Now, if you want to say "well maybe Ukraine did have a lot of Nazis, concerning amount anyways, and tolerated and armed those Nazis, and the West did too, and maybe they were waging war against Russian speakers in the Donbas, but still!! — boethius

Hum...
Paradoxically—at least for purveyors of Kremlin propaganda, which holds that Ukrainians have been oppressing ethnic Russians—most Azov members are in fact Russian speakers and disproportionally hail from the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/defenders-of-mariupol-azov

About Andriy Biletsky, founder of the Azov Battallion:
A native Russian speaker born in the predominantly Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv, Mr Biletsky refused to identify himself as a neo-Nazi instead preferring to call himself a Ukrainian nationalist - but some of his public statements speak for themselves.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/03/18/inside-azov-neo-nazi-brigade-killing-russian-generals-playing/

we've provided excellent propaganda material to Russia that materially helps it execute on its expansionist ambitions — boethius

The West can’t reasonably troubleshoot everything the Russian can use as a pretext. They do not lack creativity and can literally spin anything in their media (as we have seen, the Isis-K terrorist attack is readily associated to Ukraine, and do you remember the "bioweapons labs" in Ukraine?), while the West can’t do much about it no matter what it does (https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis/) nor Ukraine (https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-parliament-adopts-law-on-self-rule-for-eastern-region/2451232.html, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/azov-battalion-drops-neo-nazi-symbol-exploited-by-russian-propagandists-lpjnsp7qg).
Besides, if we’ve provided excellent propaganda material to Russia, you should most certainly agree that “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault”, “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline”, “The War in Ukraine Was Provoked” are also excellent propaganda material provided to Russia by the West.

Sure. But maybe you didn't get the sarcastic intent of my comment.

Palestinians should surrender before they lose whatever they have left. What a shame it didn’t happen years ago. So many lives could have been saved.

It’s frustrating that Israel will win this and seemingly get away with all the crimes it has been accused of. I feel for the Palestinian people being caught up in this proxy war between Iran and Israel.

I feel so Mikie now. Sigh.

Well the difference in outcomes is enormous for the EU and Russia. It is important for the balance of power between the U.S. and China because if Russia wins, it will bolster Russia’s position on the world stage and become a serious threat to European security. This would weaken the EU and probably lead to another European war in a decade or so. Where as if Russia loses in Ukraine, it will likely result in Russian collapse, splintering of her client states etc, strengthen and clearly define the EU to include Ukraine. This will likely put the EU on course for superpower status and a strong ally of the U.S. The U.S. and EU working together in coalition through NATO would be a formidable foe for China. — Punshhh

I find your scenario questionable on two grounds. First, I doubt that it’s the more likely than a frozen conflict scenario where victory and loss remain uncertain, controversial and exploitable at the expense of Russia and/or EU. Second, the US likely doesn’t want Russia to win (too much), but maybe not to lose (too much) either, because China could profit from Russia's weakness to increase even more its hegemonic influence in Central Asia, at the expense of the US. Russia may be reluctant to lean too much on China as well. Besides the US can exploit the Russian threat to keep its grip on the EU, to prevent it either from becoming a competing hegemonic power or serving another competing hegemonic power, a the expense of the US. In short, there is some balance to be found between competing interests which may not be one where the EU is likely the kind of superpower you are suggesting. This balance however may still serve the US hegemonic interest.

I already answered that question. Russia and the US are the first ones to come to mind. Both may have strong incentives to play divide et impera strategies in Europe to preserve their supremacy.

Nonsense, the U.S. is most powerful working alongside a powerful successful EU. If the U.S. were to go down this line you suggest, it would lead to the break up of the EU, the advance of Russia, and a generation of wars in Europe, which would try to draw the U.S. in many times and which would guarantee China’s hegemony with Russia as her side kick. Regarding Russia, she has been trying to meddle in Europe for a long time, nothing has changed in that. — Punshhh

The isolationist trend in the US politics which Trump likely aims at representing doesn’t seem to worry much about the fate of the EU and NATO, even less motivated to push European hegemony. In this predicament, Europe can very much turn into an arena for hegemonic conflict. Better to not confuse expectations with wishes about the outcome of this hegemonic race. Meanwhile, France shows some intent or velleity to replace the US in safeguarding/leading the EU, we will see.

What act are you talking about? The massacre of October 7 is the act carried out by Hamas. This act can be accused of being genocidal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel . Is such act genocidal or not, to you? If not, what DEMONSTRATES that it is not, to you?

Yes the supporters of Israel and the Jewish lobby etc will naturally claim October 7th as genocide. But if we set the bar so low it will bring thousands of small conflicts around the world into the definition. My bar is very high and I have heard numerous legal specialists on the media casting doubt on what is a genocide in this situation. As I say, for me it is the deliberate starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens, happening as we speak. — Punshhh

So bombing and killing more than 30K Palestinians is not a genocide according to your very high bar, but the starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens is, right? And such predicament trumps whatever security concerns Israel may have, right? Yet you didn’t clarify in a principled way what your very high bar is, nor offered evidence that “the deliberate starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens” is a direct consequence of Israel’s decision.

During the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt the Palestinians fought against the British, hence then you could argue that the ideology was “anti-British”. — ssu

Yes, I would argue that. However, differently from the British empire, Israel is fighting for its own nation state in Palestine, not to preserve an empire. Both Israelis and Palestinians want to build their nation state in Palestine arguably at the expense of the other and are both locked in a vicious circle of retaliations that still is instrumental to their ideological goal. The Israelis are in relative advantage over the Palestinians in terms of casualties, suffering, means of subsistence and territorial losses.
Now, one may want to say that since Palestinians and Israelis are locked in a brutal conflict, other international players may press Israel, the stronger side, to tread more lightly. But the predicament which Israel and Palestinians are stuck in can occur at the international level in an analogous form: i.e. the international supporters of Israel may be compelled to not abandon Israel if supporters of Hamas are not abandoning Hamas either. So my conclusion is that the US may STILL be compelled to support Israel against Hamas because Israel is a strategic ally either for power balance in the Middle East and/or for domestic power balance. What I conceded is that Biden has now greater leverage over Israel, given the domestic pressure from his base, and he’s trying to use it as we are seeing.

The "stuck in a war it cannot win" is basically because the Netanyahu government hasn't any policy what to do after the military operation. Here what is forgotten is that war is the continuation of policy. Just saying "destroy Hamas" isn't enough when you have no idea, no political objective what to do afterwards. It is as simplistic and stupid as Bush going to Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda and then declaring that he won't do anything else and isn't interested in nation building. Well, it didn't go so and it's naive to think that once the IDF declares that it has destroyed the last Hamas battalion, then it can go home and everything is back to normal. — ssu

You are making it all about Netanyahu. To me it isn’t. Even though Netanyahu is politically hawkish, and willing to exploit the current conflict for political convenience, STILL he has the support of the Israelis.
The same for Bush, after Bush the US didn’t pull out immediately from Afghanistan (no matter how problematic the nation building prospects were). Israel is still supported by an American and bipartisan anti-Islamist front. Even more so if religious extremism (both Christian and Judaic) is pushing the US foreign policy and the Zionist agenda in the Middle-East.
What you keep discounting is that people may not pursue peace, if that means WHATEVER peace. That’s what Palestinians (and Israelis (and Ukrainians)) are teaching us. And if this is true for Palestinians why shouldn’t it be the same for Israel? If everything is not going back to normal for the Israelis, the same goes for the Palestinians. Yet, the Palestinians are the ones to lose the most in terms of material and psychological damages.
Gaza will turn into another West Bank, that’s the policy Netanyahu probably aims at pursuing. And others (Israeli and pro-Israel politicians) could likely let him execute his dirty job long enough, so that any post-Netanyahu’s Israeli regime (and other potential partners in the peace process) can more easily take the initiative into relying on Palestinian authorities (other than Hamas) and have a greater appeal than Netanyahu in any peace settlement to the Palestinians.

This isn't an anti-Israeli view. I think who makes this quite clear and obvious is former prime minister Ehud Barak. He states that the military side of might go as now, yet what is lacking is the political side of what to do. Many have stated similar thoughts, but Barak I think gives the most straight forward analysis (even if his English isn't the best). If you have time, you should listen to the former prime minister says here: — ssu

Thanks for the link. It was interesting and it seems to support your views more than mine, until it doesn’t. At min 37:49, the former prime minister says: so people tell me, Barack I got convinced that you are convinced but you're not the only person around, what do I and the other said citizen know that Gantz doesn't know, Eisenkot doesn't know, president Herzog doesn’t know, head of opposition Lapid doesn't know, Lieberman doesn't know? AS LONG AS ALL OF THEM ARE QUIET, me the ordinary citizen thinks that probably TIME HAS NOT YET COME, that's tragedy because there is urgent need to stop this drift to the abyss and the public doesn't see a personal example, energy, focus and determination. Even in political worlds you have first of all to clarify to yourself what you want to achieve so it's not easy.
So again the problem is not Netanyahu, but the surrounding domestic (and I’d add international) political environment that let Netanyahu do what he is doing. I find these circumstances intelligible to the the extent they are also significantly driven by the kind of geopolitically reasons and security concerns I discussed.

And btw many of your links look at states like Syria (prior Iraq) and their WMD projects. Understandably the objectives of these countries has to do a lot with having some kind of parity and deterrence towards Israeli WMDs. — ssu

Yes, understandably. The same goes with the Iranian nuclear program. That’s why I wouldn’t disentangle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the wider hegemonic conflict in the Middle-East. And threats do not need to be actual to guide policies, because when they are actual it may be already too late (also because intelligence failures can happen). We have seen how Hamas and Houthis managed to upgrade their military threats against Israel and the West, and how they want to have a role in the international arena, so we can’t underestimate how their threat can evolve in future scenarios.

Your arguments don’t sound consistent to me: on one side you readily concede that “Deadly terrorist strikes are usually made to get a complacent actor to lash out in revenge and get itself stuck in a war it cannot win”, on the other side you seem to refuse to accept the consequences of such logic. — neomac

I'm not seeing anything inconsistent here. Terrorist want that their target governments lash out in anger and thus show how evil they are. That's their thinking.

Or you don't understand how Al Qaeda or ISIS work? Or how fringe terrorist groups of twenty people think they can change things and move millions of people in their favor?

Al Qaeda and ISIS aren't states, even if the latter insists being the Islamic State. They want publicity for their cause and anticipate the crackdown on themselves and hope that the crackdown will create itself support for their cause. They want an Islamic Caliphate to rise allover, hence their objectives are quite messianic (and really out there). It's quite consistent, so I'm not understanding what is so confusing to you.

Hamas and the PLO have the objective of creating an independent Palestine. The PLO has used similar terror tactics, until it choose to attempt the peace process way. Hamas is still using terrorism. — ssu

First, the distinction you draw between Hamas and Al Qaeda/Isis is disputable, even though the former pursues a nation state while the latter pursue a Islamic caliphate. Indeed, Hamas is a Islamic jihadist group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism_in_the_Gaza_Strip) branching out from another Islamic jihadist group pursuing an Islamic caliphate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood) and heavily supported by Iran which pursues its hegemonic goals in the region. So it looks more as if the secular demand for a Palestinian nation state from PLO has been hijacked by the Islamist cause of Hamas. This is a source of ambiguity that doesn’t help the Palestinian cause at all. Hamas is part of an Islamist network which may strategically fail the pursuit of a Palestinian nation state. So it is myopic to not recognise the agency of Middle Eastern actors and their strategic failures too.
Second, you didn’t get my objection. You seem to claim that Hamas/PLO terrorism is a trap to an endless war and this would be a Israeli failure. But if that is true for Israel, then that is evidently more true for the Palestinians because they are the ones losing the most in terms of life, suffering, means of subsistence and territory. And if that’s not enough to call embracing terrorism a Palestinian strategic failure, or demand a Palestinian surrender at the expense of their nation-state ambitions, then why should it be enough to call the brutal repression of Hamas a strategic failure of Israel, or demand for Israeli mercy at the expense of their own nation-state ambitions?

You have introduced the distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction”, without clarifying its implications, at least to me.

↪neomac
— Punshhh

The implications are that in the case of the Ukraine conflict the difference between the two outcomes, 1, that Russia wins and incorporates Ukraine into Russia and 2, that Russia fails to win Ukraine and Ukraine becomes incorporated into the EU. Would have far reaching and profound implications for the geopolitics between Europe and Asia (and by implication between the West and the East) for a generation or more.
By contrast, the difference between likely outcomes in the Isreal Gaza conflict will not make much difference to geopolitics either way. I don’t see any significant wider geopolitical ramifications. (Please provide some, if I’m wrong). Any linking of these alternative scenarios to a swing of power towards China, or away from the U.S. is weak as the struggle between the two is primarily elsewhere. Russia and the U.S. have been playing proxy wars in the region since WW2. This is just another of those. — Punshhh

I get that the conflict in Ukraine is of primary importance for the EU and Russia, but if you are focusing on the swing of power between China and the US, I’m not sure that the difference between likely outcomes either in the Ukrainian conflict or in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would make a difference for China and the US. As you say “the struggle between the two is primarily elsewhere”. Besides the conflict in Ukraine still looks far from being settled in a way that is amenable to most certainly boost China's or the US's hegemony.
Concerning the “contrast” between the Ukrainian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (or the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for that matter) you highlight, it doesn’t look that compelling to me. One reason is that the pro-Israeli political front in the US is arguably very strong (https://www.timesofisrael.com/congress-is-now-three-times-as-jewish-as-the-us-is/) and it can keep the American focus more on Israel than on Ukraine. Another reason is that the ramification that may have an impact in both rebalancing the power struggle in the middle east between regional powers is for example the normalisation between Saudis and Israeli, with cascading dividends for world hegemonic powers (the US, China or Russia) because the US then would be facilitated in pulling out from the middle east and re-invest its military capital/troops elsewhere to contain China. Yet, as I anticipated, it’s not easy to pull out from the middle-east:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/24/america-is-planning-to-withdraw-from-syria-and-create-a-disaster/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-13/the-us-needs-to-get-out-of-the-middle-east-soon
https://www.theglobalist.com/iran-united-states-middle-east-geopolitics-security/

Germany is making a rapid move away from Russian energy supplies, it will take a while to make the adjustments. Their trade with China is mutually beneficial. If China ceased trading with Western powers such as Germany, it would provide an economic boost and opportunity for whomever replaces the supply, markets would adjust. As I say, China undercutting Western countries with their manufacturing is the main drag on economic activity and growth in those countries. Not to mention China’s economy being dependent on such trade. — Punshhh

Maybe Germany won’t find any replacement, because other foreign markets will be increasingly dominated by competing regional/world hegemonic powers (as it happens in Africa and South America and Asia)

They can try to exploit European vulnerabilities AGAINST Europeans at convenience.

