesn’t conflict with the former principle, in other words, that the pursuit and civic duty of national self-defense against foreign actual or potential oppression doesn’t count as putting the population in danger or greater danger (otherwise self-defense against foreign oppressors wouldn’t even be possible). The second condition is that the likelihood of a certain dangerous event is known, but we can’t exclude some serious miscalculations on both sides: indeed the West was unprepared to the eventuality of a full war between Ukraine and Russia, also because the US and the EU had different perceptions of Putin’s threat. On the other hand, Putin too didn’t predict such an evolution of the war, especially the reaction of Ukrainians and the EU, yet if he expected to win so easily, it means that Putin couldn’t perceive any serious threat to Russian national security coming from the West or Ukraine (in fact the annexation of Crimea). Finally, while the West is a collective geopolitical agent whose aggregated response toward Russia is not fully orchestrated by a single tyrannic leader, so it’s hard to assess how its putative collective responsibility can be shared or distributed across individual western states, especially if there are different perceptions of the problem at hand and dispositions to deal with it, however we can not say the same for all the aggressive actions taken by Russia against Ukraine.
Conclusion, the claim that the West recklessly and knowingly provoked Putin into waging war against Ukraine at the expense of million of innocent civilians doesn’t seem to me supported by a more objective understanding of the historical and strategic interactions between Ukraine, Russia and the West with its related moral implications.

> If you are against advancing Western strategic interests and any logic of containment of its competitors that would risk a war, then you are indirectly supporting its competitors’ strategic interests, indeed of those competitors who are more aggressive in military terms, and therefore you may be rightly judged complicit in advancing them at the expenses of the West. — neomac
Only if you're weak-minded enough to see only two options.

So what would be the other available options that the strong-minded enough would go for?

> America is taking great pains not to equp Ukraine with any weapons which have a range long enough to present a credible threat to Russia. For this exact reason.

Well then there are no national security concern for Russia after all. But Russia could yell "not yet". Couldn't they? So until Russia can ensure a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine the risk is still there, even grater than before if Ukrainian are looking for revenge. And if national security was Putin’s concern before, it should be even more so now.


>Then you can not be sure of Western moral responsibility in knowingly provoking Putin either. Can you? — neomac
Why not?

Because you seemed to claim that Putin acted out of legitimate national security concerns triggered by the West. But if Putin didn’t act out of legitimate national security concerns, then there were no legitimate concerns that the West triggered in Putin leading him to start a war against Ukraine.


>Well then what forms of attack are you claiming Russia should have no fear of?

Any conventional or non-conventional attack that could seriously threaten Russian national security. The point is that there were no provable aggressive intentions from Ukraine against Russian national security, with the plausible exception of Crimea, but only after its forced annexation by Putin: so in this case it’s Putin who once again provoked the Ukrainians by attempting at their national security and integrity, not vice versa.

Yet those demands do not seem enough to guarantee the national security of Russia from a now more likely hostile country. — neomac
So? That doesn't influence their likelihood of being met.

Again, I was questioning the claim that Putin acted out of national security concerns provoked by Western interference. Ukrainian Neo-nazism, Russian genocide by Ukrainians, Ukrainian biochemical or nuclear weapons, could make the national security concerns narrative look more plausible. His actual demands however betray once more that Putin acted out of his aggressive expansionist ambitions and not out of national security concerns.

> I didn't say it was 'required' did I? I said I had no reason to. Not liking cricket gives me no reason to play cricket. Is that the same as saying I'm 'required' to like cricket in order to play cricket?

No, my point is that there is a missing explanation! What is the logic link between being Russian or talk to Russians and having reasons to believe that the Russian aggression of Ukraine is immoral? You didn’t state it in that part I quoted and I didn’t see any. This answer of yours doesn’t compensate it either, actually it makes your position look even more pointless: you may have moral reasons to condemn Putin independently from your willingness, interest or liking to do it. And if we are not here to socialise but to discuss moral or strategic reasons about this war, who cares if you like cricket or dislike condemning Putin?!



> Only if I thought it would help. If I though it would cause more harm, how would that be the moral option?

After considering also your subsequent claims, I guess that your position would be less ambiguous if you stated not that you have no reason to morally condemn Putin but that you have moral reasons to not voice your moral condemnation of Putin’s actions even if they are immoral because this would hypocritically deflect attention from Western’s moral responsibilities in the genesis of this war, and would be taken to promote the immoral indirect interventionism of the West.



> recklessly endangering millions of people by knowingly provoking a ruthless tyrant without any meaningful protection for those he might attack is immoral.

Any demand that a ruthless tyrant of a nation can make against another nation (e.g. as Hitler made against Poland or Kim Jong-un makes against South Korea) that goes unsatisfied can be seen by him as a provocation, so should we meet his demands whatever they are to avoid a war and so endangering millions of people's life and wellbeing? And who is to decide that? What if his success would make him stronger in terms of resources and determination to oppress other independent nations with further demands? Is it immoral to fight for one’s own nation’s independence and/or for the freedom that one enjoys in such independent nation? Isn’t there any civic duty to fight for one’s own nation against the oppression of other nations’ tyrants? Don’t you really see any moral imperative in trying to contain the geopolitical ambitions of a ruthless tyrant even if at risk of total defeat? BTW do you consider the West immoral only when provoking a Russian ruthless tyrant or also when supporting his ruthless regime and ambitious geopolitical goals through economic ties?



> I assume it's because Putin is an immoral turd and would probably applaud them.

