There's a thing called "simplification" that we do to get the gist of an idea across. — Moliere

Sure, but the simplification shouldn't be the opposite of a true statement.

In this case, it's socialists by and large and in particular Marxists who don't seek to change the actual economic system.

Marx is super clear that he views capitalism as a good and essentially inevitable development of the productive powers of humanity. Industrialism is not a problem as such, and if you're not trying to change industrialism as such then you aren't really seeking to change the economic system.

For socialists, and particularly Marxists, the question is who owns this productive equipment, who benefits from the profits.

Anarchists, by and large, reject entirely industrialism as well as any top down social structure or economic change as likely to result in much good. Anarchists criticize socialists (especially the kind that makes things like the Soviet Union) for having the delusion of capturing the state and wielding it for good to "make people better" (USSR style socialists are Denethor II, Steward of Gondor, would use the one ring to fight the enemy that created it; Anarchists are Gandalf, knowing it cannot be used for good even by the wise, and so seeking to destroy the one ring by guiding a fellowship of misfits, and also hanging out with Radagast the Brown, exemplifying the harmony of humanity with nature).

Any good and long lasting change, economic or social (to the extent these are separate), is a bottom up development in most anarchist frameworks.

For example, most anarchists would agree that they want to see a world where a large majority of people are gardening in their own personal gardens as well as communal.

Well, what's stopping that from happening right now? Not much, not even the state is standing in the way for most people on the planet.

So, what to make of this situation? Should we create a state program to force people to garden? The anarchist answer is no, zero need: they will learn to garden when they're starving.

So marxism the revolution is economic and the rest sorts itself out and anarchism is social structure and the rest sorts itself out?
— unimportant

Yup -- that'd be the utopian version of both, but in terms of differentiating them and trying to wrap your mind around it that's a good simplification. — Moliere

Literally no Marxist or anarchist would ever say either of these idiocies.

How exactly would you go about changing economic conditions without changing the social structure (aka. political power)? How would you go about changing the social structure without being concerned with the economic implications or the economic means required to the change in the first place?

And what is "the rest" that "sorts itself out"?

Socialists, such as Marxists, are primarily concerned with the ownership of the means of production, that's pretty much their tagline, which is a social structure change leaving the economic system otherwise largely intact.

It would be far more anarchists that have issue with industrialism full stop, and would want to get rid of it.

Nevertheless, anarchists, as expressed both by myself and @Martijn, view both social structure and economic structure as mostly a consequence of what regular people believe. For example, no Anarchist likes to see people licking boot, but 99.9 % of bootlicking episodes is entirely voluntary. People by and large choose to lick boot and very much like licking boot, and changing the feet in those boots may change the beneficiaries of the boot licking but hardly anything else.

For the vast majority of anarchists, all you can do in the face of such rabid and rapacious bootlicking is simply not lick boot yourself, and go do something else; hope for people to emancipate themselves from the bootlicking.

Point being, there's no taking control of history with our superior intellect and directing the state to create a new and better citizen worthy of our ideology.

Contemporary anarchists use the word "co-creation" a lot (like really a lot) to describe this framework of simply being one among many in a process of creating the future together with few guarantees of what's actually going to happen.

At the same time, seeing the burning flesh and screams of children scrolling through my social media feeds, the Marxists do have a point or two concerning the current system worthy of serious consideration.

I second your message.

Now, if people don't want Marxist language in a discussion involving Marxism, my argument can be simplified.

There is first a christian communist movement during the Middle Ages, with all sorts of variations and re-emergences over the centuries, sometimes by clergy and sometimes lay people, often involving both.

Then there starts a Utopian movement emerging self consciously from fans of Thomas Moores Utopia, which is a satire (both of existing society and attempts to improve it) but adherents view it as a call to creativity, of sort of playful social design, which at first is all "micro". The reformation, going on at about the same time, mixes all this up a great deal resulting in things like the Pilgrims sailing across the Atlantic on the Mayflower to found the Plymouth Colony. So these religious (both catholic and protestant) and secular utopian ideas floating around and mixing in all sorts of ways, have very real consequences in history.

These early "micro level" utopians, "socially innovating" in one form or another, were at first not so interested in what internet denizens would call "macro" issues today.

"Utopia" is both simultaneously referencing a radical ambition, while at the same time a humorous self effacing dodge to avoid being executed. These early pioneers do genuinely want to practically make a better society, while at the same time be viewed as impractical and harmless day dreamers (so as to remain alive).

However, both these social innovation experiences, scope of analysis and movements grow with time to the point of challenging the existing political order (early pathfinders were quite aware the king would just chop their head off if they were too ambitious in their analysis; what literally happens to Thomas Moore for being the first, a lesson not lost on subsequent followers; so these movements grow slowly over time until the existing power can be challenged openly).

There's a series of revolutions starting with the American revolution. These revolutions are powered by utopian slogans with the hopes of practical management at least better than what existed before; democracy the core mediating principle to make things work out in practice.

Marx is born and works in this time of political change from absolute monarchies to secular liberal democracies. Nearly all the core ideas, slogans, rights, organizing principles, and so on have their roots in utopian thinkers in the previous centuries.

Of course, what emerges at the same time to this political transition is a new economic order we call capitalism.

It is clear there is a tension between liberal democracy and capitalism, as concentrated wealth undermines democratic institutions.

The anarchist movement, that has both successes and failures during all this time (including things like "radical anarchist experimentation" of proving children can learn without beating them), by and large views the problems of democracy as resolved by more democracy, and if people aren't convinced then the only thing to do is convince them harder and try to set an example of whatever it is.

The Marxist movement (which is highly debatable what Marx actually thought about it) is distrustful of liberal democracy to the point of viewing it as essentially irrelevant.

The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. — Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels

Many anarchists, liberals and social democrats (largely founded by rebranded anarchists), form the consensus that political violence is legitimate against tyrannies (such as the absolute monarchs they deposed) but is illegitimate if there's enough democracy that "the people" can obviously change things at the ballet if they wanted to (even in a process in which there is much to be criticized). A pretty reasonable argument and why political violence goes from a truly remarkable level of random assassinations of bureaucrats and blowing shit up regularly (including the suffragettes even though there is some democracy already, just not enough) to non-violent protest, where police tell you that you can protest, being the courageous maxima.

This movement culminates in the welfare state in Europe (free education, free health care, rehabilitation based justice system, labour protections, environmental protections etc. are all core anarchist, socialist, communist, liberal, utopian goals generally speaking, and so if they can be achieved piecemeal, and revolutions turn out to be super dangerous, then why not just do things piecemeal with the hard fought democrat right), and significant tensions in the Unites States due to capital managing to avoid that happening. Liberal democracy does little to tamp down on globalized Western imperialism.

Marxists, especially the kind of Marxists that found and manage the Soviet Union, are like "how about, no" and develop what is basically a Dune like science of historical management. Long story short, obviously didn't work out, while at the same time Marx's prediction of what would happen to capitalist liberal democracy seems to be proven correct (just about a century off in accuracy - not great, not terrible).

Important Marxist schools still exist, such as the entirety of China, presenting itself as socialism with Chinese characteristics. I do not know enough to say what the Chinese Marxist school is, how it differs from the Soviet conception, what exactly it's doing today managing the largest experiment in state capitalism the world has ever seen in order to produce a significant proportion of the world's satisfaction of bourgeoisie wants and desires, but would definitely be interesting if someone here did know.

All I did was mock your post for its excessive length, and implied that reading Marx instead of reading your posts is a better use of time. — Jamal

Sure, obviously, definitely reading Marx is a good starting point in a discussion that includes Marxism ... but then what's to discuss here?

As for verbosity, Marx and Marxists are verbose; it's impossible to discuss their ideas without using their language. It's one issue I have with them in that insisting on using 19th century agitation tradecraft lingo loses most people.

We haven't even gotten to Hegelian dialectic and Marx's antithesis (and dare we say synthesis) to that.

But please oblige me, how exactly do you go about comparing historical movements over many centuries, if not millennia, that include many intellectual sources and many differing schools of thought, often mutually exclusive but each insisting they are "the real one" doing many different things, sometimes allies and sometimes murdering each other ... without reading anything?

How is it a "beginners" step, to use your language, comparing Marx to Proudhon (a tiny part of the subject at hand) not having read Marx nor Proudhon, and my advise to go read them first and then perhaps start by just comparing these two, somehow doing it wrong?

You're saying having read the thinkers the OP is asking about is akin to playing hockey with an upside down stick ... or in other words the noble craft of ringette?

And in general, I just really don't get anti-book intellectualism and why you, or anyone who's read books, would foster and nurture the notion.

It's like being an anti-stick hockey player ... what ... exactly is the idea here?

A beginner won’t have the time to get through Marx if they feel obliged to read your rambling mega-posts. — Jamal

How exactly do we go about comparing Marx to Anarchism if reading any thinker in each, not to mention Marx himself, is off the table?

Obviously no one's obliged to read any of my posts.

However, anyone who wants some insight into the OP's saught after knowledge, in my opinion, would need to read Utopia, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Emma Goldman, Bakunin, Lenon, Trotsky, a history of catholic mendicant (aka. communist) orders and their thinkers (as the early anarchists, socialists, self described or lambasted as "utopians", were all Christians familiar with these works as well, as well as the actual practice of monastic or friarly communal living), as well as obviously Marx, history of the American Revolution, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, and also feudalism in Europe. Ideally also with a pretty clear understanding of Ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, renaissance and enlightenment philosophy and the general trend of the whole culture that results obviously with liberal democracies (and not socialism or communism, much less anarchism).

All that would be a bare minimum.

Otherwise, the question is basically "I don't know what this is and I don't know what that is, but please someone tell me the difference between this and that".

However, the question is still interesting either for those familiar with the material the question is about or then who plan to read that material in the future.

The short answer to questions about thinkers from people who haven't read those thinkers is of course "go read those thinkers first", but that's hardly a discussion.

↪boethius I appreciate the effort but respectfully there is too much here in one, or several, mind dump/s to be able to work with and is not accessible for me.

Looking up and unpacking all the points would take days which stymies an active back and forth debate.

We were taught in essay writing to make one point and hammer it home well. Not trying to tell you how to write just that it is my experience that is easier to digest. — unimportant

Then focus on one point if your mind and education is only able to deal with one point at a time.

Your OP question here is wanting to know the difference between two quite large historical movements, that overlap and are similar in many ways and sometimes allies and sometimes killing each other, each with a myriad of sub-factions, often mutually exclusive.

