This...

Russia is filled with uneducated people who really have no way of knowing what is true or not because they were never given any tools to figure that out.
— Christoffer

...is a racist trope. — Isaac

So, you mean that the fact that a large portion of Russians is educated, especially outside of the denser cities, is racist?

Is Russian soldiers not even knowing what Ukraine is or what Chernobyl is because they didn't get any education about any of it... racist?

Or is it that you just twist this thing into calling it such a trope in order to have an easier time making an argument?

As is...

However, some charities develop schools and if people could be a little patient in observation, they will see that this education has an exponential effect on the nation. Status quo changes since you get more people able to actively think about how to improve their own nation.
— Christoffer — Isaac

So, for example, a nation under a government that is corrupt or has little means to handle poverty on their own and almost no people educated enough to be able to work to better the nation's situation, does not need to change that status quo? And helping those nations with getting children free education so that this structural problem can be bypassed in order to have a new generation that can build something better on their own... is racist?

I'm not saying Christoffer is racist, but those two positions are both common racist tropes that need to be called out as such. — Isaac

Or, you reshape them into racist tropes without caring to understand or read what I actually propose, what I actually argue for. You ignore everything else and just focus on a cherry-picked part of my entire text so that it can fit your trope narrative and be easier to argue against. This is an extremely low-quality way of engaging in the discussion and a disgusting way of labeling others with some guilt of association. It's appalling really.

Societies which are less well developed (whether governmentally or economically) suffer from a range of constraining conditions - the majority of which are created and actively maintained by the more developed nations, and it is those conditions, not a lack of intellect, which keeps them where they are. — Isaac

I never talked about lack of intellect, I talked about education. Are you unable to understand the difference between the two? Russian soldiers don't dig trenches in the Red Forest and irradiate themselves with that soil because they lack intellect, they do it because they lack education about where they are and what consequences such actions have on them and others.

It's you who reshape what I write into being some pro-imperialistic talk of lower intellects among poor people. This type of reshaping my argument just renders what you write now as total nonsense. Because you can't see the difference between education and intellect or willingly mix them together to say I write racist things.

That's disgusting rhetorical behavior that I wished the mods took notice of.

but that an education in essentially, 'how to think' is necessary implies that these country's natively lack such an ability. — Isaac

Are you unaware that you are writing on a philosophy forum? Like, you don't understand what I mean with education enabling active thinking about ongoing problems in their nations? Like, you don't get that I'm implying that education gives tools to channel the intellect because if you have knowledge about the world, you can organize thinking philosophically to arrive at solutions to problems you need to solve.

Like, when I write:

Status quo changes since you get more people able to actively think about how to improve their own nation. — Christoffer

I, of course, mean that they have gotten an education that gives them the tools, the knowledge to deconstruct the problems in their nation. If people get educated, they learn about different perspectives, different facts, and historical events, they are much more able to examine the problems in their own nation and have the ability to channel their intellect towards practical solutions, both as a competent workforce for building their nation and as intellectuals forming laws and other ethical solutions. Without any western intervention meddling with their progress. What I'm talking about is that knowledge is a pool of perspectives where you can test out your ideas and faster reach working conclusions. Without knowledge, without education, you will be fumbling in the dark and it doesn't matter if you have the intellect of Einstein, he wouldn't have channeled that intellect if he didn't get the education necessary to think about physics in the first place. If you get poor nations free education, you give the people the ability to more effectively think about their own life and their country and how to fix things that are broken with it.

But you interpret that as "how to think", as in "imperialistic pushing an agenda". Because you seem unable to view anything other than through that lens and it's getting tiresome.

You actively misinterpret to fit your own narrative of this discussion. When I talk about education giving people the tools for changing their own destiny, you interpret that as imperialistic intervention to make the "poor stupid people" think like capitalists. That kind of stretch and the implied racism is way over the line of acceptable.

To be clear - the relation to this thread - it is Russia's material conditions, not the intellectual capabilities of its inhabitants, which prevents change. — Isaac

But it is a fact that the Russians who want to get rid of Putin, the corruption, the war and everything are the educated, more wealthy citizens of the major cities. Most others outside in the rest of the nation does not have the same level of access to good education or they're fully under the state propaganda and has basically lived in a Plato cave of Putin's narrative.

The fact that some Russian soldiers don't even know what Ukraine is, have never heard of the Chernobyl incident or seem to have any knowledge outside of what the state told them, shows just what low education does to people. As I've said, they could have had someone with Einstein's intellect within those troops, but without education, he's drafted to be cannon fodder.

The thing that prevents change in Russia is a despot dictator who shuts down any form of public discourse, any form of will to change from any of its citizens. He shuts down every attempt at change. It has nothing to do with material conditions.

What I said was that if the uneducated, poorer citizens that are mostly outside of the major cities, who are often drafted into the military as these young soldiers in Ukraine are, would have had an education that teaches them about Ukraine, Chernobyl, that gives them the space to think critically, nurture their creativity and captured their imagination with facts about the world, they wouldn't have so easily been able to be lured into the hellhole of war for someone's ideal they don't even understand.

Bottom line is that education and intellect are two different things but you seem to be confused as to which is which or what I actually wrote about because you confused the two of those concepts together in order to call someone's writing "racist". I didn't even write "intellect" anywhere, I talked about education, about learning facts, about learning philosophy, math, politics, nature, writing, and reading, tools for thought, tools to use intellect for change. Without those tools you have intellect and no facts or concepts to use your intellect through and therefore changing your country becomes much harder. Nowhere did I even remotely imply that poor nations have lesser intellects, that's your words, your writing, your concept in mind, not mine. So stop making that part of my argument, I talked nothing of the sort.

The 'solution' such as it is, is to bring down capitalism so that it is not one of the competitors. That way alternative systems can compete on the grounds of their impact on human well-being rather than on the grounds of their ability to withstand the onslaught capitalism directs toward them.

That solution is not brought about by making countries more capitalist. — Isaac

I'm asking for a real-world solution to an active problem that is existing right now. You are talking about anti-capitalist philosophy that I am agreeing with, but as I've said before, being an idealist in a time you need a direct solution is not possible, you need to be pragmatic. If you have a nation that is conducting war crimes in other nations after invading them as well as silencing its own people, then trying to form a new standard of global politics that bypasses capitalism is really not a solution at all.

What are the real-world actual solutions to the problems in Russia and Ukraine? I think the problem with this thread is that too many sit in their comfort and invent utopias in their heads and are unable to accept that the lesser bad is the better solution at this time. Russia becoming a westernized nation, primarily in terms of protected rights for its people and low corruption in government, might require all those bad other things with capitalism, free markets, and consumerism since much of the western standards have all of that built-in and might be inseparable in the short term.

The point I've made is that if you take all forms of societies and pit them against each other, on a large scale, the form that has the most ability to change over time is the western version, the one focusing on free speech, broad education, protected rights of the people, authorities that can review politicians and scrutinize policies etc. etc. Other forms of societies that focus more on tradition, religion, authoritarianism (dictators), and so on, generally have little ability to change since it's not built in to question the status quo.

So we can have a whole other thread of discussing the bad parts of western society, how consumerism and capitalism is ruining the world and I'm just as critical as anyone else educated on the matter. But I'm not blind to having a bias toward that critical view to the extent that I cannot see that solutions in the now and real-world today in terms of this conflict need a pragmatic perspective that enables actual solutions based on what is actually existing, not what utopian form of world past capitalism that we can think of, because that doesn't help anyone right now. Russia could go full westernized, remove Putin and corruption, have free elections, free and independent media, good education for all and be just as consumerism and capitalist as the west (which they really are anyway), and that will still be a better point of origin for future change past capitalism than how things are right now. That is my point.

