You are confusing the ability to take the initiative and make large scale offensive maneuvers with the ability to defend it's territory. — ssu

This was maybe true at the very start, and had Ukraine sued for peace then, it would have been significant Ukrainian agency just as you say, both the fighting and negotiating (especially if the US disagreed and wanted more fighting to bleed the Russians).

Ukraine had a significant stockpile of weapons and equipment, and I agree (wherever it came from, mostly soviet days) it was (at the time) the basis of independent decisions action.

However, in the months that followed essentially the entirety of the Ukrainian original armour fleet and other heavy weapons were destroyed and a significant part of its officer corp killed, and munitions stockpiles fired, transitioning to complete dependence on the US / NATO to simply maintain current lines, much less make any offensive operations.

Just treading water required thousands of rounds of artillery and other munitions a day as well as attrition of vehicles, and now also the electricity grid (requiring thousands of generators to try to cope with, which again Ukraine is 100% dependent on the US for).

Policies can and do come into existence after events. It's quite likely that ideas of a full-scale war with Ukraine came to existence after the astonishing success of capturing Crimea. In fact, the easiness of this brilliant operation can perfectly explain just why Putin would think that a 10 day operation is all what is needed to solve the Ukraine-problem once and for all. — ssu

I'd have no problem believing this is true.

It could have been the policy just to avoid an embarrassing result in the next round.

A lot of decisions revolve around avoiding embarrassment, so it's entirely possible the US planners did not think seriously beyond just trying to make sure Russia couldn't so easily take more of Ukraine, leading Putin to conclude, due to these actions being a threat and overconfidence from Crimea annexation, to "Putin would think that a 10 day operation is all what is needed to solve the Ukraine-problem once and for all".

Generally in large institutions, people have all sorts of elaborate theories and analysis and plans, but the logic and sequence of decisions is fairly simple, since a lot of people need to agree for anything to actually happen, and the complex analysis just explains why given people support given decisions at certain times (even if it's all mutually incompatible on the whole).

Hey guys!

Have noticed that the war between Ukraine and Russia actually has gone on since the year 2014?

And again the hubris of Ukrainians not having any role here... :smirk: — ssu

Ukraine is 100% dependent on NATO, in particular the US who calls the shots in NATO, for arms, intelligence, training and planning support, and bankrolling the entire government

Once you are completely dependent on a party, you are that party's pawn, whether you like it or not, whether you are convinced you want what they want or not. If the US changes policy, Ukraine has zero leverage to do anything about that, and if Ukraine complains about something (like not speaking at the World Cup) it doesn't matter what Ukraine wants, what matters is what the US wants.

Ukraine is a vassal state to the US, entirely propped up by US support and financing both by the US and by other European countries (on the insistence of the US), there is no way to argue that.

Because Ukraine's interest are not the same as the US interest, obviously bad outcomes for Ukraine (but acceptable to the US) are entirely possible.

Denying this is just not facing the potential cognitive dissonance of looking squarely at the suffering of Ukrainians right now.

2014 was clearly a US backed coup (we even have the audio of Nuland candidly calling the shots in Ukraine). That's not agency.

Furthermore, anti-Russian Ukrainian policies since, by factions or the government, since 2008, and especially since 2014, are in the context of Ukrainians truly believing they'll get into NATO ... if NATO knew that wouldn't happen, which Zelensky tells us NATO told him, that's a pretty big manipulation of Ukrainians. Again, being manipulated makes you a pawn and not a king.

Two other things worth considering in explaining why the policy isn't all that coherent:

Cancel culture is now the preferred method of the elites to censure society, as it is de facto corporate power over speech. It's not online rage (whether genuine or fabricated) that is the actual mechanism of discipline but being fired by the corporation you work for or then suspended / demonetised / de-platformed by the corporation you work for.

However, anyone can be cancelled anytime, for what they are recorded as saying or even alleged to have said, and the rules of the cancel culture aren't really clear. What is clear is that any dissenting opinion of any kind runs the risk of getting you cancelled (if you are not already in a marginalised niche). If you want your risk of being cancelled to be zero, you need to have zero dissenting opinions from the corporate-mainstream.

So, when the war breaks out, there is fear and hesitation on anyone in a position of influence in any of the European or US institutions or mainstream media or even social media, to offer any criticism, but especially within the political institutions making the decisions. Everyone in these institutions will fear any dissent gets the cancelled if not now then in the future. Whereas before cancel culture the realpolitik, economic, as well as "what do we owe Ukraine?", realities may have been discussed in a fact-of-the-matter way by decision makers, it could very well be that once the social media pressure builds beyond a certain point, everyone falls in line and it's impossible to mitigate any risks, much less outright disagree with the policy. Indeed, that it's self-harmful, even irrational, can be proof-pooding that the motivation is truly just.

In parallel to cancel culture, essentially suppressing any critical analysis, at the bare minimum within, political institutions to arrive at coherent policies, there is also the essentially pure game theory problem, when everyone believes the other parties policies are an irrational bluff.

For example, US believes Russia's policy of threatening to invade Ukraine is an irrational bluff (and too bad for them if they do it!), and Russia believes Europes policy to risk losing access to Russian gas is irrational (and too bad for them if they do it!), and Europe believes Russia's threats are irrational because they pay them so much for the gas and the "time of tanks rolling across the fields of Easter Europe" are over anyways. Likewise, Russia may believe US policy, even if they do sell LNG to Europe, is irrational because the US does actually need its European allies and this will foment disagreement and resentment (such as Macron wondering why the US doesn't sell them gas at the same price in the US ... where's the solidarity?). Russia sees Ukraine as irrational for risking and then entering a war of total destruction of Ukraine, whereas Ukraine sees Russia as irrational for risking and entering a war that is super costly and embarrassing on the world stage. And, of course, both the US and Russia have thousands of nuclear weapons so can easily perceive anyone messing with them as irrational.

When everyone believes everyone else is irrational and bluffing, no ones policy is actually rational, especially if at someone point everyone needs to commit to their irrational bluff to prove they weren't bluffing to begin with (even if they were).

↪boethius I'm open to the possibility, but I fail to see a coherent plan behind letting Russia conquer (parts of) Ukraine. — Tzeentch

I think we can agree it's not all that coherent.

One driver of NATO expansion is simply you need to be in NATO to be able to buy certain weapons, but also you're obviously not going to be buying from Russia (even though that has happened, such as Turkey buying AA systems, it's at great US protest), so it's a good arms-client relationship for the US.

I would guess the main reasoning behind the policy is simply that the war on terrorism has to end sometime, so who's the next enemy?

It's easy to say "China's the near-peer-competitor" but it's a lot more difficult to demonise China as the new "other", due to their economic leverage. Whereas Russia is more doable.

The thought process could have simply been we're setting up Russia as the new enemy and focus of attention for when the war on terrorism ends, but they may not really have thought through how Russia may react to these policies.

I think what's clear is that the idea was to have a tense but balanced relationship with Russia, and especially find a way to sell Europe LNG.

So, if imagine myself as a policy analyst, or even card carrying neo-con, to the US intelligence and administration, recommending this pathway, my idea maybe not to harm Europe economically, or even Russia really, and I may not even have in mind a total war in Ukraine, but more ... just scare the Europeans a bit, get them to buy more arms and more LNG (perhaps just in the name of "diversifying"): what's good for US arms and Gas is good for the US, QED.

In parallel to these macro economic issues, US intelligence operations in Ukraine was also clearly in retaliation for Russia saving Asad.

So, how all these forces mixed within the US government and NATO more generally (and Biden's son sitting on a board of a gas company and whatever the biolabs were about and so on--just seems an absolute cesspool), and then with Russia and Ukraine, I could definitely imagine results in this outcome without anyone really having planned it, nor even viewed as remotely plausible or even preferred (at the time) when considered.

In particular, the desire to sell LNG to Europe maybe a problem that really had no short term solution until the war started, so it could have seemed like a blessing from the lord and too good to be true or giveup or mitigate the risks in anyway, and the policy then sort of takes on a life of its own.

The remarkable thing is that during those four administrations the United States policy has been constant, unchanged. That is no coincidence.

Additionally, the United States must have expected full-scale war because that's what they sought to prepare Ukraine for for years, through all kinds of military aid, from training, equipment, to joint military exercises, etc. — Tzeentch

I agree it's not coincidence, just that it may not have been completely thought through, or then arming Ukraine post-Russia invasion was not the original plan.

Letting Russia conquer Ukraine, fomenting dissidence and sanctioning Russia would be an equally reasonable contingency in the case of a full invasion.

Certainly the US could not know ahead of time Ukraine would fight and not capitulate, so, in the least, they planned for both possibilities.

So when @ssu points out the US offering refuge to Ukrainian leadership, this may have been genuinely part of the plan "Ukraine is conquered by Russia".

However, certainly the US policy since 2008 has, at minimum, zero problem with provoking Russia into invading Ukraine, but I would guess the idea was that this would be a net-loss to Russia even if they took the territory (and need to deal with Ukrainian insurgence / nationalists for years). When US officials and policy wonks kept saying "we can give Russia's their Afghanistan" before and at the start of the war, they may very well have had that in mind, of Russia winning the conventional war and then needing to deal with an insurgency and dissidence and it's more than they can handle, and, for certain, pretext for the sanctions, selling gas to Europe.

That Ukraine fought tenaciously to halt the conquering and the massive social media response and so on, may have been unexpected and seen as a new opportunity after the war started, or that they were pushing for total war but wanted to be sure Ukrainian leadership was really committed (so offering the refuge is a way to evaluate that).

Evidence for this would be that the US / NATO didn't flood Ukraine with the ATMG's and Stingers before the war, so what exactly was the plan could have been pretty ambiguous (even to the US administration and bureaucracies).

Likewise, the US could not have been completely sure of Europe's reaction to the war. Germany and France could have opposed supporting Ukraine, or been vocal about the need for peace from the beginning or resisted sanctions etc. in one way or another, in which case plan total war via Ukraine may not be feasible. The current predicament maybe a case of being victim of one's own success, in that Europe was totally in with essentially no dissent, Ukraine was fighting well with what they had, total exuberance for war in Ukraine, Europe and the US, so everything was peachy at the time. The problem that creates being how to calibrate the harm you want to do to Russia, but not more, and then end the war when it becomes a net-liability rather than an asset.

Definitely seems to me the US has achieved all it would like to achieve in the war so far, but there's no easy way to end it.

The Zaluzhny interview could be indication they're willing to just do it. But I think we've been close to peace before when a new cycle of escalation is triggered and that goes off the rails, so could be a similar situation this time.

The Economist is Western media, one of the most visible. Evidently, its competitors, such as the NYT, are not going to talk much about a scoop that escaped them. In general, American news outlets tend to ignore non-American ones -- it's part of their exceptionalism. — Olivier5

Ignoring an issue does not imply "has never been mentioned once" it just means paying little attention to it.

If you're ignoring someone or something, there's a spectrum to it, in particular if we're talking about large institutions.

But, please, post any analysis in mainstream media about this interview made today or in the last few days, certainly would be interesting to see.

If I search Zaluzhny in the past 24 hours on google, the top hits are:

1. https://vpk.name
2. Twitter (just linking to general search of Zaluznhy in twitter)
3. https://www.president.gov.ua
4. Medium
5. https://kyivindependent.com
6. https://infographics.economist.com
7. https://www.ukrinform.net

Which is not something I would predict of a topic of interest for the main stream Western media. I'm pretty confident that if a mainstream publication was talking about it, google would put it pretty near the top. And the economist.com page on it isn't even new content, just posting the an 8 second audio clip of the interview.

The Economist is ignored by the Western press, really? — Olivier5

I don't see much discussion about this interview in Western media, seems to me very much "last weeks news" that was pretty much ignored.

Something can appear in Western media and still be ignored by Western media generally speaking. Lot's of pretty "big deals" appear once in the New York Times or somewhere and then are pretty much never discussed again, or it's a topic of the current news cycle and just goes away in the next.

When a topic is focused on in Western media it will have plenty of followup, different people's reactions and takes, questions to politicians and officials, analysis by scholars and so on, which can go on for weeks, months, or years.

For example, for 2 decades there was constant focus on the topic of "terrorism"; interviewing generals, academics, journalist opinion, analysis of policy (too much, not enough), all sorts of speculations, documenting and re-documenting their crimes, talking to victims, reporting people think it's really bad in various forms, etc.

After the withdrawal of Afghanistan, the issue is basically now completely ignored. BBC reported on some starving children in Afghanistan, but there wasn't much discussion about it, not a topic that was focused on. The word "terror" or "terrorism" appears 0 times on CNN, CNBC, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters front webpage (as of writing this), whereas Ukraine or Ukrainian appears on the front page on CNN 6 times, CNBC 4 times, The Guardian 22 times, and Reuters 4 times.

Interestingly the BBC does not have Ukraine as front page news on their website today (nor any analogue like "Kiev" or "Zelensky") ... could be the first time this has happened since the start of the war; make of it what you will.

Lol, Scott Ritter, really? Well, shit seeks its own level. — SophistiCat

Any issues with the actual analysis?

It definitely seems to me that Zelensky is being pushed to the side, didn't even get to address the World Cup as he wanted, which, seems to me, the US would have made happen if it wanted; Qatar being a 100% US security dependent.

The interview is also quite extraordinary in its revelations, it's not some sort of "get to know the general" puff piece.

He literally states that Ukrainian will inevitably lose the war if it doesn't receive significant increase in assistance of heavy weapons, which are not on their way and may not even be enough (just that if the West put in another 300 tanks, 700 infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 howitzers then it's invested for double or triple or quadruple those numbers). He then references a military commander's concessions speech, Mannerheim, to the Soviet Union / Russia in a similar circumstance.

Especially considering Zuluznhy doesn't speak much to the press, it is even more difficult to believe this was just off-the-cuff remarks that the US administration did not approve of.

Now, it maybe pretty much ignored by Western media, but for certain Ukrainians paid careful attention to this, as well other policy makers in Europe and Russia. The interview is basically saying the writing is on the wall for Ukraine and some sort of concession speech is coming "if" significantly more equipment doesn't arrive which aren't on their way.

Of course, could all be part of some subterfuge to make the Russians believe Ukraine is giving up, when they aren't giving up! Or then just the private musings of the General without any indication of a policy change whatsoever. But that's difficult to imagine.

However, I would agree that interview doesn't commit anything, but I have a hard time imagining the interview was planned without the idea of setting up these options. I'd also be willing to believe that setting up a concession speech, Zelensky resigning, compromise with the Russians is coming from the Ukrainian side if they see there is simply no more viable path to victory, in which case the US is managing the process with controlled statements in the Western press rather than some confusing speculation engine of random remarks to Ukrainian press.

Just a side note, Zelensky doesn't necessarily need to resign, but could just become a figurehead, and the actual negotiation done by Zuluzhny. Then a Ukrainian election and Zelensky steps down from politics then. This is also a usual way to do these things. A lot of the conflict is portrayed as basically personal issue between Zelensky and Putin.

That simply isn't "an instrument of US / NATO policy". — ssu

Yes, if the priority is to harm Russia, and not "defend Ukrainian sovereignty" then Ukraine is an instrument of this policy.

You can argue that the real objective is just a concern for Ukrainian well being and Sovereignty if you want.

Just remember that the first thing when Russia attacked was for the US to ask if the Ukrainian leadership needed help in evacuating from Ukraine. That's how much they believed in this "instrument of US / NATO policy" you try to depict. — ssu

It's entirely possible that the policy came into existence after seeing the Ukrainians fighting back successfully enough to halt the invasion.

Although I completely agree with

The Americans have purposefully steered towards this conflict since at least 2008.

Now they have their conflict, and they spin a yarn about Ukrainian sovereignty. — Tzeentch

There's been 4 US administrations since 2008, and I'd be willing to accept the idea the US more-or-less stumbled into this conflict without really a military plan if Russia did a full scale invasion (they may have been satisfied with Russia conquering Ukraine, having a big headache to deal with trying to manage it, and slapping tons of sanctions on Russia).

Which is how proponents of this policy usually frame it: know one could believe Ukraine would be so good and Russia so bad, and suddenly there was this opportunity to bleed the Russians! Is usually how it's presented.

The policy of arming Ukraine "whatever it take, but not really" may not have been pre-planned, which would explain why US keeps having this "let's negotiate ... but haha, no, but actually yes! peace would be good, but talk to Zelensky!" and completely inconsistent in the logic of weapons supplies, rather than some clear and coherent position on these issues.

