What falsehoods, you don't bother to read the document and then want to play "what does the document mean" game.

The document is perfectly clear:

While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development. — Extending Russia - Rand

This was and is US policy.

Note that it not only clearly describes Russian reaction to US stating Ukraine will join NATO, they also correctly describe that it also boosts Ukrainian resolve, the other key element to escalation.

You seem to be literally trying to memory hole the entire start of the war in which NATO was the main justification. "Ukraine has a right to join NATO" was repeated a zillion times, Zelensky pleading also for NATO no-fly-zone intervention.

As for lethal aid, both Western and Ukrainian leaders have boasted about using Minsk to build up militarily.

And why would the Russians be provoked by the US being vocal about Ukraine joining NATO (which includes such things as rebuffing Russian offers to negotiate a peace architecture with a neutral Ukraine, private leader-to-leader discussions and so on) because even if it's low probability as the authors note, it's not zero possibility (things could change or the US could pullout some diplomatic coup of some sort and the like).

The authors explain the policy is already provocative and being even more vocal is more provocative. US has been super vocal about "Ukraine's right to join NATO", including in the direct lead-up to the war: no negotiations about European security architecture, full rebuff to Russias draft and ultimatum, Ukraine has a right to join NATO, Nord Stream will end if Russia invades Ukraine, was the US diplomatic position that Biden and Blinken made perfectly clear.

And you're just denying these obvious facts that when I have the time I can easily find video of Western leaders and top officials saying all the above on camera.

The document is clear on what will likely provoke a war (or "bigger war" if you prefer), which is what the US does, and the document is clear on the likely outcome of military escalation: loss of territory and lives for Ukraine and a US policy setback. All of which has happened.

You are simply gaslighting and obviously don't bother reading the paper, which is prescient on many points such as the arms sent to Ukraine getting on the blackmarket.

And what's their conclusion on the "lethal aid to Ukraine" chapter?

Again, we fortunately don't have to guess as they have a section conveniently titled "conclusion".

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

The authors are clear: counter escalation by Russia (such as what we see) is damaging to US interests. US interests, in the authors opinion, is served by ending the war in the Donbas, using leverage like arms supply as part of a diplomatic strategy (which the authors even emphasize would be challenging to do even that).

If you want to pretend the authors are somehow only referring to a "small" counter escalation and therefore are not right about the "big" counter escalation, such as interpreting a doctor saying alcohol is bad as somehow not-saying more alcohol is more bad for you, it's simply idiotic gaslighting.

As I explain above, you continue and increase the policies that lead to war because US long term policy interests are not your concern but rather: 1. war profiteering (go ahead and deny that has occurred just so we can all have a good laugh) and 2. being a "tough war president" until the next election, as well as weakening Europe and the Euro and selling LNG and maintaining a little circle of vassals.

In other words, whereas military escalation with Russia through the US proxy that is Ukraine does not serve US national interests in any coherent sense the authors of the RAND paper know of, if you step back from "national interests" and consider US elite interests, the war makes perfect sense.

And it's all documented in honestly surprising detail (such as Merkel just telling us the Minsk agreements were done in bad faith), so you need to practice your memory holing somewhere else because I see no reason to toss pretty clear and vivid memories that have supporting documentation down the memory hole.

Your propaganda is just dumb at this point in the war as Ukraine is clearly losing, the cost to Ukraine clearly enormous, Western policy to prop up this disaster clearly self serving and duplicitous, the weapons drip feed to Ukraine simply to prop them up just enough to experience severe destruction entirely obvious.

Propaganda at least made a bit of sense when the costs to Ukraine was in the future and people could engage in magical thinking that a ragtag group of Nazis could take on the Russian army with sheer grit and tough guy tattoos.

It doesn't say that. You quoted it yourself, it said the US could become more vocal and increase lethal aid. How, specifically, has the US done either? — Echarmion

It's just dumb discussing with you at this point.

No one disputes American military support to Ukraine before the war started, and you have both Western leaders and Ukrainian leaders, including Angela Merkel simply coming out and saying the goal of the Minsk accords was to buy time to build up Ukrainian military capacity.

US continuously affirming Ukraine will join NATO from 2008 all the way to today. Blinken literally just gave another "Ukraine will join NATO" speech like yesterday.

You're just gaslighting at this point because you have nothing, including not a sliver of soul worthy of existence.

But if billions of funds used to bribe ALL Ukrainian elites by the US are “untraceable”, how can you claim with such a certainty that the US is bribing ALL the Ukrainian elites, besides Zelensky?! — neomac

Really stupid quibble considering both the US and Ukraine has admitted that money and arms disappearing is a significant problem.

However, I'm not saying Zelensky isn't also bribed with money, just that he's also an idiot who can be easily controlled by just blowing smoke up his ass that he's a real war hero and not a clown actor in a show.

I prefer to review criteria, compelling facts and, possibly, metrics backing up such sweeping assertions. So far you didn’t offer much to me, but you keep talking as if you did. Rather surreal. — neomac

These are not sweeping assertions. They are very specific assertions that the RAND experts make, all I'm adding since the war started (as the RAND document is written in 2019) is that what RAND describes in their document comes to pass: US did escalate with more arms assistance and more boasting that Ukraine would join NATO, this caused Russia to take more territory and killing more Ukrainians, which is obviously what is called a "war" (or then a "bigger war" if you want to start the war in 2014).

Don’t be scared man of honour, it was just a passtime exercise about you predicting the likely content of a future article which Biden would have "untraceably" bribed some CNN journalist to write.
At this point I think you yourself could write this article for CNN, since you have it all figured out. You could earn some dollars from the US (instead of the usual rubles) , you know,
and come back at us with: "once again, as I’ve predicted, motherfuckaaaas!" — neomac

Biden doesn't need to bribe CNN journalists to do specific things. If you don't see that mainstream journalists are simply on "team elite" and say what their told to say, then there's little helping you.

And did any of that actually happen? — Echarmion

It's exactly what happened. We're at the WTF are you talking about stage of the debate.

The RAND paper describes what will likely lead to "higher intensity conflict":

1. Supplying arms
2. Keep saying Ukraine will join NATO

Then describes the likely outcome:

3. "doing so could also increase the loss of Ukrainian lives and territory"

Ukraine has lost 20% of its territory (so far) and upwards of 700 000 lives, maybe more, and if conquered Ukrainians who are now Russian and emigration that won't return is counted then it's millions of lost Ukrainians.

What RAND says will happen is exactly what has happened and likewise the predicted "serious setback to U.S. policy", which RAND also explains the reason being that Russia will be more committed than the US to any escalation and therefore win.

Which RAND predicts is exactly what has happened.

No, it doesn't, since what we're seeing is an entirely different category of conflict. The paper clearly does not describe a full blown war by Russia, since the writers did not expect Russia would take such a step. If they did want to predict that, they'd have stated it directly. — Echarmion

You have to actually read the paper to play the "what do the authors say in the paper" game.

What I already cited is definitely sufficient, as if the authors are predicting Ukraine losing more lives and territory in an escalation with Russia ... that process obviously happens due to an invasion and therefore war. They use euphemistic and open ended language because that's how people talk in these circles.

But they are extremely clear, they repeat the point several times, here's another:

Alternatively, and more likely, Russia might escalate, possibly seizing more of Ukraine, supporting further advances of the Damascus regime, or actually occupying a wavering Belarus. Such moves would likely impose serious additional strains on Russian defense and economic capacity, but would also represent a serious setback for U.S. policy. Given this range of possible responses, any U.S. moves of the sort described in this chapter would need to be carefully calibrated and pursued within some larger policy framework. — Extending Russia - Rand

What this is the alternative to, and note more likely, is the idea of Russia pulling back due to US escalation in Ukraine.

This is clearly "big moves", including straight up occupying Belarus.

Most importantly for our discussion, Russia escalating and seizing more of Ukraine in a way that induces serious strain.

The authors are clearly describing a process of Russia conquering parts of Ukraine in high intensity conflict that causes serious strain: AKA a war and not just waltzing in unopposed in certain places because it's quick and easy and does require a war to do so.

The authors view is that any escalation of the Donbas hot war is bad for US policy (as Russia will win those escalations) so they make that argument. Escalation results in Ukraine losing more territory and lives and so it follows from this position that escalating to a maximum extent would result in maximum loss of Ukrainian territory and lives.

The authors recommend seeking a diplomatic solution to the Donbas conflict in which lethal aid could be one point of leverage to do so but only makes sense in a larger diplomatic strategy.

You're not reading that properly. It says that a disadvantageous peace settlement of the Donbas conflict would be a setback to US policy. But we're no longer in that stage of the conflict anyways. — Echarmion

No, it says that either Ukraine will lose territory and lives or then be forced into a disadvantageous peace (to avoid said loss of territory and lives).

The authors correctly predict those are the options and we're in the scenario in which Ukraine chose to lose more lives and territory. Had Ukraine taken the peace deal at the start of the war that would have been the disadvantageous peace option, and that too would be a setback to US policy; a much smaller setback but a more sooner and immediate setback where you don't get to play war hero until the next election. Pretending Ukraine can win, is winning, will win allows the setback to be delayed by many years.

Because putting boots on the ground in Ukraine would be so widely unpopular that no government could afford it. — Echarmion

If you're talking costs, Western governments can definitely afford it and it would be a lot cheaper than the hundreds of billions sent to Ukraine.

If you're talking political costs due to unpopularity, obviously true and we can draw several conclusions from this obvious fact.

First, this fact simply emphasizes the disconnect between what Western leaders say and their actual practically available mandate from their own people. Sure, people love putting Ukraine flag emojis everywhere, makes them feel good, but actually going and helping Ukraine directly is essentially unthinkable as Westerners don't wish to pay any real cost. Therefor, when Western leaders say "as long as it takes" and "whatever it takes" and "we'll stand by Ukraine" and talk about how Ukrainian sovereignty is so important and even more extreme things like "Russia must be defeated" and so on, those are all total lies that do not represent what the West is actually willing to do. What the West is actually willing to do is extremely limited in comparison with what is practically possible, and the extent of the willingness is prop up Ukraine just long enough to lose the war (just after the next election), and this policy is maintained by a drip feed of weapons systems into Ukraine, supplying the next only after the impact of the previous is absorbed and adapted to by the Russians and attrition degrades Ukrainian capacity generally speaking.

The second conclusion we can draw is that while Western people don't want lives lost or a nuclear war, they would actually be thrilled by the West seen to "win" some direct confrontation with Russia. The strategy of direct confrontation with Russia did not involve any loss of Western lives; the strategy would be Cuban missile crisis 2.0 which would obviously result in a negotiated resolution.

The reason is not thinkable is because we know Western leaders are duplicitous, corrupt, ineffectual, and have no moral foundation. No Western leader actually cares about the Ukrainian people and we all know that and therefore (unless you have an imagination) there exists no premises out there in which to build such a process in one's mind. Western leaders do not care about Ukrainian democracy, Ukrainian sovereignty, Ukrainian territory, do not care about saving Ukrainian lives, do not care about avoiding violent escalation in Ukraine, simply do not care, they have no principles, they are not moral people, and we all know that and implicitly accept that as the start of any analysis. The mention of principles is only relevant in terms of a game of scoring political points and at no point does anyone in the West believe our leaders have any actual truly felt moral principles.

Therefore, they would not even contemplate going in and "standing up to Putin" because while that could save Ukrainian territory and Ukrainian lives, it what wouldn't it accomplish?

First, it wouldn't accomplish a long war and all the war profiteering that goes along with that.

Second, it wouldn't create a second Cold War.

The result would actually be exactly what Russia has been asking for: a new security architecture in Europe that reduces tensions overall in the long term.

For, if you start war gaming out sending troops into Ukraine to defend Ukraine (something people, especially Western leaders, love to mention at every opportunity that Ukraine is sovereign and therefore can do what it wants, join whatever alliance it wants and so on), the only next step is a negotiated de-escalation of the situation. The chances of nuclear war if the fighting actually starts between Russia and Western troops and aircraft is so great as to be completely unacceptable. The situation would be so intense and obviously dangerous that Western leaders (lacking any actual statecraft skills themselves) would be forced (by common sense and obviously the overwhelming demand of the people) to effectively give up control of the process to the experienced senior diplomats that are still around to rapidly come to a settlement with the Russians.

Had this happened, the end result would be good for everyone, and the maximum good result for Ukraine by avoiding the war that happens instead. We'd be "talking the language" that Putin understands and we'd actually gain respect in Putin and in Russia by having balls.

Once the deescalation occurs Western leaders would be viewed as geopolitical geniuses that "saved Ukraine" by bold action.

Why this is completely unacceptable to the people that actually rule us is that the long term effects are more peace, less arms profiteering, less buying up all the Ukrainian land (that's still Ukrainian) on the cheap, and actually rehabilitating Russia as a player in the Western political system.

The strategy here is not to maintain the "rules based order" but rather to carve it out for the US exclusive dominance, which means separating this system from the other major players: namely Russia and China. Countries that can be dominated by the US will continue to function under the "rule based order" and countries that can't be dominated need to fuck off from it.

As important to ejecting Russia from the system through a war (rather than a standoff that can end in a hug and "we didn't want to blow you up nukes bro", single tears and various hugging memes) is that the war also weakens Europe. With Russia as a energy and resource partner of Europe, the Europeans, with their competitor to the US dollar the Euro, could become equal partners of the US in the "rules based order"; you'd end up with three economic centres: the US, Europe and China all relatively equal in international influence. The US could also simply collapse financially in this scenario due to continued mismanagement.