Who will be doing this? — Punshhh

I already answered that question. Russia and the US are the first ones to come to mind. Both may have strong incentives to play divide et impera strategies in Europe to preserve their supremacy. And what’s worse is that the conflict between the two can move from European borders to the heart of Europe in the most insidious ways, through all sorts of political/military/economic blackmailing and/or proxies. The conflict in Ukraine can arguably be considered a case of divide at impera strategy played by the US against Germany (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202210/1277488.shtml). A specular argument can be construed against Russia: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/30/why-russia-wants-to-divide-united-states-and-germany.html
The same game can be played ad libitum with other European countries.

So even if there is a potential for growth, there is also a potential for decadence. Indeed concerns about EU’s decline are persistent and widespread in all domains: population, economy, politics, technology. Here some related readings:

Quite, issues faced by many countries around the world at this time. — Punshhh

The prospects vary among superpowers. But only in the EU the situation looks so worrisome in all domains at the same time, at least now.

I know, I can’t see the EU failing to provide enough support.
— Punshhh

Most certainly not enough to support a Ukrainian offensive, right?

Imagine the response from European countries should Russia start to make substantial ground and look likely to occupy Kiev. — Punshhh

Still, EU’s military aid wasn’t enough to support a Ukrainian offensive, so far. No matter how badly wanted by Zelensky.

I have said more than once that it is only for the specialist investigators who will testify to the ICJ to determine what is in the heads of these terrorist groups. Maybe I should get back to you in 10 years when they have concluded their work. I’m the meantime all we have is personal opinion, or judgement. — Punshhh

You said it more than once to me? Don’t you need “the specialist investigators who will testify to the ICJ to determine what is in the heads of” Netanyahu too before claiming that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza?
As for your opinions, actually I didn’t ask you a legal account, but for your compelling reasons to claim Israel is committing a genocide, while Hamas didn’t in the massacre of October 7. You didn’t offer anything else than your ability to scan “intentions” in people’s heads which is not compelling to me. Do you have other more compelling than this?

I think it is important to bear in mind that genocide is not the intent in itself, but intent and the carrying out of the act intended. So even if it can be demonstrated that Hamas had the intent, I don’t see it being demonstrated that the act, (according to the Israeli’s), intended was carried out. — Punshhh

What act are you talking about? The massacre of October 7 is the act carried out by Hamas. This act can be accused of being genocidal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel . Is such act genocidal or not, to you? If not, what DEMONSTRATES that it is not, to you?

In other words, it doesn’t matter what intent there is, it only becomes genocide when that intent, sufficient to meet the bar of genocide, is acted out on the ground. Hamas was not capable of acting out a genocidal act, all they were capable of was an incursion across the wall, to massacre anyone they found and return home for their evening meal. Doesn’t look like genocide to me. — Punshhh

What is the genocidal act which Hamas would not be capable of acting out, despite having a genocidal intent and committing massacres with genocidal intent? What is the bar of genocide you are referring to? Are you grounding your notion of genocide on the legal definition or on another one?

Security Council Fails to Adopt Resolution on Imperative of Immediate, Sustained Ceasefire in Gaza, Owing to Vetoes Cast by China, Russian Federation
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15637.doc.htm

What Hamas could do was to breach a wall that had lulled the Netanyahu goverment not to focus on Gaza and Hamas. And basically it seems that the Israelis were confident about the inability of the simpleton ragheads to do any kind of coordinated military strike against the wall. And then the wall was breached in a humiliation manner. — ssu

The "destabilisation power" that Hamas had was only because of the Israeli unpreparedness. This simply isn't at all an existential danger. A simple infantry/security team with enough ammunition could fight off the Hamas terrorists, as it in few places happened. — ssu

Notice that I didn’t take my 4 points as individually sufficient reason to consider Hamas an existential threat to Israel. Some of my most basic assumptions are that the first purpose of a state is the monopoly of coercion over a territory, and that people under a state rule are expected to support it at least to the extent the state keeps them safe. Challenging the Israeli territorial sovereignty is built-in Hamas’ declared anti-Zionist ideology. And by indiscriminately killing Israeli civilians Hamas is both challenging Israeli territorial sovereignty and its popular support. Even more so if Hamas can manage to pull into this conflict foreign military support and international support to pressure Israel. In that sense, Hamas is an existential threat to the Zionist state project.
Sure, the disparity of military capacity isn’t in favor of Hamas in a conventional sense, so one could argue that it’s a threat that Israel can easily contain. However, that conclusion doesn’t add up with what you want to claim later (which I don't discount). Indeed, if Hamas succeeds in getting Israel “stuck in a war it cannot win”, something like an unsustainable or endless war for Israel, with ever growing material and reputational costs for Israel, then this would be a strategic failure for the Zionist project. And that still is what makes Hamas an existential threat to Israel as a Zionist project.

Ah, sorry to say this, but I've heard this so many times this lurid narrative during the war on terror. But let's think about this.

Biological weapons, really? I wonder which people have more safety measure to deal with HAMASCOVID+, the Israelis and their efficient health sector or the Palestinians now starving to death?

Then chemical weapons? So Hamas have their made at home rockets, which have a tiny warhead. Now filling that up (which would likely kill more Hamas fighters when making them), but what would be the purspose? To freak out the first responders coming to a scene of a rocket attack? Besides, the rockets can go wildly offcourse and aren't precision weapons in any way. And chemical weapons aren't simply very efficient. That's why they haven't been used much after WW1. The real way would pour some nerve gas in the water system of a big city, if you really want many casualties. — ssu

I don’t know what the chances for Hamas to get and use bio/chemical weapons are,
but I can still argue that there are persistent concerns about bio/chemical terrorism which I have no strong reason to dismiss since they come from both the West and the Middle East:
https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15396.doc.htm
https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3697.doc.htm
https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/International%20Law/ILP0904bp.pdf
https://www.prif.org/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_downloads/A_WMD-DVs_Free_Zone_For_The_Middle_East.pdf
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/cia-report-on-proliferation-of-wmd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

Besides related technology can evolve, so what is costly and unpractical for Hamas today, may be cheeper and handy tomorrow:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/the-u-s-is-defenseless-against-a-drone-terror-attack-be1fabdb
https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/drones-of-mass-destruction-drone-swarms-and-the-future-of-nuclear-chemical-and-biological-weapons/
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Islamic-State-and-Drones-Release-Version.pdf

Yet how does this help Hamas? That Bibi's administration has more credibility when saying that they are human animals that one cannot negotiate with? That the media would be even more fixated on the terrorist attacks and turn a blind eye to the response of more intensified ethnic cleansing? That the US and the West would be more firmly on the side of Isreal?

Deadly terrorist strikes are usually made to get a complacent actor to lash out in revenge and get itself stuck in a war it cannot win. — ssu

But if you want to believe that Hamas and the Palestinians supporting Hamas is this rabid death cult who hate democracy and want everybody to be dead, including all Palestinians, then there's not much to argue with you. Because obviously it just then repeating the mantra we heard so many time during the War on Terrorism. — ssu

Your arguments don’t sound consistent to me: on one side you readily concede that “Deadly terrorist strikes are usually made to get a complacent actor to lash out in revenge and get itself stuck in a war it cannot win”, on the other side you seem to refuse to accept the consequences of such logic. If Hamas’ terroristic attacks aim at indiscriminately killing civilians with the purpose of having Israel lashing out and kill Palestinian combatants and civilians in larger numbers (whom are then called “martyrs”), and yet that’s not enough for you to take Hamas as a “rabid death cult”, all right, so what?! Still the issue is that Hamas’ mindset is alien to humanitarian concerns as Westerners understand them, no less than Israel, and arguably worse than Israel because Hamas can even be accused of committing war crimes against its own people.
Besides, if Israel can not win this war against Hamas, can Hamas win this war against Israel while bearing greater costs in terms of life, suffering and territorial losses? The exchange rate of offenses can still favour Israel, no matter if the feud between Israel and Palestine could last for an undetermined number of generations. In any case, it’s not me who is going to settle what is bearable to Israelis or Palestinians, since Israelis and Palestinians are putting their skin in this game, not me.

OK, first of all, nobody else has territorial demands on Israel than the Palestinians naturally, who want their own independent state and Syria, which lost the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967. Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt or Saudi-Arabia or Iran don't have territorial demands on Israel. — ssu

Still there are disputed territories between Israel and Syria or Lebanon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_occupation_of_the_Golan_Heights
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/13/why-is-there-a-disputed-border-between-lebanon-and-israel

Secondly, do you understand that with nuclear weapons those hostile to Israel seek nuclear parity? If they have nuclear weapons, perhaps Israel won't so casually bomb them as it does Lebanon. Or do you go with argument that Iranians are these rabid mad mullahs who want to destroy Israel and don't care that millions of Iranians could die in the Israeli counter-attack? Is this the death cult argument again?

Why is it so hard to understand that nations seek nuclear weapons for deterrence reasons, especially when a country hostile to them wanting regime change have them? We already see in Ukraine what happens when one country that has ambitions over another one's territory has nuclear weapons and the other one hasn’t. — ssu

States driven by security concerns are not necessarily pursuing deterrence means (e.g. by getting nuclear weapons) just in legitimate self-defence as you seem to suggest. Indeed, we have seen authoritarian regimes (like Russia and North Korea) use the nuclear threat to get other countries satisfy their predatory demands. So, once nuclear deterrence works to prevent interstate wars, yet the conflict with predatory intents can continue in asymmetric ways (like terrorism) and proxy wars (again see the case of Ukraine wrt the hegemonic competition between US and Russia, both with nuclear weapons).

Ukraine is pivotal for both Russia and Europe and by extension for the U.S. and to a lesser extent China. — Punshhh

Again, I don’t see what is happening in the Middle East as pivotal, even though it can generate an awful lot of hot air. — Punshhh

You have introduced the distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction”, without clarifying its implications, at least to me. As far as I’m concerned, analogies are good to complement not to replace analytical arguments when it’s matter of clarifying meaning. And your analogical distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction” doesn’t help me understand why the US looks concerned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict way more than about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict even though both would arguably be equal distractions wrt the competition with China in the Pacific.
Besides, your argument makes me seriously doubt that your views are congruent. For example the Middle East is pivotal to Israel and the Jews as much as Ukraine is pivotal to the Europeans, right? To the extant the pro-Israel community in the US (Jews and Evangelicals) is influential to the US foreign policy (and arguably it is), then the US can’t simply pull out from the Middle East just because Middle East is a distraction wrt the competition with China in the Pacific. To use your own words, since Israel is pivotal for pro-Israel Americans then, by extension it is pivotal for the U.S., right? If so, what was the point of invoking the distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, again?

In the meantime, which was my point, Europe will have rearmed and with the appropriate weaponry for such a fight. — Punshhh

I’m not making specific claims just making broad observations. For Europe to rearm over the next ten years would be easily financed from the current level of economic activity. Provided there is sufficient incentive( which Russia provides). — Punshhh

You sound more convinced than convincing. I understand that circumstances are motivating Europeans to think more strategically and re-arm. However geopolitical analyses sound more uncertain about the outcome of this wake up call. Here an example: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/27/russia-ukraine-nato-europe-war-scenarios-baltics-poland-suwalki-gap/

Also Europe in the longer term, which I was referring to when I said it would become a super power is inevitable. With a population over 500 million and wide ranging resources including the longer term opportunities for growth, why wouldn’t it? — Punshhh

I already answered that question. You seem to observe “inevitable” trajectories based on a couple of approximative parameters (what are the “wide ranging resources including the longer term opportunities for growth” you are referring to?) without considering the influence of historical circumstances and the implications of hegemonic competition. Europe is still a contended space for hegemonic competition, from within (conflicting interests among European states) and from outside (under the pressure of Russia and the US to begin with). The European economy relies on foreign markets of commodities for their input and/or final products for their output, which are already either under control by regional/world hegemonic powers or contended by regional/world hegemonic powers (example, Germany depending on Russia for oil and on China for export). Besides regional/world hegemonic powers are not just going to sit and watch what Europe will do in the longer term, just to give Europe a chance to “inevitably” become a competing superpower. They can try to exploit European vulnerabilities AGAINST Europeans at convenience.
So even if there is a potential for growth, there is also a potential for decadence. Indeed concerns about EU’s decline are persistent and widespread in all domains: population, economy, politics, technology. Here some related readings:
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/04/china-sees-first-population-decline-in-six-decades-where-does-the-eu-stand
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/10/11/brussels-sounds-alarm-about-eus-rapidly-ageing-population-recommends-migration-to-fill-vac-
https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/very-worrying-trade-unions-alarmed-by-eus-industrial-collapse/
https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/european-issues/642-the-european-union-s-declining-influence-in-the-south
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/15/majority-of-europeans-expect-end-of-eu-within-20-years
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12286-021-00481-w
https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/digital-tech-europes-growing-gap-eight-charts
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/securing-europes-competitiveness-addressing-its-technology-gap
https://www.ft.com/content/d4fda2ec-91cd-4a13-a058-e6718ec38dd1

Conclusion: again you sound more convinced than convincing.