Well if Putin is such a moral turd then the moral responsibility of the West in the genesis or the continuation of this war doesn’t seem as morally questionable nor reckless as you claim. Not morally questionable, because an immoral turd doesn’t need any specific strategic provocation by the West to wreck Ukraine the way he’s doing in this war (the Ukrainian neo-nazi narrative could have worked just fine even in the absence of the NATO expansion narrative), except for playing it as a counter-propaganda against the West and its public opinion, to create division and so weaken Western governments’ resolve to counter Russian aggression against Ukraine. Nor reckless because the West may just have provided enough military support to Ukrainians to precisely withstand such eventuality, while reliably counting on its antibodies to neutralise Russian propaganda against the West. It’s worth noting that Ukrainians remember very well that Soviet Union under Stalin provoked a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians (and nobody was talking about Ukraine joining the NATO or the neo-nazi Ukrainian regime at that time), so the fact that Putin, ex-KGB, considers the collapse of Soviet Union “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and is deeply convinced that Ukrainians are not a distinct nation from Russians may sound quite threatening to them if they value their national identity. By consequence, Ukrainians may have a very good reason to fight by all means against the eventuality that such immoral turd has such a control over Ukraine that would enable him to repeat the Holodomor if he so pleases.
Therefore what you claim to be an immoral provocation by the West toward an immoral turd with strategically pertinent concerns about Russian national security, may be seen by Ukrainians with strategically pertinent concerns about Ukrainian national security and national identity preservation as a morally laudable support in preventing an otherwise unavoidable national capitulation to such an immoral turd.


> unless of course you are against advancing Western strategic interests. Are you? — neomac
Yes.

If you are against advancing Western strategic interests and any logic of containment of its competitors that would risk a war, then you are indirectly supporting its competitors’ strategic interests, indeed of those competitors who are more aggressive in military terms, and therefore you may be rightly judged complicit in advancing them at the expenses of the West.


> An interest some party might have about their security which actually relates to their security (as opposed to a connection made only for political rhetoric).
[…]
How can a non-nuclear power as Ukraine constitue a threat for a nuclear power like Russia in the first place? — neomac
By serving as a base for much better equipped allies like the US.

Then Putin’s aggression will result in a total failure if he will not at least put a pro-Russian regime, because the West is already military equipping Ukraine even if Ukraine is not yet a NATO member and still has a putative "neo-nazi" regime, and will likely do it even more so once Russia withdraws from Ukraine. Not to mention the fact that all other eastern countries that feel threatened by the Russians, including Sweden and Finland, will increase their military equipment to fight against any aggression from Russia.


> why are you so convinced that Putin acted primarily out of security concerns? — neomac
I'm not.

Then you can not be sure of Western moral responsibility in knowingly provoking Putin either. Can you?


> BTW if he so afraid of Russian national security why is he so quick and vocal in menacing the West to escalate to a nuclear war when nobody in the West or Ukraine is planning to attack Russia? — neomac
Because his concern is not an attack on Russia. A land invasion of one's country is not the only thing that comes under the umbrella of a security concern, obviously.

What?! I talked about attacking Russia, not about land invasion on Russia.


> why did he limit his demands to the denial of NATO membership to Ukraine, and the acknowledgement of the annexation of Crimea as well as the independence of a couple of Ukrainian regions instead of going for the annexation of the whole Ukraine or at least for a pro-Russian regime change to ensure that no other competing power could turn Ukraine against Russia? — neomac
Because those demands were more likely to be met.

Yet those demands do not seem enough to guarantee the national security of Russia from a now more likely hostile country.


> It was Yanukovych's attempts to create just such a relationship and the EU's refusal to countenance it that acted as one of the precipitators of this whole thing.

Yet Yanukovych’s fall didn’t compromise the economic ties between West and Russia as badly and probably long-lastingly as the decision of Putin to start and protract his aggression against Ukraine.

> all he’s proven with his war against Ukraine is that he’s willing to take military action if lobbying doesn’t suffice to reach his ambitious strategic goals that certainly go beyond national security concerns. — neomac
Not sure what the 'all' is doing there.

I meant that the lack of an actual immanent threat from a declared hostile country (as the US experienced during the Cuban missile crisis and dealt with without destroying Cuba or bring about a regime change), the aggressive geopolitical strategy beyond national security concerns (lobbying parties, trolling the mass media and hacking companies in the US and in the EU, and establishing a prominent military presence in the Middle East and in Africa), Putin’s official declarations against the current world order, and his being an immoral turd or ruthless tyrant make his national security concerns look less pertinent and more as a piece of propaganda to promote his ambitious geopolitical goals. Actually by acting as he did, he just compromised more and more rapidly Russian national security. Besides this war could seriously threaten his own regime too more than anything else has done so far.

I'm not Russian, nor talking to any Russians. Why would I morally condemn them? This is a discussion forum, not a socialising site. You're not 'getting to know me better' by my writing a little puff piece about all the things I like and dislike. — Isaac

To think strategically or morally about this war doesn’t require you to be Russian, nor to talk to Russians. So your question is grounded on a non-sequitur. Maybe what you are implying here is that your readiness to voice your moral condemnation of the Russian aggression is conditional on your capacity of affecting their choices. But that’s a very weak argument, indeed if you can not affect directly their choices (assumed you could just by being Russian or speaking to Russians), you could affect them indirectly by promoting western governments’ decision to support Ukrainian defense precisely because Russian aggression is morally wrong. Additionally it sounds contradictory wrt your further claim: this is a discussion forum, so we can discuss things just for the sake of discussing them.
Finally the purpose of my argument was not to socialise but to discuss in a philosophical forum about this war. And the point is precisely that your analysis about this war instead of proving to be more objective, it just proved your preferences.

Morally - People have implied (outright said in some cases) that 'the West' bears no responsibility for what's happening. I think that's morally wrong, so I oppose it. No one has said that Putin's is blameless, so there's no cause for me to write anything morally condemnatory about him. — Isaac

And what are the moral principles or the moral values which the West has infringed and therefore should bear responsibility for the Russian aggression of Ukraine? Besides if the West did something morally wrong, why isn’t the West being attacked by the Russians but Ukraine? Are you including Ukraine in the West?