I could go on, but the point is that it's super telling that when I explain how NATO could use it's "mightiest might that ever might the earth" to deter Russia from killing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and taking large parts of Ukrainian territory, it's "No! NO! Can't do that!! Uh-uh! NO".

But why not? The reason is because our cynical use of Ukrainians not only for Western interests but for US war machine and energy interests, at the expense of both Ukraine and pretty much every other sector of Western society, is completely internalized in the minds of most Westerners.

It doesn't, and you can't start a war that's already ongoing. — Echarmion

"The war" in the context of this debate has been used to refer to the war that started in 2022 of Russia regular forced invading Ukraine in multiple fronts. When people want to refer to the Donbas civil war that preceded that, they usually specify that.

But yes, thanks for recognizing the reality that the invasion in 2022 is an escalation of an already existing 8 year civil war, in which the independent Donbas regions have the right to declare independence and form their own alliances just as Ukraine can form theirs, and that Russia therefore did not start any war but interceded on behalf of allies as allies are want to do. For, in our system, separatism is completely legitimate ... as long as you win. Obviously no one's demanding the US reintegrate as a UK colony.

It doesn't, and you can't start a war that's already ongoing. — Echarmion

Again, if Russia didn't start a war in 2022 then there's not even potential violation of international law, so thanks for that clarification.

However, as mentioned above "the war" refers to the war at hand, and my use of "the war" refers to the war we get starting in 2022, whereas in the paper they use the term "increased intensity" to refer to a larger war between Russia and Ukraine directly, and they refer to the civil war in the Donbas as a Russian proxy war. Sometimes different words refer to the same thing; since this conversation has taken "the war" to refer to the 2022 invasion, as the mainstream media uses that language so we easily know what we're talking about, I use our language to explain the authors meaning. Of course, the authors don't know exactly what escalation will look like, how big it may get; they don't get into that analysis because they view any escalation as bad for US policy.

But thanks for your pointless quibbles that clearly demonstrate you are a a complete idiot.

A war which does not exist. You're talking about a theoretical scenario which did not end up happening. — Echarmion

The war definitely exists, we can see it.

Whether you want to use language in which the war started in 2014 and is one continuous war up until now or then language that breaks up the fighting into first a civil war from 2014 to 2022 and then a Russia-Ukraine war since then.

Of course, the authors wrote in the past, so from their perspective in 2019 the war that starts in 2022 is a hypothetical scenario that is covered by their "higher intensity" language. Obviously what we see is higher intensity and their analysis of higher intensity is exactly correct: Ukraine will lose more territory and more lives and the whole ordeal will be a setback for US policy.

So why the hell did Russia invade? — Echarmion

Simply because the US provokes a larger war to extend Russia and Russia know the US is provoking a larger war to extend Russia does not imply that therefore Russia should not do exactly what the US is provoking.

The same RAND analysis that explains what would the US would need to do to provoke an escalation by Russia explains exactly why Russia would do that: it would be a setback for US policy and a win for Russia.

The paper does not explain why Russia going to war in Ukraine would be bad for Russia as a nation state, but the opposite: summed up in clearly stating escalation will likely be a setback for US policy. Since the paper is dedicated to finding how to extend and weaken Russia, then a setback for US policy is an advancement of Russian policy in this context of relative power analysis.

I can go into all the details (for the n'th time) of why "Russia" when considered as a nation state benefits from the war, but basically: more territory, more people (from refugees out of Ukraine and said territory), more respect in the international system, more arms sales, more "national unity" and a long list of other benefits to the "power" of a nation state (that is a fictitious shared construct of the mind but with very real world effects).

But the main reason for this much bigger war is exactly what you keep mentioning that there's anyways already a war in the Donbas since 2014. This situation simply wasn't sustainable and ending that war is an inevitable necessity. It could be ended diplomatically, that Russia and Ukraine and the West did nominally a whole two times, or then it could be ended by force. By simply maintaining the War in the Donbas (by supplying arms, and training and support and encouragement; i.e. using US leverage to prop up the war rather than US leverage to try to find a resolution) an escalation by Russia is inevitable. Russia could not simply let the Donbas separatists be crushed. Unlike Western people who do not care enough about Ukrainians to take on any actual risk, the people's overwhelming demand in Russia is to defend the ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

By refusing outright to negotiate it then puts Russian leaders in the position of needing to issue ultimatums, which Putin then did, and when your "bluff is called" and you aren't actually bluffing then you are obliged to act on your threat to maintain credibility. Putin made clear that we either come to a a deal, a new security architecture in Europe, or he'll invade Ukraine. The US and Europe "called his bluff", so to maintain credibility when you're not actually bluffing you are obliged to act on your word.

Why try to avoid war if the likely outcome of a war is good for Russia and bad for the US in terms of national state power dynamics? because the likely outcome isn't guaranteed so you have to take into account low probability but disastrous outcomes. A negotiated settlement can easily be worse in terms of likely outcome, but is a lot more predictable process without the risk of low-probability but extreme bad outcomes.

Why then go to war when a peace negotiation doesn't work is if the situation and trajectory have anyways those low-probability but high impact events (such as nuclear missiles in Ukraine being used) in addition to the worse likely outcome (being humiliated by US missiles in your face, loss of economic integration with the Donbas and so on). In terms of the most extreme risks, nuclear war, at some point letting NATO stroll into Ukraine increases the likelihood of nuclear war more than conquering Ukraine. With enough such calculations, a giant war now is the peaceful option.

What actions did the US take? And the result is not remotely described in the document. The document does not describe a full blown invasion by Russia. — Echarmion

When a doctor says "consuming more alcohol increases adverse effects" they are also covering the scenario of consuming a lot more alcohols and getting blackout drunk or even overdosing and dying.

You logic would be that if someone actually went and overdosed and died that the doctors advise is at fault because he didn't specifically say that and therefore we were free to conclude that what he's really saying is that enough alcohol is actually good for you.

I hope even you can see how that logic simply doesn't work; if you say more of A is bad you don't need to go through every level of A and explain in detail why it's bad. If an extreme amount of A turns out to be super bad, that is entirely covered from your relating A to badness.

The authors argue to de-escalation in the Donbas and that arming Ukraine more could be part of a bigger strategy that results in de-escalation. You're basically complaining that they say going in that direction is bad but didn't describe in detail just how bad it can get if you go super far in that direction.

You haven't actually described any of the actions the US took to escalate the conflict so this is an empty claim. — Echarmion

Yes I have, I quoted RAND saying what would escalate the conflict: further arms to Ukraine and simply unilaterally declaring Ukraine will join NATO even if that won't happen soon due to ally objections, I then stated that's exactly what the US did.

Yeah you're making sweeping claims and then accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being a propagandists. Weren't you the one complaining about being called a propagandist? Pot, meet kettle. — Echarmion

First, "pot, meet kettle" if you're starting with the premise that you're a propagandist as there's no other kettles here in the context.

Second, I literally just explained how I'm the only one who's actually explained how to "protect Ukrainian sovereignty" with Western power and why that would have likely worked, avoided all the death and destruction in Ukraine that has happened since, and that I would have been completely in favour of that. Since, as you point out, West is obviously not coming to actually help Ukraine in a "tough bro" way, well it's as obvious as that that Ukraine can't win a war with Russia by itself and so the rational course of action for Ukraine is to negotiate a settlement sooner rather than later (as the more Ukraine is destroyed the more its leverage in a negotiation is destroyed; things don't get better, they get worse when you're losing a war).

Third, my claims are not sweeping, but very specific: you parrot US talking points without any concern for Ukrainian welfare (at no point do you wonder whether Ukraine is accomplishing anything with the price in blood paid so far and what it would accomplish with more blood) because you are a propagandist.

You make up pointless quibbles like "the war" referring to the civil war that started in 2014 rather than what is commonly accepted it refers to in this conversation and the mainstream media of the Ukraine-Russo war proper that started in 2022, a pointless quibble that establishes the point that therefore Russia is simply coming to the aid of their allies in the Donbas who have declared independence (as nearly every country has at some point). You address no substantive point; at no point do you argue that Ukraine losing so much territory and lives is accomplishing something for Ukrainians.

This is a lie. If you don't want to be accused of being a russian propagandist, maybe don't lie. — Echarmion

How is it a lie?

Under normal circumstances both sides would be accusing the other of not abiding by the agreement so this point would be largely moot. However, because our leaders are exceptionally arrogant and stupid, simply came out and said they made the agreement in bad faith, never intended to abide by it and planned from the start not to, but instead prepare for the exactly the war that would result due to reneging on commitments. Therefore, the point of who didn't abide by the peace agreements is not moot but we are entirely justified in assuming it's the people who blatantly say they had no intention to follow the agreement and therefore Russia entirely justified in using force to hold people to their word.

This is complete nonsense. Russia did not abide by the terms either. Not only is your conclusion that Russia would be justified to escalate the war in order to enforce Minsk complete nonsense, it's also factually wrong. — Echarmion

Where's your proof?

We have proof of Western leaders own words they didn't abide by the agreement and never intended to, from before the signing of these agreements. Not only do you provide zero proof Russia violated anything, but anyways any of its violations are subsequent to Ukraine and Western violations who made clear at no point, not even for a single second, was the agreement intended to be followed nor actually followed. These agreements came into being with Ukraine and the West already violating them by already actively planning and continuing actions that breach them.

Now, feel free to provide actual evidence of Russia breaching these agreements and why those breaches aren't anyways justified by the other parties breaching the agreements first.

If you've even read these agreements that is, which I doubt.

Also, to apply your fantastic moral compass to all those Jews killed in ww2: "sorry, they lost!" — Benkei

It's truly remarkable how people can really just not understand double standards and hypocrisy.

Also, Nazi's at least tried to hide what they were doing in concentration camps, which is a more morally laudable position than doing it streamed to the whole world, including raping prisoners in the ass.

This is convenient framing that you, like some other posters, like to proscribe for us. — Echarmion

I've literally been called a paid Russian intelligence officer by members of your "us", multiple times.

Yet, I'm the only one who explained how US / NATO boots on the ground (before or at the start of the war), creating a crisis, could have worked militarily and more importantly diplomatically and avoided the war, and that I'd be totally for that.

The reason that such direct action was and is unthinkable in any Western policy analysis or decision or talking heads of even this forum (except by me), is because obviously Ukrainian sovereignty is not the objective, but "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia" ... which to remind this exact war and it's likely consequences are described in a Rand summary of that very name, presented in a nice little slide show summarizing a much longer document that explains this very war, how to start it, how Russia would react and what the result would likely be.

CHAPTER FOUR
Geopolitical Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Measure 1: Provide Lethal Aid to Ukraine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 — Extending Russia - Rand

Rand discusses exactly the measures that would likely lead to "escalation" by Russia:

The United States could increase its military assistance to Ukraine—in terms of both the quantity and quality of weapons. — Extending Russia - Rand

The United States could also become more vocal in its support for NATO membership for Ukraine. Some U.S. policymakers—including Republican Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Marco Rubio—backed this approach in the past and Ukrainian President Porosh- enko recently promised to hold a referendum on the issue in the near future. While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washing- ton’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while lead- ing Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development. — Extending Russia - Rand

And what are the likely benefits?

Well, we don't have to guess as there's a section clearly titled "benefits":

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

and of course Rand is full of clever, straightforward and there's always risk when contemplating benefits, and we don't have to guess what those are either as the very next section is clearly titled "risks", starting with:

Risks
An increase in U.S. security assistance to Ukraine would likely lead to a commensurate increase in both Russian aid to the separatists and Russian military forces in Ukraine, thus sustaining the conflict at a somewhat higher level of intensity. — Extending Russia - Rand

Which a full-blown large scale war I'm pretty sure qualifies as "somewhat higher level of intensity".

But by this wording are the authors being simply being coy or do the authors actually believe "somewhat higher" rather than "a lot higher" is the upper bound of risk?

No, because they clearly state what the risk outcomes are in the next section putting it together:

Likelihood of Success
Eastern Ukraine is already a significant drain on Russian resources, exacerbated by the accompanying Western sanctions. Increasing U.S. military aid would certainly drive up the Russian costs, but doing so could also increase the loss of Ukrainian lives and territory or result in a disadvantageous peace settlement. This would generally be seen as a serious setback for U.S. policy. — Extending Russia - Rand

The authors are clearly describe exactly the likely result of escalation which is exactly what has happened:

Loss of Ukrainian lives has increase.

Loss of Ukrainian territory has increased.

This is all generally a serious setback for U.S. Policy.

Notice nowhere in this document or any other U.S. document is there any concern for Ukrainian sovereignty or the wellbeing of Ukrainians. Loss of Ukrainian lives and territory is noted as one drawback of the policy of escalation, but the goal is clearly to evaluate whether that would extend Russia or not. This action is not ultimately counselled by the authors not because a lot of Ukrainians would die in a war but because Russia would very super likely win a larger war and the it would be on the whole worse for the US to simply lose the proxy war in simple terms.

Notice nowhere in this document nor any other similar US policy analysis document you'll find anything describing how Ukraine can actually "win" or discussing US direct intervention to "save the day" if the likely outcome of expanding the war occurs.

Why you may ask?

It's because Ukraine is being used as a proxy to damage Russia without any concern of the outcome for Ukrainians or "Ukraine" as some special entity we should care about apart from the people in it.

The only question this brings up is why does the US not follow the Rand advise and "calibrate" support to avoid a larger war that Russia would win and thus embarrass the US.

The answer, as described above in my previous posts, is called "war profiteering".

If you want to continue the giant war profiteering engine that was Iraq and Afghanistan you're going to need another war. This document in 2019 an answers the question of how to start a larger war in Ukraine, also why that's bad for both Ukraine and US long term interests.