I know, I can’t see the EU failing to provide enough support. — Punshhh

Most certainly not enough to support an Ukrainian offensive, right?

Yes, it could be argued that Hamas committed genocide on October 7th. — Punshhh

And it is argued by various legal experts and genocide studies scholars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel

Firstly, the intent, I don’t see those Hamas insurgents having in their heads an intent to harm the racial group of Israel. But rather to commit a violent raid in a small area outside the wall. I know there are calls from people in important positions in the Hamas hierarchy who have called for the eradication of Israel etc. But this is sounding off, hot air. Arabic people often engage in this kind of rhetoric. — Punshhh

So you can scan “intents” directly from people’s heads now? If you dismiss evidences of Hamas’ massacre and declared intents against Israel, others can dismiss your capacity of scanning intents from people’s heads or even retort it against you: one can scan in Nethanyahu’s head he has no intent to commit a genocide and calling Hamas animals is just hot air.

Secondly, the act of genocide, The Hamas attack was not capable of hurting the racial group of Israel. Yes, it did hurt the people in and connected to the incursion. Who have been very vocal and it has caused a lot of turmoil within Israel. But there was no way in which the racial, or ethnic group of Israel, or the Jews was under threat, or being harmed. In a genocidal sense. — Punshhh

For what reasons “there was no way in which the racial, or ethnic group of Israel, or the Jews was under threat, or being harmed. In a genocidal sense”? Yours is just a claim. There are people claiming that Hamas committed a genocide. Why should I be more compelled by your claims than by others’? What’s the argument? Dude, I didn’t join this forum to make a survey about people’s opinions or to socialize. I welcome actual arguments if you have any. If you don’t, we’re wasting time here.

I think it is important to bear in mind that genocide is not the intent in itself, but intent and the carrying out of the act intended. So even if it can be demonstrated that Hamas had the intent, I don’t see it being demonstrated that the act intended was carried out. — Punshhh

Again you didn’t offer any analytical criteria nor evidences about what DEMONSTRATES genocidal intent when people are massacred.

I have thought about the case of one person’s death at length. In the end, I concluded that it’s not the deaths that are pertinent, but rather the harm and intent to harm a national, ethnic, or racial group. — Punshhh

Here is the problem, if the quantitative element is totally irrelevant than that definition sounds good also to claim that Hamas’ massacre on October the 7th was a genocide. And any accusation of proportionality as intended by many pro-Palestinians here (1 zillion of Palestinian children casualties vs one Israeli soldier casualty) would be equally irrelevant to defend Hamas’ crimes from the accusation of committing a genocide.

We have to understand the Palestinians themselves don't represent an existential threat to Israel as it has an overwhelming military compared to them. In fact, that ONLY non-state actors have been attacking Israel shows the dominance of the Israeli armed forces. So unlike the narrative cherished by Israel, it's not a tiny country surrounded by mighty Arab armies. Nobody else would dare to attack Israel. — ssu

I find this argument weak. First, Hamas has a destabilisation power over Israel for the victims Hamas’ attacks provoke and for their indirect effects (psychological trauma for the population, internal migration and lack of investments due to perceived insecurity, political extremism/division). On the other side, if Hamas government gets the necessary international recognition and manages to form an actual state with conventional military forces while preserving its martyr ideology and commitment to wipe out the Zionist regime, risks can grow further for Israel.
Second, given Hamas extremism and support from Muslim world, there is a risk they could manage to get and use biological/chemical weapons: “In the August 13, 2001 edition of the Palestinian weekly Al-Manar, Abu-Khosa Taufiq, the deputy chairman of the Palestinian Center for Information Services-Gaza, called for 'weapons of deterrence'—including biological or chemical weapons—to help redress the conflict’s military imbalance.” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/058003010).
Third, Hamas is not a relatively isolated threat (as the Basque or IRA terrorism were). Indeed, it can easily combine with anti-Zionist threats coming from incumbent hostile forces (states and jihadist groups) around Israel, which also may have territorial demands over Israel as history has shown. Besides if Iran’s race for nuclear weapons succeeds, the support to Iran from Russia and China continues, while the support to Israel from the US declines and the normalisation with the Saudis doesn’t succeed fast enough, Israel survival as a state can be very much in danger. The world is changing.
Fourth, since Israelis are the ones to have put skin in it (from past persecution in the Christian and Muslim world until the massacre of October the 7th) and will put skin it in case of another Hamas aggression, I wouldn’t dismiss their security concerns wrt Hamas as overblown (or just hijacked by crazy messianic Israelis) even if measures to counter related threats remain controversial.

After double-checking the list of alleged genocides on wikipedia (I don't know how many of them are "legally" proven to be genocides) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
I'm less sure the quantitative criterium which I suggested (the proportion of civilian deaths wrt the ruled ethnic group) is as relevant as the motivational factor. Actually the quantitative criterium is not even considered: The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group"
Yet it sounds implausible that a quantitative condition (e.g. for the death toll) and cumulative condition (among the listed acts) are strictly applied, since in this case even killing one person would amount to a genocide, if intent is proven. So I guess those conditions are present (to prove intent) but treated with greater discretion by the jury/judges. Yet maybe the Israelis can play around international laws by smartly exploiting legal ambiguities to their advantage. In this case this is a problem of international laws.

The point of the argument is that the West supporting the Nazi groups in Ukraine is at best handing an amazing propaganda victory and reason for war to Putin and the Kremlin and at worst are far more powerful than the West realizes and these groups will successfully execute a coup. — boethius

And who are the Russians that would be predisposed to a war to regain territory anyways? The Russian nationalists! So is making an equivalence with Russian nationalists going to convince Russian nationalists that the Nazis in Ukraine are fine? Obviously not. — boethius

It matters only for Western propaganda that first the Nazis in Ukraine are denied they even exist, and then once that's untenable to just wish-wash it away with "oh there's Nazis everywhere" and when that doesn't actually work because there simply aren't similar groups everywhere then ending finally with "well Russia also has extreme Nationalism too”. — “boethius

As far as the propaganda battle is concerned, I made my arguments already. For each propaganda there is a counter-propaganda. However the circumstances for playing pro-Russian vs pro-Western propaganda are asymmetric: 1) Western propaganda can not reach Russian audience as easily, deeply and widely as the Russian propaganda can reach the West. And politics shouldn’t adapt to propaganda needs but the other way around. To that extent, it’s not much the Western politicians that are “handing” easy propaganda exploits, but Western democracy as such. Unfortunately to counter attempts at exploiting the democratic system against itself by authoritarian regimes, Western politicians will be compelled to sacrifice democracy to preserve national stability (either in pro-Russian or anti-Russian vain), that’s the price to pay for supporting authoritarian regime’s propaganda in the West. 2) The neo-nazi component in the Ukrainian society doesn’t threaten Western interest as much as Russian imperialism does (indeed, the war started by Russian neo-nazi and imperialist militia), while the Ukrainian neo-nazis couldn’t reasonably be an actual or incumbent offensive threat to Russia (as the pro-Russian argument might go, if hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian combatants do not stand a chance to win the Russian war machine despite the Western support, that’s even more true for 20k neo-nazi combatants with even less Western support). Besides the Ukrainian neo-nazi fringe due to the war against Russia and their exposure to Westernisation (prospects of joining Europe and NATO) declined in political relevance, ideological influence, number of combatants within Ukraine. And if there is a risk for their resurgence, as your video suggests, this is due to Putin’s war against Ukraine and if Putin wins. This could be one more reason why the West may be compelled to not only support the Ukrainian resistance against Putin but also refuse to recognise Putin’s annexations.

If we're concerned about the real world, then what effect these Nazis have is providing a convincing reasons for Russia to fight in Ukraine. Now, if you want Russia to invade Ukraine then supporting the Nazi factions is definitely something you would do. If you don't want Russia to invade Ukraine or if they do you want Russian soldiers to more likely have actual morale problems then you'd want to suppress these Nazi groups and make it clear they aren't the "West's boyz”. — boethius

Russia invaded Ukraine prior to any Western military support to Ukraine and independently from any neo-nazi narrative, since the Russian imperialist and neo-nazi militia wanted to take back Donbas and Crimea before the Westernisation of Ukraine could happen. After the end of the Cold War, the neo-nazi movements and network which raised everywhere in the US, Europe and Russia under the threat of liberal globalization and islamic jihadism, weren’t a specific issue of Ukraine, nor a specific problem for Russia (e.g. Ukrainian neo-nazis were against Ukrainian political corruption and jewish power everywhere, from West to East Ukraine, from North to South Ukraine). On the other side, Ukrainian anti-Russian nationalism has been always a problem for Russian imperialists, and it proceeded the competition between the US and Russia during and after the Cold War. The Euromaidan (in which pro-Russian far-right hooligans plaid a relevant role in the ignition of violent suppression https://khpg.org/1385933116) were the occasion for a split of the Ukrainian neo-nazi groups between pro-Russian (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Gubarev) and anti-Russian (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andriy_Biletsky), and a convergence between historical Ukrainian anti-Russian nationalism and Ukrainian neo-nazi militia (BTW notice that “most of the unit's members are Russian speakers from Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Brigade).
In other words, we are talking about a phenomenon indigenous to Ukraine which pre-existed the Western support. And Western propaganda can’t do much to influence the Russian people because Putin is the one who runs the propaganda in Russia. So there is no point in prioritising the purging of a “tiny tiny tiny” group of Ukrainian neo-nazis over the fight against the Russians, also because they are good fighters (likely, they will be the first ones to die on the front) and exposition to Westernization could have been enough to domesticate them, as it arguably happened to some extent.
All I can concede is that the “denazification” narrative may have looked a smart propaganda move from Putin’s perspective to persuade his people about the “special military operation” to the extent his people were/are receptive to Russian propaganda because: 1) liberal Russians reject nazism for ideological reasons 2) non-Russian minorities in Russia hate neo-nazis because they are victim of their violence 3) the Russian old generation hates neo-nazis because they remind them of WW2 and the great patriotic war 4) Russian imperialists and neo-nazis are enemies Ukrainian neo-nazis because they resist Russian hegemony in Ukraine.
Talking about “denazification” could also be smartly exploited to appeal to Westerners harbouring anti-American feelings for whatever reason, because Ukrainian neo-nazis may serve American interest.
However, I wouldn’t overstate the importance of the denazification propaganda for the Russians either, for many reasons: 1. Putin and his circle seem to play the denazification narrative depending on the conflict evolution, like the nuclear threat, so the denazification narrative seems more a means than a goal 2. Russians at large are claimed to be more depoliticised wrt war than politically committed (https://russiapost.info/society/passive) 3. Russian private militia do not seem to rely on the neonazi narrative (see Girkin or Pregozhin) 4. Why should a Russian caucasian soldier give a shit about a genocide of ethnic Russians by a Ukrainian neo-nazis after all, since they were victims of RUSSIAN neo-nazis’ violence (https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/russian-neo-nazis-strike-again-right-wing-execution-video-under-investigation-a-500053.html)?

The other problem with equating Ukraine to Russia as an argument to defend Ukraine is that just begs the question of why we're on Ukraine's side. Ok, Ukrainian nationalism is as problematic, bad and out of control as Russian nationalism ... so why are we supporting Ukraine again? Seems at best a coin flip, but Russia has more resources so probably more practical to just side with them in this scenario, if we had to pick sides. — boethius

The West is compelled to support Ukraine, because Russia is fighting against the West, while Ukraine is fighting for Westernization. Besides, as I argued elsewhere while the war in Ukraine it’s a fight for hegemony for the US, for the Europeans it’s rather a fight for preserving functional democratic institutions and averting the risk of bringing the hegemonic fight inside Europe.
In addition to security concerns, there are some strategic commodities which Ukraine can bring to Europe (https://visitukraine.today/blog/1783/only-ukraine-has-this-the-uniqueness-of-our-land-and-its-importance-for-the-whole-world).

Anyways, you asked for my sources to backup my claims, I understand by your moving the topic to Russian nationalists that you accept said sources do indeed lend sufficient reason to my claims. — boethius

Well I asked something specific [1], you didn’t provide the source I asked yet. While the sources you provided so far support your views significantly less than you seem to realise. In any case, my conclusion is that your sources do not lend sufficient reason to your claims, as I argued after taking into account the wider historical and geopolitical context.




[1]

“such as nazi groups doing their best in the Donbas to trigger the current larger war, and explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia ... and then Berlin!”

“Many of the factions supporting these provocative policies vis-a-vis Russia had no qualms of explicitly stating their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.”

“The Nazi's are definitely there in Ukraine (I am happy to re-post all those Western journalist documenting it) and are definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine). They are also a genuine security concern for Russia (as they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”

Can you link your source?

You can keep calling it “genocide”, but you have no sentence from an authoritative tribunal that supports such an accusation — neomac


For that to happen someone has to bring a case. The process of gathering evidence, making arguments, hearings, and all the rest of it takes ages. And that doesn't stop people reading the law, looking at the facts, and applying the law to the facts themselves, and coming to a reasoned opinion. — bert1

Sure, I get it. But there is also a moral hazard in this, since people can form their opinions without adequate legal competence and investigation, reason why it takes ages for an authoritative tribunal to come to a legally compelling conclusion. And even if one wants to look at the facts and the laws, I still have my doubts: it’s harder to argue for a genocidal intent if there are plausible security concerns in the way (due to the Hamas terrorist approach and pervasive infiltration of the Gaza society) and the numbers of actual non-combatant casualties don’t seem large enough yet (see the Armenian genocide by comparison).

