This is a good point. You’re forgetting two things, though: first, I’m not trying to justify Russia’s actions. In fact I’ve condemned them all along. I think it’s both morally wrong and strategically stupid, as they’ve now pushed even more countries into the hands of the US. — Mikie

That's fair. But I do think it changes the moral judgement a fair bit whether we think of the US invasion of Iraq as a misguided and ultimately tragically counterproductive attempt at fighting terrorism or as a cynical move to exploit a tragedy in order to reshape the middle east according to the US' geopolitical interests.

For similar reasons, it does rankle me if Putin is called a "reactive leader" in this context for, even if it's not meant to exculpate him, it seems to nevertheless distract from the fact that had he not given the order, thousands victims of this war would be alive today (though this is ultimately tangential to our discussion).

Secondly, when analyzing the justification given by the aggressor state, you look at the evidence. The justification for invading Iraq (connections to 9/11, weapons of mass destruction, etc) turned out to be completely bogus. And the goal wasn’t to conquer Iraq anyway. The actual reason, in my view, was economic.

So in Russia’s case, is there any evidence that NATO is a major factor? Yes, there is. Doesn’t make it correct or rational. Furthermore, it doesn’t make it the only cause. — Mikie

Sure, it's a different case with different facts. The analogy only goes so far.

Mostly what I'm interested in at this point isn't debating an individual point - we have tried that at length. But I do (obviously) also think I'm looking at the evidence.

You're drawing a direct line from NATO expansion to the war of Ukraine. I'm saying at some point in the 2000s the line entered a bundle of causes we might label "Russian resentment towards the west", which ended up one of the causes of the war. These views aren't really fundamentally opposed. I'm not saying "no actually, there really were WMDs in Iraq".

I think it's more useful to understand Putin's decision as an expression of his geopolitical goals. The include keeping Ukraine neutral, but they also go much beyond that.

Saying the US invaded Iraq because the US is evil and George Bush is a madman wouldn’t be a strong argument. Likewise, rejecting that thesis wouldn’t justify the actual (well supported) reasons. — Mikie

From where I sit, only a madman would have thrown Russia's entire available armed forces at Ukraine if they did not intend for this to result in a seismic geopolitical shift in their favour. Neutrality for Ukraine for some indefinite period doesn't strike me as such a shift.

The Gulf War campaign had about a million coalition troops. The Iraqi Army was no longer considered nearly as well supplied or competent in 2003. Sanctions and the collapse of the USSR as an arms provider had crippled their military, as had a decade of a US enforced no fly zone. During the Gulf War, the US essentially defacto partitioned a whole third of Iraq, which was under Kurdish control and rule after. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I confess I have not really looked into this in detail. I checked the troop dispositions for Iraq out of curiosity and noticed that they didn't actually seem in an entirely different ballpark (only looking at the initial invasion force). The comparison is flawed in many ways, and yet I don't think it's entirely out of the question that Russian commanders also looked at the US invasion in Iraq as a model for their planned campaign.

Another comparison might be Vietnam. South Vietnam had about half the population of Ukraine but the SVA and US forced for COIN operations there peaked at 1.4 million.

However, in general, the size of military deployments has been decreasing. Modern warfare has shown a definite trend towards quality beating quantity. Military hardware is significantly more expensive when adjusting for inflation than during WWII and soldiers now require more training.

Russia's invasion was largely predicated on the prediction that Ukraine's would collapse. The low troop numbers represent Russia's (over)confidence in this collapse, over confidence in the effectiveness of bribes they had paid to Ukrainian leaders, corruption (they thought they had more men than they did, there have been multiple trials over under strength formations and "ghost soldiers"), and general poor planning skills, more than anything relative to their war aims IMO. That and their relative inability to mobilize and support a much larger force. After all, they couldn't support the men they went in with. Having more unsupported columns wouldn't have helped them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No disagreement here. One can say the russian invasion forces were much too small, yet on paper they still represented one of the most formidable forces in the world. The number of nations who could have assembled something similar is small.

I'd rather call it pro-Russian propaganda. Indeed, these people have no problems to whine over American imperialism EVEN WHEN American didn't "conquest" anything. While refrain from talking about Russian imperialism when the territorial conquest actually happens before they eyes while they are denying it. The intellectual misery is cosmic. — neomac

I would rather turn this around and point out that @Mikie and presumably also the other posters would never accept this kind of argument If we were talking about an US invasion.

They'd scoff at the notion that the US didn't intend to "conquer" Iraq but only to fight terrorism. If we tried to argue that the US had no imperialist ambitions in Iraq and merely reacted to "reasonable security concerns", that really the "most direct cause" of the invasion was the alignment of Iraq with the supporters of radical Islam, they'd laugh us out of the room.

The invasion of Iraq is also an interesting analogy as far as the numbers are concerned. The population of Iraq is 43 million. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq had a large army that was considered relatively modern and effective. Yet the initial invasion forces also numbered "only" some 160.000.