But what if you don't care about Ukraine and US long term interests? What if what you care about are 2 super important things to you:

1. Keeping the war profiteering engine going and even increase military and covert budgets, corporate defence profits, black market laundering, exports!

2. Show the Biden administratoin to be "strong" militarily rather than open to the critique of the pullout of Afghanistan.

Well, this exact war we are considering accomplishes those two things. Maybe the Rand authors really did and do care about US long term interests, but that does not mean people who make policy and reading this document do.

If you have other goals than US long term interests then the questions you'll be asking yourself when faced with the extremely likely loss by Ukraine in a larger war is:

Yeah, but defeated by Russia when?

For, as long as the war can be dragged out until the next election then, after the election, Ukraine dropped like a hot shell, it doesn't really matter that Russia is going to win and US be embarrassed and a new Cold War started and all that, as that doesn't concern you.

What you'll do is have the military war game things out (just not publicly as with this Rand paper) and what those war games will reveal is that Russia has no means of simply overrunning all of Ukraine. The initial invasion will run out of steam, then more will need to be mobilized as Russias standing army in 2022 was simply not that big, with the addition of the problem of pacifying conquered regions and so on. They don't know what Russia will do exactly but what they do know is that Russia is very unlikely to win in direct military terms in any short period of time. They'd also know on the off chance they're wrong and Russia does simply overrun Ukraine then that doesn't really embarrass the US as we all knew "Russia would win in 3 days" anyways, and then Russia is anyways the big meany and sanctions can continue and gas sold to Europe and so on.

Long story short, any war gaming this situation out would likely conclude what is likely to happen in a larger war is exactly what has happened, and what has happened is what was desired by policy makers. We can also be pretty sure of this as independent analysis before the war concluded the maximum Russia is likely to achieve in any short period of time is exactly what has been achieved: a land bridge to Crimea.

Further wargaming would reveal that once fronts stabilized the next phase would be high intensity attrition due to the immense artillery capability of the Russians and that Ukraine, being smaller and less well equipped, will reach a breaking point, but that takes years (aka. after the next election).

So, what we can glean from the US establishments own documents is that they knew exactly how Russia would respond to their actions described in their publicly available document dedicated to finding ways to harm Russia, and then Russia did respond in exactly that way in response to those actions.

If you can look at all this publicly available info and come up with quibbles about Ukraine's status as a US proxy to advance US interests at the expense of Ukraine, then you're engaging in what is obvious propaganda to advance US interests at the expense of Ukraine.

Promulgating the entirely false and ludicrous narrative that the West's policy is to help Ukraine out of the goodness of our hearts, doesn't help Ukrainians but gets more Ukrainians killed.

As for Russia's actions, they are a signatory and so also guarantor of the Minsk agreements, both Ukraine and Western leaders have publicly admitted those accords were done in bad faith with no intention of following them, and indeed Ukraine didn't follow them as was the plan and so therefore Russia is entirely justified in forcing Ukraine to abide by the accords, such as respect the people of the Donbas and stop shelling them.

If implementing these accords by force is somehow breaching the previous Budapest Memorandum then the guarantors of that agreement would of course be justified in similarly implementing that agreement by force.

The guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum do no such thing and so we can conclude that they agree there's no breach happening or then they simply don't care about Ukraine enough to fulfill their written obligations from which we can conclude Ukraine has already been fooled once by the West and is now in the process of being fooled again with the "as long as it takes" talk.

The first rule of start wars for profiteering club is:

We don't talk about the previous wars.

The second rule of start wars for profiteering club is:

We don't talk about the previous wars!

The THIRD rule of start wars for profiteering club is:

WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THE PREVIOUS WARS!!!

Like, you're talking as if these people are accountable to someone or something and would need to like someday makeup justifications or something for their actions and even try to make those make some sort of sense or whatever.

You're honestly really starting to scare me.

You mean that Biden has bribed Zelensky to get rid of the Ukrainian ultra nationalists by sending them to certain death with "these kinds of hopeless offensives" because they do not serve anymore the US and then Biden will pay some CNN journalist to write an article to fault the Ukrainains also for this, right? — neomac

It's honestly incredible that you're able to get this close to the truth and yet not get it.

The only thing to change is that the US bribes all the Ukrainian elites with billions of untraceable funds and weapons as well as essentially de facto full immunity for laundering the money anywhere in the West. It's not just Zelensky getting bribed and also Zelensky is an idiot so I have little problem believing that the money is less important to him than playing the war hero in the script given to him.

But yes, spot on, these "ultra nationalists", aka. literal Nazis, are no longer useful to US interests.

These idiots were needed to start the war (i.e. keep shelling the Donbas for 8 years), and impose a terrorizing fascist dictatorship on the Ukrainian people in order to force people to the front (i.e. just straight up assassinate anyone engaging in critical thinking), as well as be propped up as elite soldier heroes for the part of Ukrainian society that actually wants to drink the coolaid.

However, in the phase of the war we're in now, called the fronts are collapsing phase, these Nazis are simply more trouble than their worth.

Solution, let them do what they've been asking for (and sometimes just going ahead and doing themselves on occasion) and invade Russia. For, the weakness of these particular delusional idiots is that they're delusional enough to think their "ultra stupidity" can actually defeat the Russians.

- Blame Zelensky for sacrificing its best combatants and dooming his country to certain defeat since other Ukrainians are too peaceful, coward or corrupt to fight patriotic wars as only Western men of honor can do, right? And therefore for obliging the West to take the hard decision to not support Ukraine's reconstruction after they squandered the Western aids so recklessly? — neomac

- Blame Zelensky for sacrificing its best combatants and dooming his country to certain defeat since other Ukrainians are too peaceful, coward or corrupt to fight patriotic wars as only Western men of honor can do, right? And therefore for obliging the West to take the hard decision to not support Ukraine's reconstruction after they squandered the Western aids so recklessly? — neomac

I'm honestly feeling this vibe pretty hard. You're not just warm, I'd say you're burning hot on this one.

- Or blame Zelensky for understanding too late ultra-nationalists were a real danger (since they pushed him and all Ukraine to a catastrophic war after committing a 8-year genocide in Donbas) after years of lies to silence Western concerns about Ukrainian neo-nazis? And therefore for obliging the West to take the hard decision to not support Ukraine's reconstruction after they squandered the Western aids so recklessly? — neomac

Cold, very cold, far from the prize. This is just way too complicated for a Western audience. What you're describing here sometimes goes by the name of "introspection" and we'll have none of it.

But sure, maybe a little "turns out there's a lot of Nazis" hints and nudges to smooth out "not supporting Ukraine's reconstruction".

- Or blame Zelensky for realizing too late that defeat was inevitable and getting rid of the ultra-nationalists was the only way to finally surrender to Russia's peace conditions, which he didn't need to. Indeed, if he only accepted the Russian deal (see Instanbul Communiquée) as advised by Biden behind doors (to keep publicly honoring Ukrainians' free decision) instead of spreading the lie that the West tried to block it, none of this would happen. And therefore blame Zelensky should be also blamed for obliging the West to take the hard decision to not support Ukraine's reconstruction after they squandered the Western aids so recklessly? — neomac

Again, way too complicated for a Western audience, but elements of what you're talking about maybe tossed around. For sure, "they wanted to fight!" will be the main refrain whenever the absolute disaster is pointed out.

I think you should consider the possibility you're just overthinking things.

US doesn't feel the need to justify anything at all, nor even talk about it.

Even if random Neo-cons blurt out these kinds of talking points (whether true or made-up) the moral of the story is that it won't matter anyways in the mainstream media.

We're entering the "see you in the next war" denouement on this one and things are falling apart, nothing makes sense but it doesn't really matter if you don't actually live in the house you just trashed with your "arch nemesis" frat bro rivals.

Look at how despicable the Americans make excuses for our Kursk offensive. They whine that they did not agree with them, they say that they do not understand what is happening, they begin to mention the ban on the use of American weapons and all that. — neomac

A civilian Muscovite must suffer more than a military Muscovite. War is a complex political decision by the political leadership of the occupying country, elected by the absolute majority of the Muscovite population (> 80%). Accordingly, the majority of Muscovites support the actions of their president, government, defense minister, and army. As long as the civilian population of the occupying country will support the war, the war or the idea of ​​a complete takeover of Ukraine, in case it ends or is suspended, will live in the vile minds of the Untermanches. The more the enemy population will be demoralized, frightened and disappointed by the myth of their own invincibility, the less such revanchist ideas will reign in the enemy's minds. — neomac

You see, even these delusional "ultra idiots" can see the bus the Americans are pointing to Ukrainian elites to prepare (their people) to lie in front of.

Today, the only one who can protect Ukrainians in peaceful cities is a Ukrainian soldier walking on foreign land, killing our enemies. It is difficult for us, it is difficult, many guys after the basic course immediately went to the disco, but this is not the end of the story — neomac

Another prediction I'm pretty extremely confident on is that these kinds of hopeless offensives are mainly about getting rid of these dangerous morons: you want to fight Russians? You think "not-attacking-Russia" has been the big mistake? Have we got the operation for you!!!

Do you read what you write? I got it from your own statements which I quoted and highlighted for you (here again: “You cannot invade the US from Ukraine.”). You are FOCUSING on a hypothetical scenario where Russia invades the US from Ukraine. Why? Because you want us to compare such scenario with the hypothetical scenario where the US invades Russia from Ukraine once Ukraine is inside NATO. How should we logically infer from such a comparison that Russia has “legitimate” security concerns?! And Russia is “justified” to invade Ukraine?! And therefore we should somehow appease Russia?! None of this logically follows, RIGHT? My charitable guess is that if you feel compelled to get to these conclusions from “you cannot invade the US from Ukraine” this is because you are drawing your conclusions also from hidden and uncritically accepted premises. So I’m challenging you to make them explicit. More on this in the following comments. — neomac

Again, unfortunately I still don't have too much time to deconstruct in detail all of your misconceptions and correct them, but I'll do a few.

Yes, obviously the point of pointing out Russia can be invaded from Ukraine is to point out that is therefore a legitimate security concern of Russia, as well as to emphasize that Russia will be much more committed to the war than the US.

However, your main problem is with this term "legitimate security concern". As I've explained many times, I am using the concept functionally as meaningful in the context of a negotiation or then discussing a negotiation.

If you want to get a criminal to talk you may need to get them a coffee as that's a legitimate ask (even from your point of view), whereas you probably won't get them a flying unicorn because that doesn't seem a legitimate ask. If you want nothing from the criminal, then that they want a coffee right now in between designated meals probably doesn't concern you all that much.

It's in the situation of wanting to come to an agreement with Russia that assigning legitimacy to some of their concerns is necessary. Some of that could be purely pragmatic (we don't genuinely agree, but some compromise is needed for a deal) and some could be genuine agreement (for example because we would have the same concern if the situation was reversed; aka. the Soviet Union placing missiles in Cuba).

Now, if you say "Bah!! Nothing the Russians want is legitimate!!" then ok, you can hold that position but what follows from that is therefore more fighting and if that's your position then you need to justify more fighting as a worthwhile endeavour: aka, what's the plan? how to win? what does more fighting achieve for Ukraine? and so on.

Which you've never done!! It's always ... well Ukrainians want to fight, it's their choice.

To which my response is that coercion is not free choice and the West bribing Ukrainian elites as well as bold faced lying to the Ukrainian people is called coercion. Likewise, forcibly drafting people and forcing them to front is also coercion and not "Ukrainians want to fight".

You're theory around these questions is so hopeless confused that unfortunately I don't have the time at the moment to explain exactly why they are hopelessly confused.

And this is on top of never answering simple questions such as how many Nazis in Ukraine would be too many Nazis with too much power and therefore appeasement of said Nazis to not invade? If you have a theory of just war then you should be able to answer this question and then go onto explain that the Nazi levels in Ukraine do reach the required number and influence to morally require un-impeasement which would therefore be exactly the invasion we see.

Also, generally speaking, everything I have predicted is now coming to pass, so it seems redundant to point it out everyday. It's sort of perfunctory at this point, but I'll keep repeating myself when I have a moment.

I'll quote myself when I have the time, but within the first weeks of the war I predicted that as soon as it no longer served US interest the throwing-under-the-bussing would commence and that at anytime the US can simply paint the Ukrainians as losing, and one thing Americans don't like is people who lose, and that the loss is Ukrainians fault, that they should have tried harder and won instead.

But with most of his troops now dead or severely injured, Dima decided he’d had enough. He quit and took another job with the military – in an office in Kyiv.

Standing outside that office, chain smoking and drinking sweet coffee, he told CNN he just couldn’t handle watching his men die anymore.

Two and half years of Russia’s grinding offensive have decimated many Ukrainian units. Reinforcements are few and far between, leaving some soldiers exhausted and demoralized. The situation is particularly dire among infantry units near Pokrovsk and elsewhere on the eastern front line, where Ukraine is struggling to stop Russia’s creeping advances. — CNN - Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion

Bt the really key parts of this front page, top right article, is the following statements:

Ukrainian soldiers in the area paint a grim picture of the situation. Kyiv’s forces are clearly outnumbered and outgunned, with some commanders estimating there are 10 Russian soldiers to each Ukrainian. — CNN

and most importantly:

But they also appear to be struggling with problems of their own making. — CNN

So ... who's to blame for the West putting the Ukrainians up to fighting a war with the Russians that every single Western analyst and "decision maker" knew they would lose? (especially as they 100% knew that "whatever it takes" and "for as long as it takes" are obvious lies)

Ukraines fault!!!