The genocide is the deliberate starvation of approximately 500,000 Palestinian citizens in the north of Gaza. — Punshhh

What are your evidences that Israel is responsible for that?
Notice that international law doesn’t prohibit sieges and blockades as long as they are meant to achieve military goals [1]. On the other side, Israel claims to do the necessary to aid the Gazan civilians, and accuses Hamas for depriving Palestinians of food and drugs. This is to say that one needs a tighter and independent investigation into such allegations since they often come from interested parties and therefore may not be the most reliable source.

[1]
Sieges that cause starvation
The prohibition of starvation as a method of warfare does not prohibit siege warfare as long as the purpose is to achieve a military objective and not to starve a civilian population. This is stated in the military manuals of France and New Zealand. Israel’s Manual on the Laws of War explains that the prohibition of starvation “clearly implies that the city’s inhabitants must be allowed to leave the city during a siege”. Alternatively, the besieging party must allow the free passage of foodstuffs and other essential supplies, in accordance with Rule 55. States denounced the use of siege warfare in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was also condemned by international organizations.

Blockades and embargoes that cause starvation
Likewise, the prohibition of starvation as a method of warfare does not prohibit the imposition of a naval blockade as long as the purpose is to achieve a military objective and not to starve a civilian population. This principle is set forth in the San Remo Manual on Naval Warfare and in several military manuals which further specify that if the civilian population is inadequately provided for, the blockading party must provide for free passage of humanitarian relief supplies.Blockades and embargoes of cities and regions have been condemned by the United Nations and other international organizations, for example, with respect to the conflicts in Afghanistan and the territories occupied by Israel. Embargoes imposed by the United Nations itself must also comply with this rule.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule53

however the Middle East is like a cauldron around which the hegemonic powers stand and takes turn to stir from time to time. There are a number of risk factors in that region, such as crime, Jihadism, oil price, WMD, money laundering. But there is also the risk of more and more failed states and the hegemonic powers don’t want to get drawn in to much. So I don’t think it plays a pivotal role in geopolitics, more a distraction. Although I have long thought that it would be most advantageous for Russia to seek to control the area, but they have failed in the past and don’t seem to mesh culturally with the Arabs. — Punshhh

I don’t know what you take to be “pivotal” in geopolitics. It is claimed by many analysts that, among the major geopolitical competitors of the US hegemony, the main challenger is China. Therefore both the conflict in Ukraine and in the Middle-East can be seen as “distraction” from the main challenger. Even under this assumption, the issue is that for Russia the conflict in Ukraine is not a distraction, and both China and Russia can add up their efforts to keep “distracting” the US. Besides one can’t ignore that the US geopolitical efforts can be hijacked by subnational groups, like the pro-Israel lobby in the US. That’s why the conflict in the Middle East isn’t much of a distraction that the US can easily pool out from any time at its convenience.
See the case of Afghanistan, it was claimed the withdrawal was necessary to husband all available means to contain China, remaining with be a distraction. Whether the result in Afghanistan was protracted civil war or the fall of its freely elected government, the outcome would have not significantly impacted the US national interest. But also this argument looks questionable not only wrt China (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/24/afghanistan-withdrawal-biden-trump-china-india-asia-pivot-us-military-geopolitics-pullout-drawdown/), but also wrt Russia (https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/why-now-the-afghanistan-ukraine-nexus/).
As far as I’m concerned, a narrow-minded distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction” can mislead us into discounting or underestimating the role played by circumstances in guiding or misguiding geopolitical efforts.

Russia and China as competitors of the US (the former primarily in East Europe, the latter primarily in the Pacific) are interested in getting the US overstretched: inducing the US to divide attention and energies in multiple conflicts like in Ukraine, in Israel, in the Red Sea perfectly serves that purpose.

Yes, however this would only play out if China enters into conflict with Taiwan. Which I doubt they would want to do. — Punshhh

But China doesn’t operate like that. She spreads Maoist ideology and colonises in a less violent way. — Punshhh

Yes, an important question, however there is only one one military force any where near capable of taking on the U.S., China and as I have suggested, China is really not interested in a conflict with the U.S. under any circumstances. — Punshhh

Still the Chinese military build-up, posturing and meddling in other conflicts is understandably taken to signal the US should prepare for the worse anyways. And we should not forget that there are also preventive wars.
Anyways, maybe the US under Trump would not be interested in a conflict with China either:
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/china-says-trump-could-abandon-taiwan-if-he-wins-us-election-1.2028732
https://tass.com/world/1755693

The weakening of Russia is in a whole other dimension compared to Europe and China. Russia is destroying her fighting age men as cannon fodder, has destroyed her lucrative trade in gas and oil with Europe. Is now under the strictest economic sanctions and is sinking into a deep dark authoritarianism reminiscent of the dark days of the Soviet Union. By contrast Europe is feeling the effects of having those fuel supplies suddenly cut off, but will soon bounce back and as I said will now rearm after 70yrs of relying on U.S. and U.K. guarantees of security. — Punshhh

You sound pretty confident, I don’t know what evidences you have to support your claims. For example 10 years seem enough time for Russia to restore its pre-war capacity for another push (https://kyivindependent.com/reznikov-russia-could-take-up-to-10-years-to-restore-its-military-after-losses-in-ukraine/) or threaten NATO (https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/03/16/7446764/, https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/14/russia-military-war-nato-estonia-intelligence/). And Russia’s war economy (aided by its hidden network of opportunistic supporters) still looks pretty resilient. Meanwhile Europeans face other uncertainties about re-arming and defence (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/21/europe-military-trump-nato-eu-autonomy/, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/02/26/war-in-ukraine-not-all-european-countries-view-russia-as-top-threat_6560936_4.html, https://www.politico.eu/article/what-another-trump-presidency-would-mean-for-nato/).

Myths around the economic malaise, or decline in Europe are overblown. (Here in the U.K. this has been used as an argument for Brexit for internal political reasons). It’s true there has been a slow down in growth due to the economic pressures of globalisation along with all affluent countries. But the opportunities for economic growth in the E.U. are large with the expansion including Eastern European countries, not to mention Ukraine, offering the opportunity to bring their economies up to speed with western standards. Also once the economic woes of southern European countries is remedied the E.U. will become quite the superpower. — Punshhh

Again, you sound pretty confident, I don’t know what evidences you have to support your claims. Even if we give for granted “opportunities for economic growth”, given our recent experience of financial crisis, pandemics, wars, and the crisis of the Western world order under the pressure of a more assertive Rest, I would not rely too much on optimistic forecasts. In other words, I seriously doubt that uncertainties and hostile superpowers (which we might soon include the US under Trump) are the best environment for European economic growth or ambition to superpower status.

You fail to see the significance of this. Currently Russia is dangerous for the whole Eurasia continent and particularly for Europe. Her becoming bogged down in Ukraine will weaken her for a generation while Europe rearms. This neuters the only serious threat to global stability at the moment. The last time this happened in WW2, a deranged tyrant spilled out across Europe. This time it won’t happen, Putin is now powerless and a pariah on the international stage. — Punshhh

To keep Russia bogged down in Ukraine, the West still needs to adequately and promptly support Ukraine as long as needed. Yet the support from the West had dramatically declined after the last Ukrainian offensive until it collapsed (https://www.csis.org/analysis/impact-ending-military-aid-ukraine-gradual-decline-then-collapse).

Yes, this is a looming threat. Although it is an enterprise which will be controlled solely by China and will result in all these other states becoming controlled in a malignant way by Chinese authoritarianism, (to sell their souls). China knows that she will win the economic war in the long run and will not be distracted by wars in the meantime. — Punshhh

Economic growth is possible if input, output, shipping are secured, free, and sustainable from and to China. But we are seeing a resurgence of global security concerns, Western protectionism, national demographic decline that may compromise the Chinese economic growth.

Either human rights are universal and they apply to everybody or they're not — Benkei

The problem is that even if one believes that human rights are universal and they apply to everybody, the capacity to enforce the respect of such human rights is very limited and its legitimacy even contestable. So any state no matter how committed to human rights it claims to be will makes efforts to ensure that human rights are primarily respected for its own citizens, not at their expense.

The erroneous comparisons with WW2 have already been extensively dealt with in this thread. — Benkei

What posts are you referring to? Can you link some post dealing with these erroneous comparisons ?

It’s a comment on the how the suffering of the Palestinian people can be alleviated and who of the two sides in this conflict can deliver this. — Punshhh

Sure, but it looks more reasonable to expect that the stronger party imposes its conditions on the weaker party than the other way around. So if it was only matter of strength then Hamas is expected to wave white flags, not Israel.

The comment in bold below seems to be a claim that a Hamas surrender would deliver this. Are you sure about that?

Better in what sense? For whom?

The suffering of Palestinians. — Punshhh

How do you assess what we can be sure about, here? There were proposals for a cease-fire from Hamas, which Netanyahu rejected. So the problem seems more about negotiation conditions than trust. In this case the least one can say is that the more favourable Hamas’s negotiation conditions for a cease-fire are to Netanyahu, the less incentives or pretexts Netanyahu has to continue bombing and sieging Gaza. This in turn would reduce the suffering of the Gazans. Anyways, at this point, since Netanyahu likely wants to eradicate Hamas from Gaza once for all, Hamas can propose negotiation conditions which are favourable ONLY to Gazans and not to Hamas. This shows that Hamas doesn’t care about the Gazans’ suffering in humanitarian terms, as you seem to do. But if Hamas doesn’t, why should Israel?

If Hamas had surrendered prior to committing the 8/10 massacre, then this would have spared the Gazans the current brutal retaliation. Any time Hamas surrenders in exchange for a cease-fire, then this would spare Gazans further brutal retaliation. If Hamas doesn’t surrender but it returns the hostages in exchange for a cease-fire, then this would still spare Gazans further brutal retaliation. So if the purpose is to spare Gazans Israelis’ brutal retaliation or further brutal retaliation, then not committing the 8/10 massacre, surrendering, returning hostages would be (or have been) all available options to Hamas. Wouldn’t they?

What is happening now is something more than a brutal retaliation for 07/10. It is the deliberate starvation of a captive population. A genocide. — Punshhh

You can keep calling it “genocide”, but you have no sentence from an authoritative tribunal that supports such an accusation. And legally speaking, it is really hard to prove the genocidal intent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocidal_intent). Understandably so in the case of Israel, since Israel keeps framing its beef with Hamas in terms of security concerns triggered by actual terrorist attacks and Hamas is a terrorist group that pervasively governs Gaza.
Talking in terms of numbers (https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/02/04/hamas-combat-battalions-down-70/), Israel claims to have eliminated 17 out 24 Hamas battalions at the beginning of February (1 battalion is more than 1000 combatants, but to simplify let’s put 1000), so we are roughly talking about 17000 combatants. If the number of casualties was roughly 27000 at the beginning of February (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/3/israels-war-on-gaza-list-of-key-events-day-120), that means roughly 10000 were civilians. So the ratio between combatant/civilian casualties is roughly less than 1 (this is also relevant to assess proportionality). If the ratio keeps stable, we should expect that the eradication of 24000 Hamas combatants would roughly cost 14100 civilians which is roughly 0.7% of roughly 2 million Gazans. Even if we assume that all 27000 killed by Israel were civilians, we would still be talking about 1.3% of the Gazans. If assume that current 31K casualties were all civilians, we would reach 1.55% of the Gazans. On the other side if we are talking about the Palestinians in the occupied territories (roughly 5 million) , we would get roughly 0.5%. And if we are talking about all Palestinians under Israeli rule (so including also the Palestinians living in Israel in the computation, another 2 million, roughly) we would get less than 0.4%.
The Armenian genocide under the Ottoman rule (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-armenian-genocide-1915-16-overview) was at least roughly 660000 of civilian casualties over a population that was roughly 1.5 million Armenians, so roughly at least 44% of the Armenian population. To conclude, I’m not sure you even have credible numbers to call it a genocide.
(Of course, feel free to correct my math, if I’m wrong).

(1) When Israel kills people, it’s unintentional/accidental. In this they have a near perfect record.

(2) When Palestinians (whether Hamas or whomever) kill people, it’s terrorism. — “Mikie

The plausibility of such distinction (not its actual validity, which remains to be investigated) comes from the “principle of distinction”, which Hamas’ asymmetric warfare approach doesn’t allow.

Why? Because even though they’re the oppressed people in this scenario — living for decades in concentration camp conditions under a superpower-backed colonial state — and have killed FAR less people, they do it intentionally. — Mikie

That is consistent with what I just wrote. Hamas prefers an asymmetric warfare approach because it can’t compete with Israel in conventional ways. So Hamas purposefully exploits an asymmetric warfare approach to radicalise both the Israeli and the Palestinian population, which in turn helps Hamas perpetuate its warfare approach.

So how many innocent Palestinian children need to die before Israeli actions count as terrorism/“bad”? — Mikie

Terrorism is a warfare approach. And it is not based on comparing number of casualties or civilian casualties, but on respecting or violating the principle of distinction and the notion of proportionality that goes with it. Of course, reality is arguably much messier and uglier than this, I can concede you that. Yet that doesn’t mean decision makers can or even should try to fix it.

What Israel should do is the right thing, regardless of Hamas demands. — bert1

Well, it depends on what you mean by "do the right thing".
Ordinary citizens should act according to laws, regardless of the reasons why they have those laws. But should political decision makers take decisions, regardless of the political consequences of their decisions?

So what? War is neither a beauty contest nor a fair play contest.

↪neomac

You keep saying this, asymmetrical war is a reality, I’m not saying that it’s a question of morality, fair play here. But rather an imbalance in agency. The only agency Hamas has had since October 8th is the option of releasing the hostages and surrendering themselves. Israel has wide ranging agency and propaganda machinery. Not to mention the thing I said about apartheid. — Punshhh

You mean that since Israel is disproportionately stronger than Hamas and can erase Hamas from Gaza, then Israel must yield to Hamas’ demands? Or that since Israel is disproportionately stronger than Hamas and can erase Hamas from Gaza, then Hamas can’t help but fight Israel to death? Do these conditionals make sense to you?