If, for some wild reason, the invasion had failed, would we now be talking about how the US couldn't possibly have intended to conquer Iraq, since clearly it didn't have the troops?

There were other reasons for invasion. Conquest wasn’t one of them. — Mikie

Except for the parts of Ukraine actually conquered and annexed, right?

I think for the Ukrainians, the distinction between "conquest" and a "special military operation to demilitarise and denazify" is rather academic.

Right, fair enough. We could also say his legitimacy was forged in a war. War, or perhaps we should be more neutral and call it direct military action, has worked for Putin.

Supposedly he was chosen because he demonstrated that he was corrupt, so Yeltsin, who was also corrupt, believed Putin wouldn't prosecute him for his crimes. War increased his power? — frank

Well I'm sure the word Putin would use is not "corrupt" but "loyal". But yes that is what I read as well, and also that he was a bit of a blank slate politically. Noone knew what he really stood for. At the time, he might have simply been considered an interim solution. Someone not offensive, who would make sure the Yeltsin family got off free, and then make way for someone with more of a political profile. But Putin quickly made his mark by taking a hardline stance on Chechnya and is to this day suspected of having orchestrated terror attacks to have a pretext for a second Chechen war. That brought him into his own as a political figure in his own right.

Another allegation is that Putin was essentially always a KGB trojan horse, who played the role of the loyal vassal long enough to get into power, and then started to enact the kind of policies his KGB clique had wanted to employ since the days of the USSR.

Do note that all this is based on somewhat hazy rememberings on books I read / listened to. So it's quite possible I muddled something, Perhaps @Jabberwock can correct any glaring mistakes, since they seem knowledgeable.

Just do armchair speculation. Good enough. :up: — Mikie

Are you doing your speculation from a footstool? If so, you should upgrade!

He rose to power originally by starting a war. More war would pull the country behind him? — frank

That's not quite true, Putin was elevated to power by the Jelzin family. But his success in the second Chechen war did much to secure his rule.

I think if the invasion was just a land grab, Putin's timing is a little strange. Why wouldn't he have done that a few years earlier when Trump was president of the US? Trump would have cheered him on. — frank

But that would have damaged trump, possibly beyond repair. Which would probably have not been in Russia's interest. Or Putin might have considered the west especially weak in the wake the COVID pandemic. Also possible is that Putin intended his invasion in 2020, coinciding with political turmoil in the US, but COVID stopped that plan. In the early days of COVID, some estimates had the mortality way higher than it actually was.

Waiting until Biden, a hawk, to become president, makes it seem that he wanted to engage the US military somehow. — frank

Putin seems to have overestimated the strength of his military, but I doubt he overestimated it by that much.

Since he also declared some sort of new world order after the invasion, indicating that the US was no longer in charge of global affairs, it seems like he thought he was going to easily conquer Ukraine and flaunt this win in spite of Biden's public threat to punish Russia for interfering in US elections. — frank

Something along these lines. Deal US prestige a crushing blow, demonstrating it's weakness as an ally, while restoring Russia's great power status and cementing his reputation in Russia.

What's not to like? But it was not to be.

In other words, I don't believe the invasion was about NATO, but I think it may have partly been about demonstrating Russian military strength and simultaneously demonstrating that US supremacy was over. He just miscalculated his own military capability? — frank

Arguably, he had some reason to overestimate his chances for success. In Georgia the russian forces did poorly, but were overall successful and western reactions were muted. In Ukraine in 2014, russian forces were spectacularly successful and Ukraine was even briefly staggered by a ragtag bunch of mercenary "separatists". The western reaction was less muted, but still far from unified and effective.

Taken together Putin might well have assumed that his military would pull off a blitzkrieg campaign so shocking that the Ukrainian military would be unable to respond, while the west would look on helplessly and just pile on some more toothless sanctions.

The russian military isn't some incompetent bunch of conscripted farmers, as pro Ukrainian propaganda sometimes suggested. They had much improved from their nadir in the first Chechen war. But apparently they, like some many others before them, did not sufficiently account for the effect of determined resistance aimed at their logistics and c&c.

“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn't sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second-class membership. We rejected that.

So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.”

Yeah and Austria-Hungary went to war to get a proper investigation of the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Well then we're probably in agreement that Israel's stated intention to not occupy Gaza likely means things will be much worse for whoever is left there, since it seems to imply Israel will destroy all the "Hamas infrastructure" (which probably means just all all the infrastructure) and then just leave.

I’ll just quote Mearsheimer, who said it best over a year ago: — Mikie

Is it at all plausible to you that this argument from Mearsheimer is only convincing if you happen to already agree with it?

but fortunately I do so I'm happy to dissect all the myths that cloud and manipulate your judgement. — boethius

Charming.

why the Russian offer was a reasonable one for Ukraine to take (of course trying to negotiate as many further concessions as possible, and not only from Russia but the EU as well). — boethius

The russian offer which we ultimately know very little about.

Ukraine did negotiate. The best source on the early negotiations, Naftali Bennet, has said he saw a 50/50 chance of a deal being made.