The big question is : do the people of that country have a say in how that country is being run? Peace, stability, prosperity, these things are important, but how do you get there? — FreeEmotion

Through the citizens of that country pushing for those things. Apathy and low education give birth to despots and tyrants. So education is extremely important, if there's anything that people from outside a country can do as a way to influence a nation to develop these good traits by themselves, it is to push education into that nation.

A good and easy example is poor nations where people don't have any education at all and there's no real government push for state-run education that is good. While everyone in western nations run around giving money to charity to feed these nations it does very little to change their status quo. However, some charities develop schools and if people could be a little patient in observation, they will see that this education has an exponential effect on the nation. Status quo changes since you get more people able to actively think about how to improve their own nation.

If people don't know why a corruption-free democracy is better than the status quo, they only have the status quo to live for.

It's the old saying; Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

It's the same with politics: give a man a government and you will govern him, give a man the knowledge of government, and he will govern himself.

Let's take Sweden as an example. While there are factors that most likely are important to the state the nation is in today, like being "neutral" through two world wars and having a history of pushing for education and knowledge, like the Nobel prize. A major key element is how socialism formed and became a core feature of support for the people and how people get educated. The state funds education, even higher education, and it doesn't cost the citizen a dime to get that higher education. We even get paid for it and can take a small very low-interest loan for higher education to help us with rent and stuff if we need to live close to the university. All this makes it possible for any person of any class or economic situation to get top education if they strive for it. This in turn generates a high number of people able to participate in shaping society based on actual knowledge of the topics that need to be changed.

In recent years there's been, just like most nations in the west, an increase in right-wing extreme politics, with politicians from that part of the political spectrum getting into parliament. What is the most common thing among these politicians and the people voting for them? Low education. And that low education is purely based on the people having all that education free of charge and open to them, but their apathy led them down that path.

So education is the key here and whether people have a good relation, opportunity or apathy towards that education.

Russia has a lot of educated people and those are almost statistically everyone who opposes the war and Putin. The problem right now is that they risk everything if they speak up. But a huge population in Russia has little to no education, just like how the right-wing extremists of the west have been winning through the part of the population who has little to no education, so does Putin and his propaganda machine win on their support. Right now there are too few in Russia, even though there are millions of them, who are opposed to the war and educated enough to see what Putin is actually doing, to see things for what they are. But imagine if education could creep into a larger portion of the population? Then it's just a matter of time before there are enough people to oppose the status quo and when the state can no longer control the population, that's when coups and revolutions happen to radically change things.

If a nation is a security risk to the world or risk of doing atrocities towards its own people, we have enough examples of how interventions in terms of invasion and forcibly applying "democracy" do not work at all. Yes, some leaders are sometimes so bad that the removal of them might heal the nation or remove the direct threat, like how Hitler's death broke the camels back on the Nazi empire, but most often than not, it's an uneducated and poor mass that gives way for such authoritarian power.

In general, if you give the people free education and enough people apply for it, it will change the nation at its very core. The best way to change Russia from the outside, in a way that doesn't prevent themselves from changing on their own, is to try and "smuggle" in education that bypasses the state propaganda education. Schools or online education that is possible for anyone in Russia regardless of their geographical location. Get some Stalink dishes into the countryside so people can bypass state-controlled internet.

Give the people an open door to all that knowledge outside of their state control and over time it will change things. Putin and his authoritarian power can only survive on the people not knowing or understanding what he is doing or how the world outside actually is.

Like, reports are coming in that many of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine... don't even know what Ukraine is. And the soldiers who went to Chernobyl and dug trenches in the red forest, have no idea where they are and they didn't even know about the Chernobyl accident. This is how Putin controls them, by their low education and total obliviousness to the outside world. Imagine what would have happened if these soldiers knew about Chernobyl, knew about Ukraine, and that Ukraine doesn't want to be part of Russia or that there are no Nazis like Putin describes the government in Ukraine to be. The fact that so many Russian soldiers have deserted or even turned on their leaders, even killed them, shows that some of them might have realized the truth and reality of everything and turned against the lies they've been fed.

Russia is filled with uneducated people who really have no way of knowing what is true or not because they were never given any tools to figure that out. And just 30 years after Soviet collapsed, that's a very short span to go from that level of state-controlled information to a very short period of openness, back into similar state-controlled information.

Smuggle education into Russia, educate the people, that's the key to changing Russia without force and with stability at its core.

've seen that story bandied around, but it's not true. Yeltsin was corrupt af, and he chose Putin as his successor so he'd have protection from prosecution.

Putin has the same problem. He can't step down unless he has a successor who's loyal and corrupt. — frank

Why is progress through time such a hard thing for people to understand? Yes, Yeltsin was corrupt, but there's a lot of shades of grey in all of this. He was corrupt, but that's totally normal for a nation who still has echos of its former regime. The only thing that matters is how it progress, does it move towards less corruption or more? Yeltsin doesn't matter, what matters is if the entire nation moves in the right direction.

As an example, just look at Ukraine. It had the same problems with corruption for a long time and it still has a lot ingrained in the day to day life (before the war). But they acted to work against that kind of corruption and they had made a lot of progress in just the last couple of years.

All it takes is one leader that might be corrupt, might be a fucking asshole or super bad at his job, but open to let the society change in the direction IT wants.

Ukraine was slowly becoming more stable, with better standards and protection of it's citizens individuality and freedom of speech, it had everything aimed right in the best direction.

This is what Putin stopped in Russia, he stopped the progression of Russia to get to that place and instead did everything in his power to consolidate power to himself.

So, you can't say that "it's not true", because you're viewing everything with black and white glasses, thinking that me saying Yeltsin was better for the progression of Russia is me saying he is a good leader and uncorrupted. He was not, he was shit, but the nation had the right course, before Putin killed all of that ambition.

from the Finnish outback — Apollodorus

I stopped reading after that, your way of discussing in this thread is just low quality through and through so don't even bother caring. I won't be interacting with some in this thread because I don't want to sink to that level.

Take capitalism and socialism: they can be combined into any form of social-democracy. In this view, the values of socialism are combined with those of capitalism as a sort of ying yang. — Olivier5

I know, I live in arguably one of the best establishments of this kind of system and it ranks us very high on indexes of life quality and freedom. Why wouldn't I argue for something like that being better than what Russia has today?

The same applies to political systems: they can mix up various elements of strong leadership vs broad representation and consultation. What is important to realize is that our values as human beings are varied, and any society must find ways to combine sometime competing values, such as freedom vs equality. So this is about a combination of philosophies, rather than committing once and for all to one political philosophy only. That is what I was highlighting when i spoke of the first generation and second generation human rights: any manner of synthesis and variation is possible. — Olivier5

Yes, but regardless of how a democracy works in practice, the key elements that make up most functioning western societies are constitutional rights for the individual citizen and the ability to be protected from people in power rather than the people in power being protected from everyone else. If that is the foundation, then there's little chance that corruption takes hold, there's a better chance of the democratic functions actually working as a system without anyone able to steer the nation towards consolidation of power to one person or one party only.

It's just that it's more common that these traits of democracies are more common within western societies and my question was if there are any other types or forms of government and systems in the world right now that have the same strong constitutional protection of the people in that nation?

