But usually failed wars don't bolster jingoism and your willingness to use force again. Usually the result is the opposite. After the Vietnam war the US wasn't eager to fight similar wars. It needed for the Cold War to end and 9/11 attacks to happen before the US was ready to go recklessly everywhere to fight "The War on Terror". Now with Afghanistan fallen and the Taliban with their Emirate back in charge, notice the absence of anyone talking about "The War on Terror". — ssu

Sure, that sounds plausible, at least in the short term. But even in the short term, as long as the Russian political and military elites are the same along with their powerful triggers (fighting for hegemonic survival and perception of a “declining” West), they may still try to compensate or come back against the West in other forms, increasing control over strategic areas (in the mediterranean, North Africa and Middle East), reinforcing the anti-West alliance, by fostering instability within the West, and connive with rogue American politicians (if not presidents).

But note, this fear of the dissolution of Russian federation is actually the pillarstone for Russian imperialism. Catherine the Great said something very crucial when she said that in order to defend her country's border, she has to push them further. Russia always portrays itself to be the victim, even if it isn't always Napoleon or Hitler marching into their country. This is the way the Russians are fed the propaganda of their imperialism: the evil West is out to destroy Russia. We must fight back!!!

Similar reasoning is evident in Communist China too: if China would let democracy work, then "the Middle kingdom" would collapse again due to separatism. Tibet and the Muslim west would go, but perhaps also the south and the north would separate.

These fears of course forget that India, which has so many different people and ethnycities and religions, is a democracy, and isn't likely to collapse. — ssu

Not sure to what extent this comparison is useful. Russia and China didn’t experience established Western-like democratic institutions to effectively channel ethnic grievances. So the transition to a more democratic regime might more easily support separatist movements wherever the relation between ethnic groups is diverging or has been historically tense if not dramatic. See the case of ex-Yugoslavia.
Even in India authoritarianism has been on the rise for a while now (https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/indias-endangered-democracy/) and national unity crisis has been called out by Indian intellectuals (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-facing-collapse-of-nation-crisis-amartya-sen/articleshow/92583017.cms).

But those are hypotheticals, just like the lie that if Americans withdraw from Afghanistan and leave the country to the Taliban, it will become a haven for terrorists. Well, has it? — ssu

There are reasons to be optimistic, I’m not questioning this. But strategic thinking has to deal with hypotheticals, and taking into account the worst scenarios given certain realistic circumstances is part of the task.

In my view in similar line with France and Germany. — ssu

But in their case the reason is clearer and more relatable (if you are a Western European). The benefit/cost delta of this war may be more positive for the US and the Eastern Europeans, than for the Western Europeans, at least in the short term. And in the long term there are lots of unknowns.

I'm not the one claiming this is all about rational debate like some rules-based chess game. This is politics. It's your hypocrisy I'm pointing out. — Isaac

I'm simply pointing out to you that your claim of dispassionate, rational, chess-grandmaster "weighing of the evidence" is preformatively contradicted by your use of pejorative rhetoric. — Isaac

I claimed nowhere that I’m dispassionate nor that a rational debate should be dispassionate.
Even in playing basketball or chess one can be passionate, especially if the opponent cheats or plays lazily.
I’m not even questioning the fact that our moral/political views are motivating our engagement in such political discussions, colouring our communicative style, pressing us for certain conclusions.
However the fun part to me is mainly to play by argumentative rules that make one’s views rationally compelling to opponents’ views. Besides since this is a philosophy forum and not a science forum, we can more easily end up discussing our conceptual frameworks, our terminology, our beliefs’ inferential or explanatory power, etc. and this in turn can help not fix the world, but fix (clarify/reorder/clean up) one self’s ideas about the world.
Where is the hypocrisy in all this exactly?

Where was the argument in... — Isaac

I didn't claim that I or anybody should provide only arguments and counter-arguments.

Because it sounds like a weak attempt at sarcasm, followed by a lame cliché about anyone not cheerleading the war being pro-Russia. — Isaac

As lame as your attempts at calling opposing views "cheerleading the war", "bollokcs" and "bullshit". Serving you your own "sarcastic" soup.

Your idea of pariahship is having people engage with you in page-long discussions? :chin:

I'm sorry the forum isn't your personal echo chamber, I guess. — Tzeentch

I don't see the relation of your comment with what I wrote which was about taking position and its costs.
Besides if I'm engaging with other people who think differently from me, how am I in an echo chamber?
That's a philosophy forum, so I guess if people provide arguments and question each other's arguments with arguments, it should be welcomed. If you do not feel like playing this game with me, don't do it. No hard feelings.

You're presented with two theories, which you otherwise can't tell between A and B. Those advocating for A stand to gain several hundred billion dollars from the pursuit of policies according to A, those advocating B stand to gain nothing but pariah-ship and contempt for advocating it, yet do so anyway. — Isaac

A horrible and bloody internet "pariah-ship and contempt" is what the majority of anonymous users of this thread have to suffer from the minority of other anonymous users for advocating B and calling "bollocks" and "bullshit" thinking otherwise. But they are doing it for a good cause, the Ukrainians' well being, which they know much better than the Ukrainians themselves. And that's no virtue signaling by no means. From Russia, with love.

A humiliating defeat might not be enough to get rid of Russian hegemonic ambitions once for all. It may set also the grounds for the next imperialist surge. Unless it brings to the dissolution of the Russian federation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_dissolution_of_Russia
But this may bring other problems to the West: the fate of the Russian federation’s nuclear stockpile, China hegemonic expansion in post-Russia federation states.
The American leadership and engagement in this war is indispensable to force Russia to back down yet the Americans, despite the rhetoric, can’t be fully trusted by the allies. Not with Biden, way less with presidents like Trump (and next elections are getting closer). If Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria definitely compromised the American reputation more in the Rest, Trump definitely compromised the American reputation more within the West. And the American contribution in the war in Ukraine looks suspiciously too slow-paced and replete with mixed-signals. For the Europeans the future looks pretty grim, especially if they are not pro-active and coordinated in building their own foreign politics (like a “new deal“ with Africa? and South America?), and more autonomous in shaping their military security.

The loss of their “empire” after the collapse of Soviet Union principally due to NATO expansion and the need to recover their hegemonic status overshadowed by the Americans. — neomac


...is hypothetical.

offensive means to threat Western security — neomac


...the actual use of which is hypothetical.

Russian hegemonic ambitions. — neomac


...which are hypothetical.

promoted/pursued an anti-West alliance with other authoritarian states (like China and Iran) with hegemonic ambitions. — neomac


...hypothetical ambitions. — Isaac

So you practically ignored all other facts to focus on “hegemonic ambitions” which in the case of Russia, China, and Iran you claim to be “hypothetical”. Let’s first clarify terminology. How do you understand the notion of “hegemonic”? And what constitute evidence of “hegemonic ambitions” to you?

Russia’s military activity beyond its borders up until now shows an actual non-hypothetical pattern of “Western containment” — neomac

...not even going to dignify this bullshit with a response. — Isaac

Unless this kind of answers is the best you can afford.

There's no debate at all about the threat Russia poses to Ukraine. That's the difference. — Isaac

There is debate also about the threat Russia poses to Ukraine. You can hear it when discussing about peace. Different peace scenarios and conditions are also influenced by a different understanding of the threat Russia poses to Ukraine.

Russia's threat to 'the West' is entirely hypothetical — Isaac

There is absolutely nothing hypothetical about Russia's threat to 'the West'.

• Russia has actual non-hypothetical motives to be hostile against the West. The loss of their “empire” after the collapse of Soviet Union principally due to NATO expansion and the need to recover their hegemonic status overshadowed by the Americans.
• Russia has actual non-hypothetical offensive means to threat Western security (3rd country by military capability, largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, cyberwar capabilities through hackers and disinformation agencies), and ways to heavily interfere in Western political life, through lobby and a network of far-right movements.
• Russia has plenty of actual non-hypothetical pretexts and leverage to conduct anti-Western activities in the West: Russian minorities in neighbouring countries, rebellious countries like Serbia and Hungary , political ties and support from within the West (Trump being the most clear example encouraging Russian adventurism), and economic bonds that up until now induced complacency toward Russian hegemonic ambitions.
• Russia has actually non-hypothetically made plenty of hostile declarations against the West since 2008 and has promoted/pursued an anti-West alliance with other authoritarian states (like China and Iran) with hegemonic ambitions.
• Russia’s military activity beyond its borders up until now shows an actual non-hypothetical pattern of “Western containment”: by encircling Europe with its military activity in the mediterranean, North Africa, Middle East and the Baltics. And now by meddling in Western backyard with a genocidal war: Ukraine wants to join the West and is also plenty of natural resources the West may integrate in its economy (wheat and gas among others). And during this war Russia also dared to threaten the West with a nuclear escalation.

So no, there is absolutely nothing hypothetical about Russia's threat to 'the West'.

Acting as if something is safe, when it isn't, just because it ought to be, is reckless. It's not complicated. — Isaac

It's not complicated. As this one: acting as if Russia is not a threat to the West, when it is, just because the West ought to be peaceful, is reckless too.

Ukraine ought to be able to enjoy its sovereignty without being threatened by powerful neighbours. Pretending that's how the world is when it blatantly isn't is reckless. — Isaac

Unless you are confusing "ought" claims with "is" claims, aren't you?

I think that the notion of "morality" is at the crossroad of different considerations pointing in different directions. So it's very possible that any definition may leave something out. For example, the problem of Gert's definition is that it leaves us wondering what the notion of "rational people" and the "specified conditions" may mean or be determined without begging the question or being too large (traffic rules maybe a rule of conduct that satisfies the definition without being moral) or too strict (in certain societies homosexuality is considered immoral).

In this situation we better maximise our understanding of moral behaviour by analogy/contrast between moral conduct/norms and non-moral conduct/norms. Here I can draft the main points:

• - Moral norms apply timelessly, spacelessly, and universally: they apply to individuals at any time, and do not change. That is different from ludic or professional norms that can apply to us at a given time (e.g. when we play when we sign a work contract). They also differ from law: legal norms can be changed over time (like in a democracy and they do it also for moral reasons) and space (different countries have different laws), but moral norms do not change. If homosexuality or killing innocent people is immoral, there was no prior time (or different place) in which homosexuality or killing innocent people was moral and a later time (or different place) where both turned out to be moral. We shouldn’t confuse moral norms with their popularity. Popularity can certainly change over time, space and individuals.
• - Moral norms can always overrule non-moral norms in both conduct and ethic assessment: concerning the conduct, let’s say that there is a law legitimising prostitution or weed selling, whoever considers that law immoral may protest against it or not act the way those laws allow. So the way one feels or decides to act wrt the law is overruled by moral norms. That doesn’t mean that moral norms can’t be occasionally and narrowly suspended: e.g. in box people are allowed to physically hurt each other, or in a movie people are allowed to lie, in art naked adult sculptures are not considered obscene, etc. At the end of the day, people’s life is ultimately assessed wrt moral conduct. Namely one life is more valuable if it is compliant to moral norms more than it is to legal or fashion norms or artistic norms.
• - Moral norms are self-promoting at social level and psychological level: it’s not just that individuals should follow moral norms (like do not kill, do not steal, do not lie) but they should also care if other individuals follow them (e.g through praise and blame). Moral norms have an intrinsic social dimension (like laws). We can think of a code of conduct for specific individuals e.g. a king’s code of conduct, or private in its genesis (e.g. the son promises his father to continue his business after he retires). But they are qualifiable as moral only to the extant they should become object of social pressure (praise and sanction). Moral norms should also be internalised in both conduct and emotion as pre-reflexive habits accompanied by specific feelings e.g. outrage, dignity and guilt. While economic and legal conducts are more dependent on cost/benefit calculi, can be more emotionally neutral and evolve over time.

Al doesn't know that p and that he doesn't know that not-p. — Ludwig V

This might be true from a third person perspective. Not from a first person perspective. If a person makes a knowledge claims and then she herself discovers that what she believed is false, the discovery of her belief's falsity itself would support another first-person knowledge claim.
That's different from the knowledge claim where the justification is to be questioned. Imagine I claim: I know that Erik the Red used to wear horned helmets because Erik the Red is a Viking and Vikings used to wear horned helmets. But then I discover that archeologists have widely called as a myth the belief that Vikings used to wear horned helmets. Then I might say: I didn't know (not "I don't know"!) that Erik the Red used to wear horned helmets, or I doubt that Erik the Red used to wear horned helmets.

Something reliable can fail once or twice and still be classed as reliable. But if something certain turns out wrong, it is no longer certain. — Ludwig V

I get your point. Still it depends on what we are certain about. We can also be certain that something is reliable. So if that something turns out to be wrong that doesn't mean it's unreliable, or no longer certain.