So the entire argument that the west has cynically manipulated Ukraine to dismiss negotiations rests on - at best - coin toss odds for an acceptable ceasefire agreement.

You can of course say you'd have taken your chances, but the case for manipulation under these circumstances is very weak.

So, to dress up US involvement in Ukraine leading up to the war as simply naive do-gooding, — boethius

Which noone is doing.

and encourage Ukraine to continue fighting and repudiate negotiations and make absurd ultimatums (such as the negotiation can happen after Russia leaves all of Ukraine), — boethius

We're leaving out the fact that Ukrainians make decisions too again.

is simply living in a delusional mythical echo chamber (that you so happily fill with noise with your fellow US sycophants whenever critical voices are absent from the thread for even a day). — boethius

Pot, meet kettle.

I post RAND's report — boethius

You just fail to account for developments since. Because Ukraine did not collapse quickly, and it did not end up in a significant strategic defeat for the US.

You do not seem to have this view, but rather share my view that policy should be based on (in not entirely, then with strong consideration for) reduction of harm — boethius

But, crucially, I believe that the people who decide what harm they're willing to accept are the Ukrainians. Who, it bears repeating, have decided to fight this war knowing full well their chances.

Now, if we agree on the moral fundamentals, then it doesn't seem even up for debate of what the purpose of Western policy has been leading up to the war ("extend" Russia at great risk and peril to Ukraine) and what the Western policy has been during the war (fight Russia to the last Ukrainian ... but not escalate more than that and risk Russia using Nukes). — boethius

Part of my moral fundamentals is that people are responsible for their actions, and that decisions are made by real people with real interests and not abstract forces.

Noone forced Russia's hand. Noone forced Ukraine's. We can discuss influence, but I reject any theory that refuses to take account of the basic reality that Putin could simply not have given the order to invade, while Zelensky (or any number of Ukrainian soldiers) could have simply refused to fight.

These were choices made, not expressions of the will of the US.

1. why does such a disastrous policy (at least for Ukraine, if not for the West) get put into place in the first place despite warnings directly from RAND that Ukraine have little chance of "winning" and that their losing will be a significant loss of US prestige and power — boethius

We'd have to look at specific decisions being made.

2. how best to end the war now, and — boethius

Why would I take your positions on that seriously given rhetoric like this:

understanding how the myth building works and fools people such as yourself into believing that disastrous policy is either somehow necessary or then at least "hearts were in the right place". — boethius

Why not just talk to the mirror?

The focus on criticizing Western policy by us critical Westerners in this thread, is because we are Westerners and citizens of countries that are part of the Western institutions organizing the policies in question as well as directly participating in sending arms and thoughts and payers. — boethius

I'm not criticising the focus, I'm criticising the quality of the analysis.

Despite various statements to the contrary, and claims to nuance, the analysis is imho marred by an overreliance on overarching historical "forces" with little account made of the actual people who make decisions and the various ways in which the conflict has shifted.

How can NATO-expansion be the same issue in 1995 and 2022 despite a vastly different situation in eastern Europe? Why does it not matter that Putin already invaded Ukraine in 2014, annexed part of it's territory and created a frozen conflict? Why are we ignoring the different ways in which EU leaders have had their hand in matters, perhaps most importantly the two German chancellors, Schröder and Merkel?The situation might have been very different without a German government as friendly to Russia.

Ukrainian interests, too, seem frozen. Ukraine's internal divisions are cited, but the various changes in their position are not. The US involvement in the 2014 revolution (or coup if you prefer) is loudly touted, but russian moves that also exacerbated it are not. Putin's moves towards Ukraine have become markedly more heavy handed, even though his previous strategy had largely been effective in keeping it "neutral".

All these are simply not accounted for by the analysis that puts US "influence" front and center.

Which is simply masterbating with a fellow US sycophant with more myth and propaganda. — boethius

Exactly. — Mikie

You do realise the irony here?

Now you are misconstruing my point which was AFTER they were bombed to hell they made sure that the countries were liberal democracies, friendly to the Allies, and demilitarized. — schopenhauer1

Right, so is the argument that, through an occupation of the Gaza strip, Israel might be able demilitarise it and then develop occupation policies that'll lead to a long-term rapprochement?

In that case yeah, that might be possible. It'd be very hard and costly but at least it'd be a plan. It doesn't seem to be the current plan though.

But they don't work both ways. The IDF doesn't livestream itself committing atrocities on civilians and raping women to death. Hamas fighters behave like animals. They revel in the sadism. They think they have a divine mandate to kill Jews. They want to wipe them all out.

There is not a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas. — RogueAI

And, I suppose the implication is, whoever has the moral advantage is the good guy, and the good guy can do whatever it takes.

To me this is just as risible as the parallel argument where whoever is most oppressed is the victim and the victim can do whatever it takes. A parody of a moral argument.