The purpose of this article by CNN is to signal to the American elite that the "Ukraine show" is just about wrapped up and to inform them who the blame will be assigned to.

If memory serves me right, when I said the Ukrainians will be thrown under the exact same bus that we threw our "Afghani friends" it was you that explained that it's different because the Ukrainians are more "culturally close" or something along those lines (aka. we wouldn't let down white people).

Well, yes, they're white but very strange ... and also irredeemably corrupt and also fleeing from the battle lines as the above article explains in some detail, and most importantly they're losing and white people who win would really be a lot better.

I agree with Benkei's skepticism.

In fact, I would go a step further and say the WSJ story is obviously bullshit.

What amazes is me is the fact that people are even willing to entertain such a story when it's so obvious who is responsible for this.

It's like the propaganda storm is messing with people's 'bullshit filter'. — Tzeentch

Well then we definitely agree.

So, being a Westerner an'all, sovereignty is not a concern? — jorndoe

Before even getting to my own views on the issue of state sovereignty as an anarchist, the first problem with the sovereignty argument to justify Western policy is that it is disingenuous.

First, obviously sovereignty is of no general concern to the West: did we care about Iraqi sovereignty, Afghani sovereignty, Libyan sovereignty, Syrian sovereignty, and a long list of other countries the West has invaded, attacked, orchestrated coups and so on?

Obviously not. When the ex-CIA director was asked (in the context of discussing alleged Russian interference in US elections) if the US has meddles in other people's elections, his answer was "nium, nium, nium", and basically when we do it it's for a good cause, which obviously renders sovereignty (of others) a non-factor in formulating foreign policy.

So there's the hypocrisy which makes it impossible to take seriously any such argument in the context of Ukraine.

But, let's say we ignore all that and consider this case in a vacuum, the problem is still rapacious hypocrisy because obviously Ukrainian sovereignty is not our objective.

If it was our objective we would have sent in troops day 1 (or even before) to "stand up to Putin" and protect Ukrainian sovereignty. Which, I remind you, I'm the only one in this conversation that actually advocated that and explained the military and diplomatic steps to do it and why creating such an acute crisis is likely to work and actually less dangerous than a long war and slow slide towards nuclear war.

As I clearly stated, had NATO gone in, Russia backed down, we avoid all this death and destruction that has happened since, great! My main concern here is all the loss of lives (mostly Ukrainian, but Russian too), so if NATO did actually do it's "democracy defending" and avoided all or most of that loss of life, great.

Now, the reason such a policy was unthinkable is not nuclear war, that would be fairly easy to avoid in a confrontation (as Russian elites don't want to be nuked either), but rather such an acute crisis would focus attention and make clear that the only resolution possible would be diplomatic, resulting in not-a-long-war (and so not-a-long-war-profiteering) and thus exactly the kind of "new European security architecture" that Russia was asking for, such as a neutral Ukraine.

You could not have an acute crisis without even the Western media getting serious about it and the only options some negotiated resolution (such as the Cuban missile crisis) and thus Russia getting some of what it wants, such as neutral Ukraine, protection for the Russian speakers, at least token rebuke and commitment to "do something" about actual literal Nazis. For, if there was direct confrontation the propaganda of "we can't negotiate with the Russians, that's up to Ukraine, we're not going to 'go around them' " could not possibly apply, and Western negotiation positions can only be so stupid, but not stupider.

It is only as long as only Ukrainians are doing most of the dying that attention can be obtuse and the propaganda of don't-negotiate, unquestioned Ukrainian just cause ("unprovoked") and drip-feed weapons and so on, can be fed to the public without any criticism in the mainstream media.

Now, we can get into all the apologetics of why Ukraine matters but not that much if you wish, but if we go ahead and assume one or another apologetics argument for not going and defending this sacred sovereignty ourselves manages to work and therefore all we can do is send arms and various covert means.

Well why not send all the arms then? Why have this drip feed of weapons systems over more than 2 years? If Ukrainian sovereignty matters (just not so much as to go ourselves) well why not send the good stuff from day one?

The answer is that the concern is not Ukrainian sovereignty but the policy is to try to damage the Russians using Ukraine as a tool to do so.

But the problems don't end there. If Ukrainian sovereignty (i.e. independent free action) is important, why do you have zero concern for the sovereignty of individual Ukrainians to choose not to fight in the war? How does forcing and coercing individual Ukrainians to the front lines to fight for some sort of abstract "Ukrainian state" right to free action make any sense?

And especially if the support for the war is coming from the right, what happened to "So they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first," and yet when Ukrainian men look to themselves and their families first and don't want to sacrifice themselves for "society" ... well, I guess fuck them is the pro-war rightist message today.

And that only scratches the surface. All in the name of the non-existent "society" that is Ukraine, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of movement, due process, free elections must all be jettisoned to prop up what is now a totalitarian state all in the name of freedom.

The idea what is happening is about "sovereignty" is so hypocritically idiotic it is difficult to even formulate the idea in the mind's eye long enough to write down what's wrong with it.

This 'sitting and waiting' reflex seems to be a form of intellectual paralysis, brought on by the fog of war and continuous propaganda campaigns. It's actually one of the goals of information warfare to bring the adversary into that state of mind, in which case it is called strategic paralysis. It hadn't occured to me until now that this also happens to domestic audiences.

Don't get me wrong. I get the reflex out of intellectual rigor, and usually reserving judgement is the 'correct' thing to do, but in this case it's exactly where the propagandist wants you to be. — Tzeentch

Though I agree with your basic point here, @Benkei's issue seems to be the particularly with the story about the plan to blowup the pipelines being essentially a drunken frat prank.

I think some skepticism about this particular story is warranted and seems to play into the propaganda technique of downplaying elite crimes as serendipitous, "boys will be boys" kind of thing, that elite crimes serve no agenda and aren't "really crimes" as any kindergartener might get up to similar mischief, nothing further to analyse.

In this case the drunken origin story portrays the decision to blowup the pipeline as essentially whimsical, and we can just go ahead and ignore the sophisticated planning that goes into such an operation, that there is almost zero chance Ukraine would act without the US' blessing, that Biden stated clearly they'd find a way to end the pipeline, and the immense surveillance system of the US that renders it difficult to fathom that even if Ukraine did come up and execute the plan by themselves that the US did not know about it

Which connects with your point that obviously it is a clandestine operation which we can be positive in any actionable sense that the US carried it out for all intents and purposes, either directly or then indirectly through Ukraine as a backup patsy, but if @Benkei only meant to say he'll wait and see if it was really all planned on puke stained napkin during a binge and then executed by force of willpower and cocaine alone, that seems warranted.

Here your assumptions seem that “legitimate security concerns” for one state is only about being “invaded” by foreign countries, and that the only relevant comparison over security concerns is between the US and Russia. But I deeply disagree with both. — neomac

I don't see where you get the idea that I'm reducing security concerns to invasion. Obviously invasion is topical for this discussion, but there are plenty of other security concerns as well. For example, between the US and Russia, the main security concern would be a nuclear war.

1. As I argued elsewhere, “legitimate” is an ambiguous expression: it can be used to express “accuracy” of one’s judgement about perceived risks in terms of security. In that sense also nazis, terrorists, mobsters have legitimate security concerns, because certainly there historical circumstances that potentially harm nazis, terrorists, mobsters more than other circumstances. In another sense, “legitimate” is about other people’s recognition or acknowledgement about somebody’s rights to commit certain actions within an international legal order. So nazis, terrorists, mobsters violating this legal order can not appeal to “legitimate” security concerns to justify their violations, no right of violating the international legal order can be acknowledged by those who are committed to preserve such international legal order. An unprovoked aggressive war (the one Russia inflicted on Ukraine) is not justifiable by security concerns in light of the legal world order Westerners support, a provoked defensive war (the one by which Ukraine resists Russia) is. “Provoked” is not about hypothetical scenarios but actual offensive acts like actual territorial sovereignty violations (as in Russian actual territorial occupation of Ukraine).
I don’t mind you using the expression “legitimate security concerns” once the distinction of the 2 meanings is clearly stated and acknowledged because we should neither conflate the 2 meanings nor assume that one implies the other. Indeed, one can successfully claim that Russia has legitimate security concerns in the first sense, and yet deny the second after the invasion of Ukraine. — neomac

As I've explained many times, "legitimacy" is a concept that is useful in the context of a negotiation, to denote where your own side sees (or you're arguing should see) the other side as having a point needing to be addressed in some way. I often used the example of detectives trying to get information from a criminal. If the criminal demands a coffee, his right to outside time being respected, and a flying horse, the detectives may conclude between themselves that the coffee and the outside time is a legitimate concern, they should address those if they want the criminal to cooperate, but the flying horse is illegitimate and they'll just have to deny that request.

If the detectives don't want anything from the criminal, they are unlikely to care as much, if at all, about the criminals concerns.

The main thing you are still unable to see is that you cannot go from "rights" or "concerns", of one kind or another, to justifications.

"A right" and "a concern" are one aspect of the situation, if we on our side of a conflict or dispute recognize that the other side does have a legitimate right or legitimate concern then that simply indicates to ourselves that we'll need to pay attention to this aspect of the situation and likely need to address it in a robust way, compared to what we view as illegitimate which can just be dismissed offhand (such as a criminal demanding a flying horse). If you go into a court of law or a negotiation recognizing the counter-party does indeed have a legitimate right or concern, the judge will naturally expect you to address in a sophisticated way and then go onto explain that on the whole that legitimacy on those points are insufficient to make their case and your case is the one that is justified.

For example, in contract disputes it is pretty common that both parties have broken the contract in one and usually several areas, and each side will then argue the other side did it first, did it worse, did it intentionally, caused more damages, didn't reasonable address the issue once emerged, didn't negotiate the contract correctly to begin with, didn't secure the appropriate insurance, didn't amend the understanding correctly on the fly which should have been triple stamped and signed in blood with a notary present, etc. etc. etc.

Legitimacy is simply the opposing demarkation to bullshit. If you receive a longwinded demand from a scummy lawyer, the first thing you'll want to do is separate the legitimate points from the bullshit, either born from incompetence or expressly designed to waste your time (usually its both simultaneously), and then come up with robust arguments that address the legitimate points and witty retorts and dismissals to the bullshit if address them at all.

2. Binding the notion of “justification” to that of military victory and defeat, or war and peace is questionable. Afghans, Palestinians, Kurds are evidence that people won’t renounce to defend what they perceive to be their land and people against foreign oppression because of the disparity of military means and costs for fighting foreign oppression. — neomac

No where have I equated justification with military victory.

Fighting under impossible odds can be justified, but the situation must be extreme.

To argue an action is justified requires arguing the likely consequences are acceptable and preferable. So, to attack your kidnappers with 100 to 1 odds of prevailing over being shot in the head, requires more than the right of self defence to justify, you must argue that the likely result of being dead is preferable to continuing to be captive. Obviously you prefer that 1% of chance of taking down your captors with improvised kung fu, but your action is only justified if you are also content with the far more likely result of being dead. To make things more morally concrete, not just a "you" thing, the situation is that attacking your captors will likely result in you and the other captives you're with also being shot in the head.

If your decision is based purely on the "feeling" that somehow you'll prevail against what you have no problem recognizing is 100 to 1 odds, and you yourself have no problem recognizing the captors will simply leave once they've done robbing the place, then that's just magical thinking that gets people killed for no justifiable reason. However, if the captors are likely to torture, rape and the murder everyone whatever happens, then those 100 to 1 odds are looking pretty good.

Vis-a-vis Ukraine, one can simply argue that land ownership is more important than anything else and it is better to fight to the death than give-up 1m^2 of land. As I and @Isaac made very clear, we obviously don't share that view.

However, even on this premise that fighting to the death for land with low odds of victory is justifiable, it does not somehow just magically justify forcing people into fighting, taking away their right to freedom of movement, taking away their right to free elections and a free press and a due process and pretty much every other right they previously had (however poorly implemented in the pervasively corrupt state of Ukraine).

As I've said many times, if Ukrainians (the individual soldiers) were really fighting of their own choice without coercion with more-or-less correct understanding of the situation, knowing the low odds of success, then I wouldn't have much of a problem and wouldn't have much of an argument. Obviously we could still argue whether that really is a justified position or not, still argue about the strategic military choices, and so on, but if it really was a case of "Ukrainians want to fight"; the situation would be tragic but there would be little to really argue about.

However, when the power of the state is used to corrupt people's understanding with propaganda (both Ukraine and Western governments), a flood of external and contingent (on doing what the West wants) money is bribing the elites in effective control of the state, take away people's rights, coerce them to the front lines, and the end result is massive amounts of death and suffering and nothing to show for it, then there's plenty to take issue with.

The narrative of "Ukrainians want to fight" that's brought out whenever the terrible consequences (slip through the cracks of state propaganda) is just more state propaganda to dull the senses of Westerners who step back a moment from the cheerleading and get uncomfortable with what the actual consequences of our choices are and ask obvious questions (like whether it was a good idea to rebuke Russia's offers to negotiate a liveable peace in Eastern-Europe for decades).

2. If one wants to reason strategically over longer term objectives under evolving geopolitical conditions one can not discount NATIONAL interest as perceived by the concerned nation (Ukrainians and Russians, to begin with) nor discount how all other relevant players are reacting to such conflict. So defining necessary and sufficient conditions as a function of chances of winning or achieving peace as soon as possible (not even as long as possible?) based on current military capacity of the two direct belligerents, and independently from perceived national interest or other actors’ playing strategy, looks historically and strategically myopic to me.
At best, you may wish to persuade Ukrainians (not me) that it is not in their national interest to refuse to become Russian vassals. But I would be surprised if Ukrainians would find your arguments conclusive since their national identity is rooted in a historical opposition to Russian national identity and oppression. It would like to trying to convince them that the Ukrainian national interest is better served by being Russified. — neomac

Right on cue, the exact propaganda I just responded to.

