Has anyone been able to come up with a credible explanation for Ukraine's incursion into Kursk yet?

Let us ask the simple question: "Cui bono?"

Hypothetically, what country might want Ukraine to be unable to sit down for negotiations before a certain, hypothetical election that may take place in the Autumn? — Tzeentch

Not sure why you're asking, since clearly you already know.

But for the benefit of everyone else, I'll summarise all the various explanations I've heard:

• At a basic level, Kursk was badly defended and offered the chance to take a bunch of territory and POWs, in effect strategic depth that could be bought cheaply.
• The incursion forces Russia to treat the protection of it's borders more seriously, thus requiring more resources and complicating logistics.
• On the subject of logistics, the offensive has cut a rail line and is putting artillery systems deeper into Russia, thus opening up more targets. Ukraine needs a way to target russian rear areas, and one way to do that is to just cross the border.
• By crossing the border, Ukraine demonstrates that simply limiting the use of western weapons systems won't keep the war on some preordained railroad, thus hopefully (for Ukraine) forcing western governments to rethink those restrictions.
• Russian commanders might overcommit to the defense and reconquest of Kursk for political reasons, thus opening up opportunities at other parts of the front.

Whether or not the offensive was ultimately "worth it" is a different question we won't be able to answer for some time. The Pokrovsk direction looks bad for Ukraine and Pokrovsk is more valuable to Ukraine than anything Ukraine has taken in Kursk is to Russia (in objective terms). At the same time, committing the offensive troops used in Kursk anywhere else doesn't necessarily change the outcome there.

How long is Russia going to tolerate this? — RogueAI

If by "Russia" we mean the russian public, it's hard to say. Evidently Putin does not feel safe to order full mobilisation or declare a state of war. But Russia is a well established autocracy and as I said before the availble space for any opposition is small. So I don't expect any near-term effects.

Is there political pressure on Putin to drive Ukraine back? — RogueAI

I'm not sure, but since Putin is cultivating the image of an effective and involved war leader, failure to curb the offensive will certainly reflect badly on him.

So far Russia seems to be attempting an asymmetric strategy, where they're not pulling combat units from the front but instead pull together reserve forces while also intensifying combat in other sectors. This avoids playing to the Ukrainian playbook, but it also means it'll likely still be some days or even weeks before an effective counteroffensive can mounted in Kursk.

I've heard the Russian military bloggers aren't happy. How influential are they? — RogueAI

They command a significant following among the ultranationalist crowd, which is an important constituency for Putin. The Kremlin made a number of attempts to gain control over the scene, and made some examples of more vocal critics. Whenever the situation is dynamic and confusing though, the milbloggers have a bit of free reign until a new official line coalesces.

As with everything else this isn't the first time the Kremlin has had to deal with a military failure, so I doubt the current situation is enough to cause a major problem on that front.

If the AFU keep up racking successes on russian territory for a couple of weeks though, that might cause another crisis.

Ukraine is apparently destroying the bridges across the Seym in targeted strikes. The Seym runs west from the Salient Ukrainian troops have pushed into Kursk Oblast and into Ukraine, meaning that the area south of the river (about 700 km²) could be cut off from major resupply.

This is could be a planned second phase of the offensive, as securing the area would shorten the frontline and put Ukrainian troops on a more easily defensible line.

Right, I falsely remembered that NS 1 was merely shut off by the Russians and only NS 2 was affected.

Another odd thing about the timing of the attack: it happened about a month after Russia unilateraly suspended deliveries, which meant that neither pipeline was actually operational at the time.

It does sound like the kind of story that sounds believable because it comes with a lot of situational details, but that doesn't actually make it more likely in statistical terms.

Really it just seems to shift the confusion from "what benefit does destroying an inactive and politically poisonous pipeline have?" to "why would the Ukrainian leadership decide to just blow up a pipeline on a whim?".

So apparently the WSJ has published a report, based on 4 anonymous military sources, that the plot to blow up Nord Stream 2 was hatched by some Ukrainian officers during a drunken celebration in may 2022 and initially received Zelensky's blessing. That blessing was later retracted, but allegedly General Zaluzhniy went ahead anyways.