Israel's Arab neighbors are culturally inferior to Israel. Their Islamic-based values are abhorrent. The world would be a better place if Israel conquered it's Arab neighbors, occupied them, and forced a constitutional republic on them where women and LGBTQ people are given equal rights. Can you imagine the rejoicing that would take place from tens of millions of women and girls if that happened? — RogueAI

I can also imagine the abject carnage that would precede the rejoicing. And maybe we would find that the people don't take all that kindly to our civilising mission.

If only we had some good, recent evidence to judge this proposal. Perhaps if some massive military power had invaded some middle eastern states and attempted to turn them into liberal democracies we could look how that went.

Straw man as I didn’t state that, just facts. Allies utterly bombed the hell out of these countries and occupied them for a time. — schopenhauer1

The question is, do you think the relevant factor for their post war recovery was how thoroughly they had been destroyed

That’s speculative. Hopefully Netanyahu gets kicked out but then again how solid was post war Germany at the beginning? However, from what seems to have been stated it’s some sort of entity that isn’t hostile to Israel but have no idea what that looks like. Again, tgst is just from what’s said, so speculation. You can do that too but then your speculation is just that too. — schopenhauer1

I think we'd have to see what arguments we come up with rather than throw our hands up and say "it's all speculation anyways".

I don't see how Israel can develop the kind of rapport with the arabs that the US managed with Japan and Germany. In the case of Japan, the US had the emperor to work with, along with the somewhat ironic twist that the Japanese death cult turned into a kind of studied subservience once their defeat was obvious.

In Germany the US had already been as much a model to strive after as an object of hate. Americans and Germans did not have the kind of baggage Israel would have to deal with.

And again there's the basic problem of where there's room for the arabs in Israel, politically speaking.

People expect action from their leaders during times of economic misery. As FDR said, "The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach."

This is a silly point you are arguing. When a country is attacked or when it's economy isn't working people expect action from their leader. Had Netanyahu not retaliated, as some here propose, he would have been removed by the Knesset for dereliction of duty or cowardice or incompetence, and deservedly so. His replacement would then have retaliated. — RogueAI

Well and had Hamas not attacked Israel, they'd have been replaced by some other fanatical islamist organisation. As @Baden has repeatedly pointed out, all these arguments work both ways.

People defend Hamas citing exactly the political realities you're using in defense of Israel. That Hamas is the underdog. That Palestinians are oppressed. That one cannot expect the oppressed to be reasonable and just turn the other cheek.

I've noticed some of the people here hold Israel to a ridiculously high standard, almost like a Madonna-complex, and when Israel doesn't live up to the impossible saintly expectations, they're lumped in with the animals that attacked them. — RogueAI

Animals, yes. And what can you do with animals but to exterminate them. And since we cannot guarantee that the children of Gaza do not also turn into animals, the proper reaction is therefore to kill them all. Perhaps "god will know his own", as the apocryphal saying goes.

"During one week in February 1946, a committee of 24 Americans, both military and civilian, drafted a democratic constitution for Japan. MacArthur approved it and SCAP presented it to Japan's foreign minister as a fait accompli."
https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/lessons_on_the_japanese_constitution#:~:text — RogueAI

Meanwhile the Germans were allowed their own constitutional conference. Does it follow therefore that Germany is still Germany but Japan isn't?

But the US did occupy Germany and Japan after utterly destroying many of their cities. There’s even dozen or so US army bases still in Germany and in Japan. When Western and Eastern Germany was rebuilt, it was definitely in a new framework molded to each sides image. It doesn’t mean it was some occupied territory forever (but was for a time). It had to be a liberal democracy again though. — schopenhauer1

This idea that Germany and Japan were somehow remade out of while cloth by the allies, turning former barbarians into civilized people (as per @RogueAI) is really weird. Is this somehow a result of how the history of WW2 is taught, that the continuity of either nation was permanently shattered?

Edit: now that I think about it, I guess there is a popular history that Germany wasn't properly defeated after WW1 so the allies had to finish the job properly and excise the evil spirit of prussian militarism permanently.

Neither Germany nor Japan were transformed into killing machines by some evil spell, and neither nation just effortlessly switched back after the war. That the result was as positive has much to do with the integration of these countries into the anti-communist alliance, which justified lenient policies while providing a new sense of identity (very much abbreviated).

It would not be easy for Israel to pull off something similar. Centrally the current conception of the Israeli stated seems to me utterly opposed to giving the arabs en Masse some sort of unifying identity as a part of Israel.

Just like it's a political reality that people won't take a longstanding political grievance combined with economic misery "lying down".

The solution this political reality offers is not new. Hamas is clear in what it proposes. So are some Israelis. Perhaps we should laud them for their honesty and just get on with it?

So, get your killing out of the way, lest someone outdoes you?

As an aside, I'm a bit surprised no one has claimed that Washington is the real actual true cause of Putin's rise. :) — jorndoe

I think it's implied. How could it be anything else when US imperialism is the singular force that determines events around the world.

Well maybe only the bad ones.

You have to respond because your country is being attacked. — Hanover

Do you? Why?

This is no valid syllogism.