Also if Hamas had surrendered, the course of this situation might not have been much better than where we are now. Certainly if they had released the hostages, but not surrendered, it may well have been considerably worse than that. — Punshhh

Better in what sense? For whom? If Hamas had surrendered prior to committing the 8/10 massacre, then this would have spared the Gazans the current brutal retaliation. Any time Hamas surrenders in exchange for a cease-fire, then this would spare Gazans further brutal retaliation. If Hamas doesn’t surrender but it returns the hostages in exchange for a cease-fire, then this would still spare Gazans further brutal retaliation. So if the purpose is to spare Gazans Israelis’ brutal retaliation or further brutal retaliation, then not committing the 8/10 massacre, surrendering, returning hostages would be (or have been) all available options to Hamas. Wouldn’t they?

Yes, however this is an asymmetrical situation. Israel is an occupying force with state of the art weaponry. Hamas is a small band of terrorists with basic weaponry. — Punshhh

So what? War is neither a beauty contest nor a fair play contest. War is as shitty as it can get. Precisely because there is an asymmetry of forces it's not advisable for the weaker to poke in the eye of the stronger. If the weaker does it for whatever reason then there are consequences to be payed.

Also the idea that Hamas can spare the population by handing back the hostages and surrendering, or something. Works on the assumption that Israel doesn’t have an ulterior motive, or can be sufficiently trusted. — Punshhh

Sure but the argument can be retorted: the idea that Israel can spare the Palestinian population from the consequences of the conflict and withdraw from Gaza after returning the hostages, works on the assumption that Hamas doesn’t have an ulterior motive or can be sufficiently trusted. What differs is the price to pay, given the asymmetry of forces the Palestinians are the ones to risk the most.

So if Palestinians are doomed to suffer whatever price Netanyahu is willing to inflict on them (at least until Hamas keeps hostages and Netanyahu is in power), who is going to help them? If it is the Great Satan to do it, what would be the benefit for the Great Satan?

And the invading Russians have installed people they allegedly sought to do away with. — jorndoe

:up:

But their Nazi thing is a great (rabble-rousing) rhetorical/propaganda device (like sort of extending The Great Patriotic War), — jorndoe

Yes the Russian forget to mention that before the Great Patriotic war there was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact
And that during the Great Patriotic war "while millions of Ukrainians fought against the Nazis as part of the Red Army during WWII, approximately 250,000 Ukrainians joined the German forces and participated in the Holocaust and other German atrocities."
https://origins.osu.edu/read/living-ghosts-second-world-war-and-russian-invasion-ukraine?language_content_entity=en
Not to mention, that there was a comparable number of Russian collaborationists of the Nazis:
https://www.feldgrau.com/WW2-German-Wehrmacht-Russian-Volunteers/

One of the basic problems is that there isn't similar case like Ukraine when the West has supported one side in an conflict or had it's own conflicts. Invasion of Iraq was quite dubious, done with false arguments and little understanding of how unstable Iraq was. Yugoslavian civil war was indeed a civil war. And Serbia shows that even if Serbians ousted Milosevic, they weren't at all happy with the US after NATO had bombed their country. Yet the assault on Ukraine 2022 is a clear cut example of one country attacking another with Putin giving even more delusional arguments (neonazis controlling Ukraine and hence a denazification of Ukraine) than the WMD argument for invading Iraq. — ssu

Among other issues, there is one which I find philosophically deep and troublesome: namely, the notion of sovereignty as it is shaped by the Westphalian system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system)

What we should note is that if Putin would have opted just for Crimea and not tried to instill revolution in all Russian areas (which didn't happen in Kharkiv or Odessa, but only in the Donbass), it might have worked. We could have been fine with that as Europe was already at easy with a "frozen conflict" in Ukraine. Yet February 24th 2022 changed all that. Now it's quite simple. — ssu

That sounds about right. BTW how are the Finns taking the recent Russian threats: https://www.deccanherald.com/world/putin-says-russia-will-deploy-troops-to-finlands-border-now-it-is-in-nato-ria-reports-2935190 ?

The population is expendable in the pursuit of Israel’s objectives. — Punshhh

No less than the Palestinian population is expendable in the pursuit of Hamas’ objectives, right?

I explain for over 2 years how to get the best outcome for Ukraine: diplomacy, using both economic incentives and the potential for continued violence (which even if devastating for Ukraine is still harmful for Russia and, most importantly, there's huge error bars on all sorts of processes and events at the start of the conflict, which must be priced into decision making) as leverage in that diplomacy, prevent tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of deaths, mass trauma and injuries, a large part of the entire youth of Ukraine permanently gone, retain as much territory as is viably possible ... and somehow I'm pro-Putin. — boethius

You keep framing things in a way that I find rather questionable.

To me, “the West” refers to a political strategic alliance between numerous democratic countries: there are conflicting agendas between Western countries and within Western countries. And Western governments have also changed over 20 years. Russia is one country, with a despotic regime that has been lasting for more than 20 years. Westerners likely care about not losing their standards of life more than Russians. Westerners can voice their discontent more often, more loudly, more widely than Russians and can be infiltrated by pro-Russian propaganda more than Russia can be infiltrated by pro-Western propaganda. Competing political/economic lobbies (including those financed/guided by foreign powers like Russia) can thrive and weaponise Western people’s discontent against any government. That’s why boosting military build-up, implement coherent/timely foreign policies over a long period of time and getting confrontational with a foreign foes, namely foreign policies that demand sacrifice to the nation are much more easy to enforce for Russia than for the West. In other words, the decision-making process and the political will in Western democracies is structurally more weak and vulnerable to international shocks, than in the authoritarian regimes.
So to the extent there was/is a Western failure to support Ukraine adequately this may have less to do with ethic of Western decision makers than with the structural problems of Western decision making as such. And what makes your argument still pro-Putin is again its hypocritical purpose of morally discrediting the West, even if the lack of resolve and cohesion in the West is not inherently immoral and it stems also from people like you whose prejudicial distrust over Western institutions amplifies lack of resolve and cohesion.

I've posted the same Western reporting on the Nazis in Ukraine I think 4-5 times now. It's the same cycle, someone mentions the Nazis in Ukraine as mere Russian propaganda, I post the evidence based on Western reporting, and then no one wants to talk about it anymore.

Got through these videos and you will see what the concern is. — boethius

I watched your 4 out 5 videos (one is not available) and I couldn’t find what I expressly asked: your evidence to support the claims “they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”, “their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.”, “explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia”.
So I’m still waiting for your source to support such claims.

Once faced with the evidence, the denialists will then say "well there's not enough Nazis!", but then refuse to answer the question of how many Nazis would be enough. It's a simple question, if I say "this isn't enough water to live on" presumably I have some standard in my head of what is enough water and could inform you that a thimble is not enough water but about 2 litres a day is a normal healthy amount (but may vary quite a bit depending on the conditions). — boethius

I doubt that you watched the videos you linked since one can find there many pertinent answers to what you have been asking to the denialists.
Take video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUgKTfe-IqA
At minute 9:39 the guy says “if you look at the electoral results of the far-right political parties in Ukraine, they actually only add up add up to 1.65% IN TOTAL, which is less than some INDIVIDUAL far-right parties in other European countries have achieved” and that doesn’t even reach the bar for obtaining any seats.
At minute 15:54, the guy answers to question about the scale of the Azov phenomenon as follows: “In absolute numbers, it’s a TINY TINY TINY of the Ukrainian population. None knows for sure, but I think the last reliable figures were about 2000 active fighters at any one time”, while the wider Azov movement is max 20k people.
At minute 12:32, the guy goes even so far to concede: “If there wasn’t a neo-nazi problem before this war, there might be afterwards”. So Putin’s war would be the reason why there is a neo-nazi problem for Ukraine that wasn’t there before the war.

The Ukrainian neo-nazi problem was such a non-problem that in Ukraine there is a Jewish president, there are Jews fighting in Azov Battalion and fighting against Russia for Ukraine:
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-762000
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/israeli-government-welcomes-azov-battalion-leader-as-honored-guest/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-zelensky-adviser-40-jewish-heroes-fighting-in-mariupol-steel-plant/
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/ukraine-conflict/1651655303-russia-claims-israelis-fighting-alongside-azov-militants
https://genevasolutions.news/ukraine-stories/in-ukraine-jews-embrace-their-double-identity

Now, maybe there isn't and has never been enough Nazis in Ukraine that not-invading and destroying said Nazis would be the appeasement.

But, they're clearly there with quite a bit, even if "not enough" power, and it is foolish to dismiss their presence, goals and how they impact events, in both direct and indirect ways. — boethius

If you watched those videos you linked, the neo-nazi problem in Ukraine is never taken to be a problem primarily for Russia! But for the US and Europe given the international far-right network and far right terrorist attacks in the West. And more so for Ukraine itself after the war with Russia, because there is a chance that neo-nazi may fight against any peace agreements with Russia made by the Ukrainian government (as shown when they protested against Zelensky in 2021 https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-right-protesters-zelenskiy/31410694.html).
Notice also that even Prigozhin the leader of the Wagner Group questioned the nazi narrative of Putin: https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/24/wagner-boss-openly-defies-kremlin-ukraine-nazi-narrative

It's also important part of the conflict as it's simply giving Putin and the Kremlin immense propaganda wins. Russians don't squint their eyes and debate exactly what kind of runes we're looking at when they see obvious Nazis talking obvious Nazi shit.

Of course, simply because something is true doesn't mean it won't be used and exaggerated for propaganda purposes, and in this case it is a simple motivator that goes some way to explain why Russian troops didn't just run away from the battle field as they low morale and "didn't know why they're fighting" and other lines repeated by Western media. — boethius

The nazi problem which Russians lament is not a NAZI problem AT ALL. It has nothing to do with Nazi symbolism, antisemitism or white suprematism for the simple reason that the neo-nazi, white suprematists, far-right ideology and militia in Russia is not only bigger in volume wrt Ukraine (https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id-moe/09348.pdf, https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/RAD-135-10.-12.pdf, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1022970.pdf, https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/0/e/27072.pdf, https://www.foi.se/rest-api/report/FOI-R--2592--SE, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301232300_The_New_Russian_Nationalism_Imperialism_Ethnicity_and_Authoritarianism_2000-15) but WAY MORE influential abroad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_nationalism). Indeed, Putin and Russian ideologists (like Dugin) have been actively engaged in exporting and supporting such far right movements abroad (https://www.justsecurity.org/68420/confronting-russias-role-in-transnational-white-supremacist-extremism/).
Not surprisingly Russian neo-nazi militia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism_in_Russia#Groups) are the ones involved in Euromaiden and the conflict in Donbas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_separatist_forces_in_Ukraine, https://ukraineworld.org/en/articles/infowatch/russian-neo-nazi). I wrote a series of additional notes on this, starting from this post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/882175
The problem for the Russians is not if Azov battalion is ideologically neo-nazi, but that they are "Russophobe"!

The actual Nazis are one thing, the perception of those Nazis by Russians and Putin and so on is another thing, and their discourse about said Nazis is still yet a third thing. Of course, how we know anything about reality is through our and other perception and discourse on those perceptions, in this case we can be confident of some degree of objectively confident view of the Nazis due to the reporting of credibly unbiased reporters that have no stake in the outcome of whether the Nazis are there or aren't there or what they are doing or not doing (a credibility that would be based on yet still more perceptions and discourse on those perceptions). — boethius

Yes, I can collect videos too:

This one's just adorable. — “boethius

As these ones:

Again I don’t see the U.S. having any interests in the Middle East other than the supply of oil from the Arab states and protecting the Western outpost of Israel. They want to maintain the status quo in the area for these reasons. They were happy for Syria to be thrown to the wolves in the fight against Isis and now they are only maintaining a presence in those areas to prevent the rise of Isis in the region over the next period.
As such I don’t see the Middle East as an important arena of geopolitical, or hegemonic tension.
I don’t see any signs of wider conflagration, or broader hegemonic locking of horns, or WW3, resulting from this crisis. Neither the U.S. or China wanted this. — Punshhh

Maybe that depends on where and what you are looking for. As far as I’m concerned, the Middle East, Europe, the Pacific, Africa, South America are contended/contendable spheres of influence for 3 major hegemonic powers: Russia, China and the US. Controlling these areas means controlling their economic/security input and output and whatever transits through them. The Middle-East is important for commodities like oil and gas, and for international routes (commerce of goods, oil/gas supply, internet supply). Besides that region is source and exporter of Islamic Jihadism, that can spill over in other areas of interest (like Africa and Europe). That’s not all: as a hot area the middle east nurtures the international contest in military supply (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/11/fear-of-china-russia-and-iran-is-driving-weapons-sales-report) and as failed governance area criminal business thrives (https://www.arabnews.com/node/1944661). All that sounds particularly worrisome if WMDs are involved (https://thebulletin.org/2023/04/why-a-wmd-free-zone-in-the-middle-east-is-more-needed-than-ever/)
So there are several reasons why the Middle East can very much be subject to hegemonic interest and struggle, and wars in Middle East can get more news attention than the war in Ukraine (not only in the West).
Russia and China as competitors of the US (the former primarily in East Europe, the latter primarily in the Pacific) are interested in getting the US overstretched: inducing the US to divide attention and energies in multiple conflicts like in Ukraine, in Israel, in the Red Sea perfectly serves that purpose. The co-occurrence of such conflicts doesn't look casual at all, given that Iran (a regional hegemonic power strategically allied with China and Russia against the US) can very much be the liaison among the three by supporting Russia against Ukraine, Hamas in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Yemeni Houthi in the Red Sea (https://www.arabnews.com/node/2465036/middle-east, https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/sites/default/files/Iran%27s%20Proxy%20Wars_2.12.24_JC_JMB_JC_JMB_JC.pdf). The geopolitical link between what happens in Israel and the hegemonic conflict between super powers is candidly stated by involved parties:
“We want the Arab communities in the West to be active, and (we want) cooperation with superpowers like China and Russia,” the former Hamas chairman continued. “Russia has benefited from our (attack), because we distracted the U.S. from them and from Ukraine.”
“China saw (our attack) as a dazzling example. The Russians told us that what happened on October 7 would be taught in military academies,” the terrorist leader boasted.
“The Chinese are thinking of carrying out a plan in Taiwan, doing what the Al-Qassam Brigades did on October 7,” Mashal claimed, saying “The Arabs are giving the world a master class.”
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1698588842-oct-7-will-be-taught-in-military-academies-hamas-leader-boasts-of-russian-chinese-support