If there was no coercing Ukrainians to fight, then sure, let them fight. However, considering the few Ukrainians outside of Ukraine that return to fight and the many that attempt and do leave, this narrative is simply not true.

As has been repeated many times, my primary issue is with Western policy (as I'm a Westerner and I mostly affect and am responsible for Western policy) and my secondary issue is with Ukrainian policy.

Obviously "Ukrainians" clearly don't want to fight, else there wouldn't be press gangs forcing them to the front lines and there wouldn't be all the whining and bitching about needing Western nations to round up the Ukrainians (refugees from a war; which we proudly recognize the rights of refugees from every other war) who got out and needing to send them back to Ukraine and force them to the front lines.

And, obviously "Ukrainian sovereignty" is not the concern of the West or we would send our own troops to defend this important thing.

The situation is not one of sophisticated moral, political and strategic thinking, but of Western elites cynically bribing Ukrainian elites under the cover of sophisticated propaganda for Western elite purposes, to in turn exploit Ukrainians to fight and die so elites can continue to pocket said bribes.

Furthermore, losing a war now to prevent losing a war later is not sophisticated strategic thinking.

Can't respond more now, but I'll try to make time for it.

↪boethius I bring up KIA because the Ukraine situation is becoming oddly similar to America's adventure in Vietnam. In both cases, you have a strong power taking on a weak country, with the weak country being supplied and funded by other strong powers. A proxy war, in other words. Eventually, the American public soured on Vietnam, and by the time we left, we'd lost just about 60,000 soldiers. At what point is the Russian public going to sour on Ukraine? — RogueAI

The difference is that Vietnam was thousands of kilometres away and so the reason for the war was an abstract domino theory. There was no practical security threat of North Vietnam to the US and also zero cultural affinity with South Vietnam to make fighting for them emotionally make sense.

In the case of this war, the Russians are fighting to protect Russian speaking separatists and it is obvious what security threat hostile forces in Ukraine would represent for Russia.

It's easy to make a case for the war from the Russian perspective, so you don't have anything remotely similar to the anti-war movement during Vietnam.

Another big difference is that the US was not winning the war in Vietnam; had the US been making steady progress the "we need to win" faction may have prevailed.

Then there's the question of resources that Vietnam didn't have anything of particular importance to the US, whereas Crimea, the Azov sea, the land bridge to Crimea, lot's of arable land and industrial capacity and new Russian citizens and so on, are all positive additions that make the war "profitable" in from a purely imperialistic lens, which I have no problem believing the Kremlin does put on those glasses to consider things, from time to time.

↪boethius My sense is that a total collapse is unlikely, unless the Russians dramatically shift their military operations to a more manoeuvre-style approach. — Tzeentch

Yes, the cause of total collapse would be financial.

People can accept fighting a losing war with horrendous losses ... as long as they're paid.

Likewise, the whole government, pensions etc. is floated by the west.

Hence the publicity stunts like crossing the Dniepre or this recent "invasion" of Russia. to make things "make sense" in the Western media.

Probably they will stick to their slow & steady war of attrition, which leaves enough breathing room for the Ukrainians to stave off collapse. — Tzeentch

Well, until they can't any longer.

Ukraine has a finite man power pool. At some point Ukraine will not have the reserves to throw in to arrest advances and then Russia can manoeuvre at low losses, open new fronts, even return to siege Kiev and the like.

Keeping the fight in the South maximizes the distance Ukraine needs to go to supply the front, so this is a big advantage in the attrition phase; that politically the South being now Russian territory and protecting the separatists one of the main reasons for the war is an additional reason.

However, at any moment Russia can launch an offensive on any other point of the border, including Belarus, where defences are less built up, as we've seen Ukraine just do. Of course, a big maneuver still has the problem of occupation and pacification, and the only war ending maneuver, presumably, is taking Kiev. So, maneuver to go where and do what is a critical question, but my intuition is that there does exist large manoeuvres North that do accomplish more than they cost. We'll see though.

As you're certainly aware, the writing is on the wall, but for the benefit of any others that may have been following my analysis, we are now at the rapid disintegration phase of the war.

However, Russia still cannot conquer all of Ukraine due to logistics, manpower and it often simply not being a good idea to occupy people who really don't want to be occupied (i.e. the Ukrainian speaking regions).

Although small compared to Russia, Ukraine remains pretty big with significant strategic depth of its own, so even in this phase of the Ukrainian front lines disintegrating that does not directly entail defeat.

It could, Russia may have another go at the capital and regime change, but Russia could also just stop advancing at some point, such as after conquering the Donbas.

However, wherever Russia ultimately decides to go militarily will anyways take significant time in terms of planning and logistics.

In the meantime, Ukraine, in particular Zelensky, has other also problems.

As mentioned above, the shortest pathway to total collapse is running out of money. Ukraine just defaulted on their debts. Notably, no Western country stepped in to simply pickup the tab.

Then there's the ever present prospect of a coup.

The two issues are tightly linked. As I explained many moons ago, as long as Zelensky is the avatar that can summon vast sums of cash then other Ukrainian elites need him as the conduit to said cash, but as soon as the spice stops flowing they no longer need him.

Of course, if the West keeps pouring in hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine, then the status quo can be maintained, with the front lines moving steadily backward which (if properly managed) could take many more years to get to some sort conclusion, but how much cash the West is willing to spend on Ukraine is a pretty big unknown.

Simply because the Western media takes it for granted that we must send Ukraine as much cash as is needed, does not mean that it's an easy thing for policy makers to do; the cash can be spent on other things.

And that's the main issue that is currently being hashed out: will the West even finance the next phase of the war, which would be just slowly losing at great monetary expense (also expense of lives but Western policy makers don't care about those).

Zelensky's behaviour is becoming very erratic because there is no winning scenario and even in comparatively better scenarios he may still be assassinated. He knows the narrative could change overnight, plug could be pulled at anytime and even if the West continues to prop the show up, his successor could be anointed any minute of the day. You can always make a new avatar and tear down the old posters.

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

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

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

The strategy is the same of creating a "success story" for the Western media.

This stunt replaces the crossing the Dnieper stunt.

Ukraine has military problems, obviously, but its biggest short term problem is financial. If the money runs out then the whole things collapses overnight.

To solve this financial problem, Ukraine needs the Western media to present things in a positive light and forestall any realistic appraisal of Ukrainian military capabilities relative the Russians.

As soon as the Western media concludes that Ukraine is for sure definitely losing, and the losses so far have been overwhelming terrible and difficult to justify, and also the whole thing makes zero sense, there's zero chance of a military reversal and more fighting just means more death and suffering (mainly for the Ukrainians) for nothing, then the whole "this is just what we do (send arms and money to Ukraine)" current disposition of Western institutions will come under significant pressure.

Attitudes can change organically due to undisputed facts on the ground (Western media does have to maintain some minimum level of credibility) and also simply from orders from the top that it's time to pull the plug.

Zelensky needs to prevent both things from happening, which requires sending good news Westward, which required "successes" that may mean nothing strategically and be nonsensical in terms of resources, such as creating a bridgehead across the Dnieper, but are good enough for Western talking heads to keep patting on the back Western institutional mouth pieces and all is therefore as it should be.

This is the main reason, but an additional reason is that Zelensky is also criticized from the pro-more-war factions of Ukraine (aka. literal nazis for the most part) that believe the problem has been "playing by NATO's rules" and not hitting Russia proper hard enough. These people believe that attacking Russia north of the Donbas is a good idea, and they did so before seemingly by themselves with the media narrative that it's all real Russians leading the way to overthrow their own government, if you remember that episode.

In actual strategic terms, the problem with attacking Russia is that it has enormous strategic depth, a serious problem the greatest militaries of their time, such as the Grande Armée and the Wehrmacht, discovered to their dismay after hundreds of kilometres of offensive maneuvers, and so the idea the Ukrainians are going to get somewhere and accomplish something these previous far more powerful forces didn't, is dismissible offhand.

↪boethius Do you believe the reporting that Russia has suffered around 60,000 KIA? — RogueAI

Exact KIA and casualty figures are hard to come by, but I'd have no problem believing Russia has suffered 60 000 KIA. Seems reasonable.

If your point is that Russia has suffered losses, that is clearly true.

As I've just recently mentioned, my main concern is Ukrainian wellbeing and lives.

I find it highly debatable that the war is harming Russia geopolitically in relative power terms, certainly vis-a-vis Ukraine but also with respect to the US and NATO. For example, the war has done significant harm to the European economy, which may turn out to be bad for NATO, whereas Russia has been able to continue to export commodities and arms and the global uncertainty the war brings may turn out to be good for commodity and arms export.

This has already been discussed at some length multiple times, and the main argument that seems to arise to demonstrate the war is weakening Russia is that it is in fact China the greatest beneficiary of the war and the Russia-China led block has gained significantly as a whole but Russia is a junior partner in that "close friendship". This seems a pretty weak argument to me for many reasons.

However, I'm not so interested in the relative power jostling for power between the US, Russia and China, but more concerned about whether it makes sense for Ukrainians to sacrifice to reduce slightly Russian relative power, even if the were true. If we agree it does not make sense for Ukrainians to sacrifice themselves for US relative power over Russia ... or Chinese relative power over the US and Russia?! (which is what the "real winner is China and Russia is the junior partner" argument seems to imply) then it's of course also interesting to try to evaluate whether Russia is even being harmed in relative power terms. It's a complicated military, economic, political and cultural issue to try to get to the bottom of, necessitating developing a lot of potential scenarios to parse out the benefits and costs of the war to Russia and other relevant parties.

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

Which is exactly what Russia has done.

I hope you do realize how stupid you sound, and the fact that your moving the goalposts from Mearsheimer can't make any sense of Russia's invasion of Ukraine to ...

What he has said is that Russia would react, potentially with military force. — Echarmion

Creates the reality that you cannot be taken seriously and are simply a bad faith propagadists.

Nothing in this contradicts anything I said. — Echarmion

Yes, obviously it does.

What you stated was:

A comparable decision would be the US directly invading Cuba, but that is not what happened. — Echarmion

An act of war at sea is completely comparable to an act of war on land and considering Cuba is very much an island in the sea one would very much expect acts of war to commence in said sea.

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

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

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

As for it being a good strategy or not, obviously time will tell.

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

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

Mearsheimer did not predict the exact timing which is not what we expect from a theory of international relations, same way we don't expect an economic theory, much less the economists who develop such theories, to predict exact days bubbles burst.

You are trying to argue that somehow the Russian invasion of Ukraine cannot be accounted for in Mearsheimer's world view of offensive realism, "struggles with the consequences" is the words you use, which is simply a laughably stupid point to make.

To move the goalposts to Mearsheimer did not predict the exact timing of exactly when Russia would invade Ukraine is simply a weak and deluded mind defending its very much unreal view of the world.

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

First, Mearsheimer puts significant effort in his theorizing to account for miscalculations. Indeed, it is a central theme of offensive realism that the distrust between states easily induces paranoia and miscommunication easily leading to miscalculation. So, even if what you said was true, that Russia is weakened by the invasion of Ukraine, that isn't unusual in the slightest in an offensive realism analysis. It can, and often is, argued that US was to be weakened by its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and those invasions and / or subsequent management of the occupations was a miscalculation. Likewise, it can and has been argued that the Israeli genocide in Gaza ultimately weakens its position and is a miscalculation. Offensive realism is first mostly a theory of the prevailing criteria and motivations of state actors in making decisions, i.e. what states tend to try to accomplish (self preservation), and second a theory about how those decisions processes succeed or fail (in seeking regional hegemony, Sadam may have miscalculated for example), and third a theory of the inherent instability of the nation state system (as, by definition, a system of violent competition has winners and losers).

Second, it is very much debatable whether Russia has been weakened or strengthened by the war in military, economic and political terms.

Obviously Russia has paid a cost, but paying a cost for something does not somehow inherently reduce one's position. Obviously, in order to evaluate things both the costs and benefits must be taken into account.

For example, if Ukraine was on an inevitable pathway of a military conflict with Russia, then even if the war is costly it is presumably less costly than a later war with a more powerful Ukraine. Sometimes costs cannot be avoided in which case paying the least price is best option.

Even if Russia has been weakened by the war, it's entirely possible that the end result is a far weaker Ukraine and therefore Russia vastly increasing its relative power to Ukraine. Obviously if we fight and I break my hand, I'm weaker, but if in the process you become entirely paralyzed I have increased my relative strength over you. This maybe nevertheless a mistake on my part if I have other foes to fight and can't prevail with a broken hand, but in the case of Russia there are only a limited list of candidates for further conflict.

So, even if we accept the premise Russia is weaker that is not sufficient to conclude it is weaker in relative terms over the parties that matter.

Then there is the argument that Russia has increased its power by increasing and refining its war machine, creating an essentially independent economic system (i.e. an alternative to dealing with the West), and, in the eyes of much of the world, it is Russia that is "standing up" to US Imperialism and Ukraine a hapless vassal state, and not Ukraine standing up to Russian imperialism.

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

As mentioned above, there is increasing in relative power vis-a-vis Ukraine, increasing and refining its war machine, creating an economic system independent of the West and "standing up" to the US.