The kind of answer to this kind of question can only make sense to people who are actually familiar with the history and major works, and polemics, of the intellectual traditions addressed.

If you haven't read Marx you won't be in a position to understand what the difference between Marx and other thinkers you haven't read are. If you haven't read Utopia and aren't familiar with the pre-Marx utopian thinkers (and doers) that eventually give rise to political revolutions such as in American and France and Russia, then where Marx is situated in this intellectual and historical development isn't going to make any sense.

I realize it's popular today to perceive oneself to be an intellectual without having read anything concerning the topics at hand, but that's really not how it works.

The question is one of effective power.

Liberal democracies are constructed specifically to avoid anarchy through the principle of "consent of the governed": there's a totalitarian state built-up by kings, popes and emperors over many thousands of years, and that OK as long as people vote for the shiniest head of the hydra (aka. the president, prime minister, or what have you). Once a tiny handful (among thousands of bureaucrats) are elected it is essentially impossible to recall them, they need keep no promise, and the most critical governing institution that effectively controls society, law-enforcement and the judiciary, are kept "independent". What does independent mean? Independent from any democratic oversight whatsoever, even the paltry amount of oversight of managerial policy that does exist.

Our law-enforcement and legal system is for the most part simply a direct continuation of the feudal institutions with essentially zero democracy.

The first people to experience what we now call state power correctly identified police as a de facto hostile occupying army there to protect the interests of state power and not regular people. Of course, people had a justice system before police, which of course the merits of one such system over another can be debated, but it at least aimed to protect the interests of the people of that community and not state power in a far off capital.

So this is the sort of state power anarchists take issue with. A rebranding of the anarchist principles (or at least direction anarchist want to go in) of governance is direct participatory democracy, with immediate and easy recalls of any elected agent of the community.

Both marxism and anarchism are bestialities. Marxism is, however, a bestiality of minor imperfection. The dictatorship of the proletariat is equal to a true form of State — Ludovico Lalli

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" was a criticism of the idea of democracy by its detractors at the time; democracy being a horrid thought for aristocrats. It was common sense for some thousands of years that poor people should never be able to participate in politics as they would just vote themselves more money. Even the original and archetypical democracy in ancient Athens had a wealth check for citizenship and the Roman republic system had weighted votes.

The dictatorship of the proletariat referred to regular people being able to vote (i.e. dictate governance rather than the Lords and kings, which was the system at the time), not that socialism / communism would need a dictator, such as Stalin.

Anarchy is equal to a lie. There cannot be anarchy as also within anarchy there would be a major agency of protection, an institution playing, de facto, the role of the State. The greatest bestiality is equal to anarchy. — Ludovico Lalli

Anarchism is about equal participation in the political process, without a moral or class hierarchy.

The general goal of most anarchists, such as myself, is genuinely accountable and decentralized governance. A stateless society in the sense of not having a class of bureaucrats organized in a hierarchy of essentially totalitarian control for all intents and purposes.

The greatest bestiality is equal to anarchy. While the dictatorship of the proletariat is an extended form of State characterized by penetrability (thus by the presence of perpetual newcomers), the dominant agency of protection ruling anarchy is equal to a private-based State, an institution that would not be accountable to the people. A private form of State is the most false and dangerous. — Ludovico Lalli

You seem to be talking about US libertarians who love private property but hate taxes and government. They sometimes randomly call themselves some sort of anarchist school, but that's just ridiculous. Their patron saint is Ann Rand who is not in anyway an anarchist thinker.

As a short addendum, the post above is differentiating Marxism with Anarchism starting with Marx and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the most important "Marxist streak", as it were, primarily differentiated by this idea of understanding the laws of history in order to change history to our liking.

Now, Marx would disagree with most if not all the policies of the Soviet Union, but the basic framework as some sort of historical scientific mastery is rooted in Marx; famously saying "philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it".

The resurgence of Marxism today are generally not of the historical mastery school, but generally using Marxism as a sort of brand recognition as an alternative to Neo-liberal economics. For example, Yanis Varoufakis may reference Marx, but also clarify that not in a Stalinist way.

This difference is also one of historical period. The idea of "changing history" made a lot more sense in the 19th century. New natural-philosophy (aka. materialism, aka. science) is being discovered all the time, wondrous reports from around the world, new technology that is essentially magic to people (such as electricity and the telegraph and so on) while the Reformation and then American Revolution proved that turning the religious order on its head was possible and the democracy was possible (previously a Utopian dream), after literally a thousand years of things staying basically the same, so there was this sort of "anything can happen vibe" and if we can master steam power, and then the electron and discover where continents and species come from and so on, why couldn't we master history?

So Marx is as much the product of the erudition of the 19th century as the naivety about what was possible.

Where socialists, communists, marxists, anarchists, leftists in general, agree is that people suffering is not a necessary evil and it's wrong to exploit people through system of coercion and manipulation (such as state power) for profit.

In terms of relation to libertarianism, all European renaissance and enlightenment philosophies that maintained any relevance are libertarian. Libertarian is in opposition to the surf and vassal system of feudalism. If feudalism simply doesn't exist anymore and there basically not adherents trying to bring it back, then all philosophies, including religious philosophies, are libertarian. All Western states and all Western parties promise liberty.

Liberals (from the leftist perspective) view liberty (in the you're no longer a surf sort of way) as the only necessary value and if poverty persists that's the poor fault for not using their liberty wisely enough, whereas anyone left of centrist liberals views poverty as a social ill that can be remedied (through various degrees of redistribution of wealth).

US libertarians are not anarchists, and not even liberals, but are basically in a philosophical psychosis of believing you can have private property without state power enforcing property rights. This just doesn't make any sense from the get go, but comes from American elites existing in a sort of philosophical vacuum in need of an ideology that backs them up. Wheres European elites can position themselves in a tradition of symbolic aristocracy and go rub shoulders with actual royalty and remark to themselves that this prince's balls are hot as fuck, and therefore all is well in the political order and so do not need to go around calling themselves philosophers to satiate their anxieties.

As a self described anarchist, I certainly hope I can provide some insight into your question.

First some historical context: Socialism, communism and anarchism all predate Marx, and can be argued not really have traceable historical origin but have been points of view developed way back in pre-history, along with traditions that result in monarchy, feudalism and private ownership etc.

In other words, as soon as their were chiefs there were people who had issue with chiefs and as soon as there was private property there were people who had issue with private property (or then issue with who happened to own it).

So there's already a lot of traditions, schools of thought, movements and material on these topics by the time Marx is born.

Probably the best place to start in terms of insight into the cultural conversations is Thomas Moore's Utopia, which is one of the corner stones of the kind of conversation that socialism, communism, and anarchism represent. Thomas Moore's Utopia is both a synthesis of political critique available at the time (in 1516), somehow managing to satirize both feudal power and alternatives to it simultaneously. It's a comedy, but written to be as thought provoking as it is hilarious. It's a sort of "why not? why can't things be better" book.

Essentially omnipresent to the development of what we include in the "philosophy cannon" such as Thomas More are all sorts of Christian schools and orders, already under Catholicism, that explode into far more sects and cults and churches during the reformation. Christian communism is a constant theme of Western society since basically Christ. The difference being that the various mendicant orders of Catholicism are doing communism for religious purposes and avoiding commenting on "worldly affairs" (even if they do essentially say everyone should be christian communists like themselves, it is not taken as dangerous political philosophy by kings or philosophers).

To make a long story short there's a rich history of all sorts of people trying out new things, making "ideal farms", or founding "more perfect" religious communities in the US and New Zealand and so on, in parallel to European states taking over the entire planet, subjugation or eradicating people as they go. Then capitalism starts to develop out of feudalism and globalized imperialism and along with that discovery of political instability of this new economic-political order, into which these new Utopian ideas suddenly take hold of the public imagination and inspire revolution.

All this context is necessary as Marx is one thinker in thousands of years of development of all these sometimes competing and sometimes aligning political ideas, and then Marx himself famously says "if this is Marxism then I'm not a Marxist" so there's then further distinction between Marx himself and Marxism as a school referencing Marx as a foundational figure.

However, in terms of broad comparison, the fundamental difference between Marxism and Anarchism I think can be reasonably found in Marx's work.

What Marx attempts to do is develop a science of history. Historical materialism just means science of history; science was a more nebulous word (astrology would be an erudite science for example) and if you wanted to talk about what we call science today you used the word materialism (that causes to effects were to be found in matter).

Long story short, Marx discovers a lot of, if not actual scientific laws, then useful guide rules (and far more "law like" than what passes for sociological peer review today). His foundational insight is that the technological development of society determines (although a modern equivalent would be constrains) a society's political organization and ideas. This is obvious to us now, but it was not really obvious at the time. Anthropologists are direct descendants and users of Marx's theory, immediately informing us of some ancient tribe's organization, religion, general world view, based on the material artefacts they dig up. This is exactly what Marx is talking about. Out of this technology based analysis of historical Marx undertakes an analysis of capitalism and how it develops from and is different than feudalism.

His second main insight is that technology progresses, and so a society's political organization that was suitable for the technological situation when it started could be no longer suited due to technological improvements. When Marx talks about revolution in his works he's referring to periods where there is tension between the political organization and the new constraints of technology. Again, in anthropology this is completely obvious, for example bureaucracy developing due to the problems that farming creates on a flood plain (both to keep track of stored grains, keep track of debts paid off by the next harvest, and also keep track of who even owns what land), a problem created due to agricultural success and reaching carrying capacity (people were obviously farming before bureaucracy was invented, so having no maps or anything they could either just go out and "find a spot" or then eyeballing / moving a rock to settle disputes, was sufficient when there was plenty of extra space anyways). So bureaucracy is a Marxist revolution in Marx's theory, followed by consolidation of state power to manage this bureaucracy, and then either slave-based Empires (such as Rome) or surf based feudal systems (such as Western Europe after the collapse of Rome).

As you may imagine, there's a lot more Marx has to say about capitalism and revolution: that capitalism is both simultaneously in continuous revolution of itself (as it constantly seeks to intentionally innovate; a stark difference to most previously political orders which were by nature conservative) while also hurtling towards a revolution of political relations due to the irresolvable internal conflicts capitalism creates through the concentration of wealth and power. To be complete, Marx does not say revolution is inevitable, only that when conflicts between political order and material conditions arise, either there's a revolution that creates a new political order adapted to the material conditions or then the system collapses.

