@Benkei you taking me up on my wager?

Ok I was a day off, DLX already - 5% in pre-trading.

The meltdown begins!

The Ponzi scheme can no longer support their share price and it's going to zero and then trading will stop after that, I guess the SEC and NASDAQ "let the market decide".

Putting all my florbose on the table this time, no holding back, all in.

Well I'm out 3 florbose, but the day is young.

Considering Deluxe Corporation doesn't even have a functioning website since 2 months, I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one. But we'll see.

Well as for me, I'm pretty risk averse, so I'm only putting 3 florbose down that DLX doesn't trade when the New York Stock exchange opens in 15 minutes.

Like I know @Benkei wants to bet against me, so what's he wagering? 5 florbose ... 6!!

Nearly a month has gone from the last commentary on this thread. — ssu

Events have resolved all the key issues of disagreement.

It seems quite bleak for Ukraine at this time. — ssu

It was bleak since rejecting negotiations and committing to a long war.

It's very unlikely that Trump will truly pressure Russia, because that would totally go against everything he has communicated. — ssu

Trump hasn't even said he's going to pressure Russia. Unless I've missed something, Tump has mostly just said he'll end the war.

When US Presidents (Obama, Trump) have promised to draw down something, that isn't the best negotiation stance to have with an enemy that can simply wait out and continue. — ssu

Well, that's assuming the US even cares about the results of these kinds of negotiations. Once the decision is made to get out of a war, what's there to negotiate from a US perspective? The rights of the people they're abandoning?

Hence I started a thread Why Americans lose wars as there are parallels to Afghanistan and the Vietnam war. — ssu

I'll add my thoughts when I have the time, but I think we agree on the basics.

Of course, I may be wrong. And hopefully I would be wrong, actually... — ssu

Doubtful you are wrong. Losing wars is where the money is.

I have to correct you here.

My point was not that the US is trying to crash the global economy, but that it is trying to disrupt land-based trade connections between its main rivals in order to maintain control of global trade. — Tzeentch

Maybe there is some subtlety I missed in your position, but the core of the disagreement seemed to me that you were arguing this Israeli escalation in the Middle-East served US grand strategy interests up to and including a war with Iran.

The central thesis of my rebuttal to this position is that a war with Iran would crash the global economy and I don't see that as serving US grand strategy interests.

If the position is escalation but not to the point of crashing the global economy, my rebuttal to that position is that I just don't see what more chaos the US could possibly need in the Middle-East.

Obviously there was no land trade highway about to be built through Gaza nor Lebanon, so sure trade could pass through Iran and so collapsing Iran could make "sense" in such a strategy but:

A. Genocide isn't needed to provoke a war with Iran and is anyways a liability (my main concern is arguing the genocide serves no plausible US imperial interest), and

B. A war with Iran would crash the global economy (presumably) and I don't see what the US does next ... just keep the rest of the world economy continuously crashed?? Doesn't seem possible to me over any extended period of time, but indeed would just hyper-accelerate building exactly those land corridors of which this strategy is designed to prevent.

Of course I am not disagreeing with the generalities that you present that chaos in these land corridors generally serves the whole Island-navy-vs-land geopolitical strategic approach, just not to the point of actually crashing the global economy that would have plenty of adverse effects and accelerate further opposing coalitions (which we are already seeing by simply disrupting the global economy and threatening the crash Russia as a vital supplier of resources to plenty of countries; they naturally look to secure their survival in building an alternative trading system to that of the US; which, sure, the US could embargo the whole world - I'm not denying their supremacy on the high seas - but where does that actually lead is my issue).

Which mirrors our disagreement also on escalation with China in which your position is the US could embargo China, whereas my position is the same that I see no successful pathway after crashing the global economy.

However, to be clear, I am open to such questions being answered. I'm not claiming such a strategy is impossible for US imperial custodians to be embarked on, only that I don't see what it could be; therefore, given that, I feel the data is best explained by the alternative hypothesis that these escalations serve various coalitions of US elite personal interest merely cloaked in broad strategic terms such as Israel by definition serving US interests somehow, but quite directly at the expense of US grand strategic interest.