Strategically - Again, no one has commented to the effect that we should not take America's strategic interests seriously, so there's no cause to write anything to the effect that we should. People have, however, treated Putin as if he were a psychopath with no legitimate security interests, I think that's wrong so I oppose it. — Isaac

That people are treating Putin as a psychopath should be welcome if it advances western strategic interests, unless of course you are against advancing Western strategic interests. Are you? Or do you believe that Western strategic interests are better served if people do not treat Putin as a psychopath?
And, even if you discuss for the sake of discussion, what do you mean by “legitimate security interests”? First of all if we reason in strategic terms, then no geopolitical agent has legitimacy beyond what its competitors are willing to accord, precisely because we have excluded morality as a primary source of legitimacy for strategic action. Besides any geopolitical agent can rationally decide to respect or infringe any agreements and sphere of influence if it proves effective in advancing as long as possible their strategic interests. In other words, even legal legitimacy based on international law is strategically irrelevant if it is not granted by a super-national overwhelming deterrence power.
Secondly, why are you so convinced that Putin acted primarily out of security concerns? Just because Putin claimed so? I think that there are enough strong evidences that is matter of geopolitical influence not of national security per se for the following reasons:
How can a non-nuclear power as Ukraine constitue a threat for a nuclear power like Russia in the first place? And if the threat Putin perceives is about letting Ukraine have nuclear missiles in some far future, then why didn’t he demand an agreement analogous to the one between US and Soviet Union during the cuban missile crisis in the first place, instead of invading Ukraine? Besides no other eastern European country has nuclear missiles even if they are NATO members, so why having Ukraine inside NATO is a security threat for Russia as a nuclear power?
BTW if he so afraid of Russian national security why is he so quick and vocal in menacing the West to escalate to a nuclear war when nobody in the West or Ukraine is planning to attack Russia?! Or why did he limit his demands to the denial of NATO membership to Ukraine, and the acknowledgement of the annexation of Crimea as well as the independence of a couple of Ukrainian regions instead of going for the annexation of the whole Ukraine or at least for a pro-Russian regime change to ensure that no other competing power could turn Ukraine against Russia?!
Finally the military presence of Russia in the Middle East and in Africa has nothing to do with national security concerns, but with a world power struggle. And Putin’s strategic choices wrt all other eastern European countries [1] and western European countries (given the Russian lobbying in American and European politics) seem more aiming at becoming more politically influent in Europe then supporting national security concerns per se. Indeed economic ties would have been sufficient to preserve peaceful relations between EU and Russia, and things could have gone even more awesomely if Putin boosted democratisation and the rise of a middle class in Russia to the point of making Russia eligible to join NATO as he wanted. So all he’s proven with his war against Ukraine is that he’s willing to take military action if lobbying doesn’t suffice to reach his ambitious strategic goals that certainly go beyond national security concerns.



[1]
“The demands, spelled out by Moscow in full for the first time, were handed over to the US this week. They include a demand that Nato remove any troops or weapons deployed to countries that entered the alliance after 1997, which would include much of eastern Europe, including Poland, the former Soviet countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Balkan countries. Russia has also demanded that Nato rule out further expansion, including the accession of Ukraine into the alliance, and that it does not hold drills without previous agreement from Russia in Ukraine, eastern Europe, in Caucasus countries such as Georgia or in Central Asia.”. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/russia-issues-list-demands-tensions-europe-ukraine-nato)

All right, I’ll expand my argument with a premise. I see 2 distinct kinds of possible evaluations on the current Ukraine-Russia conflict: one is strategic and the other is moral. From a strategic point of view, what counts is how geopolitical agents can maximise benefits and opportunities while minimising costs and risks wrt actual/potential competitors, independently from any moral considerations. Indeed moral considerations are seen as instrumental in the form of propaganda or soft-power in winning consensus against geopolitical competitors. On the other side, from a moral point of view, an action can be good or bad without necessarily being strategically good or bad, yet strategic thinking should be constrained by moral considerations. Given this distinction one can argue that while letting Ukraine free to choose to join NATO was morally good because we value freedom and sovereignty, yet it was not strategically good because it challenged Russia to react in a way we weren’t neither ready nor capable to properly contain; or argue that the Western propaganda is hypocritical in trying to downplay the role of neo-nazi movements or even hide their indirect support to neo-nazi militia, yet this propaganda is strategically effective in winning the consensus of the western public opinion for supporting the Ukrainians.
The distinction I just pointed out is at play also in your (and not only your) comments when, on one side, you morally condemn the the Western hypocrisy (see the case of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc.) and “warmongering” propaganda at the expenses of the Ukrainians. On the other side, you switch to strategic thinking mode when the subject is Putin, so the point is no longer to condemn the propaganda or the inhumanity of the Russian aggression of Ukraine, but to evaluate costs/benefits of a protracted war between Ukraine and Russia. And expect your interlocutors to do the same.
This dialectical approach is twice flawed:

• You are switching between two modes of thinking as you see fit, and you may take it as a sign of intellectual - if not moral - dishonesty when your interlocutors do not follow you on this or, worse, they do the opposite of you (i.e. they morally condemn Putin, while thinking strategically about Ukrainians and Westerners can do against Putin). But you didn’t provide any compelling reason why your way of switching between strategic and moral evaluations is more legitimate than alternative ways of doing it.
• This switching between moral and strategic thinking is also misleading you into thinking that your reasoning is more objective and detached than the one of your opponents when you reason strategically. But that’s not the case because: A. If you want to talk strategy then also propaganda is part of the game and must be judged accordingly for its effectiveness, no matter how much you feel morally above any propaganda. Indeed, from a strategic point of view any moral claim, can be exploited for achieving non-moral goals: e.g. your view too is or can be instrumental to the Russian propaganda! B. You are limiting the scope of your strategic analysis to how much or how likely the Ukrainians can lose (e.g. in terms of human lives or political/territorial integrity) in this war as if this is all that matters. This might be true from a moral point of view (even if I have difficulties to understand how this can match the interest of humanity at large), or from Ukrainians point of view (but they do not seem to think like you), anyway that is not certainly so from a strategic point of view at large because what is at stake in this war goes beyond Ukraine’s fate and its outcome can destabilise the world order in ways that no other war after the end of cold war has done.