Enter Marxism. Marxism, and certainly the grain is planted by Marx in his writings, central belief is the manipulation of history through this science of history.

Why you end up with things like "avant-guard" and "accelerationism" in Marxist traditions is that it's not exactly clear how exactly a science of history can manipulate history to begin with as well as what the point is. For, one poignant question is that if the revolution is inevitable ... what exactly is there to do? And from this starting point one can as easily argue attempts to cause a revolution could as easily backfire and in fact help state power.

A debate that can go on for quite some time, but it's the whole framework of manipulating history that anarchists generally reject and the main difference with other socialist-communist schools.

What Marx does not develop is a moral theory. That's why there's so much focus on who exactly causes what profit in Marxist discourse and debate, as Marx basically just assumes the general humanist ethics floating around in the enlightenment, of which the central ethical cornerstone of reformation is the idea that the benefits are due the producer (not at all obvious idea at the time, as what was previously totally obvious is that benefits mainly go to lords, kings and priests, and normal people should suffer quite a big deal actually to make amends with god).

So where socialists, communists, Marxists, anarchists and capitalists all agree is that the benefits of economic activity should definitely not be mainly going to lords, kings and priests, but amongst themselves. But who exactly, that's another question. The Marxist-Capitalist debate arises in that they both assume that if the proceeds of some economic activity can be attributed to themself, then they should get that share of the bounty. Fairs fair.

Anarchists generally reject this entire moral framework and view life and the value of life from a much broader perspective than economic production.

The purpose of the human enterprise for anarchists is not efficient economic production, with only who gets what as to be worked out, but rather love, mutual caring, and both creative self expression and creative community expression.

Where this creates differences is that anarchists were and still are highly skeptical, if not hostile, to the Industrial Revolution and destruction of both nature and the human spirit it entails, whereas for Marxists the Industrial Revolution is generally considered an important, necessary and good step in the development of man's productive capacity. For anarchists if it does not make people more creatively engaged in their surroundings, with their fellows, with their work and nature, then it's not progress, but subservience to state power.

Due to this focus on individual and collective creativity, anarchists are more political flexible and open. What anarchists generally want politically is equal participation in the political process (so that each can equally contribute their creative spirit to the collective project) and due to this focus anarchists simply don't know what such an equal people in terms of political power would do. They may very well vote that some people can have a hundred or a thousands times more wealth than others.

To summarize, the project to control history reduces to the project to control people (cue the Soviet Union), whereas the project of equal political participation is the project of a single individual and what they think they can contribute to the world, and what other people do is outside our control.

↪boethius What's the solution to the Trolley Problem? What's your take on abortion? Should the state compel me to save the life of a drowning child, if I can do so with no risk to myself? — RogueAI

The point of the first volume, The Book of Croms, as the name suggests, is focused on proposing a foundation for political action and coordination, such a foundation being a proposed ethical theory upon which to form agreement.

To continue with the mathematical analogy above, The Book of Croms is essentially an existence proof that answers to political questions can have a coherent and unique answer. There need only be one such unique answer to form the basis of political collaboration, such as avoiding the destruction of the entire planet, and that is essentially the only specific moral dilemma taken up in The Book of Croms. If we can agree on that then presumably we should ensure we have taken measures to avoid that happening, but it also stands to reason coherent and unique answers may exist to other political questions as well and so, at the outset we can presumably further agree to try to find such answers to those, or any, political dilemma.

The writing plan here being subsequent volumes devoted to more and more specific political problems and proposed solutions. Volumes with hopefully equally self-explanatory names: Vol.2 - The Nonage Works, Vol.3 - Cromulous the Destroyer, Vol. 4 - Crombobbolous, Vol.5 - The Garden of Crombo, and then finally the final Vol.6 - Cromtography.

The issues you raise would be dealt with in Cromtography, which aims to place all such moral landmarks on the map, so to speak.

So, I'd of course prefer to wait until Cromtography is complete to discuss the answers to your queries, but as that may be a far way off I am happy to satisfy you now.

The short answer to your question is of course, "well people would need to vote on these things", as, as an anarchist, I am mostly concerned about equality of effective power over the political process, and not so much dictating to people wha they should vote for, much less believe. So once anarchy is achieved the results are not necessarily predictable. The Cromulomicon is more about that more fundamental level of appropriating state power to oneself in a collective mission to distribute it as widely as possible, and not a list of dictums of what the state should do.

For, the state is corrupt! There is no much point in arguing endlessly what the state should do as if it was unaffected by corruption and had some coherent third party relationship with the individual that can be parsed out mechanically what is fair and just.

So, to start with you question about the state compelling you to save the life of a drowning child, the Cromulomicon resolution to the problem would be that the community you live in will need to decide what to do with you. It will depend very much on the specific circumstances. If you're in a position of explicit or implied guardianship over the child then letting the child drown is then likely murder. If there are extenuating circumstances, then those would obviously need to be considered. However, let's say you make no such defence, but explicitly say you let the child drown on purpose when you could have easily saved the child. Then definitely my vote, at a community quorum of some sort or then a jury trial in a process of justice decided by the community, would definitely be murdered as all adults have implied guardianship over all children of the community. The most fundamental responsibility of the community being the protection of children.

Of course, what exactly is the definition of a community and how to conceive of a community of communities and what they may do, and how to create that, is what the previous Volumes are about.

As for the trolley problem. The first thing to note about moral ambiguities is that their existence does not somehow retroactively affect, much less erase, prior moral certainties. As with any body of knowledge we may get to finer and finer questions of which we have no resolution. The existence of unsolved math problems does not somehow make problems that have solution somehow no longer have a solution or then less of a solution. There's problems we've solved and there's problems we haven't solved.

The second thing to consider is that in the case of the trolley problem, is that the actual problem is not the trolley scenario, in which case the solution of seeking the end result with a minimum of harms (such as with any accident or natural disaster or what have you) is a perfectly acceptable answer to the problem.

The actual problems in the dilemma are first that a ethical-political theory is needed answer any moral dilemma whatsoever and so if one is not already agreed on then really the problem is just begging the question of what are moral truths generally speaking upon which we can answer any moral question whatsoever. The second actual problem is then making a false analogy between minimizing harm in the case of an unstoppable trolley and things like forced organ harvesting.

For example, if we make instead an analogy to an actually analogous situation of an airplane losing power and going to crash and we ask the question of whether the pilot should stop intervening on the controls and allow the jet to crash into a crowd of people or then try to fly the aircraft into a more sparsely populated field, the obvious answer is to avoid the crowd. Unless the pilots goal was to kill as many people as possible there is not a pilot on the planet that would argue letting things take their course and ceasing to intervene on the controls is the moral thing to do even if you're heading straight to a dense crowd.

The difference with forced organ harvesting is that there is no accident or force of nature occurring in which people can have the intention to do no harm at all and given unfortunate circumstances outside their control seek the pathway that reduces harm. With forced organ harvesting you need to capture, torture and murder people against their will.

An entirely new category of harm is introduced into the situation and there is no direct analogy with the trolley problem. The deontological answer is simply that people are not means to ends but ends in themselves with their own moral autonomy, so there is a difference between seeking a minimum of harm in a disaster (whether a pilot trying to avoid a dense crowd in a crash or a doctor triaging care) and using people as unwilling tools to help other people. If people get killed by the jet crashing into the least populated area to crash in, those people were not used as tools but the deaths are accidental.

However, we can go further also, in that the goal of society is not simply to minimize short term harms in all cases. If we are concerned about the welfare of society as a whole then we are concerned about the younger generations and generations to come and we want to preserve a healthy society and not simply as extend the lives of as many present individuals as possible. Sacrificing one healthy person to save numerous unhealthy ones therefore is not as natural a choice as a fighter pilot avoiding a dense crowd during a crash. So the analogy is not directly comparable in this respect as well.

Of course, even accepting a healthy individual is more valuable to society than a sick one and it makes no senes to sacrifice one healthy person to simply extend the life a terminally ill person, one could of course argue that this logic requires a weighting, as the sick person therefore does not have zero value just not equal value. So, if we say these five sick people have each a third the value of a healthy person, then we can start arguing the human sacrifice is going to result in greater value.

We then must weigh that calculation against the value of bodily autonomy, and the debate can continue. The ultimate solution is then democracy. We (at least here in Finland) have no problem scarfing conscripts on the battlefield if we claim the conscription system has democratic legitimacy. So we could have the same system when it comes to forced organ harvesting and the debate really ends here because we all know almost no one would vote for such a system, which is why no such system exists in any democratic country (not to say it exists in non-democratic countries, just to make the point no vote has ever past in any democratic quorum of any kind in favour of forced organ harvesting).

So it's really not a dilemma at all, only a fallacy of false-analogy. We have no problem voting for air traffic control regulations that instruct pilots to avoid dense crowds during a crash and have equally zero problem not passing regulation forcing people into organ harvesting if the weighted outcome of comparative health is positive.

Now, we could of course imagine a scenario in which people start changing their minds due to extreme circumstances that humanity would perish as a whole without forced organ harvesting. In such a case it would simply become comparable to conscription and the legitimacy a reflection of the legitimacy of governance as a whole. That would of course not end the debate; the moral legitimacy, of forced conscription, whether democratic or not, as we see in Ukraine today, is of course debatable. The point here being we already today have states that force people into sacrifice for the common good and the difference with forced organ harvesting is simply that there does not seem a comparable utility for it. If there was (such as the population would go extinct without forced organ harvesting for some reason) then the debate would be very different.

Lastly, to deal with abortion, again the primary goal is equal (as equal as possible) effective power into the governing process, and there are a wide range of abortion policy options.

What is clear is that unwanted pregnancy is, by definition, better to avoid, so a healthy society would have few unwanted pregnancies, in particular unwanted due to a lack of resources to properly care for the would-be-child. So the first thing to consider is all the obvious ways to reduce unwanted pregnancies and then the less obvious ways that would need to be figured out, and that anyone arguing against abortion but not for a healthy society that cares for all the children within it, we can note is a hypocrite.

Of course making a healthy society would not reduce abortions to zero, the case of wanted pregnancies but unwanted fetus due to potential handicap of some sort (aka. fetal eugenics), and even if abortion were reduced to zero by healthy policies that would not remove the issue as a policy question as obviously there's no guarantee that the situation would not arise in the future.