So far I haven't heard anyone give an example of something better, that lose the consumeristic hellhole part of the capitalistic west while still giving constitutional protection to the people.

What is the practical and real-world solution to an authoritarian state? An actual solution society, government, and system that get rid of despots and fascism etc.?

So far, western society and its standards is the solution. I think people just think about the US when thinking about western societies, but I would say, give the Swedish system of government to everyone, it clearly functions better than most nations in the world when it comes to the freedom of the people and their rights and protections as well as care for the sick and weak and making sure that as many as possible in society are well and looked after in a positive way. Of course there are problems to deal with, but so far I think the general line of thought in here is that "the west" is just "bad". No it isn't, Sweden is a much better nation than Russia when it comes to protection and care for the people in a nation.

It would require a moron to argue against that fact. So I have no problems saying that Russia is a cesspool right now and the solution is to rid itself of despot leaders, corrupt politicians and oligarchs, removal of state propaganda media, applying constitutional rights to the people with free speech and free media as major core functions of balancing against the state, while parts of the system actively work with governing the politician's practices so that no politician tries to consolidate their power and if they do they are removed. The basic pillars of a functional democracy that through the system governs itself to never let through any authoritarian fascism. And while we have problems in "the west", especially the US, it is still better than the system of actual fascist authoritarian control. And most importantly, it enables change in society if something is bad, which authoritarian dictatorships can never do.

What you're saying suggests that Russia would be healthier today if it would have taken a more western looking route.

I understand why it seems that way, but we don't truly know because we can't see an alternate history of Russia.

It's possible that profound corruption that leaves most of the population destitute was the only way to achieve stability. — frank

It wasn't. The economy was healing when Putin entered the scene, and then he consolidated his power over the course of 20 years.

That "we don't know if it would have been healthier today" is not a counter-argument really. We know the result of the corruption and despot move of Putin to consolidate his power. It's seen right now. That a westernized version of Russia with true democracy would have been worse needs a much better argument in support for it.

I'm absolutely certain that if Putin wasn't there and did his consolidating and established the corruption that is present today, it would have been much better and enabled people like Navalny to be elected instead of him being in prison.

I'm trying to get people to present alternatives to a western version of Russia, that exists without the corruption and without the shit the population has to go through whenever they speak their minds, but I don't ever get such an alternative. So what is your actual conclusion? That "we don't know if it would have been better"? What's your inductive reasoning? What's the most probable conclusion?

How did you arrive at this dichotomy??? — baker

No, that's the one you're seeing. — baker

So give me an alternative then. Why can't you just do that in order to prove the dichotomy wrong? Because you've only presented two alternatives, either Russia as it is now or western standards which means it becoming a consumerist hell hole. Give me a third alternative then, where the people of Russia can be free and not face imprisonment or being killed, and where elections aren't controlled by a despot and media is independent and can criticize the government. If you have an option that is realistic that gives the people this protection, independence and freedom while not being a western society, then please provide that example, I'm waiting.

The majority of the population of any country are plebeians. If they are given the reigns, the society will sink further and further. — baker

That's why we have a representative democracy. But what are you actually saying here? Are you defending authoritarian dictatorship because giving the people power makes it worse? What's your point?

(By the way, this was the idea behind the US institution of the Electoral College: to make sure that some idiot wouldn't obtain a position of power simply because the majority of the people voted for him.) — baker

Representative democracy is bigger than the US. The US is one nation, you can look at far better examples of democracies if you want to find options that are better than alternative forms of government in the world (i.e other than western standards of representative democracies).

The total genius of Western democracies is that they outsourced government oppression to individual people. So that it isn't the government which oppresses people, it's Tom oppressing Dick and Harry. The government's hands are clean, but the people walk on eggshells and fear for their jobs and lives. At the same time, they are becoming more and more alike, the differences between them are superficial at best, one big mass of mindless drones. And what does it help if some politician can hold his elected position of power only for 4, 8 or, 10 years, or so, if the next one differs from him only by name? — baker

This is an extreme oversimplification of everything and you still have no alternative to western society. Give me an example of a practically working society on a large scale where people aren't under the pressure of a state boot? A western society may make "drones" out of the masses, but it also generates outliers that can drive society in new directions. In an authoritarian society, it is even more impossible to be different from each other, you need to stay in line, otherwise, you'll get shot or imprisoned. Why do you think ethnic cleansing is a common thing within these authoritarian societies? Because anything different is a threat to the power. This is less common in western societies.

What you are doing is making an argument against western society in a way I would too. But when I ask you to "grant Russia" a better society as an alternative to the authoritarian nightmare they're in now under Putin's boot, I want you to give me a pragmatic answer to that, because you can sit here and dream of utopias or just say that "everything is bad", but the reality is that there's bad and there's worse. The authoritarian reality of Russia makes its society worse than western societies, that is a fact. I can sit here and write openly with criticism against people in power and I won't get killed or become imprisoned, I can try and change things in society, but in Russia, I wouldn't be able to without risking a poisoned umbrella tip.

So, if there are no alternatives, Russia should really become a westernized country. Because it's a corrupt authoritarian pariah state now, where people get imprisoned on a daily basis and state critics are either dead or in Siberia. To say that westernizing Russia is worse than what they have now is a fucking joke.

Frees them from what? Frees them to do what? — baker

Of their authoritarian boot silencing them and making them unable to choose any other person in power than Putin. What the hell do you think I mean? Seriously do you have problems understanding this?

Or are you just apologetic about Russia/Putin and deny what is going on there?

I'm saying that the situation in Russia is actually not that different from the situation in the West. — baker

Tell that to state critics six feet under after getting poisoned or those in prisons or free media or the people getting dragged off the street in busses. Are you seriously saying that western societies and Russia are "basically the same". Seriously?

There is no country in this world where one could "speak up against the government" without this having some negative consequences for one. — baker

Of course there are! What the fuck are you even talking about? What kind of bullshit is this?

If not imposed by the government, then imposed informally, by one's employer, one's customers, one's friends, and relatives. One can simply never speak badly about those in power without this backfiring in some way. — baker

You absolutely can. I don't know what the fuck you are writing now but it's just nonsense blanked opinions as some kind of valid premises. Seriously, either you live in a nation with broken democracy and you're biased because of it or you are just blind to more perspectives than this. I can support whatever the fuck I want in my country and no one would do anything about it, I can write critically about the government or some party or leader or whatever and my employer can't do a thing about it. It's when people act out racist and degrading opinions that employers and others react and that comes from a moral perspective, not the kind of "boot" that I'm talking about in authoritarian systems like Russia.

Police fire tear gas as anti-Covid restrictions ‘Freedom Convoy’ enters Paris — baker

This is not an example of authoritarian power. It's an example of either a demonstration getting out of control or police going too far. Has nothing to do with state control of the people in the way that is going on in Russia. Seriously, are you unable to understand the differences here? Understand the grey area we're discussing? France is a fucking paradise compared to living in Russia now.

And so on. We can also look up how many times the police in Western countries have used real bullets against protesters, not just rubber bullets (which can sometimes be as dangerous as real ones), water cannons, tear gas, mass arrests. (Oh, and if the West is so wonderful, then why on earth are people protesting at all?!) — baker

Doesn't matter, the fundamental structure of a democracy that is free of corruption and people able to speak their minds without getting imprisoned is still there. Many nations have a variety of quality of this system, but it is still better than in Russia.

