That depends on the facts on the ground. Facts we are not yet fully in posession of.

You asked a hypothetical - "circumstances where helping a nation defend herself against aggression would be morally worse than said aggression". @boethius answered with a hypothetical (someone invading his country).

Whether that hypothetical applies to Ukraine is a separate question. One we're attempting to address here. The key questions being...

To what extent is Putin deliberately targeting civilians, to what extent does he intend to occupy Ukraine?

...and...

To what extent do the US genuinely believe their arms aid will lead to a Ukrainian win, and to what extent are they just cynically benefitting from having Russia engaged.

If the answer to the former is that Putin is reckless but not inhumane, if he wants neutrality, not dominance...

...and...

If the answer to the latter is that the US know perfectly well Ukraine can't win and are indeed cynically encouraging resistance to benefit from having a global financial power tied up and a massive reconstruction loan in the offing...

...then yes. The US would, under those circumstances be morally inferior. That's exactly why we're discussing those very possibilities.

If you want my current guess, I'm leaning toward the former being "no" (Putin appears to be a monster), and the latter being "yes" (the US know full well what they're doing) making them both as bad as each other.

You've read and agreed with it? — Olivier5

Broadly, yes. I find manipulation leading to human misery to be slightly more disgusting than open aggression leading to the same misery. Something about the attempt to hide it adds to the disgust.

I just can't figure out any circumstances where helping a nation defend herself against aggression would be morally worse than said aggression. If you think it is possible, do explain how. — Olivier5

@boethius has already done so, but it requires that you actually read that which you've prejudicially dismissed as 'meaningless text'

He said that sending arms to Ukraine is more disgusting than bombing Ukraine. Literally. — Olivier5

No. He gave a 300 word answer of which you ignored 299.

Is this an example of your famous 'trying to understand' the other party's point of view?

Over a thousand children died from completely preventable consequences of poverty just in the time since you posted that picture.

You asked why it's propaganda. It's propaganda, not because it didn't happen, but because it focuses social attention (which means it pulls attention away from other things). Barring outright lies, that's how propaganda works, by highlighting one grain of truth without any of the context, to pull people's attention to that one matter and away from the others.

Exactly what's happening here. The atrocities of war being used to keep attention firmly fixed on one issue, so that others (with no lesser a death toll) can go unnoticed.

"The 'other' is the enemy. They're sub-human - can't be reasoned with, they have no common goals (only their own peculiar ones). All the ills are their fault."

You seriously don't recognise that rhetoric? Not sounding familiar to you in any way...?

↑ A fascinating map of the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries in which countries it would be socially unacceptable to say they don't want people of another race as neighbours (The Washington Post; May 15, 2013) — jorndoe

Fixed it for you.

You have to promise. Positively so. — Olivier5

Scout's honour.

So, no quote then?

Only if you promise that you will try to understand. — Olivier5

How could I refuse?

I think it is perfectly possible to heap liquid shit upon Nato, the West, and Putin all at the same time. — StreetlightX

Nooo! We'll run out of internet if we do that, we can't possibly condemn two sides at once. Why, I'm running out of space even to finish wrtng ths pst!

I'm talking facts. You guys talk rubbish. There's a provable difference. — Olivier5

Oh great, it really is the latter option.

Go on then. Let's have one of these 'provable' facts to set against some of my rubbish - together with the actual proof, of course.

if someone talks about the attrocities of the Russians, then it's a bit odd to attack those of "believing in Western propaganda" or being "warmongers" or the type. — ssu

Yeah, that would be really odd.

Fortunately, as you well know, that's never happened, otherwise you'd be able to fucking quote someone doing it instead of pulling some made up fantasy version of the discussion out of your arse.

I guess the issue with being critical of the West and the US, like you or Benkei, @Isaac are, is the thing that Russia is fighting a brutal war without caring much about civilian lives. — ssu

Yes, and the US and Europe are complicit in it. You've yet to provide any kind of explanation of what exactly the problem is. What bad thing is going to result from our discussion of US and European complicity?

Isaac has stated it quite clearly: he doesn't want to give any credit the the US here as being a "knight in white armour". Fine. Yet talking about the failures and the imperialism of the West doesn't change the war in Ukraine. — ssu

No less than talking about how bad Putin is, yet that doesn't seem to hold you back, nor do you concern yourself with those that do. So this seems an incoherent argument.

And you've ruled out the possibility that it's they who don't understand our arguments because...?

I can't decide if it's just rhetoric or if you genuinely are so grossly narcissistic that you can't even contemplate the idea that it might be you who are actually wrong.