The issue has been argued every possible way and even pro-choice countries rarely allow third trimester or full-term abortions. I'm also not a woman so I'd vote for a system where women vote on the issue, if also the issue of forced male conscription is only voted on by men. Obviously plenty of society's exist with plenty of different abortion policies, so if the process to arrive at the policy represents equal effective power of the individuals in that society, including voting on whether to have women vote on the issue, then I would accept the outcome.

Which is not a way of avoiding the moral question, as I would still have my position and would vote both in a vote on who should vote on it and then a vote directly on the policy if I'm then invited to vote on it, and I can of course elaborate my position, but it is already a political position whether different policies are liveable or not. Simply because people vote for everyone to torture their children to death does not mean I'd go along with it, but in that case would consider myself at war with whoever voted for such a thing.

Simply wanting equal effective power (as equal as feasible) in decision making does not mean all decisions that follow are therefore acceptable. People could literally vote that we'll all worship satan and human sacrifice everyone.

So, to say the outcome of a vote on the policy would be accepted requires some serious reflection.

As with many policy issues where there are clearly different sides that have a lot of people, voting is the answer to formulating the policy, and therefore as equal effective power in the political process to render those votes as legitimate as possible.

That being said, my own position is that abortion is immoral unless it is indeed a trolley problem kind of scenario where there is not enough resources and the goal is to minimize harm. However, bodily sovereignty, which is also important that nearly everyone always votes for (myself included outside some extreme circumstances, potentially) their own bodily sovereignty as we saw with the forced organ harvesting, then abortion is a crime but that takes place in a different country and the political body I'm apart can't practically do anything about it (other than as many policies to ensure we take care of children, unwanted pregnancies avoided in the first place, of which education is the main factor, etc.). This of course changes in late term abortion where the community can keep alive the new individual once it has been deported.

Of course, as mentioned, the content of the entire Cromulomicon would be required to really develop the concepts of community and effective power and the more fundamental things than any given policy decision, but I hope the above does answer your questions to your satisfaction given the philosophical tools presently in hand.

Sir, you exaggerate! — unenlightened

I'm just trying to keep with the tradition set forth by Kant and Wittgenstein and most of our philosophical forebears of continuously claiming that everything argued is both trivially true and they've also essentially completed the philosophical project for all intents and purposes. I'm pretty traditional at the end of the day (using conventional languages rather than made up ones and doing many conventional things like sitting rather than standing on chairs).

I haven't finished a first skim, but it is a heroic effort. I find myself largely in agreement with your conclusions, though I arrive at them in other ways sometimes. Give me a couple of days to read more slowly, and have a think, and I will come back with some questions and thoughts. — unenlightened

I am deeply humbled by your interest.

And yes, nearly all of my conclusions are really common beliefs, that mostly go without needing to argue, such as "avoid contradiction" and "don't torture children for fun", and the point of the work is mainly to answer why exactly do I believe such things.

The point is not so much that others, such as yourself, would need to believe the have the same philosophical foundation to arrive at the same conclusions, but could perhaps appreciate that I have mine and you have yours. "Feeling strongly these are good things" in a spiritual sense I would view as equally legitimate foundation for things like don't murder children for fun.

An analogy would be that you don't need set theory or category theory or some other logical foundation for numbers in order to count, and you can also argue that counting is what's fundamental and you can't actually do any logic at all without counting to begin with (how do you count braces to be sure squiggly brackets are closed if you don't know how to count yet?), so these foundations of numbers and counting are actually going in a circle (in this case we start with the idea we shouldn't torture babies to death for fun and then get back to the same place).

So criticism from this sort of angle I would view as perfectly fair.

That being said, having a logical foundation for counting and numbers, such as set theory, we can both appreciate that such things do exist but they are also needed to solve certain complicated problems (far beyond addition and multiplication of finite numbers).

For my purposes in The Cromulomicon, these certain complicated things are political coalition building.

I have my beliefs set out here and you have similar beliefs for different reasons, can we therefore form a coalition? To what end and to what extent.

Meanwhile, I think you could do with a bit of editing here and there - Your English is excellent but there are one or two places where the meaning could be more clear. I could make some suggestions on that level at some stage if you would like. — unenlightened

Again thanks for appreciation and definitely there's a lot of mistakes.

I originally published this essay in a rush because I discovered I had all this international money laundering evidence and believed I could be murdered at anytime.

Feel very welcome to send me corrections either just posting here, maybe in big blocks, or PM me if you think it would just clutter the space here.

Fixing all the mistakes is on my list of things to do.

Do you mean blocking the ability to see both sides of an issue? Give some examples please. I don't read lengthy essays. — jgill

If I understand correctly you are a mathematician, so the meaning of avoiding contradiction here is just in the basic sense as appears in mathematics of not believing something and it's negation simultaneously.

In my belief system here this principle is assumed to be true. Of course, it can't be proven as the principle of non contradiction needs to be assumed to prove anything.

Which is of course a pretty common, if not standard, starting point for logic and philosophizing. Where I then depart this common starting point is arguing that this principle of non contradiction is an ethical commitment. It's functionally a should statement, "I shouldn't contradict myself", and requires some effort to implement (i.e. putting in the effort to resolve contradictions when one realizes, intuits or then has some measure of doubt about things).

Someone with your skills I think can easily see this argument as the principle of non-contradiction reducing the configuration space of acceptable actions and beliefs (to remove contradictory ones) and an ethical theory meaning any restricting of this space whatsoever.

Point of all of this is to "boot-up", so to speak, an ethical purpose which is to avoid contradiction and search for the truth. Finding truth is then further restriction on all possible actions and beliefs. Again, the search for truth is a pretty common, if not standard, starting point for philosophical enquiry, but what seems obvious to me, but does not seem standard and common, is that it is clearly an ethical doctrine.

This whole point of view is summarized (for someone with your advanced knowledge of logic) by viewing is statements as also should statements.

If I argue to you that something "is" I am at the same time arguing that "you should believe it".

Thanks for this, on the Ukraine discussion one poster mostly just spammed links, without even summarizing them and when he did do so he'd make his point in the form of a question with an emoji, to avoid making an actual point. Really annoying.

As far as I can recall, that’s the first time you are bringing this argument up with me. And I really appreciated it. No irony. At least it’s something new and definitely worth discussing.
Some more questions: what empirical evidence support your claim that “socialism is a far more efficient and strategically sound approach to arms production”? And what do you mean by “strategically sound”? — neomac

Well I've mentioned quite a lot that the war is good for arms manufacturers, but it maybe the first time I've pointed out that the arms manufacturers don't actually want a total war, as that leads to socialism.

In the literature it's referred to as "war communism" to stress the irony that capitalist elites love immediately building what is essentially a communist central planned economy where everyone the state needs contributes what they can to the war effort completely outside any sort of free market dynamics; conscription being the biggest such socialist agenda.

Of course socialism in this context is used to simply represent top down state programs where most value is contributed on a volunteer or quasi-volunteer basis (both in terms of pay and also possibly not having much a choice in the matter), such as in Soviet economy. Of course, socialism here has nothing to do with workers owning the means of production.

The reason this is more strategically sound is that orders of magnitude more value is generated for the same cost, which should be common sense as a quasi-volunteer (especially conscription) produces enormously more soldiers for the same cost.

Think it through. Plenty of Europeans volunteered to go fight in Ukraine, how many more would volunteer (or quasi-volunteer, as in perhaps be paid something but far below market value) to work in factories producing shells. People would be lining up!! Plenty qualified people to boot.

To put 2000 posts in two months in context, I have just over 2300 posts in 8 years, and I'd say I post pretty regularly.

... and it's an average of 33 posts a day ... so possibly part of some relapse into methamphetamines. And I say that out of concern and not insult.

Philosophy can be a dangerous mind game at times and injuries do occur.

You are just describing how Russia attacks other countries. False flags are just the Russian traditional method. Or the attackers described as being "volunteers" or "local freedom fighters" and in the end, a "peace-keeping operation". — ssu

You just described how you proved my point.

I guess thanks for that.

Lol. Glenn Diesen, of course. The person who is frequently on Russia television. — ssu

Soooo, I'm not following you here, you'll need to spell it out.

By "manages the risk" what is meant is maximizing the net present value, which is basically expected gain but integrating over a longer term to take into account depreciation, discount rates and a bunch of other stuff we corporate executives like to phone up accountants about and be like "crunch the numbers on this! stat!".

1% chance of nuclear armageddon MULTIPLIED by a trillion dollars, equals 990 billion dollars (BILLION dollars man!) of net present value and is simply a win in business terms if both increasing or decreasing the risk of nuclear armageddon results in a lower net present value, and therefore would be violating fiduciary responsibility and lead to lawsuits from shareholders, which quite obviously would mean the end of the fucking world in corporate executive terms. QED in corporate speak.

Why aren't Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems not bribing Trump to push for the war in Ukraine, so they can sell more weapons? — neomac

First, in terms of general principle, the war profiteering contribution from the war in Ukraine, especially in terms of defence contractors, is in creating a far less stable world generally speaking in which it is "common sense" that more arms are needed by all parties. I.e. in stoking a new arms race.

Once adequately stoked, a fire no longer needs further kindling.

Second, even defence contractors don't want a nuclear war and even they would recognize the need for drip feed theory. Which, as the name connotes, is far from the maximalist approach to "whatever it takes" to supply arms to Ukraine.

Indeed, defence contractors don't even want too much war!!

Too much war, even in setting policy too ambitiously in arming Ukraine, would be bad for defence contractors as it would be necessary to transition to a war time economy, at least partially. What a war time economy means is a central planning and low wage, if not volunteer, basis to war production (think women building planes in WWII).

If EU states actually sat down and put themselves to the task of making enough arms as simple as shells for Ukraine they would immediately realize the only way to do it is through government mobilization of the work force (say the recently unemployed industrial work force of Europe due to cutting off Russian gas) and they would need to organize this production themselves. This wouldn't be a good thing from the perspective of the defence contractors. May even open pandoras box of the defence contractor world in that socialism is a far more efficient and strategically sound approach to arms production. We rely on quasi volunteers (i.e. paid well below the market value of mercenaries to do the same thing, made possible through the magic of patriotism) as combat soldiers so it actually stands to reason that a quasi volunteer force to produce arms (or then at least standard munitions like shells) may in fact be equally common sense.

You wouldn't want to open pandoras box would you?

God man, heaven forbid.