I prefer "defeasible" because "fallible knowledge" can be taken to mean that If I claim to know something on good grounds but it still turns out false, it is nonetheless knowledge. So I'm anxious to insist that knowledge doesn't fail - people do. So a claim to knowledge that p must be withdrawn if p turns out to be false. — Ludwig V

I substantially agree but what I find more interesting to notice is the following: while the falsity of p implies that "I know that p" is false, the epistemic "withdrawal" from a belief that "turns out" to be false (as opposed to "unjustified") might correspond to different epistemic conditions: e.g. "I don't know that p", "I know that non-p", "I believe that non-p", "I don't believe that p", or "I doubt that p". Yet only "I know that non-p" would make sense to say to me in that case. In other words, knowledge claims defeated out of falsify are not just "withdrawn" but "replaced" by other knowledge claims.

Scott Ritter on prior to the Russian invasion (in December 2021): Russia won't invade Ukraine, it's a manufactured crisis (by the West) and if there would be war between Russia and Ukraine, Russia would defeat Ukraine in 6 to 7 days (If Ukraine made an attack in the Donbas). And so on... — ssu

what a guy:
On April 6, 2022, Ritter was suspended from Twitter for violating its rule on "harassment and abuse" after he posted a tweet claiming that the National Police of Ukraine is responsible for the Bucha massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter

Disagreements are occasions for anybody to review their beliefs and reasons, making them explicit, examine how they link together, find inconsistencies, inefficiencies, holes. And what makes this king of exchange philosophical to me is that we can dig further into our background assumptions, especially our conceptual frameworks. — neomac

Bollocks. You've done none of those activities. All you've done is use the spectre of them to pour cold water on any counter-arguments you don't like. For example...

here there is a whole package of deep assumptions of yours that would need some reviewing — neomac

... is typical of your responses. No actual review, no actual analysis, and God forbid any comparison to your own assumptions. Just enough distraction to blunt the point that you have used US government funded sources to back up US government policy. — Isaac

As usual, you put most of your intellectual effort in caricaturing me the way it suits you. It’s expected and boring to read, but it’s still an occasion to denounce your intellectual dishonesty.
I was making a general point there. And this is supported by what I have done in several past exchanges: conerning the clarification of my conceptual framework, e.g. I discussed my understanding of moral claims (with you a while back, almost at the beginning of our exchange in this thread), of the relation between morality and power in my infamous “wall of text”, of the way I understand my contributions here with its implied limits and possibility of agreement (about the meaning of the words, evidence-based reasoning, expert feedback). I also take my time to clarify my terminology when needed.
But of course I can’t expand on all points at the same time at any moment and with all the interlocutors (you may have missed a bunch of my points with other interlocutors). Even more so if on the other side there is an interlocutor who shifts the burden back to his opponent when invited to clarify his own deepest assumptions [1] , and who accuses his opponent to write “wall of texts” to provide the requested clarifications.
Not to mention that I’m not here to entertain you, I’m here to entertain myself.

BTW even opendemocracy is financed by grants from funds and trusts in the hands of philanthropic wealthy or ultracapitalists like Soros. And Soros isn’t so “well reputed“ either, is he? — neomac

Indeed. And if ever I was arguing in favour of the General Theory of Reflexivity I wouldn't cite a Soros-funded think tank in support of such an argument as it would be obviously at risk of bias.
You cited US government funded think tanks to support your belief in a US government policy. It's not just intellectually dishonest, it downright dumb. You seriously think that an organisation funded by the US government and arms manufacturers is going to give you an honest assessment of the state of the war in which both are intimately involved? — Isaac

OK let’s dig deeper into my conceptual assumptions.
First, it’s in the nature of the division of labor (material and intellectual) that there are cognitive asymmetries and conflict of interests. Cognitive asymmetries and conflict of interests are practically pervasive and overwhelming in a complex society like ours, and they may facilitate abuses depending on the circumstances (i.e. there are implied social or institutional costs in case of abuse). Somebody selling products and services may be prone to a dishonest marketing, but also consumers consuming products and services may be prone to dishonest reviewing. We can’t a-priori exclude that dishonest dispositions are present in anybody when their self-interest is concerned in any competition over scarce resources. And self-interest is very cheap to guess: e.g. Mearsheimer is an academic professional that has a self-interest in selling his theories as the best on the market, jacobins are militant agents self-interested in promoting their ideology as the best on the market, you are self-interested in promoting you as the the smartest guy in this forum. ===> Hence you can not impress me by denouncing some conflict of interest.
Second, when we have to cope with cognitive asymmetries plus conflict of interests, we are compelled to develop some trusting strategy (and trust doesn’t need to be unconditional) over time to prevent possible abuses of our trust. These strategies comprise informal cost/benefit assessments, risk/opportunity assessments for competition and cooperation, and through several iterations (dense and extended as anybody’s personal intellectual and social life) they end up building relatively stable informational social networks/channels. The point is that it’s part of our social survival to be able to integrate into our proximate informational habitat, and as long as we live in a Western capitalist society under the American hegemony we can’t likely spare ourselves from integrating with the available informational network/channels that this habitat offers to us (not matter how critical or self-aware we can possible be about this) ===> Hence you can not impress me by claiming I can’t definitely trust X because it’s an agent of American capitalism.
Third, in our society mainstream and non-mainstream media are mostly controlled either by government or capitalists. Even academic expertise is financed and marketed by government or capitalists, and in each domain pool of experts can self-organise in enterprises that government and economic agents can rely on, because it’s functional to their activity. Even anti-system and fringe informational network like the jacobins’ can be supported by political/economic forces antagonising government or capitalists, NOT because they want or can fix the world injustice but because they want to grab power. ===> Hence you can not impress me by saying expert views that conflict with dominant economic/political elites’ main narrative are more trustworthy because they are not financed/supported by dominant economic/political elites.
Fourth, since there is a “physiological” drive for self-perpetuation in any power system and practically any ideology needs power to win over the competition, it’s important for us to understand how agents of any power system reasons over power ===> Hence it's not just intellectually dishonest, but also downright dumb to take political/economic elites’ narratives (like US government funded think tanks to support your belief in a US government policy) exclusively as a function of a specific ideology or specific power system, and “deconstruct” them accordingly. It’s intellectually dishonest because ANY ideology needs power to be promoted (jacobins included), it’s downright dumb because such narratives offer relevant clues on how ANY power system could reason as a function of power needs in similar conditions (e.g. security dilemmas, militarisation, technological/military/intelligence performance, and how economic, demographic, social factors can shape them etc.)

Besides your argument looks questionable for 2 reasons: on one side, it recommends not to be dismissive toward views alternative to the ones spread by mainstream outlets while suggesting to be definitely dismissive toward the mainstream outlets (“mainstream outlets can't be trusted (and they definitely can’t)” as if mainstream outlets are like astrologists). — neomac

How is that questionable. I'm saying don't trust mainstream outlets on certain issues because they're funded by the people who benefit from the issue in question. There's no contradiction there, no error of fact. So in what way is it "questionable"? — Isaac

It’s questionable because it generically suggests a trusting strategy that discriminates between mainstream and non-mainstream outlets on the preposterous ground that a conflict of interest suffices to make the point. It’s like me saying: your baker has a conflict of interest in marketing his products, and for that reason he definitely can’t be trusted, you better go to a fruit shop.

even if it was true that definitely mainstream outlets can’t be trusted, that doesn’t imply non-mainstream views can definitely be trusted — neomac

Absolutely. Which would be why I never made such a claim. — Isaac

But it was implicated in what you claimed. If you suggest that mainstream should definitely not be trusted because X has conflict of interest better listen to non-mainstream, the implicature is that latter is worth trusting. The problem is that the latter too may have conflict of interests.

your argument is so general that it holds for any alleged non-mainstream view (islamists, nazis, anarchists, satanists, QAnon or flat-earth believers, etc.) — neomac

No it doesn't. I'm referring here solely to the use of expert opinion. Not lay opinion. If you can find me an expert in geology who thinks the earth is flat we can have that discussion, otherwise this is just more straw-manning. We hear this garbage argument every time someone brings up an alternative perspective; it's like you guys just pick these off the shelf. — Isaac

I didn’t commit a strawman, because you are clarifying now what you meant before, and I warned you already several times about the fact that your general objections are decontextualised wrt the current exchange.
So if you want to be better understood, you better make a bigger effort in that direction. Indeed, your accusation is still without clear reference:
No idea what you are referring to. In our most recent exchange Tzeentch didn’t point at any expert source for his “diversion” hypothesis, except for Mearsheimer. But we interpret Mearsheimer somewhat differently. In any case, I didn’t claim that Mearsheimer is running pro-Russian propaganda, nor deny that what he says in that video should be discounted or ignored.
Besides if Tzeentch can question experts, I can do the same. But, for the moment, he is the one questioning the experts I’m citing, while I’m just defending them.
You opportunistically jump into an exchange I had with another interlocutor to resume your most general objections in such a completely decontextualised way that demotivates any attempt to answer. For example, can you quote claims or objections of mine where your conditional (“if you want to claim 'likelihood' you need to show how your sources are more likely to be right than others”) is supposed to apply? Because I have no idea.
Source: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/782980
In any case, feel free to post here military/intelligence experts that have a different view wrt mainstream narrative about Putin’s objectives in the first phase of the war.

[1]

It’s important you answer those questions because you are the one who claimed “the rich oppress the poor far more consistently than one nation oppresses another” and believes it’s pertinent in the debate about the war in Ukraine. — neomac

Your argument relies on this not being the case, so it is incumbent on you (if you want to support your argument) to disprove it. I’ve not interest in supporting my case here (I don't even believe it's possible to support such a case in a few hundred words on an internet forum, and even if I did, I wouldn't make such a case as I've no expertise in the matter). — Isaac

190,000 troops is completely insufficient to control Ukraine. Everyone, even your own preferred experts, seem to agree on that. So we've made some progress. — Tzeentch

No idea why you call it “progress”. I never argued that 190K troops are sufficient to control Ukraine.

Your option - that number is a product of astronomic Russian incompetence and wishful thinking. In other words: "the Russians are dummies".

My option - that number is a product of limited Russian goals. — Tzeentch

Even if the Russians had limited goals since the beginning, their poor execution didn’t shine as a paradigmatic example of military competency.
Russia failed to achieve what was likely its main political objective: to overthrow the Kyiv government in a blitzkrieg military operation. The Russian military also faced significant challenges seizing and holding territory. These problems contributed to the suspension or firing of several senior military officials, such as Lieutenant General Serhiy Kisel, commander of the 1st Guards Tank Army, for dereliction during the offensive against Kharkiv; Lieutenant General Vlaislav Yershov, commander of the 6th Combined Arms Army, for failing to capture Kharkiv; and Vice Admiral Igor Osipov, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, following the sinking of the flagship cruiser Moskva. In addition, roughly a dozen Russian generals and other senior officials were killed on the battlefield, such as Lieutenant General Andrei Mordvichev, Lieutenant General Yakov Rezantsev, Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, Major General Kanamat Botashev, Major General Andrey Kolesnikov, and Major General Oleg Mityaev.13 These firings and deaths may have exacerbated command and control problems that the Russian military was already experiencing.
Source: https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-ill-fated-invasion-ukraine-lessons-modern-warfare

Still Western source — neomac

Gee, really? You have a problem with western sources now? — Tzeentch

You said “I don't base my arguments on western media sources either.” But you do.

If you rely on the estimate of “21,000 troops” from that report why don’t you rely on the claim “the Russian military’s main effort remains seizing Kyiv in an effort to force the Ukrainian government to capitulate” ? — neomac

Because those estimates are not being contested by anyone, while the claim is.
Are you really going to hide behind random objections like these? This is getting a little childish. — Tzeentch

It’s not random at all. It’s still related to the issue of expert source reliability. I asked several times what your expert sources were. So far, in our recent exchange, you linked Mearsheimer’s video claiming it was supporting your “diversion” hypothesis. But Mearsheimer in the clips you posted didn’t make the argument that 21K troops deployed by the Russians make it outlandish to believe that “Russian military’s main effort remains seizing Kyiv in an effort to force the Ukrainian government to capitulate” in that video. Now you claim that “the Russian military’s main effort remains seizing Kyiv in an effort to force the Ukrainian government to capitulate” has been contested, I’m asking you again: link here the expert source you rely on.

The connection you fail to make is that all these western sources have one thing in common - they all spin the "Russian incompetence" yarn. CSIS, as ↪Isaac
pointed out, is funded by the US government and the DoD - that could be a clear sign of bias, but perhaps it is just something so simple as intellectual arrogance or tunnel vision.
In any case, the contradictions in their analysis are plain for all to see, and I've been pointing them out repeatedly. — Tzeentch

What doesn’t square in their analysis is “plain to see” if one shares your assumptions about how Russians might have planned this operation. But your assumptions can be questioned, without you being able to provide direct evidence that Russians had just the limited objectives you specified from the start. Yours remain guess work as mine.
Even if there is a “Russian incompetence” argument to spin (which I don’t need to exclude, after all “truth is the first casualty in war“), this is something the Russians should have taken into account in their years of preparation for this war. Wars are most certainly a showcase of military/intelligence/technological competence by geopolitical agents with hegemonic ambitions. And Russian poor performance on the ground plus Putin’s military/intelligence purges reinforced their infamous image of corrupted and incompetent system of power with foolish hegemonic ambitions. The poor execution of their maskirovka operation not only kind of squanders the credit of a smarter plan with limited goals but it also backlashed against their chances for a successful negotiation and a reputational promotion of their military power.
Not to mention that also the pro-Russian propaganda my be interested to spin the “feint” argument to minimise the reputational costs Russians have suffered on the ground.