Also, I wouldn't disagree that fighting back initially is a good idea, preferable to complete capitulation, even if the cost is not trivial (thousands dead). However, it's after doing that when a smaller party has maximum leverage: the leverage is basically "you might ultimately be able to win, but the cost will make it not-worth it and there are significant risks". For example, in the first weeks of the war, the Kremlin would not know how the sanctions would play out, if their lines would hold (or then be able to withdraw from losing positions without being totally encircled), if Ukraine / US had some insane surprise, what the domestic political reaction would be to the war and sanctions and so on, if mobilisation would work / be accepted by Russians, if the whole thing could just spiral into a nuclear conflict the Kremlin doesn't actually want either and so on. There's not only the cost even if you win, but all these other risks and if the cost of 2 weeks of war to Russia isn't that much, then it doesn't have to get much in a compromise to show it was "worth it". Likely, due to all these risks, when the Russians offered to be out of Ukraine the next day, if Donbas was independent and Crimea recognised as Russian and Neutral Ukraine, it was entirely genuine and clearly the minimum the Russians would accept.

The longer the war drags on, the more all these risks at the start either go away or then get clarified (or then just now familiar and no longer feared as much, even if the risk is actually the same).

However, if the priority is Ukrainian sovereignty then what follows from that is an honest discussion with Ukraine of what would be a reasonable compromise to end the war on the best conditions possible, given the limitations of Western support and also the cost in itself of more war (some plausible cost-benefit analysis for Ukrainians, not the West). Additionally, if the priority was Ukrainian sovereignty and welfare, the West would use its economic leverage to help negotiate the best outcome, or then just have used its economic leverage before the war to try to avoid the war (such as Nord Stream 2; of which the logic of refusing to open it was not that the project wasn't mutually beneficial to Europe, or clearly a basis of peace for Russia, but simply that US wants to "contain" Russia, which is by definition promoting conflict and not peace).

And this is clearly not how the US and NATO are making decisions, but the only consideration is what harms Russia the most while not escalating into nuclear war, meaning Russia losing would be going to far. To sweep all the moral issues of this position under the rug, US and NATO just yell "Ukraine wants to fight! Ukraine wants the weapons!" but this moral hot potato does not somehow dissociate our actions from the consequences of our actions.

To recapitulate your intellectual failures so far: — neomac

emotional blackmailing, — neomac

That you perceive my pointing out the cost of your "endgame" for NATO, who you support, as emotional blackmail, is just demonstrating your cognitive dissonance about your own position.

Harming Russia by arming the Ukrainian army, comes at to Ukrainian welfare, and if harming Russia is the goal the cost to Ukraine could be far in excess of what would be in Ukrainian-self-interest (with or without us deceiving them about it, we would still be responsible for the outcome).

If you want to support harming the Russians, and not just a little bit but until they are no longer a threat to the West, then this requires a commensurate cost to the Ukrainians, a "moral dilemma" in your own words. Pointing out the cost is just reality, not "blackmail", and your perception that the reality is blackmail, is delusional.

slippery slopes, strawmans — neomac

What slippery slope, what straw man? You can't be more clear what your position actually is, and then you double down on it to be even more clear:

Sure, here I restate it again and bolden it: The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power (in terms of its economic system, its system of alliance, its capacity of military projection outside its borders, its its technology supply, its military and geopolitical status) to the point it is not longer perceived as a non-negligible geopolitical threat to the West. Outrageous right?! — neomac

It's not outrageous, it's exactly what US / NATO are trying to do, and they are pretty clear about it.

Lot's of geopolitical "moves" require the sacrifice of some country or people's wellbeing for the "greater good". Talk to the Vietnamese, talk the Kurds, talk to our liberal "friends" in Iraq and Afghanistan, talk to the Libyans and Syrians (again, our "friends" there, not to mention just average person there trying to get by).

And, indeed, it is typical of any war that it is waged on land and among civilians that do not benefit from the outcome, either way, especially if their dead. Sacrificing here or there, this person or that, for the polities benefit and not their own, is an entirely normal process in any war.

The reason it's controversial in this war is because we're not even fighting it, Ukraine may lose anyways and even if they have some sort of "win" it may easily be at an unreasonably high cost. If it was all just to virtue signal without any coherent workable plan to actually "beat" Russia, then this Western attitude (of which the policy of the leadership entirely depends) has caused immense suffering for nothing.

You support the policy, the cost to Ukraine is immense, face the reality and explain how it's worth it so far, how the same or multiple times more cost would be likewise worth it, or even the entire destruction of Ukraine would be worth it if Russia is harmed enough.

For months the cost to Ukraine was simply denied, casualties super low, easily winning, Russian army incompetent and will collapse any day etc. so everyone in the West could just ignore the "moral dilemma" of what this policy is costing Ukraine.

Now that the "bill is coming due" people in the West want to just ignore it and if they see it a little bit: Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine chose this path!!

The truth of the situation is simply that nuclear blackmail works. The situation would need to be nearly inconceivably more extreme than what is happening in Ukraine for it not to be reasonable to submit to nuclear blackmail.

And, because nuclear blackmail works, US / NATO policy is not to "escalate" beyond a certain point: that point being Russia actually losing the war.

First, it’s not “my” endgame. Making it personal would be misleading even if there was no intellectual dishonesty involved, because it may confuse my understanding of certain geopolitical dynamics with my taking position toward them. These are 2 distinct things. My understanding how the chess game is played by a couple of players is one thing, my siding with any of them is another. — neomac

You're really now trying to say you're just engaging in objective analysis without a horse in the race?

Moving the goal posts all the way from:

Putin and China are questioning the West-backed world order. The West must respond to that threat with determination. That’s why Putin unilateral aggression must fail in a way however that is instrumental to the West-backed world order. If this war is not just between Russia and Ukraine, then it’s not even just between the US and Russia, it’s between whoever wants to weigh in in establishing the new world order, either by backing the US or by backing Russia. — neomac

All the way to "My understanding how the chess game is played by a couple of players is one thing, my siding with any of them is another."

We debated your support for "the West" in this war in Ukraine for many pages.

You present your actual arguments in clear terms "Putin unilateral aggression must fail".

It's "your endgame" because you're the one proposing it:

Sure, here I restate it again and bolden it: The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power (in terms of its economic system, its system of alliance, its capacity of military projection outside its borders, its its technology supply, its military and geopolitical status) to the point it is not longer perceived as a non-negligible geopolitical threat to the West. Outrageous right?! — neomac

"Putin must fail" and you propose an US/NATO endgame that "doesn’t need to be to stop Russia".

You then literally just say the exact thing I just says, just you're issue is my "framing".

Again you are conveniently framing the issue as it suits your narrative. Ukrainian lives (namely casualties) are not “The instrument to ‘inflict as much as enduring damage as possible to Russian power’” but the collateral damage of Ukrainian decisions to fight back Russian aggression, direct damage inflicted by Russian decisions on Ukrainians, and indirect collateral damage of Western decisions to support Ukrainians in fighting back Russian aggression. As collateral damage is Ukrainian lives, this poses a moral dilemma of course. — neomac

Collateral damage to Ukrainian lives would make sense if NATO was fighting with Russia in Ukrainian territory, then Ukrainian lives lost would be unfortunate collateral damage.

That's not the case, NATO isn't fighting.

Ukrainian lives (especially the soldiers) are the instrument of US / NATO policy in this fight, and the collateral damage would be civilians and structures that the Ukrainian military kills, wounds or damages as an unintended consequence of warfare.

Soldiers dying is not collateral damage.

However, even if you want to call it that, you recognise the main issue which is all this death and destruction in Ukraine "As collateral damage is Ukrainian lives, this poses a moral dilemma of course."

Why is there a moral dilemma? Because achieving the policy objective you set (and US / NATO doesn't have much problem admitting to) of inflicting enduring damage on the Russian military is not the same objective as Ukrainian welfare, which I have zero problem saying can involve some fighting (the first weeks of fighting is certainly preferable to total capitulation and humiliation, but it's after demonstrating your honour on the international stage, is the optimum time to sue for peace and accept a compromise as a smaller nation) but (regardless of when peace is sought) fighting for the welfare of Ukrainians is a much more constrained criteria than fighting to harm the Russians. Saying "they both want to fight the Russians so they both want the same thing" is simply totally wrong: "fighting the Russian insofar as it's in the interest of Ukrainians" is a very different objective than "fighting the Russians insofar as it damages the Russians".

This is why "the US / NATO fighting to the last Ukrainian" has been a focal point of debate since the beginning of the war, because, obviously, if the goal is simply to maximise damage to Russia then what follows from that would be "fighting to the last Ukrainian". It's a way of saying the objectives of Ukraine and US / NATO are not the same, which US / NATO don't really have a problem saying.

For example, saying Putin and Russia must "pay a cost" for breaking the international "rules based order" is exact same idea, maybe with slight "narrative framing" differences. It is not saying "we must ensure Ukrainian welfare is the top priority, which may require compromise with Russia", but it clearly means the priority is damaging Russia so the war is costly, which means pouring arms into Ukraine as they are doing the fighting, which means Ukrainians are the instrument of this policy, not the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries are all who benefit from the "international rules based order" and if the entirety of Ukraine is sacrificed for this policy then "mission accomplished".

Let’s examin the density of your intellectual squalor as illustrated by this arbitrary accusation.
First, I expressed my preferences and the reasons of my siding with the Western support to Ukraine in previous posts, so there was no need for you to invent such pathetic slogans about my preferences (BTW why love one and hate the other? I could be adverse to both powers yet hate Russian hegemony way more than the American one). — neomac

Even more ridiculous that after stating "My understanding how the chess game is played by a couple of players is one thing, my siding with any of them is another" you state a few paragraphs later "I expressed my preferences and the reasons of my siding with the Western support to Ukraine".

Can you not read and understand your own statements? You are "siding with the West" and you propose an "endgame" that is sufficient for the West (The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power) ... so i.e. an endgame you support.

Second, I’m arguing that Western support of Ukraine is both strategically and morally defensible (actually more than the opposite view for avg Westerners) so your attack ad hominem is irrelevant wrt such arguments. — neomac

Sure, but as you yourself admit there's a "moral dilemma" in the Western support of Ukraine for the purposes of harming the Russians, as it is not the same thing as supporting Ukrainian welfare.

So, if Ukrainian welfare is sacrificed for a goal that is not Ukrainian welfare, the moral responsibility for our policies cannot just be then shifted to the Ukrainian leadership and "Ukrainian people" (insofar as we equate them with Ukrainian leadership), we are still responsible for our own policies and what we are trying to achieve. Just because you want to kill someone doesn't mean I am justified in giving you the weapon to do it. Even if you were justified in your desire to kill (say self defence) and I was justified in helping you do that, even then it does not justify any form of lethal support. As @Isaac pointed out, self defence vis-a-vis your neighbour doesn't justify nuking the whole city. As the provider of lethal support, I'd still be responsible for the outcome and how my actions contributed to the outcome.

Whenever the cost to Ukraine of the Western policy is pointed out, essentially all the supporters of the policy here and elsewhere just throw their hands up and say "Ukrainians want to fight!" and seem to believe that completely unburdens them of the consequences of the policy.

But as you say yourself, there's a "moral dilemma". If you want to support this policy and argue in good faith, then solve the moral dilemma, rather than move the goal posts around for your own arguments so much that the "game" your playing is now entirely made of goal posts. We're literally walking on goal posts.

Can you show better how your accusation follows from your notion of “justification”? — neomac

I've accused you of moving the goalposts of you arguments around rather than just arguing what you actually believe (that the endgame is to "inflict enduring damage on Russia", which causes "collateral damage" in pursuit of that goal, that causes a moral dilemma).

I have argued the justifications you present are insufficient, such as a UN general assembly vote being some sort of "normative / legal justification", or, even if it was (which it isn't), then totally incompatible with supporting the US despite the US ignoring UN generally assembly votes all the time. More importantly for the actual debate we're having, the "normative / legal" argument isn't your actual justification but rather supporting the West, and US hegemony in particular, generally speaking.

There are four central issues to what you actually believe.

1. First being the justification of US hegemony in the geopolitical struggle with Russia, but more importantly China. Now, like yourself, I prefer to live in the West than in China or Russia, however, this is equatable with seeking hegemonic control / influence / containment of China and its neighbours. My approach would be a "lead by example" policy and not picking fights that get hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed and injured and destroying half or more of the Ukrainian economy, in seeking to harm Russia, which benefits China so seems to me entirely counter productive on the geopolitical hegemonic "chess game" in any case.

2. Bringing to the second point which is this policy really does advance US hegemony and Western leadership of the whole world.

3. And lastly, that the sacrifice of Ukraine to advance this policy is morally justified. At least the US was fighting in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and there's at least honour to that and suffering the consequences of the policy. It is impossible to ignore the fact that when parties are armed to do the fighting for us, that this creates an intense moral hazard, moreover when any criticism of the leadership and war is banned in the country, we wholeheartedly condone and promote propaganda for "morale" purposes and winning the "information war" with Russia (i.e. we cannot even say there's some sort of informed consent) and (make matter morally worse) we produce a lot of the propaganda ourselves (encouraging belief that the side we need to fight can "win" when our military and civilian leadership may be fully aware that is very unlikely) leading to decisions on false pretences, and, also important, if pouring money and arms into the country is de facto bribing the leadership of that country who benefit immensely in both legal and illegal ways from all this money and arms pouring in.

4. That anytime the goal posts change to "Ukrainian sovereignty!" then why aren't Western armies in Ukraine defending this alleged priority?

These are not "accusations" but just what your position actually entails. If harming Russia is the objective, and Ukrainians are doing the fighting, and the West is arming and bankrolling and "advising", then it simply goes with that position that it's entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that this setup will result in Ukrainians fighting beyond their own self interest (which I have zero problem recognising involves some fighting).

In other words, we may have already (I would definitely argue this), and if not, may very well in the future, sacrifice Ukrainian welfare to pursue the West's priority in this situation, which is, to boil it down, "not letting Putin get away with it!".

Does “you cannot justify to others” mean that my claims are not justified until I can prove that everybody on earth agrees with me?! — neomac

"Justification" has a social function definition of justifying to others. If a judge asks for your "justification" for some actions, the request is to justify to the judge not yourself. When a justification is only to oneself, we say "self justification" to clarify that no one else is intended to be convinced by the argument.

For example, if you were caught taking something and this led to a trial, "I wanted it" is not a good justification in this context; this self-justification goes without saying and not the issue at trial (no harm in mentioning it, obviously you took the thing because you wanted it) so if you started your explanation with "well I wanted it" unlikely anyone would disagree, but a adequate justification in this context would be some right to the thing (there was a deal for example, that the counter party is now denying) or then some particular circumstance (some emergency, for example, or then you actually thought it was lost and took it to "return it" to the owner etc.).

That's just what the word justification means.

Of course, one can propose nothing is justified, there is no justice, all moral language is for the purposes of rationalising and manipulation. But, even in this position, the word "justification" still refers to the attempt to convince others your actions are just (only everyone, perhaps even yourself, is always deceived about it, there is no "actual" justification for anything, life has no purpose other than pursuing your inclinations and desires, which are accidental to your genes and upbringing and themselves not justified either, just nothing else to do).

Anyways, essentially no one, certainly not myself, argues that a position is justified only after a everyone agrees, which creates immediately the problem of why anyone would believe it's true if it's not true until everyone believes it's true. The "truth" (or then meaninglessness of the issue) of a justification is independent of anyone's belief about it. Your actions maybe justified and a judge and everyone else disagrees. Indeed, your actions maybe justified and you yourself are convinced it was actually wrong later.

The point of getting into the meaning of justification, is that what people propose as their justification maybe a lie. So, it is entirely reasonable to speculate as the real motivations behind what people do. Now, the actual (secret in this case) justification maybe true and following from that the lies about it are also justified, or then maybe both are not-justified. Or, the more confusing situation but entirely possible, is one uses a true justification to advance a hidden objective that is similar to but not actually the same or even compatible with the true justification.

For example, I maybe entirely justified in helping a traveller in distress, but if my true intentions are to simply gain this travellers trust for the purposes of stealing from them, then my actions up to that point only appear entirely justified but it is in actuality part of a deception. So, a true justification can also be a lie, that it only even possibly revealed in the future.

since you believe the following “Certainly we would want law to conform to our normative disposition, but until A. all people have the same values and B. little or no corruption exists, then that won't be the case” how can we possibly justify (in your terms) our position to others if they do not share our values or we can’t assure that little or no corruption exists? — neomac

We may not be able to, but we try nevertheless. For example, the Byzantine Empire would argue theology with the various caliphates they were in contact with. Neither side expected to convince / convert the other, but they would still make the attempt. Lot's of reasons for this: vis-a-vis the other party in the debate it can be simply a sign of respect to argue one's position, as it recognises the other party's arguments at least have the merit of being responded to, and it can also be for the purposes of just maintaining a polite dialogue with people you may need to deal with to avoid wars or do business etc. or then it could be for internal reasons of just impressing your own court with "proofs" that the heathens are wrong (or for all these purposes) or then just an obvious task of one's own theologians to prove the faith etc.