It's not a matter of him being bought off to outright start a war which I agree he wouldn't do if the option was explicitly presented to him. However there are plenty of escalatory actions that the guy may not know is escalatory. I'm talking about him accidentally putting Iran in a position where they put Trump in a position to start a war. Perhaps he could be told that assassinating a top Iranian general in the middle of Tehran like Israel did when they killed Nasrallah would be a good idea, with assurances from Netanyahu that this definitely wouldn't get the Iranians to retaliate in a major way. He could very well be paid off to do something like that, as he was when he moved the embassy to Jerusalem. — Mr Bee

Yes, this is definitely a good explanation for all the escalation that happened during his presidency.

However, "when shit hits the fan" as it were and you need daily approval of the president for all sorts of military actions and responses, then the inability to predict Trump is a problem.

He can snub his base all he wants and they will still suck up to him. He was supposed to "drain the swamp" but his major piece of legislation was a tax cut to the rich. He was supposed to get Mexico to pay for the wall but shut down the government because congress wouldn't fund it. He was supposed to bring back jobs to the Midwest, which ironically enough happened under Biden. None of that matters. — Mr Bee

Sure, but none of that is on the scale of crashing the global economy in a mad scheme to attack Iran without an endgame.

However, as I say, if there's deescalation that is mainly due to practical factors in the scenario I propose, including what Israel now understands as practical limits.

The issue of buying Trump is related in my these only to escalating the genocide, simply to avoid paying for something you can get for free anyways under Biden. I'm not disputing you can pay Trump in one way or another to do a great many things, including continuing the Genocide but it's just economics 101 to buy from the cheaper source for the same thing (... or indeed get paid for getting it, as is currently happening under Biden; which I think is best explained by Biden's proclivity to be "grandpa awkward" around children in public translating to even more damaging video material existing in private).

Obviously Trump has no problem wither further violence against the Palestinians, but if he's asked for something he's going to want something in return.

If it was only Trump that would be an obstacle to further escalation I agree with your view that he can anyways be easily manipulated into escalation. Deescalation would be due to simply not having the means to escalate further to a desirable scenario (because Iran can fight back).

The fundamental driver of this corruption being that US elite interests diverge from any plausible objective imperial interests as soon as imperial extension reaches a peak (a rising tide no longer lifts all boats) and is greatly accelerated by the removal of an ideological threat to the whole system, such as communism.

Even if you loved the empire, as soon as there's enough US elites that rather maximize their own wealth by withdrawing US political capital (mostly by mismanaging imperial finances), then there is anyways created an elite collective action problem that if you don't defend your position in the troff then someone else will take your place anyways.

I.e. would you either spend your capital on trying to defend some plausible set of US imperial interests ... or spend your capital on getting even more capital and just move to your giant yacht in Singapore with a few backup bunkers sprinkled over the globe on various cool islands, even undersea bases like Sponge Bob Square Pants!, if it all goes tits up?

The rational choice according to US elite's own ideology is to maximize their own individual gains in this situation and not sacrifice a single dollar like a dirty communist for the good of the whole, even if the whole is the glorious empire that they'll cry single tears over saluting the flag in this case and even if the end result of transferring all the means of production to communist China in pursuing individual gains is that communism becomes the dominant force on the planet. "They're not really communists" they tell themselves, if you haven't noticed that refrain.

It is a mathematical certainty that at some point you maximize your gains by withdrawing whatever capital you can from any system you're involved in, rather than pursue the marginal gains of growing that system as a whole. I.e. at some point you maximize your gains as a US elite not by further growth of the Empire but by pursuing decreases in taxes while running up the national debt to transfer to yourself through various corrupt schemes and simply cut deals with other elites to make it happen, all of whom have an interest in doing the exact same thing.

When all is said and done you simply look at rational choice theory and pat yourself on the cock.