In other words, even from the private producers of arms point of view it is merely a truism that more chaos and death is good for business. Aristotle man, moderation is the key. There is a sweet spot of chaos and death that maximizes profits, minimizes socialism and also manages the risk of destroying the defence contractors in a nuclear war along with much of the rest of the economy (this is the "does the stock market still work in your plan" sanity check for corporate executives in this sector of the economy).

Who are they? List 3 of them. — neomac

Hmmm, well Zelensky to start, then maybe throw in a bit of Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems.

But why stop at 3?

There's all sorts of profits to be gained from war, from human trafficking and black market arms dealing to just generously supplying LNG to a gas starved Europe.

So in the same answer you don't believe Russia attacking the EU yet then you believe maybe Russia would attack the EU.

These delirious opinions should be given respect they deserve: Not worth commenting further. — ssu

You are so committed to the propaganda that you are simply unable to conceive that it's even possible for their to be a hot war between Finland and Russia without that war being 100% Russia's fault in aiming to conquer Finland. Reality is more complex than what propaganda would lead you to believe.

A Finnish-Russian war, that I predict may indeed happen, would not be Russia attacking Finland but some messy situation and a series of strange events and false flags / alleged false flags (that could be caused by literally anyone, such as cutting undersea infrastructure).

The goal would be to create a tense military situation with little actual fighting. Russia has no interest in conquering Finland and Finland has no possibility to conquer Russia obviously.

At least to start, of course once fighting starts the nob can be slowly turned up while avoiding any unwanted escalation (such as any non-Finns dying in the proposed conflict).

So it would be this sort of war.

And this isn't really my prediction but only extrapolating a bit on the analysis of Professor Glenn Diesen, who quite confidently asserts Finns are being prepared to fight an inevitable war with Russia.

So the two notions are compatible that Russia does not "attack the EU" with the intention of conquering parts, much less all, or it, and there is nevertheless a war between Russia and Finland.

Just like the war in Ukraine radically increased tensions, including nuclear tensions (if you remember those days of increasing nuclear readiness), simply because Ukraine is a European country and US / NATO was backing Ukraine (at least in terms of social media virtry signalling), now that we've all been desensitized to the war in Ukraine and it is essentially normalized and no longer viewed as a source of nuclear tensions, if you wanted another "tension dose" you'd need to upgrade.

The logical upgrade available is some sort of war between Finland and Russia as Finland is in NATO. Now, to have such a war also not lead to a nuclear war it would need to be calibrated just like the war in Ukraine was calibrated to achieve such effect and things would need to be confusing so as not to result in US and Russia fighting.

For, it is assumed that any sort of fighting whatsoever between Russia and any element of NATO would immediately result in a full blown war, but this is just a thing "people say" and assert as if it's a law of nature when obviously it is not. There is a whole spectrum of both fighting and tensions between Russia and elements of NATO that can be explored without that leading to a full war, much less a war in which Russia seeks to conquer large parts, or even any part, of the EU.

Ouch, did I poke a bear, or something? — Punshhh

You do realize this is a debate forum, and considering you weren't even addressing the points impacted by your citation of my point, certainly you can appreciate that's annoying.

Look, I’m well aware of the points you raise. But I wasn’t addressing them, I was saying what the big story is, the big headline. That the post war settlement is coming to an end and a new settlement will be reached. — Punshhh

You cite my point and respond, if you aren't responding to my point then just say so.

Now if by "aware" you mean "agree" then it's even more confusing, but if you agree on the points about narratives (aka. propaganda) that were being discussed then that's good to know we agree on those points.

Nevertheless, I disagree with this adjacent point of what the "big story is".

First I would argue that the "big story" is Western elites cynically manipulating, aka. bribing, Ukrainian elites (with the complicity of said Ukrainian elites, who definitely want to be bribed), into fighting a war that could not be won, no one ever intended to win, and in which hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians died and it's not even over.

That would definitely be "the big story" in my book of stories related to this affair.

As for Europe rearming. I seriously doubt that is any story in terms of actually fighting the Russians.

I'd say they story there is that actual war in Europe and constantly claiming Russia will take all Eastern Europe, maybe Western Europe too (indeed even the US according to the "fight them over there so we don't need to fight them here" rhetoric), if not stopped in Ukraine, was not enough to really get war profiteering going.

European elites may not like Trump but they see the opportunity to get that war spending finally going by playing the Trump-Europe personality friction like a full string orchestra.

The U.S. and Russia have been sparring since the end of WW2. That was part of the Cold War narrative with occasional proxy wars, crises etc. It worked for a long period maybe 70 or 80yrs. That has now come to an end and the geopolitical tectonic plates are moving. — Punshhh

If by sparring (of which the whole point of that word is to indicate no one dies) you mean "fighting proxy wars" (in which many people die), then correct.

Maybe geopolitical "skirmishing" was the word you were looking for to denote fighting that is less intense than a full blown war in which the idea is to relate the size and role of a skirmish in an actual war to that of an actual proxy war in relation to a global conflict between superpowers.

An important thing to remember in that settlement was the caretaker role of the US in Europe. This is why European countries haven’t developed powerful armies. This is why they have become complacent , always relying on Uncle Sam to do the heavy lifting. This suited both part parties. This was not likely to change much until Trump came along and trashed NATO. This combined with Putin’s imperial ambitions have changed the landscape and a new equilibrium will have to be found. — Punshhh

I simply disagree, the equilibrium is exactly as it was before. No one (who matters; aka. decides what the propaganda is rather than their job being to believe it) actually believes that Russia will actually attack the EU. Ukraine was a particular case in terms of culture, strategic military implications, and resources.

Another war maybe fought in Finland, but that will just be to sacrifice Finns to keep up the pretence of this amazing confrontation (and so sell more arms).

This inevitably results in a lot of chaos and shouting. — Punshhh

... and also people dying. You seem to always leave that part out, such as the "Big story" is arms being purchased ... not all the dead Ukrainians.

The story here is that Europe will now re-arm. This will take a decade or more. In the meantime Russia is weak and can be held at bay for that decade. — Punshhh

... Again ... why only now? (even if true, which it's not in any remotely meaningful "preparing for total war with Russia" sense)

But same question to you as with @ssu ... the rhetoric has not changed, so how are you not implicitly accepting European leaders where lying about that for years, drip feeding weapons to Ukraine to prop it up just enough to not collapse spectacularly (before the US election), and therefore the "story" being "Europe will now re-arm" is because they've been crying wolf and only see an actual wolf now because the US (specifically Trump as you've said) has exposed them to the consequences of their own actions of antagonizing a far more powerful neighbour for cynical reasons?

How can you just casually skip over the fact the EU obviously wasn't rearming in 2022 in response to literally New Hitler invading a European country and EU countries are bound to be next if New Hitler isn't stopped in Ukraine ... but obviously could have with things like the "biggest arms deal in EU history" and the like, or then even a little bit of actual war time economy measures to support Ukraine (such as essentially volunteer based factories to produce enough shells for Ukraine)?

I.e. how can you just casually skip over these obvious lies and deception by European leaders for 3 years, if not many years before, without exposing your position as just repeating whatever "pro-Ukrainians dying" propaganda you heard last.

The fly in the ointment is the possibility that Trump will gift Ukraine to Putin. This will embolden Putin allowing him to replenish his army and threaten Europe before it re-arms and will have a destabilising effect on geopolitics. — Punshhh

WTF are you talking about?

The fly in what ointment? The delicious ointment of provoking and then propping up a war by drip feeding in weapons for war profiteering purposes, only to suddenly realize antagonizing a far more powerful military while being nearly fully dependent on another great power an Ocean away (that has since decades being talking about it's "pivot" to an Ocean even farther away) was terrible state craft?

Now, if your question is why would European leaders go down such a self-destructive path which, at best, renders Europe a poor vassal backwaters to the United States?

Well the answer is that the European leaders that did this are essentially just organized crime kingpins and organized crime have benefited a great deal from this war.

In the meantime Russia is capable of throwing a vast amount of artillery at her opponent and is developing her drone capability quickly. A drone arms race is not good and needs to be choked off asap. — Punshhh

Ah yes, in the meantime Russia can just casually outproduce the largest economic block on the planet.

... but I thought the holy ointment was propping up total war in Ukraine while not even making token efforts to match production rates and only starting to think about that part of "being essentially at war with Russia" now that Trump wants to make peace with Russia as that's in American's interest to do, and will lower energy prices and get US access to all sorts of minerals and so on.

So considering war with Russia your "ointment" ... how exactly do you see choking off a drones arms race? Arms control is a deescalatory process of arms limitations, but the "story here" is Europe will re-arm ... so you're idea is Europe will rearm while asking Russia to kindly exnay on the onesdray, just kind of cool it a little, maybe just a forceful "knock-it-off", or a strongly worded letter will get the job done?

This situation could become very expensive as Putin is throwing all his remaining money at it. This needs to be avoided and Trump throwing a spanner in the works really doesn’t help. — Punshhh

Why would your program of choking off an arms race become expensive?

Also, it's called "oil", which is turned into an obscure economic thing called "revenue", which renders the phrase "Putin is throwing all his remaining money at it" basically nonsense. This sort of complicated businessney thing maybe over your head but I, as a long time corporate executive, could try to explain it to you.

Well, you answered it yourself. — ssu

No, I did not answer the rebuttal myself.

Well, because the Trump team is basically hostile to Ukraine and on the side of Russia. So yes, that indeed is really a change here. — ssu

The points here are twain:

First, they've been saying the exact same thing since 2022 in order to justify pouring arms into Ukraine, so for you're argument to work you must recognize that from 2022 to 2024 "saying stuff" like Putin is literally Hitler and we need to him in Ukraine and so on was pure propaganda that no leader in Europe actually believed.

I.e. that you're argument structure is that it was the boy who cried wolf for 2 years and now, NOW, there's actually a wolf, trust me bro.

That's the first point you need to contend with as the rhetoric has not changed.

Second, even 2024 and 2025 there is still zero evidence of the EU planning, preparing, much less implementing some semblance of a war time economy in order to fight the Russians, not even a little bit to just reach shell parity for Ukraine in Russia.

Is it really that hard to make enough artillery shells?

There's industrial layoffs in Europe all over the place, idle capacity ... why not get people to work making shells.

Which still wouldn't make a lick of sense to only start doing now (if any part of the rhetoric represented the slightest true belief), as even if we recognize that painting Russia as a threat to the EU was bullshit there was still the "rules based order" and democracy and borders, Borders man! (outside the Middle-East of course) that needed defended.