Let's do a quick recap:

190,000 troops were insufficient to control large parts of Ukraine.
You argue instead that the Russians' main goal was to control Ukraine by installing a puppet in Kiev.
My objection to this is along two lines:

> A puppet regime is completely unfeasible under conditions that were known prior to the invasion. The amount of western influence in Ukraine, the threat of a western-backed insurgency, the lack of troops to maintain control, etc. Your experts at CSIS seem to believe a Russian puppet would have "lasted hours."

> The northern drive on Kiev in no way indicates either in its troop count or behavior that it comprised the Russians' main effort. If that had been the case we would have expected to see an attempt to overwhelm the Ukrainian defense through massed forces and firepower.

Note: I did not claim the drive was too small to capture Kiev, though it was likely too small to capture Kiev if any sizable Ukrainian defense was present, which likely there was since it's the Ukrainian capital, though the Ukrainian order of battle remains undisclosed.
Nor did I argue that the Russians didn't want Kiev. Just that the troop count and behavior does not imply the Russians were prepared to pay much of a cost to capture it, which in turn implies it was not of a high priority.

My alternative to this theory is as follows:

> Given the Russians' relatively low troop count in relation to the size of Ukraine and the Ukrainian military, their ambitions were likely limited to occupying strategically relevant areas in the south and east of Ukraine. Occupying small pieces of Ukraine mitigates the risk of insurgency.

> The drive on Kiev likely had multiple possible goals, the first of which was probably to try and force the West to negotiate. If this failed, the attack would still be functioning as a diversion to lure Ukrainian defenders away from the strategically relevant areas in the east/south. Had the Ukrainians left their capital largely undefended in favor of defending the east/south, Kiev could have been captured.

I've said all I have to say on the topic. I don't think further exchanges will yield much fruit, so I will leave it here. I suggest you try to make your case succinctly one last time like I did with my recap, so we end the conversation with a nice summary from both sides. — Tzeentch

What is missing in your recap is that you consider outlandish my view while I can acknowledge to your speculation some plausibility plus the benefit of being at least more economic (which doesn’t necessarily mean more plausible). So I might just add that a series of facts (like the assassination attempts against Zelensky, purges from Putin and Zelensky against high ranks in military and/or intelligence service, heavy losses of the Russian operation, Putin’s and Yanukovic’s calls, expert reports from CSIS, Wilson Centre, RUSI) and some background assumptions (like an economic/military/political network between Ukraine and Russia, an “illegally” ousted Ukrainian president to reinstate, besides the hazardous nature of Putin’s geopolitical ambitions and personalistic chain of command) support the idea (shared by Mearsheimer too!) that Russians might have actually tried to pursue regime change in the earliest phase of the war.

As already said, “likelihood” expresses to me an assessment of the degree of confidence. There is no formula about this. Just informal assessment about what I’ve read so far from different sources — neomac


Is there then a reason why you'd expect your "informal assessment" to be the same as anyone else's? You seem affronted by the fact that other people's views are different to yours. If you recognise it's all just "informal assessment" that should be expected. — Isaac

With your initial question, you seem to understand my claim out of its context. I was talking about “likelihood” as applied to expert feedback. This is an informal assessment expressing degree of confidence. That claim doesn’t imply nor presuppose that we all share the same degree of confidence for expert source.
The rest of your comment seems to go back to the reasons why we are here. This is a philosophy forum. A place where people can discuss their reasons for believing certain things and question them. Disagreements are occasions for anybody to review their beliefs and reasons, making them explicit, examine how they link together, find inconsistencies, inefficiencies, holes. And what makes this kind of exchange philosophical to me is that we can dig further into our background assumptions, especially our conceptual frameworks. That’s an intellectual exercise that can be enjoyed as such, without being pressed by any moral, political, affective, humanitarian urge. Like a game. So having opponents is not the problem or reason for animosity. I’ll take it as part of the game I am playing.
I’m just averse to intellectual dishonesty as in any game where rules are breached intentionally.

CSIS — neomac


... seriously?

CSIS is funded largely by Western and Gulf monarchy governments, arms dealers and oil companies, such as Raytheon, Boeing, Shell, the United Arab Emirates, US Department of Defense, UK Home Office, General Dynamics, Exxon Mobil, Northrop Grumman, Chevron and others. — https://fair.org/home/nyt-reveals-think-tank-its-cited-for-years-to-be-corrupt-arms-booster/


WilsonCenter — neomac


... uh huh

Approximately one-third of the center's operating funds come annually from an appropriation from the U.S. government, and the center itself is housed in a wing of the Ronald Reagan Building, a federal office building where the center enjoys a 30-year rent-free lease. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson_International_Center_for_Scholars


RUSI — neomac


https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/why-is-bbc-presenting-rusi-as-objective-analysts-of-middle-east/

None of this is difficult to find. You just don't want to find it. — Isaac

By “well reputed” I didn’t mean that they are praised as anti-capitalist heroes by jacobins (here there is a whole package of deep assumptions of yours that would need some reviewing). I meant that in the domain of military/intelligence expertise they are “well reputed“ but if you have better source for military/intelligence expertise (indeed I wrote “(why aren’t they ‘well reputed’? What are better reputed domains-specific sources?)”), you can post it here.
BTW even opendemocracy is financed by grants from funds and trusts in the hands of philanthropic wealthy or ultracapitalists like Soros. And Soros isn’t so “well reputed“ either, is he?

I don’t think that non-US and non-Western administrations and media are immune from accusations about their honesty. The same goes for non-mainstream and anti-system source, not mention that they can absolutely be infiltrated, exploited and financed by foreign powers. What one can infer from such predicament or how we may cope with it is up for debate. — neomac

It's really very, very simple. Don't dismiss dissent from mainstream views as if it were the notions of some conspiratorial nutters.
If mainstream outlets can't be trusted (and they definitely can't) then views which dissent from the mainstream are not compromised simply because of that dissent. It is not a 'mark against them' in terms of credibility. — Isaac

“Mainstream” points to “medium” accessibility/popularity. Lots of academic source is not accessible by the widest audience yet it is trustworthy to me. Also within the “mainstream” world not all sources enjoy the same reputation or popularity. Alternative views, even fringe views, can find their way into the mainstream media. My criteria for placing trust in source of information is not based exclusively nor primarily on the distinction between mainstream and non-mainstream as you seem to suggest. And even in this case, it doesn’t need to be unconditional.
Besides your argument looks questionable for 2 reasons: on one side, it recommends not to be dismissive toward views alternative to the ones spread by mainstream outlets while suggesting to be definitely dismissive toward the mainstream outlets (“mainstream outlets can't be trusted (and they definitely can’t)” as if mainstream outlets are like astrologists). On the other, even if it was true that definitely mainstream outlets can’t be trusted, that doesn’t imply non-mainstream views can definitely be trusted, and notice that your argument is so general that it holds for any alleged non-mainstream view (islamists, nazis, anarchists, satanists, QAnon or flat-earth believers, etc.)

:up:

talking about Russian plots:

very interesting articles!

If I’m claiming that “Russia likely pursued regime change in the first phase of the war based on what has been reported”, I need to provide what has been reported. And I did. — neomac

No. If your claim is about likelihood, you need to provide some metric of likelihood (or prove that your record of 'what has been reported' is exhaustive). Without either, all you've shown is that it is plausible that Russia pursued regime change in the first phase of the war. You've not presented an argument regarding the claim that it was 'likely'. — Isaac

As already said, “likelihood” expresses to me an assessment of the degree of confidence. There is no formula about this. Just informal assessment about what I’ve read so far from different sources (which I partly linked). It’s like you talking about your experience, you can assess regularities and compare quantities, even without counting the exact amount of units, or computing and charting the actual stats. So at best I can try to explicit what kind of general criteria I consider to support such confidence on experts’ feedback, as I did. And what I could understand from there. But none of this will look like an academic review of course, nor does have to.

That is why we are making alternative sources of information available to you. If you ignore them, that's an issue of bias, not availability. — Isaac

No idea what you are referring to. In our most recent exchange Tzeentch didn’t point at any expert source for his “diversion” hypothesis, except for Mearsheimer. But we interpret Mearsheimer somewhat differently. In any case, I didn’t claim that Mearsheimer is running pro-Russian propaganda, nor deny that what he says in that video should be discounted or ignored.
Besides if Tzeentch can question experts, I can do the same. But, for the moment, he is the one questioning the experts I’m citing, while I’m just defending them.

Nonsense. You cite US government sources and those who cite them in turn, occasionally turning to Western mainstream media. None of these are "well reputed”. The US government have been shown time and time again to lie; with sources from military intelligence it is literally their job to lie (when it serves their country's interests). As to mainstream Western media, only recently has the Columbia Journalism Review written a damning report of press coverage regarding Russia, and here on the Ukraine war itself, The Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting group have written a considerable number of articles highlighting serious bias in press reporting (including specifically on Ukraine), not to mention the shocking level of blatant racism.
As I said. If you merely want to claim plausibility, it is sufficient that your sources meet a threshold of expertise (which military intelligence and sourced journalism would meet), but if you want to claim 'likelihood' you need to show how your sources are more likely to be right than others, You've not even begun to make that argument. — Isaac

First, I didn’t cite only US government sources if you are referring to CSIS and WilsonCenter (why aren’t they “well reputed”? What are better reputed domain-specific sources?), I cited RUSI and Mearsheimer himself.
Second, I don’t know what to make about your hyperbolic skepticism about the US government or Western mainstream media. On one side Western people can also learn about the US administration’s lies from mainstream media and other US administrations. On the other, I don’t think that non-US and non-Western administrations and media are immune from accusations about their honesty. The same goes for non-mainstream and anti-system source, not mention that they can absolutely be infiltrated, exploited and financed by foreign powers. What one can infer from such predicament or how we may cope with it is up for debate. Certainly, I don’t need to unconditionally trust the sources I’m providing here, I’m fine with elaborating my understanding of the war from such sources and to what extent I find them compelling. Finally, as I repeated many times, I’m more interested in the geopolitical implications than in the military/intelligence details: even if the “diversion” hypothesis turned out to be correct, this may not significantly impact the main geopolitical implications of this war.
Third, you opportunistically jump into an exchange I had with another interlocutor to resume your most general objections in such a completely decontextualised way that demotivates any attempt to answer. For example, can you quote claims or objections of mine where your conditional (“if you want to claim 'likelihood' you need to show how your sources are more likely to be right than others”) is supposed to apply? Because I have no idea.

This was a week into the war. You're using statements made months apart, under entirely different circumstances and in both cases no actual argument is presented for your claim. — Tzeentch

I’m talking about Mearsheimer only because you took him to support your claims, which I find questionable. Besides I’m less interested in the details of the military special operation than you seem to be. If Mearsheimer’s argument in that video was that 190K ground troops were not enough to conquer the entire Ukraine, why did Mearsheimer concede that Russians might have pursued the capture of Kiev knowing that they didn’t have enough troops to capture Kiev? And EVEN IF later Mearsheimer changed his views about regime change (something which is not evident since he keeps talking about capturing Kiev, the Ukrainian political capital) , why on earth would I discount Mearsheimer’s claims in the first week of the war if at that time he found already enough credible the idea that the Russians were pursuing a regime change (at least in the earliest days of the war) given that early estimates weren’t certainly supporting that belief?! I’m not discounting the possibility that over march Russians may have realised that their most optimistic plan (regime change) wasn’t achievable, so that they were left with other more workable options. But it would be a revisionist fallacy to infer Russian intentions at the beginning of the war from Russian intentions at later stages of the war, as you seem to do.

If the capture of Kiev would have forced a surrender and/or regime change, why was only a small portion of the Russian force dedicated to capturing it, and the Russians seemingly did not engage in heavy fighting in their operations around Kiev? I don't believe capturing Kiev would have been decisive at all. With a sizable Ukrainian military and western support the war could have been carried on from elsewhere in the country, possibly even over the border from a NATO country. — Tzeentch

I already answered, but if you keep dismissing my answers as baseless because they do not provide whatever evidence you would find compelling, what can I do about it?
If the Russians were relying on certain conditions like a military coup from within Ukraine and the population wasn’t so hostile (compare to the case of Crimea) and the logistic/coordination wasn’t so shitty and they manage to kill Zelensky, etc. things may have panned out differently for the Russians even with a small number of ground troops. As you suggested elsewhere the Russians had years to prepare for such war and a whole network of economic/state apparatus insiders to plot this with. So the likelihood of success depended on the cumulative effect of several factors in the most optimistic scenario the Russians might have had in mind at the beginning of the war. This is what I understood from different expert reports.
And any single evidence might be deemed only circumstantial if considered in isolation from all other factors and their background history.