He's probably not knowingly gonna do something that will be akin to starting a war, but I can't definitively rule out him being duped into it. He was convinced to assassinate Soleimani after all. — Mr Bee

I don't disagree but Trump viewed assassinating Soleimani as anyways a good thing that he's super proud of and believes, possibly correctly, people are proud of him for it too, especially his base. Where I'm unsure how easy it is to buy Trump is to do something that would make him unpopular like starting a giant war that can't be won and would also cause a major economic catastrophe sending oil sky high (he's also super proud of keeping oil prices low).

Where Trump is far more interesting than Biden is that his megalomania competes with his propensity for corruption, making him unpredictable.

So, I think we are in agreement that we can't predict either way, and so Israel can't predict either way, whereas Biden and Harris are 100% predictable. However, even Harris would want something, so it's anyways cheaper to get your genocide in before the deadline.

Which is only one explanation of recent events, that we are on a deescalation track and that explains Israel's weak attack on Iran doing nothing what they promised to do and also Israel escalating in Gaza to take advantage of peak tension to distract from the genocide but also not need to spend any further political capital once there's a new president.

Of course, the alternative scenario that Israel is just waiting for the next president, whether Trump or Harris or both, to escalate, is possible but seems to me less likely as I find the better fit to the data is that the Pentagon is simply unable to wage war on Iran in any sensible way and not that Biden would be unwilling to.

I mean he has been paid off by people like Sheldon Adelson and now his wife. He was the one who ripped up the Iran deal, moved the embassy to Jerusalem, and did the Abraham Accords which bypassed the Palestinian issue. Like you said, Trump isn't knowledgeable about the middle east so he could be casually led into agreeing to things that most other presidents won't including Biden. — Mr Bee

Definitely Trump participates in these sorts of transactions but all this stuff his base also wanted. His MO is more seeing what his base wants and then maximizing his gains in following through on that.

Trump does have a strange sort of integral loyalty to his base, which is why his base is loyal to him. He is aware that his base is against more wars and he did deliver on that policy during his presidency.

He's going to wheel and deal behind the scenes to maximize his gains, do "good business with the boys" essentially, but I do feel he puts the limit on anything that would visibly upset his base, such as starting a giant war they don't want and would increase the price of oil which they also don't want.

So, totally agree with you that he was easily manipulated during his presidency to setup both further escalation in Ukraine and further escalation in the Middle-east, but also notable the "main events" didn't actually then happen during his presidency. He teed up Biden to hit it out of the park though, genocide and giant war wise.

As a result I don't see him giving a damn about the Palestinians or their plight. His administration would probably pass the responsibility to someone like his son in law Kushner who's made his intentions to build beachfront property on Gaza well known. — Mr Bee

Totally agree here. As mentioned the only reason for Israel to speed things up before the election is to simply avoid needing to negotiate with the next president. Hence, clear Northern Gaza, start settling it under the next president who won't push back on that, whether Trump or Harris, but neither need to "pay more" in one form of political capital or another for further big favours; "go back to normal" as it were. The normal money sent to Israel is controlled by congress anyways so pay days aren't going to stop; the presidency is only needed to control for military operations.

Biden is still gonna be president for a few more months so yeah the possibility of Israel starting a war with Iran isn't completely out of the question. In fact Netanyahu may be more likely to do it during the lame duck period just so he can tie the next administration's hands. If Netanyahu feels emboldened by a Trump victory to start a war with Iran that would probably be when he'd do it. Would also provide cover for his buddy Trump to pretend like he's some kind of dove too. — Mr Bee

Definitely possible. We'll need to wait and see. Trump would definitely encourage that and be like "sleepy Joe has finally woken up!"

The alternative scenario I present is conditioned on deescalation being motivated by simply a lack of means and not motivation; there's a few indications (weak response to Iran, lack of any sensible war plan to defeat Iran, lacklustre performance invading Lebanon, domestic tensions rising in Israel) to support the premise, but it could easily all be a ruse.

As I've been discussing with @Tzeentch, one possibility is the US wants to more-or-less start collapsing the global economy by massive chaos in the various Eurasian "crossroads". @Tzeentch views events in line with this general geopolitical strategy.