Furthermore, even if it's completely delusional, a large majority of Europeans simply believe the propaganda that Ukraine good, Russia bad, Putin's literally Hitler, if Ukraine falls then literally the rest of Europe will be next, and so on, even more so at the start of the war ... so not only could idle capacity be put into making shells but there would be a large group of recently laid off industrial workers essentially volunteering for the production lines, not to mention millions of just able bodied people's (and even women with zero construction or industrial experience whatsoever could rapidly skill up and not only produce simple things like shells but far more complicated things like fighter aircraft, in WWII ... but with more eduction, more automated tooling, more engineers and so on, this cannot be accomplished today?).

At some point you have to answer these sorts of questions.

And the answer is there was never any intention, whether in Europe or the United States, to have any other outcome in the war in Ukraine other than the one we are currently seeing (of the Ukrainian military lines breaking).

The reason there is no crash program to produce things as simple as artillery shells is because that would help Ukraine quite a lot, and as importantly does not generate obscene profits for military contractors.

The strategy was always to drip feed weapons to Ukraine to at least get to the next election while still being able to at least pretend things are fine.

Ah yes, that beautiful realm of cognitive dissonance where Russia is militarily inept, on it's last legs, and simultaneously an existential threat to Europe.

The Russian economy and military are in shambles. It will take decades to recover! Also, they will be at the gates of Berlin in no time: we must militarize! — Tzeentch

It's Schrödinger's war machine.

There is no cognitive dissonance: the narratives are superimposed simultaneously without that bothering anyone in the slightest.

Poland isn't just "saying stuff". The way the Finnish military has started to train it's reservists isn't just "saying stuff". — ssu

There is not the remotest semblance of a European war time economy in preparation or planning.

Saying stuff, arms deals / profiteering from the situation, and updating military training (which armies do anyways in response to contemporary conflict whether they feel threatened or not) are not the remotest semblance of planning, preparing for, "laying the ground work", and much less in the process of implementing some sort of wartime economy that you definitely would be in the act of doing if you thought you actually might be fighting Russia.

And again, your evidence betrays the reality of the situation.

(Breaking Defense, 2024) German manufacturer Rheinmetall received its largest order in company history today: a deal with Germany for 155mm artillery ammunition, valued at up to €8.5 billion ($9.1 billion) and which will replenish Bundeswehr, Ukrainian and other allies’ stocks.

2024 ... a whole two years into the war, and only to "replenish stocks" and not somehow match, much less exceed, the Russian rate of production to fight a large scale conventional war in Europe with said Russian production.

This arms deal is simply the common sense and nearly inevitable result of sending nearly all the ammunition available to get used up in Ukraine (or then sold onward on the blackmarket) in that those stocks need to be restocked at some point.

As I said, they were very slow to see the threat. — ssu

You betray yourself!!

If they're only "seeing the threat" in 2024, then obviously they were lying to us before when the war was existential for Europe and democracy and the "rules based order" from the get go (the "war starting" referring here to the significant expansion of the war in 2022).

You're basically saying "well they were lying to us before and totally didn't see Russia as some sort of actual threat were just 'saying stuff' in order to exploit Ukraine for cynical ends. But now, Now, NOW! they totally see the threat now and they are totally telling us the truth Now.

I would call this bullshit. Do you think that speaking a specific language means that you identify with, as belonging to, and wanting to be a citizen of, i.e. "conquered by", that mother country where the language derives? For example, do you think that Americans would be "fundamentally cool" with being conquered by England because they speak English? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well I must call bullshit on your calling bullshit.

I clearly specified that "large extent being defined here as enough to render pacification easy"; i.e. being "fundamentally cool with it".

Pacification has been easy (see Afghanistan for a comparison case of pacification being hard).

Now, what most people "truly believe" is a different question to the fact there is clearly enough Russian identity, sympathy or then tolerance to render pacification easy.

Also keep in mind Kiev's campaign to suppress the Russian language ... so, true enough that speaking a language doesn't mean you want to be conquered by the main body of the speakers of that language, but do you really think people like having their mother tongue suppressed and have a strong desire to remain under the rule of people suppressing the language they speak?

Furthermore, it's very evident that many expatriates are expatriates because they disavow the governance of the homeland. But when the disgruntled ex-citizens are perceived as congregating and conspiring against the government of the homeland, by members of that government, they might feel compelled to take action against them. — Metaphysician Undercover

Unclear what you're talking about, but the reality on the ground is that insurgency, sabotage and intelligence rat lines within the conquered territories have had no noticeable effect on the course of the war.

Of note is that there are other regions of Ukraine where that would not be the case which Russia has made no attempt to conquer and pacify; when Russia did go through those regions at the start of the war in the Northern operation to surround Kiev, they made no attempt to conquer and pacify territory (which they obviously know how to do as they did so in the South).

Lol. :lol:

Well, that's delusional and simply false. No, up until this week, Europeans have truly believed that the US is an ally. With US and NATO allies, there's such a mismatch, that there hasn't been a reason to spend so much more on the military. There was ample deterrence. Yes, it's not just Trump that has been talking about the "Pivot to Asia", that started with Obama. But taking a bigger role in defense of Europe and the US going along with Russia are quite two things. The military threat of Russia is totally real. This week, the threat of a larger war in Europe just increased. And so will likely the Russian hybrid attacks.

Where do I start... — ssu

"Saying stuff" is not building up arms in any meaningful way, whether to send into Ukraine as the "last line of defence" or then for your own preperation.

What Europe has not done is any sort of crash program of any sort to buildup armaments.

Statistics have been rolled out on the regular that Russia is outproducing all of NATO in basic things like artillery shells, by several factors, and the reaction to EU elites and journalists is just ... hmmm, pity that.

If you actually thought you might be actually invaded by Russia there would be massive efforts of building up arms as well as building up significant fortifications.

Notice your own date of your own citations:

When

From last year: — ssu

... last year ... last year whoever your quoting (which is just talk) wants to:

ramp up our efforts

Well ... why the fuck aren't they already ramped to the fucking max already in 2022 when the war that war to "stop Putin in Ukraine" started?

Or then even before when European leaders were already preparing Ukraine to fight said war? If Russia was such a threat why not prepare also themselves?

There is no actual preparation, much less even the slightest sort of "war time economy" to support Ukraine as some sort of Gondor against the forces of Mordor, because there is no actual belief that Russia poses a threat.

Again, doesn't exclude war with Finland, but Finland doesn't matter.

I do. Do you follow the thread, as you refer to two months ago. A lot happened this week. — ssu

The point was in your seeming to take issue with my description of the "chemical attack script" which obviously came and went along time ago, serving its purpose at the time to further frustrate any attempt at a negotiated settlement.

Militarily Russia isn't winning Ukraine, but Trump is giving Putin the biggest political support ever. — ssu

If you thought / think Russia isn't winning in Ukraine and it's only Trump that is spoiling Ukraine "victory", of whatever sort is defined at the end of the process of Russia not winning, it's difficult to start to address this. I will try to get to it later.

The Ukrainian military is essentially melting away at this point.

As Trump is crushing the Atlanticism, and ending Pax Americana, Putin can be very happy. Alexander Dugin stated that this was the (and should be the goal) of Russia, and thanks to Trump, Putin is achieving his objectives. — ssu

.... or in other words:

The war consolidates Putin's power, is amazing for China, and achieves US objectives of preventing a real "World Leader" competitor, which both China and Russia could never be, but Europe would have already displaced US as a global leader with A. peace with Russia and the enormous benefits of it's mineral riches and B. some fucking balls in positions of influence rather than "leaders" that both make sure they appear, as well as seem to feel in their heart of hears, that they must be USA bitches.

This Ukraine war is a disaster for Europe, easily prevented, and a few speeches doesn't rectify anything. Washington, Moscow and Beijing are all getting what they want. Indeed, China and USA far more than Russia, but at least Russia's getting something.

Europe gains nothing, loses a lot, and it's failure to do anything meaningful to have peace, is because European elites do not care much about European interest, neither Ukrainians nor their own populations; they care about US interests, for reason I honestly don't get (I talked years ago with bureaucrats in Brussels about there being no purpose or benefit to antagonizing Russia for no discernible reason; they honestly didn't get my point of view, would just repeat USA talking points about the issue).

When I pushed for some sort of justification, "like why? why though?" they would just get angry with me.

And the "appeasement" argument doesn't work as there's already NATO ... which, ok, sure let Ukraine in by surprise over a weekend ... and see how that goes, but if, by your own admission, no one's letting Ukraine into NATO, why a pointless war of words and sanctions that simply push Russia towards China rather than stick to the European policy of economic ties with democracies a good way to spread to democracies. There was zero logic nor even any understanding of the political situation with Europe's largest neighbor ... supplying 40% of it's natural gas.

As far as I could tell, Brussels bureaucrats just like sucking American dick. Offensive, maybe, but I find pointless bloodshed and cities leveled to the ground more offensive ... don't like that ... well either do diplomacy or go send troops there to defend against said shelling you say you don't like. Honestly, arguing with a mix-tape of stupid would have been a more interesting conversation.

Argument has basically been: if we appease Russia by doing diplomacy in some credible way, they may invade Ukraine ... but stop there because everyone else is in Nato. However, if we don't appease Russia they will for sure probably invade Ukraine as we're for sure as hell not letting Ukraine in our little Nato club, as that would be provoking Russia too much. Therefore, we are fucking morons.

Credible diplomacy not only may have worked, but also increases the costs significantly for Russia if there were credible offers turned down, credible denunciation of neo-Nazi's in Ukraine, EU stopping Ukraine's language suppression programs etc. common sense things, all increase the likelihood of peace directly but also decrease the cost-benefit of war as it's a harder sell to your own population.

Instead, USA is basically "Hey, Germany, go make sure neo-Nazi's are seen to be of credible importance in Ukraine with the implicit backing of the EU, and also make sure they can do whatever language and cultural suppression of Russian speakers there that said neo-Nazi's dream of: make sure Russia sees you do it Germany, I'm counting on you." — boethius

Agree?

↪Tzeentch When Trump parrots Kremlin's lines, nothing else could better justify Putin's actions.

Pax Americana is dead and we are closer to war, if Europe doesn't get it's act together. Or at least form a willing coalition. Because Putin won't stop and he already has his sights on next targets. — ssu

Perhaps, given everything that was told by mainly @Tzeentch, the late @Isaac and myself, you would consider for a moment that propaganda has lead you astray.