The narrative fed by Western states it that Russia didn't "win hard enough" and therefore is somehow losing, but the reality is that Russia has defeated Western intelligence and weapons systems as well as defeated Western sanctions. Russia has essentially created both a model, example and system of breaking with the West: intelligence that can deal with Western intelligence, weapons that deal with Western weapons, and an economic system that can deal without Western integration.

In terms of great power conflict with the US, this is the most significant end result of the war.

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

A blockade is an act of war. Had the Soviets repudiated negotiations because "Cuban rights" then both Cuba and the Soviet Union would be entirely within their right in international law to break the US blockade with force. Fortunately, Soviets viewed the likely end result of defending "Cuban rights" as a nuclear war and so preferred a settlement.

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

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

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

Now, whether the war is ultimately good or bad for Russia as a regional hegemon in conflict with the United States is very much debatable, but what betrays your role as a propagandist in this discussion is that you have zero concern whatsoever for Ukrainian wellbeing. Your only concern is with arguing US good and strong and Russia bad and weak, you not arguing that somehow Ukraine is better off by the war. You console yourself that Russia must be slightly worse off vis-a-vis great power competition with the United States, while completely ignoring that Ukraine is getting completely wrecked in this war.

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

You don’t seem to follow through your own reasoning here. Indeed, what is true for Russia, it is true for the US and Ukraine too: regardless of what you think about the US and Ukraine, “countries in our system have a right, and rationally do anyways, act in preemptive self defence. What's been referred to as legitimate security concerns.” — neomac

This is in no way the case.

The US has no legitimate security concerns in Ukraine. You cannot invade the US from Ukraine.

If Russia went and built up forces hostile to the US in Mexico, obviously the US would respond to that.

As for Ukraine, when you are a weaker nation beside a much stronger nation, your security is not served by forming military cooperation with another major power thousands of kilometres away that (precisely because you are of no relevance to their actual security) is not going to actually send any armies to come defend you if you get invaded due to becoming hostile to your more powerful neighbor.

For example, Mexico's security is not served by becoming a vassal to Russia to get a supply of arms to then lose a war to the United States.

A smaller state's security is served through a combination of defensive deterrence and diplomacy, without being a threat. Canada and Mexico coexist with the far more powerful United States because they don't threaten the US.

What is obvious common sense when applied to US neighbours does not change in the slightest when applied to Russian neighbours.

When you're a smaller state your legitimate security concern is to avoid being invaded by more powerful states.

As I've explained numerous times, rights are insufficient to determine justification.

Russia has both a right and can actually justify preemptive military action against a smaller state: because it is likely to win. A smaller state has the same right to preemptive military action but is much harder to form a justification if it is unlikely to win.

That "Ukraine has a right to join NATO" is not a justification for trying to do so if the likely result is being invaded, losing large amount of territory, massive economic destruction, mass exodus less likely to return the the more the war drags on, and most importantly hundreds of thousands of maimed and dead Ukrainians.

If Ukraine's "rights" actually were sufficient justification, then the West would have all their militaries in Ukraine right now, but they don't because tying rights to justifications is a fallacy. What are the consequences of doing this or that also matter in forming a justification for actions. The West doesn't like the consequences of actually sending our armies to defend "Ukrainian rights" so we don't consider it justified on that account, and so we don't do it.

A logic that, super ironically, the US just used to try to argue that Iran shouldn't retaliate against Israel for assassinating a foreign leader hosted (and thus under the protection) of Iran because, sure Iran has a right retaliate and any Western nation would do the same without hesitation ... but ... consequences, consequences!!

A logic that is sound and equally applicable to Ukraine, just isn't because Ukrainians serving US administration interests to die to harm Russia is fine by the US administration.

In the case of Iran, we'll see soon enough if the logic is not only sound but also actually true that Iran cannot retaliate against Israel without unacceptable consequences.

In the case of Ukraine we have already seen what the consequences are to evaluate whether it was "worth it" to pursue a particular right.

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

Which planet are you living on? History is filled with invasions.

The only thing that's unusual in terms of the last few decades it's not the US and co. doing the invading.

So already you start with complete delusion.

Then you go deeper into your delusional fantasy that Mearsheimer somehow struggles to account for the invasion. Russia invading Ukraine is what Mearsheimer has been predicting since the fall of the Soviet Union (going so far as to argue Ukraine should not give up its nuclear weapons) and especially in response to NATO expansion.

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

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

More total delusions.

Nearly all wars end in a negotiated settlement. It's pretty rare for people to fight to the last person.

The idea Russia attempted and failed to conquer all of Ukraine in 3 days was a Western talking point, made up first by propagandists and then promulgated by delusional sycophants such as yourself, in order to portray Ukrainian losing 20% of its territory in about a week as some sort of victory.

In normal military terms, losing 20% of your territory in a week is called a major defeat.

The reality was that the start of the war was a big debacle for Ukraine. Ukraine offered zero resistance to Russian troops crossing a series of bridges from Crimea to the mainland and could not strike a 70km convey sitting on a highway with anything.

However, in order to sell both Ukrainians and the West on repudiating any negotiations to end the war, it was necessary to portray losing as somehow winning and that Ukraine could simply continue to fight until victory.

If the reality was acknowledged that Ukraine had just lost 20% of its territory in a week and had essentially no chance of recovering that territory with force (having a significant disadvantage in artillery, armour, air power and electronic warfare), then trying to negotiate an end to the conflict makes a lot more sense than the prospect of near total economic collapse, losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and causing a mass emigration which would reverse less and less the more the war drags on.

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

That Russia committed roughly 200 000 troops instead of the +2 000 000 troops that would be needed to occupy and pacify all of Ukraine, is Mearsheimer (and plenty other analysts) main evidence that Russia was not trying to conquer all of Ukraine.

I have an intuition that it's an attempt to somehow create a plausible motivation for the invasion that fits the notion of "abstract geopolitical forces". — Echarmion

Well, your intuition is stupid.

The motivation of Russia to invade a state trying to form deeper and deeper military cooperation with states hostile to Russia, literally publishing giant tomes with titles like "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia", referring to Russians as "rivals" when being polite and simply enemies when "straight talking", labelling the Russian leader as literally Hitler, and so on, is a pretty obvious and common sense motivation.

In addition, there was the civil war in the Donbas where Russian speakers were being shelled by literal Nazis, which created significant domestic pressure to intervene to defend those populations.

Not only common sense motivations, but motivations that the US uses all the time to justify its own military actions: we need to bomb so-and-so because they are part of the "the axis of Evil" at worst or some sort of domino of bad at best, and / or we need to bomb so-and-so as a humanitarian mission to protect civilians.

So we're forced to either conclude that Russia's geopolitical interests alone do not explain the decision (which is my view) or we must invent reinterpret the decision as something other than a committment to full scale total war. — Echarmion

We are in no way forced to accept your two options.

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

Indeed. And Russia understands this, which is why they are trying to get a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The problem is, Europe does not.

Europe's naivety is the real risk factor here. Zero geopolitical awareness makes them irrational and a willing pawn. — Tzeentch

Well, real risk to Europeans that's for sure.

It's unfortunate to see, being European myself, and will likely result in the right wing making things even worse. To summarize the process, the "centre" neo-liberals do corruption to benefit the US Empire (and themselves personally) whereas the right wing want to do corruption to benefit the local rich in their countries, resulting in a double dose of state asset pilfering and other foul deeds.

Personally, I don't think the eventual war can be avoided, because the US has pressed itself right against China's doorstep where it poses an existential threat by threatening to cut off all Chinese sea trade. (Quite comparable to the situation it created vis-á-vis Russia) — Tzeentch

The problem with the US-China war is there seems to me no way for the US to win. There's also far more costs in a war with China than with Russia due to the global supply chains.

And, of note, the US has not blockaded or otherwise physically interfered with Russia's ability to trade, so that they'd be willing to cross that line with China seems far fetched to me. It's not just the US that depends on Chinese goods but most of the world so that itself does not seem manageable.

Then there's maintaining the blockade itself. China will be "the victim" of this clear act of war and would sink US vessels and down US planes. Even if somehow has a strong advantage to start, China has enormous industrial capacity to build more drones, more missiles, and figure things out.

I just don't see how the US could maintain such a blockade of any extended period of time.

Invading Chinese mainland obviously isn't possible, and the only other option would be to nuke China. China also has nuclear weapons.

So I just don't see a viable endgame for the US to go to war with China.

Now, certainly situation is tense and there could be "events" as tensions rise, essentially border skirmishes of one sort or another, but I don't see either side having any rational to start some sort of actual war which would quickly transition to simply the US blockading China, which seems to me the only conventional "war" move on the table.

So basically it has created a completely unacceptable situation for the Chinese, and any attempt by the Chinese to resolve it will result in war. — Tzeentch

They're obviously accepting it so far.

They don't like it, obviously, but the Chinese have been clearly playing the long game of economics since decades. The "remote Islands game" has no actual strategic impact and is purely symbolic; no one is actually obstructing any shipping from these various islands.

The big issue is of course Taiwan but the Chinese have clearly been able to live with that for many decades and with enough economic ascendency and with the decline of the US Empire it should be possible to simply re-absorb Taiwan eventually.

In other words, the current dynamic favours China as the US is decreasing in relative power as the Chinese increase their own. So why start a war to formally control Taiwan when that's not a critical strategic issue? Taiwan does remain an island at the end of the day that does not threaten mainland China (in comparison to Ukraine that has a 2000 km border with Russia).

An alternative model for the Us-China conflict is the US-Iran conflict. Many powerful people in the US, really, really, really wanted to go to war with Iran, but it's simply not practical to do.

People make business all the time; some successful, some not.

Making things clear on paper is not difficult.

Making things successful is the difficult part.

Son of a bitch.

I'm in.

1. Russia and Europe are in prime position to benefit from a war between the US and China. — Tzeentch

This is true, but Europe and Russia would also anyways benefit from mutual peace.

And if there was no US-China war then Europe, Russia and China would benefit from the peace.

So either way US relative power would decrease.

With the war that doesn't happen but also Europe becomes a vassal province so Europes power is simply absorbed fully into American power.

So even if Russia benefits from the war (something US planners would certainly have thought possible considering their own RAND analysis told them that) and also there is no war with China, having a China-Russia power block and then a US block with Europe as a side kick is a much better prospect to manage US power decline than simply letting the world get on more-or-less peacefully.

Without the war, the Euro could have just quietly overtaken the USD and that would be that.

So you also get the benefits of your point 3:

3. European populism threatens to slip Europe from Washington's grasp, turning it from a vassal into a potential rival. (In terms of potential, Europe even surpasses the US and China) — Tzeentch

Even without a war with China.

The US strategy may not be to get into a war with China, just containment and slowing China down as much as possible while the US consolidates imperial domination where it can.

The current process can be as easily interpreted as US, Russia and China working out the lines on the "spheres of influence" map as it can be an actual conflict between them.

Eternal foes usually become your frenemies, as you must inevitably learn to live together.

There is no available strategy for the US to go out and, through conflict, actually dominate either Russia or China.

There does, however, exist a strategy for the US to go out and, through conflict, dominate Europe.

Now, it could be the US is trying to do something it can't actually do and this second strategy is a byproduct.

Or, it could be the US is trying to do what it can actually do.

This creates fertile soil for conflict in the future. — Tzeentch

This is certainly true, but I think for now the US has as much as it can handle.

There's also Biden's cognitive decline, could he handle an actual crisis? Not just sending weapons to Ukraine and talking a big (but extremely slow) game?

Just doesn't seem doable. To handle a nuclear escalation cycle you need a leader pretty quick on the draw (for a lot of reasons).

Me feeling considering everything, for what it's worth, is that the US has achieved exactly what it set out to achieve with the Ukraine war:

It was a tool to decouple Russia from Europe, remilitarize the region, and sow adversarial sentiment. — Tzeentch

How the US establishment then handles the fact it can't win the war that achieved so much profits already, is to just let if fester, then just walk away one day, start a new war somewhere else, we just "move on" and anyone who's like "what the fuck did we just do in [insert last country to be destroyed]" is a ridiculous anachronistic busybody, a dinosaur from a bygone age, and polite society does not pay attention to such folk and their vapid noises.

It's not just majority rule — Benkei

I think it's also important to consider this part too.

If you occupy a place and expand your territory that way, but don't give the people in that territory any rights, in particular the right to vote, then you're no longer a democracy simply due to this.

You're just a "big aristocracy" just with a geographic class basis, instead of hereditary (or then hereditary due to the geographical distinction).

I'd argue this is likewise true even if you don't formally control the territory but manage to informally control it.

Why this matters is not merely in formulating an appeal to democracy to argue government legitimacy in a particular case or then in general, but also functionally history teaches us that an aristocratic class with special privileges never gives up those privileges willingly.

If the entire West is essentially a geographically segregated global aristocracy (with relatively few exception elsewhere), especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, then not only does this raise questions of just governance, this also functionally explains why the West doesn't make any policies that actually address things like climate change, as that would mean giving up privilege which privileged classes never do (some individuals do, but there's no example of a whole class being like "this is unfair, have some more democracy").

In the case of Israel it explains why they are willing to commit a genocide rather than give up their class privileges.

↪boethius You would think the Poles of all people would understand the potential cost of playing games with the Russians, though when I look at their behavior I am not sure. — Tzeentch

I think they are, that's my argument here.

Haven't they, just like the Romanians, mentioned Art. 5 when supposed missile debris landed in their borders? — Tzeentch

Well they still want to deter the Russians from actually attacking them. Them mentioning Art. 5 does not really indicate they want to escalate and get into a war with the Russians, but more they want to deter both the Russians (and everyone else) "starting shit" due to Art. 5.