However, what's a norm, what's normative, and what's legal are not the same thing. Certainly the goal of society is to harmonise all three, and for some things that happens to be the case, but you cannot deduce one from another. Simply because something is a norm does not mean it it normative nor legal. From my position in corporate management, people break the law literally all the time with no consequences.

what do you mean by “require recognising legitimate grievances of the Russians”? — neomac

This was discussed at length near the very beginning of this discussion, but, in short, if you want to negotiate a dispute with a party the first step is to recognise legitimate grievances of the other party (i.e. grievances that you yourself agree are reasonable and can do something about). Generally, everyone has some legitimate grievances in any situation, and the more complex the situation the more legitimate grievances everyone has, if you want to negotiate a settlement then the first step is to layout all the grievances of all the parties on the table and see if everyone can at least agree those are all legitimate points of view. The other essential starting element is the leverage each party has. Based on these two things, perhaps it is possible to come up with an arrangement acceptable to all the parties that is preferable to further conflict.

If you ignore someone's grievances then they are unlikely to accept anything you propose. Now, "legitimate" is prepended to "grievances" as maybe someone grievances are simply unreasonable (at least to you) and you can do nothing to solve them. "Legitimate grievance" is something you yourself agrees the counter party has a point about and an agreement would need to resolve, compensate or address in some way.

The position that Russia is 100% wrong about everything and has no legitimate points or grievances, is simply the position of refusing to negotiate and the choice of more warfare, which maybe justified, but the West and Zelensky like to present demands obviously Russia would never accept and just deny any problems on their own side. Like the very real Nazi's with significant influence, whether there is enough to justify invasion or not, it's clearly a legitimate grievance that the West should also have a problem with. Also expansion of NATO is also a legitimate grievance, considering NATO is quite clearly an anti-Russia organisation. Engaging in the self-justification of NATO expansion, just insisting that of course it's anti-Russian because Russia is the threat and countries want protection from Russia and getting into NATO and expanding NATO closer to Russia is not a threat to Russia because NATO's intentions are pure, people can do ... but, if you don't intend to negotiate. Obviously, my "anti-you" alliance will be perceived as a threat from your point of view. That Westerners can say we place these missiles closer to Russia but that's not like "a threat" to Russia is dumb if the goal is to negotiate with Russia.

A negotiated peace would be by definition a compromise. An uncompromising peace is what's called a surrender. So, listing uncompromising demands that Russia then obviously rejects, is a convoluted, bad faith way of saying there is no desire for negotiation, the surrender of Russia is preferable, for the purposes of propaganda. The problem is if you can't actually force Russia to surrender then this sort of language prolongs the war.

The problem the West has created by encouraging Zelensky to be uncompromising and make delusional statements while also insisting all negotiation must be with Zelensky, without the other powers involved at the table, is that basically any compromise on anything is now a Russian in Zelensky's framework.

Peace negotiations can be dealt with as quid-pro-quo without recognising any legitimate grievances, like a prisoner exchange, so why would this be required as a first step for a peace negotiation? — neomac

In order to engage in a quid pro quo, you need to recognise those are in fact legitimate grievances (such as return of prisoners) to then arrive at an agreement about it. Your own side negotiating needs to do this process at least internally (hear what others have to say, what they want, etc.). Whether something is recognised explicitly in public is a form of compensation, and is not a requirement as you say. However, anyone doing any actual diplomacy with Russia (with an intention of resolving the conflict) would need themselves to evaluate legitimate grievances that are reasonable to address in a settlement, and likewise anyone simply analysing the situation and trying to what sort of resolution the war is possible must do the same (to have any chance of proposing some practical insights).

Is it something that needs to be officially recorded anywhere? With what potential/likely legal and propaganda cost/benefit and strategic implications?
What kind of “legitimate grievances” are you talking about and in what sense you consider them “legitimate”? — neomac

As I explain above, the important recognition is internal to the negotiating parties (if they genuinely seek a resolution; if not you just say whatever you want). How these legitimate grievances are then recognised in an agreement can be through explicit recognition and compensation (but this is pretty rare in a settlement, as one of the benefits of a settlement is not recognising any wrong doing), so usually it's simply recognised in compensation and horse-trading, and between nations there can be entirely secret arrangements.

What kind of “legitimate grievances” are you talking about and in what sense you consider them “legitimate”? — neomac

The main on is of course NATO expansion. When Russia mentions moving missiles and forward operating bases and so on closer to Russia is a threat to Russia, that's obviously true. One of the quid pro quo agreements with Russia in the expansion of NATO was that missile bases wouldn't advance. The actual military threats are hardware and personnel, not the actual NATO treaty, so bringing countries into NATO is one thing, and actually advancing NATO hardware, systems and soldiers is another.

In terms of real military analysis, the central military justification for Russia war is that NATO installed a missile base in the Baltics. That NATO says it was to protect against Iran and is only missile defence is entirely meaningless if you want to negotiate an end to a conflict with Russia.

There is actually a stable form of NATO enlargement in making NATO bigger but not only moving little to no hardware closer to Russia but the Easter-European states themselves becoming more stable vis-a-vis Russia and also each other and both lowering their defence expenditures because they are in NATO as well as depending on NATO command structures to function so unable really to do any independent military actions anyways. For, previous to NATO expansion you can have disputes between East-European countries entirely unrelated to Russia or NATO but that then draft Russia and/or NATO into the conflict and the it growing into a regional conflict and getting out of control. Prior to NATO directly threatening Russia with advancing missile bases and proposing Georgia and Ukraine join NATO (and notice the combination of abandoning the quid pro quo of not advancing advanced hardware will also wanting to expand right to Russia's border, is something any general would say warrants a war, and there'd be only political reasons not to go to war; this is a sad reality of NATO's actions over the last decades, that this war is totally provoked and any NATO member would evaluate things militarily exactly the same as Russia has).

So, obviously if NATO wants peace with Russia it will likely have to recognise it has to take a less threatening posture with Russia. Advancing missile bases is particular stupid if the goal is peace. Obviously, neutral Ukraine are removing the missile base would be one way of recognising this grievance. If you want Ukraine in NATO, then to convince the Russians you'd need to propose a lot more compensation for that, but that seems essentially an impossible deal, but maybe there's some sort of "NATO light" version or something.

There are definitely the Nazi's in Ukraine. As a Westerner I don't think that should be acceptable to the West, let alone the Russians. And if you look into the issue with reporting pre-invasion, these are definitely Nazi institutions with enormous power and influence in Ukraine. It should be, first of all, Western policy to not support and arm Nazi's. That Western media lauds these "ultra nationalists" as "the best fighters" that Ukraine simply needs, is even more outrageous.

The rights of Russian speaking minorities that, fact of the matter is, Ukraine started oppressing in total contradiction to the West's "values and policies" about minority rights, is also simply an entirely justified grievance, which is text-book prejudice due to ethnicity and language that the West claims to be against.

There have been war crimes also by the Ukrainians, but generally in a peaceful resolution to a war, all the warcrimes are ignored. As with any settlement, one of the main benefits is not admitting any wrongdoing.

We had trials against the Third Reich ... because we won. There was no trials of Western war crimes even if they were of comparable or worse nature than some convicted Nazi's.

Benefits of winning is also likewise not needing to admit any wrong doing.

Finally what kind of legitimate grievances against the Russians (notice how the negotiation requirements are framed around pro- and cons- for Russia, because they are the ones really need convincing not the West or the Ukrainians) is Russia required to recognize as a first step? — neomac

Yes, the negotiation from our Western perspective is mainly around the pros-and-cons for Russia, since it's them that we are negotiating with.

The first step in negotiating a settlement is coming up with a compromise of the key issues that you think is acceptable to the other party, the "deal breakers". There can be a long list of minor stuff, in this case economic arrangements of how to rebuild Ukraine or then dropping sanctions and so on, but there's no point in addressing secondary issues if there's no possible compromise on the deal breakers.

The deal breakers in this war for the Russians are concerning NATO and Crimea. There maybe someway to negotiate the other big issues, such as Russian speaking rights in Donbas and so, in a way that de-annexes these territories (such as the proposed referendums to be part of Ukraine, autonomous in Ukraine or independent) or then simply recognises the annexation (such as another referendum to join Russia that the international community recognises).

There is, for certain, no compromise Ukrainians and Westerners would be happy about, but the alternative is more war, more death, and potentially Ukraine losing anyways, which people will just blame Ukraine for not "fighting hard enough" but people should be far more unhappy about compared to a compromise now or at any point previous in the war.

Which is why the issue of the cost to Ukraine of more fighting is simply ignored in Western media, and even in this forum: so that if Ukraine comes out a big loser in all this, well that's what they wanted, what are you gonna do, all we did was give some of the weapons that they wanted, as any friend would do.

Russia won't be more dangerous after the war, it will be defanged and humbled. Don't you look forward to that? — Olivier5

It could be, but that's far from certain.

Conventional war theory is that an army that is merely not-defeated (doesn't even need to win), is stronger after a war than before even if damage suffered during the war is severe. As I've mentioned, even militaries that lose and essentially forced to disarm, such as Germany after WWI, still have all the experience benefits enabling starting entirely new world war a few decades later in this case, but typical examples are the US army after the US civil war and Soviet army after WWII (some 12 million personnel despite some 9 million dead and 22 million wounded during the war; essentially 2 orders of magnitude greater than current Russian losses in Ukraine).

The reasons for this is that fighting an actual war is not only "real-world experience" necessary to get good at anything, but places significant meritocracy pressure on the chain of command, as well as orienting a large part of the economy to war materials and fighting.

It is very simplistic thinking to believe that short term harms inflicted on the Russian army translate to any medium or long term harms.

As for economic sanctions, I have trouble seeing any problems for Russia insofar as China is willing to supply them. People should keep in mind that nearly all our "Western technology" is fabricated and/or assembled in East-Asia, significant portion in China itself, and there's zero way to significantly obstruct Russian supply chains without China's active assistance.

Considering we've been calling China our rival, geo-political threat, needing a pivot or two, etc. for decades, I have difficulty imagining why China would suddenly assist us in what is, arguably, a Chinese proxy war to attrit NATO.

And this is not controversial opinion in geo-political analysis circles, the top "cold warriors" nearly all came out of retirement to warn the US and NATO that their actions in Ukraine are potentially counter-productive in terms of the balance-of-power, such as Kissinger.

Does cutting Russia off from the Western economic system (while still needing to buy their resources directly or through intermediaries) harm Russia? Or does it reduce our leverage in dealing with Russia? Leading to all sorts of trouble down the line.

Is Russia transitioning to (a large degree) a war economy where we've purposefully removed all potential pathways to "Westernise", even going so far as to ban Russian orchestras and sports teams etc., increase or decrease Russia as a threat to our interests?

Indeed, Kissinger just reiterated his position that peace is a preferable geopolitical choice.

I disagree with a lot Kissinger's decisions, but there is no denying his expertise on geopolitical issues as well as his priority being "US interests".

It's time for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, Kissinger says — Reuters

Notably, Kissinger also suggests international organised referendums as a means to solve the annexation issue (which I was the first to suggest, on this very forum, as far as I know).

Likewise, achieving the goal of breaking up Russia, potentially resulting in chaotic internal nuclear wars between factions, is not a reasonable goal to have, as I've also pointed out.

The Economist interviewed General Valery Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Now, normally I don't pay much mind to government or military officials' statements. You have to read between the lines to get a morsel of useful info. But Zaluzhny is no politico, and he is known for speaking candidly on those infrequent occasions when he speaks in public. And indeed, this interview is not what you might expect: "Rah-rah-rah! Crimea in six months!" Not at all. — SophistiCat

Scott Ritter's take on this interview is essentially as follows:

First, this is not some spontaneous off-the-cuff remarks by some low level commander.

He may very well be someone who speaks candidly, but this interview was certainly planned by the US administration (because it's to a US news outlet; if it was to Ukrainian journalists, then maybe in that case he's gone off script or just shit-happens kind of thing). In addition, Zelensky was there.

So, already the fact this interview happens and is Zaluzhny is the primary representative of Ukraine delivering critical information is pretty significant.

Why not Zelensky? Because he's talked himself into a corner of refusing all compromise, insisting Ukraine is winning, and going to win every single inch of territory back, including Crimea and anything less is unacceptable.

Unfortunately, in war you may simply not be able to achieve what you want, and this is Zaluzhny's central message, that 300 tanks, 600-700 infantry fighting vehicles and 500 howitzers would be required to take Melitopol, a key objective to pressure Crimea.

Not only does he state this, but he states Russian mobilisation has been a success and without this fairly massive infusion of equipment (if I'm not mistaken, larger than every single NATO country's vehicle fleet, with the exception the US; actually Turkey has 3000 main battle tanks, followed by Greece with 1200, and Poland with some 800, and then a Romania, Bulgaria, France and Spain have over 300, along with the US 8000, so numbers isn't a problem but these are mostly tanks that NATO does not want to provide), that Russia will win the war.

To emphasise his point, he reference Field Marshal Mannerheim's concession speech explaining Finland admitting defeat and signing the armistice with the Soviet Union.

Finland has been used as a model for fighting the Russians (in reality Soviets), but if that's the model, Finland loses the war. Of course, losing the war while retaining independence was potentially the best outcome for Finland, so it was definitely a "win" in that sense, but since it was simply impossible for Finland to "defeat" the Soviet Union, the only options are eventual defeat or then a diplomatic compromise (acceptable to the Soviet Union; what other people think doesn't matter if you're dealing with Soviet Union).

Now, the white house did not respond with "yeah, yeah, yeah, all that's on its way".

So, if defeat is inevitable, and it's impossible for Zelensky to negotiate, then Zelensky will need to be replaced. This is pretty standard politicking, as insofar as you believe more fighting in desirable, someone like Zelensky is good for moral by essentially maximising the cheerleading, then when further fighting is no longer desirable someone more "candid" can be selected to replace him and negotiate a resolution.

That Zelensky was still involved in the interview indicates to me that he'll likely be resigning, instead of being thrown under the bus. This will be the definite signal to Ukrainians, as well as the whole world, that Ukraine will negotiate a peaceful settlement.

Is essentially Scott Ritter's analysis.

Of course, nothing is totally certain in war, but I would guess the US administration is setting up the option for an end to the war along these lines with this interview and switching media focus to Zaluzhny. People in the West now know who Zaluzhny is and that he's a trustworthy straight talker.

The other piece of evidence I would add that would support this analysis, is that the US response to all the Russians shutting down the Ukrainian grid every 2 weeks and degrading it, is to send Patriot Missile systems.

These cannot possibly defend Ukrainian air space against this kind of an attack. Essentially nothing can defend against offensive missiles except your own offensive missiles.

Air defence only works against vastly inferior opponent that is unable to attrit your AA systems. The basic math is: offensive missiles are cheaper than defensives missiles, and the attacker can employ decoys which has no counter part in defence. Not only can you make smaller and cheaper decoys but you can also just produce cheaper missiles with minimal guidance and no payload (or replace with fuel) and then fly around and there's zero way to differentiate.

Not that anti-air is useless. It does make sense in defending point targets like military bases and air craft carrier with multiple levels of defence, but, even there, the point is you're also attacking and your AA is buying time while you carry out your own air attacks on the opponents assets. So definitely, if you attacked a US carrier group, your missiles maybe destroyed and yourself shortly after.

However, there is simply no way to employ Patriot or any other AA systems in a war of attrition against an electricity grid spread out over a vast area without being able to actually destroy the origins of these attacks (i.e. invade and conquer Russia). Indeed, even in it's intended use case of defending fixed points, if you weren't fighting back, and even if Patriot is 100% effective you would quickly run out of missiles and everything else and your entire carrier group would be sunk (what makes the carrier group dangerous is that it will probably fight back).

By comparing these 2 quotations, anybody can immediately notice your conceptual confusion, typical of a militant mind addicted to reasoning through slogans. In the first one you do not talk just about “stop Russia” but about “stop Russia from achieving it's objectives in Ukraine”. Yet in the second quotation, the “from” clause has vanished (it’s common for slogans to use ellipsis: e.g. “Yes we can!”, “Just do it!”, “Stop Russia!”). — neomac

Your words are absolutely clear:

Sure, here I restate it again and bolden it: The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power (in terms of its economic system, its system of alliance, its capacity of military projection outside its borders, its its technology supply, its military and geopolitical status) to the point it is not longer perceived as a non-negligible geopolitical threat to the West. Outrageous right?! — neomac

No where in this is Ukrainian welfare or Ukraine "winning" requirement in your endgame, whatever definition of that they are using today, under consideration. Ukraine can both lose, and in the process suffer extreme harms, and your end game can still be accomplished if enough damage is inflicted on Russia.