Worth wile to see. — ssu

thanks for sharing this video, it was very instructive!

I expect he'll end up getting more than what he asked for before the war. And a real danger is the longer it goes on, the more he may demand. — Baden

A real danger? You keep asking for evidences (which already seems to clash with the idea that we are living in a news environment poisoned by propaganda from any side) what evidences do you have to support the idea that the longer it goes on, the more Putin may demand? I think we have more evidences to the contrary. Indeed he wanted to denazify Ukraine in the first place , which also implied a regime change, along with having Ukraine forever outside Nato, securing Crimea annexation, and keeping the independents Ukrainian regions independent. Now he is not talking of denazification or regime change on the negotiation table.

If some Ukrainians (they are not, as I keep having to repeat, some kind of homogenised entity, they are 40 million diverse people), if some Ukrainians ask for help in the form of military aid, then our governments (and us in our role as their mandate) have to decide whether it is in the best interests of humanity at large to give such aid. It is totally up to us to decide what's best for them, that's the nature of the power relationship. We have the weapons they need, so we must decide whether what they're asking for is in their (and other people's) best interests. — Isaac

I’m wondering if we should not think of 40M Ukrainians to be some kind of homogenised entity, all the more it’s true for ~8 billion of currently living people that constitute (still in small part) humanity at large, what makes you think we are even capable to decide what it is in the best interests of humanity at large?! In any case your dialectic approach looks to me deeply flawed mainly for the following reasons: you as many other contributors here want to keep the privileged moral position to denounce ("critically think" about) the hypocrisies of the West, its propaganda machine and showcase your pity for the Ukrainian population’s fate while accusing your opponents of “cheerleading” the Ukrainians against the Russians (and this position indeed is not a strategic stand wrt a geopolitical power struggle), and then expect from your opponents a rational and detached strategic analysis (assuming anybody here is as competent and reliably informed as strategic analysts who shape our government’s choices are) based on evidences which you may claim are compromised by propaganda if coming from western mainstream media, to understand Putin’s aggression of Ukraine, Putin’s demands and the likely evolution of this war to convince you that the best options for Ukrainians or “some” Ukrainians (and not humanity at large) is to accept Putin’s demands as soon as possible to end this war (which I doubt it’s a strategic objective for the Ukrainians or “some” Ukrainians or other indirectly involved parties who support Ukrainians).

all I care if you can explain to me how this war can be ended without conceding to at least some of the Russian demands. — Baden

Who knows? Maybe it will end as the Afghan wars with the Soviet Union first and with the US later ended. But most importantly, since making concessions to Putin's demands will have strategic consequences for the economic and military security of all players around the world, and not just for Ukraine, one can not possibly think that what is at stake is just Putin's demands to end this war. As long as the Ukrainian feel like fighting against the Russian oppression, whoever might feel strategically threatened by Russia and the imperial ambitions of authoritarian regimes around the globe now or in the near future can not do other than side with the Ukrainians one way or the other, forced by the same logic that Putin claimed to justify his attack against Ukraine and fend off the putative threat of having the NATO at their doorstep. And BTW Russian representatives are not stopping to spread their military threats against the West beyond what's happening in Ukraine: they clearly want the world to take the Ukrainian case as an example of the Russian Superpower status and so influence whatever "new world order" may come with it.

so it's like we are trading with a terrorist. Are concessions the best strategy to deal with terrorists?

I view the purpose of analysis to make decisions, not morally condemn.

What decisions matter to me in this situation that I can affect: the policies of my own country and political block.

What are those decisions:

A. Go to war on the assumption of Ukrainian just cause ... well, nearly the entire country and political block believes in Ukrainian's just cause yet we are not going to put our boots where our mouths are.

B. Send arms to Ukraine in the hopes they fight our righteous battle "for the free world" for us and win.

C. Pump arms into Ukraine, not for the purposes of option B, but to ensure an endless insurgency that bleeds the Russians at Ukraine's expense ... Wooooweee!!!!

D. Use diplomatic leverage to protect civilians as much as possible and work on a diplomatic end to the war.

[...]

So, it seems to me D is the best choice. — boethius

So options A,B,C are practically saying that the West supporting Ukrainian defence is coward, hypocrite and cynical. While you would choose D which implies refusing to support Ukrainian defence and accepting Russian demands (whatever they are) not out of cowardice, hypocrisy or cynicism of course, but because it saves Ukrainian civilians as much as possible. And this is supposed to be the best example of analysis to make decisions not to morally condemn or do virtue signaling, right?

If Russians generally support the war, which they seem to do — boethius

If they support it, why is there such a level of censorship in Russia (which is not even under martial law)?

What's evil is the invasion, the bombing of civilians, etc. — Olivier5

Worse than this, Putin is killing people who - he claims - belong to the same nation as Russians. So he's like killing Russians!

So why did you involve my post? If you want to have a different conversion, don't do so in response to my posts, it's really confusing. — Isaac

You didn't specify anywhere what kind of conversation you want in your post. This is a public forum about Ukrainian crisis. You made a claim that I as others find questionable and I addressed it as such.

wanting a war to continue — Isaac

Then by your definition I'm not warmongering. I didn't want a war between Russia and Ukraine nor I want it to be continued. I was talking about my expectations about what the Ukrainians want not about what I want. BTW were the Russians warmongering when fighting back the Nazis out of their country in WW2?

Me or Putin? Define "warmongering".

Why is that more unhelpful for peacemaking than the opposite framing of 'totally innocent Ukrainians bravely fighting a ruthless and hell-bent tyrant, deaf to all pleas'? — Isaac

I don't expect the victims of an aggression to make peace with the aggressor, especially while the latter is rampaging with the aggression. Unless they are demotivated to fight and defend their rights for themselves, of course.

