How dare they react. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, how dare they react to legitimate resistance to occupation by committing genocide.

Who would believe that bullshit, right? Well, as it turns out a lot of people continue to believe that bullshit. Propaganda is a powerful thing. — Tzeentch

Agreed. No qualms from me on that one.

And if we're honest, how is Gaza any different from the de facto and actual genocides the US has perpetrated and supported, like those in Vietnam, East-Timor and the Middle-East, with casualty figures running into the millions? — Tzeentch

Definitely, why I stressed genocide is not something American imperial custodians are against per se, just that this particular genocide doesn't serve US imperial interests.

Main difference is that this genocide is being broadcast live and there's also no plausible deniability, muddy the waters, kind of usual bullshit people easily swallow as you mention above. Israeli officials literally just get up on podiums and declare their intention to starve the Palestinians, that rape is ok, that they're animals, that children are just future terrorists and must be killed etc.

Normally you have clear evidence of mass murder on the one hand and a long winded plausible deniability bullshit narrative on the other and most people are then like "huh, who's to say what happened".

It's crazy, but they continue to get away with it. I can't blame the Americans for thinking they'll get away with it again. — Tzeentch

But they didn't!

The famous child burning photograph turned public opinion against the war, massive protests, huge cultural change.

It was so shocking to American elites that they did not in fact get away with it, they wanted to "win the war", that they completely reorganized the military, and in particular the draft, in order to be sure not to be bothered by public opinion in subsequent wars they will want to wage.

Of course, US remained a superpower and the threat of the Soviet Union was still current and so on and there were plenty of "rational" parties involved in US politics at the time.

For example, in 1975 you not only have the end of the Vietnam war but also the Churchill committee that investigated the CIA (for the first and only time). That no one was held accountable represents the fact corruption wins out over democracy basically in a process that continues to this day getting more and more corrupt all the time, but the fact the investigation happened at all represents things were on a knifes edge. It could have easily gone another way.

It's crazy, but they continue to get away with it. I can't blame the Americans for thinking they'll get away with it again.

I'm open to the possibility that they won't - times are changing - but that will require US assets from putting their money where their mouth is. No sign of that so far. Just "Oooh"ing and "Aaah"ing. — Tzeentch

Well there's two forms of getting away with it.

There's the "getting away with it" in terms of not being held accountable for law breaking and incompetence, starting a war on fabricated intelligence and lying to congress and the public and so on, and then "getting away with it" in terms of wasting the Imperial capital stocks of one form or another doesn't exactly collapse the empire and there is plenty left still to loot.

Soviet elites "got away with it" in both sense for quite some time and continued to "get away with it" in the various former Soviet republics.

Of course, if the US Imperial tributes suffers enough then there could be elite re-alignment to fix things, such as we saw with the re-ascendency of Russia under Putin, of which the key element was Putin putting in place a system of elite discipline (that is the key to play the geopolitical game coherently which Putin definitely understood from day 1; of course, who knows what will happen once he's gone if he's the linchpin in this strategic alignment).

Iran and Afghanistan are part of the same geographical region, so in my opinion this is not so strange.

Afghanistan has been wrecked, while Iran is now threatening to jump the gun on US intervention.

So the switch makes sense, and again I see continuity. — Tzeentch

Did Afghanistan really need to be wrecked? Was the Taliban building some cutting edged economic centre and I just missed it?

But my point was if you really want a war with Iran how do you geographically go about doing that without Afghanistan or Iraq?

So you really need to war game this out in detail. Obviously there's no actual plan to invade Iran, the best that can be done is a lot of chaos which would shut down oil exports from the region and (maybe collapse is too strong a word but) basically "not goodify" the global economy, seriously pissing off everyone in particular China. Is the expectation that China just accepts loss of oil imports from the Middle-East (and a lot of other people too)? Is Europe super happy about this?

There's the critical need of the oil, the super bad press of Israel committing a genocide, so how does the US maintain a forever war in the Middle-East between Iran and Israel without a coalition forming big enough to intervene?

Don't get me wrong, I do get the basic geopolitical idea of crashing the rest of the global economy and then sitting pretty in North America ... but how do you actually go about doing that?

Life ... finds a way.

As otherwise, the disruption must be only acute the time to accomplish some terminal objectives, such as invading and occupying Iran, which you'd definitely want to be in Afghanistan and Iraq to actually go about actually doing (which there is zero indication that the US can do, even when it was in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even less indication that the US is actually preparing to do such a thing).

Yep. It's all bullshit.

I'm as surprised as you are that people keep falling for this shit, but alas here we are.

By bombing Nord Stream the US has rolled out a plan that has been in place since at least 2014, of transferring European energy dependency from Russia to the US.

And the US has succeeded. Germany and the rest of Europe took it like a bitch. The US reaps the benefits. — Tzeentch

US elites reap benefits from harming Europe and forcing Europe to buy US gas.

The US empire benefited from a strong Europe. The whole reason the US can abuse European allies to begin with is that they are such diehard allies. They were far more useful to US imperialism with vibrant economies that can help balance against China.

The reasons to "take out" Europe are only sensical due to previous US imperial mismanagement, such as removing the Euro as competition for the dollar ... which only makes sense to do if you've already greatly mismanaged the dollar ... and doesn't actually solve the fundamental issues so only delays the day of financial reckoning.

Cannibalizing allies is again a sign of imperial decline.

Maybe this is true, but I will believe it only when the US empire is definitively put in the trashbin of history. Until that happens, history shows they're way too dangerous to underestimate. — Tzeentch

Yes, we shall definitely see.

However, just like Russia has gone through many phases of Imperial expansion and decline, and the corruption and discipline of each phase, and China for even longer, so too can America go through it's first imperial decline and reemerge later.

The great powers rarely just "go away" completely since the globalized international system started to form.

What's different now is nuclear weapons and environmental limits.

Either, or both, will kill billions of people in our lifetime. Which is unfortunate.

We actually agree that the plane is definitely going down, however I think a better representation of our arguments is "Plan vs. No plan", and to that end I've tried to repeatedly point out that there is clear continuity in US policy over the course of decades, both with regards to Ukraine and Iran.

A continuity that is in line with geopolitical theories like for example Heartland theory by Mackinder and Geographical Pivot theory by Brzezinski. — Tzeentch

In this case, we are pretty close in overall position.

However, my view is simply "there is a plan" is too strong wording. I think more accurate terminology is there is a framework for discussing plans that derives from dry geopolitical analysis of the kind you mention.

My position is that what plans actually get implemented, what decisions and policies the US government actually makes, are heavily affected by corruption as to make the moves incoherent on closer inspection. This incoherence is due to the primary motivation of various moves being extracting value from the Empire rather than trying to maintain it.

These other priorities of elite decision makes will be mediated through discussions nominally just about "geopolitics as usual" and "serious analysis" but without genuine engagement with any long term coherent thought process concerning what the interests of the US empire actually are.

For example, we go from abandoning Afghanistan and "fighting for democracy" there to a discourse of fighting for democracy in Ukraine as the most important thing to ever happen and Putin is literally Hitler and a genocidal maniac ... to supporting an actual genocide in Gaza!?

... and then escalate to regional war with Iran ... which the whole point of abandoning Afghanistan was that Iran was no longer such a big priority and the region generally, time to pivot to East-Asa.

All in the span of 3 years.

Add into that blowing up critical infrastructure of key allies, going from decades of the war on terror to now conducting state terrorism openly is ok and actually super clever if you kill some enemies in their living rooms with their families, running low of ammunition after decades of outspending essentially the rest of the world on the military for decades (where'd the money go??) and so on.

Yes, there is a planning framework that decisions and policies are hung on, but the incoherence is best explained by corruption: Afghanistan was about transferring wealth to military contractors and only nominally about something about Iran, and Ukraine about deflecting from the Afghanistan disaster while continuing to transfer a large amount of wealth to military contractors (and get blackjack in there and burry Biden family corruption in Ukraine by literally destroying the country), and then Zionists are further taking advantage of a weak Imperial centre to conduct a genocide which they've always wanted to do and perhaps feel now or never in reading the same tea leaves we are reading.

I.e. the characteristic feature of an empire in decline is elites transferring Imperial wealth to themselves, poor decision making and other misuses of the empire for elite personal aspirations (toxic elite "infighting" of one form or another).

... And neither do Americans. — Tzeentch

Sure, everyone has a plan.

The main point I'm trying to make is we're in a phase where the top elites, what I refer to as the Imperial primary beneficiaries, have personal plans that are more important to them than the interests of the empire.

Which is exactly what your reference strikes at the heart of, that individuals can have plans widely at odds with whatever official plans exist.

When an empire is on the ascendency there is strategic alignment between a dominant majority of Imperial elites, due to both external threats and the prospect of imperial booty of one form or another.

A near universal feature of imperial decline is strategic misalignment between Imperial elites and the interests of the empire, which leads to corruption and elite conflict.

The continuity of policy can represent the continuity of strategic thinking, as you say, but it can also represent the continuity of elite interests who only dress the policies up as serving some strategic purpose.

Corruption usually goes to some length to dress itself up as legitimate.

Also just a quick note that if my analysis is correct and Zelensky's days as a Western magical money faucet is in fact over, as it seems to be (certainly getting close), then a coup will be happening shortly.

To summarize my rebuttal:

I'm saying "this plane is definitely going down" and your reply is "well we still have a lot of fuel so can't be that bad".

Whatever the case, the Israelis disagree and the Americans don't feel called upon to correct them. — Tzeentch

Well that's exactly my point, genocide against the Palestinians is an Zionist-Israeli interest, not a US imperial interest (not to say US imperial custodians wouldn't commit genocide if they thought it was in US interest to do so, and I would say they have done so on many occasions), and Israel is not giving anything to the US in exchange for cover for the genocide ... but it's the US that is paying Israel for the privilege of being party to genocide!

The theory that these events are best explained by some cryptic geopolitical strategic calculations no one has ever heard about is certainly "possible" but has no evidence for it.

The theory that these events are explained by Zionists being a major faction of US imperial primary beneficiaries and have the leverage to control US policy on this policy point has extremely well documented evidence supporting it.

Israel has proven capable of assassinating high-profile targets within Iran, and it's likely they are holding back various means at their disposal for when shit truly hits the fan.

So personally I would not underestimate Israel's capability to hurt and/or destabilize Iran in significant ways, even without the nuclear option.

If things were to come to global conflict, I believe Israel may use nuclear weapons on Iran. — Tzeentch

There's no evidence that high profile assassinations are of any help, that's why the world mostly abandoned the practice (if it "worked" we'd see way more of it) with mostly just the US and Israel continuing it, and not because there's any evidence that it helps but I would argue it is mostly just ego service to those in power: i.e. it is withdrawing US imperial capital to make US imperial primary beneficiaries "feel good".

But we do now agree that nuclear weapons will likely be used.

However, again, if the US wanted Israel to nuke Iran they would quickly strike a deal with Israel to follow a CIA script to build up to nuking Iran, and my main point here is that we are not witnessing some US imperial lead plan, which is another indication in itself of US imperial decline.

Israel is flexing its ability to commit genocide, commit terrorism, assassinate the leaders of its enemies, and flexing its influence over US policy to be paid handsomely to do so. This all makes the US empire look more weak and hypocritical and untrustworthy than it already did while stoking immense animosity.

If you believe it's only Israel that's clever enough to commit terrorism at scale we'll just have to wait and see.

This is true, but I think the signal from Israel is that they are definitively abandoning rapprochement (and thus embracing conflict - as good ultranationalists do) - probably because they now believe it was never feasible to begin with.

Without a solution to the Palestinian problem, no rapprochement. And any real solution to the Palestinian problem (either a Palestinian state or an end to the apartheid) would be anathema to the Israeli hardliners. — Tzeentch

Definitely true, but becoming despised by 2 billion people (in addition to significant anger in the rest of the world) and validating what their most extreme voices have been saying all along (... because it turns out those extreme views were 100% correct all along) is not good long term strategy.

Seems to me more prophecy based delusion (and helping Netanyahu' personally) than the result of any sort of rational strategic planning process.

The US still has Europe, the Anglosphere and several East-Asian nations like Japan and South-Korea in the palm of its hand.

I think one shouldn't exaggerate the decline of the US empire. — Tzeentch

"Has them" to do what?

And how exactly does it "have them"?

When I have time I'll make a new thread detailing my theory of US imperial decline, within a more general theory of imperial decline generally speaking, but defining feature and also the whole point of empire is to extract value from a periphery into an imperial core, but to make a few brief points perhaps worth considering:

Countries do not need to turn hostile to the US in order to stop transferring de facto tribute in one form or another.

The cost of maintaining the Empire must be less than the value of the mentioned tribute for the empire to be sustainable.

These resource flows "are the empire" not the imperial military.

The imperial military can do little in the face of imperial fiscal mismanagement which is what takes down most empires and is a process usually driven by corruption due to the interests of imperial primary beneficiaries falling out of alignment with the interest of the empire as such.

The effect on a small scale is when criminals cooperate to pull off a heist but then turn on each other the moment the loot is boosted. Their interests align in the phase of wealth accumulation but then diverge once wealth accumulation reaches an apex, after which the benefits of competition with ones fellow thieves for the available resources outweighs the benefits of further collaboration.

Trump v Harris represents this phenomenon on a large scale of different imperial elite coalitions competing for control of the imperial financial and resource flows.

The "civil" era people opine for when politicians were "friends at the end of the day" and could "work together" and so on represented the situation where thieves collaborate to organize and pull off the heist.

You're basic error in evaluation, if I may (which I definitely will), is in considering the US imperial power in static absolute terms: it's still very high and so you are not worried.

Of course, power in absolute static terms is of course very relevant, but what is also relevant in the direction things are going.

The dynamics of a complex system in decline are usually non-linear (and by "usual" one can read near infinitely likely), meaning: effects can be small at first and then rapidly accelerate, point-of-no-returns can be hidden and impossible to find regardless of the amount of information you could possibly collect on the system, and processes pushed beyond a threshold of stability tend to interact with other processes and amplify one another in unpredictable ways.

Perhaps consider you are too focused on a static analysis of the situation that extracts geopolitical strategy from real political situations and dynamics (such as corruption so "baked in" it is essentially impossible to reverse without a catastrophic collapse event).

I.e. your analysis is accurate to taking the geopolitical situation and transposing it to a game with each player controlling a country, in which case the US is in a quite good position and can do many things to manage Russia and China. This point of view is easy to fall into as the usual way of talking about geopolitics is "US declared this" and "China wants to do that" which implies some sort of unitary agency to entire countries.

However, I believe a famous person once said that a house divided against itself is a bungalow. Keep doing that and eventually what you have is a hotel for rats.

US elites could get their act together and make plenty of rational moves but the reality is that they won't. People (especially Western people) often place as weird confidence in corruption in that corrupt people will of course maintain the system from which they extract value (basically pushing the myth of profit maximization implying asset care, which is not true, to an absurd even less true limit), but the reality is that the more a system starts to degrade the more corrupt parties focus on extracting as much value from it before it collapses as possible. Someone thieving in a building that catches on fire simply hurries up their thieving rather than fight the fire to thieve it better later.

Eastern Europe is a vital bottleneck that connects China, via Russia, to Europe over land. (Iran is the other one, remember?)

What the US has done is economically decouple Europe and Russia, and created long-lasting conflict with fertile soil for further escalation.

A forever war in Ukraine is the goal, and it's what they're getting. — Tzeentch

As the RAND paper explains, it only works if Russia doesn't simply win ... which they are likely to do as the RAND paper explains.

We can continue this in the other thread, but a forever war is only sustainable against an insurgency and I would argue not sustainable in high intensity conventional warfare that exists in Ukraine currently.

In the case of the anticipated global conflict (which may be instigated by the US, or simply turn out to be an inevitability), this serves two purposes: it denies China overland access to European markets, and it involves two potential US rivals, Russia and Europe, in a war with each other. — Tzeentch

Now, unlike this Israeli genocide, I agree that Ukraine is born from some basic strategic framework, but the primary motivation is not that framework but rather selling weapons and gas to Europe, private interest in buying Ukrainian land on the cheap, deflecting from failure in Afghanistan and from US high level corruption in Ukraine and short term propaganda wins generally speaking, mixed in with general neocon delusional psychopathy.

It is not a "good move" if Ukraine collapses and the whole thing becomes quite clearly a Western debacle, that the US is not "for as long as it takes" and "whatever it takes" in supporting its "friends", that Russian weaponry was perfectly adequate if not superior, the West has no information or technological superiority that translates to determining battlefield gains, massive drain on arm stocks, and so on. A result that was predictable, and predicted by the US's own imperial analysts, before the war started.

The Russians winning means "Russia beat the West" and the Russians can go around credibly asserting that if parties join up with them and China that they "know how to deal with the Americans".

Before this war, people would need to include far more uncertainty in dealing with America as the military, information, covert and economic (i.e. sanctions) capabilities were not exactly clear (what they were exactly and if they could be dealt with). People will reasonably conclude that if the Americans had some super capability to deal with Russian air power, deal with Russian armour, deal with Russian intelligence, deal with Russian electronic warfare, deal with Russian sanctions proofing/skirting, then certainly they would have.

So the result is that you have Russia that can credibly say they are able to "deal with those Americans" partnered with China that can credibly say they have the finance and industrial capacity, all in a system that is already proven to be immune to sanctions, and this lowers the threshold considerably for countries joining in a Russian and China system and reducing tribute to the US in whatever forms they were accustomed to doing.

This global effect on changing the leverage and incentive positions of a large proportion of international actors far outweighs the control or disruption of specific trade roots. Countries that want to will find a way to trade with each other and that can't be disrupted or prevented over the long term (without conquering those countries, which the US is not in a position to go around doing on a global scale: for every Ukraine or Afghanistan or Lybia that becomes a focus of Imperial aggression, there are dozens of other countries in the system, either paying tribute to the US or then going and doing something else).

↪boethius If Israel fully embraces the ultranationalist path, genocide/ethnic cleansing is not necessarily desirable to the US, it is inevitable. In the case of Israel, and indeed most ultranationalist endeavors, crimes against humanity are par for the course.

I'm sure the US has made peace with that fact decades ago, which is why US support for Israel remains unchanged no matter how many American bombs fall on hospitals and refugee camps. — Tzeentch

But then you'd want to negotiate with the ultranationalists to delay their genocide the time to attack whoever needs to be attacked.

There is no strategic path in which genocide is necessary nor conducive.

That isn't necessarily true.

Iran is the target here, and there is no other proxy that could destabilize Iran. — Tzeentch

Your argument has been premised on the US imperial goal being avoiding regional integration and so becoming a land corridor, attacking Iran is not necessary to avoid this regional integration.

Furthermore, Israel isn't destabilizing Iran either and can't really wage war on Iran. It could nuke Iran as we've already discussed but that doesn't require a genocide and you're position on Israel using nukes is that would be too high a diplomatic cost (but not for genocide?).

As far as attacking Iran goes, as mentioned we've been hearing the neocon reasons for this being important for decades but no actual pathway has ever been presented for how you actually go about attacking Iran.

Does it?

I'm seeing some hand-wringing, strongly-worded letters, etc.

Is there any chance of alliances dissolving over US support for Israel? I see no sign of that, to be honest. As far as I can tell, they're getting away with it. — Tzeentch

It definitely does. This genocide is broadcast to the entire world and the muslim world in particular which has some 2 billion people.

The whole "soft power" thing is actually pretty important to conduct imperial business, as it's only soft power that actually scales globally, whereas actually using hard power "unscales" global power to focus it on a particular spot, which can definitely then get destroyed but there's a limit to how many wars can be waged simultaneously.

As for alliances dissolving, this can definitely happen in the Middle-East, Türkiye, but diplomatic costs are more just making things more difficult to negotiate across the globe. The whole prestige thing really does matter a lot.

Now, Israel will "get away" with the genocide to the extent that no one can intervene due to the US protecting Israel, but this is at a massive diplomatic cost to the US and not really the world shrugging off the genocide. People are pretty mad about it, including as mentioned nearly 2 billion muslims.

Already this has had some pretty notable effects such as Houthis effectively controlling the Red Sea (and willing to be bombed due to their actions supporting Palestine).

You may view these as 'obvious blunders', but to me they are not obvious at all.

The US is doing quite well, all things considered. The ones who are paying the price are the Ukrainians, the Europeans, soon it will be the Israelis too, but the Americans are safe on their island, with their economy doing largely fine. — Tzeentch

We're talking about the US empire, which is its hegemonic influence outside its borders.

Now, if the grand strategy you're talking about at the end of the day is just the US spoiling as much of the rest of the global economy as it retreats into isolationism on their island as you say, that's simply accepting US imperial decline.

If you're argument is the US can essentially burn all it's imperial clout overseas on really stupid policies like fomenting a proxy war in Ukraine, then losing, and going on to enable a genocide in Gaza, after decades of fruitless wars in the Middle-East ... only to come back in with a bang?? and those aren't blunders because the US can withdraw from the whole empire business, there would of course be a lot to discuss on how exactly the US can withdraw (and if US elites are really actually doing that), but all those decisions that lead to imperial withdrawal are anyways clearly blunders as far as the empire goes.

Yes, Ukraine paid far higher a price than America for the war with Russia ... but the important question is what did the US gain? It's not a case here that the US cynically used a proxy to accomplish something. As the RAND paper informs us, the war in Ukraine escalating and the Ukraine's losing would be a setback for US policy and a loss of prestige. Likewise, Europe is supposed to be America's closest allies and harm to your allies harms your empire. Most notably, you don't mention how the Russians (the US rival of concern in the situation, at least nominally) are themselves harmed.

You seem to be basically accepting that all these decisions are blunders, just pointing out that they aren't immediately fatal (which I agree we're not discussing anything that is likely to completely collapse America in the short term, just significant harms to US imperial power) and also pointing out that the US could withdraw to simply being a somewhat normal nation station and still do quite well.