Russia and China do not need to get more directly/openly involved in the conflict in the middle east: indeed, they may just want to maximise the military/economic/reputational costs for the US to their benefit while minimising the costs for them, and for that it could be enough to abstain from helping to fix the middle east crisis or contribute to keep it alive (e.g. by helping Iran and other forms of triangulations).
https://www.orfonline.org/research/how-hamas-taliban-are-gaining-from-russia-chinas-growing-influence
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/russias-dangerous-new-friends
https://theins.ru/en/society/269789

As long as the West is eroding its power of deterrence against a more assertive Rest, the question remains: how can the West, the US, Israel deter without escalating? And that’s not all, when the tide of historical circumstances will favour the Rest, we should also expect that the Rest will come back at the West (https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-09-20/china-russia-india-and-the-global-south-the-era-of-revenge.html). This explains the race for military build up also in the West (and not only, https://theowp.org/south-korea-to-increase-military-spending-and-to-set-up-a-military-unit-specializing-in-drones/, https://www.vox.com/world/2023/1/15/23555805/japans-military-buildup-us-china-north-korea) and why certain taboos are broken (https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-defense-committee-marie-agnes-strack-zimmermann-european-nuclear-weapons/, https://www.euronews.com/2023/09/01/conscription-is-seeing-a-revival-across-europe-is-that-a-good-thing).

The primary geopolitical game being played currently is by Russia in Ukraine and as far as the West is concerned (geopolitically) that is going nicely in that it is keeping Russia occupied and gradually weakening her. This is also providing the incentive for Europe to re-arm and wean herself of Russian oil and gas. There is however the increased affiliation of Russia with China to consider. However I would expect this to result in a reluctance for war from this coalition once the Ukraine war has played out. This will most likely result in a new Iron curtain dividing Europe from Russia, as I predicted in the Ukraine war thread. Russia will pull back from China when they realise they would be required to sell their soul. — Punshhh

Even if Russia is weakening, that’s maybe true also for the West. Europe in particular is weakening economically (https://apnews.com/article/economic-growth-europe-recession-red-sea-trade-2b28c78474cf9ed2f3d28e85e9458bc9) and politically (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240223IPR18084/parliament-calls-for-action-against-the-erosion-of-eu-values-in-member-states, https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/europe-will-struggle-unite-if-ukraine-loses-2024-03-11/) in a period where political cohesion and expenditures must grow to face common security and energetic challenges. And the possibility of a European decline is ominously looming (https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2024/02/23/the-decline-of-europe-becomes-more-evident/, https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west/). Even the hegemonic power of the US is strained by national challenges and the pressure from international competitors. Besides, if the US wants Russia to be bogged down in the war in Ukraine, China may want the US to be bogged down in the war in Ukraine, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the Red Sea. Notice also that if China manages to establish a strategic alliance with Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, amongst the major oil suppliers (with the possibility of widening the strategic alliance of oil/gas exporters over Nigeria, Kuwait, Algeria, etc. maybe through the BRICS), this could be a non-negligible threat for the West (https://unherd.com/2023/07/has-the-west-lost-control-of-oil/, https://www.cointribune.com/en/saudi-arabia-and-china-sign-the-end-of-the-petrodollar/).

As I said before, why would China enter into a ground war, or dabble with proxy wars, when she is already winning the economic war? — Punshhh

A part from the fact that the Chinese economy has run into some serious troubles (https://time.com/6835935/china-debt-housing-bubble/, https://www.vox.com/world-politics/24091759/china-economic-growth-plan-xi-jinping-crisis), if you want a deeper risk analysis for hotter conflicts involving China you can find lots of interesting readings on the internet, like this one:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/04/china-war-military-taiwan-us-asia-xi-escalation-crisis/

If the IDF were wicked then the IDF should be targeted; not random, peaceful civilians. Hamas hurts the Palestinian cause of self-determination. — BitconnectCarlos

BTW
The cruel irony of Hamas’s onslaught, which alongside the scale of bloodshed, shocked Israelis with the barbarity of the terror group’s torture and documented sexual abuse, was that many of the civilians Hamas slaughtered and kidnapped were precisely the loudest voices for peace with Palestinians.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/peace-activists-in-a-traumatized-israel-remain-hopeful-for-a-two-state-solution/

Russia deepening ties with global axis of evil, Israel charges at UN
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-789156

You keep repeating that:

“such as nazi groups doing their best in the Donbas to trigger the current larger war, and explicitly explaining to Western journalists that's what they want: a grand purifying war and destruction of Russia ... and then Berlin!”

“Many of the factions supporting these provocative policies vis-a-vis Russia had no qualms of explicitly stating their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.”

“The Nazi's are definitely there in Ukraine (I am happy to re-post all those Western journalist documenting it) and are definitely a problem (mainly for Ukraine). They are also a genuine security concern for Russia (as they have no hesitation to explicitly say their goal is a war with Russia and to destroy Russia”

Can you link your source?

Yet Pakistan didn’t perform or wasn’t cooperative as required. — neomac

And why is that? Because the state of Pakistan had it's own security agenda, which the Bush administration didn't care a shit about. There were there only for the terrorists ....and either you were with them or against them .And that's why it failed. — ssu

A part from unnecessarily caricaturing Bush’s administration attitude toward Pakistan, your views seem to overlook Pakistan’s agency in dealing with the terrorists. And this risks to attribute to Bush also Pakistan’s strategic mistakes:
https://southasianvoices.org/what-went-wrong-pakistan-strategic-depth-policy/

But how clearly wrongheaded did it look the idea of exploiting that "window of opportunity” within Bush administration, back then? — neomac

So clearly wrongheaded that few people including myself saw the error that was being done. All you needed was read a bit. What was telling then was Scott Ritter, who had been part of the weapons inspection team and wrote a little book about there being no WMD program anymore before the invasion. Of course he faced the wrath of the US later and once those bridges are burnt, the only thing to get income is to be Putin's spokesperson. — ssu

Trump shattered the stupid idea of "The Prez just got bad intel”. — ssu

Even if the link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, or Iraq possessing WMD or the bad intel were convenient hypes, still your analysis may miss something deeper in Bush’s approach to the region:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/wmd-just-a-convenient-excuse-for-war-admits-wolfowitz-106754.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/05/11/no-weapons-no-matter-we-called-saddams-bluff/0be893f3-f877-44d9-84b2-5f580266213e/

“Property” as a legal term presupposes a legal system. Israel doesn’t acknowledge the Palestinian legal system. But it acknowledges to some extent the international legal system, so to that extent, Israel may be compelled to abide by what international law establishes for Palestinians

↪neomac

You can dress it up all you like, it doesn’t change the facts on the ground. The people living on that land were expelled by an occupying force. This is why they hold a grievance and it’s still happening in the West Bank. Indeed it has happened continuously since 1948. — Punshhh

Then it’s not about facts, but what one wants to legally/politically infer from that.
For example, if the numbers of Palestinian and Jewish Nakba are comparable (if not superior on the Jewish side) and the confiscation of properties and assets on both sides are comparable as well then they compensate each others (e.g. in Syria, Jewish property was confiscated and Jewish homes were used to house Palestinian refugees.). In other words there was an exchange of people and properties on both sides. So one can’t reasonably expect the Israelis’ to listen to Arabs’ grievances against them without Arabs’ listening to Israelis’ grievances against them.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/fd/il20062006_07/il20062006_07en.pdf

the international status over Palestine was the one proposed by the UN resolution 1947 which the Palestinians rejected. So Israel forcefully imposed its rule with the main support of the US at the expense of the Arab/Palestinian aspirations in that region.

So now we see what happened, it’s not difficult, it’s not complicated.
And yes I know about the Jewish Nakba, that was an inevitable consequence. — Punshhh

If you are reasoning in terms of “inevitable consequences” than also the Zionist project can be claimed to be an inevitable consequence of the persecution and abuses Jews suffered in the West and in Middle East.

I can accept that. But if they are both (potentially) racist, and oppressive, then so? What is the significance so great that it merits differentiation in the context of these discussions? That is, besides just that "analytical minds must repel classifications based on overstretched associations of ideas." — ENOAH

If it’s a problem of security concerns more than racism, then Israelis may be more open to solutions that address their security concerns in satisfactory ways (and resentfully closer toward solutions/measures grounded on "racial issue" accusations). I’ll give you an example, if one wants to push for a 2 nation-states, one should try to couple it with things like demilitarisation and neutrality of Palestine and, maybe even a constitutional regime that protects minorities like the jews (and their properties) in the Palestinian State and grants them political representativity (no less than the Arab/Palestinian minority has in Israel).

Is Apartheid objectively more culpable than Colonial Occupation and the imposition of Martial Law against, and for the purposes of subjugating, indigenous people who are all painted with the same brush on the basis of their ethnicity? — ENOAH

As I said, one should be careful with similarities, besides an analytical mind should care about consistency. If one wants to talk about Foreign Martial Law in terms of Apartheid State for Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank, how about the condition of Palestinians in Lebanon?
https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/20-09-28_lfo_context_protection_brief_2020_final83.pdf

So the US invaded and occupied a country, which not only had a tradition of fighting successfully Great Powers that invaded it, but now there also was a safe haven, a country next to Afghanistan where the Taleban could rest, reorganize and train and coordinate the fighting from.

So yes, George Bush didn't take into account that the Taleban would simply continue the fight from Pakistan. And guess he didn't want to make Pakistan, another former ally of the US, another nuclear capable axis-of-evil state like North Korea. Nope. Once Kabul was free from Taleban, mission accomplished and onward to the next war. — ssu

As far as I know the Bush administration had a hard time to diplomatically/financially solicit Pakistan to fight the terrorist network from their side, but he tried to the point of even calling Pakistan “major non-NATO ally”. Yet Pakistan didn’t perform or wasn’t cooperative as required. Pakistan’s approach was more for appeasing toward the Talibans in order to contrast the Iranian (and the Indian) influence in Afghanistan and contain the terrorist threat on its soil.
It would have seemed smarter for Bush to cooperate with Iran and India to preserve the new Afghan government after overthrowing the Taliban one and/or contain a Taliban comeback. Only then Pakistan may have turned more willing to deal with the network of Taliban terrorists on their side with the support of the US. But I guess that the pro-Israel lobby may have contributed into shaping the course of the “war on terror” surrounding Iran.

And when OBL was killed, did the war end? Of course not! That's what you get when your response to a terrorist attack done by 19 terrorists is to invade a country where the financier of the strike has been living. Getting the terrorists won't end the conflict, because those insurgents opposing you are fighting you as the invader of their country. To me it's quite obvious, but people can live in their bubble and have these delusional ideas that a whole country has to be invaded in order for it not to be a terrorist safe haven. — “ssu

It took 10 years to kill Osama Bin Laden. Maybe the US could have pursued a small military operation Israeli-style to hit main Al-Qaeda leaders, military resources, and training camps but the idea of remaining there could have also been a way to keep the terrorist forces in the region to fight the “invader of their country” and not give them a chance to regroup and organise another attack in the US soil in retaliation. Especially if the other risk the US felt exposed to was not just Islamic terrorism, but Islamic terrorism equipped with WMD weapons (let’s not forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks). Whence the infamous link to Saddam.

The case of Iran is obvious when it comes to Iraq. It's telling that the Saudis told exactly what would happen if Bush senior would continue the attack from Kuwait to Baghdad. But younger Bush had to go in, because there was the "window of opportunity”. — ssu

This looks as another big mistake in the hindsight, and Bush didn’t listen to the Saudis nor to Putin ok. But how clearly wrongheaded did it look the idea of exploiting that "window of opportunity” within Bush administration, back then? The war on terror was likely exploitable to more ambitious hegemonic goals in the region beyond simple retaliation. Yet wrong intelligence, unilateralism, widening goals and overlooked regional political equilibria backfired.