My own view is that events are better explained by pursuing such a strategy nominally but the essential character driving US policy being corruption; that US imperial factions are withdrawing capital from the empire (different forms of war profiteering in the case of Ukraine - military, selling gas to Europe, privatizing Ukraine and buying up the farmland, human, drug and arms trafficking - and in the case of Israel all those war profiteering motivations but also, dare I say, "propheteering" in the form of pursuing a delusional apocalyptic Zionist vision); other US elite factions "go along with it" due to inter-elite negotiations, but only up to a limit of threatening their core interests (such as actually collapsing the global economy, in the case of tech elites, or then getting into wars that can't be won, in a bad way and not a good way, such as top Pentagon generals and CIA bureaucrats, who also have say in these negotiations). I.e. geopolitical debate in the US is currently a proxy for discussing and sorting out each elite faction's share of the Imperial pie, resulting in conversation that presents itself as being about "US strategic interests" but is really about which elites are going to get what and which pipers are going to get paid along the way.

Zionists are simply one of many US elite factions in this context getting their pound of flesh.

He did suggest that Israel should attack the nuclear facilities in Iran in response to the Oct 1 attack. Of course that may be him playing politics because he thinks a war with Iran would help him but I just want to throw that out there. — Mr Bee

My basic point is that he's free to criticize Biden for not being "tough enough" as red meat to his base without having any actual intention to attack Iran. If elected he's then free to claim there was a perfect time to attack Iran but the weak Biden missed it.

Apart from that I agree that Trump's general aversion to wars will probably discourage Israel from starting a war with Iran since they won't have the ironclad guarantee that Biden would provide that the US would be involved. Of course that same assessment would also mean that entities like China and Russia would be more emboldened to invade places like Taiwan. — Mr Bee

Agreed.

Unfortunately I don't see him encouraging Netanyahu to deescalate in Gaza or Lebanon especially if the US doesn't have to get involved. Trump is also paid off by folks like Adelson too mind you so probably he'll be transactional in matters like the West Bank. — Mr Bee

Definitely possible. I'm definitely not arguing the genocide would stop under Trump, just that I find it unlikely he'll attack Iran. However, Trump being erratic and also loving good press, he may see forcing Israel to let aid in Gaza as an easy win.

Where "deals" may occur is that Israel maybe forced to deescalate anyways if it has no further possibilities of escalating and then Trump takes credit for that. I didn't make that so clear in my post above, but I didn't mean to imply that Trump would actually be the direct cause of deescalation in this scenario, just that if it happens he'll take credit for it. He would nevertheless be the indirect cause of deescalation due to being unwilling to escalate. Permanent war with Hezbollah with the US Israel may simply be forced to accept is unsustainable.

It's unclear to me what hard influence the Israeli lobby has over Trump so maybe he can be just paid off as you say, but perhaps not.

However, my main thesis here is that Israel / US simply has no practical pathway to defeat Iran without nuclear weapons and Israel is forced to deescalate not by Biden but by the Pentagon making clear they simply just go casually defeat Iran, then the deescalation would happen due to not having an option to escalate further. Which if that happens Trump will simply claim it was because of him.

The reason to escalate as far as possible now while Biden is present, try to "finish the final solution job", would be, even if Trump can simply be bought, to simply avoid needing to do that. Escalating as far as possible now and then deescalating (whether it is Trump or Harris that wins) is simply cheaper than needing to cut a deal with the next president, whether Trump or Harris.

So now Israel hit Iran by going after it's air defense. But not the nuclear sites and, of course, not yet the oil installations, which would bounce oil prices higher. — ssu

I think the better explanation is that Israel / US simply have no practical way to defeat Iran.

They've been in a delusional driven genocide with constant escalation to try to distract from the Genocide internationally (new enemies to continue to be the victim) and also maintain credibility domestically of being the superior race that can go around killing all their enemies.

Targeted assassinations is massively popular in Israel and also provokes responses that allows Israel to claim to be the victim.