As Neutrality Studies has pointed out repeatedly, if the EU genuinely believed Russia represented a military threat they would be building up like crazy! But they don't.

Why?

Because they don't view Russia as a genuine military threat to the EU.

Russia has only conquered Russian speaking, ethnically Russian, and also Russian identifying (to a large extent), regions in Ukraine (large extent being defined here as enough to render pacification easy).

Russia is simply not conquering, nor shows any signs of intending to conquer, anyone who is not fundamentally cool with being conquered.

Then there's the problem of nuclear weapons, which two EU countries have along with the United States.

In addition to that there's the problem of no feasibly conquerable EU territory having any resources worth conquering.

However, this is not to say there won't be further war, only that my prediction is that it will not be started or desired by Russia but engineered by European countries in order to justify the current trajectory, in particular in terms of totalitarianism.

As the Finnish professor Glenn Diesen recently noted, I believe on the Duran if memory serves me, along with calling the Finnish president a traitor (which he is), the Finnish population has been and is being prepared for war by Finnish media and Finnish politicians, and the mood has changed to war with Russia being inevitable.

Now, this was a policy undertaken during the Biden administration, so it may change, but I doubt it. Mark my words, however, that the war will not be instigated by Russia but rather by Finland.

Finland is a small country that can easily be sacrificed for the greater EU good, which in this case is defined by maintaining a state of total delusion.

↪ssu By the way, all of the sidelining of the Europeans and the Ukrainians seems to tell us a thing or two about who was right about whether or not to assign these actors with much agency. — Tzeentch

They were agents in their own unagency Tzeentch, authors of their own writing themselves out of the script entirely.

Never said such thing. In the end even the most ruthless dictatorship has to have a "domestic support", namely of the security apparatus. Putin has his followers, just as Trump has his followers. But likely not everybody is in Russia happy about Putin's adventures, but who are they to say it, when you can be sent to jail for speaking out. — ssu

Yes, I missed your definition of "domestic political support" to include the "security apparatus", which removes nearly the entire meaning of the expression to reducing essentially to a truism that those in power have by definition some basis for their power, and it would be only relevance in literally the last moments of a regimes nominal titles when it has lost control of the security apparatus during a coup.

However, even with your definition your framework is still wrong as the security apparatus keeping people in power is not by definition domestic but can easily be partly, or even wholly, foreign controlled, in term of finance and intelligence resources and even the people.

I'm not sure this part of the debate is relevant to continue, though feel free to, but just wanted to address a couple of points, especially where I misinterpreted you, before getting back into the current debate.

Generally, I am still intending to make a new thread on these more general themes.

So how much is Russia winning now and which step are we on? — ssu

Do you not follow the news?

Russia using chemical choking agents in Ukraine, US says — Russia using chemical choking agents in Ukraine, US says

Problem that was encountered was that this playbook is no working, to such an extent the neocons have been ousted from power.

Political power, be it democratic or autocratic, is dependent on domestic political support, be that needed support of the voters or the security apparatus. Foreign policy is to serve those goals, just like defense policy or energy police etc. — ssu

Well you seem to have just disproven your own point then since if Russia foreign policy depends on domestic political support, which you claim the Russian state doesn't have, then obviously the foreign policy of waging war in Ukraine would have collapsed by now due to depending on domestic political support which is insufficient to support the policy.

Russia is continuing to wage war in Ukraine so therefore has sufficient domestic political support to continue to do so. Case closed.

As for Mearsheimer's basic foundational point, the current international system, parties, in particular the great powers can't trust each other, which breeds paranoia, and so seek to maximize their power to ensure their survival.

Not that the small powers can trust each other or then the great powers, just that their only option is usually to cut a deal with a great power (or more) to be of some functional utility ("ally" / vassal, buffer, military base substrate, source of raw materials, or what have you) in great power politics.

In this framework, Mearsheimer answer to your rebuttal is that the states people of the great power will both argue and more importantly actually act on the premise that state security dominates all other "domestic political concerns" in that there is no domestic politics at all if the state is destroyed.

The situation is NATO is threatening Russia (literally writing documents hundreds of pages long detailing how to impose costs on Russia to both weaken Russia and coerce Russian foreign policy positions) and therefore it is rational for Russian state decision makers to react to those threats. The political structure is setup in Russia, as in the United States, so that state decision makers can react to threats without bothering much with the opinion of normal people anyways.

Now, also importantly, Mearsheimer is not saying that state decision makers, in this tense and paranoid sauce they find themselves in, make therefore optimal decisions, but rather the exact opposite that miscalculations occur all the time (precisely because things are so tense and paranoid). Likewise importantly, these global in scale hegemonic power struggles are a zero-sum game and therefore miscalculations are exploited by opposing powers.

So does every policy in the US that enjoys the support of both political parties. For example, just where the US spends it's government income has been extremely stable without not much differences between administrations: wealth transfers (welfare and pensions), health care, defense and education (and then the interest on debt). In fact, there isn't anything for politicians to decide as the usually these spending has been announced to be mandatory. What has approval of both parties, doesn't create much debate, as foreign policy does, especially when it's usually the last refuge that US Presidents then try to mingle after their domestic campaign promises have withered away. — ssu

You go from claiming that foreign policy (even in autocratic regimes) depends on domestic political support (so democracy is superfluous anyways as all state policies by definition require domestic political support) to seamlessly transitioning to claiming both major political parties in the US essentially by definition represent accurately the US population ... and not special interests or anything like that.

"What has approval of both parties" ... "doesn't create much debate"

... So you're saying the US health care policy hasn't created much debate?

But foreign policy (... which my understanding is we both agree is nearly 100% consistent throughout all recent US administrations; presumably how we know they have genuine support from the general population) does create debate?

Just look at the Charter of NATO itself: every country has to be ratified by each member state. For example Hungary has said that it doesn't want Ukraine in NATO. And prior the invasion, member states like Germany opposed this. This is why NATO has often irritates American Presidents as the organization won't go the way as they plan. The really ignorant and naive idea is that the US can push anything through NATO. It cannot. It couldn't do that either in CENTO and SEATO, as these are organizations made up of member states.

Yes, the members can say that Ukraine will be in the future a NATO member, just as the European Union can say that the door is open for Turkey to join the EU. — ssu

I don't have the time to fully unpack how absurd this line of reasoning is, but to make short of it: when you make statements like "Hungary has said" that's something that is only true for now, if it's true at all (i.e. if Hungary really could oppose the will of the US even now). So, even if what you said was true right now, obviously it could be the opposite tomorrow with a change in leadership in Hungary, of which the US is pretty experienced in bringing about (why this whole war started in the first place).

The idea that Russia is irrational for basing their foreign policy on the mighty Hungarian position in NATO, is just laughably absurd.

Just ask yourself, what if Russia wouldn't have annexed Crimea, which doesn't bring enormous riches to Russia, but more problematic backward economy. If it hadn't done this, the European countries would have continued to dismantle their defenses, Russia would enjoy large support in Ukraine (and hence have a say) and Ukrainian NATO membership would be one silly thing that some US presidents would have said. Ukraine would seem quite dubious candidate with it's frequent revolutions etc. — ssu

The annexation of Crimea was in response to a literal coup in Ukraine orchestrated by the CIA with Victoria Nulled literally handing out coup-victory cookies in the Maidan square.

The CIA had already built 12 forward operating bases that we find out about later (but certainly Russia would have already had at least some intelligence about).

You're whole argument is basically "don't worry, the most powerful nation on earth can't accomplish it's explicitly stated objectives, can't do shit about a single tiny country in it's main alliance disagreeing, can make a coup happen but couldn't substantially follow through on that coup to do anything; and therefore, due to these mostly paperwork issues, Russia is just totally overreacting to billions of dollars of financing to anti-Russian parties, including literal Nazis; it was all basically 'fun money' and didn't threaten a single Russian fly".

Just look at what happened in Central Asia. After 9/11, American had several military bases all around Central Asia, even with Tajikistan holding both an American and a Russian military base. Now...NOTHING. Russia had just to wait for the neocon dream to implode, which it did. Now Russia has a firm grasp on the area, even with countries needing Russia help to put down their demonstrations... without invading anybody. — ssu

Really? Russia has a firm grasp on the area?

That obviously false statement aside, the difference between events in Ukraine and Iraq and Afghanistan, is that both Iraq and Afghanistan were US client regimes. The US made Saddam Hussein and also the Taliban (to fight Russians).

The US was not actually attacking any Russian interest, and in fact Russia helped with both logistics and intelligence in those wars as both a gesture of good will towards the Americans but also since they don't like Islamic terrorism either (which, to be clear, I have seen zero actual credible proof 9/11 was orchestrated or abetted by anyone actually in Iraq or Afghanistan, and even less so anyone in the Iraqi or Afghani state; and the US investigation into 9/11 is filled with wholes, contradictions and insane claims like the source of finance is irrelevant to the investigation of the crime).

However, for our purposes here, what's important is that the US response to 9/11 did not harm Russian interests, so your whole premise makes zero sense in that the US was somehow acting against Russia in Iraq and Afghanistan to begin with.

Where things started to change is in Libya where Russia approved the no-fly zone as Russian interest were not threatened, but interpreted "no fly zone" as to mean "you cannot fly aircraft in the zone without the UN Security Council permission" and not "everything that could potentially help something to fly, which is literally anyone and any object whatsoever, can therefore be bombed" which is how NATO interpreted "no fly zone". Where Russia had issue is that was just a retarded use of language and bombing a country into a failed state (that now has literal slave markets) doesn't benefit anyone, including Russia, and obviously radically increases the power of international Islamic terrorism by creating an essentially Islamic Mad Max scenario.

But, again, to differentiate with Ukraine, NATO was not directly harming Russian interests, which is why Russia supported the no-fly-zone (which had it been an actual no-fly-zone in the common sense understanding of "what do words mean" then that would have helped some reasonable negotiated political process).

Where Russia actually intervened to directly oppose US intelligence activity, is in Syria, and the reason being Syria does represent Russian interest.

You're argument here is basically because Russia didn't need to intervene to stop the US from essentially cannibalizing it's own vassals to have a "as long as we can war", then it doesn't need intervene when it's own interests are directly attacked.

That's just foolish.