"We got the idea while drunk" would certainly address the issue of motive, though why Zelensky would have given it the go-ahead and why Zaluzhniy would have felt compelled to go through with it against orders is less clear.

They're expecting us to believe it was the US that tried to stop Ukraine from sabotaging Nord Stream, when it obviously was the US that orchestrated the whole thing. (Having given us both their stated intent and a clear motive) — Tzeentch

There are two problems with this story.

One is that the German government permanently suspended the certification of the pipeline following the invasion, and there is no evidence this decision was ever about to be reversed. Certainly September 2022 is a very weird timing if you're supposedly worried about Russian gas supply to Europe. On 14th September, the German chancellor, after talks with Putin, stated that he saw no change in Russian attitude. On September 21, Putin announced partial mobilisation. On September 27, Russia announced the annexation of three Ukrainian Oblasts. So the conflict was deepening, and there was zero sign of any improvement in relations.

Edit: I wrongly remembered Nordstream 1 was not affected, but it was.

The second and arguably bigger problem is that Russia has already unilaterally reduced gas deliveries via Nord Stream 1, and completely stopped them on August 31.

Really the most salient thing about the attack on Nord Stream is that it's confusing. And this suggests that either it wasn't done for any of the obvious motives or that we're missing some relevant information.

Several people, including some western military analysts have expressed concern that Ukraine is risking valuable assets in an attack with no apparent strategic goal.

However, the idea that the Ukrainian general staff, with two and a half years of experience in modern warfare, would plan a major offensive with no strategic goal seems rather fanciful.

I've recently listened to a German general who has quite convincingly argued that a "PR campaign" is not a military objective and the idea that the Ukrainian general staff would conduct a major offensive for PR reasons is absurd. Nor would any reasonable commander assume that their opponent is going to act exactly as they expected. Rather, it's reasonable to assume the Ukrainian general staff has a detailed plan for the offensive that includes specific military goals, and that they are aware of obvious risks.

Which goals those are is not public, but it should be noted that Kursk Oblast is not some purely domestic idyll, but rather a major staging ground for russian artillery and air forces.

Still doesn't answer which country was behind it. Makes Ukraine likely but would it do it without conferring with the US? Or is this still a non-state operation? We're not really any step closer to figuring out who's behind it, only just figured out who did it. — Benkei

If there's a court case, we should be pretty close to getting at least some detailed information about who did what and their connections. That probably won't go as far as directly establishing any government responsibility though.

The best argument for it being a non-state operation, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's just a really odd move. The only party it could have really been aimed at is the German government, but there was never any indication that the German government would significantly diverge from the European consensus.

Ukrainians apparently occupy around 300-400 sq miles of Russia. This is becoming quite the embarrassment. — RogueAI

Apparently there have been new incursions across the border, too. Russian officials are apparently worried about a similar attack into Belgorod, though I'd assume the russian defenders there are better prepared since they're already actively fighting in this sector.

Still no clear indication of any strategic goal on the ground. There's no apparent push towards Kursk, which makes sense since that's way too ambitious given that available forces are probably fairly limited.

Might still be as simple as forcing the russian military to flatten their own villages in order to dislodge the Ukrainians.

I mean I agree with all of this. I am not sure why a poster's hatred for the US and its inevitable hegemony after the Cold War would lead to rooting for Russian aggression. What's the end game for such a person? They want to see the rise of Russian hegemony to counter it? But why? What good would authoritarianism do, even if one disagreed with policies from the US. At some point, one must account that even if there are no "good guys", there are certainly "better guys", and Russia ain't that. — schopenhauer1

In a world where everything that happens is a US plot, there is no russian aggression though. It's just an inevitable reflex of US machinations. In such a world, your only choices are to be a "US stooge" or to grind your teeth and make common cause with your strongest neighbors to try and resist the US. There are no "better guys", there's the USA and there's everyone else.

I'm not quite clear on why, in such a world, anyone would choose to not be a "US stooge", given that they all seem to be doing fine, while the alternative seems to be being targeted by coups and embroiled in wars.