My money is on the former, but I'm excited at the prospect of having found a genuine case of the latter.

Yeah, we've offered the caravans on our farm, but it's probably too far from anywhere to be of any use. We did have some Somalis with us a few years back, but they we part of a scheme organised by a local charity in the city. Everything has been sporadic and scraping around for funding... until now. It feels wrong complaining about the amount of help now available (for some), but I just can't help feeling what a fucking kick in the teeth it must be for the millions who've been crying out for help for the past decades.

Imagine being half-drowned, imprisoned, destitute and scraping for scraps for years and now finding the government who's mercy you've been begging all this time, can all of a sudden find £350 per person per month for an unlimited amount.

Barring the possibility of our governments suddenly finding a conscience, it just shows the latent racism thst still underlies the refugee issue.

They don't seriously try to reach understanding. — Olivier5

Oh, this is gold. So...just so I understand what's missing, would you quote for me an example of you 'trying to reach understanding' with any of the posters here opposing your position (me, boethius,, benkei, streetlight...). I just want to see how it's done.

Is it...

More confused BS. — Olivier5

or...

That's simply an insane, delusional or very ignorant argument. — ssu

or...

Liar — frank

or...

Boethius must be on their payroll. Otherwise, his behavior here makes no logical sense. — Olivier5

or...

Your rhetoric is as empty as the Kremlin's. — Olivier5

or...

I am not reading your ignorant bullshit. — SophistiCat

or...

you suck — frank

no end of the "realist" supply when those issues are "debated" — boethius

"Can we do something about the Syrian refugees?"
"We'd love to, but it's all terribly complicated, getting the funding, the resources..."

"Can we take on one of the world's largest nuclear powers, in a fight to the death?"
"Sure, saddle up, grab that spare $15 billion we had lying around, and let's go!!"

Indeed, the Hitler-wannabe failed Anschlusser is being dragged in the mud by media the world over. — Olivier5

Wow, I'm flattered. The entire world's media dragging Putin's name through the mud, but little old me on an obscure (no offense) internet forum mustn't stray for a second from 24/7 condemnation of him and him alone lest my failure be interpreted as tacit support and bring the whole project crashing down. I didn't realise I was so influential.

Yep.

Step 11- millions of refugees resulting from the situation look to their noble benefactors for succor.

Step 12- noble benefactors: "fuck off, we've got a new crisis on the front page now"

What's been interesting about the Ukraine issue is the way that the narratives from Covid have been carried over - the idea of there being 'misinformation' which can simply be identified and expunged as if media were some kind of factory line quality control; the deifying of the status quo, where all the instruments of society become benevolent agents of public service; intense polemicism rendering every discussion in high contrast black and white...


A single 'other' enemy responsible entirely for the (unforeseen and unavoidable) harms, benevolent corporate and government agencies just desperately trying to serve humanity, frustrated only by a vocal minority of 'conspiracy theorists' who don't deserve to be included in the conversation...

...familiar plot?

Fill the air with lies so nobody knows what to think. That's what the exploiters do to control the public. — frank

So if 'the public' are being fed lies, you know they're lies how?

Are you not 'the public'? Are you CIA, MI5 maybe? No wait, it's Illuminati isn't it... I knew it.

Or possibly, are you just such an arrogant twat that you think whatever you've heard simply must be true because, unlike all those other dupes, you couldn't possibly be being fed a narrative, you wouldn't fall for that. It's only everyone else who falls for that.

The only thing which is all Putin is that he surely made the choice to invade Ukraine. — ssu

I know. My point was your blatant hypocrisy in pouncing on every suggestion of US complicity, yet letting the many comments to the effect that "this is all Putin" slide by unopposed.

Your aim here is clearly not to simply inform us all that history is multi-causal. It's to pour cold water on any discussion of the west's culpability.

Because a private conversation does not make it more difficult to sign a peace deal, not the same way as a public speech may do. What is private does not feature in peace negotiations, and cannot play any role there. — Olivier5

The topic was Putin's likelihood of truly wanting peace - ie his intention. Intent can be no less judged by a public speech as a private one. In fact slightly more so by a private conversation if anything.

Besides which, Putin has already publicly laid out his demands perfectly clearly - no Nato membership, independent Dombass, Russian Crimea. Do you notice any religious fervour for the removal of Evil there? Your argument fails because Putin's already played his hand, further speculation is about intent, not public pronouncement.

Furthermore, none of this gets around the very public statements of religious fervour by America. Should we not negotiate with America either?