The instrument to "inflict as much as enduring damage as possible to Russian power" is Ukrainian lives. In the world of "practical rationality" there is no military achievement in this context possible without sacrificing Ukrainian lives. So, if you want to maximise your military objective, which is harming the Russians in your "endgame", then that requires maximising the sacrifice of Ukraine. Even when in a clearly losing position and even when suffering far higher kill-ratios than the Russians and civilian and economic damage etc. fighting on another day will still inflict another day of damage to the Russians.

Predictably, you now try to move the goal posts to NATO and Ukraine, but again the harms to Ukraine in such a process can still be essentially total. Ukraine could be totally destroyed, totally sacrificed, in such a project and if the goal to inflict enough damage on Russia is achieved then perhaps Russia is indeed no longer a threat to Ukraine. However, if in the process "Ukraine", however you want to define it, is totally sacrificed and destroyed, clearly Ukrainian welfare has not been protected.

You just throw up bullshit and then move the goal posts around in typical pseudo-intellectual fashion.

However, you've made your position and priorities clear, which is an entirely coherent geopolitical position to take: you want the US to "win" in this conflict, Russia to be damaged enough to no longer be "a threat" and Ukraine can serve this objective. If your top priority is inflicting damage on Russia, then Ukrainian welfare is subordinate to that.

You can not serve 2 masters: you will love the one and hate the other. Clearly, you serve US interests in this conversation.

Which leads to plenty of interesting debate.

For example, I have serious doubts about your geopolitical theory considering China is the much larger hegemonic competitor to the US.

Is the US attritting Russian forces and weapons stockpiles and political capital using the Ukrainians ... or is China attritting the US weapons stockpiles and political capital using the Russians?

Are energy flows from Russia that once fuelled the NATO war machine in Europe diverging to fuel the Chinese war machine a good thing for the US?

Does the US need its allies in Europe in good economic order more than China needs its ally Russia in good economic order, is Russia even hurting economically more than Europe? Now and over the medium and long term.

Can your objective of inflicting "enough damage" on the Russians even be achieved, considering the war is 99.9% taking place in Ukraine and Russia has already increased it's population due to the annexes and refugee flows out of Ukraine:

Number of Ukrainian refugees recorded in each country:
1. Russia (2,852,395) — wikipedia citing the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees

And military stockpiles after a war (that you win) usually rapidly match and exceed the stockpiles that existed prior to the war (although perhaps not in this case, given the size of the Soviet stockpiles, but certainly Russia has the resources and production capacity to keep arms manufacturing going at a good pace both during and after the war).

As far as I can tell, regardless of how and when this war ends, post-sanctions-and-war Russia will be far more dangerous to its neighbour's and the West than the previous Russia-we-trade-with, and at the same time Europe will be significantly worse off economically.

The war is certainly good for US gas producers and arms producers, but equating these interests with US interest as such or "the West's" interest as such is a big mistake.

BTW, since you seem to care and know about the Ukrainian welfare more than I do, I still have to ask: how many Ukrainian lives did your online outrage save so far exactly? — neomac

I'll respond to this as well, as it's such a dumb strawman.

Obviously, my recommendation (my position in this argument) of a negotiated resolution to the conflict, which would require recognising legitimate grievances of the Russians (and also against the Russians) would be the first step in trying to find an acceptable compromise to the warring parties, would, if followed, result in an end to the war and saving Ukrainian lives who would otherwise perish in the trenches, explosions, from the cold in their apartments, disease, and all manner of evils which accompany a war if it was to continue (which it has).

What I can say, is that if my recommendation was followed at the start of the war (when Ukraine had likely the most leverage it would ever have) literally hundreds of thousands of people now dead would still be alive (not only in Ukraine but due to increases in food and energy prices worldwide that translates directly into more suffering and deaths).

Of course, it could be argued that whatever compromise would be required is not worth saving those lives, or that the Russian demands of an independent Donbas (at the time) and recognition of Crimea would be a worse state of affairs than the lives lost since.

It could be argued that what's important is:

The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power (in terms of its economic system, its system of alliance, its capacity of military projection outside its borders, its its technology supply, its military and geopolitical status) to the point it is not longer perceived as a non-negligible geopolitical threat to the West. — neomac

And so concern of Ukrainian lives is misplaced given what can be achieved if we encourage them to fight on, even perhaps without actually "stopping the Russians" and even if we know that to be the likely outcome.

But saying a peace settlement would not result in less Ukrainian dead, is just dumb. Obviously it would.

The benefits to a peace and compromise are less death, and the benefits to more war are achieving the fruits of war (mostly territory and national pride) at the cost of a lot of death.

Now, this is of course a debate between non-decision makers, so at no point do I have the power to directly translate my recommendations into "saving Ukrainian lives" by negotiating what I think is a reasonable resolution to the war; so proposing that as a burden of proof of some kind is just stupid. No where do I claim I've saved Ukrainian lives, and that's basically the text-book definition of a strawman to present my position as claiming that or somehow requiring to demonstrate that.

Had there been a peaceful resolution at any point in the conflict, perhaps then I could say my analysis contributed to that in some small way, but there is no peace and no lives have been spared.

Sure, here I restate it again and bolden it: The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia — neomac

You're just so delusional.

Obviously this statement is not compatible with a concern for Ukrainian welfare. The goal is to just harm Russia, not actually stop Russia from achieving it's objectives in Ukraine (which, unless you invoke basically magic, is not compatible with Ukrainian welfare).

So just say you are willing to sacrifice Ukraine and Ukrainian welfare to harm the Russians, and argue that point. Sometimes great achievements require great sacrifices (of other people).

It's just crass and cowardly to show your cards, what you truly believe, which is harming Russia is your priority and not Ukrainian welfare, which is not "mentioned" as you say, then say "no, no, no, there's nothing logically impossible about "not stopping Russia" and Ukrainian welfare!!

That's just dumb, obviously if Russia isn't stopped, Ukraine loses the war at great sacrifice, this isn't "good" for Ukrainian welfare.

If it's an acceptable end game for you, then it's acceptable for you to sacrifice Ukraine for your objectives.

So maybe stop your torrent of psuedo intellectual bullshit that doesn't even have anything to do with your actual position in this matter: which is:

Sure, here I restate it again and bolden it: The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia — neomac

Russia hasn't made this change recently. They have said this far earlier than now, actually. — ssu

They've mentioned their previous policy before of using nuclear weapons if attacked with nuclear weapons or to defend against a threat to the existence of the Russian state, but news seems

Russia is thought to be considering adding a preemptive aspect to its nuclear doctrine, Vladimir Putin has said.

If added this policy would allow it to strike with nukes first, not just in a retaliatory manner.

The Russian doctrine of using nuclear weapons is currently different to that of the USA, which does have a first strike clause. — Daily Star

Normally I wouldn't cite the Daily Star, but it seems just citing Putin's speech. If you want to quibble that they haven't technically changed the policy just yet, feel free. Clearly the policy of what policies are under consideration have changed in that case.

Conventional response means non-nuclear in this case. NATO and the US use the arm of the forces that is most powerful, which is the air forces and cruise missiles. I don't know why you are insisting the case for ground forces, which make an obvious target. Air attack is the way to keep the response limited. You can stop the attacks instantly. It's Russia's choice then to escalate.

The deterrence of nukes isn't hypothetical, but the use of them on the battlefield is. — ssu

I'm not insisting on ground forces, other people talk about ground forces in Uktaine, including main stream media. I am just listing and considering the possible responses and noting they are all problematic. We both agree ground forces would be highly problematic.

Yes, air attacks are the likely option, but as I point out using only cruise missiles is of limited damage, and there are large risks in sending NATO planes into Ukraine. Maybe they would be highly effective, teach the Russians a lesson, and then maybe Russia won't escalate further. But both elements there are problematic. NATO cannot know its air combat effectiveness against Russias integrated air defence system, and any essentially any losses are going to be embarrassing.

It's also simply doesn't seem possible to implement air superiority without striking AA systems in undisputed Russian territory, which NATO is unlikely to do in this scenario. So even if you pushed Russian air craft out of Ukraine they would still fly around on the Russian side firing missiles at your planes.

The deterrence of nukes isn't hypothetical, but the use of them on the battlefield is. — ssu

We agree we're talking hypotheticals, just obviously not rhetoric. Rhetoric is what you use to try to convince your interlocutors or simply justify your actions. Threats (that are not empty) are not rhetoric.

NATO letting Russia to win? Bit of hubris there from you. — ssu

NATO could have been training Ukrainian pilots on F-35 and modern NATO main battle tanks and supplying every sort of missile, from day one of the invasion, or even years prior. If your goal was to see Ukraine win, this is what you would do, yet they don't even supply F-16's or older NATO tanks. Sure, would take time, but the war may still be on during that time frame in which case you want this option.

Why doesn't NATO do this?

Because they don't want to "escalate" beyond a certain point. What's that point? A point unacceptable to the Russians. What would be unacceptable? Actually losing.

If you didn't care about Russias own metrics of evaluation and what's acceptable to them, you'd simply provide all the equipment and training that maximises the Ukrainian force to allow them to win.

The two concepts of holding back weapons systems and Ukraine winning being your main priority, are incompatible. It's like if I say I "really, really, really want you to win this cross country ski race", but I give you second hand skis that are a major handicap, while holding on to plenty of shiny modern skis in my garage. Obviously, my first priority isn't seeing you win the race, but there's some other priorities that lead me to hold back the support I could provide, but choose not to. Sure, maybe I would wish for a world where I give you shitty skis and you manage to win the race somehow anyways, but that's not how priorities and decision making work.

LOL!

Oh you are so funny again. Yes... the evil Commission of the European Union!!!

The next argument will be that I'm referring to experts with military intelligence background or military leaders themselves. Or perhaps all the interviews of Ukrainian people that have been tortured? All of them are just propaganda! — ssu

Can't help but notice you ignore the "s" to "funders" and don't bother to even put United States Department of State and BAE Systems plc as the next entries on the list.

The whole reason think tanks exist is because you can simply buy the analysis you want whereas academia is more difficult to control.

The whole reason academia is more difficult to control is because biased analysis and censorship (of intellectual debate) proves harmful to society and so a few (however limited) mechanism were developed to limit such harms, such as tenured professorship as well as a general context of needing to at least encounter different points of view.

You really think the funders on that list are going to finance producing analysis that criticises their polices?

Nevertheless, noted, that you can only come up with a strawman that my issue was "only with the European commission" and I believe they are evil caricatures of some sort.

What you cite has literally no sources.

Since these activities were critical to the Russian theory of victory in the operation,
it is important to outline these plans to appropriately contextualise the role of the conventional
force. — Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022, RUSI.org

How do we know what the Russian theory of victory was or is? Did the Kremlin publish it somewhere? Why then do they directly contradict the theory of victory they themselves published, it in public statements saying they were prepared for this outcome and the Northern offensive was a fixing operation to capture the South etc. Do the authors just telepathically read the Kremlin and Russian army top commanders minds and "know what they really think"?

The assumption appears to have been that Ukrainian government officials would either
flee or be captured as a result of the speed of the invasion. — Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022, RUSI.org

What the hell is "assumption appears to have been" doing in purported serious analysis. Is everything that follows just deductions from what "appears" to the authors?

Complete trash.

It was also anticipated that shock would prevent the immediate mobilisation of the population, and that protests and other civil resistance could be managed through the targeted disintegration of Ukrainian civil society. To manage these protests Russian forces would be supported by Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) and riot control units. Meanwhile the FSB was tasked with capturing local officials. The Russian counterintelligence regime on the occupied territories had compiled lists that divided — Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022, RUSI.org

What does "targeted disintegration of Ukrainian civil society" even mean?

Do the authors have the FSB list?

How do they know the categories:

Ukrainians into four categories:
• Those to be physically liquidated.
• Those in need of suppression and intimidation.
• Those considered neutral who could be induced to collaborate.
• Those prepared to collaborate. — Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022, RUSI.org

The entire paper is just an unsourced narrative based on (in the authors own words) "appearances" that Ukrainian partisans would certainly wish to be true.

And who are the authors?

Oleksandr V Danylyuk served as the Special Adviser to the head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service, and as an adviser to Ukraine’s Minister of Defence. He currently heads the Centre for Defence Reforms and is a coordinator of the NATO–Ukraine intergovernmental platform for
early detection and countering hybrid threats. Oleksandr is an Associate Fellow at RUSI. — Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022, RUSI.org

Literally includes Ukrainian intelligence.

And ...

Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi was born in 1973 in Dnipro, Ukraine.

[blah blah blah got promoted a bunch]

Today he serves as First Deputy Chairman of the Committee of the Supreme Council of
Ukraine on National Security, Defense and Intelligence. He has been awarded with state awards, including the Golden Star (with the Hero of Ukraine status), Danylo Halytskiy Award ІІІ class, and Bohdan Khmelnytskiy Award III class, as well as Military Distinguished Service Medal І and ІІ classes, and the Military Virtue Medal. In 2012, he was also awarded with personal arms by the minister of defence of Ukraine. — Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022, RUSI.org

You're really stating here, in this forum, today, placing your posting reputation on, sear by the scared runes, that this RUSI paper represents unbiased and well sourced analysis and simply trustworthy expertise?

... and not a total farce of the most transparently stupid propaganda?

In “normative legal force” the expression “normative” refers to the fact that laws are norms and “legal” is a specification of “normative” since there are also non-legal norms. Now “normative force” and “law” or “legal system”, or “legal force” are part of very common jargon in the juridical domain. Google it if you have no idea what I am talking about. — neomac

I know what the words mean, obviously you don't. You could have said "normative and legal force" (and then explain your non-legal theory and your hegemonic normative theory) but a normative statement is not the same as a legal statement. The Nazi genocide was "legal" as well as US slavery and segregation, but we have normative issue with such legal states of affairs.

Certainly we would want law to conform to our normative disposition, but until A. all people have the same values and B. little or no corruption exists, then that won't be the case and just prepending "normative" to "legal force" means you don't understand the subject matter.

To make matters worse, "normative" is not at all the same as a "norm" and laws are also not necessarily norms. It's illegal to jay-walk, but can be entirely the norm, likewise it can be illegal to take bribes but, likewise, just as much a norm as jay-walking.

Furthermore, powerful states invading or interfering smaller states that "defy them", in your jargon, without any UN security resolution, is the actual "norm" on this subject matter. You spent some time justifying why the US can invade countries to maintain their hegemony for the simple fact that they are the hegemon.

Now, if you actually do google "normative legal force" you get a whole list of entries that explain the difference between normative and legal statements.

After distinguishing some other senses of the “normativity” of law, this chapter addresses its moral force. It is argued that all deontological accounts of a prima facie duty to obey the law, other than the argument from consent, fail for being unable to show that the moral value of law as an institutional order implies a duty to obey each and every legal rule. The argument from consent fails for familiar reasons. This leaves an instrumental account of the moral force of law as the only option. The upshot is that, for individuals, the moral force of law is variable, and often weak. The case is different for state officials, as subjects of either domestic or international law. Here the instrumental case for obedience is typically strong. — Chapter 3, The Normative Force of Law, Individuals and States, Liam Murphy

Is literally the first result for doing as you suggest, which is a paper explaining how there is no prima facie normative connection to law.

Not only, as you account for yourself in your next paragraph, no actual UN legal basis for the West's intervention (no security council resolution), but your reference to "normative legal force" just leads directly to an explanation that even if there was a UN security resolution that would not be sufficient to establish to a duty to implement it (it maybe legal but wrong, due to, for example, resulting in a worse outcome for the citizens concerned, such as we saw in Libya).

Besides your legal quibble is irrelevant wrt he original point of contention: I referred to the UN resolution against the Russian invasion of Ukraine to clarify my original claim about Russian defiant attitude toward the West. — neomac

If you're moving the goal posts back to this argument, then certainly you'd agree that Russia's actions in Ukraine are entirely justified by Ukraine's defiant attitude toward Russia, and that Russia is only "wrong" in your framework if they fail to teach Ukraine a lesson.

As long as I don’t understand how you apply your notion of “justification” I can’t really assess if it’s consistent (BTW does “you cannot justify to others” mean that my claims are not justified until I can prove that everybody on earth agrees with me?!). — neomac

What a ludicrous straw man.

First, justifying one's actions to others is independent of whether the actions are justified or if others agree. The actions can be justified but you fail to convince anyone. Likewise, the actions could unjust but everyone agrees with you.

Indeed, one maybe engaged in a process of justification one knows to be false (lying to investigators, or throwing out UN resolutions as having "legal force"), but hope other parties agree. Of course, in this scenario, presumably one has some internal justification for presenting a false justification.

Even more bizarre is the idea the entire world would need to agree as a condition for justification, which doesn't even make any internal sense. For, if the proposition isn't justified until everyone agrees ... why would one be justified to try to convince people of it's truth, which is by definition is false until everyone agrees.

Obviously in any remotely common sense ethical framework, the truth of a justification is independent of others agreeing it's true.