Yet the Ukrainian attack into Kursk shows that evidently the war isn't over. — ssu

War? There is merely an anti-terror operation in Kursk :wink:

Reportedly the russian military is using a mixture of conscripts, units from the strategic reserve and battle hardened units from other fronts to counter the Ukrainian thrust.

That seems sensible in purely military terms, though using conscripts is politically risky. It'll be interesting to see whether combat on this front if going to look significantly different from what we've mostly seen due to the absence of mines and heavy fortifications.

Perhaps my statement was too wrong. Theorems (statements) about a concept must follow the concept's definition, lest we are talking about something else. Within the definition that consciousness is something that starts at birth and ends at death, if a body would happen to die and be somehow reanimated, that would imply they have a different soul now. Maybe that is a problem. — Lionino

Does consciousness need to be continuous?

Well, their view is problematic. If you get cloned and don't die the two bodies share the same consciousness then? — Lionino

It only works backwards. Both people would be the same person at the instant of the copy being made, but then instantly diverge.

From the perspective of either copy though, they've always been the same person. There is no reason why there'd be a discontinuity that's any different from going to sleep.

It violates the tansitivity of identity. — Lionino

I guess I'd see the self more as a process than a state in this sense.

What are your thoughts about the current state of the GOP? Is it in disarray or better than ever? — Shawn

I wouldn't say it's in disarray. There was a crisis around Trumpism but the party has now reworked it's strategy around it. Adopting Trumpism comes with the cost of a bunch of very vocal cranks, but they need the highly mobilised base in order to have a chance.

Overall Trumpism seems to have accelerated the republican trend / strategy towards minority rule, it remains to be seen whether it was too fast and the frog jumped the pot.

In 2014 it made the critical error of jumping in bed with the US. — Tzeentch

But that, according to you, was the result of an US-backed coup, wasn't it?

How can it be both a US operation and a mistake?

One possibility would be to recreate the neural pattern in the hand of the victim in your hand. But that could be described as copying the pain from one hand to another - making a new pain. Another possibility might be to connect your nervous system to that of the victim in such a way that you felt the pain in their hand. But consider this carefully. How would you know that you had connected the neurones correctly, so that the level of pain you felt was the same as the level of pain felt by the victim? How could you know you had dialled the pain up or down sufficiently to match their pain? Even if you exactly matched the "neural firings", how could you be sure that the "subjective" result was the same? — Banno

I'd say my argument is that I cannot be sure that the subjective color people see is the same either.

I think a problem in this conversation is that for colour, we're using really big obvious differences: green, red, blue. And sure people will generally agree about the big categories. But that's the same with pain. Tell someone you stubbed your toe and they'll know the general outlines of what you felt.

But what about a collection of different reds all next to each other. What if the question isn't "is this pen red" but "which of these pens is cherry red"? Don't we get all of the same problems you outline for pain above?

Even if we got the same neuron firings from the eye, we couldn't be sure that this results in the same answer.

What I think salient is that the way we talk about pain (pleasure, joy...) is different to the way we talk about colour. You can buy a chair of a particular colour but not a chair of a particular pleasure. — Banno

This is a good point, but again are we comparing colour and pleasure at the same level of precision here? Comfortable chairs don't usually have widely differing shapes. If I read positive reviews about a particularly comfortable chair, it'll probably be pleasurable to sit in. You can argue that there are some very particular tastes, but there are also people who are colourblind.

If we get into more finely grained colour scales, agreement gets more complicated. We can agree on what colour we see if we both have an external reference to agree on. But without prior calibration, could we actually pick out a "walnut brown" from a collection of brown sofas reliably?

Herewith, a little talk about the possible aims of the Ukrainian Offensive. Seems to make some sense, what say ye? — unenlightened

I like this explanation because that plan requires only a relatively straightforward sequence of events. Ukraine takes a bunch of territory at relatively little cost, which it believes Russia will then be forced (for domestic political reasons) to recapture at relatively greater effort.

The idea of some grand offensive towards Kursk or to cut off a large chunk of russian territory seems fanciful given Ukraines past capabilities.