So you either say that Russia right now is a better society than the west.
Or you accept that the westernization of Russia is preferred to fix the problems with the authoritarian boot pressing down the people.
Or you present an alternative to western culture that still gives the people freedom from that boot.

I'm asking for a practical solution here, not some blanket statements of how the west is a hellhole and therefore Russia is fine without it.

Speaking of "being free of the authoritarian bullshit", in what ways are we in the West "free of the authoritarian bullshit"? — baker

Free speech and you don't get imprisoned or killed if you criticize those in power. It's quite clear what I'm speaking about, isn't it? The government won't kill or imprison you for what you write here on this forum for instance.

Because it's not possible, it's pragmatically not possible. Because Western standards are destructive. They destroy nature, they destroy people. — baker

That's an irrelevant blanket statement that doesn't really counter-argue my point here. You have no other alternative for any kind of society that has practical evidence of being better for people and the environment. Western societies are the only ones that also have the ability and potential to change if destructive ways are discovered. You think societies like Russia would care for actually changing transportation to renewable solutions? You think they would care about stuff like that or make any efforts to push for it?

Western societies have problems, of course, but blanket statements that western societies and standards are the worst things in the world while not even remotely presenting an alternative to that type of large-scale society just underlines my point. Dreaming of utopian types of societies that have no practical or realistic existence right now is irrelevant. We can start with every nation granting constitutional free speech, free and independent media, and serious efforts to fight back against corruption. Laws that do not protect politicians and people in power but regulate them instead. Those kinds of things exist in western societies primarily and those are the ones I'm advocating for. The question is if it's impossible to implement those things without everything else becoming western in standards.

I'm asking you to find a better alternative, that exists today. Please present an alternative that actually counters my argument here, because I still haven't heard any actual and realistic alternative yet. It's so irrelevant to just say "west bad" and present nothing else that is practically possible if the result is Russia's population being free of their authoritarian boot.

Are you actually worried about the Russian people? — baker

Uhhh, yeah, there are millions who don't want Putin and his bullshit, who want to live according to what I described as a free society. Why wouldn't I care for them?

So this was the real question: can a modern and free society avoid the ills of capitalism? Which BTW is a question not just for Russia. — Olivier5

Yes, can it be avoided? Can all the criticized traits of western society be avoided while still enabling the progressive traits most common in western society? Or is the world built upon a global system that makes it impossible to achieve those good traits without the bad?

And follow up to that question; is it better to accept the bad and be part of improving such a western standard society beyond those bad traits because the good outcome of the progressive traits is worth it?

Because as I see it, there are no real-world solutions as alternatives. You either accept the bad and get a society that is as good as it gets, based on all the indexes and research on human health and well being, with hopes of it improving beyond the bad through the freedoms it provides (western society is still more progressive and can change and adapt more easily than most other systems to this date), or you accept the conditions of the society you are in, since there's no real alternative (which my initial question was about) that gives you those good traits a western society can provide.

But all that hangs on the fact that there are no other systems that provide the same freedoms. It could be argued that people might not be well with those freedoms, but that can lead to dangerous routes to apologetic arguments for dictatorship and authoritarian systems. The only system that could function in that way would be a benevolent non-human leader that can lead forever with all people's best interests in mind. Some A.I system that we surrender to that could care for us.

We can only have so many different systems in place. Either everyone governs themselves, or everyone tries to govern the entire society, or a small group governs everyone, or people choose representatives to lead them, or someone leads everyone, or a machine or other being rules everyone. Or some combination between them. How do we give the most good for all within these systems? Breaking all of it down there are only a few options that would, over long periods of time, lead to good outcomes for everyone when applied to massive scale societies.

I think the problem is a logical one: if one defines 'western' as a society enjoying 'their rights, their freedom in society' then by definition all such societies are 'western'.

Historically, the notion of human rights 'appeared' in certain places: the US and France, during two near simultaneous revolutions. Other places back then did not have them and rejected them. Pretty much all Western European kingdoms rejected them. So the idea was not 'western' then. It was just progressive, and stronger here and weaker there by historical accident.

Then a number if things happened which led to all sorts of things including two world wars. At some point Germany, one of the most modern European society, opted (?) for Nazism, following Italy for fascism 10 years before. Again, these modern, industrialized western states did not accept human rights.

It is tempting to subsume history within geography. 'Western' is a geographic notion. But human rights are a cultural concept or practice. They appeared somewhere, as these things usually do, and then they spread elsewhere, as good ideas generally do.

Agriculture appeared historically in the Middle East (and a few other places independently, but the 'West' got it from the Middle East. Does that make agricultural European societies 'Middle-Eastern'? — Olivier5

Exactly, and this leads to another point I've been making a few pages back and it's that whenever people use "western" in a negative way as a counter-argument to people like us who want freedom for the Russian people they are essentially unable to separate between these basic rights and these globally progressive standards, and western culture of capitalism.

I mean, of course there's a way to make a society without capitalism that still has a strong foundation in freedom, freedom of speech, and so on.

However, at this time in history, which nations of the world can present an alternative political and economical form that also has these modern standards of values for invidual people? Because we can sit here and talk about some utopian nation with all of the good things that comes out of political and moral philosophy, but what nations have through time proved to be better for the the majority of its people, in the context of these things? It still needs to be answered in order to have an alternative for Russia if the authoritarian regime collapses and something else is built upon those ruins.

There's India, Senegal and other democratic states in the 'southern hemisphere'. Of course, their democratic 'form' and processes are originally western (representative democracies with parliaments). — Olivier5

And this seems to be the crux of the problem. When we see nation's who's transitioning to have better quality for their citizens, their well-being, their rights, their freedom in society etc. they tend to move towards what we define as western cultures.

So as long as we don't have a true example of a large scale society that isn't western, but gives rights, freedoms, and well-being to their citizens, there is a problem with how arguments form to question how nations move toward western standards, like how Ukraine has been doing and Russia don't want to do. I don't think any of the Russians who oppose Putin want anything but to have western standards of living, because it gives them those rights and freedoms. If there isn't a secondary alternative with the same level of quality for the citizens, then why don't we start with western standards and together improve up from there? It's not like western societies are stuck, the philosophical debates about how western societies function are always going on and is always changing things within it. There has to be a starting ground somewhere from which more can be built or rebuilt. But I've yet to hear about another, an alternative "starting ground".

I think a lot of hunter gatherer societies fit the bill. — Olivier5

Probably, but how can such societies function on a large scale, like for example Russia? Isn't such societies functioning because they are small in nature? As soon as society grows so large that systems need to exist to govern the stability of millions or billions of people, what happens then?

Is there any nation in the world that has millions of citizens with all these positive human rights and functions that still aren't western in cultural form?

Yes, but what about the question of a society in the world right now that functions as an example of being good for the people without being a western country or culture?

My question is if there are societies in the world that have strong human rights and emphasis on freedom of the people, things we often associate with western culture. But that they don't at the same time have the consumerism and capitalism that many say will "creep into" Russia if they get these rights and freedoms?

I'm trying to find the "solution" to the Russian people getting rid of the corruption, the propaganda that at the same time bans free media, killing and imprisoning of state critics, and gaining things like representatives of the people in politics and not self-proclaimed czars in absolute power.
How does that happen without Russia becoming a western society? Aren't these basics of a balanced society where people generally feel well?