Neither points I'm arguing against. Israel committing a genocide harms US interests but is unlikely to collapse the American empire overnight, much less America as a nation state. As for normal Americans, that they are "doing quite well" is debatable but normal Americans don't benefit much from maintaining the US empire anyways so the empire could go away completely and normal Americans not even really notice in their individuals lives for the most part.

The problem, however, in US imperial decline is that there isn't so obvious a way for US elites to simply give-up the empire, such as Britain giving up on its empire, without severe dislocations at home, mainly due to the finance structure depending on the dollar being an fiat reserve currency, a lot of production being oversees, and a lot of US "real wealth" being in brands that require global market access to be valuable.

If Washington wants to sow chaos in the Middle-East, a nuclear-armed Israel that fully embraces violent ultranationalism is the perfect vessel to do so. — Tzeentch

But again, Israel committing a genocide isn't needed for this. There's plenty of ultra-violent groups in the Middle East already completely willing and able to cause further chaos for the right price, training, equipment and a large amount of intelligence.

Even if the US plan is to completely collapse the Middle-East and stop the flow of oil to harm all its competition (except for Russia ... that was imperative to defeat literally a monty ago) genocide doesn't help.

Indeed, it would be far easier to escalate to a regional war without the genocide. Currently Israel's retaliation planning against Iran is frustrated precisely because of the genocide their would-be-Arab-allies against Iran are making their position clear that their airspace and US hosted bases can't be used in strikes against Iran ... which considering Israel has no other option than to fly over Arab countries to strike Iran that's really not convenient (of course they can fly over anyways, but it's still not convenient if this causes further diplomatic tensions of violating sovereignty of would-be-allies).

Without the genocide the pathway to war with Iran would be far clearer: battle Hamas, escalate with Hezbollah, play the victim far better, claim Iran's behind everything and trying to destroy Israel and is going for nuclear weapon and therefore needs to be attacked. Without the genocide that would be a powerful narrative, but with the genocide it's simply not believable (and a bit of real genuine belief in your imperial wars goes a long way).

Genocide and ethnic cleansing, while dooming the Israelis in the long run, are critical steps towards its short-to-medium-term survival as an ultranationalist nation. Since, if it goes down the ultranationalist path (as increasingly seems to be the case) it will soon be at war with various neighbors, at which point the housing millions of possible partisans within their borders would become a critical strategic vulnerability.

In other words, Washington doesn't need Israel to commit a genocide, but it doesn't exactly have a reason to stop it either. If anything it means they might get more use out of their proxy before it eventually kicks the bucket. — Tzeentch

I just don't see how this argument works mainly for the reason above that supporting Israel's wars is far easier without the genocide and the genocide doesn't improve any actual strategic conditions.

Had Israel not genocided and instead let food in and avoided blowing up hospitals and schools and mass civilian casualties, the wars it would be so much incredibly easier to support diplomatically within the Arab world and Europe (and also everyone else).

Therefore, if America actually wanted to get into a big war in the Middle-East and wanted Israel to escalate things until the US had to intervene and attack Iran, then a deal would be struck pretty quickly that Israel play its part in this US plan (which Israel would be completely over the moon over). A key part of such a plan would be to "play by the rules" so that the US can easily portray the Israelis as the victims in need of saving. The Israelis could obviously carry out their genocide at a later date.

Now, if the US only wants Israel to escalate but doesn't intend to intervene with a big war ... well what exactly does this accomplish? Is throwing Lebanon into even greater crisis some major accomplishment?

Damage to US reputation/prestige is the price to pay, but if we are entering the prelude to global conflict, that really isn't all that significant. — Tzeentch

I disagree, even more reason to ensure Israel doesn't commit a genocide if some actual global conflict is about to erupt. The genocide places significant pressure on US alliances which you do actually need when going into a global conflict.

But on that issue we also disagree.

I just don't see the pathway to boot up a legit WW3 in a way that makes sense for America.

They can't actually defeat the other great powers and trying to shutdown global trade entirely just doesn't make any sense. As you've explained many times, the big advantage of the US is in its Navy to control global trade, but in order to leverage that to its advantage global trade must be happening.

Countries wouldn't all totally collapse but would figure out how best to survive in a US global trade embargo, and then figure out how to trade and it's not clear to me how the US could maintain such a global trade embargo. US and China can already trade over land and such an overtly aggressive move would bring countries together to deal with it.

Then there's the effect of such a global trade embargo in the US. How does this move get sold to the US?

There's of course intensifying competition between the great powers and I that will continue, but my point here is I don't see how it can get so extreme as for the genocide not to matter, diplomacy in the Middle-East simply not matter, neither public opinion in Europe and elsewhere.

PS: I would be exceedingly careful with ascribing the label "obvious blunder" to the actions of great powers.

People incorrectly interpret the actions of great powers all the time, as was for example the case with Russia's invasion of Ukrain, which many must have deemed 'an obvious blunder' at the time.

The great powers' chess game is vastly superior to ours.

My litmus test for this is whether or not the great power in question shows signs of backtracking, or instead continues to double down. In the case of the US we see them continuously double down on 'obvious blunders' - in my view a clear indicator that they may not be blunders after all. — Tzeentch

Again, this is where we disagree.

Supporting a genocide in today's world is an obvious strategic blunder in terms of geopolitics.

Likewise escalating the war in Ukraine was an obvious blunder.

Likewise getting into long wars in the Middle-East.

Likewise destroying the empires finances.

Likewise offshoring critical production.

Likewise a lot of things are obvious blunders in terms of geopolitical strategy.

As I've spent sometime explaining, elites cohere and are disciplined in the ascendancy of empire but once corruption sets in then incompetence reigns supreme (from imperial maintenance point of view and of course not transferring trillions of dollars of public money to private hands points of view).

Lastly, if the US did actually instigate some sort of global trade collapse on the theory that it will be the strongest party standing, countries would be forced to fight back against this embargo and start sinking US ships. Again, just not clear how this is supposed to strategically work ... and then what's the end game? To just maintain this global trade embargo indefinitely?

For, getting back to the Middle-East, the region is already super fragmented and nowhere close to some sort of regional integration to act as a land-trade-corridor, so the only purpose of increasing the chaos even further would be to collapse the entire Middle East oil economy as a move in some global war.

Again, don't need genocide to do that, but if that's the objective exactly how long is this global economic collapse supposed to last and why would the US expect to come out the victor? Seems more probable that the world would react by everyone agreeing they need to get the US out of their affairs.

And I ask these questions as I'm genuinely curious.

I also have zero problem believing that US neocons would want to do exactly such a thing, I just don't see the pathway; just as they've wanted to attack Iran for decades but just never found the actual pathway, so if there was an actual pathway available then that would be persuasive, I just don't see one. What's step 2 after embargo China?

↪boethius I think you're grossly underestimating the power of the United States.

Of course it has various domestic issues, and corruption is undoubtedly one of them. — Tzeentch

Power to do what though?

Defend their own borders? Nuke the world? Bomb a few weaker states into a internal chaos. Sure.

The US has no where near the power it did even a decades ago, let alone 2 decades or 3 deuces ago. It's in imperial decline.

We could of course discuss exactly what the US power status is at the moment, but my point here is not to argue that the US does not have a lot of power. Indeed, it is precisely because the US build up such a large amount of power that it can withstand such incredible levels of corruption without collapsing yet. However, the waste is very evident wherever one looks.

But perhaps that would be best to discuss in a new thread.

This is a strawman that I rejected in the very post you replied to. — Tzeentch

Unless your position has changed, I don't view my portrayal as a strawman.

That's the reason the US may tacitly approve of Israel's genocidal actions, since, if successful, it gets rid of a critical vulnerability of their Middle-Eastern proxy. — Tzeentch

Is the main point I'm responding to, which I feel is fair to assess as the US needing Israel to commit a genocide for "strategic reasons", those reasons being solidifying Israel's position (which also the genocide is unlikely to accomplish).

If you're objection is the use of the word "need" in the sense of some sort of categorical need, then I agree that's not what you're saying, but in this case I'm using need in the sense of "need for these strategic reasons" and those reasons being strengthening Israel's position through genocide. My intention was not to connote that you were suggesting the genocide was some sort of US strategic imperative.

My argument is that the US empire is not benefiting at all from the genocide and is in fact greatly harmed by it in various ways. If the US benefits from chaos in the Middle-East generally speaking, which I also disagree with, that is easily achieved without a genocide.

I.e. if your theory was true then it would make sense to say "The US needed Israel to commit a genocide to better secure the latter's borders and so the strategic position of it's proxy would be improved to more optimally contribute to further Imperial machinations".

By 5D chess is a pretty usual lingo to refer to theorizing secret cleverness to what seems like an obvious blunder.

And various Ds of chess is not meant to dismiss such theories as intrinsically ridiculous but rather to stress that if the theory is true then there's really advanced cleverness and subterfuge going on.

Of course where we agree is that the US tacitly approves of the genocide, where we disagree is on this serving US imperial interests or simply Zionist stakeholders within the US elite.

Personally, I think it is self-evident that the US action is guided by a geopolitical strategy. The idea that a nation achieves, maintains and defends hegemony 'by accident' is just not a very convincing argument to me. I also think there is plenty of historical and contemporary evidence to suggest that the US follows deliberate geopolitical strategies. — Tzeentch

Not sure where you're getting this from, but nowhere did I say the process imperial expansion is an accident.

What I explained is that empires tend to grow in response to an external threat where imperial expansion is perceived to be needed to deal with that threat. Certainly at least initially with other, especially later, phases of expansion having profit and prestige as also a main motivator, though "enemies out there" is generally a constant theme.

Point being, the perception of a serious external adversary that really could destroy your society drives meritocracy and competence among elites.

In an imperial ascendency phase you find competent, smart and honest people doing their best to advance the interests of the empire and other, even far more powerful on an individual basis, elites subordinating themselves to the needs of the empire as determined by a consolidated imperial custodianship.

Of course, when an empire expands elites benefit generally speaking, so there's not only the pressure from external threat but there's also a continuous flow of new empirical capital that eases inter-elite negotiations. There's a carrot and stick incentive structure driving competence, coherence and cooperation. What Chomsky refers to as (pretty sure Chomsky though maybe he didn't coin it) refers to as elite "war communism".

So definitely to build an empire you need really astute strategy, governing competence at all levels, and low levels of corruption (or then what corruption there is nominal corruption while actually serving to resolve elite conflicts; corrupt to de-corrupt as it were).

The problem that arises in the Imperial life cycle is that once external threat goes away (because enemies have been defeated for example) then elites lose focus on imperial maintenance. Elites ask themselves the question "what's it all for" and the answer is usually "to get me gold and sex slaves".

There's no longer the stick of the threat of external conquest that disciplines elites to subordinate their desires and personal ambitions to the needs of empire.

Reaching the apex, or then post an apex, of imperial expansion there's also no longer an inflow of the fruits of conquest that can be used to terminate inter-elite negotiations, so there is also no longer the carrots that the imperial custodian core can offer troublesome elites to follow their strategy.

The era of war communism comes to an end and elites lose the discipline to compete coherently with an external adversary and start competing between each other.

"Imperial strategy" doesn't go away per se, but becomes subordinated to factions of elite personal interest to extract capital from the empire, rather than the other way around, elites subordinated to imperial strategy, that was needed to build the empire in the first place. For example, faced with the threat of not only competing empires but competing ideologies that could potentially result in revolution at home, American elites tolerated a 90% top percentile tax rate, which wasn't so much to raise lots of taxes that way (as no rational person pays themselves to the extent of the taxes becoming 90%) but rather to discipline the elite class into reinvesting into expanding the capital base (or then the government anyways takes basically all the money and does it anyways). America was not dominated by socialists during this time, but rather American elites subordinated themselves to the needs of empire during the phase of imperial expansion (where they're going to access more markets, control more resources, so also had reason to reinvest all their capital rather than take it out of the production system and waste it on hookers and blow and lavish elaborate sex parties where "dark whims" can be indulged to better viscerally feel one's elite power; i.e. the stick of the threat of global communist revolution and the carrot of globalization goes away and other more personal priorities emerge).

As the threat of the Soviet Union seemed dealt with militarily and in particular the anxiety of communist revolution at home ebbed away (which was very real in the Great Depression), long story short, elites started to corrupt the system as their perception started to change from strategic alignment with imperial expansion and maintenance to extracting imperial wealth being the best strategy for personal aggrandizement of whatever form they are into. I.e. elite cooperation maximizes elite personal power during imperial ascendency as the benefits of being an elite running an empire far exceeds the power of maximizing relative power with other elites in a not-empire, but once empire reaches an apex then extracting wealth from the empire, to its long term detriment, is what maximizes personal power.

All of which is to say that the US is in such a corrupt decline and imperial strategy is subordinated to individual elite interest and the dominant factions they able to form on any particular issue. They'll of course continue to nominally express their actions as the result of some intelligible imperial plan; obviously people don't just come out and say "we're doing this war to make mad profits and build bunkers in Switzerland and New Zealand that we can hide in once the system collapses" but they pretend it's part of some actual plan. To begin with there's a compromise between elite interests and honest and clever imperial custodians but over time that process of compromise with smart people is a liability and they're replaced with useful idiots and corrupt sycophants and that's when things become rapidly stupid.

We've seen a rapid decline in US power and prestige over a short period of time; this is due to corrupt idiocy and not some 5D chess moves happening.

For example, to the extent the Ukraine war is for the geopolitical purpose of harming the European economy to put down a geopolitical competitor and in particular a competitor to the USD ... well the need to harm your own allies is only a situation that arises due to corrupt imperial mismanagement and the Euro threatening the position of the dollar as reserve currency is likewise only a problem in the first place due to disastrous fiscal mismanagement (debts taken on to directly transfer massive sums of money to the elites).

As for the matter at hand, the idea the US needs Israel to commit a genocide for "geopolitical reasons" is simply laughable. Israel needs to commit a genocide in order to carry out a genocide and can extract US Imperial capital of various forms in order to do so because a Zionist US elite coalition has managed to put themselves in charge of the issue through decades of systemic corruption.

Unfortunately I don't have the time right now to go through the long list of reasons why the genocide being some cryptic US plan is extremely unlikely.

To be clear, this is not because anyone important in US decision making has any problem with mass-death and genocide per se, and there are plenty of examples where the cost of senseless mass murder is indeed low as you point out.

But the basic framework that you may find worth considering is simply that few policies are actually explained by geopolitical strategy.

For example, if you really cared about geopolitics:

- you wouldn't give-up the draft
- you would have universal health-care (to have a healthy population to mobilize if need be, like Israel does)
- you would have free secondary education so as to self-produce your own intellectual class (like Israel does) and not rely on foreign intellectuals that can bring back your cutting edge expertise back to their country of origin legally or illegally (as China is happy to do)
- you wouldn't transfer all the means of production to communist China
- you wouldn't go into huge national debts
- you would keep strategically critical industries you invented, such as semiconductor manufacturing, on-shore and definitely wouldn't send all that stuff to Taiwan
- you wouldn't maintain a war on drugs that is turning one of you neighbours into a narco-state and creating a massive con and ex-con population that are sub-optimally contributing to society and unavailable for conscription
- you wouldn't poison your own population making them unfit for conscription
- most of all you would fight corruption inside your institutions like the plague as corruption leads to wasted recourses, treasonous rats, and general incompetence as well as inability to manage an actual crisis

You can easily understand the reasons for all such policies by envisioning a geopolitics game with options like "poison or don't poison your own population" and "give-up the draft or don't give up the draft" and "balance the budget or go into extreme debt" and the obvious consequences of such decisions over the long term (aka. obviously maintaining a healthy, educated population, with sound general finances, guarding jealously industrial capacity in particular at the cutting edge, and low corruption is going to provide an advantage in the geopolitics game).

So, how to explain America does none of that shit?

It's because geopolitics is not the priority. Geopolitics is there, some people are paid to think about it, sure, but it is not the driver of decision making.

What is? Transferring the wealth of the empire to the primary beneficiaries of the system through a network of corruption.

Mostly that wealth is just money but on occasion the real owners want something else and in this case it's cover to perpetrate a genocide.

The alternative just doesn't make any sense.

For example, the idea you mention that the US wants Israel to solve its proxies strategic weakness of Palestinians being in Gaza. First, how is this genocide doing that? Israel is going to have far more radicalized proxies on its borders from committing a genocide and not less. And second, solve that strategic weakness to do what exactly? Conquer the whole Middle-East in a giant US-Israeli war on everyone and then occupy the place forever? US was literally just occupying Afghanistan and Iraq for decades and that didn't really accomplish anything and they left ... so the idea here is the US actually wants to return and by doing it with Israel instead of literally all of NATO (which includes several countries 10x bigger than Israel) it's going to work out better somehow? It just makes no sense.

If the idea was to pave the way for the US to reenter the Middle East ... well then why give Afghanistan back to the Taliban in the first place? And how exactly is a genocide needed to achieve that? How is a genocide in Gaza going to enable the US to reinvade the Middle-East ... which there's no indication the US will do and completely unclear what exactly they'd be doing, trying to conquer Iran in a multi-year war that is likely to fail?

If it's just causing enough division and chaos to avoid land-trade-corridors, how has that not already been achieved? And again, why would a genocide be needed to achieve that?

Genocide in Gaza is simply not a US interest no matter how you look at it, it has only immense liabilities and no upside even from a super cynical point of view (for example the point of view where sacrificing hundreds of thousands of weapons while drip feeding them weapons to "calibrate" the fighting at "lose" all while telling them they're fighting for Western values and "whatever it takes" and "however long it takes" knowing those are lies, we can see the basic imperial logic of separating Russian resources from the European economy, maybe harming Russia; may not be the best Imperial moves but we can understand the motivations), and if the US was somehow in command all the fighting and chaos we've seen is completely 100% totally feasible to have without a genocide, bombing hospitals and schools systematically and so on.

Genocide in Gaza is a Zionist interest, not a US imperial interest. If there was something the US was getting (money or something) then maybe we could conclude that the US is trading cover for the genocide in order to get that said thing (such as money) but that's not the case. It's the US paying Israel hard cash to carry out the genocide that Israel wants to commit. And Israel is 100% dependent on the US so there is simply not a situation where the US would need to "give Israel a genocide" to get Israel to do something in return ... such as continue to be a source of tension in the Middle-East.

People have been studying and analyzing geopolitics for a long time, with a lot of focus on the US; if there was some US geopolitical advantage for carrying out a genocide in Gaza various analysts would have pointed it out. It hasn't been pointed out because it makes no sense and trying to make sense of it post-murderous-festum is grasping at straws to avoid the obvious conclusion that the US empire is thoroughly rotten and on it's way down, making lots of blunders mostly due to pervasive corruption, and not in some brilliant counter-stroke re-ascendency.

For example, the war in Ukraine at least fits some sort of Imperial logic as we've been discussing for hundred of pages. Maybe a big mistake, but the general Imperial ideas are easy to understand. What's also indisputable (when the actual facts are under consideration) is that the US drove this process to war and it's a deliberate policy decision by the US and at no point is somehow Ukraine driving US policy.

And what do we see? We easily find discussion of exactly this war that is happening in US policy analysis documents literally called "Extending Russia" as well neocons discussing conflict with Russia in one form or another for years and years. In addition there's years of anti-Russian propaganda, CIA and neocon fingerprints all over the place (including literally on cookies handed out in Maidan Square ... and also 12 CIA forward operating bases) and the list goes on.

With the genocide in Gaza there's none of that. There's no analysis of how Hamas is somehow standing in the way of critical US interests, most of all there's not "programming" of what comes next, everything is a surprise. It's just not the CIA way. If the CIA wanted to go to war with Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah, Iran, we would have been talking about this for quite some time, the reasons would be clear, we'd have built up to it: Obama would not have signed the nuke deal and then Trump would not have been criticized by the mainstream media for backing out of it, and the logic and need to go to war with all of Israel's enemies would have been made clear and the drums of war would have been beating for quite some time and the march to war would be underway to thunderous applause and it would be clearly explained by Biden the need for these new wars.

I've made similar arguments pertaining to the crises in Ukraine and Israel - namely that Washington feigns weakness and reluctance, when in fact it is doubling down on all the policies that drive towards escalation in a way that suggests it is following a coherent strategy. — Tzeentch

Agreed, the US is driving towards more escalation, but the strategy is not coherent.

As the RAND document recently discussed mentions: escalation in Ukraine only benefits US interests if Ukraine prevails, which is it extremely unlikely to. Ukraine losing would be a loss of prestige to the US and of course massive cost to Ukraine.

The Ukraine war benefits various US special interests in their short term profits as well as helping to protect the Biden family from the whole being bribed thing (best way to get rid of a political problem in a country is a force majeur giant war) and is also a general extension of neocon delusion.

There is zero "5D chess moves" happening.

The US is in classic imperial decline where the primary beneficiaries, mentioned above, are more concerned with drawing down imperial capital for their own purposes (aka. corruption) than they are in imperial maintenance.

Empires generally grow out of a solid political structure and culture based on hard, honest work and sacrifice for the common good and has developed various mechanisms to suppress corruption (as a small structure can obviously not prosper in corrupt conditions) in combination with an real or perceived external threat that can only be reasonably met (at least in this political structures thinking) with expansion. So Babylon v Persia, Rome v Carthage, Athens v Sparta, Mongols v China, England v France (and then Spain, and then Russia ... and then Germany ... twice), US v Japan and the Soviet Union, and so on. I simplify from memory but the basic pattern of imperial expansion is nearly always driven by fear of some enemy.

If there are economic fundamentals driving social integration then imperial expansion has a stable equilibrium around that economic integration and the empire transforms into what we would describe as a nation-state (such as ancient Egypt and China, which remain nation states today).