I don't understand what the military objective is. In fact, if anything, what this is gonna do is detract from their effort in the eastern part of Ukraine to stimey the Russian steamroller, which is consistently moving forward every day and attriting the fighting units the Ukrainians have arrayed on that eastern front.

What the Ukrainians should be doing with those forces that they sent into Russia in the Kursk area, is those forces should have been sent to the frontlines in the eastern part of Ukraine to buttress the forces that are buckling underneath the Russian steamroller.

It makes no sense to attack into Kursk. What are they gonna gain from doing this? Are they gonna, you know, help win the war? Not at all. So this is a foolish, last-minute gamble from my perspective, on the part of the Ukrainians, to try and turn things around. — John J. Mearsheimer

What I don't understand is how Mearsheimer can conclude this is a "foolish last minute gamble" when he also admits he doesn't actually know what the objective is.

If you have a red pen in your hand, you can pass the red pen to me. If you have a pain in your hand, you cannot pass the pain to me.

The analogy between pain and colour fails because there is a public aspect to colour that it not available for pain. — Banno

I don't think that holds. The difference here is that we have a relatively easy way to "share" color (pointing at some colored object) but not for pain. But this is merely a practical restriction. If you could accurately measure neuron firings in your hand, you could also "share" that pain.

Bald assertion contradicting everyday observable events, falsified by them, in fact.

Some people use "white and gold" and "black and blue" to pick out specific things. Some use them to pick out particular wavelength ranges within the natural visible spectrum to the exclusion of all else. Some use them to gather groups of things reflecting/emitting the same wavelengths. Some use them to pick out certain parts of personal subjective experience; namely the ocular biological structure's role in our daily lives(seeing things).

We all use them to pick out white and gold and blue and black things. We just differ on which things. — creativesoul

But people can agree that something has "blue the wavelength" yet disagree whether it has "blue the colour".

Do all of the eyes that are perceiving the very same scenery at the very same time from nearly the same vantage point perceive the same light? — creativesoul

What do you mean with "eyes perceive light"? Are we talking about the eye as an organ? And are we talking about what happens when light waves interact with the eye or what kind of signal the eye transmits?

Impugn "intellectually". Very different to impugning their ethics in my view. I think other people should not have children. Would I purposefully insinuate this to people? No. I'd prefer to suffer in silence on this issue unless asked. I wouldn't assert someone's mind was wrong (in terms of some kind of retardation(in the strict sense)) for not agreeing with my ethical position. Please keep in mind, though, I am an emotivist to the degree that i have an actual Ethical view.
I don't believe my ethical framework can be enforced. It should should be followed by me. No, this is not morality, but it is a bit of a get-out-of-jail card because it basically is a meta-ethical theory that asserts there is no objective morality. Moral theories in general don't make any sense in this light. — AmadeusD

A sideline to this: it seems to me that most antinatalist arguments apply to animals as well (possibly even more strongly, given the amount of suffering).

If you're unwilling to enforce your framework or even really convince people, what about animals? Would you spay/neuter as many animals as possible, given the chance? Perhaps avoid their procreation in other ways?

Ukrainian troops appear to have penetrated deep into Kursk Oblast. Some pictures suggest Ukrainian troops (though probably not large formations) have reached Ljubimovka, 30km from Kursk.

What is it all good for? Hard to say. Perhaps the plan is simply to cause as much dislocation as possible, in the hopes of drawing large formations from other parts of the front.

Its also possible that Ukraine received intelligence about a russian incursion into Sumy and this is a spoiling attack.

Some russian milbloggers are apparently warning that Ukraine might seek to open further fronts and even cut off the salient of Kursk Oblast. I'm not sure where Ukraine would have gotten the forces for such an operation though.

On the other hand, humanists, existentialists, and secularists who hold notions of "virtue" or "civic virtue" argue that Enlightenment values can temper the excesses of pure hedonism in a secularized society. They believe that reason, individual rights, and scientific inquiry provide a framework for a meaningful and virtuous life without the need for religious dogma. — schopenhauer1

A question which I have increasingly asked myself is whether the secularisation of enlightenment values was ever actually complete. As you note, religious belief fulfills a plausible spiritual need of

being part of a larger cosmic scheme — schopenhauer1

The secularisation of the humanist ideals - which were first derived from christian theology, has been successful, but it was also arguably underpinned by a continued Spiritual belief in a god. This belief is waning though.