Now both of these countries are planning to base Ukrainian F-16s within their borders, which makes them legitimate targets. This would in effect make them direct participants in the war. — Tzeentch

This is obviously a dangerous move, but the delay after delay after delay on the F16s would indicate what these NATO parties are actually trying to do is maintain the status quo, not escalate.

The armour repair facilities are legitimate targets too but Russia doesn't strike those. Why? Because they don't need to, so the F16s as "scary" as they sound can easily be introduced in theatre as more of the same: not worth striking outside Ukraine.

If the F16 do longer represent a real threat (as there is no longer any ground forces of significance to support), one could bet the Russians then wouldn't escalate the matter further.

There's also American influence to consider. The White House is desperate to prop up Ukraine until the election as no one likes a "loser" and all the false promises being clearly demonstrated to be false promises.

Therefore, dangling the prospect of F16s to the Ukrainians is critical in motivating them to keep fighting in hopes this "wonder weapon" changes things, and then if things get too bad may actually be necessary to introduce the F16s to try to stabilize the situation.

Poland may not want F16s on its territory but US officials may both pressure to do it anyways while assuring them they have some way of avoiding escalation (the F16s won't do much, the Ukrainians are functionally defeated already).

If they had no intention of getting directly involved, the US seems to have been successful in dragging them ever closer. — Tzeentch

As mentioned above, obviously US has a lot of influence over what Poland does.

Furthermore, as with Macron, countries still want to threaten to do things as "deterrence" and for "me feel strong" vibes. Behind the scenes things could be very far from any actual escalation.

The thing I am increasingly worried about, is for the US to do something extreme - something that will create a crisis that takes all these nations that have positioned themselves close to the precipice and plunges them in. — Tzeentch

This is certainly something to worry about, but it's possible they already did it.

Blowing up Nord Stream was pretty extreme. If the concert terrorist attack was Whitehouse / CIA, that was pretty extreme too. Likewise plenty other attacks inside Russia, on the bridge, oil refineries etc. seem only possible with CIA and their lapdogs in SAS.

Sanctions was an extreme option too (at least in US policy makers perception as they kept calling it the "Nuclear Option" on their onscreen mutual masterbation sessions).

So lot's of extreme things have happened already.

The problem with escalating to a bigger regional conflict is that there are few ways to do that without front line country participants.

Anything you do to escalate inside Ukraine just results in Russia striking Ukraine harder.

If you did exceed what the Russians are willing to tolerate, then Russia has the option of simply escalating to nuclear weapons inside Ukraine.

The problem in this scenario is that (precisely because Ukraine isn't in NATO and it makes no sense to fight a war simply based on the wish to be in NATO) there's simply no logic in retaliating against Russia with nuclear weapons.

For example, Russia nukes a Ukrainian base, so US nukes a Russian base ... well this will just result in Russia nuking an European NATO base.

Ok, now US has to respond to that, but the Russian response to another nuke will be something like nuking every single NATO base in Europe and then saying the next step is generalized strategic launch if they see even one more missile in the air.

Well what do you do then? This threat will for sure be credible at this stage of escalation.

Obviously you back down. So since this is the result the whole process makes no sense.

Therefore, to avoid a nuclear game you can't win, you respond to Russia nuclear strike in Ukraine with conventional weapons.

However, Russia can just keep nuking Ukraine.

That is the key problem here.

Responding to a Russian nuke with conventional weapons in Ukraine to avoid European bases being hit with nuclear weapons (the likely response to actually nuking a Russian base), simply results in Russia nuking Ukraine into submission and winning that way.

Therefore, escalating within Ukraine to a bigger war can certainly work, but just results in a bigger war in Ukraine involving Russia nuking Ukraine. That is the rational response for Russia in response to anything conventional that does anger them enough or then actually threatens them enough with military defeat.

So, the only other way to broaden the conflict is to get another front line country involved.

The only candidate is Poland as far as I can see.

There's not only the issue of getting the poles involved (as they need to go through several rounds of escalation and need to formally invite NATO to the party), and at some point even corrupt politicians with binders full of compromat may not be willing to start a war on their own territory (only Ukrainians are corrupt enough to do that).

Then there's the problem of Belarus and that Poland doesn't actually border Russia. There's way to manage that problem but it's still an annoying obstacle to escalating WWIII.

Conclusion, although I agree that the White House wants a bigger war (make a bigger problem that kills a lot more people to solve your current problems that are currently killing less people, is the Neocon religion), there are real obstacles to achieving that.

Now, do I share your concern that "life finds a way" and it turns out the frogs are gay, or however that was supposed to work, yes I do, but my difference with your position is that I'm of the opinion that the obstacles are too great and so I'm predicting this escalation won't happen. Could happen. A lot of powerful people want it to happen. Definitely black swans go for cheap nowadays. But still, seems too tall a task even for the rambunctious and wily blackest of black-ops agents at the CIA to pull off.

Sometimes there's just a war too far.

↪boethius In my opinion, war has a tendency to start imposing conditions on its participants. Especially when one of the most powerful nations on the planet, the United States, is pushing for it. — Tzeentch

Agreed, no qualms from me here.

Furthermore, the Europeans seem utterly politically clueless, so I highly doubt Europe as a block will be able to push back on the United States' desire for chaos. — Tzeentch

This is why I focus on Poland. To expand the war you need willing front line participants and the only real candidate for that would be Poland. My understanding of the Poles is that they view themselves as clever enough to have Ukrainians (who they don't like) fight Russians (who they don't like) while also being clever enough to not fight Russians themselves and destroy their country for US interests as the Ukrainians are doing.

Maybe a Pole would contradict me, but my understanding is that Poles view Ukrainians as useful idiots, and they don't view the war as something they want to start fighting on their own territory.

The Baltics don't really matter as they don't actually threaten Russia, they are simply too small so if shit going to start on NATO territory it has to be Poland, and the Poles would have to be willing participants to both let the escalation happen as well as trigger Article 5.

↪boethius While that is certainly true, if the US manages to slowly expand the state of war that already exists, it is a matter of time before Art. 5 can be claimed. — Tzeentch

Well I agree that the US wants more escalation and triggering some messy bigger Eastern European war with Russia if Ukraine front line completely collapses I think would be their preference.

I'm just not sure how motivated Poland is to get into an actual war with Russia.

My reading of the Poles is that they very much like Russia and Ukraine fighting, but that's mainly because they don't like either Russians nor Ukrainians, and they view Ukrainians as corrupt and stupid to get into a war.

It's only in Western Europe and the US (and Finland apparently) that the entire reality can just be denied, but I don't think that's the position of the Poles.

Then there's the problem of Nuclear weapons.

I think you're completely correct that the US power brokers would love nothing more than a bigger conventional war in Eastern Europe with French and English troops streaming to the Polish front, with the US raining down conventional missiles and picking apart Russian air defence.

US can hang back on their Island, commit mostly standoff munitions and not real any troops and Europe has to deal with it. Of course, the West wouldn't defeat Russia, as there's too much strategic depth, but it would be devastating economically for both Russia and Europe (and Uncle Sam likey-like).

However, it seems to me the first thing that would happen is the Russians will immediately respond with Nuclear weapons and we'd enter a cycle of nuclear escalation management where conventional fighting essentially stops.

As I've been arguing for a while now, the US objective is to provoke a large-scale conflict between Europe and Russia.

The latest step in this process is the basing of F-16s in Poland and Romania, which makes the bases in these countries legitimate military targets.

This is of course what the US is hoping to provoke - a Russian attack on NATO soil, after which it can invoke NATO Art. 5 and forcefully drag Europe into the conflict. — Tzeentch

That the bases are legitimate military targets doesn't mean Russia will strike them.

Russia clearly wants to avoid a war with NATO (otherwise they could have easily started on or then made sure "accidents" happen such as actual Russian missile "misses" that hit Poland), as Russia would have a lot to lose in a war with all of NATO even if it didn't go nuclear (and obviously Russia has also been avoiding nuclear war as they can start one of those any time).

It's simply not strategically sensible for Russia to get into a war with NATO as the US is still far away and very protected; taking a bunch of Europe "down too" isn't such a good participation trophy.

And just to make good on my promise of mirthful pleasure, in response to Mr. Corrupt, senior constable, clearly committing to writing that crimes committed against me (including the use of the law to harass me and extort me into signing severance) wont' be part of his investigation, I had to "go philosophy on him" and wrote this dialogue for the benefit of his soul:

Of course, after explaining the money laundering and all the crimes there's clear evidence for:

[Dear Mr. corrupt]

But if you are curious, how I see police actions in this affair:

Police see some corporate board race starting about share ownership and money laundering and email access and shit.

One horse is a mystery box [because I had already reported the above crimes before a criminal complaint was made against me and police never phoned me about what I reported, just went ahead and placed me under investigation, including for defamation to an auditor].

Police are just like ... hmm, I'm going to bet against the mystery box.

Someone says (obviously no one actually did, but for literary purposes): don't you want to see what's in the mystery box before going all in against them, could be just a normal looking horse which may easily win against all these odd looking horses [because the people laundering money are absolute morons].

Police: nah, nah, no need to look, anything in a mystery box is clearly nothing to be concerned about.

Socrates: And is life worth living for us with that part of us corrupted that just action harms and unjust action benefits; So one must never do wrong… Nor must one, when wronged, inflict wrong in return, as the majority believe, since one must never do wrong. But verily, gentle Constable Meletus, you should still probably at least see what's in the mystery box, for it is certainly not some trick designed to fool the gullible if you yourself created the mystery box for no discernible reason or motive. And what is there to fear? Certainly you would have no problem trusting to your own faculties that whatever you see in the mystery box will not fool you but provide additional information in your decision to predetermine the result of criminal reports without doing any investigation at all. Seems a dangerous game constable Meletus.

Police: nah, mystery box we created must stay, we are fully committed to avoid seeing or knowing anything about the horse in the mystery box before deciding they for sure can't possibly win, and to bet significantly agains them in a way that creates stakes for us of which no reward function even exists if we be right or wrong [all local police should do about a report about corporate money laundering is send it to the national police who have jurisdiction over those kinds of things].

Socrates: but Constable Meletus, you crass fool! certainly it's an offence to reason and the gods to take on such blind risks, to harm oneself and others, without even there being any benefits to you! How can siding with injustice, or taking such a risk, not even for any benefit of which a avid man may understand the action, but merely it seems on the principle that injustice is preferable to justice. That you do this in the garments of a police officer makes the offence to reason and, I dare say, Hades itself, certainly all the more destable in the eyes of your peers if you turn out to be wrong in you gamble! All the more baffling Constable Meletus, I must say I truly do not understand. What you seem to say is that injustice must be defended on principle and justice rebuked with significant risks and no benefits to yourself! But how can that be! Say it ain't so Meletus.

Police: Yolo bitches. I grip it and I rip it Socrates. New time new rules. You wouldn't get it. When there's a mystery box that has the potential, once opened, to cause all sorts of troubles, people in our time let it lie, see what happens later: climate change, enabling money laundering, over fishing, destroying forests, gain of function research on dangerous pathogens. We always roll the dice regardless of the risks or whether there's even any benefits to ignoring potential problems down the line. It's called being a baller Socrates, and bigger the unnecessary risks, bigger the balls, higher the views, ca-ching, ca-ching Socrates! We're talking fucking cold, hard, cash, Socrates. But in this case not real cash, at least not for us, just the people laundering money who don't pay us, but some sort of mystical coin none-the-less.

The author: Well, I gotta go, but I'll try to continue this dialogue later, but I think you get the point. — Actual email sent to police in a criminal investigation into myself

What's even more hilarious is Mr. Corrupt, senior constable, recuses himself or is anyways taken off the case when I follow up later.

Socrates strikes again.

Well, be careful not to choke on your ambitions.

I have no experience with this, though a fair amount of experience in compliance in general.

My trying to help might not be so useful to you, but maybe some diversion for us both.

What sort of questions or processes are you trying to work out?

I can have a crack a it. If I come up with the same answers as you, then maybe that increases your confidence somewhat in your conclusions, and if not then we have learned absolutely nothing from the experience and you're no worse off.

In exchange, I'm dealing with my own legal issues of being under investigation since 2021 for defamation for reporting money laundering to the auditor, which is a ridiculous statement, but the law turns into basically a topsy-turvy Alice and Wonderland adventure when reporting people clearly laundering money and destroying evidence (that I still had a copy of, so that was really stupid).

Just to give you an example of how crazy it gets, when I point out the claims of defamation against me are clearly harassment and also used to extort me as I was told I'm under investigation and would be going to prison if I didn't sign a severance package giving up all "claims and pursuit", and what is obviously money laundering and plenty other crimes in the circumstances, police investigating me for crime literally committed to writing:

Hello,

You can always contact a lawyer and ask them about the situation and if they will present you. But in this particular case, you won’t be assigned one so you have to take care of that yourself.

Regarding your counter claims. I have also talked with the leader of the investigation and if you feel like you are a victim of a crime or want to report a crime, you can make a new police report about the matter. But it won’t be handled in this same case and case number I have contacted you about. This case number of 5680/R/6414/22 is about [plaintiffs]’s claims against you.