However, if the imperial expansion exceeds any economic justification and is simply extracting resources from a dominated periphery to a imperial core, then as soon as the political system is no longer under threat then the meritocratic system that built the system erodes and drawdown of imperial wealth for private interest commences. It is fear of being conquered that is a check on corruption and once that fear goes away then it is time to enjoy the fruits of imperial power.

Why this pattern is so common can be sourced to imperial exploitation (and what is necessary to maintain it) being incompatible with any sort of coherent theory of justice.

Personally, I am reserving judgement on this issue, though I am leaning towards the US being in the driver's seat.

The basic question is, could Israel be used to plunge the Middle-East into chaos once controlling it becomes unfeasible? — Tzeentch

Obviously you could use Israel for such a purpose as well as plenty other purposes which the US has and does.

However, the US has plenty of other ways of causing chaos in the Middle East. If it was just about causing chaos there are literally hundreds of pathways to chaos that don't involve paying such heavy prestige costs.

And even if you chose "have Israel attack people" as the pathway to chaos you simply wouldn't have them commit genocide in any rational plan.

Imagine all the same fighting, just no genocide: even better chaos! Without genocide you may actually be able to build a coalition to go fight Iran and have far less opposition to it at home as well.

Genocide not only solicits far higher resistance to your chaos machinations, but also causes massive cognitive dissonance within the US state apparatus itself, as "against-genocide" is a pretty core part of the US imperial proponent identity. "US is good because it defeated the Nazis who were committing genocide" is a pretty foundational plank of most pro-US-empire thinking.

Notwithstanding, the basic structure of Israel is near 100% imperial imposition by the British and then American empires and Israel is a sort of ersatz fractal copy of these empires

However, the argument that these particular recent events are not driven by some sort of plausibly objective US imperial policy is because nearly all the key decision makers in the US administration at the moment are zionists.

The US envoy to go negotiate with Lebanon is literally an Israeli military alumni! which is a massive indication that Zionists are running the show. Non-zionists US imperial custodians that are using Israel for their own purposes are extremely unlikely to do such a thing.

The general theme of causing more death and destruction in the middle-east is certainly on the to-do list of the CIA, but paying this high prestige costs simply doesn't make sense. Gaza has zero importance to the US empire as such, and you could have just as much fighting and chaos and just do some false flags to move things along while allowing food and water into the strip and refraining from bombing hospitals and schools. These war crimes and genocide in Gaza serve no US interest, they simply impose a cost that is super massively high for no benefit. Genocide in Gaza serves the purpose of getting rid of the Palestinians living there which is squarely and uniquely a Zionist interest.

The current situation is Israel drawing down US diplomatic capital (at an alarming rate if you're a non-Zionist US Imperialist) in order to commit genocide. There is zero return on investment to the US for this component of the violence.

And generally speaking Israel is not a critical US imperial asset, but mostly frustrates relations with far more important countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the whole region is very much divided without the need for Israel. You only really need Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran to maintain a strategy of tension to prevent regional integration ... but you also have Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran, Pakistan and plenty non-state actors to boot!

Furthermore, if you consider all the US interventions in the Middle-East as the result of cold Imperial logic ... well Israel wasn't really needed in any of them: US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq without really needing Israel for anything to do that and when NATO wanted to bomb Libya into a failed state they just went ahead and commenced with the bombing. The one key "Imperial utility argument" Zionists made was guarding the flank of the Suez Canal ... that the US gave to Egypt anyways as that actually served the US Empire better.

It's also not the case that the US is somehow otherwise benefiting, such as being paid, to turn a blind eye to the genocide, such as the Saudis paying for a war against the Houthi's, but rather the US is paying Israel!

Imperial logic, aka. "Geopolitical strategy", is simply not as dominant a force as your studies have led you to believe.

For whom is it all for? Yes, there is an imperial strategy developed by professional bureaucrats that pretty much explicitly identify as humble custodians of the empire, and so what happens is in this framework, but they are not the primary beneficiaries of the empire, they just work for it. The primary beneficiaries, i.e the actual owners, of the empire do not have the same mindset but have their own personal objectives, usually to amass a lot of wealth: For example, massive wealth disparities and huge national debts are not good for imperial cohesion and finances ... so why do the rich get tax breaks and huge contracts paid by national debt? Because they run the show! If imperial maintenance and geopolitical strategy was a dominant factor determining policy then reckless Imperial finances wouldn't happen. The reason reckless imperial finances happen is because it transfers wealth from the empire to the effective owners of said empire and they happen to see that as a good thing.

For the case at hand, a large faction of the US imperial primary beneficiaries happen to be Zionists and so they are willing to convert Imperial capital to Zionist objectives. They may not be the majority dominant faction but they have prevented the formation of any anti-Zionist coalition from forming and so dominate policy through a plurality of power, at least when it comes to issues concerning Israel.

You can kind of see where the Que sera sera attitude of stoicism came from I guess — I like sushi

I honestly think this modern, essentially commercial, version of Stoicism is pretty much simply due to the fact "stoic" remained a word with a at least some meaning and also some cultural cachet. People do understand what you mean when you say you're being "stoic about it" when faced with some setback.

Same phenomenon happened around the word "zen" coinciding with fascination (again nearly completely commercially driven) with far east spiritualism and mysticism.

If, however, you are not fleeing from the dissatisfaction of modern Western capitalism towards a sort of eastern nirvana of escapist platitudes but are instead convinced of the cultural superiority of modern Western capitalism, all while being equally dissatisfied with one's actual experience of modern Western capitalism, then "stoic" can essentially drop in for "zen" in the essentially the same commodified escapism product.

I.e. a "zen" brand for liberals and a "stoic" brand for conservatives on, as you say, a Que sera sera market place of feel-good intellectual trinkets and good luck charms.

There is a real allure or reward of stoicisms promise of staying sane or achieving inner calm. — Shawn

First of all, Stoicism makes no such promise.

Stoicism is not a self-help philosophy.

These ancient (and for the most part a lot better) versions of self-help tools are not the ends of Stoicism but tools to help in one's Stoic tasks: the journey towards the good.

Stoicism is about eradicating suffering by detaching from things outside of one's control; and it makes a really good pragmatic philosophy for normal life. — Bob Ross

Again, as above, the purpose of recognizing what is out of one's control is to recognize what is in one's control: one's intention towards the good, utilizing whatever powers and tools one happens to have by circumstance, resulting in the above mentioned journey towards the good from one's starting point.

The purpose of Stoic practice is that (in most circumstances, or then at least most circumstances the ancient Stoics encountered) such practices are useful. Useful for what? Useful to express one's intention towards the good by developing one's skills, faculties and discipline.

For, simply saying "my intention is good" does not make it so, if one's intention really is good then one will actually go and attempt to do good things and as an extension prepare oneself for the task in a reasonable way (i.e not preparing indefinitely and never actually doing what one is preparing for, nor under preparing and so going and failing in a completely foreseeable and preventable way).

Now, the ultimate results of such attempts are not under our control, so one must seek to be detached even from the idea one may actually do any good, but making the honest attempt is under our control.

The very heart of Stoicism is not letting our lack of control over external circumstances (including our own faculties such as a limited supply of "willpower") neither to discourage the pursuit of the good nor form any excuses in making the best attempt towards the good we are able.

There is no absolute moral scale in Stoicism as measured in external accomplishments, as we do not control our circumstances that are a prerequisite for this or that accomplishment nor the part of serendipity involved in doing anything, but essentially the worst one can do is engage in self-deception that one is limited by external circumstances, therefore one cannot do good, when there is not the limitations that one imagines in reality.

Stoicism is not a philosophy of accepting things as they are in the sense of therefore being indifferent and not doing anything, but rather accepting things as they are to then do one's best in whatever real circumstances one finds oneself in: which maybe prison, maybe poverty, maybe severe cognitive limitations, maybe trauma, maybe the emperor or Rome.

The modern version of Stoicism is "give me the strength to endure what cannot be changed and also the delusion of believing I can't really change anything, and also the wisdom to be able to find some pussy from time to time".

It obviously a complete farce.

The best way to see what stoicism is actually teaching is to sit down and think seriously of what good deeds one could have accomplished had one really put a maximum of effort into it: a maximum of self discipline, a maximum development of one's knowledge and abilities, figuring out and employing the best strategy with the greatest courage of execution, and indeed a maximum of self-care in order to best sustain the effort to its expected conclusion. Of course, there are no guarantees as to the results (or even one's actions are in the right direction), but the teaching of Stoicism is to try to figure out what the maximum good you can do is and then some guidance in going and actually doing it.

↪boethius We are in general agreement, but the West will be pushing the envelope because it knows Russia will get more risk averse the closer it gets to victory. Thus, the West could theoretically get away with more blatant belligerence. Russia on its part is signaling it will meet escalation with escalation. — Tzeentch

Yes, we're definitely in agreement, and as you point out the language being used is as part of a signalling exercise.

I just add clarification that the concrete reality doesn't actually matter lest someone get into a zany kindergarten level argument that Russia couldn't retaliate against NATO ... if Ukraine did it.

Obviously you're aware this sort of logic doesn't drive decisions.

Currently Russia doesn't retaliate against NATO because doing so would cause more problems than solve, but if NATO was attacking Russian critical infrastructure (directly, indirectly through Ukraine, with Ukraine programming the weapons or "advisors" or mercenaries or someone's hacker cousin) then the calculus obviously changes.

Completely agree with you that in this theatre there is likely a hard cap on escalation that is unlikely to be breached for the reason you point out that the great powers benefit from the status quo at the end of the day and they don't have an interest to nuke each other.

What's different in the middle-east right now is that Israel is not a great power that benefits from the geopolitical status quo as such, but rather benefits from the American empire and can "draw down" US imperial capital for their own purposes, which could honestly be mostly delusional prophecy fulfillment

A lot of the experts I think we both follow are discussing this pretty intensely right now of whether US is controlling Israel policy for US imperial interests, or Israel is controlling US policy for Israeli imperial interests, or even that it may appear Israel is driving policy at the moment but US imperialists wisely set things up this way decades ago to happen (to act as that cross-roads spoiler you've described, come-what-may style).

It's quite fascinating, but I feel there's just too much long term degradation of US prestige for what we see Israel doing to be some sort of cryptic US policy. General idea, sure, but no one concerned with US imperial interests would want to see a genocide in Gaza; They'd want to see what the US does: insane amounts of damage and suffering ... but aha! not quite genocide motherfuckers! Purposefully starving a population, for example, US imperialists simply view as beneath them (if people are eating while the US drops bombs on them, that doesn't bother them much, it's a sort of "why not?" attitude within the US war machine to people having basic food stuffs supplied by various humanitarian organizations; what we see Israel doing is I think too profoundly different to be driven by US imperialists; certainly enabled by zionists within the US administration, but this I think should be viewed as Israel effectively in control of US policy and not US imperialists, as such apart from being also zionists, view the extremes of zionism as somehow serving US foreign policy).

Ukraine cannot strike targets deep inside Russia without NATO ISR capabilities.

That's the problem here - NATO becoming a direct participant in the war by giving Ukraine the targeting data for its long-range strikes.

This would put two nuclear-armed powers in direct conflict with each other.

That's what the recent signaling is about. — Tzeentch

This simply doesn't really matter.

Giving one party a weapon to then use on another party anyways makes you a party to how those weapons are used.

The status quo that weapon supply is not considered being a party to a conflict is only because they all like selling weapons. However, using this status quo as a loophole to then do critical damage to someone doesn't work. Even if your loophole "works" in terms of international law or whatever that simply isn't worth all that much.

No leader will go "ahhh, yeah, they got us, you see the loophole they used there, that they didn't technically strike us but gave the weapons to a proxy force so there's just nothing we can do".

Whether Ukraine needs NATO or not to technically use the weapons doesn't matter.

I honestly don't think it would be all that problematic for Ukraine to program the weapons themselves using their own spies, surveillance, literally google maps for targeting data. Critical infrastructure is not exactly difficult to find. The only difficulty is that the West would need to provide Ukraine the API interface needed to program the weapons which they don't provide precisely to be in control of what Ukraine uses the weapons for. If I had the API and documentation I would expect to be able to program one of these missiles to hit something like ... oh let's see ... let's say the Kremlin in about a day, week tops if there's some zany math going on to harmonize various sensor inputs. Probably there's some sophisticated simulation software the optimizes performance but I'm pretty sure a good approximation could be worked out by trial and error if we simply fired enough of these bad boys.

But whether it is or it isn't, if the only way to reestablish deterrence is striking a NATO base with a nuclear weapon, that's what Russia would do.

Obviously Russia would anyways claim exactly what you say, that NATO is supplying intelligence thus making them a party (which obviously NATO is doing generally speaking anyways so already a party to the conflict on that definition, also obviously already programming missiles to hit Russian targets "nearish" the front line anyways) but my point is NATO and Ukraine getting into some hair splitting loophole of who exactly is inputting what data into the missile doesn't actually change the situation.

The situation is that Russia and the West have currently an understanding that "what happens in Ukraine stays in Ukraine" but this understanding is founded on the West not going too far and instead letting Russia win. As it stands Russia is gaining territory, gaining people and resources, and so NATO support for Ukraine can be accounted for as a cost of doing business on the imperial profit and loss statement.

What the West is currently doing is playing a bit more footsy to signal to Ukraine to keep fighting because "maybe" they'll let Ukraine do some spite attacks and then they'll feel better (but still obviously lose) ... but they have cold feet this time as it may break the understanding they have with Russia to be cool.

Why would I be unable to deal with that? Yes most everyone assumed that Russia would easily prevail over Ukraine if it committed serious resources (at least initially). — Echarmion

If by "most everyone" you mean just common Westerners that believe what they're told on television, then yes they believed what the television told them.

However, actual military experts did not believe this 3 days scenario but that Ukraine had a sizeable military, could and would likely fight (as that's what soldiers are trained to do and usually do), and was also supported by US and NATO intelligence.

Then there was the size of the Russian regular forces which were and still are insufficient to simply conquer all of Ukraine.

In addition to military operations having fundamental logistical limitations.

Without even getting to the part of the West flooding in arms, such as shoulder launched anti-armour and anti-air missiles (which aren't sufficient to win the war but highly effective defensively).

But it turned out that Ukraine had more teeth than most anyone assumed. — Echarmion

Completely false.

What has occurred is what experts predicted was the maximum war aim Russia could reasonably accomplish with its initial force: securing the land bridge to Crimea.

Here's just one paper of actual experts analyzing things before the war occurred (published in December 2021).

Likely Ukrainian Initial Responses to Full-Scale Invasion
The Ukrainian military will almost certainly fight against such an invasion, for which it is now preparing. Whatever doubts and reservations military personnel might have about their leaders or their prospects, the appearance of enemy mechanized columns driving into one’s country tends to concentrate thought and galvanize initial resistance. It collapses complexities and creates binary choices. Military officers and personnel are conditioned to choose to fight in such circumstances, and usually do, at least at first. There is no reason to think the Ukrainian military will perform differently in this case. — FORECAST SERIES: Putin’s Likely Course of Action in Ukraine, Understanding War

In the same paper they describe Putin's "most attractive option":

The operation to establish a land bridge from Rostov to Crimea is likely the most attractive to Putin in this respect. It solves a real problem for him by giving him control of the Dnepr-Crimea canal ,which he badly needs to get fresh water to occupied Crimea. It would do fearful damage to the Ukrainian economy by disrupting key transportation routes from eastern Ukraine to the west. He could halt operations upon obtaining an important gain, such as seizing the canal and the area around it or after taking the strategic city of Mariupol just beyond the boundary of occupied Donbas. — FORECAST SERIES: Putin’s Likely Course of Action in Ukraine, Understanding War

The paper also explains exactly the problem Russia would have in actually conquering significant parts of Ukraine:

Russia does not adhere to American counter-insurgency doctrine, to be sure, but the counter-insurgency ratio identified in that doctrine was derived from the study of many insurgencies, not just those in which America was engaged. That ratio—of one counter-insurgent per 20 inhabitants—would suggest a counter-insurgency force requirement on the order of 325,000 personnel just for those cities. — FORECAST SERIES: Putin’s Likely Course of Action in Ukraine, Understanding War

Hence why the authors identify the most "attractive option" as establishing the land bridge to Crimea which solves a "a real problem" after which he could "halt military operations" and "declare victory".

A significant part of the paper is devoted to analyzing the possibility of Russia conquering all of Ukraine, which the authors recognize Russia could do but that it would pose so many military and political problems that they describe such a move as irrational, even putting in bold:

Putin certainly could find ways to govern a conquered Ukraine, and he might well decide to pay the prices and take the risks considered above in return for completing this vital part of his legacy. But such decisions would be fundamental deviations from the patterns of thought, behavior, and action he has pursued for two decades. — FORECAST SERIES: Putin’s Likely Course of Action in Ukraine, Understanding War

Followed immediately by:

They would be, in many respects, irrational, driven by an ideological need and psychic urge to take real risks and pay real prices for abstract benefits. People change, of course, especially toward the ends of their lives. But we should look for solid evidence that Putin’s thought process and calculations really have changed so fundamentally that he would either overlook these problems or accept these costs before accepting at face value the invasion plan he is ostensibly pursuing. — FORECAST SERIES: Putin’s Likely Course of Action in Ukraine, Understanding War

The core thesis of the paper is:

We continue to assess for all these reasons that Putin does not, in fact, intend to invade unoccupied Ukraine this winter despite the continued build-up of Russian forces in preparation to do so. — FORECAST SERIES: Putin’s Likely Course of Action in Ukraine, Understanding War

The terminology the authors use is "invade unoccupied Ukraine" refers to conquering all of Ukraine, and anything less being a limited operation which they predict is in fact likely:

A full-scale Russian invasion would consist of numerous discrete operations, almost every one of which could also be conducted independently of the others to achieve more limited objectives at lesser cost and risk. The most salient of those operations include, in order from most- to least-likely:

• Deploying Russian airborne and/or mechanized units to one or more locations in Belarus that would support a planned attack on Ukraine as well as pose other threats to NATO member states;
• Deploying Russian mechanized, tank, artillery, and support units overtly into occupied Donbas;
• Breaking out from occupied Donbas to establish a land bridge connecting Russian-occupiedCrimea with Russian territory near Rostov along the northern Sea of Azov littoral, as well as seizing the Kherson region north of Crimea and securing the Dnepr-Crimea canal;
• Conducting airborne and amphibious operations to seize Odesa and the western Ukrainian Black Sea coast; and
• Launching a mechanized drive to seize the strategic city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine. — FORECAST SERIES: Putin’s Likely Course of Action in Ukraine, Understanding War

The authors also conclude that the "leaked plan" to conquer all of Ukraine is likely a ruse (by either Russian or Western intelligence) as well as the obvious fact the Russians could implement different operations as ultimately feints (either planned that way from the start or then pulled back if losses are too high).

Point being, experts definitely expected Ukraine to fight and that Russia conquering and occupying all of Ukraine to be so infeasibly militarily given Russias available forces as to be irrational, but that what does make sense is securing the land bridge to Crimea which is what ultimately happens.

All this has been discussed multiple times since the start of the war and in particular since the Russian withdrawal from North Ukraine.

That's a strawman. I asked you specifically how the US escalated in Ukraine. You never were able to answer those questions. — Echarmion

We can definitely get into the escalations in Ukraine itself, such as those 12 CIA bases and supplying more weapons including to Nazis if you really need it.

But this is the kind of kindergarten logic that I simply need to push back against. Escalating militarily with Russia in terms of being more vocal about Ukraine joining NATO (what the RAND authors point out would likely solicit a Russian counter-escalation) and also withdrawing from INF, of which NATO intermediate range missiles being stationed in Ukraine is what Russia would be most concerned about in the scenario of Ukraine joining NATO, are both escalations in Ukraine.

This kindergarten logic that withdrawing from INF is not technically happening "in Ukraine" as it happens on paper in the abstract and so "shouldn't" involve Ukraine, is just stupid (at an adult level; if actual kindergarteners had these sorts of conceptual divisions that would be ok).

Whole reason Russia is so concerned about Ukraine joining NATO is the possibility of stationing intermediate range nuclear weapons now, and it was already essentially taken for granted even by Western talking heads that one reason to maintain a proxy war in the Donbas was to impede Ukraine joining NATO.

We can get into the funding passed in 2017 of military assistance to Ukraine if you want which would be the escalation in Ukraine, but as the authors of the RAND paper make pretty clear the Russians are particularly sensitive to the nuclear issue and potential for a decapitation strike and use pretty strong language to point out Russia would likely respond to both being more vocal about Ukraine joining NATO as well as withdrawing from INF.

Of course, you're just not going to do this very easy demonstration. Because you're lying. — Echarmion

What facts? Literally what the hell are you talking about?

Ok, well if you're going to call me a liar without even the cursory research into what you're talking about, the military assistance to Ukraine and the intelligence assistance (eventually revealed as 12 CIA forward operating bases) are not disputed facts except by you.

Here's an article from Politico from 2019 describing the situation:

For the 2019 fiscal year, lawmakers allocated $250 million in security aid to Ukraine, including money for weapons, training, equipment and intelligence support. Specifically, Congress set aside $50 million for weaponry. — Trump holds up Ukraine military aid meant to confront Russia, Politico

Which is what is called escalation in Ukraine, continuing year after year thus building up capacity and escalating further.

If you are unaware of such basic facts you are clearly not actually interested in the topic but just want to engage in denialism, which is just dumb.

Russia invaded. — Echarmion

That's what the purpose of provocation is.

The two biggest airforces on the planet, plus the European air forces? — Echarmion

Russia has a massively superior Air Force to Ukraine and yet it does not have uncontested air supremacy. After 2 years Russia has been able to degrade / attrit Ukrainian A2AD enough to be able to launch glide bombs from dozens of kilometres out.

The reason is that planes are incredibly vulnerable to surface to air missiles, and these systems can be highly mobile, hidden, dispersed and turned on only long enough to engage a target and then moved.