Besides he’s claim is more cautious than yours: “There are no exact formulas for how many soldiers are required to hold conquered territory, but a force ratio of as many as 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants has sometimes been necessary to pacify a hostile local population.” — neomac

Ahem. From the very same article...

The force ratio of Russian soldiers in Ukraine was far too small to hold territory—including cities—for long. — Tzeentch

Ahem. From the very same article: “Russia failed to achieve what was likely its main political objective: to overthrow the Kyiv government in a blitzkrieg military operation.”
So Jones’ claim (“The force ratio of Russian soldiers in Ukraine was far too small to hold territory—including cities—for long”) doesn’t seem enough to assess what Russia likely intentions were (at least at the beginning of the war), as you do ! Jones is not arguing that since “the force ratio of Russian soldiers in Ukraine was far too small to hold territory—including cities—for long” therefore overthrowing the Kyiv government most certainly wasn’t the main political objective Russians and it would be outlandish to think otherwise, indeed he claims it was and they failed it.

So the point of contention is whether regime change is a feasible option without occupying (the vast majority of) Ukraine. I think it isn't because:
- The Ukrainian military was never decisively defeated.
- There is/was plenty of anti-Russian/pro-Western sentiment in Ukraine, especially in the western parts.
- Western backing would likely counteract Russian influence in areas not held directly by the Russian military, if not outright create and fund a widespread insurgency.
We've seen the United States try to enact regime change under much more advantageous conditions with no success. — Tzeentch

OK but that’s your personal view. Maybe the Russians had different views. For example I wouldn’t exclude that the Russians might have considered the Malorossia region (Kiev) as less anti-Russian than the Western side of Ukraine (Galicia), giving them some hope to find less hostile masses. Or that Ukrainian military would have been less of a problem if part of it also in the highest ranks would have revolted against Zelensky. On the other side I wouldn’t exclude that the Ukrainians didn’t fully trust Western military aid, or they might have feared further mobilisation, escalations, involvement of additional Russian private militia, etc. from Russians.
In any case, I never said that regime change would have implied the end of the war.

Where did you get the estimates of the number of Russian troops were between 15000 and 30000? — neomac

The day-by-day campaign assessments by ISW. (note: not western media)
On February 26th, 2022 their report stated:
The Russian military’s main effort remains seizing Kyiv in an effort to force the Ukrainian government to capitulate. The Ukrainian General Staff reported at 11am local time February 26 that Ukrainian forces halted 14 Russian BTGs northeast of Kyiv and that Russia has committed its northern reserves – an additional 17 BTGs – along this operational direction.
As you can see, these estimates are based on reports from the Ukrainian general staff.
31 BTGs each comprised of roughly 600 - 800 officers and soldiers amounts to roughly 21,000 troops.
As far as I know these numbers aren't being contested. If anything a western source would likely have a tendency to overstate rather than to understate Russian troop numbers. If they are being contested please show it to me and I might reconsider. — Tzeentch

Still Western source and no “tangible” evidence (you didn’t count them yourself, did you?). If you rely on the estimate of “21,000 troops” from that report why don’t you rely on the claim “the Russian military’s main effort remains seizing Kyiv in an effort to force the Ukrainian government to capitulate” ?
The problem is not the lack of “tangible” evidence but a putative “blatant” incompatibility between the estimated number of ground troops and the estimated objective of the Russians. Yet if you find them so blatantly incompatible (because with 21,000 troops they couldn’t possibly overthrow Kiev’s regime), don’t you think that ISW would have noticed such blatant incompatibility? And once again, why did the Ukrainian feel threatened by 21k ground troops if this number was blatantly insufficient to capture Kiev, “Ukrainian military was never decisively defeated”, “There is/was plenty of anti-Russian/pro-Western sentiment in Ukraine, especially in the western parts”, “Western backing would likely counteract Russian influence in areas not held directly by the Russian military, if not outright create and fund a widespread insurgency”? Do you want me to believe that ISW, CSIS, WilsonCenter, RUSI, Ukrainian military experts don’t know the Russian military doctrine and couldn’t possibly think it was a maskirovka operation?
Again, the problem is not just that there is a “blatant” incompatibility, but that it appears to you a “blatant” incompatibility in light of your assumptions about the kind of war was fought in the first phase.

"reliability" instead of "certainty", "defeasible" instead of "fallible".
What's the difference in both cases?

When you objected (“Russians were going to install a puppet regime in Kiev while occupying less than 1/5th of the country”) I argued yes so does Mearsheimer in that video by saying that a possible aim of Russia was capturing Kiev [2]. — neomac

Where did you get the idea that Mearsheimer argues the Russians could install a puppet regime by capturing Kiev? — Tzeentch

Mearsheimer doesn’t explicitly talk about regime change in that video, all right. But he did it elsewhere:
You don’t think he has designs on Kyiv?
No, I don’t think he has designs on Kyiv. I think he’s interested in taking at least the Donbass, and maybe some more territory and eastern Ukraine, and, number two, he wants to install in Kyiv a pro-Russian government, a government that is attuned to Moscow’s interests. https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine (March 1, 2022)
And it makes sense. What else would be the purpose of capturing the political capital of Ukraine be? Forcing a negotiation (so surrender) and/or regime change. One can’t exclude regime change.

Are you really going to stake your argument on a single line by Mearsheimer which he treats as no more than a passing comment? — Tzeentch

Don’t need to, but you used to support your claims that “It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions”. So that comment doesn’t seem to support such a claim of yours.

I'll repeat myself: it's obvious that Kiev was an interesting military and political target for the Russians. If they could have taken it at no cost they probably would have, for a myriad of possible reasons. However, the data from the battle does not indicate they were prepared to pay much of a cost at all, which puts into question the idea that their entire campaign hinged on capturing Kiev. — Tzeentch

I didn’t even exclude that “things may have evolved differently from what initially planned, and still be worth it”. The change might have happened any time over march. In any case, the reports talking about blitzkrieg in capturing Kiev are giving a meaningful time range of around three days.

I’m not over/underestimating anything because I’m relying on legit source reports. — neomac


Your own source, Seth G. Jones, states that subdueing a country's population with a force ratio of 4 to 1000 is woefully inadequate, regardless of what metric you pick. I've already rebutted your example of Afghanistan which serves as a clear example in favor of the case I am making. — Tzeentch

That’s evidently false, Seth G. Jones himself claims: “Russia failed to achieve what was likely its main political objective: to overthrow the Kyiv government in a blitzkrieg military operation.”
Besides he’s claim is more cautious than yours: “There are no exact formulas for how many soldiers are required to hold conquered territory, but a force ratio of as many as 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants has sometimes been necessary to pacify a hostile local population.” (so there are some assumptions to make, to accept that formula)
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-ill-fated-invasion-ukraine-lessons-modern-warfare

And no source or argumentation is given - not very convincing. Mearsheimer contradicts Jones directly and gives a detailed argumentation as to why he believes the Russians did not aim for a classic blitzkrieg. — Tzeentch

Mearsheimer does not contradict Jones, because Mearsheimer is arguing against the idea that Russia could conquer the entire of Ukraine. If I’m reading more into Mearsheimer’s claims in that video, you do the same.

Except that I don't base my arguments on western media sources either. — Tzeentch

Really? Where did you get the estimates of the number of Russian troops were between 15000 and 30000? Did you count them yourself?

If you want only to prove that your view is plausible, then you need to show that you have sufficient evidence and that it is trustworthy. You're failing to do that because you're instead asking others to show their evidence or to show yours isn't trustworthy. This is an incorrect burden of proof for this type of claim. Other people lacking evidence is not evidence that your position is plausible, it's evidence that their position might not be.

If you want to prove that another's view is implausible, then you need to show that their position is overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary. You keep failing to do this because you revert instead to merely showing that there is evidence to contrary (sufficient to show your view is plausible, but insufficient to show another's view isn't).

If you want to prove that your view is more likely true than another's, then you need to have some metric of likelihood. Again, you keep failing to do this, merely pointing out that there exists evidence of alternative views, none of which has any bearing on likelihood.

You've written huge volumes of text, all of which add up to nothing more than that there exists evidence which supports (some of) your views. That's not an argument. That's the bare minimum threshold of entry into the debate. You then have to go on to argue either likelihood, or the implausibility (lack of evidence) for the alternative view. Otherwise, all you're doing is showing, at enormous length, that you qualify to be heard. Something which no-one is now contesting. — Isaac

Your opportunistic accusations are overlooking context and assumptions of my claims and objections.
To me the “burden of proof” depends on what is claimed in the first place. If I’m claiming that “Russia likely pursued regime change in the first phase of the war based on what has been reported”, I need to provide what has been reported. And I did.
Second “burden of proof” is limited by the available information, and how I can process them. I said and repeated that mine are just speculations under uncertainty (namely we lack enough relevant information to make my case conclusive) from a non-expert avg dude in a philosophy forum post format. Therefore there is no “overwhelmed by evidence” I can offer about “Russia likely pursued regime change in the first phase of the war” other then what has been reported by experts. As I already clarified even talking generically about evidences in a non-principled way is pointless, because I might still be unable to assess their authenticity or relevance due to lack of expertise.
Third “burden of proof” can be assessed in terms of “likelihood” depending what it is claimed. “Likelihood” expresses to me an assessment of the degree of confidence. Generically speaking, the platforms I reported from (and they were just a part of the sources I consulted) are well reputed, domain-specific, corroborate each other and do not contradict my wider background assumptions. Hence the degree of confidence I put on them is enough to use them for my speculations.
Fourth “there exists evidence which supports (some of) your views” holds also e.g. for Tzeench’s argument. The problem is not on the evidence, but on the assumptions made to assess those evidences. The price to pay for holding Tzeench assumptions is to conclude “the entirety of your argument, nay the entire western narrative, hinges on the idea that the Russians went in with a force to destroy the Ukrainian military and occupy all of Ukraine - something which is almost directly contradicted by the facts”, which are wrong (as far as I’m concerned) or implausible (as far as experts’ feedback is concerned).

4. Having answered all three questions, would you like to revise your answer to any of them?

5. Why? — Ludwig V

The point for me is that:
1. "knowledge" claim is a principled based or procedural form of certainty. And principles/procedures can validate our "knowledge" claim to the extant they are reliable.
2. we can't meaningfully set validation epistemic procedures arbitrarily high.
Condition one makes "knowledge" claims legitimate. Condition two makes knowledge" claims fallible.

Mearsheimer claims that the strategic objective Russians were aiming at were either capturing or threatening Kiev. — neomac

He does say that, without any elaboration whatsoever. — Tzeentch

I don’t care about your excuses. I myself still do not understand what “threatening” means if not “threatening to capture”.

You look confused. — neomac

Are you really implying the Russians were going to install a puppet regime in Kiev while occupying less than 1/5th of the country, with a western-trained, western-backed Ukrainian military occupying the rest, and an angry Ukrainian population to reckon with, with 190,000 troops? — Tzeentch

Right, so it’s FALSE the assumption that one needs military control over the whole territory to install a puppet regime. — neomac

Do you know what a strawman is?

... yet in the same post you claim that my argument hinges on “occupy all of Ukraine”. — neomac

Which it essentially does, whether you realise it or not. — Tzeentch

Again you look confused. You made and apparently still making 2 claims [1], that Mearsheimer’s video supports your “diversion” theory but in that video Mearhsiemer is arguing against the hypothesis that Russia wanted to conquer the whole of Ukraine (which you claim my argument hinges on), so I argued against this by saying that no Russia didn’t need to conquer all of Ukraine. When you objected (“Russians were going to install a puppet regime in Kiev while occupying less than 1/5th of the country”) I argued yes so does Mearsheimer in that video by saying that a possible aim of Russia was capturing Kiev [2]. So no, I’m not strawmanning you, at best you are strawmanning yourself.

Second, I do not have an equation on how many ground troops are necessary to ensure the success of a regime change in Ukraine. So the quantities you are considering in your arguments (“1/5th with the 4/5ths”, “occupy all of Ukraine”, “the vast majority of the country”) may make sense to support your claims under certain conditions, but not under all conditions (e.g. it depends on how hostile the population is, the contribution from state apparatus insiders, the support of aircraft/rocket shelling, the size of the targeted territory, etc.). — neomac

It makes imminent sense in the conditions the Ukraine war is fought under.
A large, capable Ukrainian military (outnumbering the Russians even). Vast amounts of Western support, etc.
Regime change under the conditions you have suggested is outlandish.


Russia might have had a complex strategy wrt Kiev (based on different possible scenarios), which include regime change. — neomac

Again, lovely theory, but where is the evidence?
Every time you need to invent a more complicated explanation as to why the facts don't line up with your view it becomes less convincing. — Tzeentch

Your argument is just dismissive of what has been reported due to the lack of certain evidence, which is essential if your assumptions are correct. And the assumptions are roughly that the conditions at the beginning of the war were such that the Russians absolutely needed a certain number of ground troops which they didn’t deploy, and since they knew that all along that implies it was likely a maskirovka kind of operation (at best aiming at forcing the Ukrainians to a negotiation table).
But I’m questioning that assumption based on what has been reported. So your argument begs the question.