[Mr. Corrupt]
Senior constable
Central Finland Police Department — Finnish Police

As you may expect, in Finland investigations are supposed to be impartial and neutral (therefore taking into consideration the suspect is actually the victim and the law is being abused by money launderers and police to shut the victim up about that), which is stated quite clearly right in the Criminal Investigations Act:

Chapter 4 – Criminal investigation principles and the rights of persons participating in the criminal investigation
Section 1 – Principle of neutrality
Facts and evidence both for and against the suspect in the offence shall be clarified and taken into account in the criminal investigation.
Section 2 – Presumption of innocence
In a criminal investigation, the suspect in the offence shall be presumed not guilty. — Finland'sCriminal Investigations Act

Aka: I'm supposed to be presumed not-guilty and therefore entirely possible I am in fact the victim, and anyways facts (such as money laundering and threatening me with jail time if I didn't sign a severance package and drop all claims and pursuit, in exchange for both 1 000 000 Euros and "all my legal problems solved"), as it common sense.

It's supposed to be a pretty amazing risk that can easily blow up in your face if you commit crimes and then go and get the victim put under investigation ... and then threaten the victim with prison if they don't sing your deal.

So, not sure what sort of advice you could provide, but at minimum I'm confident you will anyways be entertained.

Anyways, obviously can't do much work as a corporate executive being under criminal investigation, so I have plenty of time on my hands to get into the nuances of EU compliance law.

So, I propose this deal.

(Did you mean "to Russia by" instead of "to Ukraine by"?)

strives to maximize the damage to Ukraine by drip feeding weapons (... just enough to prop it up at an incredible high cost to Ukraine)
— boethius — jorndoe

The policy maximizes damage to Ukraine and damages Russia as a side effect.

Maximizing damage to Russia would be just flooding in all the systems Ukraine could possibly use from day 1. And why even accept the overtone window of Javelins to F-16, why not pour in F-35s and all those fancy drones and so on. Of course, maximizing damage to Russia would likely result in Russia resorting to Nuclear weapons, hence the point of Drip Feed is to make it clear to the Russians that there is no credible attempt to actually cause them much trouble.

As you just posted, Kremlin is happy at war, so the Drip Feed is a favour to the Russian authoritarian power elite (which a large majority of them).

Your "drip feed" theory presumes cohesive organized "feeders" with that (hidden) agenda.
Haven't really heard anyone pushing/discussing that (supposed) agenda, more like the usual debates quarrels dis/agreements bureaucracy. — jorndoe

You haven't heard people openly discussing a hidden agenda?

Hmm, I wonder why that could be.

The policy only requires the United States as the other Ukraine supporters don't have anywhere close the capacity of the United States nor would they escalate beyond what the United States is doing anyways as they know their place: they have neither the means nor the motivation. Germany will supply tanks if the US supplies tanks.

Now, we know there is a hidden agenda because we know we are lied to about the rational behind weapons shipments.

The US spokespeople, including the president, will just take it as essentially common sense that "of course we can't supply Western artillery, of course we can't supply IFV's, of course we can't supply tanks, of course we can't supply short range missile, of course we can't supply long range missiles, of course we can't supply F-16s! we don't want to start WWIII man!!" and then when they change that policy they just ignore what they previously stated.

So, any rational observer can conclude that the reasons behind not only not-supplying the weapon systems in question but stating that it can't possibly be done, and then just going ahead and doing it, is because the criteria of what to supply when is clearly not stated.

The stated reasons for decisions just arbitrarily change without explanation, hence the actual reasons for decisions are hidden from us.

Furthermore, the timing of the escalation to the next weapon system is always in response to Russia getting the upper hand and the new weapons systems trying to restore balance. If you actually wanted to win you'd optimize all your weapons systems at the start; you wouldn't do things like have Ukraine go on an offensive with no air power to support the front nor any no long range missiles to disrupt the Russian rear.

But introducing all the useful systems from the beginning is really absolutely critical as you want Ukraine to not only get experience on those systems that they'd inevitably need to transition to (i.e. have some units using Western equipment as soon as possible so they gain experience and work out doctrine and then can train other Ukrainians in their language with actual battle experience when the transition needs to be scaled up later, when all the soviet equipment has been destroyed), but you'd want to do things like see if sprinkling in more sophisticated Western equipment with soviet systems is a force multiplier. For example, having one or a few Western MBT with better sensors, electronic warfare capabilities, and battlefield awareness with drone and other intelligence connectivity leading a company of soviet tanks and IFV's that are easier to maintain, Ukrainians already know how to use and have ammunition for, are smaller targets and so on, would be something you would want to try out in order to force multiply all the soviet equipment.

Most of all, if you actually wanted to help the Ukrainians, you'd conclude attacking the Russians is really dumb and you wouldn't do that, instead focusing on defence and making Russian progress as costly as possible and holding the card of a credible threat of a major offensive in response to Russian over commitment to their own offensives.

This is what the Finns did in the Winter war; they didn't embark on some suicidal offensive against the Soviets.

The reason this obvious strategy is not employed is because it would then give the game away that the only termination possible to the war is negotiation: we are making Russian progress costly in order to compel them to negotiate.

However, if you admit the only end to the war in negotiation and Ukraine isn't going to achieve any political goal through military conquest, then that obviously begs the question "well what negotiation? why not then go and negotiate an end to the war? avoid more people from dying? why are you here talking to me, go negotiate. I don't get it". Now, since the Russians are happy to negotiate if it was recognized in the West that negotiation was the only termination of the war feasible for the Ukrainians, and the sooner the better (most Ukrainian refugees would have returned if the war ended soonish after beginning, but by now they's largely made entirely new lives), then enthusiasm for the war would have dissipated and focus would have shifted to negotiation and that would have put enormous pressure on political leaders, in the West and Ukraine, to negotiate: sure, maintain the lines, but then use that leverage in a negotiation.

The US didn't want that, therefore negotiations need to be repudiated, the only rational basis to do that in a conflict is because you can achieve your goals by force, if Ukraine can achieve it's goals by force it should definitely go and do that, sooner the better as the Russians are increasing in strength, hence a disastrous offensive into heavily fortified Russian lines without air cover nor long range munitions and plenty of both on the Russian side. Once the offensive starts it's important that it doesn't end quickly as that would again give the game away that Ukraine has no hope of "winning" so it needs to be dragged out to be able to pretend that the offensive lasted so long and accomplished so much (or just people simply forget about their previous anticipation of evaluating Ukrainians offensive capabilities and the implication of that), and before you know it you've burned through your reserves and can no longer even keep up a defensive posture.

It's all very cynical and manipulative and none of this is designed for Ukrainian welfare.

That is my issue here.

Sorry to break up the circle jerk again, but the issues of contention here are:

1. Regardless of what you think about Russia, countries in our system have a right, and rationally do anyways, act in preemptive self defence. What's been referred to as legitimate security concerns. A nuclear power creating missile bases nearer and nearer to you is one such obvious security concern.

2. Regardless of what you think about point one above, it is just dumb to provoke a war, then actually fight a war, on the principle of denying Russia has legitimate security concerns that would lead a rational actor in the international system to wage preemptive war ... when apparently we all now agree that Ukraine would never join NATO anyways, but also not really we'll just go ahead and claim that's going to happen someday from time to time. Fighting for something you can never actually have is dumb.

3. Regardless of what you think about how smart it is to fight for a right to have something the relevant parties never give you (which, if they did, the whole point would be to then avoid a disastrous war such as what is happening right now). Fighting a disastrous war to (maybe, hopefully, wishfully) get something to protect from fighting disastrous wars, is completely moronic.

4. Regardless of what you think about fighting a disastrous war to (maybe) get something that would offer protection (maybe) from disastrous wars, it still only makes sense to do if you can actually win.

For example @ssu's argument at the start was that while agreeing with me that he saw no way Ukraine could win, well maybe Ukrainian general have something or know something we don't and will pull off a brilliant victory. Turns out Ukrainian generals had no such thing and exactly what was predictable given the available information is what happened. The corollary of @ssu's position is that if Ukraine had no surprise then their war effort is a disastrous mistake, immoral, got many people killed for nothing, and definitely they should have taken the Russian's offer at the start of the war (or before the war). But these positions are just conveniently swept under the rug of "Ukrainian agency".

5. Regardless of what you think about fighting a war you can't win, the West's policy has clearly been to make sure of this result by drip feeding in weapons systems. Now that the drip feed of weapons systems has run its course, the West has turned to drip feeding "maybe we will, maybe we won't" send in ground troops to turn the tide, to maintain the policy of having Ukraine fight, giving them hope (such as the next wonder weapon or wonder intervention; something we've already seen at the start with all the hullaballoo about a "no fly zone" which was critical in encouraging Ukrainians to fight while the weapons drip feed system was put into place: as that takes logistics).

As I've argued, this is my main problem with Western policy. We are clearly not even trying to help Ukrainians, but just propping them up to take an absolute beating in order to accomplish other things, all harmful to Europe.

6. Regardless of what you think of the drip feed theory, if there was some genuine intent to use the leverage of clearly being willing to drip feed weapons into Ukraine to seek a diplomatic solution that is favourable to Ukraine, the Western leaders would put on their big boy pants and go and try to negotiate that happening and using their leverage (such as the sanctions and so on; whole point of sanctions being to serve as leverage to compel compliance, if the goal to effect Russian decision making and not just have a big giant war for the sake of all the sweet, sweet profiteering).

Furthermore, sending money to a pervasively corrupt polity is a de facto bribe to the elites of that polity. That the West puts zero controls or supervision on the money nor the weapons sent into Ukraine is making explicit there's not even pretence that this money is not a de facto bribe. That the West recognizes a lot of that money and weapons "disappears" but has not found one single Euro of laundered money or laundered weapons outside Ukraine, is explicitly participating in the money laundering scheme.

And I can go on with even more moral and strategic problems from a "benefit Ukrainian" perspective.

However, I'll stop here for now to point out that even if all this was true:

Incidentally reminded me of some earlier comments, e.g.:

The fact is that Russia simply isn't a normal country that would try to have good relations with it's neighbors. It seeks the role it had when it was an empire/Superpower, makes huge gambles and takes extreme risks. It's extremely reckless. There simply are no benefits in trying to appease Putin.
— ssu
There should be another narrative than the imperialist one when it comes to what Russia is. This narrative creates the reality were Russia sees necessary to intervene and dominate it's near abroad. First and foremost, the collapse of the Soviet Union, is seen as a mistake. An unfortunate accident. Russia is seen to be an multi-ethnic Empire and therefore it should obviously control what has been part of the Empire. And this makes everybody so nervous about Russia. It's not acting as a normal country. Yet the imperialist narrative dominates official Russia. It is fomented with the huge conspiracy that the West is against Russia, hence to defend itself, it has to attack.
— ssu
For Russia to become a normal country and shed it's bellicose aggressive behaviour a humiliating defeat could do it. The Soviet Union came so splendidly and peacefully apart that people like Vladimir Putin understood it as a mistake, something you can and have to fix.
— ssu
But I'm hopeful that Russia can shed it's fascist tendencies and perhaps become a normal democracy someday. But I acknowledge it will be difficult. Yet Spain and Portugal aren't anymore fascist.
— ssu — jorndoe

Clearly Ukraine is not teaching Russia this lesson they are supposed to be learning.

Therefore, the policy of propping up Ukraine is to have it destroyed, have hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed and maimed and traumatized, depopulate the younger generations making the existing demographic collapse that much more catastrophic, simply for the gesture of "our hearts being in the right place" of wanting Russia to lose a war and "learn a lesson".

Notice also, no where in these positions by @ssu is there any concern for Ukrainian welfare.

The war is not existential for the Ukrainian people, Russia has no way of conquering all of Ukraine anyways and clearly doesn't want that headache if they could, the Russian speaking regions have pretty solid evidence they (a lot, perhaps even a very solid majority) happy being in Russia (considering the real repression they experience by Ukrainian speakers).

Therefore, if the war is not existential, there must be some reasonable cost to waging it to accomplish the objectives.

This is the core question, which no one on the self described "pro-Ukrainian" side has even attempted to answer: no matter what you think of "justice" there must be some limit to the cost to Ukrainians in their war. Likewise, regardless of what you think of Ukrainian just cause, it is not good for this so called just cause nor moral in and of itself for the West to continuously manipulate Ukraine with false promises and false assurances.

Really, EU CSRD compliance law?

A man of your talents.

At least you're right that the two situations aren't quite the same. — jorndoe

Which is the point.

Now, whether Russia's war is a just war is a different issue to following the law of armed conflict once a war is started.

The law of armed conflict covers both sides of a war in which, presumably, one or both sides are at fault for fighting the war in the first place.

One can of course argue Russia's cause is not just, I haven't seen any good argument demonstrating that, but certainly it is possible to imagine.

What I care about is that Western policies were clearly designed to create a war (such as negotiating in bad faith the Minsk agreements and threatening to expand NATO infrastructure to Ukraine) and then once the war started strives to maximize the damage to Ukraine by drip feeding weapons (... just enough to prop it up at an incredible high cost to Ukraine). Of course, people can argue that Russia shouldn't respond to attacks on Donbas separatists nor respond to NATO expansion, which people have tried to do.

However, whether the war is just or not on Russia's part, there isn't a genocide.

Israel's genocide on the other hand is not only a genocide, which really should be the key takeaway here, but is also a conflict entirely created by Israel in occupying, oppressing and rendering Palestinians stateless people with essentially no rights.

Israel is responsible for the conflict in violating basic morality and international law in keeping people in a giant ghetto and randomly killing, kidnapping and abusing them (including child abuse), and obviously fully responsible for carrying out a genocide regardless.

It should also be noted that Israel fighting wars with other states cannot possibly form a justification for occupying and repressing and keeping the Palestinians in a ghetto in any case.

Where we certainly agree is that if Ukrainians have a right to resist occupation and thus slaughter Russians, Palestinians too have the same right to resist occupation and slaughter Israelis.