It's my position that the Israeli response is necessary to protect Israeli interests. If you disagree, you can present one of two arguments: (1) the Israeli response is disproportionate to the threat, meaning it excessively exacts damage beyond what is necessary to achieve safety for its citizens, or (2) Israel has no legitimate interest to protect because it is either an illegal occupier of the land or because it deserves this comuppance.

If you choose #1, you've got to set out what the proportionate response is. That no one can seem to do this leads me to believe that #2 is the real position everyone here actually has. The #2 position calls for the eliminatation of Israel, which is why Israel is ignoring the protests. — Hanover

No I don't have to do that.

It could simply be the case that there is no proportionate response that protects Israeli interests. Reality is not obligated to arrange itself so that Israeli interests can always be met.

Why even bother replying if all you're going to do is demonstrate that you really don't want to answer?

Well, whatever. This just seems to be one of those topics that makes it impossible to talk to someone you don't share some basic assumptions with.

So while you could reasonably say in the Vietnam example we need to stop and rethink strategy and withdraw, you can't say the same of Israel. Actual bombs are falling and you have to respond even if it pangs your conscience that maybe you've not been a perfect neighbor in the past. — Hanover

You just have to respond, and that's that? No further argument is necessary other than "something happened, therefore a response must happen"?

My position is that Israel's right to protect itself is a given, just like the US's. The question is whether a full scale invasion of Gaza does that. I say it does. If you say it doesn't, again I ask, what does? — Hanover

But why do we need to supply a strategy in order to be allowed to criticize? It should rightly be the other way around. It should be incumbent on the one who exercises violence to justify that violence. If they can't, then they're wrong. Whether the other party can supply some alternative means of resolution is irrelevant.

This is not an argument for absolute pacifism. But you can't turn around and turn the moral onus for your position on your interlocutor.

Had Israel re-established security outside Gaza and then done nothing, a whole lot fewer people would be dead now. Of course the conflict would not be solved and Hamas could then kill even more people in the future. But if you want to make that argument then at the very least you need to be pretty sure whatever you're doing will a) destroy Hamas and b) not result in another similar group taking its place.

When will Israel be protected? Are there any limits on what it can do?

From what you quoted I asked a series of questions. Israel took it as all out war on Hamas. If they give up, that would end. They could give up no? — schopenhauer1

I'm not sure how that would work. Who would have the authority to do that? Someone might have the theoretical authority, but practically they'd just be ignored.

Of course every individual fighter could give up, sure.

Just curious, what if Israel just went into a hornets nest to get Hamas and were massacred? — schopenhauer1

Then they'd have to adjust their tactics. But still the core idea here seems to be you just have to "get Hamas", because they're evil and did something terrible. But that's the emotional reaction. Why is that the baseline we have to accept?

I think we all agree though, Hamas is evil. But the difference is Israel's response. How does one respond to Hamas? The reality is they are entrenched in that region and their goals are to do it again. If Israel did very little and Hamas did another October 7th attack, what then? How about after that? How about after that? In fact, what if the Jews in Israel just let them keep attacking and go on with their lives? — schopenhauer1

Why do we have to start form the position that the obvious thing is what Israel is doing, that is all-out war? Why is that the default outcome we somehow have to accept, even though we have plenty of historical precedent that it just doesn't work? Or rather it can work, if you follow it up with ethnic cleansing.

Shouldn't it be incumbent on the people who argue for violence - any violence - to first prove conclusively at least that it'll be effective? Oh sure in war you cannot second guess for evey bullet you fire. But you should at least have a coherent and plausible strategic aim.

Asking for a justification isn't condoning Hamas, nor does one need to accept responsibility for further atrocities by concluding that there's no good answer to the problem. The default should not be to go ahead and kill people because you just have to do something.

But suppose we take all that to be true. It does not for a moment negate the fact that Russia would view any support from the US as hostile interference. Even assuming best intentions to spread democracy and helping an ally stand up against oppression and imperialism.

Our own people knew this and said so outright. I won’t go through the quotes again. So again, were they wrong? Or does it not matter because Russia has been bent on conquering Ukraine all along? (According to you.) — Mikie

I asked this before, but you seem to have taken to ignore me.

Anyways assuming that Russia views any US support as hostile interference, what is the proper course to take?

The danger of pushing NATO was known long before Putin. That never changed. Russia was weaker at some points, but the position on NATO — particularly Ukraine — remained the same.

But don’t take my word for it. Or the Kremlin’s. Take the following — from 1995 (quite a while before 2004):

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/09/21/should-nato-growa-dissent/

Just one example. Another, from 1997: — Mikie

But these are arguments from the 1990s. Could the US / European course towards Russia have been much, much better in the 90s and early 2000s? Absolutely, yes. The end of the cold war was bungled in spectacular fashion.

The problem is that your claim that:

NATO expansion was the most direct cause of this war. — Mikie

doesn't follow from the above. Your insistence on "the most direct cause" has no justification in your premises.

Doesn’t make Putin a good guy, as simpletons will surely interpret this as saying, but it’s at least worth being honest about. — Mikie

It does seem to absolve him of a great deal of responsibility though.