Since your arguments don't make any sense and are mutually incompatible, also take note of your trying to flip the burden of proof of what "justification" means, as it's very clear your actual position is that you're a fan of US hegemony, which, by definition, non-US partisans should not be a fan of by the same logic of lust power. Of course, if people under hegemonic control, such as Europe, can be convinced the hegemony is good for them, that's a better situation, even if one knows that's the self delusion copium of de facto captives and advancing their own interests, rather than the hegemon's, would, by definition, be in their interest to do.

You've made this position clear, showed your hand so to speak, so maybe argue this position and that the US actions in Ukraine will strengthen, rather than overstretch, their hegemonic position, vis-a-vis their largest hegemonic competitor: China.

The rest of your comments are basically just word salad, but I'll respond to the meaningful part:

The fact that I didn’t mention "Ukrainian welfare” in that statement is not enough to conclude that there is zero consideration of the Ukrainian welfare on the NATO/US’s part. — neomac

The fact you don't mention Ukrainian welfare is obviously because that is not a priority. Describing how the US / NATO endgame need not be Ukrainian "victory" but just sufficient harm to Russia could nevertheless be compatible with maximising Ukrainian welfare is just a farce.

In what plausible version of the world, would Ukraine losing the war, with the death and casualties so far and likely at least as much but likely many multiples on the way to losing, and then losing, would be compatible with Ukrainian welfare?

Sure, "logically" we can imagine a universe in which somehow every single Ukrainian gets a billion dollars (without any inflation problem from that) and every dead Ukrainian comes back to life, and all bad memories of the war are replaced by happy cat videos, nothing "logically incompatible" between that and:

3. The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power (in terms of its economic system, its system of alliance, its capacity of military projection outside its borders, its its technology supply, its military and geopolitical status) to the point it is not longer perceived as a non-negligible geopolitical threat to the West. — neomac

You literally state NATO/US involvement need not be to "stop Russia".

And you accuse me of quibbling? You literally need basically magic to imagine a scenario in which "not stopping Russia" is in the welfare of Ukrainians. Sure, "logically" we can imagine by some unexpected turn of events that magic is real, reincarnation a breeze, memory replacement facile, and so on, Russia isn't "stopped" and this is actually great for Ukraine.

Indeed, "logically" there is nothing that prevents Russia winning but this somehow results in Zelensky becoming emperor of the entire planet, immortal, and a just and wise ruler who solves all our problems.

Do you even consider a few seconds what you are writing?

You do not mention Ukrainian welfare in your "endgame" because you do not care about Ukrainian welfare. You care only about harming Russia due to some irrational fear (especially when combined with the belief that the Russian military is incompetent ... of which the corollary is they are nothing to fear); i.e. your entire position rests upon Russuphobia and, as you say, not mentioning Ukrainian welfare.

I mean, I thought "practical rationality" was your pseudo-intellectual slogan, and you dare move the goal posts to "logical compatibility"?

First and foremost, this is rhetoric on both sides now. Russia hasn't used nuclear weapons and hence NATO's response is also hypothetical. But when the issue has already come up, I think that the situation is different than where the West was in 2014. — ssu

Clearly the situation is different than in 2014, there is a full scale war.

However, it is not first and foremost rhetoric. The nukes are very real and have a real impact on decision making. Putin recently harmonising Russian nuclear policy with United States policy to allow first strike against a non-nuclear opponent, is not rhetoric.

The original issue we were discussing was if nuclear weapons would be effective or not, which I think we agree they would be effective against a number of military targets, but Ukraine could continue fighting anyways.

Why would they be sending ground troops? If the response to a hypothetical use of nukes would be a conventional attack, that likely would be done by cruise missiles and aircraft. Then Russia would have to think if it wants to escalate further and strike NATO countries. And really, if it now has problems to fight a war with Ukraine, is the solution to start a war with countries it even before it's attack in February didn't match? De-escalation through escalation is simply a shock-and-awe strategy which can work when the other side is totally unprepared for it. — ssu

Ground troops are the other conventional response, but if you agree that's unlikely then no need to debate it further.

The problem with a conventional air attack on Russian forces in Ukraine is that it may simply not be as effective as the nukes. If we're talking long range cruise missiles, those maybe in limited supply to do damage remotely similar to the damage Russia just did with nukes in this scenario. So there's a real risk of "cost of doing business", as I've mentioned.

Significantly upping the damage would require planes, but it's entirely possible that Russia can shoot down a significant amount of NATO aircraft. It would also not even be possible to establish air superiority without attacking SAM's and air bases in undisputed Russian territory.

I would definitely agree that NATO could do significant damage with its air power, no questions about that. The problem is the tolerance for losses. Western audience will be expecting literally zero losses, stealth is magical, Russians are incompetent and so on.

Stealth has been around now for decades and the Russians have put significant effort into defeating it. I think the odds of zero losses is pretty low, so the question becomes how many NATO losses would be tolerable in such an operation. On top of this analysis of the operation itself there's the risk of nuclear escalation, such as tactical nuclear missiles launched at NATO air bases.

The other problem is that even if such operations are successful with acceptable losses, no escalation, everything seems "fine" ... it doesn't end the war, Russia would still be there, and essentially in a permanent hot-war with NATO firing at any aircraft that comes near and so on, maybe withdrawing from and re-invading Ukraine regularly, using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine at will, potentially for decades.

The logic that Russia uses a tactical nuclear weapon, NATO spanks Russia, profit, I just don't see how that actually works. Even if successful, one needs a plan for what happens next.

Russia has gotten already the benefit from it's nuclear weapons: NATO hasn't openly interfered in the war. There aren't any "no-fly-zones" being patrolled over Ukraine.

Hence to start actually using them is in my view really pushing the limit. Russian armed forces aren't on the verge of imminent collapse in Ukraine. Hence it would be really strange just why to continue to be so reckless. — ssu

We agree here. There's lot's of reasons not to use nuclear weapons; I'm just disputing the idea NATO has an obvious and easy retaliation that would make it clearly "bad" for Russia in military terms, and also the idea nuclear weapons would not be effective. We agree, however, on all the political reasons not to use nuclear weapons.

And, although I'm not sure NATO can so easily implement a no-fly zone over South Ukraine, for sure one retaliation would be more and more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine.

As I've outlined before, the scenario in which Russia would consider nuclear weapons seriously is if they were actually losing. However, if NATO is essentially letting Russia win by the weapons drip feed, only introducing the next weapons system when the previous one proves insufficient, and everything is very predictable and controlled, then Russia has no need of nuclear weapons and their use only introduces plenty of unknowns and risks that have no need to be tested.

One would need a situation where there is serious risks of not-using-nuclear weapons, such as actually being routed at large scale on the battle field.

All this analysis, in my view, NATO has done, which explains their policy to let Russia slowly win but inflicting (tolerable) damage and limiting the scope of victory. When NATO considers trying to escalate to actually defeat Russia in the field with the weapons (NATO tanks, NATO planes, cluster munitions, thermobaric weapons, "whatever Ukraine needs") and the training that would require ... then that does start to look like a situation Russia would consider nuclear weapons, which NATO doesn't have any obvious and easy response to, hence the decision is not to supply these systems.

Lol.

Let's first notice just what Russia had in mind if their planned 10-day operation would have been successful and they would have gotten Kyiv: — ssu

You are citing from:

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is the world’s oldest and the UK’s leading defence and security think tank. Our mission is to inform, influence and enhance public debate to help build a safer and more stable world. — Rusi.org

Which is difficult to take you seriously when you don't mention their top funders 2020-2021:

Over £1,000,000
European Commission

£500,000 to £999,999
United States Department of State

£200,000 to £499,999
BAE Systems plc
British Army, Futures Directorate
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
Global Affairs Canada
John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Tetra Tech International Development Ltd
Verification Research, Training & Information Centre (VERTIC)
ZemiTek, LLC

£100,000 to £199,999
Alion (US DoD/EUCOM)
Alliance for Intellectual Property
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Goldman Sachs Gives
Google, Inc.
Lockheed Martin UK
Palantir Technologies Ltd
Philip Morris International Management SA (PMI Impact Fund)
Redacted, Inc — Rusi funders

And just "maybe" their analysis is biased towards being essentially pure propaganda for their funders.

But, if nevertheless you are certain this analysis is just pure-truth, then I'll respond to it.

However, make very clearly you believe the analysis you posted is really true, the authors have access to the the (Russian?) data required to make their conclusions.

As for opportunities to end the war, the biggest opportunity of ending the war was before the war, implementing the Minsk agreements in good faith and actually end the civil war, and also licensing Nord Stream 2 (or then not allowing it to be built in the first place; which you may say isn't sufficient justification to start a war, but that's just the reality of geopolitics and Russia starting about it, show their "serious", is an expectation ... and Germany allowed the pipeline to be built because buying the gas is to their own benefit).

The next biggest opportunity was when Ukraine had successfully arrested the Russian offensive, this is the common sense and obvious time in which to negotiate a peace deal with a larger invading force, the time of maximum leverage. Again, if the West encouraged, even de facto ordered, Ukraine not to negotiate a peace deal at that time, that is a major fuckup (if the goal is Ukrainian welfare) that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and injury, and millions of traumatised and disrupted lives since.

It is pretty conventional and classic war theory that the thing you want to avoid doing in a fight with a superior force is a protracted war of attrition (why would a smaller force have an advantage in doing that?) and the more such a war goes on, the more the invading force would need to get in a peace deal for it to be "worth it" for the home audience. So the choices (after initial resistance and demonstrating will and capacity to fight and the cost of further fighting) becomes a much worse deal and suffering significant damage or then fighting to some sort of victory (which may not even be possible).

Of course, Western neo-cons would be upset that Ukraine makes any compromise and Russia gets anything, like recognition of Crimea and independent Donbas, and so on, and they'd be doing their little tantrums about it. However, is the destruction of the war so far really worth not-compromising over the Donbas?

Now, the counter argument would be "Russia will just take more later!" but the whole point of the fighting is to demonstrate the cost of such an operation.

The scenario where concessions just encourage more land grabbing, is if land is given up without a fight ... if it's at no cost, why not take more? However, if a heavy cost is inflicted, like hundreds of tanks destroyed, one's army and people demonstrates the will to fight a war, the whole point of doing that to show land grabbing is at a significant cost that is not worth it. But it's simply the reality that a superior force is going to need something to end the war, to sell it to the home audience. You may say "that's not fair" but that's just reality. Alternative is entering a long drawn out war of attrition.

So, are you really arguing that concessions (such as Nord Stream 2, which isn't even a concession but a mutually beneficial "comparative advantage" trade project) before the war or then in the first stages of the war (no NATO, which you keep saying was never a possibility anyways, independent Donbas still part of Ukraine, and recognising Crimea), would not have been worth it for Ukraine to avoid the current situation?

But boethius, the West isn't intervening in Ukraine as in Iraq. And in Libya there are quite many countries all around meddling in it's internal problems (also Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Qatar,...). Ukraine is basically getting arms and intel from the West, but it's doing the fighting all alone. So — ssu

Sending funding (basically bankrolling the entire Ukrainian military payroll), sending weapons, providing intelligence, covert meddling, are all in themselves interventions.

You are going back to the idea that we are not morally responsible for the outcome because Ukrainians want to fight and die, and if it's a total disaster for them that is the obvious outcome that we clearly see coming ... then that's fine. We can rediscuss this idea we aren't somehow "intervening" in Ukrainian agency, it's somehow all Ukraine and we aren't a party to the conflict, if you want.

However, my argument was simply that the West has no track record of intervening militarily in countries and producing vibrant democracies as advertised. There is no reason to believe that's ever seriously intended in the interventions so far that have catastrophically failed on this humanitarian metric, and so there is no reason to believe that is the intention now with regard to Ukraine, and there is even less reason to believe that will somehow magically happen.

No, actually where the West can fuck up big time isn't now (of course, if they just abandon Ukraine to face of Russia all alone would be that fuck up), it's later. The West can fumble after this war in the promised rebuilding of Ukraine. Done lousily that can simply increase corruption, which the Ukrainian people hate. And simply if it disregards it's own requirements, values and laws in case of Ukraine. The rebuilding of Afghanistan is a prime example how these things go bad. — ssu

No, the West can definitely fuckup now by actively obstructing peaceful resolutions, encouraging hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries and millions of traumatised and disrupted lives and the complete destruction of Ukraine which Zelensky does not hesitate to tell us is being done for "your values" (i.e. the West, not necessarily good for Ukraine) and to protect Eastern Europe (not necessarily good for Ukraine).

That we won't help rebuild Ukraine in any sense remotely commensurate with the damages our weapons have helped cause ... goes without saying. Obviously we won't do that.

Again, that the use would result in NATO making a conventional attack on Russian forces in Ukraine is believable enough to make the use a very, very bad decision. — ssu

First, this is no longer making the point that nuclear weapons are somehow not useful militarily, so I think we agree there, that there are useful.

We also seem to agree that NATO would not retaliate with nuclear weapons, why would it?

As for conventional retaliation, this is really a problematic thing. You don't just casually destroy Russian forces. The options are fairly limited.

For example, let's say you launch a conventional attack on Russian military bases in Russia ... how would Russia be sure this is a conventional attack and not a nuclear first strike? So, it's not so easy.

Sending in boots on the ground into Ukraine ... does any Western nation actually want this? No one disputes Ukrainian forces have suffered high casualties, far higher than is the usual tolerance for Western armies. When does "teaching Russia a lesson" turn into just getting stuck in a quagmire with Russia with no options to actually defeat Russia, just continuing exchange of offensives without any clear outcome?

Also, if the Russia declares Ukraine free-to-nuke, and then nukes NATO forces in Ukraine ... does it really fear a nuclear retaliation? This is not even clear, so not only is it not clear that any NATO country even has the appetite for a full scale conventional confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, it's not clear whether they have any reasonable followup to being nuked in Ukraine, which, in this scenario, Russia just demonstrated it is willing to do, so it a fairly common sense followup to say they will not distinguish Ukrainian and other forces that are in Ukraine.

Certainly, there are plenty of reasons not to use nuclear weapons we would agree on (domestic politics, China and India's reaction); however, that Russia is reasonably deterred by conventional military means, or reasonably deterred by nuclear means, or believes nuclear weapons are not useful, are fairly weak arguments.

There is no post goal shift. The UN resolution expresses the majoritarian will of its voters (the West/US among them) as much as a democratic election expresses the majoritarian will of the voters: if one political candidate would violently rebel against the results of such democratic elections despite their legality or without legally appealing against them, this political candidate would be defiant of what has been ruled as expression of people’s majoritarian will. So concerning the Russian “special military operation”, there is a UN resolution which has a normative legal force and such resolution widely expresses the will of the West/US. And yes the international law resolution against the Russian “special military operation” LEGALLY JUSTIFIES the western policies of the West against Russia. — neomac

Again, "normative legal force" is just pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Are you adding "normative" to "legal force" because you are aware there is no actual legal force involved in the situation? Or do you just have no idea what you're talking about?

In terms of the situation, legal justification for military action under the UN system requires a security council vote, which Russia obviously vetos.

As for the votes you're talking about in the general assembly of the UN, they have no legal force in military matters, and they didn't even represent a majority of people on the planet, so are not the "people's will" which seems important for your argument.

Now, if you say number of people doesn't count because countries joining the UN agree to the 1 vote per country rule ... sure, but they also agree to the security council and veto system on any military issues.

An international law based justification for intervention in Ukraine would require Russia to sign off on it, which they obviously haven't. You may say that's not fair, not "normative" according to your moral standards, but that's not how the law works. If you make a legal system where a minority has asymmetric power and favouritism, perhaps it's not fair but it's still legal.

For example, the US senate represents a minority of voters due to the states with lower populations having the same amount of seats. So, the US senate does not represent a "people's will", and US senators act in "defiance" of the people's will and are "normatively" unjustified according to your own argument, but the way the US senate works is still legal despite this defiance.

You keep talking about “justification” without clarifying what you mean by it. To me the term “justification” is pretty general and it expresses the idea that some relevant shareable rational requirement is satisfied. — neomac

Although "rational requirement" means nothing in this context, just pseudo-intellectual bullshit that the pseudo-intellectual, usually of the "economics" variety, adds to statements to make themselves feel better about their lack of knowledge of the topics they come to conclusions about, I do agree with your key word "shareable".

Indeed, justification can be anything you mention, but the essential element is we are justifying it to others with some relation to the concept of "justice" that's universal in some way. Of course, what sorts of theories and arguments can be used to justify an action is wide open, the common element is that justification is towards others; arguments we want other to agree with.

"Regardless of justification" in the context I use it, refers to the US/NATO, or you own, justifications to others about the policies. You've made it quite clear you are on the "side of the West" and simply want the West to win. That is not a justification to me, or to other third parties that need not pick a side (India, Africa etc.), and certainly not less Russia.