Not that this debate matters, but the idea NATO could destroy all Russian anti-air assets essentially overnight is ludicrous. Without nuclear weapons it would be an immense and long battle of attrition. NATO has a greater airforce but Russia would have a defending advantage of NATO needing to fly into Russian A2AD and not vice-versa.

You've got this backwards though. It is precisely because the US and the west are less committed to the conflict that no rational Russian government would ever use nuclear weapons in this conflict. — Echarmion

This makes literally no sense.

The more committed party is the party more likely to resort to more extreme force, the less committed party the party more likely to backoff and not escalate further.

Hence, it is because US and the West are less committed and Russia is super committed to winning the conflict that the US and the West knows if they actually did pour in enough weapons soon enough to actually threaten Russian forces, or then allow Ukraine to attack critical Russian infrastructure, that Russia is likely to resort to nuclear weapons which they have no response to being the less committed party.

You keep saying that the west is content to see Ukraine lose. And although you keep stretching the evidence far beyond what it actually supports, there is an element of truth in this. The west faces no existential risk over the outcome of the Ukraine war and so its determination to support Ukraine remains limited. — Echarmion

Limited support = content to see Ukraine lose.

That is literally the definition of limited support.

It honestly seems borderline miraculous that you have been able to realize essential fact of the conflict, which explains pretty much all the other facts.

If Russia were to use a nuclear weapon, especially if they were to use it directly against NATO, it would create an existential risk. At that point the West would be forced to strain every sinew to eliminate the government responsible for the attack.

It is a very, very bad idea. — Echarmion

Using a nuclear weapons against a NATO base in Europe supporting attacks on Russian critical infrastructure would not be an existential risk to NATO, and far less the US.

What would create an existential risk, in particular for the US, is to counter-attack Russia with a nuclear weapon or even more massive conventional attack.

If the process is Russia strikes a NATO base with a nuclear weapon and then the US does not respond in kind, then that is not an existential risk to the US and no US territory has even been damaged. Striking in kind on the other hand is an existential risk as that may lead to a further cycle of escalation towards a general nuclear exchange (where US cities would be hit) or then Russia may simply preempt that cycle of escalation by jumping right to general exchange (to have first strike advantage).

It of course makes zero sense for the US to risk actual existential risks to protect Ukrainian sovereignty either by directly intervening or then supplying Ukraine with weapons and intelligence that would put Russian critical interests at risk (in this case mostly prevailing in Ukraine as well as critical infrastructure within Russia).

Therefore, there being no way to mortally wound Russia without significant risk of Russian resorting to nuclear weapons to reestablish nuclear deterrence (which is of course already there, just in this scenario one side is choosing to ignore it for a period of time), the only rational move is to not cross a threshold of escalation that would lead to nuclear use.

Which is exactly what we see! NATO tanks, NATO planes, NATO missiles (and all the top shelf stuff not even what Ukraine eventually gets) could have been supplied to Ukraine day 1. The argument that it "wasn't useful" at the time is just gaslighting. Optimum military strategy would be to start transitioning to those systems starting day 1, which means fielding units with that equipment to start 1. gaining experience to workout optimal tactics to 2. more importantly to have a cadre of experienced Ukrainian troops on these equipments in order to train others when the day comes to scale up, to 3. even more importantly smoothly transition from old systems to new systems without a collapse in capacity and in fact increasing capacity. What NATO does instead is drip feed weapons systems into Ukraine, far from top shelf stuff, introducing each weapon system when previous capacity essentially collapses and then "calibrating", to use the RAND author terminology, the supply to not escalate to a "larger conflict" (i.e. one that risks nuclear weapons use).

But you run into the classic problem: both sides understand the logic of the situation. Both sides know that whoever stops the cycle of escalation loses. And whoever escalates into a general nuclear exchange also loses. The only winning move is not to play. — Echarmion

Well now you're getting it. The US is choosing not to play the nuclear escalation game by not supplying Ukraine in a way that risks critical Russian interests such as the bulk of their territorial gains in Ukraine or then critical infrastructure at home.

The US, understood as rational imperial interests (much less rational actual Americans interests), doesn't gain anything from doing this, it is a US policy setback and loss of prestige to lose the confrontation, but rather massive profits are made and natural gas is supplied to Europe and a new Cold War is started to ensure even more massive profits.

The kindergarten logic that you present here, just repeating Western talking heads propaganda, is the idea that because Russia is also deterred by Western nuclear weapons means that we can therefore do anything to Russia and they would not retaliate.

This is obviously not true. Attacking Russian critical interests, whether directly with NATO planes or then through supplying the Ukrainians with the right weapons and right permissions and intelligence to do so, is no longer a situation of mutual deterrence but one of simply attacking the Russians. If the attack approaches risk and losses comparable to a nuclear strike then this is simply starting the nuclear escalation cycle just using conventional weapons, on the basis that talking heads with kindergarten level logic can say things like "Russia is bluffing! We have nuclear weapons too!" or then "Ukraine has a right to attack Russian infrastructure! It's a war!"

However, what Western talking heads and their parrots on social media say doesn't constrain Russia. If we start a nuclear war it doesn't matter if Western talking heads feel the West was following some sort of rule book that allows it to attack Russian critical interests without the Russians retaliating. These kindergarten level logic developed by Western talking heads does not matter on the battlefield.

If the West, directly or through Ukraine, with conventional, nuclear or unconventional weapons, attacks Russian critical interests in which their only recourse is nuclear weapons or then risk collapse of the state, they will of course resort to nuclear weapons in order to stop the attack.

There's no "we have a right to attack you in a special way as outlined by our talking heads where you don't have a right to retaliate but just need to accept collapse of your entire economy and state".

What matters is not the methods but the end results. There's not "special way of murdering someone" where you get to get away with murder because "technically they pulled the trigger" and all you did was put them in a device that forced them to pull the trigger or then "all I did was leave some poisonous drink around and I didn't anyone to drink anything". These obviously stupid loopholes that obviously don't matter in the real world is the kindergarten level logic that Western talking heads keep repeating.

However, obviously Western policy makers, while happy to have these talking points repeated over and over so that the obvious problem with the policy of supporting Ukraine isn't scrutinized (that the West obviously is deterred by Russian nuclear weapons and therefore we are simply propping up Ukraine to receive harder punches), don't actually believe this kindergarten logic. When they tell us directly that this weapons system or that weapons system can't be supplied or these missiles can't be used to strike Russia, as to not "escalate", they are simply explicitly telling us that they are deterred in their choices by Russian nuclear weapons and therefore won't risk an nuclear escalation: how is that achieved? By not supplying Ukraine or permitting Ukraine to do anything that would actually risk Russian critical losses in personnel, material and infrastructure.

The point though is that Russia is already achieving that effect with just threats. No-one is even considering a large scale strike at russian critical infrastructure using western weapons. It is the strange logic of deterrence that using a weapon is less effective than threatening it's use. — Echarmion

Again, you follow literally zero events. You do zero reproach. You simply randomly deny things.

Which, if there was still interest in the conversation by others I'd just ignore you, but you are at least a useful foil in order to explain things I'm happy to explain anyways.

Striking Russian infrastructure with Western missiles is exactly what Ukraine has been asking! That's what Western talking heads keep repeating that Russia attacks Ukrainian infrastructure all the time and so the framework that Ukraine isn't allowed to do likewise to Russia isn't fair, Ukraine "has a right" blah blah blah.

No, Ukraine wants permission to attack specific military targets (airbases, air defences, supply dumps). — Echarmion

Again, you follow zero events, what Zelensky and others have been quite clearly stating is that Russia is only going to give up once the Russians in Moscow "feel" the war, which is achieved by attacking critical infrastructure, which obviously the Russians do in Ukraine all the time so obviously if you believe in "fairness" it's common sense that Ukraine would be allowed to retaliate in kind.

However, the West does not believe in fairness, but believes Russia would resort to nuclear weapons and so these permissions aren't given.

Since I know you'll just keep denying these obvious facts until I spoon-feed them to you.

The title of this BBC article is literally "Russia must feel war consequences, says Zelensky amid Ukrainian attack".

Russia must feel war consequences, says Zelensky amid Ukrainian attack — Russia must feel war consequences, says Zelensky amid Ukrainian attack, BBC

Which you may say "that's not specifically about missiles!"

Ok sure:

The Ukrainian leader previously called this the "one decision" that could prevent the Russian army from advancing further into Ukraine, adding, "If our partners lifted all restrictions on long-range capabilities, Ukraine would not need to physically enter the Kursk region to protect Ukrainian citizens in the border area and destroy Russia's potential for aggression." — US Maintains Stance on Strikes Inside Russia Despite Ukrainian Pleas

But even if you're right, that just demonstrates NATO is deterred by Russian nuclear weapons as I explain.

Palpable hand wringing as the clowns refuse to face the music. — Tzeentch

Hand wringing is how the copium is purified and refined from the raw hopium flowers that blossom after cultivators carefully plant the seeds of magical thinking in the fertile bullshit on the foggy mountains of ego preserving delusion; before being dried, packaged and trafficked to the network of dealers and pushers around the world.

And this is also the reason why the west doesn't "want Ukraine to win" as you understand it.

The US does not face similar escalation risks in the middle-east and therefore it is not effectively deterred and so places similar constraints on the use of Western arms by Israel.
— boethius

Oh? Didn't you write earlier:

Why? Because the West wants Israel to "win" and therefore do whatever is necessary to "win"
— boethius — Echarmion

The first sentence is ambiguous in that the negative is meant to apply both to being not deterred and the placing of constraints.

I have edited the post to clarify by repeating the negative.

Obviously the US does not place similar constraints on Israel: flattening entire apartment blocks, carrying out a genocide, raping prisoners and proud of it, and so on.

The difference in the situation being that Iran has no nuclear deterrence vis-a-vis the US.

The Israeli vs "the Curse" war may indeed escalate to Tel Aviv being nuked, whether soonish or then eventually depending on the state of Iran's nuclear program, but even in that situation the US does not risk much being nuked itself and if Israel gets themselves nuked that's not really a US problem.

If Russia nukes a NATO base Russia is at war with NATO. Even if a general nuclear exchange is somehow averted, at the very least any russian troops in Ukraine would be flattened by the combined NATO airforces and the russian leaders responsible would shortly after drop from a window.

Do you think that if Russia uses a nuke on NATO territory everyone will just shrug and do nothing? — Echarmion

Why would this happen? How exactly would Russian troops be flattened in Ukraine?

Even if we ignore the fact that nuclear use would make NATO conventional war on Ukraine less, rather than more, likely, what you describe is simply propaganda.

NATO would have the exact same problem, just a lot worse, that the Russian airforce had in 2022 and 2023 (and still has in 2024, just less) in that surface to air missiles (A2/AD bubbles in the modern parlance) are highly effective against airplanes and not many are needed to deny access to an airspace.

Stealth is not some magical invisible technology and Russians have had decades to develop systems to defeat US stealth systems.

Then there's the problem that the Russians in Ukraine are in basements and bunkers and dugouts and spread out and you still need to actually find them to be able to drop bombs on.

In other words, even if we pretended Russian anti-air assets had zero effectiveness (which would not be the case), air supremacy doesn't win wars anyways: right now Israel can drop US bombs at will on Lebanon and Gaza and that has not delivered victory.

But most importantly, let's say Russian A2/AD simply doesn't work, and you can also turn the tide of the war in Ukraine thanks to this bombing, Russia can still continue to nuke things.

If your response to a NATO base getting nuked is conventional, Russia can just nuke more things.

So there's the high risk that NATO planes in Ukraine don't have the desired effect of "flattening" all the Russian troops there but instead planes start to be downed and NATO needs to fall back to standoff positions just as the Russians did in 2022 due to Ukraine anti-air assets, and then even if that doesn't happen there's the risk of NATO planes not actually turning the tide of the war, and finally the risk that Russia just nukes more things in response to this conventional air assault.

And in all of these strikes and counter-strikes a general nuclear exchange would be on a knifes edge as each side would be paranoid of the other side launching first. Planes and missiles flying everywhere are not going to reduce tensions.

At the end of the day, Europe, and the US for that matter, knows that the US is less committed to the conflict than is Russia and that the US has no interest in even a major risk of a general nuclear exchange with Russia. Even if European leaders were willing to have nuclear strikes on their territory for the sake of defending "Ukrainian sovereignty", which honestly many Europeans seems dumb enough to actually want, they know that the US doesn't actually want that: that Ukraine as a useful proxy force to accomplish some objectives for a time and at no point is the US going to "risk anything" for Ukraine.

Therefore, if the US did escalate to the point of Russia using a nuclear weapon to reestablish deterrence both the US and the Europeans know that the US has no rational response.

In this scenario, the situation, at the end of the day, would be US and NATO (mostly the UK) firing missiles at Russian critical infrastructure, an attack Russia needs to respond to, with nuclear weapons if that is the only option. Therefore, the solution would be for the US and NATO to stop attacking Russia to end the nuclear war. The only other option would be to simply continue the nuclear war; Russia would be in the same position of needing to resort to nuclear weapons to reestablish deterrence and therefore the only actual alternative to the US stopping the cycle of escalation would be to simply escalate to a nuclear war.

Actually attacking Russia is no longer deterrence it is simply straight-up attacking Russia resulting in Russia needing to respond to reestablish deterrence.

Which is why at the end of the day US elites do follow the RAND paper basic framework of "calibrating" the intensity of the conflict to avoid unwanted escalation; the intensity of violence needing to calibration to achieve that is Russia prevailing in Ukraine without systemic risk to Russian critical infrastructure.

The Russians can tolerate NATO weapons being used in Ukraine because at the end of the day they choose to be there, Russian critical infrastructure is not impacted, and defeating those weapons and prevailing in Ukraine has some advantages (from the Russian imperial perspective).

You don't need a successful first strike scenario for nuclear weapons to be a threat. During the cold war, one of the pillars of nuclear deterrence was that no side could develop an effective missile defense system.

The deterrent effect from nuclear weapons isn't based on the fact that they make you win the war. It's based on the fact that they'll make your enemy lose.

And this is also the reason why the west doesn't "want Ukraine to win" as you understand it. — Echarmion

As mentioned above, if you are attacking the other sides critical infrastructure (what the Ukrainians want permission to do with NATO missiles) this is no longer a mutual deterrence situation: you are being attacked, therefore use of nuclear weapons is either the only recourse or then is believed would reestablish deterrence.

It's like if you had a gun and I had a gun and then I knife you in the stomach so you shoot me and then we're both dying and I'm like "what gives!? I thought we had deterrence??"

Oh I agree wholeheartedly. — Echarmion

Then maybe you're becoming self aware.

From my perspective what's happening here is that you're showing me a guide to the city of Bordeaux and telling me it's a guide to the city of Paris. When I point out that the guide is about Bordeaux and not Paris, you keep pointing out all the places where the guide talks about how to get to Bordeaux from Paris, or where it compares locations in the two cities. — Echarmion

Just more very dumb trying to move the goalposts.

These are your central claims on this issue:

The paper was not an analysis of existing US policy but an analysis of a series of future possibilities. — Echarmion

You have already quoted the parts of the paper that make clear that it is analysing a course of action where the US intensifies it's efforts. I'm not sure who you're trying to fool by now acting like the paper was an analysis of the US policy. Yourself? — Echarmion

I then cite where the paper clearly takes positions on the existing US policy of the time, in line with what the authors explicitly set out to do in drawing from "existing US policy debates" with their 116 footnotes and over 40 pages of references.

I not only cite directly where the authors are clearly analyzing the existing policy of the time but also citing them explaining that is their methodology and summarizing as follows:

The paper is not discussing things in some sort of hypothetical vacuum but takes as it's starting point existing relations with Russia and analyses those existing policies as a basis to then consider different policy moves and the benefits and risks of those moves. — boethius

You then directly cite this sentence and rebuttal with:

As I pointed out normally this is common sense that does not need pointing out. — Echarmion

And so moving the goalposts from I'm literally trying to fool people by pretending the paper consider existing US policy all the way to that claim is obvious and does not need pointing out!?

Now, why are we having this incredibly stupid exchange that is easily resolved by simply directly citing the paper?

Because you were unable to deal with the obvious fact that Russia was extremely very likely to prevail in Ukraine if there was an escalation and obviously US elite know that because they read their own elite think tank policy papers, such as this RAND papers which makes this point extremely clearly.

Your first bad faith propaganda strategy was to just keep denying that the US did anything escalatory between the paper being written and the larger war in 2022 (which they obviously do such as withdrawing from the INF treaty but you can't deal with that so you just ignore that part) to then pretend that these expert authors do not support my position (which, to be clear, is the super obvious common sense position that Russia is extremely very likely to prevail in Ukraine, and whatever the result would be at a massive cost to Ukraine in terms of lives and terriroty), but that debate about how provocative US actions where between 2019 and 2022 isn't even necessary as the authors make clear that Russian may escalate anyways, preempting any US escalatory action, resulting in the same risks of Russia prevailing, significant cost to Ukraine in lives and territory and a setback for US policy and prestige.

Now, I understand that your aim was to engage in stupid quibbling that the US didn't arm Ukraine "even more" between 2019 and 2022, and simply ignore the US being more vocal about Ukraine joining NATO (one other major escalatory action the authors describe) as well as the US withdrawing from ING (what the authors describe the Russians as particularly sensitive about and would certainly undertake counter-escalation, likely offensive, in that event).

Rest assured it is quite easy to demonstrate that the US policy decisions between 2019 and 2022 are exactly the kind of escalatory action the authors describe, but if your aim is to unwind the stupidity then you can simply accept that the authors position was that the status quo in the Donbas was anyways a risk of Russian escalation, which the authors are quite clear is in the US interest, and certainly the Ukrainian interest, to try to avoid through a diplomatic resolution.

We now see exactly the expected results the authors describe: significant loss of Ukrainian lives and territory, very likely leading to an even more disadvantageous peace (i.e. losing), and it is indeed a US policy setback and loss of prestige (Russian weapons pawned US weapons in Ukraine; Russia can deal with US intelligence, the US cannot do what it said it would do in supporting Ukraine "whatever it takes" and "as long as it takes" until victory).

Therefore, the purpose of provoking the war and propping up Ukraine with cash and a drip feed of weapons systems, was not to advance US policy and prestige (in any arguably objective "national interest" sense) and much less to help out Ukraine, but was for partisan and special interest purposes (i.e. corrupt profiteering as well as have a bit of "war time administration" until the next election).

A note more relevant to the actual situation: — Echarmion

If you're interested in the actual situation you should start with:

1. Ukraine is in the collapse phase on the losing end of a war of attrition, which was entirely foreseeable.
2. Striking infrastructure and civilian populations deep inside Russia is essentially the only military move or point of leverage Ukraine has left.
3. The West has not wanted to "escalate" to that point because the West is absolutely content with Ukraine losing the conflict.

Notice how at no point does the West have any problem with Israel "escalating" with Western weapons to the point of levelling entire apartment blocks filled with civilians.

Why? Because the West wants Israel to "win" and therefore do whatever is necessary to "win" (I put win in quotes as Western leaders may not have a clear idea of what a winning end-state would be, but whatever seems like winning and Israel wants to do is fully supported).

Why maintain the asymmetry that Russia can disable Ukrainian infrastructure across the entire country but Ukraine can't do likewise to Russia is to "calibrate" the conflict at a "somewhat higher level of intensity" without escalating too far (i.e. escalating to a point where Ukraine maybe winning on the battlefield).

As I've pointed out since the beginning of the conflict, the reason the West does not "escalate" to actually threatening Russia (in terms of battlefield loss in Ukraine or damaging Russian infrastructure on a mass scale) is nuclear weapons.

As various commentators have pointed out, the change is clearly intended to make the doctrine more vague. It's also pretty much a direct warning to not allow Ukraine to strike targets on Russian territory using western weapons. — Echarmion

It may surprise you but at the start of the war many here, and elsewhere, argued that Russian nuclear weapons were of essentially no meaning in the conflict and did not shape Western policy and shouldn't shape Western policy: i.e. I argued that Russian nuclear weapons does and obviously should deter Western escalation, while others argued it doesn't and it shouldn't ("we cannot let them get away with nuclear blackmail!" was the battle cry of this camp).

Nearly 2 years later and this is not the common sense position even in the Western mainstream media that nuclear weapons are indeed a significant deterrent to "winning".

This seems a fairly big step for Russia, which seems to indicate that they're really concerned about possible long range strikes. It also demonstrates the bargaining power Russia's nuclear capabilities still represent. — Echarmion

This is not a significant step. Russia has already signalled the threat of nuclear weapons use since the start of the conflict, they are just making it more explicit now to make it even clearer that they aren't bluffing. The policy doctrine before was also vague in that wasn't clear what "existential threat" for the Russian state actually meant.

Ultimately I agree with the view that, no matter what Russia says their nuclear doctrine is, there is just nothing to be gained from using nuclear weapons over Ukraine. Nuclear weapons are a powerful threat to a country's population and infrastructure, but their direct military use is limited unless you intend to absolutely obliterate an area. Something Russia really cannot afford to do in Ukraine. — Echarmion

First, you literally just made the point that "It also demonstrates the bargaining power Russia's nuclear capabilities still represent" so obviously they are useful as leverage, and they are useful as leverage because they can be practically used in response to different actions (such as a large attack on Russian infrastructure).

Second, nuclear weapons ability to obliterate an entire area has many military uses, in particular obliterating entire NATO bases, which is what the Russian doctrine change is referring to.

A large scale conventional attack on Russian infrastructure would be a major problem for Russia risking the collapse of the state. It's not a similar major problem for Ukraine because the West underwrites the Ukrainian government, military, pays pensions, ensures supplies of essentials and so on (of course it will be a "major problem" the moment the West stops funnelling cash into Ukraine to prop it up).

Russia is therefore making it clear that if the West were to organize such a major missile strike, intended to cause systemic damage to Russian infrastructure, that Russia will start nuking the NATO infrastructure that supports such missile supply and operation.