Would you be OK with saying that Clemenceau, by insisting on harsh terms in the treaty of Versailles, set "the most direct cause" for world war 2?

Or we can pretend the US isn’t the world superpower these last 30 years, and that its intentions are mostly benign. — Mikie

What are it's intentions like?

Did the US try to "wipe out" Nazi Germany? They wanted to wipe out the Nazi regime, indeed. And they did at great cost. And by the end of the war, the US didn't say "Ok, well the Nazis are sufficiently pushed back to their own accepted borders... let's go home now". At that point, past 1941, it was all but over for the Nazis, and certainly by 1945. — schopenhauer1

When are we talking about? Germany still had warfighting capacity in 1945. Heavily degraded, yes, but it's not like they could not rebuild.

Anyways one of the relevant differences is that defeating the German military and occupying their territory was a reasonable plan to prevent Germany from fighting another war of aggression.

The challenge is that Israel's plan for Gaza is not a rational path to security for Israel.

Possibly. It would have to be done very carefully and legally, though. Countries have duties to their own citizens that go way beyond duties to innocents in foreign lands. — RogueAI

I think legally Gaza is Israel. So the Gazans are Israeli citizens, whether either likes it or not.

No. Are you claiming Nazi Germany was a civilized place? We could argue about Japan after I see your answer on this one. — RogueAI

Germany existed prior to 1936.

But also yes, Nazi Germany was "civilised". The Nazis weren't some alien species that suddenly appeared in the middle of Europe. While Nazism was a peculiarly German ideology in some ways, it's also recognisably a product of european civilisation.

That's what makes it so scary: it unleashed the murderous ideas that European powers had confined to their colonies on the heart of Europe itself.

I understand the psychology of this, but I don't forgive it. I don't forgive the ignorance of history, the immediate forgetfulness, the inability to draw analogies, the absolute lack of nuance, the wilful moral blindness, all that which renders otherwise intelligent people helplessly unable to condemn the killing of civilians, even children, unless the right ones are being killed. So, yes, I'm halfway with you on your analysis but I draw contrary conclusions. My conclusion is that it's not "unfortunate" what happened after 9/11 any more than it is "unfortunate" what Israel is doing now; it is, rather, wilfully criminal and predominantly an expression of hatred and revenge that will be recognized as such in the history books and in the later consciences of those who were misguided enough to go along with it. — Baden

Well said!

The deaths of the Palestinians I lay at the feet of Hamas, not Israel.. Men drape themselves in Palestinian babies with guns blazing toward the innocent and the world stands in shock at those who return fire and not at those men? That is a world gone mad. — Hanover

It should probably be considered a compliment that people think you're susceptible to moral appeals.

You'd think from your description, Hamas has Israel where it wants them. From my chair, Hamas is being devastated and their only hope is in winning a political battle on the streets that will convince Israel to stop the onslaught. — Hanover

I don't think Hamas had any illusions as to their ability to fight the IDF head on. Perhaps they were counting on a more limited response, or perhaps not. Ultimately I don't think they care either way.

But anyway, no one has actually responded by providing a real battle plan as the bombs fall. — Hanover

Seems like an odd requirement on the philosophy forum.

But anyways I think the battle plan would involve not fighting the Hamas directly but instead setting up a scheme that incentives the Gazan citizens to withdraw their support for Hamas.

Probably take back direct rule over the Gaza strip, start with an area and show that you can provide something more tangible than hate.

Of course it's correct to advocate for releasing the hostages. I don't see it as effective. That is I see no way such advocacy has tangible results.

I guess we could lobby our governments to pressure the gulf states to pressure Hamas.

I think it would indeed lead to some sort of cease-fire. — schopenhauer1

I'm not so optimistic. It rather seems like the policy currently is to wreck Gaza to make it unliveable. Which is arguably a more plausible plan than to somehow "pacify" it by killing Hamas fighters.

My own answer is what the Israelis are doing now - and I do not see that they have much choice. — tim wood

If only we had some historical precedent to assess the likelihood of that working.

I guess it just seems pointless. Though Qatar has claimed they're close to a deal.

To all this you can only muster 'But the US...!'. Until you understand what the actual CONFLICT is about, you will still be wrong about the direct reasons for the war. — Jabberwock

Well apparently there is no conflict. There's just US imperialism, pulling all the strings.

So this is not a hard question to answer. Yes, you would prefer to live in a world where Israel is in charge. — RogueAI

Unless you're an arab.

It's a bit like arguing Nazi Germany was a perfectly fine place to live. If you were a blond, blue eyed ethnic german.

The world is a better place without Hamas in it, and if Palestinians support the Hamas attacks, the world is a better place with fewer of them too. — RogueAI

My standard response to this is the following:

Since you're in favour of killing people, I think the world is a better place without you. Therefore, please apply your own logic.

Peoples sometimes have to be dragged into the civilized world kicking and screaming. It happened with Germany and Japan. It will happen with Palestine too. — RogueAI

Germany and Japan were not civilised before 1945?