Russia has nuclear deterrence. Without that nuclear deterrence, it's likely that NATO would have created a "no fly zone" over Ukraine and been one actor in the war, just like it was for example in the Libyan Civil War. — ssu

As I've stated many times, without nuclear weapons, we would already be in World War III, and if we were discussing geopolitics at all it would only be because we happened to be in the same trench.

Since there is nuclear weapons, the great powers can't simply launch all-in warfare against each other, and instead we are in a process of America attempting to maximize its coercive power just short of triggering a nuclear war (or then full scale nuclear war; likely they are trying to ease the world into normalizing limited use of nuclear weapons).

Is Russia counter strategy optimal?

Well obviously not optimal as nothing is, but it is a rational response of basically a good defence is a good offence.

The situation for Russia is that it simply doesn't know what the CIA could eventually cook-up in Ukraine (especially with things like AI coming online) so best resolve the tension while things are still somewhat predictable (including decouple from the West technologically speaking).

Of course you can make counter-factuals that what the CIA was doing in Ukraine would have amounted to a nothing burger had left to continue.

You can also for sure add Russian imperial ambition that many Russians, and certainly Russian elites, very much would like Crimea back, as there was not really a good reason for the Soviet Union to "gift it" to Ukraine in the first place.

And isn't then also the European Union is also a "threat to Russia"? As we can see from Ukraine and where the revolution of dignity started and now are seeing in Georgia, where the Georgian dream as backtracked it's election promises. — ssu

Obviously the European Union is also a threat to Russia, it's just superfluous to mention as all the key militaries are also a part of NATO.

I'm really confused what you are aiming here for. First, NATO is a security arrangement for Europe and an obvious issue is actually Article 1, that it keeps member states in not having conflicts themselves. NATO membership has at least for now made Turkey and Greece to avoid a war. Then NATO was wholeheartedly seeking for a mission and thus concentrated on "new threats", but Russia's actions has made it to focus in it's original mission, which in the 1990's and 2000's was a relic of the past for many. — ssu

This doesn't seem to have anything to do with the point you're responding to, but to clarify what NATO says on paper doesn't matter much to counter-parties.

NATO has embarked on plenty of offensive actions in which no NATO country was under attack and in addition to that there's a little something called a false flag that solves the problem of launching an offensive action under a defensive requirement.

You speak as if Russian generals should just print out NATO's charter and go through that when they sit down to evaluate their own force posture ... rather than print out maps of military assets.

Obviously nowhere do generals base their recommendations on what opposing forces have written about their own intentions publicly ... well it happened once (maybe) and it was called the Trojan Horse and, notably, only needed to happen exactly once (and even then it maybe didn't actually happen) for the entire world to learn the lesson of not blindly trusting the word of opposing parties that may wish you harm.

It's just amazing that you expect people which the US literally categorizes as enemies (usually with a bunch of euphemisms like "rival" and the like, though also sometimes just outright say that Russia is an enemy that needs to be defeated), should take the US and NATO at it's word (with the odd exception of when the US and NATO are directly threatening them, in which case they should be assumed to be bluffing or impotent to cary out those direct threats), when not a single chance you'd just take Russia, or Iran, or Hezbollah, or anyone you had issue with at their word about their own intentions.

Not sure you're aware of this, but Sadam Husseine and the Taliban both gave their word they weren't helping islamic terrorists strike the US, on 9/11 or otherwise (and turns out they were actually right about that), and yet I'm pretty sure you don't view the US actions as irrational due to the word of Sadam Husseine and the Taliban.

That simply is a lie.

Just against my country, Russia made threats far before this, basically starting from the 1990's, first by Russian generals and Russian politicians. First hybrid attacks of sending migrants of the border into Finland and Norway happened in 2015-2016. The real breach already happened during the Kosovo war. There Russian forces faced British NATO forces and the rhetoric from Yeltsin was already very aggressive. That was before Putin. And of course there's the famous Putin at Munich in 2007 well before the Russo-Georgian war. — ssu

Well feel free to produce this evidence.

Mearsheimer makes the challenge essentially every time he speaks on the subject for people to present any evidence that Russia was threatening Ukraine, Georgia, much less NATO, and expressed any intention whatsoever to expand into Ukraine, Georgia, or then Finland in your example, prior to 2008 which is the start of the escalation in Mearsheimer's view.

Notably, your example of "hybrid action" against Finland is in 2015 which is after the Ukraine coup, annexation of Crimea, Donbas civil war, and escalation goes hot.

Just seems to my your entire position is hopelessly confused.

You argue that Russia had zero reason to invade Ukraine as the US (and also NATO) declaring it's intention that Ukraine would join NATO doesn't matter ... but also that it is in fact Russia that was threatening Ukraine (and also Finland) all along and therefore Ukraine joining NATO (which you also argue can't actually happen because of Hungary) was a reasonable response to Russian aggressive language.

It's simply a series of mutually incompatible positions.

If it was right for Ukraine to join NATO to be protected from Russia ... then it's absolutely fucking retarded to try to do that if you know it can't happen because Hungary disapproves ... which isn't fixed by then trying to argue NATO doesn't matter and everything the US does fails so Russia should just not react to anything and assume US will anyways fail ... it's just a hodgepodge of nonsense at this point.

What is real however is the immense harm that has come to Ukraine in this bid to join NATO ... which apparently could never have happened anyways ... how is that possibly fair to Ukraine ... but also Finland can join NATO and so Russia is severely damaged by that and so waging war in Ukraine was a big mistake because ... Finland ... makes zero sense.

The criticism is the one-sidedness of Mearsheimer's theory. He doesn't, and he has admitted himself, look at the situation from the Russian domestic political viewpoint. This is the theoretical flaw here. — ssu

This is not a theoretical flaw, it is a prediction of the theory that domestic politics has little effect on great power politics and there's both theoretical and empirical justification for it, for example that US foreign policy remains extremely consistent throughout wildly different administrations.

Domestic politics is absolutely essentially in every country: it drives foreign policy in every country. — ssu

This is a wildly inaccurate statement.

Then there is the idea that this, starting a huge conventional invasion, was a rational decision by Putin to thwart NATO enlargement. Yet the action lead to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, the NATO countries increase their spending and NATO getting back to the role that it had during the Cold War. It doesn't make any sense. — ssu

It makes perfect sense if enlargement into Sweden and Finland is viewed as less dangerous than enlargement into Ukraine.

Finland joining NATO is not some sort of "gotcha" but you'd need to actually demonstrate why Finland in NATO is far more threatening to Russian interests than Ukraine in NATO.

Especially when just having large scale exercises would have made Ukrainian NATO membership as impossible as EU membership of Turkiye. — ssu

What's this statement based on?

(But as NATO follows it's charter, it could never say this out loud.) — ssu

This is such a strange line of argument to assert that what people explicitly say, such as "Ukraine will join NATO" should be ignored in favour of what "they actually mean" if you listen to internet analysts or "what is actually possible" if you read the fine print as interpreted by internet analysts.

Hence the war cannot be explained only by NATO enlargement, which is now done by those willing to go with Putin's line. And that "only" changes a lot in the actual picture. Yet it make sense if Putin wanted Ukraine irrelevant of NATO. — ssu

NATO enlargement is I think best viewed as the "ultimate cause" of the war, a possibility so bad from Russian elite perspective that Russian elites are essentially united in their willingness to fight a way to prevent it happening, and there is a bunch of proximate causes, such as there already being a war in the Donbas regularly killing ethnic Russians that ethnic Russians in Russia want and expect something to be done about it. But the Donbas war itself is explained as an attempt to keep Ukraine from joining NATO, so if the argument that Ukraine would never join NATO because there's already border dispute designed to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO ... then the argument is basically it was irrational for Russia to expand the war that was rational for Russia to start in the first place, which is pretty tenuous view of rationality, but to address the substance the problem with keeping a war going to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO is that it's not sustainable (just as Ukraine has encountered the attrition problems of fighting a much larger power even in the context of substantial support from outside powers, so too the Donbas militias had the exact same problem, and the solution is the same of the larger supporting power directly intervening).

Added to these two main causes, there's then a long list of other co-factors and triggers. There's for example a long list of escalations of tensions by the US generally speaking from simply more anti-Russian propaganda to withdrawing from the INF and ABM treaties, "clashing" or whatever you want to call it in Syria, and the main trigger for the war I would argue is the obstruction of licensing the Nord Stream II pipeline, which is when things came to a breaking point in terms of any further dialoguee.

Yet it doesn't reflect accurately EVERYTHING. Yes, Putin says that he is in a war with NATO. So basically he is saying that Russia is also in war with your country, Benkei, and with my country. And I've been the first one here to remind even before the annexation of Crimea, the in the official military doctrine of Russia the first threat was NATO enlargement, when international terrorism (read Al Qaeda) was threat number 14 or so. Yet if you just repeat the Mearsheimer line, the logical system would be not to enlarge NATO or even get rid of NATO. But that wouldn't stop Russia! In fact that would simply make them be even more aggressive. If you think that's just a hypothetical, that also Russia could be totally passive and nice neighbor, that isn't the case when people like Putin run the country. You simply have to listen to what they really say, not just look at the US and the West and think that everything that other people do is just a response to your own actions. It isn't that way. That's the whole point here. — ssu

But isn't the whole argument that the war is irrational for Russia premised on Russia being weak and the war therefore too damaging? How does that square with symultaniously presenting Russia as this unstoppable force that would roll over all of Eastern Europe, and maybe even Western Europe, if not for NATO and also stopping this unstoppable Russian army with the unmovable might of NATO in Ukraine?

Even more problematic for a philosophy forum, in defending the idea that NATO in Ukraine is not a threat to Russia your methodology is that nothing anyone explicitly says matter, but then when it comes to Russia threatening Europe you beseech us to take every little word as seriously as possible and also "know what they mean" even if they didn't say anything.

For, you will not actually find any of this threatening language before NATO escalated with Russia in pushing into Ukraine ... for apparently zero reason if it is true they would never "actually do it" ... so you're whole argument basically boils down to "Russia is irrational for not realizing NATO is in fact the irrational party pretending to do things they will never actually do".

It's also the company my money laundering investigation ultimately led to, and so their not having working website I thought was totally normal (most companies involved in money laundering have defunct websites), but that was before I realized Deluxe.com represents a billion dollar market cap company listed on the Nasdaq, a fortune 1000 company and in the S&P 600.

... So I'm like ... what.

It's deluxe.com

Considering their website doesn't even work since the last 2 months, I'm pretty confident the Ponzi scheme is now imploding.