I honestly think the "win" strategy was nuclear weapons but they were simply unable to maintain the delusion level required to followthrough. The spell of invincibility broke between due to Iran's missile attack demonstrating Israeli air defence doesn't work so well (so Iran can cause significant damage conventionally) and also the pentagon simply having no plan to actually defeat Iran (Israel overconfidence likely includes overconfidence in US capacity as well).

Seems like Bibi listened to the US administration and now waits just how the US elections are going to go.

If Trump get's into office, will then the nuclear sites be targeted? — ssu

My bet is that it is in fact the reverse, that Biden is the one 100% captured by the Zionists and they are pushing a max the genocide and attacking everyone else because Biden is president, but there simply a practical limit of how far you can actually go.

When Trump talks about Iran he never mentions a need to attack them but just goes on about how he sanctioned them and they were broke and he kept the price of oil down and they would never dare due anything because he's Trump etc. A major component of Trump's rise to power initially was his calling out the wars in the middle-east as failures as he knew they were unpopular.

Biden's Zionist support is quite clearly due to lobby capture and is super bad for him and Kamala, as an obvious genocide isn't popular with democrats, and Trump has no need to criticize Biden from the left, he can just vaguely claim that Hamas would never have tried anything when he was in power and he's going to solve everything.

Trump's base is pro-Israel so he knows it wouldn't be popular to go anti-Israel but if he was intent on attacking Iran we'd probably know that. Mostly when he talks about the issue it demonstrates he just doesn't know much about any of the Middle-East conflicts and isn't too interested in them: he just claims no one would try anything when he's president and that he bankrupted Iran with the sanctions and keeping the oil price down.

Trump's MO on national security is to escalate rhetoric to appear tough and then be the reasonable person that brings peace with his brilliant negotiation tactics. He was bragging on Joe Rogan that he would bring Bolton, who he called a nut job (accurately) to international diplomatic meetings to scare people and that he used Bolton that way. Now, whether this sort of negotiation tactics are effective or not is one question but what's clear is that despite all Trump's many failings he simply not a warmonger and does stay true to his "businessman persona" or focusing on deals and economics (what he's most excited about is tariffs).

Not that Trump is any friend of the Palestinians, literally using it as an insult, so the genocide may continue, but I find it unlikely that Trump is itching to get into office to escalate unwindable wars in the Middle East. He absolutely loves the Saudis for instance and the Saudis don't want a regional war so he's have plenty of reasons to deescalate and cut deals and claim diplomatic brilliance and that he's saved the lives of all the people over there.

Wheres Biden simply gets slapped down when he tries to "talk back" to Netanyahu, Trump may simply do that and force Netanyahu to deescalate (which the US could easily do).

Most of all, I would guess is what preoccupies Trump's the most is on all his legal battles and nearly being assassinated and so on and he's going to deal with all that, as we've discussed before.

Naturally all the above is guess work as he's highly erratic while also gaining in experience. He no longer has such singular focuses as he did before and also now knows better how the system operates and can be manipulated.

Wheres when he got elected the first time he was easy to predict that he'd just keep being Trump and running is mouth constantly and fighting with the media and constantly tweeting whatever crosses and being extremely naive how the political system actually worked, he has learned a lot since so what he actually plans to do is anyone's guess, but I don't find it likely his focus will be to attack Iran is my main point here.

There's really only one way to get into philosophy in a serious way and that is a university library and following your interest through as many philosophy books as possible as well as related subjects.

Depending on where you live this maybe a more or less difficult task, may require negotiating with the librarians and other administrators if you're not associated with the university in anyway, may require being persistent, in which case local public libraries, used book stores etc. may have a few books.

But there's really no substitution for a university library and once you get to the philosophy section in such a library you'll understand what I mean.

There's no substituting reading the source material. Other material about this source material is complimentary, but not a substitute.

History of philosophy without any gaps is a pretty great and pretty comprehensive free introduction however.

In calling the deliberate murder and rape of civilians "legitimate resistance" you only expose your own moral bankruptcy. — BitconnectCarlos

The only rape in all these events that's actually proven is the Israelis raping prisoners on camera.

How do you explain that?

Ah yes ...

"Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty" - J. Goebbels. — BitconnectCarlos

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".