The West might not be that deterred if it thought Russia would respond with Nuclear weapons only in Ukraine, as obviously Ukrainian wellbeing is not a priority, but it is a much more significant deterrent the prospect of NATO bases being nuked.

The basic problem, as I've elaborated on many times since the first phases of the war, is that the West would be unable to strike Russia with nuclear weapons in-kind without that escalating to a general nuclear exchange.

So, it is a lose-lose situation. If they organize a large scale missile strike on Russia and Russia then nukes a NATO base and the US does not respond with nuclear weapons, that would be definitely losing the exchange, and if the US does respond with nuclear weapons that would very likely lead to a general nuclear exchange which isn't exactly good for the US just right now.

Therefore, the threat of nuclear weapons effectively deters the West from causing any significant harm, or even risk of significant harm, to Russian state power in Ukraine or indeed in Russia.

The US does not face similar escalation risks in the middle-east and therefore it is not effectively deterred and so does not place similar constraints on the use of Western arms by Israel.

Yes, obviously. As I pointed out normally this is common sense that does not need pointing out. — Echarmion

So, I'm trying to "fool" people by pointing out this common sense thing?

The conversation is just dumb, and it's also not common sense that the paper would take an analysis of existing US policy as a starting point.

As I mentioned, it is entirely possible to do entirely hypothetical analysis or then historical analysis or, indeed, as you first claimed: analysis of different things the US could do and what might happen afterwards, without commenting on existing US policy.

However, the paper does analyze existing US policy as starting point to evaluate different policy options, as the paper explicitly says is their goal.

It doesn't. There is no chapter in the paper analysing the contemporary situation, nor does the paper state anywhere what the risks and benefits of the current policy are. — Echarmion

This is even dumber. You literally just offer the rebuke that the paper taking the existing policy situation as a starting point in their analysis is common sense and not worth mentioning ... and you're next point is directly contradicting the point you just made.

We're literally on a descent into stupid.

That the paper is not organized in chapters about the contemporary situation and chapters considering future action does not remotely entail the paper does not consider and analyze the contemporary situation.

To take the Paris example of debating a paper that does talk about Paris but you continuously deny, simply because a paper does not have a chapter literally entitled "Paris" does not mean the paper does not mention Paris and simply citing the paper discussing Paris should be sufficient evidence to satisfy everyone in a discussion that yes indeed the paper does talk about Paris: maybe doesn't talk primarily about Paris and maybe doesn't have a chapter literally titled "Paris" but does mention Paris nonetheless and that can be verified by directly citing the paper using the word "Paris" and clearly talking about the city of Paris in doing so.

The paper is organized thematically on each dimension of competition with Russia.

Each dimension or area the paper considers (and there's many as the paper is nearly 300 pages long) the authors take the contemporary situation and their analysis of it in order to then consider changes to that status quo and analyze to arrive ultimately at their recommendations (which, topical for this discussion, does not include Ukraine at all).

It is neither common sense that the authors would necessarily do this (plenty of ways to provide policy analysis without considering the contemporary situation; either as a sort of "blue skies" thinking, or then go into fine detail on just one thing that could be done without considering the broader consequences, or then for the purposes of creating a longer term view of imperial competition generally speaking to generate timeless lessons of imperial exploitation). All of which is analysis that exists and people produce all the time. To give one example, militaries routinely create contingency planning for a wide variety of events and policy changes without any relation to contemporary policy (such as detailed plans on invading various countries without anyone involved in that analysis believing that would actually happen in the short or long term), and it is also obviously that they didn't do this thing you claim is obvious they would do ... simply because they have no chapter literally called "the contemporary situation and how we got here".

I have no idea what the text looks like in your mind, but the text that I read has no "direct citations analysing the existing US policy". — Echarmion

It's honestly just bizarre.

Within the same comment, you literally start with:

Yes, obviously. As I pointed out normally this is common sense that does not need pointing out. — Echarmion

In response (directly citing me) making the point:

The paper is not discussing things in some sort of hypothetical vacuum but takes as it's starting point existing relations with Russia and analyses those existing policies as a basis to then consider different policy moves and the benefits and risks of those moves — boethius

Which, to repeat myself, is not obvious as there are plenty of ways to analyze policy options without considering the existing policy and situation as a starting point.

And then after claiming my pointing out the paper is not hypothetical but takes it's starting point as an analysis of existing policies, you say that doesn't need being pointed out ... and then, in the same comment, contradict yourself in claiming no where does the paper do that:

I have no idea what the text looks like in your mind, but the text that I read has no "direct citations analysing the existing US policy". — Echarmion

I guess you're trying to move the goalposts from analysis to "direct citations" of US policy. The paper does not need to make direct citations of "US policy" (which is often not actually written anywhere in some monolithic "US policy" document but requires considerable analysis to even come up with an educated guess what the policy even is).

The reason the paper doesn't make many direct citations is because the paper is delivering the conclusions of experts and is meant to taken as authoritative. For example, when the paper discusses the US withdrawing from the ABM treaty, the point of doing so and Russias reaction to then go onto consider further ABM and nuclear technologies competition, it's presumed the authors are authoritative enough to not require "proving" that the US did indeed withdraw from the ABM treaty, "proving" why, "proving" the Russian response so far to that, and so on.

Now, if you're dissatisfied that the analysis presented in the near 300 page paper isn't detailed enough for you, that is a weakness of the paper the authors recognize and quite literally point that out and then recommend a second phase of the analysis be carried out that goes more into detail, in particular to try to quantify in dollar terms the costs of each policy option (both to the US and to Russia).

The authors are quite clear on this:

Importantly, due to space and resource constraints, we do not quantitatively cost out each measure to extend Russia; instead, we relied on more-qualitative judgments of the researchers. While we believe that these judgments accurately capture whether each measure would be cost-imposing or cost-incurring for the United States, future analysis would benefit from estimating the dollar amounts involved more rigorously. — Extending Russia, RAND

And yes, simply because the document also contains "judgements" it is still an analysis paper and both providing analysis explicitly to us on occasion, directly citing the prior analysis they make reference to, as well as also delivering the results of their analytical deliberations they've had as experts to come up with authoritative statements and judgements.

If you're issue is this is not an academic dissertation filled to the brim with citations to attempt to prove every step in the thesis, it's because this is not an academic paper but the target audience are policy makers (politicians, bureaucrats of various kinds etc. to get a broad overview of both the situation with Russia and what experts have to say about it and what options are available and their comparative likely fruitfulness: benefits, cost and risks).

This is just false. "Current policy debates" does not refer just to "debates about the current policy". It's more broad and would include both debates about current policies as well as debates about possible future policies. — Echarmion

"Current policy debates" are about "current policy": i.e. the starting point is what is the current policy.

Whether an author or team is analyzing the history of a current policy, the impact of a current policy, the ethics of a current policy, the cost of a current policy, the trend of where the current policy is going, as well as how the current policy could be changed or anything else we may wish to discuss about a current policy, the common denominator about these various "current policy debates" is the "current policy".

By explicitly telling us they are drawing on "current policy debate" they are making it clear the paper strives to start with the current policy.

More importantly, the authors then go and do exactly this, analyze the current situation in each area they consider, evaluate the existing policy (such as for our purposes stating the war in Donbas already imposing a cost, in blood and treasure, on Russia when the paper is written), with plenty of footnote references they refer to in establishing their current policy positions.

The style of the paper is very fluid and conversational weaving together the collective wisdom of the authors for the purposes of delivering said wisdom to the reader, mostly presuming the reader is going to go ahead and trust the experts know what they are talking about (and so do not go into the minutiae of exactly how we know when, how, who and what happened next with existing policies such as withdrawing form the ABM treaty, but the authors assume readers will trust their report and ideas about this existing policy experience).

Nevertheless, the authors do not expect the reader to trust-but-not-verify, and conveniently provide us 116 footnotes with references to other expert work supporting their points, and also for our convenience include a comprehensive list of all their references in 41 pages of references at the end of the book.

In other words, the analytical work the authors provide us is very thorough and in drawing on "current policy debate" the authors go ahead and all analyze for us the current policies.

In reading the paper, which I suggest you actually do, it is quite clear that the authors strive to present an analysis of the current situation so the reader has a good idea of "where we are" before considering different policy options that would go in different directions to evaluate their costs, benefits and risks (that the authors put in super clear colour coded tables in the brief of the paper).

To circle back to the point that started this expedition into the depths of what about the paper can easily be established by simply citing examples from the paper, the authors do indeed (as they explicitly tell us they intend to do) draw on the "current policy debate" vis-a-vis Ukraine, siding on the side of experts that believe Russia can commit to and sustain a larger war, and also consider the risks of the current policy of supporting Ukraine in a proxy war in the Donbas, that it does extend Russia in blood and treasure but comes at considerable risk of escalation even sans-US-doing-anything more in that Russia may anyways preempt any such actions and escalate in Ukraine, which the authors evaluate the likely result will be that Russia has a significant advantage (due to proximity) and there would be significant loss of Ukrainian lives and territory as well be a US policy setback and loss of US prestige.

Please feel free to continue to go in circles to simply avoid dealing with what the paper obviously says and therefore US policy makers obviously know in deciding to push on all the escalation buttons the paper explicitly says risks a major Russian response, likely offensive: more arms to Ukraine, withdrawing from INF and being more vocal about Ukraine joining NATO.

Obviously it doesn't serve any purpose for you to continue to go around in circles of denialism and then denying your denialism and so on, but it is somewhat humorous to watch.

For those interested, the authors even make a power-point style summary document of their 324 page (not counting the introduction and other pages outside the main text) where they make all these points super clearly, stating:

Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages. — Overextending and unbalancing Russia Brief, RAND

And they assess the risk to doing so as "high" and likelihood of success as "moderate".

Increasing lethal aid to Ukraine does not even make it to their "Most-Promising Cost-Imposing Options" that they list at the end of the document.

The measures the authors identify that are "most promising" all have a greater favourability than moderate likelihood of success but high risk.

The only high risk option they include is further sanctions but they rate that as having high likelihood of success and high benefits, all the other options being at worst moderate risk but high likelihood of success or then moderate likelihood of success but low risk.

Obviously US policy makers in the Biden administration (which I guess is probably mostly Biden's wife, but who knows) don't follow the recommendations of the paper, but they also do nothing to "change the game" as it were to somehow prove the authors wrong, such as pouring in advanced weapons systems into Ukraine day 1 of the war without restriction in order to prove that Ukraine can indeed win and Russian nuclear weapons are of no concern to them.

Indeed, the US administration explicitly tells us that "why not this weapon system or why not that weapons system" is to not escalate further ... but escalate to where? Obviously Ukraine winning, or even risking that outcome, that's what would be "escalation" in the proxy war with Russia. There is simply no way to cause Ukraine to start winning on the battlefield but also that not being the escalation they are talking about avoiding.

Even Western talking heads would confuse themselves in trying to grapple with what this "avoid escalation" meant in the context of a giant war the US was nominally trying to help Ukraine win. Then they'd confuse themselves even more when the exact escalatory thing that was proposed as "common sense" obviously we can't supply to Ukraine one day was supplied to Ukraine the next day.

There is no theory ever proposed which would demonstrate a pathway to proving the authors of the RAND paper wrong much less any action in accordance with such an alternative theory.

The paper describes what will likely happen if the US policy provoked Russia into a larger war (including just maintaining the existing policy, why the paper recommends trying to resolve the Donbas war and not even just maintain the status quo), the US then does those provocative things the paper describes as bad ideas, the US explicitly tells us aid to Ukraine is limited to avoid "escalation", and then exactly what the authors predict from a major escalation is what occurs: significant costs to Ukraine in terms of lives and territory and also a US policy setback and embarrassment (i.e. loss of prestige).

The idea that US policy makers don't understand their own policy analysts is simply dumb.

The theory that coheres with all the facts is that US policy makers know what they are doing, know it's bad for Ukraine and also US long term interests, but do it anyways for other reasons (partisan, special interests, being pro-evil generally speaking).

I'll only respond to the stupidest part of your comments:

The paper was not an analysis of existing US policy but an analysis of a series of future possibilities. — Echarmion

First you claim the paper is not an analysis of US foreign policy:

You have already quoted the parts of the paper that make clear that it is analysing a course of action where the US intensifies it's efforts. I'm not sure who you're trying to fool by now acting like the paper was an analysis of the US policy. Yourself? — Echarmion

I then explain why it definitely is analyzing existing US foreign, which you have issue with and I respond to with the parts of the paper clearly analyzing existing US foreign policy and the risks already inherent in the existing policy.

Clarifying the purpose of my points with:

I am responding to your statement that the authors aren't analyzing US policy at the time at all. — boethius

To which you then cite this sentence and rebuttal with:

Deciding what your interlocutor is saying sure makes arguing easier. — Echarmion

Since you are unable to deal with the fact the paper obviously does analyze existing US foreign policy at the time.

The paper is not discussing things in some sort of hypothetical vacuum but takes as it's starting point existing relations with Russia and analyses those existing policies as a basis to then consider different policy moves and the benefits and risks of those moves. However, it also considers the benefits and risks of the existing policies, such as the Donbas war already imposing a cost on Russia and that Russia may anyways decide to preempt US actions and counter escalate. Why the paper recommends trying to resolve the Donbas conflict, in which expanding US assistance to Ukraine could be one bargaining chip in a larger diplomatic project. For, although the authors recognize escalation by Russia in Ukraine would be further cost to Russia it evaluates the risks to US foreign police (and also Ukrainian lives and territory) to be not-worth it (noting elsewhere that increasing conflict with a nuclear armed rival for conflicts sake doesn't make any sense).

To sum up:

1. First you deny the paper analyses US foreign policy, which if obviously does
2. Then you can't deal with the direct citations of the paper analyzing the existing US foreign policy of the time (of which I only provided a couple of examples, which is sufficient to disprove your claim the paper doesn't do so)
3. So you deny you ever said that when I explain that it does analyze existing foreign policy, that I'm just randomly deciding what you're saying.
4. Then I cite you your own words quite clearly stating "I'm not sure who you're trying to fool by now acting like the paper was an analysis of the US policy. Yourself?"
5. Now you just circle back to claiming the paper doesn't analyze US foreign policy.

Obviously, being demonstrated to be such a transparently bad faith actor, you're trying to move the goal posts from stating the the paper doesn't analyze US policy (and to claim it does is trying to "fool" people) to that's not the main objective of the paper.

However, saying "the paper doesn't do X" is not stating "the objective of the paper is to do X".

If you say a "paper doesn't mention Paris" and someone can cite the paper in question literally talking about Paris, that is sufficient to disprove the claim that the "paper doesn't mention Paris"; to then try to move the goalposts to "the paper doesn't primarily talk about Paris" is just dumb.

I am aware of the objectives of the authors because I read the paper, and they literally describe the methodology in a section literally titled "Methodology":

After identifying Russia’s perceived anxieties and vulnerabilities, we convened a panel of experts to examine the economic, geopoliti- cal, ideological, informational, and military means to exploit them. Drawing on these expert opinions and on current policy debates, we developed a series of potential measures that could extend Russia. After describing each measure, we assessed the costs and risks associated with each and the prospect of success. Could the measure impose a disproportional burden on Russia, and what are the chances of it doing so? — Extending Russia, RAND

Notice they are basing their work on "current policy debates" which, if you can read English, is another way of saying "analysis of existing US policy", which is what current policy debates are about.

So we not only have the words of the authors describing what they are doing, but then plenty of examples of them actually doing it (i.e. actually analyzing existing US foreign policy) such as statements like:

Rather than returning to compliance with the INF Treaty, Russia might instead interpret U.S. R&D as a sign that the United States is preparing to unilaterally breach or withdraw from the treaty, the way it did in 2002 with the ABM Treaty. — Extending Russia, RAND

They have a footnote for this sentence which reads as follows:

73 Terence Neilan, “Bush Pulls Out of ABM Treaty; Putin Calls Move a Mistake,” New York Times, December 13, 2001. — Extending Russia, RAND

Which is a demonstration of doing what they say they will do "drawing on these expert opinions on current policy debates" in literally citing these experts they are drawing on (i.e. analyzing the existing policy as a starting point).

Notice how this sentence in question does both: it represents an analysis of the policy of withdrawing from the ABM treaty (by simply citing an expert analysis they are going with in their analysis) to evaluate the likely Russian reaction to withdrawing from the INF treaty.

This example not only demonstrates one of many example of analyzing existing policy (along with the previous examples I gave) but is also topical to the original disagreement of whether US action (since the paper) was provocative towards Russia. After this paper is written the US does withdraw from the INF treaty and US policy makers clearly know that it further provocation likely to solicit a response from Russia.

A significant part of the paper, perhaps the majority though I haven't counted, is focused on economic relations. Indeed the very first paragraph of the paper in the summary, page xi, states:

The maxim that “Russia is never so strong nor so weak as it appears” remains as true in the current century as it was in the 19th and 20th.1 In some respects, contemporary Russia is a country in stagnation. Its economy is dependent on natural resource exports, so falling oil and gas prices have caused a significant drop in the living standards of many Russian citizens. Economic sanctions have further contributed to this decline. — Extending Russia, RAND

Which is clearly commenting on the existing US policy of sanctions against Russia, crediting the sanctions to contribution to Russian stagnation, which the paper puts significant focus in further analysis of these economic policies and options to expand sanctions them.

In other words, the paper is not some sort of hypothetical exercise drawing on lessons of history of similar great power conflict or simply positing fictions scenarios, but takes the existing US foreign policy and situation with and in Russia as a starting point to then consider different policy moves from the current situation.

In line with this objective the paper considers the impact (benefits and risks) of existing policies, such as the existing sanctions and existing support to Ukraine.

The authors literally say that's what they are going to do, "drawing on these expert opinions and on current policy debates" (i.e. analyzing existing US policy), and then they go and actually do that. They sometimes even consider different contradicting expert opinions and then give their own opinion about the matter, one topical example is:

Some analysts maintain that Russia lacks the resources to escalate the conflict. Ivan Medynskyi of the Kyiv-based Institute for World Policy argued, “War is expensive. Falling oil prices, economic decline, sanctions, and a campaign in Syria (all of which are likely to continue in 2016) leave little room for another large-scale military maneuver by Russia.”22 According to this view, Russia simply cannot afford to maintain a proxy war in Ukraine, although, given Russia’s size and the importance it places on Ukraine, this might be an overly optimistic assumption. — Extending Russia, RAND

Demonstrating that they are clearly aware of different expert opinions exist, worth considering but they politely make their own position clear that they do not agree with this opinion but find it unconvincing. Of course they use polite diplomatic language as is usual for these kinds of papers, but considering they explicitly state elsewhere the risk of not only Russia escalating in Ukraine in response to US actions in Ukraine but consider is also a risk of Russia even preempting those actions and escalating first anyways.

Now, to remind anyone following along and actually interested in honest debate, the reason for these absurd denials about what the paper quite clearly states, is that the position that the US decision makers know that:

A. Their actions (at the time of the paper and since) were provoking Russia into a larger war: the existing support to Ukraine risked a larger war and in particular actions since the paper was written (in which arms assistance to Ukraine was increased, US more vocal about Ukraine joining NATO, and withdrawing from the INF treaty, all identified as significant risk of provoking Russia into significant escalation).

B. That the likely outcome, according to experts, of a larger escalation of the Donbas war was Ukrainian losing territory and lives and Russia would likely prevail and impose a disadvantageous peace on Ukraine and that would be a setback for US foreign policy.

C. It is highly risky to increase competition with a nuclear armed adversary.

Most of the steps covered in this report are in some sense escalatory, and most would likely prompt some Russian counter-escalation. In addition to the specific risks associated with each measure, there- fore, there is additional risk attached to a generally intensified competition with a nuclear-armed adversary to consider. Consequently, every measure needs to be deliberately planned and carefully calibrated to achieve the desired effect. Finally, although Russia would bear the cost of this increased competition less easily than the United States, both sides would have to divert national resources from other purposes. Extending Russia for its own sake is, in most cases, not a sufficient basis to consider the steps outlined here. Rather, these need to be considered in the broader context of national policy based on defense, deterrence, and—where U.S. and Russian interests align—cooperation. — Extending Russia, RAND

US decision makers (i.e. whoever is calling the shots in the Biden administration) obviously know all this because they or their assistants read these kind of RAND papers.

It's also just common sense that doing things like military and covert assistance to Ukraine, like building 12 CIA bases in Ukraine, are provocative actions, along with withdrawing from INF and doubling down on Ukraine joining NATO, refusing to discuss, much less any real negotiation, for a broader European security architecture are provocative.

The US own top tier analysis says all this is provocative, that Ukraine will lose significantly in an escalation, that Russia will likely prevail, that the end result is also bad for US policy and prestige, and that obviously you can't go too far in intensifying a conflict with Russia because they have nuclear weapons.

Now, propagandists such as @Echarmion just want to deny the obvious fact that the US knew it's actions were provoking a larger war in Ukraine and that the US knew the super duper likely result of Russia winning such an escalation at significant cost to Ukraine in both lives and territory. Why this denialism is so important as to get to the absolutely stupid situation that @Echarmion needs to then deny his denialism only to go onto deny his denialism of his denialism is that it is so obvious.

You cannot read this RAND paper and then have even a cursory knowledge of the facts (not only arms supply to Ukraine military but to Nazi groups that Western journalists go and verify for us is definitely happening despite Western laws past to make that explicitly illegal), CIA bases in Ukraine, withdraw from INF, being vocal about Ukraine joining NATO "oh ... someday", and so on, and conclude there's not only no provocation but the facts are simply inline with someone reading this RAND report and then simply pushing on all of the buttons the authors identify as likely to provoke a Russian escalation in Ukraine.