To achieve regime change ground troops might have not been enough (also depending on how hostile the population would have proven to be), but in addition to that rocket/air-force strikes, possible inside jobs (especially by collaborationists within military/intelligence service favourable to a coup [1]) and killing Zelensky might have compensated. All these conditions are not implausible since they have some support from the available reports. — neomac

You vastly overestimate the weight of miscellaneous factors, and underestimate the importance of boots on the ground. No control means no regime change.
Your own article already blows your theory out of the water since it puts into perspective what kind of force is needed to occupy and control a population and what the Russians actually fielded.
Remember your example of Afghanistan? The US enjoyed every advantage imaginable. A decisive military victory, complete air dominance, support from multi-national coalitions and indigenous forces, a way higher troop-to-population ratio. It was fighting a third world country. And it still lost. Russia has NONE of those things. — Tzeentch

First, I’m not over/underestimating anything because I’m relying on legit source reports. If you find them unreliable, that’s still your problem not mine.
Second, no the article doesn’t blow out of the water my “theory out of the water since it puts into perspective what kind of force is needed to occupy and control a population” because the article (June 2022) is reporting about how the war in Kyiv actually evolved on the ground under the assumption that “a force ratio of as many as 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants has sometimes been necessary to pacify a hostile local population” and nothing of this questions the assumptions about Russian intentions that were made in the earliest phase of the war as reported on the same expert platform (March 2022): Russian intelligence and military agencies are also supporting paramilitary actors in Ukraine to conduct sabotage and subversion. The highest density of Russian-backed units appears to be in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has provided tanks, small arms, mobile artillery, fuel, training, and other aid to separatist rebels. Russian forces have helped create, sustain, and fund separatist political parties in Ukraine; established and aided paramilitary groups such as the Russian Orthodox Army and the Night Wolves; and recruited Cossack, Chechen, Serbian, and Russian paramilitaries to fight in Ukraine.16 But this Russian assistance to groups in Ukraine appears to be growing. One use of these groups may be in sabotage and other irregular warfare or “fifth column” activities in the capital of Kiev or in the rear of Ukrainian military forces while Russian conventional forces advance from the east. In addition, the Kremlin has developed plans to install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine, according to British intelligence, possibly via a coup. https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-gamble-ukraine
Indeed, even in the very same article you took that excerpts it is still claimed: Russia failed to achieve what was likely its main political objective: to overthrow the Kyiv government in a blitzkrieg military operation. https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-ill-fated-invasion-ukraine-lessons-modern-warfare
Whether those assumptions about early Russian intentions were wrong can’t be proved just by size and movement of ground troops over one month (even more so if one takes into account Russian logistical and coordination failures).

Except that I'm not basing myself on Russian sources, but nice try. — Tzeentch

As if in Western media are impenetrable by pro-Russian propaganda that you can read and regurgitate here.

Here for more details: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23003689/putin-ukraine-russia-donbas-energy-feint — neomac

Don't bother with such blatantly biased and low-quality articles. The some of the sources linked in that article literally lead to Twitter. — Tzeentch

As if experts can’t comment the war on Twitter.

If the point of the advance on Kiev was to force the Ukrainian leadership to the negotiating table they succeeded actually. Those negotiations failed, though - blocked by the US, we now know. And obviously Russia is so far unable to end the western policy of NATO membership for Ukraine, which I agree is probably their primary strategic objective. — Tzeentch

So let’s not loop over the same arguments once again. (And notice I'm not claiming that your hypothesis is outlandish, while you do claim that mine is).



[1]

The Russians invaded Ukraine while outnumbered, with a force that was way too small to occupy all of it. This leads me to believe that the territories they occupied in east and southern Ukraine probably roughly coincide with the initial aims of the invasion.
Mearsheimer makes that point in detail. — Tzeentch


Russia pursued regime change, denazification of Ukraine. This doesn’t require the occupation of all Ukraine, it requires to take control over Kiev and install a pro-Russian puppet regime (as the US did in Afghanistan). So far Russia tried but failed this objective. Along with the objective of demilitarization (or neutrality). Ukraine is getting more pro-Western and its chances of joining the West have arguably increased thanks to the war started by Putin.
The small number of troops at the beginning of the war was likely because Russians didn’t expect the kind of fierce resistance the Ukrainians demonstrated (due to the Russian intelligence failure).
Concerning Mearsheimer’s video, it’s too long. It would be easier if you specified at what point of that video Mearsheimer is offering arguments in support of your belief that "the territories they [the Russians] occupied in east and southern Ukraine probably roughly coincide with the initial aims of the invasion". — neomac

[2]

Are you really implying the Russians were going to install a puppet regime in Kiev while occupying less than 1/5th of the country, with a western-trained, western-backed Ukrainian military occupying the rest, and an angry Ukrainian population to reckon with, with 190,000 troops? — Tzeentch


Yes I do. And also Mearsheimer is confirming it at minute 24:20 Mearsheimer of your video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) where he claims that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev and conquer a large swath of territory in East and South Ukraine. And that is not implausible if one takes into account the Russian intelligence failure I was talking about (among other possible miscalculations, of course). — neomac

23:05 - 27:20 discusses the implications of the size of the Russian invasion force.
1:30:40 - 1:32:00 Mearsheimer makes the point that he believes Russian territorial ambitions escalated as the war progressed.
Mearsheimer throughout the lecture actually argues that Russia might not have had any major territorial ambitions at all at the start of the war.
And recent revelations about the peace negotiations that took place weeks into the conflict might actually confirm that. The Russians were willing to make major concessions when they negotiated for Ukrainian neutrality, and it might only be after the negotiations failed that the Russian strategy changed to annexing parts of Ukraine. — Tzeentch


In the first clip Mearsheimer’s is questioning the idea that Russia could conquer the entire of Ukraine. In the second clip Mearsheimer is questioning the alleged imperialistic ambitions of Putin. Neither of these arguments are relevant to counter the arguments that there were intelligence failures on the Russian side that might have compromised their strategic objectives whatever they were.
Said that, I also remark that at minute 24:20 Mearsheimer is claiming that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev and conquer a large swath of territory in East and South Ukraine. That doesn’t seem to support your claim “It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions”, it just supports the idea that the Russian military deployment wasn’t enough to subdue the entire Ukraine. — neomac

:up:

Both the article and Mearsheimer's view on regime change in Ukraine (that he shared only days after the invasion - way too early for it to be viewed as a detailed assessment, in my opinion) are directly contradicted by a point Mearsheimer made himself more recently, namely that the Russian troop deployments were far too small to carry out a classic blitzkrieg necessary to facilitate such a thing. He states that almost literally word for word in one of the clips I gave you. — Tzeentch

Mearsheimer in the clips you linked talks about occupying all of Ukraine and imperialism. However at minute 24:20 of your video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) Mearsheimer claims that the strategic objective Russians were aiming at were either capturing or threatening Kiev. He uses the word “capturing”. He doesn’t exclude that “capturing Kiev” might have been their intention. So suck it up and move on.

my point never was that control of the whole country is necessary (nice strawman), but that enacting regime change while holding less than 1/5th with the 4/5ths being occupied by a western-backed, western-trained enemy military is utter fantasy. — "Tzeentch

the entirety of your argument, nay the entire western narrative, hinges on the idea that the Russians went in with a force to destroy the Ukrainian military and occupy all of Ukraine - something which is almost directly contradicted by the facts. — "Tzeentch

I don't see how regime change is even a reasonable option without decisively defeating the Ukrainian military and occupying the vast majority of the country. — Tzeentch

You look confused. First of all, you accuse me of strawmanning you because “occupy all of Ukraine” to achieve regime change is not what you are objecting to me, yet in the same post you claim that my argument hinges on “occupy all of Ukraine”. So no, I’m not strawmanning you. At best, you are strawmanning yourself.
Second, I do not have an equation on how many ground troops are necessary to ensure the success of a regime change in Ukraine. So the quantities you are considering in your arguments (“1/5th with the 4/5ths”, “occupy all of Ukraine”, “the vast majority of the country”) may make sense to support your claims under certain conditions, but not under all conditions (e.g. it depends on how hostile the population is, the contribution from state apparatus insiders, the support of aircraft/rocket shelling, the size of the targeted territory, etc.).

Again I ask you, Russia installs a puppet. What happens to the areas that aren't under Russian control? What happens to the Ukrainian military consisting of hundreds of thousands of men? What happens to western support? Do those things magically disappear?
No. The war would obviously continue and the "regime change" would be completely meaningless in areas that Russia doesn't directly control. — Tzeentch

Even if you want to make the point that their goal was to enact regime change in Kiev, you cannot explain why only a small portion of those forces actually marched on Kiev, and intense fighting over the city never took place. — Tzeentch

Killing off leadership figures is a common method in warfare, which I already explained to you. And it's not obvious at all that killing Zelensky would change anything about Ukraine's political course. In fact, I believe it would change nothing. How much influence do you believe Russia has in Ukraine, outside of the areas it directly controls? Virtually zero. — Tzeentch

You keep focusing on the number of deployed ground troops as if my argument essentially hinges on that. But that’s not what I argued (nice strawman). Russia might have had a complex strategy wrt Kiev (based on different possible scenarios), which include regime change. To achieve regime change ground troops might have not been enough (also depending on how hostile the population would have proven to be), but in addition to that rocket/air-force strikes, possible inside jobs (especially by collaborationists within military/intelligence service favourable to a coup [1]) and killing Zelensky might have compensated. All these conditions are not implausible since they have some support from the available reports.
Detecting intentions from the troop movements on the ground may underestimate the impact of logistic and coordination problems and the equipment losses the Russians suffered.
The West propaganda objection is as good as the Russian propaganda counter-objection.

That's another strawman. I never argued the Ukrainians could have known prior to the invasion that the Russians would not try to take Kiev. The fog of war can make diversionary attacks very effective, and we know for a fact that the Russians employ deception as a core pillar of their military doctrine. The fact that the Russians used 15,000 - 30,000 out of a 190,000 men in their offensive towards Kiev, and the fact that very little heavy fighting seems to have taken place, does not imply the Russians attributed high strategic significance to the capture of Kiev. — Tzeentch

First, it’s not a strawman because you are making now the distinction between prior to the invasion and during the invasion, and I didn’t make this distinction either. I didn’t even exclude that “things may have evolved differently from what initially planned, and still be worth it. I don't deny that.” But estimates about the number of the deployed Russian troops were available very early in March 2022 (while the Russian attempt lasted till end march), so that begs the question: how credible was the Russian threat to the Ukrainians backed by the Americans if the number of ground troops was all the counts and it was evident to all military experts that they were insufficient to capture Kyiv?
Second, the arguments supporting the “diversion” hypothesis have been questioned for several reasons: They are not consistent with the structure of Russia’s military campaign, public statements by Russian authorities, or even a basic cost-benefit analysis. Here for more details: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23003689/putin-ukraine-russia-donbas-energy-feint
But the point I care mostly about remains the same. So far, if Russians wanted to threaten/capture Kiev as expected (also because without control over Malorossia there is no buffer territory wrt NATO), they failed. If the Russians wanted just to consolidate the Eastern-South, they didn't ensure the geopolitical victory they were after (at minute 1:40:04 of your video “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU”).


[1]
Russian intelligence and military agencies are also supporting paramilitary actors in Ukraine to conduct sabotage and subversion. The highest density of Russian-backed units appears to be in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has provided tanks, small arms, mobile artillery, fuel, training, and other aid to separatist rebels.15 Russian forces have helped create, sustain, and fund separatist political parties in Ukraine; established and aided paramilitary groups such as the Russian Orthodox Army and the Night Wolves; and recruited Cossack, Chechen, Serbian, and Russian paramilitaries to fight in Ukraine.16 But this Russian assistance to groups in Ukraine appears to be growing. One use of these groups may be in sabotage and other irregular warfare or “fifth column” activities in the capital of Kiev or in the rear of Ukrainian military forces while Russian conventional forces advance from the east. In addition, the Kremlin has developed plans to install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine, according to British intelligence, possibly via a coup. https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-gamble-ukraine

Second, nowhere we have discussed related terminology... — neomac

There's no need for us to discuss it, since those terms are already neatly defined. It's up to you to use those terms properly. — Tzeentch

Prove that I didn’t use those terms properly. You just clarified your understanding of one term: “decapitation is a military-strategic goal that aims to sow chaos in the enemy's command & control, for example by taking out leadership figures and destroying central communication networks.“
But that’s obviously a questionable definition, “decapitation” is neither specifically nor primarily a military-strategic term. As far as I’m concerned, I talked about “the decapitation of Zelensky’s regime”, “The US said it believed that Russia intended to ‘decapitate’ Ukraine's government”, so I was always talking regime change. No goalpost shift.