Like "War on Terror". What is this war against a method? What actually does it mean? Going after every terrorist group anywhere or what? — ssu

how many different wars you think they can handle? Fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, the Sahel, Philippines. — ssu

What do you think will happen when an administration starts a "Global War on Terrorism"? What kind of myriad involvement you will have everywhere when you try something like that? — ssu

I don't think there's any trace of the Taleban being involved with the September 11th attacks oir that they had been informed about them. And what was the "diplomacy" between the US and Taleban in turning OBL to US authorities? As I've stated, it wasn't enough just to get OBL and Al Qaeda leaders to be put into trial. Nope, Americans wanted revenge, punishment! — ssu

While I understand that there is greater chance to solve problems by military means if military objectives are enough clear and circumscribed, and circumstances are favourable (military capabilities are enough, national and international consensus is wide, all other diplomatic attempts failed, etc.), I doubt that this is how human affairs and politics are reasonably expected to work. In other words, you keep reasoning as if, in a conflict, the political task was to define military objectives in such a way to maximise military success, as if politics has to adapt to military needs. But I find more plausible to take war as a way to pursue political goals with other means. So it’s political goals that guide (and misguide too!) military effort. Besides I’m reluctant to view the American failure in the middle-east just as a military outburst driven by punitive compulsion. The same goes with the Israeli reaction to the massacre of October 7th, and Hamas reaction to prior Israeli oppressive measures. These reactions are not just actions emotionally driven by will to retaliate, but also pro-active steps toward longer term goals and calculated wrt expectations about other main interested players’ moves. So even war on terror (i.e. against Islamic Jihadism) in the middle east was a political strategic move not just a compulsive reaction, as much as NATO expansion in Europe and inclusive economic globalization (especially addressing potential competitors like Russia and China). All of them were long-term strategies testing the US hegemonic capacity of shaping the world order through hard and soft power, even if it ultimately wasn’t planned and dosed well. Democratization (and economic growth) seemed the best way to go to normalise relations, preserve peace and quell historical grievances (as it happened for Germany and Japan) so the US, after the Cold War, in the unipolar phase, had the time window to think big and take greater risks.
Even terrorist attacks of Islamic jihadism, including the 9/11 attack, aren’t just isolated punitive operations against some past grievance, but steps toward more ambitious ideological goals (https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32759.html). Islamism and Islamic Jihad can very much aspire to ideologically replace the Soviet Union in representing the grievance of the Rest against the West since the end of the Cold War. And it can very much be seen as a globally sharable foe (so another aspect of the globalization) given the problem of the muslim minorities in Europe, Russia’s conflict with the Chechen, India’s tensions with the muslims of Kashmir, China’s persecution of the Uyghurs, Israel’s conflict with Hamas (backed by Iran), Egypt’s struggle with Muslim Brotherhood. While the asymmetric warfare, the fluid/decentralized organisation, the vocation to martyrdom, and the prospect of obtaining WMD made Islamist Jihad look a particularly tricky challenge to anybody, including to the US (and Israel). So escalating a state-to-organization confrontation to a state-to-state confrontation and bring the confrontation into the Islamist homeland (i.e. targeting states that finance or, otherwise, support Islamic terrorist organizations) was instrumental to hitting deeper into Islamist jihadism.
So even if the US committed big mistakes, I question the way you are trivialising them. What we see in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, or in the war on terror can NOT be reduced to an “emotional reaction”, an act of revenge, of just punishment, a retaliation for a provocation. These events are best understood as power struggles. And people/leaders/political administrations/states are not necessarily peace maximisers so political choices do not need to be assessed exclusively in terms of peace maximising objectives.

On the other side, Saddam was a maverick and had more enemies than friends in the region while the influence of his biggest supporter (the Soviet Union) was already gone. So he was an easy enemy. — neomac

LOL! So you think that Osama bin Laden and his little cabal called Al Qaeda weren't mavericks? :lol: — ssu

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but my point wasn’t about being or not a maverick, but about being one or many (as I clarified later “The ‘war on terror’ wasn’t against a single enemy”). Indeed, Islamist terrorism looks as a fluid network of cross-national guerrilla fighters’ groups (with replaceable leaders).

Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. (The whole speech here) — ssu

Bush’s speech still “tastes” differently wrt what I said earlier.

But I’m not sure to what extant the US could have done otherwise in light of what was known back then and given its hegemonic ambitions. — neomac

What I find is tragic is that when too many people die, legal procedures how we treat terrorists or other homicidal criminals goes out of the window. Hence, I think it's an impossibility that 9/11 would have been treated as a police matter and the perpetrators would have been dealt as criminals and not to have a war in Afghanistan. Some other nation without a Superpower military could have been forced to do that. But now it was an impossibility. Not only would Bush have looked as timid and incapable of "carrying the big stick", he would have been seen as cold. If it would have been Al Gore as the president, likely the war in Iraq wouldn't have happened, but Afghanistan would have. And the real history is well known. To please the crowd wanting revenge and punishment, the Bush administration gave us the Global War on Terror. Something which still is fought around the World by the third US president after Bush. — ssu

As I said elsewhere “long-term strategies can still be worked out of ‘emotional responses': indeed, it’s the emotional element that can ensure a united/greater home support for strategic efforts around the world.” In other words, to me the issue is not the emotional element behind a foreign policy but how it fits into a wider political strategy. Even if Al Gore would have stopped at Afghanistan, it remains to be seen if and how this choice could have served wider political strategic goals.

It's something that Biden warned the Netanyahu government not to do. But Bibi surely didn't care and is repeating exactly something similar. — ssu

The similarity may overshadow very different stakes: for Israel it’s a matter of nation-state building, for Bush it was more matter of hegemonic struggle.

Notice that 20% of the Israeli citizens are Arabs/Palestinians and they do not suffer from the political, economic, legal, and social discrimination — neomac

Notice that we are talking about the Occupied Territories. — ssu

An Apartheid state is a state with a racially based law system in peacetime, not a foreign military occupation imposing martial law to indigenous people.

So a question back to you, why then a one-state is impossible? The answer is that Zionism isn't meant for the non-Jews, so the State of Israel has a problem here. — ssu

As much as the Palestinian nation-state promoted by Hamas. One state solution is impossible for both Zionists and Hamas, because they both pursue a nation-state over the same land. So they are reciprocally incompatible. Under this assumption, you have no more reason to complain about Zionism than about Hamas. Yet you seem to put a greater moral burden on Zionism, I guess that’s because you are compelled by the comparison of military capabilities and losses which favour Israel, or because you believe that Palestinians have a more right to the their nation state over Palestine than Israel. So it would be clearer if you spelt it out instead of leaving it implicit.

What also I can concede is that the ethnocentric nature of the Zionist project is incompatible with Western secular pluralism, and this factor can very much facilitate structural discrimination even if it doesn’t straightforwardly lead to an Apartheid state. — neomac

I agree, this incompatibility here is the real problem. Hence all the talk of a two state solution.

And we have just a slight disagreement on just what makes a state to be an Apartheid state. You won't call it that, others here like me will call it so. — ssu

Since you insist, then let me insist: no it’s not “a slight disagreement”. Qualifying Israel as an apartheid state is analytically wrong to my understanding. It’s like equating ethno-centric Nation-state, State with structural discrimination, foreign military occupation, Apartheid state due to certain similarities. Even Republican conservatism and nazism are similar wrt left-right political spectrum, yet one can’t reasonably call Republican conservatism “nazism” unless one wants to achieve a rhetoric effect more than analytic goals. Even Stalinism and Nazism are similar within the spectrum democracy, liberalism, pluralism vs dictatorship, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, yet one can’t reasonably call Stalinism “nazism” unless one wants to achieve a rhetoric effect more than analytic goals. Analytical minds must repel classifications based on overstretched associations of ideas.
Out of curiosity, can you list other current Apartheid states, beside Israel, according to YOUR understanding of what an Apartheid state is?

What I’m saying is there was an injustice to the people on the ground when the Nakba occurred, because as far as they were concerned it was their property, their real estate when it happened. — Punshhh

“Property” as a legal term presupposes a legal system. Israel doesn’t acknowledge the Palestinian legal system. But it acknowledges to some extent the international legal system, so to that extent, Israel may be compelled to abide by what international law establishes for Palestinians. Yet it likely won’t do it if this compromises its national security. So until Israelis’ national security concerns are addressed in a way that sufficiently satisfies Israel, then a solution can be only FORCED onto Israel. Who is going to do this? How? I doubt that the US (or any other major actors in the region) finds convenient to force a violent solution on Israel for various reasons. So only diplomatic, economic, legal pressure remain but diplomatic, economic, legal pressure may still be ineffective if too mild (why should they be mild? Again out of convenience?) or even counterproductive if they could harden Israeli’s resolve.
Since you care so much about Nakba and refugees’ property rights, do you know there is a Jewish Nakba too?
https://www.thetower.org/article/there-was-a-jewish-nakba-and-it-was-even-bigger-than-the-palestinian-one/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world

So why exactly should we acknowledge rights to land to people (Arabs and/or Jews) prior to the end of the British Mandate?

I saying that their right to the land they are living on is due to their living on and owning the land on which they lived. — Punshhh

If you are still talking about the Nakba, see my previous comment. If you are talking, as we should, about the Palestinian State, Nakba and the legal case of the expelled Palestinians during the Nakba doesn’t suffice to deal with the demand for a Palestinian nation-state. Zionists bought lands from local owners, befriended powerful allies, obtained the league of nation acknowledgement and, after the British Mandate ended, the international status over Palestine was the one proposed by the UN resolution 1947 which the Palestinians rejected. So Israel forcefully imposed its rule with the main support of the US at the expense of the Arab/Palestinian aspirations in that region.

So your only position then is limited to a concern for any broader geopolitical considerations and possible developments — Punshhh

.

Right. I’m not a political activist and using this philosophy forum to spin some political propaganda, no matter how legitimate, instead of philosophically investigating one’s own understanding of the political crisis in the Middle East is a wasted opportunity, even worth of being ridiculed.

P.s. I’m not going to go back over pages and pages of responses to answer questions. My responses will be consistent as my position on these issues has been considered at length and doesn’t change as a result of interactions with others. That’s not to say I won’t accept a revision when new information is provided and errors identified. — Punshhh

You do as you wish. I do as I wish.

It sounds as if you are making an objection to me — neomac

Sorry if I was rude or impolite, didn't mean to. — ssu

You are neither rude nor impolite to me. And I’m fine even with rude and impolite objections as long as they are on topic and sufficiently argued. In any case, I have a thick skin.

Just to emphasis that in order to have peace after war, it's not so simple as politicians say it is. Simple easy sounding solutions (just destroy them) end up in quagmires.

For example: Just to "go to" Afghanistan and destroy Al Qaeda and the supporting Taleban was what George Bush had in mind. He didn't want to have anything to do with "nation building". Did he take into account Iran or especially Pakistan, the backer of Taleban? Nope. So the US got it's longest war, which it even more humiliatingly lost than the Vietnam war. And Pakistanis can celebrate (as they did) outsmarting the Americans. — ssu

I’m not sure what you are referring to. Pakistan and Iran didn’t have the same interest in Afghanistan. Bush reserved a more privileged treatment to Pakistan than to Iran, during the war on terror (maybe this was a mistake, since the Iranian were willing to cooperate in fighting the Talibans more than the Pakistani were). So I do not understand why you are claiming that Bush didn’t take into account especially Pakistan nor in what sense he could have taken into account both Iran and Pakistan. The ethnic/religious composition of Afghanistan doesn’t look it very amenable to nation building.

That was the plan. And simple naive plans backfire. Usually because they are stupid plans. — ssu

As long as presidential speeches are meant to market national and foreign policies the president promotes, one has to assess them more in rhetoric terms and as function of their effect on the audience, more than on their accuracy or explanatory power. But even in that speech Bush is talking also about international support, patience for sacrifice and the long time that the war may require (it took almost 10 years to kill Bin Laden). He is also talking about the broader prospect of a war on terror (which may have been nothing more than a threatening posture) and making pay the price of the terrorist attacks to state sponsors (which is not only based on military action, but also diplomacy, intelligence, legal prosecution). The confidence in a victory didn’t seem farfetched given the military power of the US and Bush’s focus on objectives such as the destruction of military capabilities and terrorists training camps in Afghanistan, or making it more difficult for terrorists to use Afghanistan as a base for terrorist operations, or bringing terrorists to justice. He insisted also on friendly dispositions toward Afghans and Muslims, and humanitarian aid to the civilian population.
I don’t think one can see much of a plan doomed to fail from that speech alone. At most one can get an impression of confidence in the international support and in the victory of justice that my look excessive or hypocritical in the hindsight.
Anyways speaking of “war on terror” in such wide terms, unilateralism, widening the conflict and lack of flexibility may have plausibly contributed to misdirect efforts and to compromise successes.

Just compare to his father who a) got an OK both from the UN and from Soviet Union and China for the use of force, b) arranged an overwhelming alliance, c) listened to his allies and didn't overreach and continue to Baghdad, d) had an cease-fire — ssu

I find your comparison misleading. A declining Soviet Union led by a complacent Gorbachev said OK at the UN resolution but he also tried to play the middle man to avoid the war since Saddam used to be a strategic ally. China abstained from voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_678) as well as from opposing the American led intervention against Iraq. Indeed, China might have been willing to cooperate with the US in weakening the Soviet Union with its system of alliance. Besides China was prone to focus on national economic build-up and modernisation pushed by Deng Xiaoping’s reforms more than to engage in international military endeavours over international borders. Even more so, if such abstention was instrumental to preserving a soft but not compromising cooperation with the US over Taiwan. On the other side, Saddam was a maverick and had more enemies than friends in the region while the influence of his biggest supporter (the Soviet Union) was already gone. So he was an easy enemy. The Gulf war was also an easy cause because it was a relatively narrow conflict between two Arab countries, one bullying the other, over internationally acknowledged borders with no major or incumbent geopolitical stakes for the US. And it was restorative objective because the instability was brought by Saddam’s aggression which was countered without any need to overthrow Saddam. Actually this war greatly contributed to support the idea of the US world police.
The “war on terror” wasn’t against a single enemy, nor an easy cause (Islamic terrorism inflicted a humiliating attack against the US which would be welcomed by anti-American feelings in the region), nor a restorative objective (the region was destabilized by overthrowing regimes and this offered enough leeway to other geopolitical actors’ initiative at the expense of the US). But I’m not sure to what extant the US could have done otherwise in light of what was known back then and given its hegemonic ambitions.

And since Israel never has had the attempt to make both Jews and Non-Jews there all Israelis, then this is what you get.