Now, you may accept that what you want you cannot justify to others (although it maybe still useful to your purposes to fool them into believing the actions are justified) and have a separate internal justification for your actions. In this case, within your own head, there becomes two uses of the word justification; one use is essentially how you try to trick others, say a public position on the matter, and another use is why you are actually doing what you're doing, say a private position. So, in this duelism it can make sense to talk of your justifications for trying to convince others of your justifications which are not your real justifications, but it serves your real justification if others believe your justifications for other reasons.

For example, being the "Hegemone" maybe your "private position" and you may justify that by saying having more power is a "rational requirement" of all "rational agents", but since this applies to everyone else, you cannot simply justify your actions seeking more power simply because you want more power, as you recognise other actors want the same power: i.e. that you want more power is not a justification for others to give you more power. So, you think to yourself "how can I justify these actions" and then create arguments, for example protecting a "rules based order", that you may recognise are insufficient justifications but the gullible may believe them, or then one's opponents are perhaps at least flummoxed a bit in needing to deal with them.

If I clearly stated several times what you attribute to me, you can easily quote myself, but I don’t see any such quotation. Besides your understanding of my claims is under question, your serial misinterpretation of my claims is intellectually creepy, so using the word “clearly” is no assurance of your understanding at all. — neomac

This is insanely clear:

So what? There are three reasons your question is failing to take into account:
1. We are in the middle of the war so we don’t see the end of the war nor the full consequences of such war. The Soviet–Afghan War lasted 10 years, could anyone see the end of it and the following collapse of the Soviet Union while they were in the middle of it back then? No, because they didn’t happen yet.
2. Russia was complaining about NATO enlargement since the 90s, did Russia see NATO enlargement stopping for that reason? NATO/US can be as determined as Russia to pursue their goals in Ukraine at the expense of Russia. And since Russia, especially under Putin, took a declared confrontational attitude toward the hegemonic power, Russia made sure that NATO/US will deal with Russia accordingly as long as they see fit.
3. The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power (in terms of its economic system, its system of alliance, its capacity of military projection outside its borders, its its technology supply, its military and geopolitical status) to the point it is not longer perceived as a non-negligible geopolitical threat to the West. — neomac

Point 2 applies what you obviously actually believe: "And since Russia, especially under Putin, took a declared confrontational attitude toward the hegemonic power, Russia made sure that NATO/US will deal with Russia accordingly as long as they see fit".

As I pointed out at the time, if US hegemonic status is a justification, which you clearly state it is, then if Russia wins the war then it's just asserting its hegemonic power over Ukraine, and likewise justified. If the US can't stop Russia then clearly it isn't a global hegemone, as it was unable to determine the outcome of this even that happened on the globe. US may, nevertheles, have a larger sphere of hegemoning than Russia, but it is not global.

In particular, your point 3 is extremely clear "the end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian."

Your "end game" involves zero consideration of Ukrainian welfare nor any notion that it would be justified, in terms of your international law arguments that are in any case wrong, to seek such an outcome. The goal is quite clearly to simply harm Russia as a power competitor.

Which, whether the war is even doing that, would be an interesting question which I'm happy to debate. It could be the war is harming Russia, but it could also be Russia will come out of this war with a far more efficient and powerful army, more autonomous economy and new international banking system and so little reason to ever stop "defying the West" (had Putin implemented the sanctions himself this would have certainly caused serious domestic problems, but since the West did it for him, it's easy to say the West doesn't want to do business with Russia ... sort of what sanctions mean), rapidly replace any equipment, and all its neighbour's far less (rather than more) willing to "defy" Russia, seeing as they clearly can and will do what it takes to destroy your entire economy and the West clearly doesn't have a solution to the needing gas problem.

So, if you want to stop advancing propaganda, we could discuss what you actually believe, which is that the US / West can and should use this war to harm Russia in pure power competition terms. Ukrainian welfare doesn't matter, nor any other justification, just harming Russia.

The problem with your position is that historically wars, even extremely harmful wars in the short term (such as the American civil war, or WWI or WWII), generally result in any non-losing-party having far more powerful military at the end of the war.

Indeed, even losing parties can radically increase their real military power, such as Germany after WWI still had all sorts of "war experience" benefits even if physical war fighting capacity was essentially dismantled, despite this and the high casualties it is applying the experience and lessons of WWI that Germany could then rapidly rebuild their military power and fight WWII.

However, in the case of the war at hand, there is little probability that Russia will lose. At best, it "won't win".

Furthermore, in your hegemon's got to hegemon, you don't consider at all China.

Viewed as a proxy war between Russia and the US, perhaps US is winning something at some expense (at the expense of the destruction of Ukraine), but viewed as a proxy war between China and the West, China is winning a great deal at no expense; indeed, if the first view is correct, the West is weakening due to this war as well as Russia, an otherwise regional competitor.

So, if this war with Russia is satisfying some "rational requirement" of a global hegemon, there should be some argument as to why this helps against China, a more economically powerful adversary.

For, if China is a larger threat to US hegenomic power, which was the basis of all this talk of "pivoting" to East-Asia for over 2 decades, then optimum hegemomic strategy would be to "divide and conquer" the would be Russia-China alliance, and certainly not expend immense material and political capital in trying to harm the weaker of the two in such a team.

↪boethius, if you think something's off then hit the report button/link. It's a small flag at the bottom of posts. — jorndoe

Sure, if you see no reason explain what your point is, then yes, hopefully the moderators will remove this sort of content. If you are not supporting a point, nor offering any analysis of what you're sources say and and why you think they are trustworthy, then it's just propaganda.

It's about the Ukraine crisis, not just your own take, though that's cool too, despite the occasional curious tunnel vision. — jorndoe

What other "take" have I suggested be removed from the discussion? The problem with your propaganda is that it's not a take, just spamming links. There's generally nothing to respond to, just a few unverified anecdotes that don't even relate to any topic of discussion.

You keep ignoring that Putin, Pavlov, Solovyov, Patrushev, Chernyshov, with Peskov, Matviyenko, and others in tow, speak of liberating Ukraine from a Nazi regime (previous posts, all over actually), a ruse, an excuse, false. For that matter, it's pretty clear that Kremlin has no particular concern for the Ukrainians (also prior posts). — jorndoe

If you actually followed the discussion, instead of just spamming, you would have read a long exchange on this exact topic that obviously Russia produces propaganda as well. Of course, as @ssu has pointed out numerous times, the best propaganda is based on truth. So that the Kremlin says something, and that we know they will also produce propaganda same as you, doesn't make it untrue (the problem I have with your propaganda is that it generally has nothing to do with what's being discussed, lending zero additional weight to any position, but clearly designed to just impress the gullible).

I also make clear that people are free to argue there are not enough Nazi's to justify invasion.

If you were actually engaged in the discussion and not just toiling away at spamming propaganda, you would have actually argued why there is not enough Nazi's with enough power in Ukraine to justify invasion, which starts with setting a bar of what "too many" Nazi's would be, that would justify invasion, and then demonstrating Ukraine is under this threshold. That there are Nazi's elsewhere does not serve such a purpose, as the distribution of Nazi's is obviously not uniform.

Clearly the actual number of Nazi's and how much power they have is essential to the West's, generally speaking, argument that appeasing the Nazi's was a mistake (i.e. they should have gone to war sooner). For example, Hitler, in himself, was no reason to attack Germany. If Hitler was literally the only Nazi in Germany at the time, and it was only himself and his book and no one listened to him and he had no power or influence, there would have been zero reason to attack Germany to fight Naziism. The appeasement argument rests on there being more Nazis than just Hitler, and at some point too many Nazis and war is preferable to appeasement.

One could also argue that, yes, there's too many Nazi's in Ukraine and there has been for a while, and the West should not have appeased these Nazi's by sending them weapons, but, nevertheless, the Kremlin is simply cynically exploiting the otherwise completely justified invasion to kill said Nazi's in order to accomplish unjustified objectives such as steal resources.

Whether something is used as propaganda is independent of whether it is true. Not everything Zelensky says is false, for example. Likewise, even a true justification for war may also be propaganda, if the war does not actually serve that purpose. For example, maybe it was justified to attack Saddam and the Taliban simply because they are bad and there was the means available to do something about it (a key element that maybe lacking vis-a-vis Russia, or China, or North Korea or any number of authoritarian / totalitarian governments that maybe as bad or worse than Saddam / Taliban); however, if the war is then prosecuted in a way that does not actually help Iraqis or Afghanis, but simply transfers wealth the arms industry, creates some forward operating bases to threaten Iran and so on, then the justification is not actually for the actions, but similar actions that did not actually happen and was not the actual goal.

Which is a synthesis of my criticism of the West's intervention in Ukraine. If Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya were now vibrant democracies, benefits of the Wests reconstruction and tutelage of these places far exceeding the cost of the war to bring it about, then by all means go help Ukraine become a happier place. However, the West simply has no track record of actually fulfilling our promises, but rather abandoning our allies.

Maybe it was entirely justified, in itself, to remove the Taliban from power and support democratic forces in Afghanistan. The problem with this scenario is that we under-supported, enabled and engaged in corruption at all levels of governance, and then abandoned our so-called allies in Afghanistan the moment they no longer served entirely different purposes to "democracy" and "welfare", which was control of resources and transferring funds to the arms industry.

We will abandon Ukraine the moment they are inconvenient to the actual objectives as well.

Even if the current intervention was somehow justified (which I highly doubt), it does not matter as we will abandon Ukraine to the cold and dark, and our claims to bringing the light will be something that we just keep telling ourselves. Indeed, I would argue we already have.

They are perfect for deterrence, but not so great in actual warfare because of the obvious drawbacks and the obvious escalation. — ssu

... how would something that doesn't work deter an opponent?

And again, Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons so MAD does not apply.

To update my analysis of the military situation:

The new NATO Wunderwaffe is the German Flakpanzer Gepard, latest entry into the weapons drip-feed to keep Ukraine just well enough to keep fighting.

The Gepard can fire bullets at drones and cruise missiles, and supposed to deal with the attacks on the electricity system, but that idea is just dumb as an electricity grid is simply too vast with too many targets to protect with a system like Gepard.

Zelensky is now basically just complaining that Russia uses too much artillery and they can't deal with it. News has certainly arrived from the front that the weather makes war fighting no longe or very fun (a warrior "lifestyle" as a Nazi in one of the videos I posted phrased it).

Drone attacks on Russia air bases do not seem significant or sustained in anyway to matter militarily; just a dose of propaganda.

The devastation of Ukraine is severe.

Yes, air campaigns don't win wars (except when they do), but sides to military conflicts still lose.

The dynamic NATO has created is sending out Ukraine's best troops with "just enough" weapons to lose, starting with the Javelin and Stinger type systems, then when they can't win (and a lot of them die), provide the next military system to not-lose, rinse and repeat.

However, it's not clear to me how long this strategy can go on for. Continuously attritting your best troops in battles they can't win, then compensating the loss with more sophisticated equipment to make the next tier as effective (but not more effective), has clear limitations in man power.

I see zero indication NATO is coming to help their "friend".

What is the point of your posts?

You're just microblogging and news aggregating.

Again, there are places you can do that without betraying your fanatical devotion to propaganda by simply reposting material without scrutiny, criticism, nor even any link to the discussion.

I posted 6 videos of Western journalists investigating Nazi's in Ukraine and all concluding that there definitely seems to be Nazi's in Ukraine.
— boethius

Sure, Nazis, and they're a problem, wherever, anywhere (even in Russia). — jorndoe

The videos I posted show Western journalists investigating Nazi institutions and Nazi groups receiving arms from Ukrainian military (that came in turn from NATO members ... including members who needed to pass laws to make clear that was illegal to arm Nazi groups, but Ukraine does it anyways). These are not fringe organisations.

Western journalists who point out this arming of Nazi's and the clear Nazi sympathies, links and lying by the Ukrainian ministry of defence in arming the Nazi's even if NATO was claiming they shouldn't and weren't.

But, I am happy you agree that Nazi's are indeed a problem and should be liquidated, and whether the Russian war is justified or not, if they've killed some Nazi's along the way, in Azov Battalion and Right Sector and Ukrainian Intelligence and in the ranks and elsewhere, then that's at least happy happenstance we can all celebrate.

But I wasn’t talking about the American invasion of Iraq, I was talking about Russian invasion of Ukraine. To repeat it once more:

I listed facts that support that claim, like the fact that Russia didn’t halt its invasion even after a UN resolution against it as widely voted by West/NATO/US, with ensuing sanctions and continued military support to Ukraine by the West. If that’s not an act of defiance by Russia against West/NATO/US, then I don’t understand your usage of the word “defiance”: if X is warned, condemned and sanctioned by Y for a certain choice, and X knowingly pursues its choice despite of that, that’s for me enough to call X’s behavior defiant toward Y. EVEN MORE SO, if X were to question Y’s authority with “tu quoque” arguments (as you suggest with “but also the US has little respect for international law”)!!!
Your criticism doesn’t address my claim and plays with words (“maverick”, “justification”) in interpreting my original claims which weren’t using such terms. Your conceptually confused or caricatural way of rendering my claims is good to mislead or brainwash you, not me. Anyways yes the Western reaction against Russia is justified on geopolitical and legal grounds. — neomac

This is just a word salad and has nothing to do with your original argument.

Your original argument tied "defiant" to justification of Western policies ... you've just moved the goal posts to Russia is doing things the West doesn't like. Yeah, no shit.

Now, does not liking what someone is doing justify any particular course of action?

No.

People do things I don't like all the time, I wouldn't call it "defying me" but you're free to say that, but, what matters here, is that whatever you call it, that does not in itself justify arming their competitors, or any particular course of action.

Russia and the West are at odds over Ukraine, no one disputes that. If Russian "defiance" against the West justifies Western policies, then the Ukrainian "defiance" of Russia justifies Russian policies.

And you've already laid your cards on the table, in that you simply want the West to win this confrontation, so you support Western policies regardless of justification or trying to reconcile with what they West itself does and rights it claims (pre-emptive war, shock and awe, etc.), and regardless of whether they are a benefit to Ukraine.

You state clearly several times the only objective that needs to be achieved is harming the Russian military (not Ukrainian victory, not any benefits at all for Ukraine, even the total destruction of Ukraine is acceptable if Russia is also harmed).

So, argue this position, rather than throw out pseudo-intellectual bullshit that is quite clearly just trying to prop up the propaganda (in this case the US's claim of holding up the "rules based international system" as reason to arm Ukraine, is clearly where you sourced your "defiance" justifies Western policies, but you can support that because it's a bullshit argument, so you move the goal posts to simply someone is defying something in this situation, which is clear: Ukraine is defying Russia, therefore, according to your argument, Russia is completely justified in destroying entirely Ukraine to put a stop to that defiance).

You may think of yourself as an astute intellectual, but you are not.

Astute intellectuals make a clear and meaningful point.

Propagandists throw shit against the wall, see what sticks, throw more shit at whatever spot they think has landed, which is what you do.

Nukes have their military use, which is to wipe out all mankind and give the earth a well-deserved break from us critters. — Olivier5

This is not correct.

MAD theory does not apply to Ukraine as Ukraine does not have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet, or any nuclear weapons.

And this whole idea that nuclear weapons would not be useful militarily ... but of course could destroy the entire planet, is just dumb.

Take this argument for example:

That is where nuclear weapons work: deterrence. If this would be a non-nuclear armed country attacking Ukraine, it is likely that a no-fly zone would have been enforced. — ssu

Why would nuclear weapons serve as a deterrent to a no-fly zone if nuclear weapons are not effective?

Why would implementing a no-fly zone be the obvious and easy response to the use of nuclear weapons?

Nuclear weapons are right now deterring a no-fly zone ... but if nuclear weapons would actually be used then the deterrence would evaporate and of course there would be a no-fly zone?

The argument seems to be nuclear weapons are not useful militarily, but serve as a deterrence (because they're not useful?), and of course so powerful that they can destroy the planet, but cannot be made less powerful to be useful outside the context of destroying the planet?

Makes no sense.

Obviously, there are many political reasons not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but the idea they would not be useful is just absurd. Now, they may not be some magical weapon that produces instant victory.

But to take the bridge example, the situation could be that conventional missiles failed to destroy the bridge, or there's effective missile defence defending the bridge (that a nuclear hypersonic missile could penetrate), or simply too many conventional missiles would be needed and it would be nice to conserve them, and the bridge is essential for an offensive operation, and a tactical nuclear weapon can destroy the bridge, completely and totally with zero chance of repair.

It is very, very easy to see a scenario where a small nuclear weapon would be useful in military planning. Would destroying said bridge, or bunker, or bridge head, or air field, or fortified arms depot, etc. win the war in itself? No, but there are reasons these are targets of military strikes even when the target can easily be repaired (like an air field), as it would be convenient to get rid of them; so, if nuclear weapons can do that (which they can), then they are clearly useful.