Well, I've just read the article with its 5 essays plus BTL comments and I'm seriously depressed.

1. Tom Burgis: ‘To confront his kleptocracy, we must first cease our complicity in it’.
2. Catriona Kelly: ‘We must try to understand the complex history of Russian imperialism’.
3. Oliver Bullough: ‘We can deprive him and his cronies of access to their wealth’.
4. Ruth Deyermond: ‘Closing contact will confirm Putin’s narrative that the west wants to destroy Russia’.
5. Peter Pomerantsev: ‘Solving the problem means confronting the psychological grip he has on people’. — Amity

So of the five experts consulted, three of them focus directly on our complicity and insist that addressing it is crucial to stopping Putin. All of whom address the problem of simply bleating on about how 'bad' Putin is in the stark light of our own wrongdoings.

The rulers of the west applied the same logic to Putin as they applied to the rulers of DRC or Kazakhstan. They wanted to buy these countries’ commodities so they pretended the kleptocrats were legitimate leaders with whom they could do business. They kept this up when he murdered exiled dissidents abroad, when he stole South Ossetia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, all the while developing a tribal imperialist spiel to stir fealty at home. After 22 years of this, Putin evidently believes his own propaganda that he is a statesman

As well as accepting that we have so emboldened him that we may well have to meet him on the battlefield, to confront Putin’s kleptocracy, we must first cease our complicity in it. What do we think happens to the money we pay for Russian gas? How do we imagine western multinationals secure oil-drilling rights dispensed by a regime we know to be corrupt? Who do we think is behind the companies of anonymous ownership, registered in places like Guernsey, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, that we continue to allow to participate in our economies? — Tom Burgis

Push for proper peace talks, accompanied by a full ceasefire, and with participation in the talks of observers trusted by both sides. — Catriona Kelly

Putin is not Hitler or Benito Mussolini, he is not even Joseph Stalin, he is a modern problem, and solving a problem like him requires new skills, new sacrifices, and new laws.

[The oligarchs] have moved at least half of their wealth out of Russia, and spent it on houses, yachts, football clubs, fine art and more. Their investment managers have been in London, Luxembourg and New York

Being able to bury their wealth deep in our economies has allowed Russia’s rulers to avoid the consequences of their own greed: their children have studied in English schools; their wealth has been invested in western funds; their German-built yachts fly under the flags of British tax havens. — Oliver Bullough

European states and the US need to recognise that there is no going back to the world before February 2022. On issues of strategic stability, cooperation, energy security, and indulgence towards the oligarch money that has corrupted their politics, there has to be a commitment to permanent change.

Western states also need to acknowledge how badly they miscalculated both their relationship with Russia and the international significance of Russia’s relations with its post-Soviet neighbours. Too often in the 30 years since the collapse of the USSR, the US, the UK and others have treated Russia as little more than an irritating obstacle to getting on with the more serious business of world politics in the Middle East or east Asia. At the same time, some European states clearly prioritised energy relations with Russia over questions about where Russian foreign policy was heading.

One of the triggers for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine seems to have been the mixed signalling over Ukraine’s Nato membership, which was neither ruled out nor firmly ruled in. Nato and the EU both need to decide, and to communicate clearly, whether they plan to admit the remaining post-Soviet states that want to become members, and what the relationship with them will look like if they don’t.

At the same time, even if it is unpalatable to talk about it now, there will also need to be engagement with the Russian government in some areas, as there was between the west and the USSR even in dark periods of the cold war such as the early 1980s. — Ruth Deyermond

Accept that we've emboldened him, accept our role in financing him, accept that we're going to have to negotiate with him, push for proper peace talks, Putin is not Hitler, acknowledge our miscalculations, acknowledge our mess over our involvement in Ukraine...

These are exactly the talking points being so decried on the other thread.

Notice how not one of them advises just whitewashing Putins' victims, spotlighting him and him alone to create a Disney version of events so transparent that a child could point out the plot holes, and then fiercely repelling anyone not toeing that line.

Any closer now to understanding those arguments?

Historical events aren't monocausal — ssu

So "this is all Putin" would be a mistaken argument here. Ignoring the role of the US, Europe, Ukraine... That would be a mistake, yes? And yet when such arguments are made, I don't see you step in to correct them. It seems your desire to remind us all of the multi-causality of historical events is limited to exculpating America.

They are dissimilar in that one is public and the other private. I thought this would be obvious. — Olivier5

I expect one was in Russian and the other in Ukrainian too. One had more words in it. One was at a slightly higher pitch. One was delivered at a lower latitude than the other.