Usually I would say: it's their country, their life and their responsibility, not ours. But now their midget of a fürher threatens us with nuclear holocaust every single time he has an anxiety crisis, which is often. This makes the rest of the world interested in getting rid of that insecure nuclear blackmailer. — Olivier5

Yes, a nation's act outwards internationally and the response that nation gets because of it, has nothing to do with their independence as a nation. It's like if someone murdered someone else and when getting caught, his defense is that he felt threatened and that everyone should just leave him alone because what he thinks on the inside is his own damn business... well, he just murdered another man so we couldn't give a fuck about his "internal feelings" when he's clearly dangerous, things need to be done to make sure he doesn't murder again.

But when we speak about Russia's freedom, we're talking about the freedom of its people, and in that context, the question is how we measure freedom or a society that is "better"? I'm measuring by the quality of life indexes, of societies in the world where as many as possible within those societies have basic individual and humanitarian protections so that basic human acts like having an opinion aren't shut down with violence or the ability to have a meaningful impact on the collective through politics isn't as well shut down with violence or censorship.

With basic human rights, a society becomes better and most importantly can improve. A society without a peaceful ability to change will not change peacefully.

That leads to the question if western society and culture can be detached from such basic human rights? or is a western society built upon such rights and are inseparate? Or is western culture and society not being examined with complexity in here? That saying that basic human rights aspects in western society should appear in Russia is the same as saying they need western capitalism?

How can basic human rights be put into the constitution of Russia while keeping western culture out? That is the question. What societies in the world are not western societies, but still has the same human rights as western culture takes for granted?

The question is basically, if Russia were to fix their problems of corruption, if they give their own people human rights, freedom of speech, free media, and the ability to choose their own path as a person, then what type of culture exists with all that, but at the same time isn't western in nature?

Please either be civil to each other or ignore each other. — jamalrob

That's why I asked him politely to ignore me and stop quoting me when I'm not engaged in discussing with him. I can ignore him, but he is spamming quotes by me all the time, it's extremely annoying.

The method used is immaterial, they heightened nuclear tension. — Isaac

I wrote about Russia's threats right before deliberately violating Swedish airspace carrying nuclear weapons. Because it shows just how fucking dangerous Russia acts. And I remarked with sarcasm how such acts are being compared to something, in context, not even close to the same thing and you do just that kind of comparison.

I don't want to discuss anything with you because your post quality is so low and your way of discussing is just cherry-picking whataboutism with zero engagement into an argument outside of fallacy-ridden bias-fests.

So, I don't care about what you write, it's irrelevant, you've proven your voice irrelevant to me so I'm trying to ignore you, but it's hard when you keep quoting my posts when I'm discussing with others.

write a fucking blog — Isaac

This is what I mean, get lost.

OK. — Isaac

Did they deliberately violate borders with these nukes? Did the president threaten by heightening nuclear readiness without anyone threatening them with the same?

The comment I made that you quoted was sarcasm of the inability to grasp things in context, and you followed accordingly.

Stop quoting my posts please, I'm not talking to you so keep to yourself ok?

Russia has violated other nations' airspaces on several occasions, and when their warplanes fly with transponders off they might jeopardize civilian traffic. — jorndoe

The recent violation of Swedish airspace was a deliberate act... and the planes had nuclear missiles on board. But let's talk about how bad the US is :shade:

I am not complaining, for one, a real-world solution is an evolutionary solution where each sovereign nation, for example Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, the United States all have to work out their progression without foreign interference, for example, Russian meddling in elections. That was a bad idea, even if it was just an idea in someones head. We have to work with a world we may not like. — FreeEmotion

Of course all nations should evolve by without meddling of others. However, if the progression leads to dangerous risks of other nations they are the first to break that respect and should not be treated with that same respect. Russia has shown too much meddling in other nations to the extent of threats and actual war with killing civilians so they've lost their right to exist independently without the rest of the world meddling in their progression. This is perfectly logical. So far, no one is really interfering with North Korea, they do what they want, but if they were to attack others without defensive cause, then that right to make choices for themselves get revoked since it's a security risk for other nations.

But outside of that, this leads to a proper philosophical topic. What type of society should these nations progress towards?

If we can agree on Russia being an authoritarian nightmare, a proper fascist regime that kill or imprison state critics, silence free media and free speech, invade others and spread lies about their own nation while the rich elite is the corrupt top politicians with a dictator calling the shots and everyone looking at him wrong gets shut down in one way or another.

Then what should they progress towards? What type of society do we have that functions in a way such as to improve the lives of the Russian people from this authoritarian nightmare?

My argument is that we can look at societies with the highest index for quality of life, indexes showing what fundamental rights in society that enables the most well being for the citizens, and then that should inform what these nations should progress towards.

That they have the right as sovereign nations to evolve themselves without interference is correct. It's their right. But since we have numerous types of societies throughout history we should be able to reach a conclusion of the best course of action, the best type as a recommendation for these nations.

If we actually want Russia's people to be free of the authoritarian bullshit, then what is the "solution society" that they should progress towards?

No. You want Russia to be Western. To be yet another consumerist hellhole. — baker

So there are no other roads to take? It's either the authoritarian regime imprisoning or poisoning critics of the state, propaganda to the point of total denying reality... or a consumerist hellhole?

Because that is the dichotomy you are presenting here. If giving the population the individual freedom to choose their own path in life, to give them security in freedom of speech, to have real democratic elections (a democracy with low corruption is still the best system in existence, and if you don't agree then provide an example of a functioning alternative system), is the same as a consumerist hellhole, you might need to elaborate how you reach that conclusion.

Just because western culture has a lot of problems that a lot of modern philosophy is examining and dissecting, that doesn't mean Russia is better. It's not, it's an authoritarian state with state violence against anyone who doesn't follow the rule of the "king". It is entirely possible to say that we want Russia to be free without it meaning some "consumerist hellhole".

Maybe first get Russia to a place where people don't get poisoned, imprisoned, and don't have an authoritarian leader who plays around with his rich friends while a large part of Russia lives on almost nothing. If that means more western standards, so be it. If not western standards, then feel free to present a system of state that frees Russia while keeping western standards of living out of there.

It's tiresome to hear people complain about a solution when there's no alternative solution presented that is better. If you want real-world solutions you might need to be a bit more pragmatic. Idealism is good for changing a system that is already somewhat functioning, pragmatism is needed when a system is fundamentally broken.

Unlike you I don't think the world boils down to a popularity contest. "But who do you trust more?!" — Benkei

Unlike you, I make an effort to understand my interlocutor instead of picking stuff out of context to make some smug response. I still don't understand how you became a moderator on this board, the posts you've written in this thread don't even try to follow forum guidelines. I may not be a master philosopher, but I know I have more quality in my posts than you. And this is what Oliver is talking about.

And I don't agree that the bar should be lower in a forum thread about politics. Setting the bar low for people venting their frustrations is one thing, but that's not the same as setting the bar low for quality of arguments.

I've tried to ask for clarifications of others' arguments over and over and there's not even an effort. Every time I've asked for better logic, better induction and deduction it's met with "oh the bar is lower in this thread for quality posting", as if quality arguments don't matter when talking about ongoing wars.

Lost interest in actually discussing this topic for real in here, it's too much of a Reddit shitstorm than anything of value.

It looks like your average reddit thread because it is insufficiently moderated. — Olivier5

And one of the moderators is one of the worst offenders of this thread's behavior. :shade:

Outside of that, we've got reports that the planes that broke into Swedish airspace had nuclear weapons on board. But people can please continue to say that Russia is no worse than the US when it comes to nuclear weapon threats since the argument seems to be that because they used them in 1945, Russia is no nuclear threat because the US already used them. Fuck there's a lot of stupidity in this thread :shade:

His mental issues were not due to his thinking. It could catalyst, probably due to social alienation, but that his philosophy drove him to it is just myth-making.