Today these secular valued are challenged from multiple directions. On the one hand there is the internal challenge of increasingly polarised societies where the de-humanisation of opponents is increasingly normalised. On the other hand there is the external challenge by international actors who explicitly reject "western" values both on secular (e.g. China) and religious grounds.

Will the humanist values be strong enough to weather this challenge without the added resilience that a spiritual belief in their ultimate value offers?

Eventually, the American public soured on Vietnam, and by the time we left, we'd lost just about 60,000 soldiers. At what point is the Russian public going to sour on Ukraine? — RogueAI

I'm doubtful of the notion that public pressure could lead to a change. The political space to organise an opposition movement in Russia is highly constrained. This is compounded by the difficulty of opposing a "patriotic cause".

Concerning Vietnam, historian Max Hastings has argued that a highly critical press which was willing to point out every US failure was critical in shaping anti-war sentiment in the US. There was also not a singular commitment to Vietnam among the leading US politicians. So there was ample political space for the anti-war movement. I don't think this space exists in Russia today.

So apparently, the Ukrainian attack into Kursk Oblast was not just a larger cross border raid. Ukrainian troops are apparently still fighting in Russia.

It's possible they're opportunistically exploiting a situation of course and planning to retreat as soon as opposition is stiffening. Too early to tell really.

If this is a sustained operation it's notable in that it would be Ukraine widening the front, which so far they've tried to avoid. A change of strategy?

My conclusion thus far is that «A does not imply B» can't be translated to logical language. I attempted several different ways in flannel jesus' thread but none worked. — Lionino

Couldn't it be said that logical language establishes a number of precise connections between states, but the absence of a connection is not defined. It's the negative space that remains outside the ruleset.

No, it wasn't. It was a draft peace treaty. But here you go again, bickering over minutiae because clearly you've got nothing better.

Look kiddo, this is a philosophy forum and people here make a sport out of trying to 'win arguments', and that's what you're doing, and it's worth no one's time. You're even wasting your own. — Tzeentch

I'm not trying to win an argument, I'm pointing out false and misleading statements.

A peace treaty is a treaty that, if signed, ends the conflict. That's not what the Istanbul communiqué was. This is not bickering, this is you making an obviously false claim. Obviously false because as you know, the question of the further borders of Ukraine, which would be an essential part of a peace treaty, was not resolved.

In what world is a draft peace agreement "just guessing"? :lol: — Tzeentch

It was a ceasefire proposal not a "draft peace agreement".

The basic issue of contention here is your claim that somehow Russia's invasion of Ukraine cannot be made sense of, at least not in the realist point of view. So let's just note in passing that you can easily make sense of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

So obviously that part of the discussion is resolved, you can easily make sense of Russias invasion of Ukraine and your only actual issue is that Russia responded with the wrong act of war. — boethius

You're talking about "acts of war" as an abstraction, whereas I am looking at the invasion that actually happened in its concrete form.

My argument is that there's no good way to explain the invasion that happened within a realist geopolitical framework. It doesn't follow that there's no good explanation for any act of war, however we might define that.

If you want to divide the decision into "do we act?" and "how do we act?", then my issue is with the second part of the decision.

The Istanbul Communiqué is a strong piece of evidence that points in that direction, so obviously it is not 'unsubstantiated'. — Tzeentch

It's unsubstantiated insofar as it relies entirely on what you guess the russian intentions were.

To say the document is "strong evidence" is to say that in a world where Russia did intend to make territorial demands, we would not see a deferral of the question. But the deferral is equally compatible with a world where such demands are made.

The terms of the Istanbul Communiqué did not include any territorial gains for Russia - not even Crimea. — Tzeentch

Because the agreement explicitly deferred these questions to a later date, supposedly to be resolved in direct talks between Putin and Zelensky.