So you agree with me that all the framing of this war as 'evil Putin vs. noble Ukrainians' is unhelpful. — Isaac

No the problem is that Putin has framed the 'evil neo-nazi Ukrainians vs. noble holy-warrior Putin&Russians' in the first place (and persisting with that). That is unhelpful for peace making.

The senator was totally shocked that the answer wasn't no, and changed the subject to his next question (aka. damage control) — boethius

I see zero shock on Senator Rubio's face, voice, posture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvRpntmUIxs). The next question is just reinforcing the narrative that Russia can use the Ukrainian bio labs for a false flag operation similarly to what may have happened in Syria & Chechnya.

she's talking about shouldn't fall in the hands of the Russians and they're working hard to make sure that doesn't happen. — boethius

What is ambiguous may be that she didn’t say simply “no” right away. However the explanations she gave were enough to make clear that whatever was in that lab could have been weaponized by the Russians against the Ukrainian civilians (as it is claimed to have happened in Syria and Chechnya). And that also why she didn’t simply say “no”. Still the Russians and its troll army could try to play it against Ukraine b/c whatever can be weaponized against the Ukrainian civilians can as well be weaponized against the Russian army or philo-Russian civilians.

which is alarming and also just weird as to why they didn't take care of it if they knew the war was coming as US intelligence publicly claimed. — boethius

They took care of it.

What does the EU get? — boethius

Unity against a common enemy (Russia) and question their subordinate role toward an unreliable US. This awakening may be essential for EU's future survival and prosperity.

she's answering the direct question of whether there are bio-weapons in Ukraine. — boethius

If they wanted a clear & unequivocal answer from Nuland, they would have asked for such an answer. But they didn’t, and also that can be seen as suspicious.

it obviously will play well to the Russian supporters of the war and consolidate support for the war, which makes the war less reckless. — boethius

Feeding the Russian propaganda with half truths to increase Russian support will facilitate e.g. Russian use of chemical weapons in a "false flag" attack against Ukraine [1]. This would be an example of being more reckless.

the classic strategy for what you propose is to feed Russia false intelligence that can be easily disproved, denied or just ignored later. — boethius

I’m referring to a war of propaganda and how the Russian intelligence resources might be invested to feed the propaganda machine.

"fuck-the-EU" Nuland just wants to do what she claims and fuck the EU by orchestrating a coup with neo-Nazi's, setting those neo-Nazi's up with means and resources and then institutional legitimacy, and then setting up bio-weapons labs for this neo-Nazi cesspool as she feels that's a good way to "fuck-the-EU" which is her stated desire. — boethius

I’m just saying that one part of the American establishment might find some use in feeding the “neo-Nazi”, “bio-weapons”, “Russian genocide” narrative in a way that on their side grants plausible deniability while on the other side it can contribute to escalate tensions between Russia, Ukraine and EU.

EU has gotten fucked, has it not? — boethius

As much as Russia, its useful idiots and its useless troll army.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-may-use-chemical-weapons-false-flag-attack-not-more-broadly-western-2022-03-11/

But if you have a better explanation of Nuland's answer, feel free to debate that point of view on a debate forum. — boethius

We can not exclude that there are competing views within the American establishment toward this war. Some maybe want to escalate the conflict between the West and Russia. Others do not want to escalate it further. Maybe "fuck-the-EU" Nuland is dog-whistling to the Russian propaganda and intelligence on purpose, to galvanize them and maybe offer them a pretext for becoming even more reckless. In other words, Nuland and the piece of establishment she represents could be doing their dirty job by exploiting such ambiguous declarations in public hearings.

As long as we are in a military strategy discussion, why didn't Russia simply do this with cruise missiles to destroy military targets?

Why not simply threaten to invade?

Is arming rebels a good strategy and does it violate the UN Charter?

Why not simply threaten to use Nukes in the first place?

Saving lives... — FreeEmotion

For Putin's internal propaganda of course, coz the Ukrainian population wasn't that neonazi afterall. They should have been liberated from the neo-nazis, right? Now after fighting against Ukrainian civilians, being condemned by the Ukrainian Jewish community, having millions of Ukrainian refugees going west not east, shelling Ukrainian residential areas, destroying hospitals, violating humanitarian cease-fire, and killing Ukrainian children (which is as like as killing Russian children b/c Ukrainians and Russian are "one people" [1]) is harder to back up the narrative of the "neo-nazi problem" any more, isn't it?

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220201003310/http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

The above presupposes that you have a good grasp of my view. — creativesoul

Right, but what if you do not have a good grasp of your own view?

So... show me. — creativesoul

I'm quoting you when I make my objections and then I spell out in detail what I have to object to your quotations, as well as why it is relevant (here is a good example to prove my point). So this already shows what I understood about your views (unless you expect from me to parrot your claims or to fill up a questionnaire). And I expect you to do the same every time you have something specific to object against my claims or arguments. But you on the contrary waste lots posts and words in recycling the same generic objections, dismissive remarks and compulsive framing accusations, that either miss my point and its relevance, or miss what I argued to support it, or simply prove your intellectual dishonesty [1]. That's why, not surprisingly, any objection to your claims and arguments are either conflating or irrelevant according to you, no matter how preposterous your arguments and claims evidently look to everybody else.
To prove once more what I just said, your most recent posts [2] do not offer any support to the target of my objections: the ignoratio elenchi fallacy (as discussed here, see third point). Instead they point out, at best, some flaw in the way I presented my argument, and that helped me just sharpen my objection.
Another example of your shallowness is here:

False belief cannot possibly be true.
— creativesoul

Which I'm not questioning. Indeed also false statements cannot possibly be true. — neomac

...we can claim of a belief (or proposition) that is proven to be true (or false), that it could have been false (or true)... — neomac

Arriving at incoherence is a sign of self-contradiction and/or equivocation. You've littered the thread and this conversation with such things... — creativesoul

Where you accuse me of self-contradiction and/or equivocation without spelling out in detail where the contradiction or the equivocation is. You just slam your preposterous claims, and then you move on with your dumb rant as if it was enough to quote me to make your point!