And the fact is US has no reason to nuke Russia for Nuking Ukraine and any conventional retaliation would be lower than out-right victory in Ukraine. Move-fast-and-break-things, "cost of doing business", is just a page out of our corporate play book.

Hence, drip-feed theory is alive and well, of supplying Ukraine only with enough weapons to lose, and so keep the political reasons to not use nuclear weapons a sufficient deterrent, and since Ukraine is once again losing, we now hear talk of supplying cluster munitions, and people trying to restart the discussion about jets.

Meaning? — neomac

Meaning pointing out US's invasion of Iraq was not an act of "defiance" does not create some situation where the "contrasting" the concepts of maverick and defiance has anything to do with anything.

You receive criticism ... can't deal with it, then move the goal posts. Obviously, you're no longer remotely arguing that Russia's breaking or not breaking international law is a justification for Western policies.

First, you keep repeating that I made a strawman argument. Do you know what strawman argument means? Explained that to me. And show me how that applies to my counterarguments. — neomac

I point out that your argument about "defiance" is unsound and invalid, at no point does party A defying party B tell us anything about who is justified and what any of those or then third parties should do about it, and you then formulate my position as somehow contrasting maverick with defiance ... but they are compatible. Sure, you can also have the maverick defier, but that was not my statement which was just pointing out the US invasion of Iraq was not "an act of defiance" and then pointed out how your whole topsy-turvy defiance logic makes no sense.

Which you've entirely abandoned, formulating your position as very clearly support for US hegemony.

Forth, every time you call my claims trivialities, that means you agree with me. — neomac

No, when we say you've moved the goal posts to something trivial, the triviality maybe true, but that doesn't support your position.

You have a bunch of elements in an argument that doesn't support your position: we point that out and then you move the goal posts to focusing on just one element, such as "defiance", or then just generalising your argument into a tautology which you quite clearly didn't say, but very clearly said something specific but unfortunately unsupported.

Besides my arguments are always the same ones. Just looping through them for a while now. And if I find your approach conceptually flawed, I don’t feel rationally compelled to stick to it.
Fifth, quote where I made such a claim “Russia is defying international law”, you serial liar. — neomac

Do you just not remember what you've already written and what we've been discussing?

And the problem I see is that Russia doesn't simply want to take a piece of land from Ukraine, but it wants to do it expressly in defiance and at the expense of the West/NATO/US: starting with the violation of international law till aiming at establishing a new World Order in alliance with at least two other authoritarian regimes (China and Iran) [1]. — neomac

Clearly your position at the time can be summarised as Russia defying international law, the West/NATO/US therefore needing to apply that law somehow, and to make things more abundantly clear "violation of international law" is another way to say "defiance of international law".

What do you mean by “justification”? I clarified for the thousand time my point when talking about practical rationality. While you keep playing with words. — neomac

So you're saying something that is of "practical rationality" to do would not be justified to do it? Why would it being both practical and rational to do ... not therefore be a justification to do it?

How is "practical rationality" anything other than a pseudo-intellectual bullshit way of saying "justification".

If I ask why you did something and you answered with the practical and rational reasons for doing it, how is that not you justifying your actions with those reasons?

No, there is no reason to constrain the field to region in the sense you suggest here. When great powers struggle for hegemony they can do so over all domains within their reach on earth, sea, space, virtual space. Small powers pick their side according to their means and convenience. Besides I don’t reason through caricatural slogans like “might is right”. I’m not sure it makes even sense. — neomac

Again, so if Russia wins the "struggle" over Ukraine then it's actions were justified all along and Ukraine just picked the wrong side since 2014?

You're only substantive criticism of Russia seems to be they haven't won yet ... but the US hasn't won this struggle yet either. "Might is right" is not a slogan, it's just exactly what you are describing: if the US can dominate Russia in this confrontation then it should do so, which of course exact same thing applies to Russia dominating Ukraine.

When you are asking ME your questions you look as dumb, yes. I don’t share your conceptual assumptions. And for exactly the same reason, your rhetoric attempt of emotional/moral blackmailing me looks even dumber to me. And if you are doing it for your fans and sidekicks, I don’t give a shit about it. — neomac

You say this question of cost is both dumb and emotional/moral blackmail ... while stating you already answered this question literally a few sentences later:

s the cost to Ukraine of such a policy morally acceptable?
— boethius

I answered yes and argued for it a while ago. It was among my first posts to the thread. — neomac

Nothing is preventing anyone here arguing the cost is worth it. No one in the West hesitates to argue the cost to defeat Hitler was worth it. Sometimes great causes have great costs.

Of course, in the case of WWII the people arguing the cost was worth it actually sent their own soldiers to fight and share that cost. Saying the cost to Ukraine is worth it for our policies, such as not needing to "win" just damage Russia a lot, is quite clearly a cynical exploitation of Ukraine for our own ends.

However, nothing stops anyone from arguing the cynical exploitation and manipulation of Ukraine for our own ends is justifiable, that we will save more lives in the long run in the Baltics and Poland.

However, my question is not some "conceptual framework" that makes sense to reject. If you advocate some goal, such as in this case harming the Russians, "what would be a reasonable cost to attain that goal?" is just common sense. Obviously you wouldn't sacrifice every single American to harm one Russian soldiers knee ... so between that and achieve your objective at the cost of a cup of coffee there obviously some zone of acceptable cost (to the US, to NATO, to Ukraine) which you're comfortable with.

It's simply a common sense question to participants who reject a negotiated peace and any essentially any compromise whatsoever, what cost to Ukraine they think would be worthwhile in refusing to compromise. Would 300 000 lives be worth it to conquer Crimea? Is clearly a reasonable question. Of course, people can argue that 300 000 lives wouldn't be worth it, but it can be conquered with some amount of lives that is worth it. However, to be an honest participant in this debate one should be able to answer such simple questions.

That the questions simply point to a total incoherence, ignorance and Russophobia underpinning your position doesn't somehow make these simple questions as part of some "conceptual framework" that can be rejected.

Russia can still do lots of damage and especially at the expense of the American allies. Indeed if there is going to be a more direct clash between the 2 powers, this is going more likely to happen in Europe than on the American soil. — neomac

Like who? The Baltic states? Poland? Germany?

And in what conditions and scenario does Russia just start invading East-ward?

Also, if Russia can do what you say here, doesn't that just make them the Hegemon?

Here:
"move fast and break things" maverick attitude, and not some sort of act of defiance.
— boethius — neomac

You are contrasting "maverick attitude" with "some sort of act of defiance", as if if they were incompatible, while Russia can be described as both. — neomac

Your full sentence was referring to Russia, whereas my statement was referring to the US invading Iraq was not "defiance". Maybe follow the context.

You then setup some sort of maverick-defiance strawman stated above, which obviously has nothing to do with anything. As the following statements you cite demonstrate, pretty much doing anything can be construed as "defiance" of someone who disagrees.

Why are we talking about defiance? Because your argument about the West needing to deal with Russia's "defiance" (originally of international law) justifying Western policy, couldn't standup to @Isaac's criticism so you've again do what you always do and focus on some trivialities and moving the goalposts: in this case moving the goal posts from Russia is defying international law and that broadly supports your position, to Russia is defying the "West".

Secondly, the US’s invasion turned out to be a reputational failure for the US and set a dangerous precedent exploitable by anti-Western authoritarian regimes. Still the US is the hegemonic power which the Westerns rely on, so Western countries are not compelled to treat Russia with the same submissiveness they treat American abuses on geopolitical grounds. Russia is no peer of the US on the geopolitical arena. Period. — neomac

Notice how this, your actual position of supporting US hegemonic power, has nothing to do with justifications of US actions you throw against the wall to see what sticks and we've been cleaning up for hundreds of comments.

Putting that aside, let's deal with this argument. First thing to notice, is that if Russia is a Hegemonic power in its neighbourhood then Ukraine should be compelled to treat Russia with submissiveness.

The only justification here is who has the hegemonic power in the region should call the shots in Ukraine. If Russia comes out on top in the war then it was the Hegemonic power all along, Ukraine should have submitted and that would be that.

Your argument basically boils down to might is right, so who has the might is the key question which the war is going to uncover.

Your question is based on assumptions we do not share. It’s like asking to an atheist: is being gay a sin against God or not? Likely the atheist answer won’t be based on what is claimed in the Bible, but on his disbelief of any such thing as “sins against God”, right? — neomac

Just wow. The question of whether the cost to Ukraine of our policies of encouraging, financing, arming more war is worthwhile cost so far to accomplish ... "liberation" of the Donbas? Crimea? well whatever it's accomplished compared to the offer at the start of the war, and what further cost do Zelenskyites think would be reasonable to pay to accomplish the objectives of the "common cause" ...

... is akin to asking if being gay is a sin against God to an atheist.

The same blablabla. We have already been through this, here is my answer once again:
The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power (in terms of its economic system, its system of alliance, its capacity of military projection outside its borders, its its technology supply, its military and geopolitical status) to the point it is not longer perceived as a non-negligible geopolitical threat to the West. — neomac

Your whole premise is:

Russia is no peer of the US on the geopolitical arena. Period. — neomac

... So what's there to fear?

And notice how just after lauds the "common cause", it's made as plane as day there is no common cause as Ukrainian defeat is completely acceptable as long as enough damage has been done to Russia along the way.

Is the cost to Ukraine of such a policy morally acceptable?

It’s like asking to an atheist: is being gay a sin against God or not? — neomac

Truly remarkable.

Convenient, that Ukraine and others could come together in a common cause, huh? :D Democracies against autocrats, defenders against invaders, ...? — jorndoe

Again, if you declare martial law and disband the second largest political party, that does not qualify as democratic.

But even putting aside that, is the cause common?

Zelensky and his followers certainly want to "defeat" the Russians, that's certainly their cause, so if the cause was common what would follow from that is Ukraine would already have the weapons systems, training, even allied troops to accomplish this "common cause".

We don't see that, so perhaps because the causes are different.

US and co. is certainly happy to see the Ukrainians suffer a lot to make the Russians suffer somewhat, but unless the goal is to "win" I don't think that's what Zelensky et. al. have in mind.

Hard to tell what would happen if, say, the UK was to deploy 6000 troops + equipment, Poland 6000, France 6000, Romania 3000, Spain 5000, the US 10000, Australia 2000, Luxembourg 10, Norway 800, in Ukraine. (just whatever came to mind while typing, and assuming this stuff would go through whatever procedures the respective governments have, however unlikely, but invitation accepted) Would Putin play the victim card (again)? Take Kim Jong-un's offer? Tell Lukashenko "Send what you got!"? Ukraine could become quite the battleground. Not sure how realistic something like this is, but one might hope not all that likely...? What might happen? — jorndoe

Yes, seems incredibly unlikely.

If you agree on that point and just want to discuss hypotheticals, you haven't listed enough troops to make a significant difference.

Cropsey's comment ↑ there doesn't need NATO so close by. NASAMS (and others) can help. :up:

Lavrov says Ukrainians will be liberated from neo-Nazi rulers
— TASS · Nov 26, 2022

Getting old, the Nazi thing (and Lavrov perhaps). Been shown the door. Repeating doesn't make it so. — jorndoe

I posted 6 videos of Western journalists investigating Nazi's in Ukraine and all concluding that there definitely seems to be Nazi's in Ukraine.

But let's get back to that later and focus here on your argument form:

Ukraine keeps blaming Russians for the war ... has that gotten "old" in your definition?

How simply the same as now. Keep the course. Let's see after next year. As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight, it's their decision. It is them who are actually paying the cost, not us. — ssu

Our proxies will keep being proxies so therefore we should continue to use them as proxies? It's their country that gets fucked, not ours?

And to accomplish what?

First, "Ukrainians" make decisions now without any critical press or critical political parties and in a vast stew of propaganda. We don't really know what Ukrainians think and whether polls are accurate considering any dissent is viewed as "Russian collaboration" and may get you imprisoned and/or killed.

Additionally, the West keeps saying it will support Ukraine indefinitely and with "whatever it needs" and so on, so even if the decision to fight was genuinely democratic, it maybe based on the Wests assertions about support.

And, more fundamentally, they are still our weapons and we are still responsible for the outcome regardless of what the Ukrainians want to do. It maybe simply not morally acceptable to have Ukraine fight a lost battle even if they want to.

There are also many benefits to peace.

Simple: to continue to undo "the greatest tragedy of the 2oth Century". Russia to claim dominance over it's "near abroad". — ssu

... Like Belarus and Kazakstan and Georgia?

Places Russia already dominates?

What is the next step of this "rebuild the Soviet Union" plan?

And the West has given him this: After annexing Crimea and starting in limited insurgency in the Donbas, what did Putin do? He took take the next step to make a large scale attack on Ukraine. Did then the West and NATO respond as it has now? No. There's your example from history. — ssu

What Putin did next was negotiate Mink I, which Ukraine didn't respect and the Western "guarantors" didn't use any leverage to pressure Ukraine to respect it, and later Ukraine said was just playing for time to build up their forces to have a big war, and then ... negotiate Mink II, which had the exact same result.

However, the more important question remains what we can do about it.

This whole "Russia will keep expanding in an unexplained way without any evidence or rational" is simply to justify the Western policy of having Ukraine pay an enormous price for harming the Russians. A price that will never be compensated, may not achieve even close to the military outcomes, and in which the West could intervene at any moment to provide real help, but doesn't.

Tell that to people. (I have to remember to quote you later.) And btw radiation on the site where a tactical nuke has been used, it is a problem. — ssu

Radiation of tactical nuclear weapons simply isn't much. If there's a scenario in which a tactical nuclear weapon would be under consideration for military purposes, the radiation would not be a major concern. Of course, if there's zero military reason to use a nuclear weapon then the radiation, among a long list of things, is an additional reason not to use them.

Where radiation from nuclear weapons is a real problem, is in a full strategic nuclear exchange. Strategic weapons create far more radiation, far more fallout, and there would be hundreds if not thousands of them exploding around the world. Additionally, you may have nukes hitting nuclear power plants (that contain far more radiation than a nuclear blast) or then just society collapsing and melt-downs and nuclear fires at various defunct nuclear power plants.

Again you have no idea what you are talking about. In the age of drones and instant fire-missions that can rain down in few minutes, artillery poses a threat at any time to any concentration of force. That's why you don't see columns of Ukrainian tanks... or nowdays of Russian armour moving along. The unit size is smaller than before (Soviet doctrine was to operate with fronts and armies). This is obvious from the fact that the Russian forces, already before the war started, were deployed as Battalion-combat-teams. You don't operate with larger formation, brigades, divisions as in WW2. — ssu

Let's say Ukrainians form a bridge head over an important river and need to pour in significant resources to consolidate that bridge head ... drop a nuke on said bridge head and not only all those forces are gone, but it become clear that there is basically no way to ford the river in peace.

The idea Nuclear weapons have no military use is just insanely naive.

If there was no political reasons to not-use nuclear weapons, and it was just one of many capabilities, military commanders would find tactical uses for them.

Now, if you're saying nuclear weapons would not "guarantee" victory, again, totally false. Russia could drop a nuclear weapon on every Ukrainian city and every command centre and the war would be over in a day.

Again, there's lot's of reasons not to do that, but the idea nuclear weapons are some sort of nothing burger in a theatre of war seems just bizarre.

I think it's obvious from what has been leaked even to the public. A conventional attack on Russian forces in Ukraine and Naval ships operating in the Black Sea. Hence notice the level of escalation: Russian sites in Russia aren't attacked. Then again Russia has an option to escalate: does it enlarge the battlefield to outside Ukraine and the Black Sea. — ssu

It seems, if what you say is true, Russia can suffer some acceptable losses for the privilege of nuking Ukraine.

There would be a "cost of doing business" is what you are saying?

Of course, we are in agreement that there are plenty of good reasons for Russia to not use nuclear weapons (the main one being they are sitting on the land bridge to Crimea and Ukraine can't seem to do anything about that anyways).

However, that the cost to Russia of using nuclear weapons doesn't seem to be much, maybe explains why the West is careful to not create a situation where it would start to arguably a good idea to start using nukes: i.e. a situation in which Russia is actually losing in conventional warfare.

Let's remember that for example in the Korean war the Soviet Air Force fought the USAF on a limited airspace next to the Chinese border. That indeed the two Superpowers were engaged in fighting was simply kept a secret by both sides not wishing to escalate matters. — ssu

We totally agree.

Again, maybe just explains why the US and NATO aren't actually escalating to "help Ukraine win" which is why Ukraine has so far not won and suffering immensely for the honour of representing Western interests, in some vague way.

But then again, this is the "sabre rattling" to Russia's "sabre rattling" in the first place. What actually NATO would do or not is another thing. Medvedev could be right and NATO wouldn't do anything, but be outraged. — ssu

Of course the West wouldn't strike Russia, why would they?