If you want peace and have in your country other people then you, then you try to make them part of your country (like Romans decided later that everybody living there would be Romans). Or be even smarter, create a new identity like the English did: Everybody, including them, would be BRITISH. Even that wasn't enough for the Irish, because they had a long memory of how the English had behaved in their country. But it has been a success story in Scotland and Whales. — ssu

You are thinking as if people and states reason in terms of maximising peace and are willing to sacrifice anything else for peace. But that’s a rather questionable assumption: people can fight because they refuse slavery, or inequality, or intruders, or for blood revenge, or for predation, for defence, for helping somebody under threat, etc. People can fight also to preserve their religious or ethnic social identities, the customs, habits, language, historical memories they have inherited from past generation and want to transmit to future generations. This mindset can drive Israelis as much as Palestinians. Israelis apparently do not want peace if that means sacrificing Israel as a nation-state. And even Palestinians do not want peace if that means sacrificing Palestine as a nation-state. In other words, you have to convince them, the people and their the leaders, that nation-state is not something worth sacrificing their life for. And good luck with that.
Until then Israel can’t simply annex Gaza and West Bank and give Israeli citizenship to all Palestinians, even if the international community allowed it (and I doubt it). Indeed, given all the historical grievances and the comparable demographic size, there is no guarantee that the conflict would NOT reproduce in form of a civil war. It’s a deadlock.
So if one finds Israeli’s security concerns credible given its nation-state ambitions, then only solutions that address such Israeli’s security concerns better than just keep using brute force or ethnic cleansing have a chance to be appealing to Israel. For example, I deeply doubt that one state or two state solutions can address Israeli’s security concerns better than a confederated state (which is still compatible with Palestinian nation-state ambitions) or three state solution (which is NOT compatible with Palestinian nation-state ambitions).

Now, does Israel try this? No. It's a homeland for the Jews and others just can fuck off. And that's why in the end it is an Apartheid system, because it has at it's core that similary hostility towards the others, similar to what the white Afrikaaners had in their system for blacks. — ssu

You are comparing Israel to an Apartheid system as others compare Israel to Nazi Germany always in light of perceived striking similarities. But watering down the meaning of the words, based on associations of ideas, to achieve rhetoric effects is more good for propaganda than for analysis. Notice that 20% of the Israeli citizens are Arabs/Palestinians and they do not suffer from the political, economic, legal, and social discrimination that “Blacks” suffered in South Africa during the Apartheid, nor from the segregation and/or military regime Israel has imposed in West Bank and Gaza. As far as I’ve understood, the Israeli military rule until 1966 made look Israel dramatically closer to an apartheid state than after the military rule was lifted.
What also I can concede is that the ethnocentric nature of the Zionist project is incompatible with Western secular pluralism, and this factor can very much facilitate structural discrimination even if it doesn’t straightforwardly lead to an Apartheid state.
Indeed we shouldn’t overstate its gravity nor underestimate its force for 3 reasons:
1. The ethnocentric nature of Zionism was common to European nation-state formation, nationalist ideologies, European colonialism (which also lead to ethnic cleansing and/or oppression). It took centuries and 2 world wars to overcome this mindset in favour of more pluralistic views. In other words, pluralism seems a very hard won lesson. So maybe also Israelis and Palestinians have to learn it the hard way.
2. Structural discrimination is still very common also in Western pluralist countries (like the US, the UK, France, Germany etc.) and actually in the rest of the world (have you compared how certain minorities are treated in other countries, like Arab/Muslim countries or China or India or Russia?).
3. Security concerns (not racial concerns) are still dominant in Israel and when a country is at war with terrorism or another country, democratic backsliding is expected (“Terrorism and Democratic Recession” https://www.jstor.org/stable/26455914).

And where did I make such extraordinary claims exactly? Can you quote me verbatim?

↪neomac

I didn’t say you had made such a claim, I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about claims. But you do appear to be positioning yourself there in relation to my claim. Unless, you are in some kind of neutral position. As far as I’m concerned to even consider that this Israeli administration we are discussing could be a workable solution, unless it is imposed with brute force is entirely fool hardy, or naive. It’s not going to happen.

While from your neutral position you are happy to use analysis to deconstruct what I was saying. — Punshhh

I do not have a neutral position. I’m partial, interested and pro-Israel, to put it bluntly. But that doesn’t mean unconditional support for the Zionist cause. In other words, my position is that, given my understanding of the status of the geopolitical game in that area, I think there are STILL strong reasons to see Israel as a valuable strategic ally of the West (I qualify myself as a Westerner) and act accordingly even in the current circumstances. So even if the West doesn’t align with Israel on how Israel is handling the current crisis, it has to deal with Israel in a way that it doesn’t estrange Israel either. I do not have strong opinions on that and I do not think I know better than Western or Israeli political decision makers. So mine are just general concerns from a Westerner perspective based on a general understanding of the situation given certain geopolitical and historical assumptions.
Since I’m not a political activist and we are in a philosophy forum, I prefer to focus on my and my interlocutors’ limited understanding of the situation beyond personal interested perspectives. This means the analytic exercise I’m engaging in and challenge others to do as well is to investigate, make explicit and review the assumptions and the arguments which could support one’s political beliefs. To give you an example: I do not care if one believes and claims that Israel is “ an Apartheid state”, but I care more to understand how one came to conclude that Israel is “ an Apartheid state” and assess how such argument is compelling on geopolitical and historical grounds.

You mean that the burden of proof is all on me and you have to do nothing other than making claims? You didn’t even offer a clarification of what you mean by “Apartheid state”.

But I’m realising that you are not committing to a position on these questions. You’re just shooting down what people say. I ask for a counter argument and none is provided. You comment on some issue, but thats not making claims. — Punshhh

What is the counter argument that you asked and I didn’t provide, exactly?
I’m still waiting a compelling response to the 3 questions I asked to you.
1. If you check the demographic of Palestine in recorded history, the first known people to occupy those regions in majority were Jews, not Arabs/Muslims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)
Before the end of the 12th century Arabs/Muslims turned to be the majority.
So those lands have been over time occupied by different people and demographic distribution changed over time. But the original people occupying the land of Palestine (and which never completely left Palestine) were NOT Arabs/Muslims but Jews (and notice that the West Bank = Judea+Samaria is the heart of the historical Jewish land). And the main reason why many of the Jews fled from those lands is due to oppression by foreign powers (first the the Roman/Byzantine empire then by that Muslim empire + Arab/Muslim COLONIZATION of lands originally occupied by Jews). So why exactly should we acknowledge historical “occupation” starting from the time the Arabs/Muslims turned to be the majority after oppressive colonisation of lands originally occupied by Jews?
2. Correlating land and population is not enough to establish rights over the land, because such rights are established by rulers. And in ancient history up until the end of the British Mandate the rulers and owners of the land were the leaders of kingdoms and empires not Jewish/Arab people. So why exactly should we acknowledge rights to land to people (Arabs and/or Jews) prior to the end of the British Mandate?
3. Correlating land, population and land rights, is not enough to establish national identity. Indeed, Palestinian nationalism supporting a Palestinian nation-state developed in the last century and in response to Zionism. So why exactly should we acknowledge rights to the land to a nation whose identity is rooted very much in this fight for land ownership with another nation whose identity precedes such conflict?

looking at your discussion with SSU about what apartheid is I’ll give it a miss for now. — Punshhh

What a surprise.

I’m not criticising your approach or what you’re saying, it just feels a bit to much like a philosophy tutorial, where your only input is to mark my homework. — Punshhh

I have nothing against you, personally. But I’m here to entertain myself, not you. And I use the same approach with everybody.

The notion that an Israeli administration that would be introduced in Gaza would be an improvement on what was there before October 7th. Or that it would even come close to something acceptable to the Palestinian population is an extraordinary position

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. — Punshhh

And where did I make such extraordinary claims exactly? Can you quote me verbatim?

You mean that the burden of proof is all on me and you have to do nothing other than making claims? You didn’t even offer a clarification of what you mean by “Apartheid state”.


Perhaps we should try and agree what a state is first, or a human. — Punshhh

Sure, if you suspect a disagreement between us over the notion of “state” or “human”. The point is that YOU feel compelled to call Israel an “Apartheid state” and want me to agree with you since you suspect a disagreement (and rightly so).

P.S. For some reason, I do not get notifications from you, even if you reference my nickname.

Not sure what your point is: — neomac

You might set your objective to that you fight a war to an unconditional surrender, but that doesn't mean that it happens automatically. Meaning that the defeated enemy can choose to surrender to you, hear your demands isn't something that automatically happens. Or simply doesn't appear to your surrender meeting. Hopefully you get it. — ssu

It sounds as if you are making an objection to me, yet I didn’t claim nowhere that unconditional surrender should happen automatically. Indeed you can not quote me saying it. So what’s the point of bringing that up? Even fighting for one state or two states solution “doesn't mean that it happens automatically”. So what?

So the “Apartheid condition” you are talking about, is very much motivated by concerns over Palestinian terroristic attacks like those of Hamas. — neomac

Wrong. The Apartheid system started immediately after the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza when the military occupation started. Far earlier than the first Intifada. See here. — ssu

You can call it “apartheid system” but I’m not compelled to accept your classification until we agree on the notion of “apartheid system” and its application on this case. Your link simply reports the following: The existence of a dual system of laws for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank has been used as evidence by those who claim that Israel practices apartheid in the region.. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not sure if “dual system of laws for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank” is enough evidence to legally support the accusation of “crime of apartheid” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_apartheid) or call Israel as an “apartheid state”, so I will let legal experts and competent tribunals on such matter to decide. However I’ll question it for historical reasons I’ll clarify below.

That Palestinians living in the occupied territories are under military law and aren't citizens of Israel while Israelis living in the West Bank are (and are under Israeli law), is the obvious sign of an Apartheid system.

And of course, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza cannot vote in Israeli elections as they aren't Israeli citizens. As there isn't an one state solution. Usually people living in a country are under the same laws and are considered citizens of the country. Not so in occupied territories that Israel holds.

That's one thing of the Apartheid system, — ssu

Does the fact that you notice “one thing of the Apartheid system” or as “the obvious sign of an Apartheid system” suffice to call Israel an “Apartheid System”? Because that is what you seem to claim.
As far as I’m concerned, the dual system in the West Bank occupied territories consists in the fact that Palestinians were/are under Israeli military law and not under Israeli civil laws, because Palestinians are not Israelis, and military laws in the West Bank (which still leave room for Palestinian local civil laws) are enforced by the military force which controls that territory, even if it is a foreign one. That situation is not uncommon, at least during wartime.
Does this dual legal system suffice to classify Israel as an “Apartheid system” as such or an “Apartheid system” in the West Bank region, and even more so if it protracts after wartime period? I find it disputable at least on historical grounds. The “Apartheid system” I have in mind is the one implemented in South Africa. South Africa Apartheid System wasn’t a military occupation over disputed land, the imposed legal system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid_legislation) by a white minority over a black majority in the whole country was explicitly racially based, economically exploitative/discriminatory, legally abusive (e.g. by allowing corporal punishments to blacks who violated the law), beside being politically authoritarian and segregational. And all these traits are relevant to me (as to the sources I rely on) to assess if a system can be called Apartheid System.
So I can get and do not need to discount that Palestinians in the West Bank feel oppressed by authoritarian and segregational measures (like walls and blockades) of the Israeli military rule, in addition to the abuses they accuse the Israelis to commit. And I can get if, to many, that is already enough to trigger humanitarian concerns, accusations of committing a war crime, support for the Palestinian cause, or remarks about striking analogies with the South African Apartheid System.
But I still find misleading to call Israel and apartheid system to the extant such classification suggests inferences and beliefs which would hold for the paradigmatic case of the South Africa apartheid system, but arguably not for Israel.

which started well before there was any Hamas formed. — ssu

I was talking about barriers and barricades as a form of segregation comparable to Apartheid segregational measures. Of such measures I was saying they were a response to Palestinian terroristic attacks, not specifically to Hamas’ attacks alone. But I welcome your objection to the extant it challenges people, you included, to clarify their understanding of the notion “Apartheid system” as I tried to do previously.

In Israel:

Jewish settlers in the West Bank are Israeli citizens and enjoy the same rights and liberties as other Jewish Israelis. They also enjoy relative impunity for violence against Palestinians. Most of the West Bank’s Palestinian residents fall under the administrative jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which operates under an expired presidential mandate and has no functioning legislature.


In Apartheid South Africa:

In the Apartheid system The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 made every Black South African, irrespective of actual residence, a citizen of one of the Bantustans, which were organized on the basis of ethnic and linguistic groupings defined by white ethnographers. Blacks were stripped of their South African citizenship and thereby excluded from the South African body politic.


Hopefully you do see the similarities and just why people can refer quite aptly the situation to Apartheid. — ssu

As I argued, I can see the similarities but I question that such similarities suffice to “refer quite aptly the situation to Apartheid”. I’m sure even Hitler and some random Jew burned in a concentration camp might have had lots of interesting similarities too, yet such similarities might not be enough to call both of them nazi.

But why do you believe that if Hamas surrenders, the people of Palestine will be plunged into an even more oppressive situation? What evidence do you have? What reasons?

↪neomac

Simply because the situation has worsened (the means and practice of the Israeli government and the IDF.)
This is self evident for these reasons;
The stand off between Israel and the leaders of Palestine has worsened and deepened over a long time, as each new conflict occurs. It only ever gets worse, not better.
There is clear evidence of Israeli leaders becoming militant, radicalised. This will only make the situation worse and make it more difficult for Israeli’s to trust Palestinians.
Their insensitivity to the plight as evidenced by their actions re’ Gaza and concerns of Palestinian people, suggests that they will remain insensitive in any subsequent Israeli controlled state. — Punshhh

What is your argument here? The Jewish psyche? You should suggest Israelis your therapist, I guess.

You proposed a confederated solution. My point was that such a confederated solution would amount to another form of apartheid by a different name. — Punshhh

Dude, really? Is that the most you can do?

Yes you said that so many times. And the first time was already one time too much.

I will stop when you agree with me about that. Or demonstrate that it is not the case. — Punshhh

You mean that the burden of proof is all on me and you have to do nothing other than making claims? You didn’t even offer a clarification of what you mean by “Apartheid state”.