Finally let's appreciate the scale of your methodological failures (practically, as catastrophic as your substantial claims and arguments): if you think I'm misunderstanding you, you can always rectify or answer my request of clarifications. But you do not address many of my pressing questions [3] and take as rectification, just repeating the same preposterous claims or arguments that I already quoted and you claim I've misunderstood. This is a very dumb dialectic strategy because if I failed to understand your claims (even when I'm directly commenting your quotes) as you state, what's the point in reiterating them? On the other side, if I don't understand, that may only depend on the non-evident logic or meaning or truth conditions of your claims wrt shared assumptions between me and you, so it's dumb just to repeat your claims (which are under question or misunderstood) and provide examples on how to apply them (as you did here ), all the more if you so candidly admit "I am very well aware of the difficulty inherent to what I'm setting out". You should instead prove your claims with logic tools and clarifications about meaning/truth conditions/logic implications or presuppositions consistent with shared assumptions between me and you [4]. If you do not do this, you are not making your view look more convincing, but simply incommensurable wrt more standard views. Indeed it's the dumbest philosophical strategy to challenge a view with claims and arguments that are unintelligible within that view, and reiterate ad nauseam until brainwashing interlocutors holding that view succeeds. And you do know what that means right? That you literally proved nothing substantially valid to support your views since the beginning of this exchange [5] up until now, especially wrt your central claim [6].
To recapitulate and not lose focus, here are the main important claims/assumptions that you didn't prove yet wrt what I questioned:

• You did not prove the immense explanatory power of your definition of belief
• You did not prove that you are not ascribing a contradictory belief in your “more accurate” belief report
• You did not prove that the knowledge requirement is necessary for accurate belief report
• You did not prove that your belief report is more accurate than the one we would normally provide in the relevant example of Jack

So spare me your sermons, insults and brainwashing sessions, and do some actual philosophical work, if you really care.




[1]

2 examples of inappropriate quotations:

↪creativesoul


My sentence was creatively chopped out by a deranged soul.

↪creativesoul


Taken in its context, my claim was referring to a different example from the one we are handling here, and only in order to clarify some implications of your views, not mine. (But now that you made me think about it, I would not be surprised if also on that occasion you were already committing a similar ignoratio elenchi fallacy ). — neomac

[2] Here is a bunch of them:








[3]
Like the following one. You keep repeating such kind of claims:

is impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood; and it is impossible to knowingly be mistaken — creativesoul

But why is it impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood or to knowingly be mistaken ? What is "knowingly" supposed to mean here? Can you spell it out?

[4] As I did for example here :

[2] "all A's can possibly be either true or false" would be a contradiction in terms if "all A's" meant "all true A's and all false A's" — neomac

And I take to be shared all other substantive claims I made which are relevant for my objections and that you didn't directly nor specifically question, like this one (referred to “False belief cannot possibly be true”):

its truth conditions (which you did not specify) depend on the meaning of the word “true” and “false” (which are contradictory terms) not on the meaning of “belief” — neomac

Indeed I took also your remark about the logical structure of your 2 claims, as a valid observation, because I can understand it wrt our shared assumptions, even though it didn't substantially affect my objection. And since you are proving to be so sensitive about logic structures, then there is still hope you will readily acknowledge that this other argument of yours is a non sequitur:

Yet I have another objection. Now that you made clear that your argument is only this:
Jack was mistaken. It is impossible to knowingly be. Thus, a proper rendering of Jack's belief will come in a linguistic form that is impossible to knowingly believe.

Then your argument (as it is) is a perfect example of non sequitur, logically speaking. I'll formalise it for you:
premise 1: Jack was mistaken (p)
premise 2: It is impossible to knowingly be mistaken (q)
conclusion: a proper rendering of Jack's belief will come in a linguistic form that is impossible to knowingly believe (c)

p
q
-------
c

This is not a valid logic deduction!!! — neomac

[5]

Care to further discuss the topic, as compared/contrasted to my interlocutor?
— creativesoul

I don't see how we can further it. — neomac


Do you find the account I set out in the first three posts of the debate to be a complete one? — creativesoul

We can set all the other stuff aside for now and focus upon what counts as belief.
Then, we will see how much sense it makes to ascribe belief to another, because we will have some standard of belief for comparing our ascriptions/attribution to. — creativesoul

[6]

At time t1, Jack believed that clock was working.
At time t1, Jack believed that broken clock was working.
You're claiming the first is more accurate. I'm claiming the second is. — creativesoul

False belief cannot possibly be true.
— creativesoul

Which I'm not questioning. Indeed also false statements cannot possibly be true. — neomac


...we can claim of a belief (or proposition) that is proven to be true (or false), that it could have been false (or true)... — neomac


Arriving at incoherence is a sign of self-contradiction and/or equivocation. — creativesoul

Where is the contradiction? Where is the equivocation? Can you exactly spell it out? First of all notice that the subjects are different: “false belief” and “belief” (qualified vs unqualified subject). Secondly, notice that also what is predicated is in different verb's mood (i.e. “cannot possibly be…” vs “could have been…”). But I get that some intellectual effort (which you are evidently incapable of) is necessary. So here are some additional hints (and if they are not enough I'll sharpen them at the next round): the claim that you apparently need so badly is “False belief cannot possibly be true” but this is a misleading claim, because - among others - its truth conditions (which you did not specify [1]) depend on the meaning of the word “true” and “false” (which are contradictory terms) not on the meaning of “belief”. In other words, reasoning in terms qualified subject (i.e. “False belief”) is ambiguous wrt what we can infer from "being a belief" or from "being false"). To avoid this ambiguity we can better render your claim (“False belief cannot possibly be true”) as a bi-conditional:
Notice that in this latter statement, the subject is unqualified. Of this unqualified subject we can claim at the same time without contradiction:
And BTW the same holds for propositions/statements (i.e. “False propositions/statements cannot possibly be true”):
Do you agree with these conclusions? If not, can you spell out exactly why not in substantial terms (i.e. meaning, truth conditions, logic implications or presuppositions)?