But he's not alone, there are plenty who lives by the same method. Nietzsche just got much attention due to his way of dismantling the power of religion and enhancing the power of the human being. Existentialists further explored this and most of how this philosophy has been put into practice today has more to do with the refinement the existentialists made rather than what he concluded.

The thing is that free minds weren't accepted much before the end of the 19th century. You could only have a free mind if you first had freedom in society, meaning, you had the means of putting time into thought and then creating methods out of those thoughts. Before the enlightenment era, it was rare that radical thoughts could live and prosper, but after it, the entire world was built upon such radical thinking. The enlightenment era opened the door and enabled people like Nietzche to put to paper what they were thinking and without him, it would have eventually led someone to similar conclusions as Nietzche. Probably one of the philosophers who built on top of his ideas would have been the one who arrived at those ideas, had he not been first.

Today, the world is almost on life support with "radical thoughts". It's easy to be blind to thinkers in modern times because history has not made them into myth yet, but we live in a world that craves "radical thoughts", so we do not see new ideas very much since they might not be radical enough. We turn to science more, since the methods are calmer, more refined. Philosophy today looks like this forum board, people trying to show how radical they are in thinking, but most do not have much to say at all.

Nietzsche would have been nothing without all that came before as well as all that came after who built upon his philosophy. The actual existence of his work today is not from him but from everyone interpreting and refining his work.

It's like saying that every physicist today is just using Einstein's findings. But that is not true. Every one of them does their own work by utilizing Einstein's findings and building on top of it. All while Einstein couldn't have concluded anything without everyone who came before him.

Even downright false ideas in philosophy trigger someone to think in a new way, to look at something from another angle, and in the end arrive at a true conclusion.

Someone being good at consolidating earlier ideas and refining them into a new context is just as good as someone who comes up with an original idea because they're essentially the same concept.

Nietzsche is one of the best consolidators of past ideas, putting them into a context of examination that was rarely done before him. That is his biggest contribution. But almost any era of enlightenment or change has had one or a few people who backed up and looked at the mess of ideas that came before them in order to cut away the fat and examine them without bias.

This is why I always talk about the necessary ability to fight back one's own biases and fallacies because the only way to get rid of what makes us stuck in old ideas that we never fully examine and re-evaluate, is if we are stuck with our biases and cannot create arguments for ourselves to question them. The inability to think beyond ourselves and the inability to create arguments that bypass our lacking capability for internal logic is what makes us slaves to concepts we prefer, not to concepts of truth.

Nietzsche was someone with a tremendous ability to question himself and everything around him. An outsider who wasn't afraid to question the status quo of ideas, because it was who he was to do so. But he also had the intellect to do so without falling into the temptation of biases and fallacies. This combination of being critical as well as dedicated to a method in thought is something almost everyone lacks and therefore such philosophers are rare occations. They would, however, not be able to exist without everyone else's ideas floating around to be examined.

No philosopher exists in a vacuum. They all build upon the old, reshape and refine while laying the ground for future philosophers.

Philosophy is essentially like science, a process. To see only one philosopher is to see only one study, ignore citations and still define the whole of science.

We can say one of the most influential, one of the most prominent, but without everyone else, their work have no context and becomes essentially meaningless.

Russia's propaganda-stated intentions of rescuing Ukrainians took a really big hit today

And I said this is irrelevant. — StreetlightX

You just don't seem to actually care to read what is being written, just puke out your kneejerk answers without even an inch of engagement. May I predict a similar answer as before? I don't have any proof you will, I'm just inducing the possibility based on analyzing behavior and previous events. — Christoffer

Oh the irony

This is dumb. Just pulling a counterfactual out of thin air then saying ha ha you can't prove it wouldn't have happened is stupid and meaningless and trivial. — StreetlightX

What is stupid are your kneejerk responses. I asked you for yes and no answers. I asked if there's enough evidence to draw a conclusion of a possible other outcome. Which if true, would have poked holes in the argument for Nato to be blamed, not to prove some conclusions about the possible other outcome being true. You just don't seem to understand the difference between the two or just keep intentionally misunderstanding in order to bully your way forward, ugh. Fucking waste of time you are.

The existence of a possible other outcome means there can't be a true conclusion to arguments just pointing the blame at Nato. Would you say that through all the Russian empire loving delusions dug up around Putin and his strong men, such a possible outcome of an invasion anyway is off the table? Out of thin air? Or just conveniently ignored?

And if you agree with yes on point 2, then how can Nato be blamed anyway if the provocation began with Russia provoking neighboring nations and not Nato provoking Russia? Are you saying that Russia hasn't provoked other nations? Are you saying that Russia hasn't broken air space intentionally as they recently did in Sweden? If we in Sweden see this as a provocation by Russia and therefore we join Nato to secure ourselves from the Russian provocations, does that mean that Nato is provoking Russia by expanding east through Sweden joining? What's "out of thin air" here?

You just don't seem to actually care to read what is being written, just puke out your kneejerk answers without even an inch of engagement. May I predict a similar answer as before? I don't have any proof you will, I'm just inducing the possibility based on analyzing behavior and previous events.

(1) Unicorn monkeys have inflected Putin's brain with rainbows (which have made him mad).
(2) No one has yet precluded the possibility of unicorn monkeys infecting Putin's brain with rainbows.
(3) You can't draw a definitive conclusion that unicorn monkeys have not infected Putin's brains with rainbows (which have made him mad).

QED. — StreetlightX

Are you unable to do anything but kneejerk posts?

1.
Is there enough evidence to conclude the possibility that Russia would have invaded Ukraine anyway?
Yes or no?

If yes, how can Nato be blamed for the invasion of Ukraine?

2.
Is there enough evidence to conclude that neighboring nations have felt threatened by Russia over the years since the Soviet Union fell?
Yes or no?

If yes, how does them joining Nato be the provocation to blame for the invasion and not the initial provocation by Russia?

3.
"Nato expanding east could lead to actions by Russia" is a fact that's been used as a premise over and over in here.

How does this fact lead to "Nato is to blame for the invasion of Ukraine" when taking into consideration points 1 and 2.

My worry is that we don't agree here even on what constitutes provocation. — FreeEmotion

1. Soviet Union falls.
2. Neighboring nations seek independence.
3. Russia acts aggressively against these nations, claiming they should be part of Russia or exist under Russia's regime. (aiming to invade or gain control in some way)
4. Neighboring nations seek security from these aggressions by joining Nato or asking to join Nato.
5. Neighboring nations joining Nato provokes Russia.
6. Russia invades. — Christoffer

Most seem to just focus on point 5 and the result in point 6. What about Russia provoking neighboring nations into wanting to join or joining Nato, indirectly expanding Nato east? So if we're talking about provocations here, who actually provoked who here?

Lol.

"If I disregard everything and assume my conclusion from the beginning, then I am correct".

Saved everyone from reading the ramble above. — StreetlightX

Except it was just part of my argument. As well as you totally not fucking understanding what I write as usual. If I point out a hole in the logic of someone's argument, that isn't me saying "my conclusion is right", it's me saying "your conclusion is not solid enough to be right". If all you are doing is to make these kinds of low-quality posts in response to what I write, then do me a favor and just stop, just ignore what I write, ok?