The fact that it relegated the most difficult question (that of territorial concessions) to a later, completely undefined, process was one reason to be sceptical about the agreement.

The insinuation that the document indicated a russian willingness to forego territorial gains completely is unsubstantiated.

They turned on a dime and all got marching in the new direction — fishfry

I don't see how they turned on a dime when they spend weeks publicly agonising what to do.

But surely you can't actually believe that the millions of people who did support Biden to the end, aren't personally disappointed that things didn't go their way. You can't seriously tell me that you don't understand this point. — fishfry

I just don't believe Biden ever had much personal support. He was the incumbent and the default choice with no serious opposition.

No matter, I enjoyed it even if you didnt. I don't literally think Biden's dead. I do think he is in terribly bad shape, and that we are being lied to. — fishfry

Well I am glad we agree on the basic facts.

Mearsheimer literally wrote an article titled "The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent" in 1993 and has predicted since Eastward NATO expansion started that continuing to do so will result in Russia invading Ukraine, which has happened. — boethius

You're welcome to provide this prediction but again so far as I know Mearsheimer has never said anything as specific as "if NATO keeps expanding eastward Russia will eventually invade Ukraine". What he has said is that Russia would react, potentially with military force.

The US blockade was just as much an act of war as Russia invading Ukraine by land, only difference is that the nature of the sea is that a blockade can first result in a standoff. — boethius

Nothing in this contradicts anything I said.

And, obviously, the US did try to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs fiasco precisely to avoid a situation where the Soviets are bringing in nuclear weapons to Cuba in response to US placing nuclear weapons in Turkey. — boethius

And this failed, which is an argument against this being a good strategy.

The point is, obviously you easily understand why the Russians would get aggressive in response to Ukraine trying to form a close military alliance with a hostile great power, and you're argument is simply that the Russians miscalculated in their choice of aggressive action. Had Russia only blockaded Ukrainians ports, it seems you'd be in total support of that. — boethius

I would consider that move a lot more strategically sound, yes.

If the war is a mistake for Russia because it's not gaining in international power ... well what is Ukraine gaining in the war? Has Ukraine's power and wealth increased? — boethius

If the war is a mistake for Russia then we at least agree that it's not sufficiently explained by Russia's strategic interests in Ukraine.

How is Musk's behavior explained? — Eros1982

My running theory is that Musk is just chasing the adulation of the most willing sycophants, and those just happen to be in the Trumpist camp.

Russia invading Ukraine is what Mearsheimer has been predicting since the fall of the Soviet Union — boethius

As far as I know, Mearsheimer never made any definite prediction that Russia would invade Ukraine. Notably he has not made any prediction on the 2022 invasion before it happened.

That a state will attack another state on its border forming alliances with hostile other states is exactly what you'd expect in the offensive realism point of view. — boethius

What you'd expect is that a state exploits the weakness of neighbours to gain (local) hegemony. Arguably Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine fits that bill. The problem with the 2022 invasion is that there was a huge and obvious risk it would weaken Russia's position instead.

The narrative that Russia tried and failed to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine was invented simply to make some sort of standard by which Russia conquering and occupying a further 20% of Ukraine was somehow a failure. — boethius

By which metric (except access to resources in eastern Ukraine, which I have mentioned) has Russia's geopolitical position improved as a result of the 2022 invasion?

Just like the US responded aggressively to the Soviet Union deepening military cooperation with Cuba beyond a tolerable threshold, it is completely adequate an explanation that Russia likewise would and has responded aggressively to the US deepening military cooperation beyond some tolerable threshold in Ukraine (in addition to the killing of Russian speakers in the Donbas for years). — boethius

Except that the US reaction did not in fact lead to a war. A comparable decision would be the US directly invading Cuba, but that is not what happened. Instead the US responded with an aggressive but calculated move that forced the ball back to the Soviet leadership who would then have been forced to escalate the conflict into open warfare.

It's exactly that difference between a calculated move to foil an opponent and a commitment to a total war without a clear exit strategy that makes Russia's 2022 invasion unusual.