The structure was different. That is exactly what I pointed out. So, they are not just different except for that structure. — creativesoul

All right, I missed to properly address this part. I’ll do it now. The distinction of A and B as 2 variables ranging over values in 2 different domains respectively, serves your specific purpose of comparing propositions and beliefs. So what your objection is highlighting [2] is the logic structure of your comparison as such. That’s fine and since I didn't clarify well enough what I took to be the same or different in the logic structure of your 2 claims wrt my 4 claims, your objection is understandable. The point is that it's grounded on a misunderstanding due to my poor phrasing. Indeed my comments were pointing at some implicit assumptions embedded in the logic structure of your 2 claims (so that's relevant for your own theory), and that do not depend on the comparison between beliefs and propositions: namely the contrast between qualified and unqualified subjects (do you deny it? [3]). Now, my 4 claims - as I said - “made more evident” this aspect by using variables ranging in the same domain. Clarified the misunderstanding, the point is that the contrast between qualified and unqualified subjects (which holds for my 4 claims too) should be relevant also in guiding a proper comparison between beliefs and propositions. And, indeed, this is the ground for my objection to your ignoratio elenchi fallacy (as discussed here, see third point). So, despite your excusable misunderstanding, my objection still holds (along with all others I made, of course [4]) .
You can however try to deny the validity of my 4 claims, for example do you deny the following ones? If yes, can you exactly spell out why in substantial terms (i.e. meaning, truth conditions, logic implications or presuppositions)?

How many strikes do we get again in your game before being counted out? — creativesoul

It's a bit late for that. In my game you lost a while ago. And there is no way to recover it. We are just reviewing how badly you lost. And we can continue as long as you enjoy it. Unless I get bored, of course.



[1]
you keep repeating the following claim without specifying anywhere its truth conditions:

when we know that an individual's belief is false, we can also know that it cannot possibly be true — creativesoul

What does the modal predicate "cannot possibly be" mean here? Are you saying if an individual's belief is false in the actual world, then it is not true in any possible world? In other words, if any individual's belief is false, then it is necessarily false, and if any individual's belief is true, then it is necessarily true, so there are no contingent true/false beliefs only necessary true/false beliefs? And if you do not mean that, what else do you mean exactly? Can you spell it out?
Besides do you also believe when we know that an individual's statement is false, we can also know that it cannot possibly be true? if not, why not?


[2]

If all A's can possibly be either true or false, and false A's cannot possibly be true, then A's are not equivalent to false A's.
If all A's can possibly be either true or false, and true A's cannot possibly be false, then A's are not equivalent to true A’s. — creativesoul

vs

If all A's can possibly be true or false, and false B's cannot possibly be true, then A's are not equivalent to false B's.
If all A's can possibly be true or false, and true B's cannot possibly be false, then A's are not equivalent to true B's. — creativesoul

[3] "all A's can possibly be either true or false" would be a contradiction in terms if "all A's" meant "all true A's and all false A's".


[4] Here is a list of entry points to my main objections to your preposterous claims and arguments:

• 1. Preposterous "CreativeSoul propositional calculi" (here)
• 2. Conflation between false beliefs and contradictory beliefs (here,here,here,here,here)
• 3. Fallacious presupposition of knowledge and truth-value assessment for proper belief report (here,here)
• 4. Irrelevance of "awareness" claims wrt "contradictory belief" claims (here)
• 5. Irrelevance of the “non-problematic understanding” argument (here)
• 6. Inadequacy of the “belief” notion (here)
• 7. Inadequacies of your “knowledge ascription” requirement (here,here,here,here)
• 8. Missing justification of your belief ascription practice wrt your definition of belief (here)
• 9. Non sequitur fallacy (here)
• 10. Ignoratio elenchi fallacy (here)

> So, when we know that an individual's belief is false, we can also know that it cannot possibly be true, and that the individual cannot knowingly believe whatever it is that they do at the time [1]. If we then make the further metacognitive claim that they believe something that can be true, or something that is believable, then we've just ascribed a belief to the individual that they cannot possibly have [2].

On one side, claim [1] can be applied to both beliefs and propositions, so it can not be used to distinguish them (if this is the aim of such considerations). On the other, against claim [2], we can claim of a belief (or proposition) that is proven to be true (or false), that it could have been false (or true). Any belief (or proposition) capable of representing the world in a given way is contingently either true or false (unless they are contradictions or tautologies). This is perfectly consistent with the claim that both beliefs and propositions can be understood independently from their truth-value assessment. Besides truth-value assessments are fallible, so the same belief can be assigned different truth values by the same person at different times or by different subjects at the same time. In other words, identifying a belief is a distinct task from assessing its truth-value and indeed the latter task presupposes the former task.

> If convention has issue putting what I've presented into logical notation, it is not a flaw of what I've presented, rather it is the accounting practice that is found lacking.

If you have issue understanding logic, it is not a flaw of logic, rather it's you who are found lacking.

Most of the propaganda has a grain of truth somewhere, denying that fans the flames of such propaganda, it doesn't quash it. — Isaac

The grain of truth is what I said [1]. And there is no need to fabricate any other narrative around this. Additionally, Putin wants guarantees that Russia will keep control over lands like Crimea, Donetsk, and Lougansk, without fearing any future demands or revenges by a Ukrainian (ultra-)nationalist government. So far all the parties involved can get it. But this has nothing to do with the label "Neo-nazi problem": Ukrainian does not need to be neo-nazi to re-claim control over Crimea, Donetsk, and Lougansk as much as the Spanish government does not need to be neo-nazi just to fight against the Catalunian separatist movement; and EU is not a neo-nazi government just because it fights against the far-right and far-left populist propaganda; and Trump is not a neo-nazi even if he flirts with neo-nazi right?
What I found dubious in your claims is that you were talking about joint investigations about the "neo-nazi problem" [2]. And this can not be since the label "neo-nazi problem" is evidently designed to support Russian propaganda to justify their expansionism and/or preventive war. We could label the same issue in many other ways: like the "anti-Russian nationalist problem" or the "Ukrainian far-right problem" or the "Russian minority oppression problem" or the "Russian separatism problem" or the "Russian expansionism problem" or the "'Ukraine belongs to Russia' problem". But probably the label "neo-nazi problem" sounds much better for the Russian propaganda inside and outside their country. So no, we shouldn't fall for this label.