So George Kenan, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Cohen, Henry Kissinger, William Perry, Vladimir Pozner,Jeffrey Sachs, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General Pino Arlacchi, former CIA director Bill Burns, former US Secretary of Defense Bob Gates...

These are all what now? Non-experts on Russia? — Isaac

Can you read what I wrote? And then understand what I wrote?

It's this inability to actually make coherent arguments where premises (facts) actually relate to the conclusion that creates a mess of a discussion where people just cite historical facts as premises for conclusions of their own opinion. — Christoffer

Fact: Nato is expanding.
Fact: Russia doesn't like it.
Fact (based on these experts): Nato expansion could lead to a response by Russia.

Conclusion (yours and others): Nato is partly responsible for the invasion.

Counter-argument (mine): No premise denies the possibility that an invasion would have happened anyway (logic). If an invasion would have happened anyway, there's no responsibility for Nato in this invasion (logic).

This creates a hole in the argument people make about Nato's blame, a hole that needs to be plugged before continuing any other argument using Nato's responsibility as a factual conclusion (which is done over and over, using that conclusion as a premise for everything else being said).

I then ask for further premises to back up that the expansion of Nato, led to the invasion of Ukraine. So far, such premises haven't been presented. This means you can't draw a definitive conclusion of Nato's responsibility. The fact that the expansion of Nato provokes Russia, does not equal Russia's motivations and plans for invasions to be because of Nato's expansion. It can, as I've said numerous times, be the logical outcome that a nation Russia wants to invade and overtake becomes blocked by becoming a Nato member and therefore Russia invades sooner rather than later.

What this means is that Nato might unintentionally provoke an earlier reaction, but the act could most likely happen anyway. This possible conclusion makes it impossible to establish that Nato is responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. Even outside of the fact that Russia's act is still made by them and cannot be blamed on provocation when no military provocation has been done. And since many of the surrounding nations have been fearing a future invasion of their nation, they have been seeking security through Nato, which means that the aggression and the motivations and fears all originate from Russia's acts and behaviors, not Nato.

Every single one on this list and the previous one has implicated NATO expansion as the main provocation for war in Ukraine. — Isaac

Yes, but can you conclude that Russia wouldn't have invaded anyway? Would aggressions and previous provocation of Russia over the years against their neighboring nations that led to them seeking security with Nato be another causality factor? So:

1. Soviet Union falls.
2. Neighboring nations seek independence.
3. Russia acts aggressively against these nations, claiming they should be part of Russia or exist under Russia's regime. (aiming to invade or gain control in some way)
4. Neighboring nations seek security from these aggressions by joining Nato or asking to join Nato.
5. Neighboring nations joining Nato provokes Russia.
6. Russia invades.

So far, the causality you propose starts with point 5, not point 2. How then, does Nato become the one provoking? The fact that Russia "feels provoked" and that these experts state that fact, does not equal Nato being to blame for the invasion. There has to be a definitive conclusion that an invasion would not have happened without Russia "feeling provoked", which isn't established and also ignoring a causality of provocations that first starts with Russia provoking neighboring nations.

The problem isn't the experts, the individual facts, it's how those facts are put into a deduction by you and others who ignore logical gaps and other factors to the extent that you continue to build arguments that use your previous faulty deduction as a matter of fact.

You can't list experts' facts when the problem I point to has to do with the deduction you're doing using those facts. Gaps in logic don't fill up by just reciting facts you used wrongly in the first place.

So what Putin says and what Putin does are consigned to the wastebasket as far as evidence is concerned. What's far more compelling is what you think he thinks. — Isaac

You can induce a lot by looking at what someone says in contrast to what he does. Combining that with the research into his regime, there are a lot of puzzle pieces fitting together far better than much of the logical gap crap some people spew out over hundreds of pages in this thread. It at least pokes holes in the logic of your conclusions.

It uses this expectation as evidence for the analysis of interlocutors you, quite rightly, allow for. — Isaac

I analyzed the possible obsession with Nato in terms of how debates and discussions has been going on for 30 years now. To the extent of leading to bias dismissing the more logical motivations Putin and Russia have.

So far, all who argue for blaming Nato for Putin's invasion are the ones inventing facts or taking one unrelated fact and making false connections to motive. All while people who actually research Russia and Putin's presidency for a living, point towards how Putin's motivations relate to the expansion of Russia, not to the fantasy of a Nato invasion.

It's this Nato bias in the rhetoric so many have that makes them pick facts that do not actually logically glue to an actual conclusion for such external motivations of Putin. The "facts" are either what Putin says directly, which is undoubtedly the most unreliable source for any kind of fact, or a historic fact with the rhetorical suffix that it somehow connects to such motivations without any real connection established.

It's this inability to actually make coherent arguments where premises (facts) actually relate to the conclusion that creates a mess of a discussion where people just cite historical facts as premises for conclusions of their own opinion. Instead of looking at what people who research Putin actually says, use that for interpreting the behavior through this conflict and make logical and rational inductive conclusions based on it.

Presenting your opinion about what Putin would and would not do, how the US might or might not have responded, what influence they may or may not now have...is the whole point of a discussion forum.

Being baffled that anyone would disagree with you renders the medium pointless. I suggest you take up blogging instead. — Isaac

What are you even talking about now? If you mean that there's no point to analyze interlocutors as part of the analysis of global events you've missed almost the entirety of 20th-century philosophy.

My hypothesis is that the point is to deflect blame from Mr Putin, which is why the guilt of NATO has to be mentioned constantly, and not just occasionally. — Olivier5

Going back to my previous argument that because we haven't really had any superpower dictators since the soviet era ended, intellectuals have generally shifted focus to a more globalized critique of how all nations handle economy, ideology, war and geopolitics. The main focus of the last 30 years has been on criticizing the US, and rightfully so, since it's been the biggest player on the world stage during this time. So when Putin almost overnight becomes a despot dictator and the world once again has a "bad man", then all the intellectuals who's been painting the picture of the US as a nation being the "bad man" over the last 30 years can't really compute this change and need to turn everything back against the US. Regardless of how Nato operates, regardless of the US not being in direct control of Nato, any type of action by Putin can, according to them, be led back to Nato, and by association, the US in some form or another. Regardless of how much points to Putin's true motivations for this invasion, it doesn't matter because we can't move away from the narrative that the US has been the "bad man" for the last 30 years. Putin knows this, he knows how to spin the narrative about Nato and he's playing these "intellectuals" like good little puppets. The only rational connection to Nato is the fact that they can block any expansion of Russia as an empire and that's why we see this desperate invasion of Ukraine. Does that mean that if Nato had held off accepting new nations towards the east, Russia would have played things cool and not invaded? No, it might have been even worse. They've might have had almost free reign of military actions without much interference from the west. Or they could have killed anti-russian politicians and installed puppets over many years to reclaim these nations. Regardless, they would have kept pushing to build up the empire again, by any means necessary. And with Putin at the helm, it seems that he doesn't want to go out of this world without getting that "Tsar status" solidified in history. This invasion has clearly been an act of desperation. Do it now or lose Ukraine forever. It's either do it now or fail for Putin, that's why he doesn't back down, why he won't peace talk with Ukraine and why the demands are plain and simple "surrender into part of our empire or die".

Putin is simply a regular 20th-century despot dictator coming back to haunt us for thinking the world got rid of them.