I've made an ethical argument: both Israel and Hamas kill innocent people. Israel stands for democratic rule and protection of women and minorities. Hamas stands for Islamic rule and degradation of women and minorities. Therefore, we should prefer Israel wins. — RogueAI

Which would be an ok argument If you're 9. Are you?

The question is whether we — the US —should have taken the Russian perspective seriously. I think we should have. We didn’t. And that’s why we have the war. — Mikie

That's easy enough to say. But what does "taking the russian perspective seriously" actually imply?

Most of what you said seems to be a certain sentiment except the war imagery at the end. It was probably a mix of just wanting to feel secure and I would think most families would rather the image be collective farmers, fishermen, builders, engineers, etc just living life building the land. Being a citizen soldier is just a necessity not the driving force. If your existence is on the line though, surely fighting in the army is not a remote possibility but a necessity. — schopenhauer1

Well I can't really make any claim in my own right. But it made sense to me as a reaction to trauma.

Israel is not just another nation state. It's not just an anachronistic quasi colonial project. It's also a product of the Shoa. It's a promise that, the next time, the jews will not be helpless.

And if that is so it would certainly have a bearing on the Israel Palestine conflict. It would especially have a hearing on the reaction to a terror attack.

After all people smuggle millions of drugs into this country everyday so I don't see how it will be different with guns. — Lexa

The comparison with drugs ends up very misleading, because it seems to be the case that, where guns are not common, a gun is often a liability for anyone engaged in criminal activity.

The main reason that repression has been ineffective at eliminating the drug trade is that the demand for drugs is inflexible. People addicted to drugs will do whatever it takes, and addiction is very profitable for the sellers.

No such dynamic exists for guns. Most organised crime is preoccupied with making money and staying undetected (or unmolested). In a country where guns are illegal, anyone who relies on criminal activity for their income will think very hard before taking a gun out on the street. Being caught with a gun in a country with strict gun control is one of the best ways to get a whole lot of law enforcement attention on you.

And most of the things these people do don't benefit particularly from being armed. The only area where guns are both a significant advantage and are actually used is in gang-on-gang violence, or occasionally internal disputes / acts of revenge.

On the other hand petty criminals might wish to be armed, but petty crime is already a high risk - low reward kind of deal a lot of the time. The people involved usually carry psychological issues like addiction or are otherwise marginalised. They don't generally have the resources to get a gun.

So the chilling effect of gun control on armed crime is overall much more effective than the one on illegal drugs.

But more proximately, Israel, the modern state, was an idea that came about in the 19th century and borne out of the nationalism that was prevalent of that time. But the same can be said of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and you name it. The reality of Israel came about through the realization that Jews in the Western world (and that includes populations in Arab centers which traditionally have been "treated" a bit better than Europe prior to Israel), because history has demonstrated a rampant hatred of this group through the generations and culminating with the holocaust (and is that some sort of "End of History" moment for humanity or the Jews in general, or can that happen yet again, and again and again.. hence the idea that perhaps a location related to the group's origins makes sense for there to be at least one place for the people not to be continually at the whims of whatever country they belong). — schopenhauer1

Naomi Klein has pointed out in her recent book, which touches on the middle east, that Zionism used to be simply one part of a wide discussion. Before it turned into a byword for the Holocaust, "the jewish question" was avidly discussed by jews with various views represented.

But the Holocaust destroyed this discussion, both by physically destroying it's participants as well as discrediting the idea that jews could integrate. Zionism ended up the only plausible answer.

Klein argues that Israel offers jews a kind of new identity. A kind of repudiation of the old European stereotypes of jews (intellectuals, merchants, poor peasant communities in eastern Europe). A muscular, tanned figure, rifle in hand, tanks and fighter jets at their back.

It's a truism that you state.

I agree with your truism and then you complain about me agreeing with your truism. — boethius

It wasn't intended as a complaint.

What is not a truism is that we agree that the Russian terms on offer, at least as they appeared to be and were interpreted by diplomats and the West's own media, were reasonable, you even go so far as to say generous (a term I would hesitate to use; generous would be just leaving all the occupied territory).

Now, what is notable, is who doesn't accept this truism is Zelensky. He rejects further negotiation until his demands are met, rather than negotiate and see if there's a deal good enough to take and thus he should take it.

But it's an additional truism that you negotiate before an agreement not after your counter-party accepts your terms.

So maybe it is an obvious truism that you should negotiate and take a good enough deal if it's on offer, but it's clearly not so obvious as to be accepted by Zelensky nor his cheerleaders in the Western media.

Ukraine rejects the terms before the war and also, we are told, the whole Minsk process of diplomacy before was just a ruse and those previous settlements to the conflict were agreed to in bad faith. — boethius

I haven't said anything about what I think the terms actually were, and I have already decided that it's pointless to discuss specifics with you as our views just diverge too much.

Clearly we do not inhabit a shared reality (mentally, that is).

What further fighting improved Ukraine's position? — boethius

Mostly all the fighting in 2022 after the first couple of weeks.