So what?

You make all kinds of accusations and strawman arguments, which I really don't care about. — ssu

Wow. I dread to think the effort you'd put in to responding to arguments you do care about.

My country isn't at war — ssu

Right. So what has my accusing you of warmongering got to do with people defending their country?

Of course, for the like of you people defending their country from an invasion is warmongering. — ssu

Are you defending your country?

One private discussion between two Jews is not to be equated to a public speech at a rally. — Olivier5

Both are speech acts. So evidently they can be equated. If they're dissimilar in some way significant to your argument then you'll have to state it. God knows why you feel the need to resort to arguing by Delphic aphorism.. Just state your case for Christ's sake.

The Russians should follow your advice and surrender. — frank

Where have I advised anyone to surrender?

And you should understand just how reaching any strategic objectives is compromised by the disastrous decision to make a large scale, or basically an all out invasion of Ukraine. It simply doesn't help the situation of Russia. It wasn't "the only correct move". — ssu

So when Anatol Lieven, veteran reporter on Eastern Europe and senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says...

Since the mid-1990s, when the issue of NATO enlargement first came up, Russian officials, Russian intellectuals, and leading Western experts, including George Kennan, the architect of containment — and myself in a small way — have all been saying that if this were extended one day to Ukraine and Georgia it would lead at best to deep confrontation and at worst to war. The [Boris] Yeltsin administration warned of this — this is not just a [Vladimir] Putin thing. And over the past almost three months, before the war, the Russian government was making it clear that there was a threat of war if the West did not compromise on what Russia regarded as its vital interest. — Anatol Lieven

Or when George Kennan, one of the architects of the Cold War policy of containment of the USSR said...

Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking — George Kennan

They should have come to you, to be schooled on what is so 'obvious'. Your Eastern Bloc foreign policy expertise is...?

The obvious. No conclusion is reached. The fighting goes on. — ssu

So warmongering for you too then.

You think that understanding that Putin is going to attack even two days before is inconsequential? — ssu

You think your brilliant insight was unique to you? Others saw it also. What's difficult is deciding what to do about it. Maybe mobilise the reserves, maybe that'd be too provocative... People have not acted out of ignorance, they've acted consequent to a decision - a weighing of facts pro and con.

You keep presenting only one side as if that did all the work for us, as if there were no counterbalancing information that needed to be weighed against it

They don't, unless you have examples to provide. — Olivier5

I've provided examples.

He can trust even less what the Russian negotiator promises. — ssu

What's he going to do about that?

We seem to be having a language issue. 'Do' refers to some action, not a change in knowledge. If I realise you're Finnish, I haven't done anything.

I asked what anyone would do. It's irrelevant people just 'knowing' things unless you have some real world strategy that's going to be taken in a different direction because of that knowledge. Otherwise it's inconsequential.

What is the Ukrainian negotiator going to do differently because Putin used religious language in his speech?

Good you asked. It tells a lot for example a) how committed Putin is to the war, b) are there any intensions against others and simply c) what one participant is saying to his people.

What Putin says is important. Some days before the invasion, I could tell from the speech Putin gave (and some others noted it too) that this was a man going to war. The whole idea of the staging of the troops to the border would be a way to get the US to talk and to solve the Ukraine problem went out of the window.

And you might have noticed yourself how this new Cold War has gone colder by Biden saying that Putin is a war criminal. Well, you don't talk to war criminals. — ssu

Yep. And what does anyone do with that information? — Isaac

...I've bolded this time...see if that helps.

I could say that, yes. — Olivier5

So your argument fails then. You've failed to distinguish the harm (to peace talks) of Russian faith-based, fight-against-genocide, propaganda, and Ukrainian, faith-based, repel-the-evil-tyrant rhetoric.

They both invoke religion, they both essentialise, they both talk about universals (or specifics, depending how you look at it).

They both demonise the 'other', present them as deaf to negotiation, imply they'll be untrustworthy...

You've failed to show how either is functionally different in terms of their use working toward peace.

But then its quite clear you don't give a shit about peace, because this is all just an opportunity for you to get off on your moral virtue signalling from the comfort of your armchair.

How genuine Putin is at those peace talks, can be observed from what he talks to the Russian public. — ssu

Yep. And how genuine Zelensky is at those peace talks, can be observed from what he says to the Ukrainian public. How genuine any mediator is at those peace talks, can be observed from how they talk to their public.

What does anyone do with that information?