Why are you using wikipedia as a source? Also, note the claim there: "Stiff Ukrainian resistance sapped the momentum." Where is the proof of that? As far as I can tell the Russians never made a serious attempt at attacking Kiev itself. — Tzeentch

Or maybe Russia failed due to all sorts of miscalculations, even about Ukrainian resistance (https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-ill-fated-invasion-ukraine-lessons-modern-warfare). Write to wikipedia if you want evidences for its claims.
As I said, I rely on experts’ feedback and mainstream sources accessible to me. If you have legit sources that can debunk the thesis of Russian miscalculations and intelligence failures in the first phase of the war, post them here.

Installing a puppet regime doesn’t need military control over the whole territory. — neomac
The invasion of Afghanistan started with the crushing defeat of the Taliban from which they took years to recover. — Tzeentch

First things first, the puppet regime in Afghanistan didn’t have military control of the whole country, right? Right, so it’s FALSE the assumption that one needs military control over the whole territory to install a puppet regime.
Second, as I told you many times, it’s possible that the Russians didn’t rely just on the efficacy of military action on the ground (backed by rocket shelling and air force), but also on certain weaknesses of the Ukrainian regime backed by the unreliable FSB intelligence pre-war investigation (https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/ukraine-through-russias-eyes) and the likely presence of Ukrainian political/military/intelligence collaborationist (or potential defectors). Early purges on both sides support these hypotheses. Putin’s suggesting an Ukrainian military coup (to replace a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who have settled in Kyiv and taken the entire Ukrainian people hostage”) would fit well in this scenario too.
That regime change was a likely goal is confirmed by attempts to kill Zelensky. And implied by official declarations: if among the declared objectives there is “denazification of Ukraine” (not part of Ukraine, not 4 oblasts of Ukraine, but Ukraine https://tass.com/politics/1409189) and the government is called “nazi” I don’t know how else anybody can interpret this stated objective other than regime change (even Lavrov and Medvev repeatedly called for regime change in Ukraine).
Since Russia’s launch of a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, it has been clear that Vladimir Putin’s announced “special operation” did not go according to plan. Putin’s proclaimed goals of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” the government of Ukraine—combined with the Russian military posture and performance in the opening days of the invasion—led many experts to conclude that Putin’s original war aims were nothing short of regime change in Kyiv.
However, faced with fierce Ukrainian defense and the West’s crippling economic sanctions, Putin appears to be recalculating his initial maximalist aims. Putin’s efforts to force Zelensky to concede on all demands—lay down arms, forswear membership in Western alliances, and recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the independence of the "republics" in the Donbas—would essentially amount to Ukraine’s surrender, and thus have proven futile.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/why-putin-scaling-down-his-political-aims-while-scaling-fight

The difference from the US case however is that Putin could arguably rely on collaborationists in the army/intelligence... — neomac

"Arguably" meaning, in contrived scenarios that you invented specifically to suit your argument, without a shred of evidence given? — Tzeentch

Again, I didn’t invent anything, I gave you the evidence accessible to me. “Arguably” in that sentence means that I can argue that claim based on the evidence accessible to me.

Prof Mearsheimer, a noted political scientist of the University of Chicago, feels that Russia’s aim is not to seize and defend territory in Ukraine (as it could get bogged down in an Afghanistan-like quagmire). The Russian aim is simply to either wreck Ukraine as a functional state or ensure regime change. — neomac


I highly doubt Mearsheimer made that claim. There's no source given and a Google search yielded nothing. — Tzeentch

You don’t think he has designs on Kyiv?
No, I don’t think he has designs on Kyiv. I think he’s interested in taking at least the Donbass, and maybe some more territory and eastern Ukraine, and, number two, he wants to install in Kyiv a pro-Russian government, a government that is attuned to Moscow’s interests.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine (March 1, 2022)

What's your excuse now?

I'm not randomly assuming Russian military/intelligence failures, I'm relying on what has been reported by legit sources. — neomac

What makes these sources legit in your mind? They provide no actual evidence to back up their claims, and their claims are counter to what military logic dictates. — Tzeentch

Even if they provided evidences, I might still be accused of being unable to assess the authenticity or the implications of such evidences.
You can’t raise the standards for what constitutes “evidence” arbitrarily high, even more so in the relaxed context of a philosophy forum. Again, I’m an avg dude, and I speculate over the evidences available and computable by me. Therefore if you have better sources than the ones I provided, post them here.

What makes those sources legit? In general, the reputation of the publication platform, the fact they support each other, and the fact that they appear plausible enough wrt my background knowledge.

As I said, I’m an avg dude so I’ll reason over the evidences accessible to me. — neomac

The thing is, you're not actually providing any evidence even when I've been repeatedly asking for it. Newspaper clippings and wikipedia articles are not evidence. Furthermore, you seem to lack the basic foundational knowledge on the topic to detect complete fiction. — Tzeentch

First, you have to clarify what constitutes evidence to you, and you too cite experts (like Mearsheimer)
Second, you can’t set standards for evidence arbitrarily high (e.g. I can’t certainly provide a police dossier with all the material evidences proving beyond any doubt that Zelensky has been subject to 3 attempts of murder by the Russians), even more so in a relaxed context of a philosophy forum.
Third, as I never claimed I’m an expert or even an amateur of military/intelligence field, and made it clear repeatedly, it’s pointless to accuse me of lacking “basic foundational knowledge” in the military/intelligence field. I’m fine with relying on military/intelligence experts’ feedback for that matter. It’s not evident to me you are one, nor even Mearsheimer, for that matter.

In other words, so far, if Russians wanted to threaten/capture Kiev as expected, ... — neomac

Either of those options would have vastly different implications, so I'm not sure why you are treating them as though they are the same.
Threatening Kiev is what actually happened, and it actually ended up with the Ukrainians and Russians entering negotations, which proceeded to a stage where an agreement was nearly reached. — Tzeentch

Because to me, “threatening Kiev” roughly means “threatening to capture Kiev”.
BTW what does “threatening Kiev” mean to you? What did the Russian threaten to do with their troops in Kiev if it was evident to anybody with “basic foundational knowledge” that the Russians were most certainly unable to capture Kiev?

What you're arguing is that the "real" Russian intentions were to capture Kiev — Tzeentch

No, dude, let’s not twist things around at your convenience. I’m talking about what has been officially reported by legit sources about Russian intentions in the first phase. While you are arguing that Putin’s “real” intentions weren’t the ones reported by those legit sources.
As far as I’m concerned, to repeat it once again, I don’t find implausible that Putin aimed at pressuring Kiev to a negotiation. Nor that negotiation might have been possible even without regime change. Nor that Russian troops on the ground weren’t enough to ensure the capture of Kiev all alone. I simply find implausible to claim that it’s unlikely that Russia pursued regime change because of lack of manpower or because negotiation was most certainly the only realistic goal. As I said many times, I don’t think that Russians necessarily counted on the sheer force and size of their troops to make Kiev capitulate. Support from air force and heavy rocket shelling could have also played an important role in wrecking Kiev’s morale or capacity of resistance. At the same time the Russians might have also counted on/expected some inside defection/support to regime collapse. Not to mention that the the poor execution of the first phase of the war makes it more likely that the Russians have tried to achieve something beyond their means. “It’s taken me a while to figure out what they’re trying to do because it looks so ridiculous and incompetent,” Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at the CNA think tank, said on Twitter of the Russian advance. “The Russian operation is a bizarre scheme, based on terrible political assumptions, with poor relationship to their training & capabilities.” (https://www.vox.com/22954833/russia-ukraine-invasion-strategy-putin-kyiv)

You'll have to come with explanations why many of the facts do not seem to line up with your view. — Tzeentch

What many facts? You just talked about size and movement of the Russian troops on the ground. And “peace talking” isn’t a confirmation against my claims , for 2 reasons: I didn’t exclude that negotiation was a pursued objective (I just argued that Russia might likely have pursued also regime change), an attempted capture of Kiev could have led to peace talks as well.
Now my questions to you. If Russians most certainly didn’t pursue regime change:
- Why did the Russians try to kill Zelensky?
- Why did the Russian troops try to encircle Kiev ?
- Why did the Russians engage in troop battles, if they could simply heavy shell Kiev?

Installing a puppet regime, regime change and decapitation are three completely different subjects. You are shifting your goalposts.
Decapitation is a military-strategic goal that aims to sow chaos in the enemy's command & control, for example by taking out leadership figures and destroying central communication networks. The Russians probably pursued that strategy as a integral part of their military doctrine (so does the US).
The idea that the Russians could pursue regime change in Ukraine by killing Zelensky is just silly. Zelensky would simply be replaced by another pro-Western talking head and literally nothing would change. And we've already discussed the notion of installing a puppet regime without actually controlling Ukraine or destroying the Ukrainian military - outlandish. — Tzeentch

First, you just keep repeating your claims as if you already counter-argued my views in a very compelling way. Which is not the case.
Second, nowhere we have discussed related terminology so you can not accuse me of shifting goalposts because to you those terms mean completely different things. Even more so if I’m less interested in arguing the details of the Russian military plans (in different phases), independently from the geopolitical endgame.
Third, I do not believe that "installing a puppet regime, regime change and decapitation are three completely different subjects". They are all arguably linked as steps toward the same goal. And I backed that with several clues (Putin's support for Yanukhovic as Russian puppet, killing attempts against Zelensky, and possibilities for Putin to conspire with collaborations within the Ukrainian army and intelligence).

You can see the territories the Russian forces occupied during their drive on Kiev, which are now coloured in blue. Urban areas were bypassed, large swathes of open ground were left completely ignored. That's not what an attempt to seize and hold looks like. — Tzeentch

Yes because the Russian failed (and let’s not forget that their military effort on the ground was supported by heavy shelling too). This fact however doesn’t exclude that this could plausibly be their initial aim.
Initially, Russian forces captured key areas to the north and west of Kyiv, leading to international speculation of the city's imminent fall. However, stiff Ukrainian resistance sapped the momentum. Poor Russian logistics and tactical decisions helped the defenders to thwart efforts at encirclement, and, after a month of protracted fighting, Ukrainian forces mounted successful counterattacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

They somehow capture Kiev, install a puppet, and the western backing, Ukrainian military and Ukrainian resistance magically go 'poof!' while an 190,000 man army maintains control a population of 41 million in a country that has an area of 600,000 square kilometers? — Tzeentch

Installing a puppet regime doesn’t need military control over the whole territory. Even the puppet regime installed by the US in Afghanistan did NOT have military control over all the territory (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57933979). The difference from the US case however is that Putin could arguably rely on collaborationists in the army/intelligence (like the ones purged by Zelensky), pro-Russian political parties (that during the war were banned by Zelensky), and an ousted Ukrainian president to be reinstalled if needed. So no my speculation about Russian military goals (at least during the first phase) is not outlandish at all, nor unpopular among Western experts.
Prof Mearsheimer, a noted political scientist of the University of Chicago, feels that Russia’s aim is not to seize and defend territory in Ukraine (as it could get bogged down in an Afghanistan-like quagmire). The Russian aim is simply to either wreck Ukraine as a functional state or ensure regime change. https://thedailyguardian.com/putin-may-be-aiming-to-wreck-ukraine-as-a-functional-state/

Ok, what do you think we know about the Russians' geopolitical endgame?

Do you know more than us? — Tzeentch

Waste of time. I answered that already (and I was already using the first-person plural):

Putin’s endgame
(In Mearsheimer’s words “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU” at minute 1:40:04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) — neomac

You're just assuming colossal intelligence failures took place, without actually having any idea of what Russian intelligence looked like? Odd. — Tzeentch

I'm not randomly assuming Russian military/intelligence failures, I'm relying on what has been reported by legit sources (I gave you some links). If you have legit sources debunking what has been reported, just post them here. Sarcasm doesn't replace a substantive argument. As I said, I’m an avg dude so I’ll reason over the evidences accessible to me.

I don't think the Russian invasion needs to be viewed as a colossal disaster when we take into consideration the Russians went into Ukraine with a "limited aim strategy," which is Mearsheimer's argument.

I think there are strong indications that the Russians went into Ukraine with limited aims. The number of troops they deployed, the terms they presented during the negotations, etc. — Tzeentch

Things may have evolved differently from what initially planned, and still be worth it. I don't deny that.
And mine remain speculations, after all. Yet movement and size of the troops in the battle of Kiev are not strong indications against the idea that Russia might have tried to pursue regime change in the first phase of the war (indeed that is what one could expect under the premises I discussed).
Besides in the video you posted to support your claims, Mearsheimer has claimed:
- At minute 24:20 Mearsheimer of your video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev.
- At minute 1:40:04 “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU”
In other words, so far, if Russians wanted to threaten/capture Kiev as expected, they failed. If the Russians wanted just to consolidate the Eastern-South, they didn't ensure the geopolitical victory they were after.