You think now Ukraine is in a better negotiation position than it was at the start of the war? And only going forward from now their negotiation position might decrease? — boethius

Yeah, at least in terms of relative battlefield advantage. You can of course argue that the russian losses will make it harder for Russia to justify any kind of settlement, but psychological effects like this are hard to measure.

It's possible that Ukraine has passed it's peak and the war of attrition will slowly accumulate russian battlefield advantage, as well as erode Ukrainian will to fight. Certainly the very public show of disunity recently is not a good sign.

But there doesn't seem to be a reason to assume either side will collapse any time soon and a lot can happen in a long war.

You obviously didn't read what I wrote.

I explicitly stated I disagree with the narrative that the US forced Zelensky to abandon negotiating but needed to persuade him. I even go so far as use the word seduce. — boethius

Fair enough. I was just reminded of the phenomenon that, in the proxy wars of the 20th century, junior partners often acquire outsized influence, because the prestige of either the US or the USSR was bound up with their fate. So both powers ended up much deeper in wars than they really wanted.

So I think (without agreeing with the sentiment that this is a proxy war) that even if Zelensky is reliant on the west for aid, we should not discount his own influence.

For that matter, an interesting thought is that Russian involvement with the DNR and LNR, which as far as I know was opportunistic and not initially part of some larger strategy, ended up setting up the conditions of the 2022 invasion.

In that sense you maybe are right to point out that Russian support for the separatists was always likely to eventually escalate. Perhaps by sending regular russian troops into Donbas Russia unknowingly (at the time) embarked on the course that would lead to the 2022 invasion.

Sure there is. If I'm an elderly man, I'm weaker than a young burglar breaking into my home. However, if I have a gun, the playing field becomes much more level. — RogueAI

There's always a bigger fish though. There are countless possible advantages, not just muscle strength.

But people do abuse the physical advantage they have over others, and the police can take awhile to show up. — RogueAI

Yes. But then guns only help in a small subset of these situations. You cannot organise a society in such a way that there is zero risk. So again the question isn't "do guns give you a relative advantage sometimes" but: "of all the things you can do to improve society, why are you focused on guns specifically".

They don't have a special standing, but they do make it possible to defend my house very efficiently. — RogueAI

And is that advantage worth the price?

There are over 300 million guns in the U.S. It's ridiculously easy for criminals to get their hands on one. Until that changes, I'm also going to have a gun, and I'm going to support other law-abiding citizens' rights to own guns. — RogueAI

But isn't this ultimately a vicious circle?

You have no choice but to depend on others, period. We are born into this world as dependants and we can only realise our autonomy by engaging in relations with others.

It's one of the fundamental dichotomies of human life: the desire for autonomy and the need for community.

We seem then to be on agreement of the principle point that if there was a suitable peace available based on an "acceptable neutrality", before or at the beginning of the war, then that was far better for Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as living breathing people compared to the situation now. — boethius

This is almost a truism, isn't it? If the deal is good enough to avoid fighting then the deal is good enough to avoid fighting.

Incidentally if that was the case then there was no reason for the invasion in the first case.

What deal would have been attainable at the time we can never know for sure now, but what I think is clear is that Ukraine, particularly Zelensky, believed further fighting would improve their position; my argument of why Zelensky believed further fighting to be a better course is the various myths quickly built up around the war: Russia was incompetent and easy to beat, Putin an irrational actor as well as some sort of nostalgic reenactment of WWII Western allied solidarity ... just without anyone coming to actually help. — boethius

And further fighting did improve Ukraine's position. Whether that will be be the case going forward is another question.

What I notice about your view, and this also goes for @Tzeentch to a different extent, is that in your "myth", or perhaps we should use a more neutral term like "narrative", noone has any agency. Decisions are ultimately just reactions to the shadowy machinations of an abstraction like "US imperialism" or "the neocons". Hence why Zelensky must be manipulated by a myth. Perhaps he is even entirely a puppet. The russian actions, too are ultimately just a reaction to the actions of the masterminds.

One does not need to invoke a master plan to explain Ukraine's decision to fight. They're hardly the first people in history to react with defiance when attacked by a seemingly overwhelming enemy.

A fellow citizen might try to kill you though, so I should hope it would be easier. A gun is a great equalizer in that regard. How do you propose the weaker citizens should defend themselves from the stronger? — NOS4A2

Weakness is relative, so there is no equaliser. One of the tasks of living together is making sure that whoever has a physical advantage in any given situation cannot abuse that advantage.

Guns have no special standing here, they're just another factor to consider.

Americans simply do not trust their government enough, nor should they. — NOS4A2

I don't really buy that though. If you want guns to protect you from the government you can buy your rifle, lock it in a safe and leave it there until you need it. And you can do that in a lot of European countries, too. Sure you need a permit, you actually need the safe etc. So it's bit more effort but entirely doable if you want a gun just in case.

And despite all the performative distrust of "big government" in the US, the US government is not unusually weak or less likely to abuse it's power.

So what's special about US usage of guns is how easily it is to pull a gun on a fellow citizen.