You have to be a special kind of stupid to think you'd have a clue, and that your opinion is anything more than your bias writ large. Perhaps it just hurts that you did not? — AmadeusD

To add to this, there are several people who post on this forum who, based on their ability to make insightful contributions, appear to be pretty intelligent but who nevertheless have views on political issues that seem bizarre.

I would argue that while there are political opinions that are overall correlated with at least academic achievement, this does not hold on a personal level. I think it is to a certain extent true that "politics is the mind killer" in that there seem to be situations where otherwise intelligent people are incapable of seeing flaws in certain political positions. And that is of course assuming the positions are held in good faith and not the result of entirely different motivations.

I agree with this objection but it’s nothing new: Mearsheimer too can be easily accused of such bipolar attitude. On one side he claims to describe “geopolitical realities” when he talks about Russia’s behaviour, on the other he is all about condemning “geopolitical choices” which do not seem to match his “geopolitical theory” when he talks about US’s behaviour. — neomac

What I find interesting is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was such an unusual event that even Mearsheimer's take on geopolitics - which due to being offensive should have been better able to account for it - struggles with the consequences.

Maybe that's an argument to be sceptical about such grand narratives in general, but then again I already am sceptical about them so this might just be confirmation bias on my part.

Anyways I find it pretty interesting that Mearsheimer now claims that the invasion was essentially fake, in that it's main objective was to somehow induce a negotiation rather than a military victory. I think this idea is pretty obviously wrong for a number of reasons, but I still find it interesting to speculate why Mearsheimer is proposing it in the first place.

I have an intuition that it's an attempt to somehow create a plausible motivation for the invasion that fits the notion of "abstract geopolitical forces". While plenty can be said about Russia's strategic interests in Ukraine, it's much harder to explain how these interests are supposedly served by the invasion. About the only clear advantage would be direct control of land and natural resources, but that doesn't seem like a good motivation given the extremely high risks. So we're forced to either conclude that Russia's geopolitical interests alone do not explain the decision (which is my view) or we must invent reinterpret the decision as something other than a committment to full scale total war.

But of course he did. You might as well argue the sun rises in the west. — fishfry

You're telling me you're very, very sure that's what happened but you haven't told me why I should believe that - i.e. what the evidence is for someone who doesn't already believe what you believe.

Yes. Fourteen million voters. Many Biden supporters were reported even in the MSM right to the end. Clyburn and many blacks in fact. I am not sure why you're questioning widely reported facts. — fishfry

I'm questioning your claim that he "still has" many supporters. The public support of Biden got progressively weaker. And even that support was of the "well it's better to not create chaos" kind. I don't see how you can be confident that this indicates a large amount of internal support.

All I'm sayin' is I'm not payin' the ransom till I see proof of life. — fishfry

But you did. You're just dismissing the evidence as insufficient. What further evidence do you require? A personal meeting with Biden?

Having a competitive 2024 primary so that BIden would have been exposed, and a strong, popular candidate, nominated by democratic means, would have been chosen.

The Dems pulled off their swaparoo. But don't call it democracy. It's anything but. It was a coup -- pardon the word -- by the party insiders. — fishfry

I'm not calling it democracy. But if your only remedy is a retroactive plan that can't possibly be executed without a time machine your complaints sound kind of hollow.

Trump was nominated in a spirited and competitive primary. You're just flailing with the rest of it. "But he's ORANGE HITLER, whatabout that??" — fishfry

Don't put words in my mouth please.

That all you've got? — fishfry

No. I've got a whole list.

When Mitch McConnell declared that the republican party would do everything to stymie Obama, that was undemocratic.

When republicans under his leadership refused to allow Obama to fill a SC seat, that was undemocratic.

When Trump claims that every election he is or was in (regardless of outcome) is rigged against him, that's undemocratic. Arguably you can't blame the rest of the Republicans for all of this, but you can blame them for supporting it to the point of ostracizing his opponents.

When Trump refused to make an official concession in 2020, that was undemocratic. When the republican party, after some hand-wringing, ended up wholeheartedly backing it they became complicit.

Those are just the obvious, highly public events. I'm not including any of the "controversial" events. I'm also not including all the lower level procedural steps like gerrymandering (a "both sides" issue that republicans pioneered).