However, West seems already at maximum outrage. I don't see what more outrage would accomplish.

You are contrasting "maverick attitude" with "some sort of act of defiance" — neomac

Where do I do this?

I do the opposite. The US's maverick attitude in invading Iraq with sufficient justification or a credible plan, somehow succeeding in making things worse than under Saddam, is an act of defiance against international law and morality. If Russia is doing the same, that's just called "learning" and being a fan, unless defying defiance is a thing, which I assume is what you'll be arguing next.

You are just playing with words (without defining them) and I don't care about your miserable rhetoric games. — neomac

The word play in this little dialogue is your use of the word "defiance" to somehow imply justification of something, in this case, Western policies.

Russia and allies "defied" Hitler in WWII ... did that make Hitler's war justified?

"Defiance" doesn't justify anything. Ukraine was defying Russia by financing and arming Nazi's ... so according to you the entire Russian war effort is justified due to the defiance of Ukraine.

What I care about is the substantial security threats that an expansionist Russia constitute for the West. — neomac

Again, what threat? Make your case. Russia is about to invade all of Western Europe? ... with it's incompetent army that can't do anything right?

What is this threat to the West you keep talking about?

Here I re-edited your caricatural bullshit to something that can express justified Western security concerns. BTW the West is doing something about Russian defiant attitude, no matter what the Western propagandist and the pro-Russia propagandist like you is saying. — neomac

The key question of the recent dialogue is "at what cost to Ukraine?" and is this cost reasonable to ask a proxy to pay.

You and all the other Zelenskyites simply keep dodging the question.

For example, Russia can just destroy the Ukrainian power grid. Is this a reasonable cost to Ukraine for the West to be seen "doing something about Russian defiant attitude".

And what's the end result? There is no guarantee that the current policies actually turn out bad for Russia.

In the current trajectory, Russia will have a far stronger army, ramped up arms industry, and has already reoriented its entire economy away from the West so if the West isn't willing to do more, Russia now has basically a free hand vis-a-vis it's neighbour's.

What has the war established so far?

It's mostly established NATO cannot defeat Russia through proxy means and is unwilling to intervene directly and sanctions are an empty threat that have already been expended, and the Russian military is willing to suffer large costs to achieve military objectives and can and will destroy your essential infrastructure if you "defy" them.

We keep on being told Ukrainian victory is just a battle away, but that hasn't happened.

Appeasing the bully will just encourage Putin. — ssu

Encourage Putin to do what exactly?

Sure, it sounds good to say we're "standing up to a bully", but what cost to Ukrainians do you think is worth it for the Western policy of not doing anything that risks Ukraine "winning"?

And why is the West's policy to not go into Ukraine, no no-fly-zone, as well as severely limit weapons systems to Ukraine?

Resulting in this situation where Russia has no particular need to use nuclear weapons.

The disadvantages of nuclear weapons far outweigh the benefits ... but only because the West isn't really stopping Putin.

- China is against the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. — ssu

The US/NATO are 100% clear that China is the real "competitor" and so on and they are enemies. China may have zero problem with Russia nuking NATO troops in Ukraine and then taking advantage of the uncertainty and fear to invade Taiwan.

Point is, what China would want in what scenarios we can only speculate. Certainly China's current stance is that nuclear weapons would be a bad thing ... but also there's simply no reason to use nuclear weapons at the moment.

Hence, why we don't see NATO troops in Ukraine as that may not only be reason enough for Russia to nuke them, but also their friends may see it is indeed reasonable course of action. As we've already discussed, Ukraine, with or without NATO troops, getting nuked would not be a reason to nuke Russia in turn.

Furthermore, actually losing in Ukraine may change the calculus to the Kremlin being what China thinks no longer a primary concern.

Hence, perhaps why we don't see Russia actually losing in Ukraine.

- There's a serious risk of this escalating the war and not cowing the West push for cessation of fighting, but to do the opposite. — ssu

Obviously using nuclear weapons could escalate to more nuclear weapons and this is a reason not to escalate.

... again, maybe why we see the US placing limits to weapons and assistance, and everything organised around the principle of not threatening Russian defeat in any realistic sense.

- Ukraine is next to Russia, hence radiation can easily travel to Russia by winds. — ssu

Radiation isn't all that big a concern when it comes to tactical nuclear weapons.

- Destroying Ukrainian forces with tactical nuclear weapons is difficult: troops on the modern battleground are very dispersed. — ssu

The utility of nuclear weapons would be in the scenario where Ukraine is actually advancing a sizeable concentration of force. Dispersed forces are a defensive measure and not an offensive measure.

There's also other uses of nuclear weapons such as destroying bunkers, bridges, logistics hubs, air bases, EMP and so on.

Of course, if Russian troops aren't actually at risk of any real defeat there would be no reason to use nuclear weapons against any such target. For example, right now Ukrainian airforce isn't doing much ... so why blowup air bases with nuclear weapons?

But, again, for the sake of argument, let's imagine the West actually supporting Ukraine in anyway it wants, and actually trained and equipped the Ukrainian airforce since the start of the war and now F-16's, B-2's, F-22's and F-35's, plethora of advances drones, and so on are an actual problem for Russia, then maybe nuking those airbases would be the only effective military option, and even China may see that as a reasonable response.

Again, why the Western media, politicians and officials simply accept the framework of "support Ukraine ... but, shhhhh, not too much".

- Forces operating in nuclear fallout areas will need training and equipment Russia doesn't have now: basically you will create a small no-go zone for your troops also. — ssu

Again, nuclear fallout of tactical nuclear bombs isn't all that big an issue, and you can just avoid these areas entirely or then, if it was a problem, only employe nukes far behind enemy lines to take out key infrastructure, such as the air base example above.

- After the initial quick-capture strategy went bust (on day one) and created the logistical fiasco, Russia has actually been very risk-averse. Suddenly such an escalation would go against the way that Russia has fought the war after the initial push. — ssu

Agreed ... but the reason why is that their parallel operation to capture the land bridge to Crimea was an amazing military success and they are in a defensive posture to protect these gains. Capturing the rest of the Donbas would be a political victory, but doesn't secure the land bridge any better in and of itself (only if it was captured at a cost benefit maintaining or improving relative strength terms, which explains the super slow advances that minimise casualties and simply withdrawing from positions that are difficult to defend).

- Russia has no interest to initiate World War 3. If the "Escalate to De-escalate" doesn't work, then there is nothing to gain from this kind of escalation. It has suffered severe losses in Ukraine already and the last thing would be to escalate the war to a totally new level. — ssu

Definitely. However, the question is what escalation the West would do that would be responded to with Nuclear weapons by Russia ... that the West would then not respond with nuclear weapons.

It's NATO that would be escalating to a point of Russia using nuclear weapons and then ... nothing, which NATO wants to avoid, and is avoiding by limiting assistance to Ukraine, excluding things like a no-fly zone, certainly not sending troops, and so on.

Nuclear "sabre rattling" has already deterred significant amount of actions that NATO (already "appeased" the nuclear bully in your parlance) would certainly have done if all this rhetoric was drummed up against a non-nuclear power.

And, you may say, "what's wrong with that! of course we don't want to harm Russia so much that they may actually use nukes!!" ok, yeah I agree, but then we're not really "standing with Ukraine" but we have a policy of appeasement. Our actions are more symbolic than practical.

This is the central absurdity of the West's position. It argues right up to its policy line with extreme rhetoric, standing up to Putin, Churchillian "never surrender" type stuff, Putin's a war criminal and the Russians are literally terrorists, and the entire world order is at risk, and basically the greatest moral imperatives you can think of etc. But when it comes to the question of "well, why not do more then, send modern tanks and fighter jets or then go in with our own planes and troops" the exact opposite direction of appeasement is argued that "of course the nukes". Well ... which one is it? Are we "doing what it takes" and fighting on the fields and beaches and and in the air and seas and so on, or are we actually tiptoeing around any actual risk to the Kremlins core goals and making clear we are appeasing with respect to those core goals so no need for any desperate measures?

Now, when it comes question to just adjust a tiny bit this balance between fighting pure evil and appeasement, then what's trotted out by Western retired general is "don't worry about the nukes!" ... but that's disingenuous as if you really weren't worried about the nukes then it wouldn't be slight policy adjustments under consideration (such as ... well, still not sending Western tanks, but at least scrounging up old Soviet tanks)-; if you were really not worried about the Nukes you'd be right back to no-fly zones, and send in the cruise missiles, and troops and strike Russia on their own territory and so on.

However, what this different arguments on different sides of the policy to sort of "squeeze it" to where NATO wants it to be means, is that there is no actual justification in any coherent moral or political philosophy. Different incompatible justifications are used to support conflicting elements of the policy framework. Putin is Hitler so we need to send some arms ... but also Putin isn't Hitler so we aren't going to actually go defeat Putin as we defeated Hitler. The analogy is only as relevant as we say it is!

Why? Because the actual policy is just to separate Europe from Russian resources, in a cynical realpolitik move that has no moral justification.

P1. If West/NATO/US has little respect for international law, then Russia didn’t violate international law in defiance of West/NATO/US
P2. West/NATO/US has little respect for international law
C. Russia didn’t violate international in defiance of West/NATO/US — neomac

Again, more bullshit soup.

What's the purpose of "defiance" in your strawman here?

Obviously if West/NATO/US has little respect for international law, then breaking international law is a homage to their realpolitik "move fast and break things" maverick attitude, and not some sort of act of defiance.

You seem to be holding on this word defiance like mould to stale bread because if Russia is "defying" the West ... then it follows in the topsy-turvy mental gymnastics of the propagandist the West must do something about that "defiance", regardless of the consequence on Ukrainians or even if our anti-defiance policies even work.

So no, Russia didn't violate international law in "defiance" of the West/NATO/US.

If the "WMD's" in Iraq that no one could find were justification to invade Iraq, then certainly the biolabs the US admitted in public were in Ukraine are more than enough justification to invade Ukraine. Russia is just paying homage to the West/NATO/US understanding of international law, if anything it's a sign of deep respect.

From the Russian point of view, the presence of NATO troops in Ukraine would mean NATO did not wait to be directly attacked before fighting Russians. — Paine

These would not be "NATO" just whatever country they are from.

For example, say Estonia announced they weren't going to just talk shit and launder money anymore, but actually put their beliefs in practice. "We're going to Ukraine!" they announce.

And then they go. And, if this isn't NATO doing anything, then that would be announced and clear, that Estonia is making a bilateral alliance with Ukraine and declare an official state of war with Russia (as they have the sovereign right to do!) and they are going in! This would not create an article 5 situation. NATO would make clear that Estonia is on its own now in declaring .

Now, let's also assume that Estonia troops don't matter in the slightest on the battlefield. Nothing would change in the current situation, except maybe Russia invading Estonia. That's what happens when you declare war on another country, and article 5 does not cover that.

The reason this is not even considered by these countries is for the reason I explain. No one actually believes the propaganda that Russia is can or plans or even wants to conquer all of Easter Europe, it's just propaganda. If people actually believed that their own countries are in danger, "going in" would be a serious consideration.

One of the ironies of the collective nature of NATO's decisions is that they protect Russia from individual nations joining the fight by themselves. Any boots on the ground from any member states would be treated as an attack by all. Cue WW3. — Paine

That view does not take into account the language of limited escalation being used by both Russia and NATO when it comes to Article 5. — Paine

Both these statements are not really true.

First Article 5 is not "we start WWIII" but is technically only a commitment to meet and respond in some way.

More importantly, NATO's article 5 does not cover troops in other countries anyways. For example, attacks on US troops in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or anywhere not in the US or some analogue they'll consider an attack (like an aircraft carrier), has nothing to do with NATO's Article 5 as these are not attacks on the US and article 5 is never invoked about any military interventions or wars of occupation.

Countries within NATO could send in troops to Ukraine if they wanted to and them being attacked in Ukraine would have nothing to do with article 5.

Countries don't send troops into Ukraine to help out because they don't care about Ukraine, and they don't actually believe that Russia will keep on expanding if not "stopped in Ukraine" and so have no actual security interest to ally with Ukraine.

Ukraine is simply a tool of both realpolitik by the US, essentially as a gas play (wise or not), as well as an outlet for Russian resentment (in East-Europe) and virtue signalling in West-Europe.

The war is the best possible distraction to all those starving children in Afghanistan. We're the good guys again, hurray!!

In the case of both East and West Europe the policy of maintaining a total war rhetoric without an actual justified total war scenario, is insanely dangerous, and not just because of the nukes.

Who is actually likely to attack other Eastern European countries once the war is done with Russia ... is Ukraine. They may not have an army big enough to go and defeat Russia, but they will be a formidable force to any of their neighbours, have zero economy and the likely outcome of the war for Ukraine is a "ultra nationalist" government dedicated to warfare. If they can't beat the Russians their attention will turn elsewhere. Anyone who thinks this war has made Eastern-Europe one happy family all of a sudden has never been to Eastern-Europe.

Obviously, for Western Europe, the smart thing to do would have been to just trade putting online Nord Stream 2 to avoid a disastrous war ... a pipeline that (sans war that started immediately after the project was cancelled) benefits Western Europe and very obviously would maintain the peace. The idea of "sovereign" states allowing the pipeline to be built but then advancing a policy against their own countries interest to not open the pipeline, is just dumb and even more dumb that they then claim to be supporting the "sovereignty" of Ukraine by supplying arms. Of course, maybe the pipelines not a good idea, but the time to decide that is years, preferably many years, before it's completed. It's just common sense diplomacy that you don't let your neighbour build a 10 billion Euro infrastructure project to your own benefit and then just not let it start. No credibly sovereign state would actually do that.

Now, what the US and Europe and other countries will do is a pretty open question, but what's not very difficult to guess is they aren't sending any troops to go help their non-ally.

And, if people think you can have allies that you don't go defend when they are attacked, that's just not what ally means. Ukraine is a tool, willing or not for more or less actual Ukrainians, of Western, mainly US, policy.

They will be the new Iraqi's, Afghanis, Kurds, whoever we were supporting in Libya, that, like them, in a relatively short amount of time we will have forgotten about and will be just a dirty word in any of, what @Olivier5 calls, "decent" conversation.

Indeed, as far as I can tell that process has already started as no one in the West wants to hear Ukraine is being completely destroyed and millions are suffering intensely ... as that would have a followup question of if we're actually going to do anything substantive to help and maybe even some sole searching of why we encouraged and financed Ukraine into this situation.

Once-upon-a-time leaders of countries were viewed as responsible for actual outcomes of their policies.

That "the enemy" did bad things to you ... sort of goes without saying that that is their function, what makes them enemies.

But people who lose wars, or get their country destroyed in the process of some disastrous stalemate, who throw their hands up in the air and say "our enemies did this": no shit Sherlock. Either avoid making them your enemy or have some plan to deal with the consequences.

Why, perchance, the finger pointing has begun with Zelensky trying to throw the mayor of Kiev under the bus and blame him for not preparing for the obvious next step in the war ... what NATO retired officers were literally mocking Russia for months not doing on day one and being "weak" and then deducing Russia ran out of missiles after a month ... as clearly if they had the missile capabilities we thought they had they would take out Ukrainian infrastructure, but they weren't doing that, the incompetents!

Light naturally travels in a straight line but, because it has mass, it will follow the contours of a gravitational field. — alan1000

Light does not have mass, it has momentum but that doesn't matter either.

It's more correct to say light travels in geodesics in curved space. A geodesic is a straight-line in flat Euclidian space and in (smooth) curved space will appear straight over any sufficiently small distance, but over larger distances may appear curved (such as gravitational lensing).

The central mass would only need to be slightly larger than any we can observe. Is that your position? — alan1000

This is correct and is already built into the theory of black holes.

A collapsing star would, in any case, collapse to a density just enough to become a blackhole on its way to infinite density, and if that actually happens we cannot observe both because it's a blackhole and also we have no devices that count to infinity. That we cannot measure infinity anyways is the more general problem for all conjectures of real infinities in any context (size of the universe, electron density, whether space / fields are continuous in some aspects and so on).

Beyond the event horizon there can easily be a force that stops further collapse.

For example, neutron stars are pretty close to the threshold of becoming a blackhole.

We can easily imagine the universe being such that neutron stars were a bit more dense and became blackholes, and so in this thought experiment, even if we came up with the idea of a neutron star, we could never verify they do actually exist as they'd all be hidden by event horizons.

So if there was some force after a neutron star collapses that kicks in later and prevents further collapse, but was dense enough to be a blackhole, then we'd be in the same situation of having no idea about these forms of matter that prevent further collapse.

And this is not all that counter intuitive, no more strange than why a planet doesn't collapse into a blackhole, the only difference being that we can't see what forces may be at play preventing further collapse in a blackhole.

Also of note, if you want to create a particle accelerator large enough to "really find out", you just end up creating blackholes in your collisions and still can't see what's going on.