You can also not read this paper and conclude that the policy since the war started of drip feeding arms to Ukraine was somehow due to an honest belief that the expert opinion as represented in the RAND paper was somehow wrong and that Ukraine could in fact prevail in a larger war with Russia. The policy of drip feeding weapons to Ukraine is not compatible with the belief Ukraine can "win" despite the extreme disadvantageous position the RAND paper points out, but rather represents the "calibration" of support the paper describes to increase costs on Russia while avoiding an out of control escalation (such as nuclear exchange); of course, a calibration of the conflict far beyond what the authors recommend but nevertheless implementing their basic framework of controlling the escalation so as not to get out of hand.

Likewise, US decision makers are clearly cognizant of the risk of nuclear escalation and their policies clearly reflect avoiding nuclear escalation ... by drip feeding weapons to Ukraine and forbidding Ukraine to use Western weapons to strike deep in Russia, which is another way of saying that US policy makers "calibrate" the conflict at "Ukraine loses" so as to avoid the risk of nuclear escalation.

Now, considering the paper is pretty clear doing all this is bad for US foreign policy, the choice is that US policy makers are just stupid with a kindergarten level intellect (as always promoted in the Western mainstream media when Western policy is counter-productive to any reasonable understanding of Western interests) or then they know what they are doing, as they can read these kinds of papers and know there's no "counter analysis" out there that says differently, but their priority is not some arguably objective US, or West in general, interest.

If you're goal is to have another war to:

1. Distract from the disastrous ending of the last wars and avoid any introspection or accountability.
2. Keep the gravy train of military spending flowing.
3. Sell gas to Europe.
4. Have a "rally around the flag" effect that comes with a righteous war.

And you simply do not care about US long term interests, just making bank for your friends and backers and winning the next election (i.e. the policy need not be "successful" just appear to be successful until 2024), then it would make complete sense to read the paper and then simply push all the buttons that maximize escalation with Russia but nevertheless still calibrate things short of a nuclear war (since fortunately, and credit where credits due, you are not so pathologically insane as to actually want a nuclear exchange with Russia).

If your goals are partisan and special interest, as outlined above, you would not ask yourself the question "can Ukraine prevail so that it's no embarrassing for US policy and prestige?" but rather "can Ukraine seem to prevail, at least 'enough', to get to election 2024? afterwhich we can drop them like a hot pierogi and move onto the next war, as, yeah, sure, maybe 'losing' war after war is 'bad' for the US in the long term but it's highly profitable in the meantime".

So what I would really like to understand is: is it geopolitical and historical reasoning that is blind to universal humanitarian concerns or is it universal humanitarian concerns that are blind to geopolitical and historical reasoning? I think the second is way more likely, hence the spectacular and endless frustration of the universal human rights activists. — neomac

I'm not sure what you mean by "historical reasoning", but both geopolitical analysis and humanitarian concerns can be as informed or then blind to the other.

There are plenty of geopolitical analysts and actors that wish to minimize human suffering, and there are plenty of humanitarian actors that are aware of the geopolitical realities. You can also find the opposite cases, of geopolitical analysts and/or actors that have zero concern for human rights (there are plenty of brutal dictatorships that understand the geopolitics of their situation but are unconcerned with human rights).

In terms of "historical force", most conflicts are framed and limited by humanitarian concerns. The rules of war and international law and WMD treaties and other self-imposed constraints on state actors are the result of a humanitarian tradition to minimize the harms of war and strive to maximize a liveable peace after war, all while recognizing that wars do happen. If there was no humanitarian concern every state would stockpile chemical weapons and strive to attain nuclear weapons and not hesitate to use such weapons, as well as any other weapon on hand, on civilian populations. And not just weapons of mass destruction, there is a long list of weapons that states agree not to use (sound weapons, pain inducing weapons, various forms of terrorism, laser and other blinding weapons and radiation weapons of various kinds) all while competing with each other using as much force as they can muster within this broader humanitarian framework.

There's all sorts of things states could do but choose not to, and the argument that they don't do it because they would look bad simply circles back to the fact they look bad because enough people genuinely believe in the humanitarian principles (such as striving to minimize rather than maximize harm, avoid intentionally harming civilians and so on) that therefore those actions look bad.

The only reason we are discussing Israels breaching of various taboos is because a global human rights movement established those constraints on state actions to begin with. Everything Israel is doing, from intentionally starving a civilian population to compromising supply chains with explosives, could be completely normal acts of war that no one is the least surprised by, as normal as shooting with riffles.

Which is one area where I diverge from Mearsheimer in that states in the current system strive to maximize power but within a collaborative framework of self-imposed constraint due to the genuine belief in principles opposed to power-maximization. Even Israel could have easily carried out the final solution to the Palestinian problem if not for attempting to at be able to keep pretending it conforms to these universal human rights values. Even Israeli propaganda would have difficulty pretending to be a good faith actor if there was not one Palestinian left in Gaza.

And, as mentioned above, these constraints are due to the values and not some second order practical consideration, for we can easily find periods in history where there were no such values and we never find such constraints simply arising anyway due to practical lessons. When it was completely compatible with people's values to be torturing, crucifying (including a tenth of your own men on occasion), poising enemy water supplies, general raping and pillaging and eradication or enslaving conquered people's etc. we never find in history groups of people who have these values (i.e. see no problem with any of these things) but stop doing them because of practical considerations (like "torture doesn't work" for example).

Or she didn’t say that because just a moron would have thought that buying time was an admission by Europeans that Minsk agreements were deceivingly meant to arm Ukraine in order to initiate/pursue a war against Russia. — neomac

That's literally what the expression "buying time" means. It doesn't mean "coercive pressure as one component in a diplomatic strategy to establish a lasting ceasefire", which Merkel could have easily expressed that concept in her own words had she wanted to. She would have also been appraised of the situation that Minsk is not being implemented and is unlikely to be implemented during the entire non-implementation of Minsk while she was in office.

When she made these comments the mood in the West, if you can remember those days, was extreme exuberance for Ukrainian war prospects and people were happy to take credit for the happy situation.

The propaganda and cheerleading in both Western mainstream and social media was extreme with mass Ukrainian flag emojis everywhere you looked. I would go so far as to describe the emotion as catharsis with continued reenactments of Churchillian speeches and steady drip of a little of that VE-Day glorious celebration.

The narrative that Ukraine was just "buying time" for a bigger war preexisted the 2022 bigger war and supported by Ukrainian officials and voices of various sorts, as I cited above. Merkel would have known this faction in Ukraine that actually wants a bigger war with Russia existed and at the time she made her comments it seemed this factions view was validated.

We can go back to those days if you want to be extremely sure that the narrative that Merkel was just decrying a failed bid to maintain a ceasefire is an apologetic invented after battlefield conditions soured, and not before, but the general point that Minsk was not a good faith agreement is supposed anyways by plenty of Ukrainian actions and, more importantly, plenty of Ukrainian and Western actions.

Nowhere Merkel is talking about Ukrainian victory in that comment. That's your rhetoric manipulation. — neomac

She says "buying time" ... buying time for what? To become "stronger as we see today".

The far bigger war with Russia is at that time underway. By "strong" she is obviously implying "able to win on the battlefield".

Otherwise her comments would make absolutely no sense: Minsk was to buy time for Ukraine to be strong ... but alas obviously not strong enough and therefore to ultimately be severely damaged by Russia and forced to sign unfavourable peace terms?!

The sentence clearly and unambiguously is describing "buying time" to successfully deal with Russia in military terms, which nearly the entire West completely believed was happening in December 2022.

You don't "buy time" to suffer the same consequences later, perhaps even worse, you "buy time" to prepare a more favourable outcome. Using a negotiation to "buy time" would be understood by anyone in diplomatic, legal, and/or political circles as the goal is to buy time to prepare for an escalation of the conflict and not buy time in order to implement the spirt of the agreement (which makes no sense: you do not "buy time" in signing an agreement with the intention of fulfilling the agreement, just not now but maybe later?! It's not how anyone speaks with even a cursory experience with this kind of discourse).

Had Merkel actually thought Ukraine negotiated Minsk with the intention to avoid a bigger war and was therefore implementing Minsk with the goal of avoiding a bigger war, but that, alas, supplying arms to Ukraine as part of that diplomatic strategy didn't work but fortunately Ukraine is now better able to deal with Russian bad faith vis-a-vis Minsk, she would have said something along those lines, but she doesn't because she knows very well it is Ukraine the obstacle for either implementing Minsk or then trying to renegotiate it, and likewise the West is an obstacle in rebuking any attempts at a larger negotiation with the main Western powers to arrive at an understanding.

The reason there's no negotiations directly with the West concerning the situation in Ukraine is because the West, in particular the US, knows that Ukraine cannot effectively use Western leverage in a negotiation.

As the RAND paper makes clear, the West was pressuring Russia on several military and economic domains. To take two important domains: in the ABM and INF situation, the West could offer in a negotiation to assuage Russian concerns of nuclear first strike, even in mutual beneficial ways that aim to create a new non-proliferation treaty architecture that is favourable also to the US (vis-a-vis not only Russia but also other nuclear or would-be-nuclear powers); and in the economic sphere obviously the West could approve Nord Stream II that Russia spent some 10 billion dollars building. In direct bilateral negotiations Ukraine cannot offer either of these things as leverage, only in negotiations that involve (at the least) the US and Germany could ABM, INF and Nord Stream II be on the table.

Now, it was presented by Western officials and media at the time that the reason to rebuke any Russian invitations to negotiate all the issues in play, a "new European security architecture" was that this was essentially as a favour to Ukraine in that the West wouldn't go "behind Ukraine's back" and negotiate things with the Russians.

What the West, in particular the US obviously making these decisions on behalf of everyone in NATO and the EU, was actually doing in rebuking direct negotiations with Russia was minimizing the leverage Ukraine had to negotiate a resolution to the disputes in Ukraine. Russia may very well have agreed to favourable terms for Ukraine in not only the Donbas but even Crimea could have changed status (some sort of strange quasi status is had been floated at the time), if Nord Stream II was approved and also some nuclear deescalation (or then at least avoiding further nuclear escalation) which presumably the West should also want. Obviously plenty of other issues such as NATO and so on.

I say all this not only because it is apropos but also Merkel would have known the purpose of US policy was to be provocative and not to try to reach a resolution with Russia.

It's Markel and Holland trying to talk Bush out of declaring Ukraine would join NATO all the way back in 2008, so she is fully aware of the trajectory.

To circle back to her comment of Minsk being used to buy time, she is not some kindergarten level intellect considering only a few surface level facts, appearances and straight-up lies, Western media permits to be discussed (the kind of intellect that truly believes fighting for "the right to join NATO" makes sense). She has a great deal of insight into actors in the West and Ukraine, and in autumn 2022 perhaps antagonizing Russia was still not her "ideal preference" but it did seem to be at least working, everyone was happy about it, and therefore she did not have a problem with saying the truth in a phone call she was unaware was being recorded.

And it is the actual facts which best serve to understand Merkel's meaning. There are no facts available in which to base an opinion that the West was doing everything possible to resolve conflict with Russian in Ukraine and instead there are a plethora of facts available to demonstrate the West, in particular the US, is escalating conflict with Russia (Ukraine being only one area: there's also Libya and Syria, and economic conflict and continuously accusing Russia of meddling in US elections which turn out to be 200 000 USD of Facebook adds purchased by a clickbait farm; though what US elites actually meant when they say things like Russia is winning the information war is that Russia was hiring US dissidents and giving them a platform; i.e. exactly what the West did to the Soviet Union and was good value for money).

If we assume Markel isn't an idiot with kindergarten level reasoning skills and absolutely clueless and oblivious to what was going on during her entire political career, then it is a very safe assumption that Merkel understood correctly the goal of US foreign policy and also the goal of the dominant faction in Ukraine (in line with US foreign policy and CIA assistance) was to have a much larger war with Russia, which they got, seemed to be doing well in, seemed "strong" and it was safe to just say the truth (especially in a conversation that she understood was casual and not recorded).

It's an interesting topic but there's also plenty of other evidence in which to base the opinion that Ukraine was not trying to resolve hostilities in the Donbas but maintaining them while building up their forces for a larger war with Russia.

Now, perhaps the Ukrainian people didn't want the resulting war, and perhaps Zelensky was completely honest in his platform of making peace with Russia, but when you have fanatical paramilitary forces that are outside the control of the central government then what the people want and what their president wants are not necessarily determining factors.

I don't remember anything of the sort. — Echarmion

Then you're obviously not really following events and are just wasting time and space.

When the Western media believed Ukraine was "winning" the conversation (in the Western media) was very different than it was now. The faction in Ukraine that wanted to war and for which Minsk was just to buy time to prepare for the inevitable war seemed completely validated by the West and the Western cheerleaders for the war essentially presented these people as geniuses, both diplomatic and militarily.

You're switching back to full on propaganda here. — Echarmion

Neither the Nazis nor the shelling of civilians by said Nazis are propaganda. The West's own institutions and media recorded both.

Now, I suppose you could argue that yes there was and are Nazis and yes the shelling of civilians was a regular feature of the Donbas war but it was actually moderate regular forces that were shelling civilians. If you're taking this position then I am happy to present the argument of why that is a terrible position to take and in contradiction with the available evidence.

Deciding what your interlocutor is saying sure makes arguing easier. — Echarmion

You can literally click through the series of responses to arrive at your comment:

You have already quoted the parts of the paper that make clear that it is analysing a course of action where the US intensifies it's efforts. I'm not sure who you're trying to fool by now acting like the paper was an analysis of the existing US policy. Yourself? — Echarmion

You're literally accusing me of trying "fool" someone by stating the paper analyses existing US policy.

I then demonstrate that the paper quite clearly is analyzing existing US policy and its benefits and risks as well as considering different directions US policy could go.

For the subject at hand, the paper analyses the US policy vis-a-vis support for Ukraine in the Donbas war (that the paper describes as a proxy war), the existing policy of Ukraine joining NATO (... oh ... some day), and the existing policy vis-a-vis the ABM and INF treaty.

The paper describes all these policies as already provocative to Russia and potentially soliciting a Russian escalation (without even doing anything more), but considers doing more such as more arms and assistance for Ukraine (things like 12 CIA bases in Ukraine would also certainly qualify as more assistance), being more vocal about Ukraine joining NATO, as well as withdrawing from INF. All three actions, which the US then does, the paper describes as likely leading to a significant Russian escalation (indeed, the paper correctly predicts that the Russians would likely respond with offensive actions in response to INF withdrawal rather than defensive actions such as inventing in ABM, but also notes that Moscow is already sensitive to the possibility of a decapitation nuclear strike and the possibility of converting ABM bases, deployed after withdrawal from the ABM treaty, to launch nuclear weapons).

In other words, the paper describes the existing US policy on all the areas directly related to conflict in Ukraine as already provocative and already risking a Russian escalation, and then discusses policy changes that would be even more provocative.

The US then does all those things and you want to just keep denying what the paper clearly says in plain English.

It's really impossible to take you seriously at all at this juncture.

If you're willing to deny what you clearly just stated a few comments ago, that the paper doesn't analyze the existing US policy at the time, you're clearly just trying to waste time.

Now, it's not a waste of my time to demonstrate your bad faith and pure idiocy of your positions, but I'll be selective in responding to you going on, only bothering to respond to your comments if it involves points I wish to make anyways.

However, in the event you have some sort of growth of your own soul (from currently empty to "something") then feel free to actually read the entire RAND paper as there's plenty of interesting conversation to be had based on what it actually says rather than simply repeatedly denying what it says and asking me to cite it continuously.

What the paper says vis-a-vis an escalation in Ukraine is also obviously common sense that Russia will have a significant advantage and a bigger conflict will result in significant losses to Ukraine in terms of lives and territory.

The only reason the situation "appeared" to be different in 2022 is first because the Western mainstream media simply ignored completely the Russian conquest of the entire land bridge to Crimea and how that's a major strategic victory that Russia would then need to consolidate, ignoring disproportionate losses for Ukrainians (often by just repeating Ukrainian loss estimates for both sides) and the fact Russia would likely be more conservative with spending lives (giving Ukraine a temporary advantage in the area of willingness to sustain losses, which Russia could easily compensate in other areas such as air power, artillery and building a sophisticated defensive line, but did allow Ukraine to "compete" for a time those losses were indeed available to lose), and ignored the simple fact that Russia is a lot bigger with better demographics (not "great" demographics but far better than Ukraine, and even that made worse by the mass exodus from the country).

The difference is that the former does not threaten the security of the great powers, whereas the latter undermines it in the most dangerous way possible. — Tzeentch

I wouldn't necessarily agree, as Israel officially adopting mass terrorism is going to motivate similar attacks on both Israel and the US as well as normalize the practice generally speaking which effects also everyone, and likewise eroding the US credibility and diplomatic position is a threat to US interests and thus security while also threatening to drag the US into a disfavour able war, but even assuming what you say is true and the former are of no concern to the US or the other great powers, can the great powers do anything about it?

Simply being a great power doesn't magically make your will happen, in this case even with respect to your own colony that you've setup, funded, nurtured and shielded. We are in an unusual situation where a colony has effectively taken control of the foreign policy of the empire from which it comes.

If not completely, clearly enough to carry out a genocide in broad daylight and boast about the fact, likewise praise rapists and blowup embassies and assassinate high officials left and right. None of this benefits US security since all of these norms are bedrock parts of the "rules based order" US officials keep going on about and some of the rules (like not being explicitly genocidal, explicitly pro raping prisoners, and not blowing up embassies) the US even follows itself (assassination being the one policy US also carries out with the expectation no one does it to them, but even there the US is clearly far more restrained than Israel)!!

Israel is simply not effectively constrained by the great powers at the moment so what the great powers want is not a determining factor in this situation.

On top of all of that, it's also debatable the extent to which US elites are actually against Israel nuking Iran. There's clearly a strong faction of US elites that wants war with Iran while, as @ssu notes, never elaborating how exactly a war with Iran would unfold; perhaps their idea is that Israel will nuke Iran all while being protected by the US from retaliation. They clearly don't have in mind a full-scale invasion, occupation and building up a liberal democracy over several decades only to be defeated by the Taliban again, yet they talk about war with Iran a lot so they must have some sort of idea of how that would actually go. If it is as obvious that Iran cannot be invaded conventionally as everyone familiar with the matter seems to believe, it would seem equally obvious that nuclear weapons is the only recourse that changes that equation.

Nuclear proliferation is one of the only topics the great powers have generally been in agreement over. They realise the consequences to global security, including their own, if the nuclear genie is let out of the bottle. — Tzeentch

Agreed, but Israel already has nuclear weapons and the great powers were unable to prevent that nor would they be able to prevent Israel using those nuclear weapons.

What would ensue after an unprovoked nuclear attack is a mad scramble where virtually every nation on the planet will be trying to get their hands on nuclear deterrents and anti-ballistic missile defenses of their own. — Tzeentch

Agreed. Again, doesn't stop Israel from using nuclear weapons. One may assume that proliferation would lead to Israel eventually being nuked, but they may (whether they are delusional or not about it) believe that preemptively nuking Iran enough will deter that from happening. The US nuked Japan and has yet to be nuked in return; that maybe their model.

At that point, the great powers would likely do everything in their power to crack down on the culprit in an attempt to cool global fear. — Tzeentch

Again, how? And also maybe Israel elites believe, rightly or wrongly, that the US simply won't do any such thing.

For, Israel is a tiny country and so it simply doesn't require that much inputs to keep afloat.

If all the "hippy liberals" and "startup bros" have mostly already left Israel, perhaps those that remain in Israel have little problem with the idea of becoming an insular rogue state exactly as you describe, confident that the US will continue to supply them with whatever they actually need. After the nuking, they'll be able to simply occupy the land they want, kill or displace whoever they want, and after that (at least believe now) they'll be left alone.

Now, the analysis I provide is not meant as a prediction, that this is the most likely outcome. My point is that this is where the trend is going and we'd need a solid theory based on prior knowledge, i.e. evidence, to predict the trend will change before nuclear weapons use.

It could very well be Israel is "escalating to deescalate" and is repeating their former pattern of disproportionate retaliation just with a bit extra "oomph" this time. That their enemies will have "learned a lesson" and will think twice about messing with them again.

It's also possible that the plan is to provoke a conventional war between Iran and the US and that they have some plan how that will go, or anyways think it's a good idea even without an actual plan.

It's likewise possible Israel is simply conquering more territory and once they have it they feel they can defend it at a sustainable cost.

Another possibility is recent events are driven mostly by Israeli internal politics to solidify Netanyahu's hold on power, trying to push the limit to distract from Israeli internal problems while satisfying the population with perceived victory, without intending to go more extreme than the current policies, and the long term security implications are not really a factor (of making more enemies, of losing enormous international sympathy, of not being unable to hold territory in Lebanon assuming that's the case, of angering the entire Muslim world for generations and so on).

So, there are many possibilities, none of which we have much data to exclude nor support above the others, but my basic point is that nuking Iran is one such possibility and directly in line with the current trajectory of going rogue on everything else and detonating taboo after taboo in an accelerating fashion.

In terms of reasoning structure, we need actual evidence (prior knowledge) upon which to base predicting a trajectory in the data will suddenly change.

I gave the analogy of the water. Another analogy would be simply throwing a ball. We know how to predict the trajectory of projectiles and in order to predict a sudden change in the data we'd need actual knowledge of something that's going to affect the balls path. Obviously if we can literally see a building in front of the ball, or we know the ball was thrown at ground level and there's no giant cliffs around, or we know someone is aiming to shoot the ball with a high precision anti-ball system, or someone there to catch the ball, etc. then that's excellent knowledge in which to predict the ball will not simply continue on an expected high-school physics trajectory (speed, gravity, air resistance etc.; which, even that presumes knowledge of the ball being thrown somewhere close to the surface of the earth and not on the moon or elsewhere in space; even the simple prediction "the ball will be stoped by something at some point" requires prior knowledge about the situation).