[1]
Concerning the neo-nazi problem, what we can more prudently claim is that this conflict involves anti-Russian Ukrainian ultra-nationalists (which include some Ukrainian neo-nazi militants) as well as anti-Ukrainian Russian ultra-nationalists (which include some Russian neo-nazi militants).

[2]

Sweeping the rug out from under him by promising to jointly investigate the problem at least has a chance of undermining some of his support in Russia if he refuses. — Isaac

Then what are you talking about?

> Putin says "The west are bullies who ignore the rise of the far-right because it suits them"

> You think that not making concessions to his propaganda is - ignoring the rise of the far-right and bullying people into not mentioning it.

On the negotiation table there is no Russian population nor Ukrainian population nor NATO population nor EU population, nor me nor you. On that occasion Putin can make all the demands he wants the way he wants and then sell it to the Russian population the way he wants. He can say exactly what you just wrote, word by word, as if he was your ghost writer. But he will probably and hopefully fail for the reasons I've already explained: a public acknowledgement of the neo-nazi justification by Ukraine, EU and/or NATO may be totally irrelevant for his own real goals, especially if we consider how easily such a demand could be easily dismissed or retorted against him. And indeed this is not what he asked so you do no need to overthink about it any more: https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-russian-military-action-will-stop-moment-if-ukraine-meets-2022-03-07/


> You'll really have to explain that.

Sure, here you go: a public acknowledgement of the neo-nazi justification by Ukraine, EU and/or NATO may be totally irrelevant for his own real goals, especially if we consider how easily such a demand could be easily dismissed or retorted against him.

> I don't see how that addresses the issue at all. The point is that if Putin needs the humanitarian gloss to cover his invasion (which he evidently does) then threatening to remove that can be useful negotiation tactic. Saying "there's nothing to see here", when there's categorical evidence is not a sensible tactic. Sweeping the rug out from under him by promising to jointly investigate the problem at least has a chance of undermining some of his support in Russia if he refuses.

I do not know how far Putin can go to support his own propaganda and censorship measures, but as we can see he can go very very very far. So I seriously doubt that even making such kind of concessions is helpful. Besides Putin is already having problems in terms of consensus despite his nasty propaganda. Therefore he will not concede anything more that will compromise his narrative for sure.
It is more reasonable to find some agreements on the status of lands (i.e. Crimea, Donetsk, and Lougansk) that he can always claim to have “liberated” from the neo-nazi oppressor, independently from an international acknowledgement of his propaganda. (Indeed this is what Putin is clearly looking for: https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-says-russian-military-action-will-stop-moment-if-ukraine-meets-2022-03-07/)


> He's made a living out of playing the role of 'thorn in NATO's side', he's already played up NATO meddling as being responsible for the rise of the far-right.

This can be easily retorted. Since far-right political movements have been financially supported by Russia in the west, and they are at home in Russia. Indeed Putin himself is clearly a far-right leader.


> How exactly do you see that undermining Putin's propaganda?

For sure not by making concessions to Putin’s propaganda. Besides, concerning the Russian propaganda in their home country we can’t do much as we can’t do much about the propaganda in China or North Korea, especially in war times.

> Or then ignore anything Putin says as your negotiation strategy ... but then why go speak about anything if the plan is just to simply ignore the points of the counter-party?

On a negotiation table Putin can ask whatever he wants, the point is that a public acknowledgement of the neo-nazi justification by Ukraine, EU and/or NATO may be totally irrelevant for his own real goals, especially if we consider how easily such a demand could be easily dismissed or retorted against him.

> People seem to be debating based on the premise that keeping social media momentum that any act of defiance no matter how irrelevant militarily speaking (such as just "defying" Putin on this philosophy forum), is going to save Ukrainian lives.

I’m here to debate about reasons to believe or act as a form of personal entertainment.

> Guy, this is Putin's stated justification of the war.

To justify the costs of the war before the Russian population. But the Ukrainian Jews find this justification preposterous.

> A response at the negotiation table can be be "we don't believe it" or "here's proof there's no neo-Nazi's" or "it doesn't matter" or then "we also don't like Nazi's and would agree to policies that reduce their numbers and influence, however bit it is, after a peace is achieved."

I have reasons to doubt it: Putin probably wants to keep Crimea, Donetsk, and Lougansk, under Russian control and formulate his demands accordingly on a negotiation table. But all this can be formulated in a way that is perfectly understandable without being based on "neo-nazi" or "denazification" claims.
To which I would add: Concerning the neo-nazi problem, what we can more prudently claim is that this conflict involves anti-Russian Ukrainian ultra-nationalists (which include some Ukrainian neo-nazi militants) as well as anti-Ukrainian Russian ultra-nationalists (which include some Russian neo-nazi militants). In other words, whatever requests Putin makes about Ukrainian neo-nazi problem can be easily retorted to him (so he could not even claim of himself to be an anti-neo-nazi hero).

> Are you basically suggesting that if Russian diplomats bring up the Nazi justification that Ukrainian and / or Western diplomats just say nothing?

I guess they could say something like what I've just said.

And therefore is our most powerful bargaining tool. It's that simple. — Isaac

I already addressed this:

nobody is expecting Putin to put on the negation table whatever limits his authoritarian power in the interest of the Russian population. Besides Ukraine, EU or NATO are not primarily worried about freeing the Russian population from Putin’s authoritarian regime. But to free Ukraine from Russian invasion. — neomac