Russia isn't the US. Putin doesn't need any backers for elections. He needs the support of the army and the intelligence services. When the head of the SVR is so frightened of Putin that he confusis his choreographed words, then some oligarch isn't a problem. — ssu

As long as Putin isn't hiding his wealth inside the oligarch's accounts, which some speculate he does. And when the war chest is empty, where does he get the money to fund his war and Russia's society? People downplay the sanctions, but they're really hitting hard on the economy and it's fine for now in terms of the war chest and funding the war, but if it goes on for months, that will not be the case. He's literally burning billions on a daily basis.

Does anyone live under the illusion that Russia was not going to eventually invade Ukraine regardless of NATO expansion into other nations? Are we to believe that Russia really thought a NATO protected Ukraine might one day invade Russia despite the Russian nuclear arsenal and so this defensive move became necessary now?

If the driver for the war is the reestablishment of a Russian empire of the likes of the former USSR (which i think it is), then the war had to be fought not just prior to Ukraine entering NATO, but prior to Ukraine breaking all ideological ties to Russia.

The window to seize Ukraine was closing through a potential NATO alliance, an EU entry, or just through continued liberalized democratization of Ukraine. If Russia wished to reestablish its past glory, it had to act before it lost all its potential prey to the protection of the West.

The problem is that Putin is learning is that the window was more shut that he thought it was. The fierce Ukraine resistance is based upon its belief that it is truly autonomous and not, as Putin would suggest, a group a Russians stranded in a Westernized state. Ukrainians stand with the full belief Russia is an invader and the West is a protector, indicating Russia is in a weaker position than maybe Putin appreciated.

This is just to say that whether NATO signaled it was expanding, or even if it signaled it was contacting (as Trump would have had it in his America first protectionism), Putin had to act now or forever lose Ukraine to the West.

Putin is fighting the infectious disease of Democracy, making this war inevitable as long as self rule is what the Ukrainians want. The only way for Ukraine to have avoided this war was to abandon democracy and submit to Putin. What backed Putin into a corner is that his country sucks and no one wants to be a part of it. — Hanover

Agree with all this. It's what I've been saying many times in here. Everything we know from the inside of Russia, past its propaganda machine (like ex-KGB, ex-Kremlin people, leaked documents and so on), points to Putin's ambitions of restoring the old Russian empire as being the great motivator. The fear of Nato invading Russia has never been viewed as anything but false flag tactics because the idea of Nato invading Russia is just plain stupid. If Putin and his people think that is a genuine threat, then they are the most stupid people in power on the planet, which I doubt they are. The absolute most logical interpretation of all of this is that Russia doesn't fear Nato invading because they know that won't happen, but they also know that THEY won't invade a Nato nation as well. So when Nato is expanding, it starts to take large literal bites out of the dream of restoring the Russian empire. Bites that will never be recovered once they've been assimilated into Nato. But Putin can't have that as an official thing to say to the world. It would be utter stupidity to sit on state TV and say that "we don't want these nations to join Nato because we plan to assimilate them into our coming empire, and if they join Nato our plans of taking them by force will fail". But all behaviors point to this. Why would Putin invade Ukraine this recklessly? Why risk this much for Ukraine? Because, as you said, the clock is ticking. It's either now or risk losing the most important part of the old Russian empire to be lost to the West forever.

If we were to play devil's advocate with Russia: it doesn't make much sense to believe the propaganda narrative that they keep pushing. It also doesn't make sense to think they are stupid enough to believe Nato would invade them. It's easier to see why they talk like they do about Nato, about Ukraine, about everything if we have the context of actual logical motivations. Puzzle pieces fit more logically with this than any of the false flag tactical bs that comes out of Kremlin.

And this is why Russia risks becoming a failed state, because the rich want more, they can't be content with the current Russian border, they can't accept the status quo of modern Russia. They want to be big boys again, or the biggest boys. While I think they are smart enough not to have stupid tactics on the global diplomatic stage, they are just basically boys with toys. Toxic masculinity on a geopolitical scale, and that has already gone out of fashion. Russia just didn't get the memo.

Nobody ever wanted them to begin with. They have always been treated as third class people. To whatever extent they were accepted, it was all conditional. Russians (and Slavic people in general) have always been expected to earn the respect of the Westerners, while the Westerners feel entitled to getting respect from others without ever earning it.

This skewed dynamic is at the core of this whole conflict, and many others. — baker

It's kind of natural that people are skeptical towards populations in nations that have consistently shown questionable national behavior, the same way everyone viewed Germany after WWII. But plenty did in fact have bright thoughts of the future for Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. After a brief fear of a new world war at the time, things were looking better. As the economy recovered in Russia there were plenty of open arms between the West and Russia.

But then Putin began to bring back that distrust through his behavior. And while silencing all people in Russia who really wanted Russia to be a modern nation with good relations to other nations all around the world, it brought back all that distrust in the West. It's important to remember that the Russian fear of being invaded is just a delusion and that delusion pushing the hands of Russia to isolate from the West is still on them, it's not our fault. If the entire culture is built around state media propaganda, silencing critics, pushing down on free speech and so on, that will bleed into a national image others have of them.

It's like that feedback loop that happens with segregated people concentrated in a neighborhood leading to higher crime rates. If the city and politics built into this pressure cooker, if lots of bad policies and systemic racism brought forth this concentration of segregated people in a poor neighborhood that then led to crime, it then feeds into the culture of that neighborhood so that people then start living within the racist concepts other people have of them. At some point, it just becomes a never-ending cycle where politicians and other citizens do nothing to help the neighborhood and the people of the hood isolating themselves and creating a culture around the negative image people have of them. At some point, things need to stop, on both sides.

The West hasn't really done Russia anything wrong since the Soviet Union fell and so many new collaborations with the rest of the world, so many open arms to create something new, but Russia just couldn't let go of the Soviet mentality. The distrust of the West is understandable, but when the West opened arms to Russia while being criticized by experts who said "don't trust Russia", it actually was that kind of one-sided stop to the cycle that was needed. But Russia just couldn't get with that program and fell into its old habit. And now we're back into Cold War territory again.

This is why I say that the only way for Russia to quickly come into the warmth again would be by revolution, french style. There needs to be a great flush to rid Russia of old farts who keep living in old early 20th century ideals. Russia needs younger, modern Russians to take over.

Why can't the Soviet Union just... die already? It's like the old relative that gets all diseases possible but still just stands up and continues screaming at younger generations.

My point is that many did actually, pretty fast as well, embrace the concept of a new Russia and let go of the distrust, but Putin kind of fucked that up royally over the years, especially with the crown jewel of shit that is this invasion.

How can we guard against sophistry? — Average

I tend to demand fewer fallacies and biases from the ones I debate against. More careful attention to how facts stick together with the premises and conclusions. The more we challenge our own arguments with the same scrutiny as our "opponents" do, the more we reach the truth we are trying to reach for ourselves. To demand that others review their own logic and force them to make their argument airtight before continuing the discussion, the less the discussion becomes a battle of emotionally argued opinions.

Be early in these demands of the other interlocutor, otherwise, the discussion will derail quickly.

On this forum, this is happening a lot. And I find it interesting that when I bring up fallacies and biases that other people are making, that becomes an unwelcome addition to the discussion. This has always puzzled me and feels more like an unwillingness to actually review their own argument, holding onto the opinion, the ideology or faith as if their life depended on it. People generally don't want to change, and even in a place like this forum, people tend to be bad at actually seeking truth past their own beliefs, ideologies and opinions.