Now, before Israel blew past all these taboos we did have the prior knowledge that Israel did place limits to its violent actions, so if we were having this conversation a year ago, or perhaps even a few months ago or even literally weeks ago, the "restraint theory" (either self-restraint or then the great powers as you propose above) would have had significant weight. I definitely didn't predict where we are now a year ago; my expectation being things would be bloody but ultimately return to the status quo (as that is what has always happened before).

And certainly the theory that despite appearance we are not actually outside the previous pattern of violence and Israeli war planners fully expect everything to "go back to normal" can be argued. It certainly feels like "things are different this time" but perhaps that is only a feeling and in another year tourists will be back on the beaches, tech bros raving in their techno parties in Tel Aviv, Palestinians still in concentration camps with little international concern for their well being dealing with the raping and murdering as best they can, tensions with Iran exactly as the same as they usually are and the spice continuing to flow from the Middle-East as it usually does. That is possible.

However, when Netanyahu says Iran will be free sooner than expected he may not be referring to the freedom that the US generously brings to a country after a large scale invasion and decades of occupation and tutelage, and he may not just be talking bluster because that's what leaders in wars do, but rather he maybe referring to freeing Iranian spirits from their bodies in by cleansing light of the nuclear flame.

Nuking Iranian leadership and population centres is the only practical interpretation of Netanyahu's words, that is unless I'm missing some other way of exporting freedom to Iran.

Also, notice that in the time we are discussing this a new data point is created by Israel which tracks the nuke Iran trajectory: "warning" the Iranian people themselves so they can say "we warned them and they didn't listen" after everything is made "different" than it was before.

↪boethius I don't think you're understanding the full gravity of what you're describing, which is essentially Israel becoming an aggressive, nuclear-armed rogue state. — Tzeentch

Consider the possibility that you are simply being too polite in your analysis and that death is a vulgar business.

What exactly is the difference between Israel as a rogue genocidal, raping and terrorist state and Israel as all those things in addition to dropping nukes?

It is exactly because the taboo is enormous that Israel is so envious to break it.

You are considering things from your own moral frame of reference.

Free your mind.

↪boethius Take the example given by the report - 25 strikes on military targets. It would inflict a lot of damage, but Iran would remain largely intact. So it doesn't even solve that problem, and it would create a million more. — Tzeentch

From a rational enlightenment humanist position, we're in complete agreement.

Israel is not, however, such an actor.

From the perspective of people who have absolutely zero concern for human life and have now committed Israel (whether due to some actual strategy or for domestic political reasons) to a permanent militaristic path (bye bye tourism, bye bye "startup nation") with every new act simply overcommitting to such a path even more, nuclear weapons use are not seen as simply creating 100 more problems.

Obviously nuclear weapons would create problems, but they also solve problems. Israel can keep building nuclear weapons and can just keep striking Iran, both military facilities and population centres.

Iran would not be "largely intact" but in complete disarray and essentially nuked into failed state status. Israel can make clear that it will simply nuke the populations centres of anyone else that displeases them.

Of course there will be build up and then propaganda justifying this, repeated by US mainstream media: Iran was about to build a nuclear weapon and strike Israel! this was just Israels Hiroshima and had to be done! we need to look at the end result here which is Iran doesn't threaten Israel anymore and that's a good thing! there's only so much unprovoked attacks Israel can take before they just have to act!! Israel warned the world again and again that Iran had to be dealt with and the world didn't listen!! so Israel dealt with the problem and the world should be thanking Israel!!!

"Normal people" will of course be in disbelief both that Israel nuked Iran and Western leaders and media continue to cover for Israel. Seems "unbelievable" but is it really? We've just witnessed Israel carry out a genocide and acts of terrorism by the West's own admission ... yet we see Western leaders and media continue to cover for Israel.

Before these things happened "normal people" would faced with the scenario would be like "nooo! naaah! Israel can't just carry out a genocide broadcast live to the world and the West just do nothing about it except supply more arms, just can't happen in this day and age! Israel can't just get caught on tape raping prisoners and then justify doing so and then the West just politely ignore that, you serious?! Israel can't just blow up embassies and the West recognize you're really not supposed to do that, but like whatever, Israel can! Israel can't just blow up civilian devices in a clear act of mass terrorism and the West be just like 'cool, still terrorism ... but cool'? None of that could happen!!

Obviously can happen and has happened and using nuclear weapons is simply becoming the next "unbelievable" thing Israel could do that the West will cover for and continue to support and supply Israel.

Israel's rhetoric is that Iran is an existential threat to Israel, and therefore nuking Iran is simply a common sense act of self defence in that rhetoric.

The Russia-Ukrainian war can be understood on the terms you're proposing: two imperial systems, operating on some version (no matter how cynically implemented) of rational enlightenment humanism, seriously chafing each other, neither so happy about it but both "rational" enough to keep things under control as there's plenty more empiring to be done and no need to just up and nuke the whole party.

Israel is not such an imperial actor but is a small and vulnerable state surrounded a lot of enemies that is dependent on a distant imperial force that requires constant stewardship to continue extracting various forms of capital, from money to arms to diplomatic cover to direct intervention: a flow of capital that is not guaranteed but could go away at any moment due to US imperial decline or changes in US domestic politics or disruptions to the global system generally speaking.

Some people in a similar situation would conclude that they need to make new friends, but others conclude what they really need to do is nuke their enemies instead.

Leading up to these completely foreseen geopolitical changes there was of course a "make new friends" faction within Israel, but I think it's pretty abundantly clear by now that the "let's not do that" faction has won that argument.

But what's the game plan, to just look at their enemies across the region and say "Are we to be two immortals locked in an epic battle until judgment day and trumpets sound?"

Possible.

But the alternative is to start dropping nuclear warheads on population centres until you declare yourself the winner of the nuclear weapons duelling context.

For, if you're not sure you can survive until judgement day why not just bring judgement day to you?

Personally, I don't find that a very realistic strategy.

It's thinkable that Israel would launch a nuclear strike if its survival is directly threatened, and after a long series of warnings. — Tzeentch

I think you're being a bit naive here.

Israel is the side constantly escalating: genocide in Gaza, blowing up the embassy, assassinating leaders, raping prisoners and then defending the rapists, killing civilians en mass apart from the genocide, in parallel to their rhetoric of explicitly stating their intention of genocide and doing whatever they want (aka. rape children and prisoners) and so on.

All I'm doing is drawing a straight line through these data points and continuing the plot, which should be the base line realism projection. When you have data that can be simply projected you need strong reasons (based on previous data) to believe the trend won't continue.

For example, if I present you a plot of the temperature of my pot of water and it keeps going up in basically straight line, you should expect that to continue unless previous data comes into play. For example, based on previous data about water you are unlikely to continue the projection past 100 degrees Celsius as you know water boils at that temperature. Of course, you maybe aware of a bunch of special circumstances (pressure well above or well below sea level atmospheric pressure) but absent any reason to suspect those conditions actually exist then it's reasonable to expect "normal" water boiling. However, discard all the exceptions and consider the simple case of just boiling water for tea and being provided data about the temperature rising, the point here is if you have no prior knowledge about water then all you can do is expect the simple projection of the data to continue: you're best guess of the temperature of the water in the future is just drawing a straight line; indeed, if you had no prior knowledge of energy and materials generally speaking you'd have no reason to exclude the water reaching a billion degrees.

Bring this water boiling example back to the middle east, I see a line of the most provocative escalations Israel could essentially possibly make including acts that even the Western media admits, even an ex-CIA director admits, is straight up vanilla terrorism, and that after the Western media already admitting that Iran does indeed have a right to retaliate for the bombing of its embassy.

What I'm arguing here is that the prior knowledge you are using to predict this trend would abruptly change before the projection of nuclear strike is reached, is prior knowledge about other people, about yourself. You wouldn't launch a nuclear weapon on a city, hopefully you believe neither would I.

We have no prior knowledge about Israel to arrive at the same conclusion.

Indeed we have the opposite of breaking every rule of war and being proud of it, of breaking every diplomatic norm and being proud of it, of committing a series of acts, and continuing at a regular pace, that by their by their nature irreversible changes to the status quo.

My argument therefore is that the goal is not to return to the status quo, and the only other equilibrium point available is the chilling "day after" the blazing heat of a nuclear strike.

The Iranians are probably smart enough to back down before such a strike would occur and then use the nuclear threats to legitimize its own pursuit of nuclear armament (as may various other actors in the Middle-East).

Back down to where? Israel is the party making the constant escalations and provocations and it is Iran that is the party already constantly backing down, doing the bare minimum to retain basic credibility.

Israel has no diplomatic position of what it "wants" to end the use of force and additionally it is not using force in a manner compatible with negotiating a resolution to anything. You use force judicially if your aim is to apply pressure for a diplomatic resolution, and Israel is essentially as far from a judicial use of force as is possible to get.

I agree, Iran does not want to be nuked and will strive to avoid that.

My argument here is that Israel wants to nuke Iran and is creating the conditions in which that is, if not the natural next step then "makes sense" that they randomly do.
— Tzeentch

Actual unprovoked nuclear weapons use would have global political consequences so dire that they would dwarf any military advantage gained. — Tzeentch

Dire for who?

If Israel has "lost the narrative" in being the actual victim in the situation and their DARVO is wearing thin, then the consequences for Israel of nuking Iran are much the same as the consequences for not nuking Iran, just that nuking Iran would greatly harm one of its enemies and create a deterrent for other parties.

Israel's basic dilemma now is that it has turned itself into a permanent war state and created non-resolvable permanent conflicts with a great many actors but it does not have the size to simply wage war indefinitely (such as Russia can) nor the geographic isolation to simply fester forever in a war economy (such as North Korea can).

How do you end war if making peace is not an option for you?

The answer is nuclear weapons.

It's difficult to take your delusions seriously, but let's give it a go.

I don't see why Israel needs the US to fight its war for it. — BitconnectCarlos

Israel already completely depends on the US for arms supply, significantly greater intelligence capabilities, and deterrence of the US intervention in order to conduct its current wars.

Israel's basic problem is first insisting on keeping Palestinians in a concentration camps and carrying out ethnic cleansing and also a genocide, slow at first but now very rapid, which renders peace impossible and having normal relations with neighbours.

Israel's second problem is that it lacks both population and strategic depth.

If Israel did get into a sustained major conflict with its larger neighbours it would lose due to simply being too small.

Without US support and also direct US intervention Israel could be conquered by its Arab neighbours in any sustained conflict. Israel's population is simply too small.

Now, obviously Israel can "go to war" against people it keeps in a concentration camp, such as the Palestinians, and also against a country with a similar surface area and a smaller population, such as Lebanon.

However, in a war against even half of the middle-east, such as the "cursed half", Israel would lose without US backing and the threat of intervention.

The key questions Israel has needed to ask itself therefore are:

1. How to complete the genocide of the Palestinians and create the living space of the superior Jewish race. I.e. how to implement the final solution to the Palestinian question.

2. Can Israel, as a Western Imperial colony propped up by Western Imperial power in the middle of a sea of people that don't want Israel there, survive without Western imperial power.

Israel's third problem is how to resolve the fanatical drive towards the final solution of the Palestine question with its desire to have long term security.

Insofar as US power was not in question, the problem was that the US itself wasn't so hot on a final solution of the Palestinians. Like, sure, US doesn't like brown people as much as the next superior race, but slaughter them in a giant concentration camp? Seems just a bit much. We're just a bit more sophisticated in our Imperial system nowadays. Therefore, the solution is to essentially take control of the US political process so that there would be no US opposition to Israel ethnic cleansing and genocidal policies, and certainly no hiccups in US arms supply during the final solution itself.

However, as US power wanes, Israel must face the prospect of being a colonial outpost of an imperial system that no longer exists as it once was.

Israel's current actions, whether October 7th was a surprise or not, are to carry out the final solution as well as prepare for the long dark or US imperial decline.

Israel is but the tip of a might US dick that penetrates the Middle East from behind. If the penis goes limp can the tip stay in?

Difficult to judge. History demonstrates that sometimes it's possible, but sometimes the tip of an empire just slips out once the mighty shaft no longer secures it in place.

Now, how exactly Israels actions prepare for this post-US dominance regime, how much is driven purely by Israel internal politics, is up for discussion, but reality is not contained in a few headlines today.

For example:

These past few days Israel decapitated Hezbollah. — BitconnectCarlos

Zero reason to believe this is even bad for Hezbollah long term but Israel maybe simply selecting for Hezbollah their most cleverest commanders to take over. Rarely does assassinating opposing leaders in a war have the desired effect.

Hamas has been neutered. — BitconnectCarlos

Hamas is a concentration camp based force that did not have any capacity to inflict real damage on their concentration camp guards to begin with ... without absolutely massive incompetence (willful or not on the part of the Israelis) as well as a "mass Hannibal" of Israel slaughtering its own citizens for political purposes of justifying slaughtering even more Palestinians.

Hamas doesn't even seem defeated, but even if it was severely diminished it it hardly a great victory to defeat your own concentration camp proxy against yourself (which is what Hamas effectively was) needed to justify your anti-peace policies.

MBS just made a statement that he couldn't care less about Palestinians. — BitconnectCarlos

Which we already knew. What is more important in that interview is MBS clearly stating that his people do care very much and he needs to be responsive to that. Unlikely MBS would join in some war against Israel, but the more domestic pressure he has the less he could obstruct others waging war on Israel much less help Israel as an ally (which was on the table before this recent events unfolded).

A good portion of the Arab world cheers today at the death of Nasrallah while in the west they protest - Iranians, Syrians, Lebanese. — BitconnectCarlos

Which portion? Who is cheering in the Arab world?

But in general, sure, lot's of division in the Muslim world, but the more extreme Israel is the more that creates if not a uniting force then a laissez faire attitude towards conflict between Israel and its clear enemies.

The Arab world is more complex and less unitary than many in the West imagine. — BitconnectCarlos

Certainly true, but neither I nor @Tzeentch are making such an error, but pointing out that Israel committing obvious and obscene war crimes against Arabs has a unifying effect, which does not need to be total to cause an eventual Israeli defeat in a major conflict with various cursed factions of the Middle-East, especially if the other assists in non-overt ways or then simply stays out of it.

Toppling the wicked Iranian regime should be the end goal. Humanity should be striving for that. — BitconnectCarlos

You see this happening? You see anyone lining up to topple the Iranian regime?

No. Mainly because it is essentially impossible to do.

Therefore, Israel would need to resort to nuclear weapons to prevail, at least a time, against Iran and to also deter other aggressions, at least for a time.

It's unclear what would then follow Israel nuking Tehran and other Iranian population centres; seems to me Iranians will then put some effort to strike Israel, with nukes if they can manage but if not conventional missiles, and continue to fire missiles at Israel for a very, very long time.

However, it's equally unclear to me any diplomatic resolution of the current situation. Israel seems to me overcommitted to its genocidal project and there is only further into hell it can go from here.

Yes, we agree on the main points.

Now, if by "victory plan" you mean a rational course of action, then definitely there is no victory plan.

However, nuclear weapons would not be for "victory" but to create long term deterrence that they are willing to nuke anyone, precisely because they are not rational actors. I.e. mad dog strategy ... but you are in fact completely a mad dog, no guessing games or theatre about it.

Interestingly, not only is there a lack of war games demonstrating how Israel could "win" against Iran even with a full scale invasion by the US, but a war game that was conducted by "The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center" concluding exactly that the US is unlikely to intervene to wage war directly against Iran and so Israel is likely to resort to nuclear weapons:

Israel’s actions [i.e. previous escalations of the type we now see], however, fail to bend Iran’s will to continue to wage war. Worse, the United States now urges Israel to stand down. Isolated and desperate, Israel concludes it has no choice: It launches a “precision” follow-on nuclear strike of 50 weapons against 25 Iranian military targets (including Russian-manned air defense sites). The aim is to cripple Iranian offensive forces and perhaps induce enough chaos to prompt the Iranian revolutionary regime to collapse. Almost immediately after the Israeli strike, however, Iran launches a nuclear attack of its own against an Israeli air base where American military are present.

With this move, the game ends.

Many critical questions remain unanswered. Would Israel or Iran conduct further nuclear strikes? Would Israel target Tehran with nuclear weapons? And vice versa, would Iran target Tel Aviv with nuclear arms? Would Russia or the United States be drawn into the war? These many basic unknowns helped inform each of the game’s four major takeaways: — Wargame simulated a conflict between Israel and Iran: It quickly went nuclear, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

The takeaways are also interesting, the key points being:

The strategic uncertainties generated after an Israeli-Iranian nuclear exchange are likely to be at least as fraught as any that might arise before such a clash. The strategic uncertainties generated after an Israeli-Iranian nuclear exchange are likely to be at least as fraught as any that might arise before such a clash. — Wargame simulated a conflict between Israel and Iran: It quickly went nuclear, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Although Israel and Iran might initially seek to avoid the nuclear targeting of population, such self-restraint is tenuous. — Wargame simulated a conflict between Israel and Iran: It quickly went nuclear, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Multilateral support for Israeli security may be essential to deter Israeli nuclear use but will likely hinge on Israeli willingness to discuss regional denuclearization. — Wargame simulated a conflict between Israel and Iran: It quickly went nuclear, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Little progress is likely in reducing Middle Eastern nuclear threats as long as the United States continues its public policy of denying knowledge of Israeli nuclear weapons. — Wargame simulated a conflict between Israel and Iran: It quickly went nuclear, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

There's more analysis of these points in the article, but I think we can agree that the first two takeaways are extremely "the case" and the last two points are extremely "not the case".

Therefore, the only thing deterring Israel from the use of nuclear weapons I would argue is Iran already having nuclear strike capability.

Why are you so convinced that you alone have correctly understood what she was referring to? — Echarmion

Just empty nothingness.

The West had no problem reporting this interpretation and portraying the Minsk agreements as a brilliant move by Ukraine and the West to prepare for an amazing job in the bigger war that was ongoing and understood to be essentially already won by Ukraine at the time.

It is not "I alone" that has this interpretation. Merkel is only one of many data points in evaluating this particular topic, you also have Ukrainian politicians explicitly stating they never intended to implement Minsk. More importantly there's the actual actions of further support to Nazis to shell civilians which is the surest way to provoke a larger war, which is what the US and Ukraine does and the war that would predictably result from doing that then happens.

'm genuinely confused whether you just don't understand English grammar or whether you're just doubling down to avoid admitting that you overstated your case.

"Would" implies a conditional. Doing A would lead to B. Not (currently) doing A leads to B. — Echarmion

As I clearly explain, the "would" is considering expanding an existing policy of supporting Ukraine to drain Russian blood and treasure in the Donbas which the paper has no problem recognizing is the existing policy.

The first sentence I cite is clearly recognizing the existing policy is to support Ukraine to drain Russian blood and treasure and considers the possibility, the "conditional" you are referring to, of expanding that policy.

I am responding to your statement that the authors aren't analyzing US policy at the time at all.

They clearly are (which is amazingly obvious if you read the paper) and they make that clear in stating making it clear that the status quo of the time is to support Ukraine to inflict costs, in blood and treasure, on Russia.

They consider the possibility of expanding that policy to inflict even greater costs and recommend not doing that.

However, they not only clearly recognize the existing policy as made clear in the sentence you are taking issue with:

Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. — RAND

"Expanding assistance to Ukraine" (which makes it clear there is already assistance to expand) "would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure" (which makes it clear the existing policy imposes costs which would then increase if the existing policy was expanded).

The meaning is very clear if you understand English and it's made even clearer by the context.

I know you would want to quibble by arguing that "expand" could be somehow ambiguous ... even though it's really not: if I say I want to "expand my restaurant" there is almost no English speaker that would interpret that to mean "I don't have a restaurant but I want to start one, thus expanding from zero restaurant", and if you said you wanted to expand your restaurant and it turns out you din't have a restaurant people would feel misled if it mattered (i.e. you were taking in loans backed by the restaurant you're expanding but also don't have) and would take it as a joke if the context was not serious (haha, good one, expand you're restaurant from zero restaurant to having a restaurant).

The authors talk of expanding assistance to Ukraine because they understand the policy is to assist Ukraine in fighting Russian proxy forces (the authors describe the war as a proxy war).

Therefore, knowing you would raise such absolutely ridiculous objections I then go onto cite more of the authors statements that further makes it clear they are analyzing the existing policy and it's consequence and risks:

Risks
An increase in U.S. security assistance to Ukraine would likely lead to a commensurate increase in both Russian aid to the separatists and Russian military forces in Ukraine, thus sustaining the con- flict at a somewhat higher level of intensity.20 Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, argued against giving Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine for precisely this reason.

Alternatively, Russia might counter-escalate, committing more troops and pushing them deeper into Ukraine. Russia might even preempt U.S. action, escalating before any additional U.S. aid arrives. Such escalation might extend Russia; Eastern Ukraine is already a drain. Taking more of Ukraine might only increase the burden, albeit at the expense of the Ukrainian people. However, such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace. — Extending Russia ,RAND

Russia may "counter-escalate" and commit "more troops and pushing them deeper into Ukraine" which is exactly what happens. They even identify this as a risk even if the US doesn't even do anything, clearly stating that Russia may "preempt U.S. action".

As mentioned, they make there position even clearer in their recommendation to resolve the conflict, compared to keeping it going (which may result in Russian preemptive escalation) or indeed expanding lethal aid, what the US actually does (which may also result in Russian escalation).

Conclusion
The option of expanding U.S. military aid to Ukraine has to be evaluated principally on whether doing so could help end the conflict in the Donbass on acceptable terms rather than simply on costs it imposes on Moscow. Boosting U.S. aid as part of a broader diplomatic strategy to advance a settlement might well make sense, but calibrating the level of assistance to produce the desired effect while avoiding a damaging counter-escalation would be challenging. — Extending Russia ,RAND

In other words, the authors get it exactly right: inviting escalation (which includes not even doing anything yet) would likely be a U.S. policy setback and come at significant costs to Ukraine, in terms of lives and territories.