So what else was the purpose of aiming at capturing or threatening Kiev if not regime change? — neomac

Options include:
1) Showing the West the Russian threats were no bluff.
2) Forcing Kiev to the negotiating table, which, we now know, they succeeded in.
3) Creating a diversion for the offensive in the south. — Tzeentch

The only aim I care discussing is 2. Forcing Kiev to the negotiating table, which, we now know, they succeeded in.
First, forcing a negotiation doesn’t exclude regime change. Putin’s request might have been a transition to a pro-West political leadership without bloodshed or detention or persecution for Zelensky.
Second, I don’t need to question the fact that Putin had other options than the decapitation of Zelensky’s regime, or that Putin preferred negotiation with Zelensky over regime change. Either cases do not exclude the fact that Putin ALSO pursued regime change, given that in phase one of the war there were also several Russian backed assassination attempts against Zelensky (https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-zelensky-russia-backed-assassination-attempts-report-2022-3?r=US&IR=T)

The pattern of troop movements suggests the Russian drive on Kiev was unlikely to have as its goal to occupy and hold. — Tzeentch

I would prefer to read directly from your source. In general, execution can also be mismanaged and Western military experts have already reported on the poor Russian military performance.
Said that, I’m interested less in discussing the details of Putin’s military tactics and strategy on the battlefield, than discussing the overall status of Putin’s “special military operation” in light of Putin’s endgame
(In Mearsheimer’s words “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU” at minute 1:40:04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM)

The idea that Kiev represented the promise of victory is a notion I already dealt with before and you can find most of that exchange on page 309 and page 313 of this thread. — Tzeentch

I also find it plausible that the Russians did not intend to take and hold Kiev, even if they could have. I've already presented arguments why I believe that.

In summary:

- The Ukraine's centre of gravity is not in Kiev, because this war isn't conducted from Kiev. It's foreign support that is keeping this war going. Capturing Kiev would be symbolic, but not decisive.

- With the limited amount of troops Russia has deployed, it is unlikely they intended to spend the time and effort it would require to capture Kiev, when they had areas of strategic significance to occupy in the south.

- It is in Russia's primary interest that Ukraine continues to fight this war themselves. The capture of Kiev and it's C&C facilities could bring a western intervention closer.

- My view is that the drive on Kiev was a show of force and Russia's last attempt at finishing the conflict quickly. By showing they were not bluffing, they could conceivably have made the West back off and forced a renegotiation of Ukraine's position. If this were to fail, which it did, it could double as a diversionary attack to allow Russian forces to occupy the south with less resistance. — Tzeentch

Concerning the first point, Kiev is the political capital if the endgame is to impact Kiev’s foreign politics would obviously be the first place to go. What was military feasible to the Russians and actually pursued is not on me to establish. I can just read what has been reported and reason from there.
Concerning the second, as I said movements on the battlefield (independently from the intelligence/military poor performance) are not the only relevant factor, Putin might have counted also on a network of collaborationist insiders (he also publicly singled his favour for an Ukrainian military coup). Besides Russians tried to assassinate Zelensky and let's not forget the heavy shelling of the capital (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)).
Concerning the third, it’s been reported that the Westerners were expecting Ukraine to capitulate soon in the first phase.
Concerning the fourth, your views do not change what we know about the geopolitical endgame of Putin, nor Putin’s and other Russian government representatives’ declarations against Zelensky’s regime, nor Russian deal-breaker conditions for a negotiation. I care discussing what Russians did up until now on the battlefield in different phases wrt these points. Suggesting that military threatening Kiev in the first phase was just to show off their seriousness without being ready and finding feasible to follow through, goes against the logic of “they were not bluffing”. Or else that failing that, they could still exploit the move as a diversion in occupying East-Southern part of Ukraine (as opposed to simply and maybe more conveniently focusing on this part of Ukraine from the start), can’t underplay the relevance of such military failure wrt Putin’s geopolitical endgame.

Besides, you are making the point that the Russians suffered some colossal intelligence failure, so why are you referring to western experts and articles? — Tzeentch

Meaning? I doubt that Russians would be free to acknowledge “colossal intelligence failures” especially if that might involve Putin’s responsibilities. There have been Putin’s purges though: https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-purges-fsb-over-ukraine-failures-bellingcat-expert-2022-4?r=US&IR=T

That's clearly not what Mearsheimer "is confirming". — Tzeentch

Mearsheimer is claiming at minute 24:20 Mearsheimer of your video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev. So what else was the purpose of aiming at capturing or threatening Kiev if not regime change? If the endgame is the political alignment of Ukraine, either there is a regime change or Zelensky's regime surrenders to Russian demands. So regime change was likely an option (and after all there was already an Ukrainian ex-president removed by the American "coup d'etat" to reinstate).

You have no idea what you're talking about if you consider it feasible to install a puppet regime when an enemy force is occupying the vast majority of a country. — Tzeentch

First, it's not on me to consider it feasible. I'm talking about the likely strategic objectives at least of the first phase of the war.
Second, you keep ignoring/dismissing the possible miscalculations of the Russians.
Third, notice also that there was a network of collaborationist within the Ukrainian armee and secret service that could have tried a coup d'etat favorable to Putin. See Zelensky's purges among generals and security Services:
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-ukraine-latest-news-2022-04-01/card/president-zelensky-fires-two-generals-cASwBg7pfy4FKlh2f25t
https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/87585
Fourth, even Yanukovic was warming up: https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/russia-ukraine-crisis/ex-ukraine-president-yanukovych-asks-zelensky-to-overcome-pride-and-stop-war-with-russia-articleshow.html

Where'd you even get such a notion? — Tzeentch

From different sources, which I can only partly link here.

- Putin himself:
the Russian president struck an uncompromising tone in a Friday address to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU), describing the government in Kiev as a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who have settled in Kyiv and taken the entire Ukrainian people hostage.” Putin appeared to welcome the prospect of—If not explicitly call for—a military coup, encouraging the ZSU to “take power into your own hands” and opining that it would be “easier” to negotiate with Ukraine’s top brass than with the Zelenskyy administration.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/can-russia-and-ukraine-negotiate-end-war-200858
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/25/its-not-rational-putins-bizarre-speech-wrecks-his-once-pragmatic-image

- Experts:
The Center for Naval Analyses said that Russia would create a pincer movement to encircle Kyiv and envelop Ukraine's forces in the east, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies identifying three axes of advance: from Belarus in the north, from Donetsk in the center, and from Crimea in the south. The US said it believed that Russia intended to "decapitate" Ukraine's government and install its own, and US intelligence officials believed that Kyiv would fall within 96 hours
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine:_phase_1

It's no wonder your theory hinges on Russian intelligence failures of colossal proportions — Tzeentch

"My theory" hinges on what has been reported by many mainstream outlets:
https://www.ft.com/content/ba440d90-b0ba-4a73-a138-9cb1229b6cac
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/putins-colossal-intelligence-failure
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a39376114/is-putin-crazy-or-bad-intel/
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220303-us-experts-militarily-the-russian-invasion-is-a-disaster-so-far

What are you referring to with "losing the conflict over Ukraine"? Russia was already occupying Donbas and Crimea. No soft power was changing that until February 2022. — neomac

Ukrainian alignment is what the conflict is about. Donbas and Crimea did not stop Ukraine from being turned into what Russia deemed a "western bulwark on Russia's borders". That's why it was (or considered itself) losing. — Tzeentch

Ukraine was not within NATO nor EU either. And again until February 2022 it wasn’t obvious that Ukraine would have joined NATO/EU imminently no matter what. No timeline no positive assessment about Ukraine eligibility. Plus the resistance of France and Germany. It’s not even obvious now, go figure

So the war might have evolved in realistic ways that could still be more advantageous to Russia than the current war. — neomac

I don't see the point in indulging in fantasy. Where would you even find the type of information necessary to make a judgement about that? We probably have access to only a fraction of the relevant information as is. — Tzeentch

You do indulge in such counterfactual speculations, when it’s matter to strategically justify Russian aggression of Ukraine. And again my reasoning is still based on known pre-war conditions. So I expect you to reciprocate in the same vain. Instead of throwing random objections.

Are you really implying the Russians were going to install a puppet regime in Kiev while occupying less than 1/5th of the country, with a western-trained, western-backed Ukrainian military occupying the rest, and an angry Ukrainian population to reckon with, with 190,000 troops? — Tzeentch

Yes I do. And also Mearsheimer is confirming it at minute 24:20 Mearsheimer of your video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM) where he claims that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev and conquer a large swath of territory in East and South Ukraine. And that is not implausible if one takes into account the Russian intelligence failure I was talking about (among other possible miscalculations, of course).

If you're going to scoff at Mearsheimer and claim knowledge on the subject, don't come at me with outlandish notions such as this one. You're making a fool of yourself. — Tzeentch

The problem is not scoffing Mearsheimer. But that his claims question yours (“It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions”).
Besides I'm not scoffing Mearsheimer, I’m just saying that if you want to give me military/intelligence lessons, better go directly to military/intelligence input, not to geopolitical academics like Mearsheimer.

So all else equal (in the pre-war conditions) the counterfactual scenario I suggested would have favoured Russia more than it did the ongoing war. — neomac

I disagree, and evidently so did the Russians or they wouldn't have invaded. — Tzeentch

I'm not questioning the fact that you agree with the Russians, I'm just questioning the reasons of your assumptions. Russians may have made miscalculations. And you with them.

That Russia was losing the conflict over Ukraine prior to the invasion when it was primarily decided through soft power, — Tzeentch

What are you referring to with "losing the conflict over Ukraine"? Russia was already occupying Donbas and Crimea. No soft power was changing that until February 2022.

Again I disagree, and apparently so did the Russians.
The longer the Russians let the US train, arm and finance the Ukrainians, the harder the eventual military invasion would be. — Tzeentch

Once again, we are talking past each other. If your reasoning starts with the assumption that Russia was set to start the kind of invasion we see now no matter what, one can then argue what was the best time window for Russia to do so. However I'm questioning that assumption and you yourself assumed that Russian were "still trying to pursue a diplomatic solution". So the war might have evolved in realistic ways that could still be more advantageous to Russia than the current war. Especially if Donbas+Crimea+land bridge were not Putin's endgame. As Mearsheimer says in your video “Winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU” (minute 1:40:04)

It would be more useful if you posted the military expert source, you rely on. — neomac

I already did, with time stamps and all. — Tzeentch

Mearsheimer?! If you want to accuse me of being layman on military/intelligence issues seriously, you better point me at some feedback grounded on documented military/intelligence expertise not at geopolitical academics. I've done my homework on this. Don't even waste your time.

That doesn’t seem to support your claim “It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions”, it just supports that that military deployment wasn’t enough to subdue the entire Ukraine. — neomac

I think that supports my claim. Mearsheimer explains how controlling a country as large as Ukraine with 190,000 troops is military fantasy, especially considering the expected resistance from the Ukrainian population. He even states he doesn't believe the Russians had any major territorial ambitions in Ukraine for the very same reason. — Tzeentch

You seem confused. Neither I [1] nor Mearsheimer (in that clip) nor you (in that quotation) were talking about "controlling a country as large as Ukraine" or "any major territorial ambitions".


[1]

Russia pursued regime change, denazification of Ukraine. This doesn’t require the occupation of all Ukraine, it requires to take control over Kiev and install a pro-Russian puppet regime (as the US did in Afghanistan) — neomac

With the amount of financial and military support that was flowing into Ukraine before the war, there was no chance of Russia destabilizing Ukraine. Ukraine was rapidly shedding all Russian influence. In terms of soft power the Russians were already on the defensive. That's why they had to resort to hard power and that's the reason they invaded. The idea that Russia could have gotten what it wanted without military means is nonsensical given the gravity of the military invasion that took place, which they themselves must have been fully aware of. In other words, I pretty much exclude the possibility that Russia could have gotten its way in Ukraine without resorting to military means. — Tzeentch

Russia was already engaged in a war with Ukraine in 2014 (so ALREADY destabilising the territorial and political integrity of Ukraine!). However this wasn’t enough to trigger the kind of military aid and sanctions we see now after the invasion of Ukraine. Until the war of 2022 started, the financial and military flow from the US was constrained by 3 factors (type and volume of military aid, lack of wider support from the West), the political pressure from the West was constrained by the fact the Western Europeans wanted to keep their business with Russia (which Nord Stream 2 would have further encouraged) and by the fact that Russia could still pressure the Ukrainian domestic politics due to pro-Russian propaganda and parties. Add to that, the effort that Russia is sustaining now and it seems determined & capable to sustain in the long run could have been invested in consolidating the control of the territories pre-February 2022. So all else equal (in the pre-war conditions) the counterfactual scenario I suggested would have favoured Russia more than it did the ongoing war.
Your objection is nothing more than just questioning the efficacy of all these factors on the assumption that flow of financial and military and soft power would have been enough anyways. That's a cheap objection.

I don’t see how the pre-war “amount of bilateral support” to Ukraine could have rendered the Russian resistance unsustainable in a counterfactual scenario that is way less challenging than the current conflict. — neomac

Because Russia changed the rules of the game when it invaded. In war, soft power goes (mostly) off the table, and in terms of hard power Russia (for now) has the advantage. — Tzeentch

Meaning?

Spare me the apologetics. — Tzeentch

That’s not even an argument. Is it?