So even if I accept all your claims as to this "coup", it merely moves the democratic party closer towards the republican party in terms of power politics.

Liberals should be ashamed of supporting this charade. — fishfry

US politics has moved far beyond being ashamed of your side several cycles ago. You're asking liberals to sabotage themselves in favour of an ideal that their political opponents have long since thrown by the wayside. That is at best naive, at worst it's a cynical attempt to get your chosen candidate into power with less of an opposition.

Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? — NOS4A2

I'm pretty confident that for 99% of the people who voted for Biden in the primaries, the answer is "yes, actually".

It's just obvious nobody cares, and why should they? Biden had no serious opponents and very few people were invested in the outcome. Trying to make an issue out of this topic seems 100% useless from the perspective of Trumps campaign. Noone is going to be dissuaded from voting for the democratic candidate because they believe Biden was treated unfairly.

Swing voters with no party affiliation have even less reason to care about the "fairness" of the democratic primary. It seems to me it's more likely that complaining about the selection will make Trump look like a sore loser.

I mean it's not like they're going to let the facts stop then. Anecdotally, many people don't seem to know much about Harris' previous career, which is a chance for both sides to try and cement a certain framing. So far the Republicans appear to be doing a rather bad job.

Suffice to say many observers saw Biden get shoved aside by an intra-party coup, or a "palace coup," as some described it. Of course not a violent or government-changing coup. So a soft coup. I can live with that. The word coup seems to bother you, I don't know why. — fishfry

I think my problem with this is that it implies that Biden had power or control taken away from him. Which in this context (since he's still the President) could only mean his power within the party.

But to me it looks more like Biden's power within his party had been on a downward trajectory for several months, which probably is why he did the early debate in the first place. Which then just rapidly accelerated the collapse of his constituency within the party.

Biden had and still has many supporters among the Democrats. — fishfry

Is there evidence for this?

You saw that his announcement was posted to X, was accompanied by no public statement or even a photograph, and bore a signature arguably not Biden's.

You saw him disappear for five days. You saw his 11 minute hostage video, full of platitudes about democracy and the good of the country. And since then we've barely seen him at all. Like I say, if that's all we get in the way of proof of life, I ain't payin' the ransom. — fishfry

What's the argument here? That Biden is dead? Held hostage in some secret facility? They replaced him with a body double?

Are we really in ancient aliens territory here?

It's not only Republicans and fallen liberals like myself who see the irony of the Democrats bleating about "democracy," when they so profoundly fail to exemplify it. — fishfry

And what would the democratic move have looked like?

They're hardly in a position to talk about democracy! — fishfry

If that's the argument, then neither are republicans after all the undemocratic shit they pulled since at least Obama's presidency.

But usually we call this "whataboutism", since your opponent's faults don't entitle you to repeat them.

Between this and his VP pick, I wonder if one or more of his advisors are intentionally trying to sabotage him. — Michael

It is kinda odd that the Trump campaign and the GOP more generally don't seem to have a ready-made strategy against a Harris campaign. Obviously you can't stop Trump from just throwing random bullshit out there, but that could at least be framed by consistent messaging.

I kinda expected them to go all in on blaming her for their favourite topic - the border crisis - and just treating her as a hapless nobody with no qualifications.

I am aware. But there was agreement on that point so I'm bringing up a further analogy to address your rejoinder.

100%. As soon as I say a few factories make no difference here and there you will just move goalpost and say that doesn't qualify as "enough small changes". Your weasel word there is "enough", it can mean anything from cow farming all the way to nuclear warfare. — Lionino

So to keep going with the turbine analogy, let's say we have an airplane turbine which can withstand a number of bird impacts before catastrophic failure. Noone is quite sure how many.

You're in an airplane with that turbine. There is one bird strike, then another, etc. after 20 bird strikes, the turbine is still running. If you fly on, there'll be more bird strikes. The engine could fail at 21 bird strikes or 100. The probability goes up with more bird strikes but since you don't know the base probability you only know that the risk increases.

At what point do you land the plane?