The US, since the paper was written, supplied arms to Ukraine, eschewed negotiations, reiterated Ukraine would join NATO (that the authors also note elsewhere is not only escalatory but would surely solicit a response from Moscow), and the result is exactly what the authors of the paper predict: significant costs to Ukraine, inability for the US to have Ukraine prevail and therefore also a US policy setback.

However, if you read the paper and "US policy" in terms of some arguably sane US foreign policy is not your priority, but rather selling gas and arms to Europe, eliminating Europe as a geopolitical rival, as well as a new shiny war to distract the masses from any accountability for the older less-shiny and disastrous wars, and, unlike the authors of the paper, you have zero concern for Ukrainian territory or wellbeing in the slightest, then you would press all the buttons the authors describe that would help provoke a "somewhat higher level of intensity" in the fighting (aka. a giant war).

If you didn't want the conflict to go nuclear, then you'd drip feed your support to Ukraine so that they are never an actual military threat to Russian forces and therefore Russia would have no need to nuclear recourse.

Which is exactly what actually happens.

Of course, the authors are writing in the past but even more importantly explicitly say they're methodology is simply to consider different policy directions (all in the view of extending Russia to coerce compliance, in particular in the information space: i.e. RT hosting US dissidents basically) and recommendations are based on essentially the subjective intuition of the authors and they are explicitly not quantifying anything in this first paper (but further work would be needed to do that); so if you circle back to your earlier objection that the authors don't exactly quantify the larger war that occurs, that is to be expected as they aren't trying to do that but rather evaluate if that policy direction (i.e. expanding assistance to Ukraine to impose greater costs on Russia) would be a good idea or not. Their explicit objective is to try to identify areas of competition with Russian in which the ground is favourable to the US (and, as has been clearly demonstrated, provoking further escalation with Russian in Ukraine is not such a favourable direction).

Do you genuinely believe US policy makers are so good that they can predict future events with perfect accuracy? Noone, except perhaps the Russian planners, "knew" what would happen in 2022 years in advance. — Echarmion

Again, more pointless quibbling.

US policy makers clearly know by being informed by expert analysis such as the paper in question that their propping up Ukraine and also literal Nazis to fight in the Donbas while being vocal about Ukraine joining NATO ... oh, one day, and also withdrawing from the INF treaty (what the authors warn would almost certainly solicit a Russian response) all while rejecting outright negotiating with Russia, are actions that would very likely provoke a larger war between Ukraine and Russia, a war that Ukraine would almost certainly lose at great cost to Ukrainians.

They know what the likely consequence of their actions are because they not only have expert analysis informing them of the likely consequences but it's also common sense. Sending arms, withdrawing from INF, breaking US laws to make sure Nazis get weapons, are all well considered decisions. I know you would like to portray US policy as essentially a series of well meaning whims, but that's just dumb.

No where do I state the likely consequences (such as the likely consequences of different policy decisions that the RAND paper explains) are somehow "certain", but in this case what is likely is what actually happens.

Experts put significant effort into explaining "doing this will result in that" and then US Policy makers go and do this and the that results. The argument that somehow they thought something else would happen is just dumb.

The additional proof they know exactly what is likely to happen and that is the end result they too are looking for is the drip feed policy. If US policy makers actually thought Ukraine could prevail and actually wanted that to happen then they would not drip feed weapons systems all the way to a handful of F16s in 2024, they would have poured in the armour, the HIMARS, the other missile systems, and much more from the beginning, and if a weapons system really was not yet appropriate they would have been trialing those weapons systems to inform tactics and training for when those systems are required (such as when the Soviet equipment does in fact get all blown up).

Instead, not only are the actual facts that the weapons systems are drip fed, i.e. "calibrated" to support a certain level of conflict without escalating further in the language of the RAND document, but US officials are pretty clear in what they are doing as they don't hesitate to explain that they won't provide this or that so as not to escalate, and assert that as common sense for months ... and then one day provide that very thing.

Escalate to what? Obviously Ukraine actually winning.

And why the about face suddenly one day? Because the weapon system under consideration no longer actually risks Ukraine winning.

Even Western talking heads trying to fully back US policy would have trouble parsing this policy and would even ask themselves confusingly what exactly is the escalation the US Is trying to avoid? Of course then they got the memo to just stop asking themselves that question.

Real world policies of states are not monoliths. — Echarmion

Which is why I have no hesitation to really believe that Zelensky really did want to prevent the war from breaking out in doing things like trying to control the Nazis, but other factions in Ukraine prevailed (such as those very Nazis just straight-up telling Zelensky they wouldn't do what he says), and I'd have no problem believing many elites in Europe didn't want this war either but didn't prevail against US proxy politicians in Europe as well as US pressure and direct actions (such as stating Ukraine would join NATO, those 12 or so CIA bases in Ukraine, direct arms supply to Ukraine and so on).

Nowhere do I present state policy as monolithic.

The goals you're listing are not mutually exclusive. — Echarmion

... Yes, obviously the goals of drip feeding weapons to Ukraine to calibrate the conflict at "Ukraine loses" and profiting immensely from the conflict by locking in Europe to US gas exports and also a generalized arms sales bonanza in starting Cold War 2.0 are ... not mutually exclusive gaols.

I'm not sure what you're responding to, but yes, we agree that drip feeding weapons to Ukraine so that they loose, just slowly, is compatible with immense arms industry and fossil industry profits.

Totally agreed.

A policy you made up. — Echarmion

Not made up, I'll go repost the Western media's own investigations into this issue if you really want me to. Journalists go to see if these Nazi groups are getting Western arms and ... immediately verify that as fact ... and then they publish those finding and nothing change so even if you wanted to pretend it wasn't the policy because "they didn't know" ... as even 12 CIA bases literally right there can't "know everything with perfect accuracy" well they obviously know once it's reported in the media.

The policy is super duper clearly provoke a larger war between Russia and Ukraine and therefore in total consistency with that policy the Nazis are supported as they not only do the most provocative things like shell civilians but are also a provocation by just being their wholesome Nazi selves.

An interesting fantasy but don't you think the fascist boots crossing the border from Russia are a much more effective motivation? — Echarmion

Again, I can repost the West's own reporting on these Nazis and their effect on the Ukrainian political process. Every time I do nothing in the videos is ever refuted or discussed further and the topic suddenly switches, but if you really want to get into those pretty clear video reports that show pretty clearly what the Nazis were up to, I am more than happy to post those reportings again (reports made by the West's own mainstream media as no one at that time had yet gotten the memo that "Nazis are in and making any sort of sense is out").

Having a peace agreement doesn't mean that you are partners. — ssu

It's quite understandable. — Tzeentch

Calling counter-parties partners is pretty usual in corporate and diplomatic speech, rarely means an actual partnership. For example, you may here corporate people say they are "working with their partners to remove unethical slave-labour / exotic materials from their supply chain" but partners in this context just means subcontractors and not actual partnerships.

So, I think in this case it's essentially just a figure of speech.

As the window of US intervention in the Middle-East is closing and the situation there becomes more volatile by the day, Israel is hoping to signal to the US that these attempts at diplomacy haven't completely failed. — Tzeentch

I completely agree with your position except I doubt there was any signalling of this kind going on.

The far greater signal during the UN visit was ordering the strike on the apartment buildings to kill the Hesbollah leader Nasrallah leader.

However, I think these attempts have failed, and that there isn't a single actor in the Middle-East that isn't counting down the days for the US intervention window to completely shut, after which they will fundamentally change their disposition towards Israel. — Tzeentch

I would go further and state that Israel and the US knows this as well.

I think it's more likely that both Israel and the US realize Israel has overcommitted to the genocide in Gaza and that has made irreversible changes.

The situation is now that ultimately the US simply has limits to what it is able to accomplish militarily, but Israel, as a country (i.e. can't now change with a change in political leadership), has no other short or medium term options than to try to force US intervention anyways ... or ... or ... or then just Nuke Iran and maybe others.

Which, seeing Israel's course of action, the nuke Iran plan could be the plan from the beginning, or near the beginning.

For, as much as it's talked about the scenario of Israel dragging in the US in a war with Iran, I've never seen it explained how this war would work exactly. No analyst I've ever seen has even outlined how Iran could be defeated with conventional forces and on the contrary I've only ever seen it explained how this is literally impossible: Iran is too big, too mountainous, too populous, too battle hardened from the war with Iraq and then surviving constant sanctions and proxy actions, to be defeateable.

Therefore, if you war game it out (which all these countries do) the only actual "win" state is nuking Iran.

You have already quoted the parts of the paper that make clear that it is analysing a course of action where the US intensifies it's efforts. I'm not sure who you're trying to fool by now acting like the paper was an analysis of the existing US policy. Yourself? — Echarmion

The paper is an analysis of existing US policy:

Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. — RAND

You need to actually read the paper to play the "what does it say" game.

The word "expand" is used because the existing policy is to assist Ukraine which the paper is analyzing the existing policy of supporting Ukraine to inflict costs, in terms of blood and treasure, on Russia and is considering the possibility of increasing that assistance.

The paper goes onto to consider a bunch of factors, including nuclear deterrence:

Risks
An increase in U.S. security assistance to Ukraine would likely lead to a commensurate increase in both Russian aid to the separatists and Russian military forces in Ukraine, thus sustaining the con- flict at a somewhat higher level of intensity.20 Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, argued against giving Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine for precisely this reason.

Alternatively, Russia might counter-escalate, committing more troops and pushing them deeper into Ukraine. Russia might even preempt U.S. action, escalating before any additional U.S. aid arrives. Such escalation might extend Russia; Eastern Ukraine is already a drain. Taking more of Ukraine might only increase the burden, albeit at the expense of the Ukrainian people. However, such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace. — Extending Russia ,RAND

Moreover, the authors asset very clearly that the risk of a larger conflict exists even without further provocations: that Russia "Russia might even preempt U.S. action, escalating before any additional U.S. aid arrives. Such escalation might extend Russia," which means the existing policy of supporting Ukraine may result in escalation by Russia that comes with significant risks.

The key phase being "significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility" and also "This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows".

I.e. if you actually read the paper the authors are quite clear that the existing policy of supporting Ukraine may result in a larger war which they see is highly risky for US policy as well as a high cost to Ukraine whatever happens. Their recommendation is to resolve the situation, in which further assistance of threat of assistance could be leverage in a resolution, but the authors are quite clear that the risks are very high, in particular to Ukraine, including of simply continuing the existing policy if you want to pretend the US made no further provocative moves between the paper being written and 2022 when Russia does indeed escalate.

Point of all this being: US policy makers knew what their policy was leading to and that the cost to Ukraine to be used as a tool to extend Russia would be enormous.

More importantly than this paper accurately predicting exactly what the consequences for the policy would likely be, the policy of drip feed of weapons systems to Ukraine is simply irrefutable evidence that the policy isn't and never was for Ukraine to "win" (otherwise you'd pour in everything they could use from day 1) but simply to calibrate the conflict at a "somewhat higher level of intensity" to inflict costs on Russia and, even more importantly than that, profit immensely in terms of arms and gas.

And this is all very obvious in only the most cursory analysis of obvious facts, without even need to get into the US policy clearly to arm the most extreme Nazi groups in Ukraine to ensure both the most bellicose actions possible towards the Russians but also to serve as fascist boots on the ground to deal with any Ukrainian resistance to the policy to march to war with a far more powerful neighbour which would obviously harm the country immensely and get a great many Ukrainians killed.

Indeed not only Merkel has NOT admitted what he claims she has, but it can not even be inferred from what she actually said or equated with what she actually said: reinforcing Ukrainian military not only is not incompatible with pursuing a cease-fire but it could also be instrumental to preserving a cease-fire. — neomac

Just gaslighting apologetics. What does Merkel say:

The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine. It also used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. — Merkel

Now this is well into the war. If she wanted to say that the goal of making Ukraine stronger was to deter Russia and so avoid a war ... she would have said that! She's not a moron.

The reinterpretation of what she said as somehow to support a ceasefire through strength, is memory holing the whole episode. Back in autumn 2022 the Western narrative was that Russia was weak, Russia was falling apart, Russia was losing and Ukraine was in the process of inflicting a brilliant victory. The Western talking heads and officials were in a circle jerk of patting each other on the cock in celebration of this brilliant geopolitical strategy, in which the Ukrainian build up, with Western assistance, since 2014 was to credit for Ukraine's extraordinary prowess on the battlefield. Various politicians and officials, in both the West and Ukraine, were taking credit for the brilliant move of using Minsk as a cover to build up Ukraine to defeat Russia.

Merkel in this statement was buying into this narrative of Ukrainian victory and taking a bit of the credit.

And it wasn't just Merkel, plenty did a little victory lap of how Ukraine "outplayed" the Russians and Minsk was part of that deception.

A version of events proudly asserted by Ukrainian politicians even before the larger 2022 war even started:

“From my point of view, the Minsk agreements were born dead,” said Volodymyr Ariev, an MP from Poroshenko’s party. “The conditions were always impossible to implement. We understood it clearly at the time, but we signed it to buy time for Ukraine: to have time to restore our government, our army, intelligence and security system.” — The Guardian

Now, before the war started it would have been controversial for Western politicians to join this narrative, but a few months into the war when the West understood Ukraine and itself to have won, then saying that Minsk was about building up Ukraine into the strong modern nation that is spanking Russia on the battlefield was simply being part of the cool winning club. Seemed at that time (if you believed what you saw everywhere on Western mainstream and social media was even partially correct, that it can't be pure invention) that this duplicitous strategy was working and the people in Ukraine that wanted only to buy time for a big war were correct.

Now, as I mentioned in my comments, more important that what Merkel or anyone else says after the facts, is those facts themselves.

A core element of Minsk was disarming the Nazi groups who literally burned their political rivals (aka. normal fucking people) aline in a building and were constantly shelling civilians.

Western countries had to literally pass laws that arms were not to be transferred to organizations their own governments viewed as Nazi terrorists (which they obviously were). These laws were passed because it's hard to vote against a ban on weapons for Nazis but journalists went regularly to demonstrate the West was not following its own laws much less Ukraine trying to implement Minsk by disarming these non-state groups.

Europe could have put pressure for these kinds of obvious provisions of Minsk to be implemented, which would not only be a demonstration that the agreements were negotiated in good faith and Germany and France doesn't want Nazi's running around with guns and artillery any more than the Russians, but had the various paramilitary explicitly Nazi groups been disarmed and removed from the front lines the actual ceasefire may have been actually implemented by Ukraine professional forces. As important, if you remove fanatical Nazis who explicitly call for a Great War with Russia, explicitly claim war is a way of life for them and they want more of it, don't hesitate to explicitly outline how a war would be a purifying process for the nation, from the front lines then if it is Russia who breaks the ceasefire you could at least plausibly make that claim.

And that's only one element of the agreements that Ukraine did not attempt to implement and the West did not use any leverage to get Ukraine to implement.

You may say "that's what friends do" but the Nazi's aren't "Ukraine's friends", Zelensky even tried going to talk to them to get them to follow orders from the president and they just told him no. Now, had the West put pressure for the disarmament of these groups (i.e. no more weapons until their disarmed and removed from the front lines and the situation on the front professionalized) then that would have actually supported Zelensky's attempt to avoid a war, which I have no problem believing was genuine but it is in fact undermined by not only the West tolerating the arming of literal Nazis but that was clearly the policy in order to "calibrate" a conflict to imposes costs on Russia as the RAND documents happily explains to us.

The continued shelling of civilians made the larger 2022 war inevitable and the West doing nothing to restrain their Nazi dogs is one of the critical contributors to "somewhat higher intensity" fighting that we see.

The position that Merkel was taking credit for Ukrainian "winning" by helping to negotiate a bad faith deal to buy time was not controversial, that was the accepted facts and talking heads didn't hesitate to explain it to us and Merkel didn't run to explain "no, no, no! not strength in the sense of beating the Russians, that we all know is totally happening, but strength to maintain a ceasefire that unfortunately didn't happen!"

The apologetics that Merkel (and plenty of others as seen above) meant something else only arose after it turned out Ukraine wasn't totally and easily beating the Russians and that maybe it would have been better to try to implement Minsk to avoid a giant war that turns out has gotten hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed.

You need to reach into the memory hole and dig out what the Western media was essentially playing on loud speaker, on repeat without interruption for months: Ukraine was winning, fighting for the "right to join NATO" (even when you can't actually join NATO because NATO doesn't let you in) is brilliant politics, Russia would collapse any day, and so on, the war was in no way regrettable but "teaching Russia a lesson", and that the West was pure and righteous and never did anything wrong and Ukraine was our innocent child finally taking flight from under our wing and learning to soar on the winds of angelic victory (just as we do since centuries).

Concerning "bad faith" accusations, apparently it's more plausible that Putin (arguably an expert in disinformatia) was duped by the Europeans (however interested in pacifying the conflict to come back to do business as usual with Russia, reason why they have been already rejecting/postponing NATO membership for Ukraine all along), than that Europeans were taking countermeasures against Putin's palpable bad faith back then (having Putin already violated various international and bilateral treaties by illegally annexing the Crimean peninsula and committing acts of armed aggression against Ukraine, and being very much interested in keeping a conflict in Donbas alive, to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, or to allow further annexations). LOL. — neomac

I can't even parse what you're even trying to say ... that concerning bad faith actions Putin was duped by European bad faith actions? Just in a different way than no one made much attempt to implement Minsk (because US policy was to have exactly the conflict we see and European leaders are merely the receptacle of American dick)? Is that what you're trying to say?

For those interested in actual analysis and understanding, rather than just repeatedly gaslighting that a document doesn't say ... exactly what it plainly says in direct terms.

I honestly recommend reading the whole RAND document cited, it's a fascinating read.

And if you read the whole document, not only is it perfectly clear that escalating the various wars at the time, most notably Ukraine, are bad for US interests ... we know because it literally says so in the introduction:

Most of these measures—whether in Europe or the Middle East— risk provoking Russian reaction that could impose large military costs on U.S. allies and large political costs on the United States itself. Increasing military advice and arms supplies to Ukraine is the most feasible of these options with the largest impact, but any such initiative would have to be calibrated very carefully to avoid a widely expanded conflict. — Extending Russia - Rand

Which again "widely expanded conflict" is another way to say "war" just like "losing territory" in a "higher intensity" conflict is another way of saying war, but correctly describes what we're seeing today: the widely expanded conflict in Ukraine is a large political cost to the United States, along with costing Ukrainian lives and territory as the authors note later.

However, steps that can be taken to provoke a larger war in Ukraine with Russia is not limited to just what happens in Ukraine.

If you bother to read the whole document, you'll also find the authors understand things are connected:

Withdraw from the Treaty and Deploy Missiles in Europe

The United States could formally withdraw from the INF Treaty, develop and deploy ground-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles, and deploy those missiles in Western Europe. This would enable the United States to deploy ground-based nuclear missiles in more-secure locations that could still be used to target positions along NATO’s eastern flank that are potential, or at least hypothetical, targets for Russian invasion. More worryingly from the Russian perspective, the United States also could target locations inside Russia, enhancing the U.S. capability for a rapid strike on command and control systems or other strategic assets (although the United States already has air- and sea- launched missiles capable of such missions). This policy option could further enhance U.S. conventional capabilities to target Russian air defense assets that could hinder U.S. and NATO aircraft in the event of a crisis. Moreover, the deployment of missiles could send a strong signal that the United States intended to defend its NATO allies in Europe, including with nuclear weapons.

With regard to the potential benefits for extending Russia, deployment of such missiles in Western Europe would definitely get Moscow’s attention. Russia remains highly concerned about the potential for such decapitation strikes with the INF Treaty in place, given U.S. sea- and air-launched intermediate-range missile capabilities, as well as the potential for Aegis Ashore missile defense sites to be altered to fire GLCMs. Those concerns would spike in the event of the return of U.S. intermediate-range nuclear missiles to Western Europe, particularly if they preceded the deployment of any substan- tial Russian intermediate-range nuclear missile capabilities, and could even be interpreted as a prelude to NATO aggression against Russia. This would almost certainly prompt a Russian response, potentially involving substantial resources, or at least the diversion of substantial resources from other defense spending, though it is difficult to assess what share would be directed toward defensive capabilities rather than offensive or retaliatory ones. It is worth noting that numbers of nonstrategic nuclear weapons and launch platforms specific to their delivery are not constrained by New START, and that Russia likely retains vastly more such operational weapons than does the United States, with the potential to rapidly deploy more. — Extending Russia - Rand

Which there's a lot to say about. First that obviously the Russians are naturally and reasonably concerned about the a decapitation strike and the obvious possibility that nominally defensive missile systems are converted to offensive capabilities, indeed literally saying "highly concerned" and "then as the potential for Aegis Ashore missile defense sites to be altered to fire GLCMs" along with the sea based systems. We should note this because at least a dozen pages have been devoted to what is essentially gaslighting that Russia should not be concerned about these systems in the slightest.

But even more notably for the topics at hand, the authors clearly predict that withdrawing from the INF treaty entirely would likely "would almost certainly prompt a Russian response, potentially involving substantial resources, or at least the diversion of substantial resources from other defense spending, though it is difficult to assess what share would be directed toward defensive capabilities rather than offensive or retaliatory ones" which is exactly what Russia does!!

So, if you read this paper and are wondering how to start a big war (rather than the smaller war that was already ongoing) in Ukraine then withdrawing from INF would be one thing on your lists to do in order motivate Russia to "involve substantial resources" in things like defence capabilities ... but also "offensive and retaliatory" actions.

US withdrew from the INF treaty ... when again?

The United States formally withdrew from the treaty on 2 August 2019. — Wikipedia Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

But interestingly US already suspended the treaty in February 2019 and the RAND paper is printed in 2019, so it's almost like this paper was written, someone read it, and the US withdrew from the INF treaty.

Keep in mind also that this is the one measure where the authors use the strongest language to emphasize Russia will definitely for sure respond pretty hard.

Which is exactly what happens.