Given the fact that the US was never planning to take Russian security concerns into consideration and basically invited war at every turn, certainly inevitable. — Tzeentch

Even if one is generically convinced about this, still Russia could have postponed further the confrontation to its own advantage. The US has already enough domestic and foreign issues to deal with, and these issues over time may have turned into Russia’s favour as they did already once (under Trump).
Besides, it’s claimed that even the US wasn’t sure about the Ukrainian resistance capacity against the Russian aggression. So even for the US it wasn’t obvious that their support to Ukraine would have taken the form it very slowly took as of now. So I don’t see anything as “inevitable” as you seem to do.

The small number of troops at the beginning of the war was likely because Russians didn’t expect the kind of fierce resistance the Ukrainians demonstrated... — neomac

Unlikely, since the Russians were fully aware of the size of the Ukrainian force, and the fact that it was equipped and trained by the US.
It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions. The theories you're suggesting are basically military impossibilities, though popular among laymen and the ever-churning propaganda machines. — Tzeentch

Another cheap objection. And, also your thesis is popular among layman and ever-churning pro-Russian propaganda machines.
It would be more useful if you posted the military expert source, you rely on.

23:05 - 27:20 discusses the implications of the size of the Russian invasion force.
1:30:40 - 1:32:00 Mearsheimer makes the point that he believes Russian territorial ambitions escalated as the war progressed.
Mearsheimer throughout the lecture actually argues that Russia might not have had any major territorial ambitions at all at the start of the war.
And recent revelations about the peace negotiations that took place weeks into the conflict might actually confirm that. The Russians were willing to make major concessions when they negotiated for Ukrainian neutrality, and it might only be after the negotiations failed that the Russian strategy changed to annexing parts of Ukraine. — Tzeentch

In the first clip Mearsheimer’s is questioning the idea that Russia could conquer the entire of Ukraine. In the second clip Mearsheimer is questioning the alleged imperialistic ambitions of Putin. Neither of these arguments are relevant to counter the arguments that there were intelligence failures on the Russian side that might have compromised their strategic objectives whatever they were.
Said that, I also remark that at minute 24:20 Mearsheimer is claiming that the strategic objective of 190K Russian troops were aiming at either capturing or threatening Kiev and conquer a large swath of territory in East and South Ukraine. That doesn’t seem to support your claim “It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev and install a puppet regime and occupy and hold the southern regions”, it just supports the idea that the Russian military deployment wasn’t enough to subdue the entire Ukraine.

The idea that political arguments can be weighed by some kind of objective metric is something most if us left behind in college. — "Isaac

All we can ever do on a site like this is enquire about people's reasons for holding the views they hold. The entire enterprise if pointless otherwise. If you're going to answer "because of some reasons", then we might as well give up here. I'm asking about what those reasons are, I assumed you had some. — "Isaac

I gave you my reasons. And if you don’t feel like counter-arguing them in ways that make sense to me, I don’t care.

If you argue something else, you must be a US fanboy — ssu

From "US cheerleader" to "US fanboy" sounds big improvement though. :wink:

It shouldn't need to be repeated this often, but it appears I've got to say it again...

We're not the ones claiming your narrative is unreasonable. Speaking for myself, I'm perfectly happy with the notion that Friedman didn't mean what he said. It's a perfectly rational theory with good evidence.
You (collectively) are the ones trying to claim our alternative theories are unreasonable.
To prove that claim, it's not sufficient to show your theory is possible. No one disagreed it was possible. You have to show that the alternative is impossible. Not merely that one of the possibilities is that Friedman didn't mean what he said, but rather that it is the only possibility. — Isaac

We have been through this already. Your way of understanding the burden of proof in a debate is hardly intelligible to me. There is something off even in the way you phrase it. You make it sound like if the debate is about possibilities.
Debates that make sense to me should be principled and computationally affordable ways to assess people's arguments and evidences. “Principled” means that there are enough shared (implicit or explicit) criteria to assess if arguments are more or less reasonable, more or less consistent, more or less supported by evidence, more or less pertinent, if quotations are more or less accurate, more or less misleading, more or less pertinent, more or less strong in terms of probatory force, etc. Talking about quotations, one criterium could be: if X is known to have made seemingly incompatible claims over the same subject, then mentioning only one of the two just because it is good enough to support my views should be an invalid move. Example: Putin is reported saying (A) “The breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” but also (B) “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart, whoever wants it back has no brain”, so knowing this it would be rationally questionable for me to argue “Putin probably wants to somehow restore the Soviet Union because once he said (A)’” knowing that Putin also claimed (B).
The same holds for G. Friedman’s quotation.

Relevant mostly to neomac's style of nonsense, but many other US fanboys here — Isaac

Moralistic rants (like the one you posted) aren’t rationally compelling to me as long as they fail to address the real issue: the relation between morality and power (as I myself tried to address in my infamous “wall of text”, https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/775801).
The problem is not if we can share or emotionally relate to the claim “X morally ought to do Y” but how we can ENSURE that “X does Y”. The former is not necessarily a big deal. The latter is where things can get really messy beyond anybody’s intentions and expectations, or capacity of offering a realistically better alternative.

There is a misunderstanding. — neomac

The only misunderstanding here is that you seem to believe babbling on about cognitive dissonance is going to help your case any. — Tzeentch

Indeed, your cognitive dissonance helps better understand your views about the relation between the geopolitical dimension and the moral dimension, the way you process responsibility attribution, and certain intellectual weaknesses like conceptual ambiguities in your geopolitical analysis (e.g. moralising amoral geopolitical agents), confirmation bias (e.g. overlooking the pros of the Pax Americana while highlighting the cons) and a posteriori rationalizations (e.g. the “inevitable” consequences of the American hubris like Putin waging war against Ukraine).

The problem is the one I have described earlier: the U.S. was in the process of turning Ukraine into a U.S. ally on a bilateral basis, completely circumventing NATO.

The Germans and the French had no power to stop that. — Tzeentch

Sure, but I considered that possibility in the context of what happened after the war. Russian military operation offered a more convenient pretext to whatever solution (inside or outside NATO) the US prefers. However if the whole point of the American initiative was to unite the West against Russia (or decoupling Europe from Russia), bilateral solutions prior to the war may have not been as useful to that effect (see the Budapest Memorandum), not to mention that they would have looked more risky since the limits of Russian military capacity (or performance) weren’t as evident as they are now.

Yet even in the current conditions Western Europeans are still reluctant to discuss about NATO membership for Ukraine. — neomac

With the current condition being large-scale war between Russia and what is basically a NATO proxy, their opinions are even more irrelevant than they were in times of peace. The European powers are a bunch of suckers, piggybacking on the U.S. defense budget and apparently believing that will not completely wipe out their bargaining power. They're essentially U.S. vassals given the illusion of relevance. — Tzeentch

Your conviction seems based more on your moral outrage than on compelling evidences or logic.
Turkey threatened to veto Sweden joining NATO. So French and Germany could do the same for Ukraine (they were already opposing it).
To me, the point is not that they are irrelevant to let Ukraine join NATO (they may even look for a compensation from the US at this point) but that the evolution of the war is increasingly compromising their hopes to recover the business partnership with Russia as soon as possible at the end of the war, or to pursue their security system more autonomously from the US.

I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that Putin was in condition to keep supporting the separatist fight in Donbas and the annexation of Crimea with the revenue from Nord Stream 2 to destabilise Ukraine ... — neomac

With the amount of bilateral support it was receiving from the U.S., I would pretty much exclude that possibility. — Tzeentch

Not sure to understand what you are talking about here. In the counterfactual scenario I suggested, first, Russia would have been on the defensive (which is less costly than the offensive).
Second, the constraint on the type of military equipment sent to Ukraine would more likely have been still preserved (see the debate over non-lethal weapons).
Third, if Russia didn’t start a war, then it could have kept messing with the Ukrainian democracy through pro-Russian parties.
Fourth, Ukraine is receiving now even greater support (not only from the US) but Russia was able to occupy even greater territory (imagine if Russia focused on Donbas and land bridge from the start!) and it’s set to continue an attrition war “as long as it takes“, so I don’t see how the pre-war “amount of bilateral support” to Ukraine could have rendered the Russian resistance unsustainable in a counterfactual scenario that is way less challenging than the current conflict.

I’m not sure to understand why you keep talking about “coup d'etat” supported by the US. — neomac
We've got U.S. officials admitting to sending Ukraine billions of USD of support prior to 2014, and to being deeply involved in constructing the post-coup government in Ukraine.
Clearly the U.S. was involved, supported the coup and, as I said earlier, I am still entertaining the hypothesis that the U.S. largely orchestrated it. We know the U.S. is capable of such things, and its fingerprints are all over it. — Tzeentch

First, let’s clarify the terminology here: to me “coup d'etat” typically means a violent/illegal overthrow of a regime by institutional figures like politicians and military (e.g. Trump backed US capitol riot can be accused of being an attempted coup d’etat). “Revolutions” are typically violent/llegal overthrow of a regime but stemming from ordinary masses.
Second, Maidan Revolution was a popular revolution. And as far as I know no Ukrainian politicians/military plotted to forcefully remove Yanukhovic. Indeed, Yanukovych signed a transition deal with Ukraine opposition brokered by Russia and the European Union (https://www.politico.eu/article/yanukovych-signs-transition-deal-with-ukraine-opposition/).
Third, the revelations about Victoria Nuland are not enough to support the claim that the US participated in a coup. The US supported the popular revolution and pro-European political candidates, but they may just have lobbied and supported campaign/propaganda to amplify or direct consensus over certain politicians (even the American domestic politics works that way). It would be different if you could provide compelling evidence that the US (intentionally) financed the armed revolutionaries (as the Americans did in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion).
But even in this case, talking about “coup” and “orchestration” doesn’t seem to me more than an attempt to mount a preconceived polemic dismissive of the pro-Western Ukrainian movements, as if the Ukrainians didn’t have enough domestic reasons to be deeply dissatisfied with Yanukhovic and Russian interference and revolt (compare it with the recent revolts in Iran).

A war of this magntitude requires planning and preparation, obviously. Besides, they did not have the power of hindsight and did seek to exhaust the alternatives. Even late into 2021 the Russians were still trying to pursue a diplomatic solution. — Tzeentch

Nothing so “inevitable” then.

Seems like a rather weak article to me, that presupposes the Russian invasion was a complete failure. While that seems to be part of the western narrative, I see little evidence to suggest it is true.
The Russians invaded Ukraine while outnumbered, with a force that was way too small to occupy all of it. This leads me to believe that the territories they occupied in east and southern Ukraine probably roughly coincide with the initial aims of the invasion.
Mearsheimer makes that point in detail. — Tzeentch

Russia pursued regime change, denazification of Ukraine. This doesn’t require the occupation of all Ukraine, it requires to take control over Kiev and install a pro-Russian puppet regime (as the US did in Afghanistan). So far Russia tried but failed this objective. Along with the objective of demilitarization (or neutrality). Ukraine is getting more pro-Western and its chances of joining the West have arguably increased thanks to the war started by Putin.
The small number of troops at the beginning of the war was likely because Russians didn’t expect the kind of fierce resistance the Ukrainians demonstrated (due to the Russian intelligence failure).
Concerning Mearsheimer’s video, it’s too long. It would be easier if you specified at what point of that video Mearsheimer is offering arguments in support of your belief that "the territories they [the Russians] occupied in east and southern Ukraine probably roughly coincide with the initial aims of the invasion".

Kommersant reports G. Friedman claiming "Russia calls the events of the beginning of the year a US-organized coup d'état. And it really was the most overt coup d'état in history." And at the next question: "Do you mean the termination of the agreement of February 21 or the entire Maidan? Together. After all, the United States openly supported human rights groups in Ukraine, including with money. And the Russian special services missed these trends. They did not understand what was happening, and when they did, they failed to take measures to stabilize the situation, and later misjudged the mood in Eastern Ukraine."
To recapitulate, G. Friedman was commenting a Russian claim in Russian own terms. And at the next question G.Friedman explains the nature of the US support. In relation to that interview (not Sputnik, "On a visit to Russia, I told the business journal Kommersant that..." [1]), G. Friedman is saying that his claim was "...If the US were behind a coup in Kiev, it would have been the most blatant coup in history, as the US government openly supported the uprising and had provided some funding for the demonstrating groups. In other words, it was no coup."
To recapitulate, G. Friedman's belief is that there was no "US-organized coup d'état", and therefore he expressed his skepticism through irony.
So if the Kommersant transcript is accurate (G.Fridman's conditional form is indeed missing), either G. Friedman actually believed that the Maidan Revolution was "the most overt coup d'état in history" and later he retracted his own claims, or G.Friedman never thought the Maidan Revolution was "the most overt coup d'état in history" but he expressed his own belief though irony (G.Fridman's conditional is maybe supposed to clarify why he expressed himself in Russian own terms).

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/george-friedman-russia-is-winning-the-internet-2016-4?r=US&IR=T

full interview — Isaac

Whose accuracy has been questioned by George Friedman himself. If you prefer to believe the Russian source over George Friedman's feedback, that's all on you.