The_Golem101
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User ID: 548
The_Golem101
11hr ago
That's certainly part of people like Strelkov's views as per "85 Days in Slavyansk" - and I agree that denying your opponent nationhood/legitimacy is a useful tactic that many groups have made use of, no disagreement there.
I just don't think it makes much sense to argue historical word games around it when the fake people in question have sunk a good chunk of your Black Sea fleet, routed Guards divisions and your economy is in real trouble as your new BRICS buddies aren't buying any exports other than gas. Ukrainians certainly now feel like a people, and you're unlikely to argue them out of it with a new paper - he has to get his economy back on track and do something to sort out his horrible attrition ratios if he's going to apply his will to them by force.
The_Golem101
1d ago
I think you might have missed a bit of why the Lex interview focused on the question of Putin's reliability and goals - what is looming over the current game board is the upcoming negotiations for ceasefire conditions, that's why it consumed all the oxygen in the room. It does make sense in this context for Ukraine to lay out its position that Putin has made and broken treaty commitments before, and they need security guarantees to make sure that a ceasefire isn't just a way for Russia to sort out its force generation issues and have another go in a few months. That's their minimum position, and while they won't "concede" territory, they may well agree that they aren't getting all that they want there, and a deal will be thrashed out. It's very important for their security and therefore survival that they get this, and so they will raise it as a key talking point.
Meanwhile, Putin's position is crazy town, he still wants full war goals, which is a bit of a "lol, lmao" position for someone whose military position is as weak as it is currently (they are struggling to source any tanks and tubes for the first time over sections of the front, meaning that their fires superiority will have to come increasingly from an expansion of air, which seems impossible medium term) and whose country is starting to seriously suffer under the economic pressure. For example, "Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded to the initial reports of the Turkish peace proposal, stating that "freezing" the frontline is "a priori unacceptable" for the Kremlin and that Russian President Vladimir Putin's previously stated conditions for ending the war — which amounted to full Ukrainian capitulation — remain "fully relevant." - that includes Ukrainian disarmament and massive additional territorial transfers.
Zelensky laying out a solid but reasonable ceasefire position to Trump and make Putin seem crazy is 80% of his US facing work currently, and he's doing a reasonable job of it I would guess. Some evidence of that is that his official position is pretty close to what you predict as the end state, without throwing out all of his haggling chips before he even starts.
A better interviewer would have drawn out far more interesting quotes with far better questions of course, but we had the interviewer we had, who sadly was Lex. There have been a lot of people who have talked about the different positions on the war over the years, and Pro vs Anti Ukrainians have written books on the topic, it's certainly not under discussed. We could discuss it here if you're interested, I have some opinions - but Putin's positions on the topic are certainly curious. He genuinely believes that Ukraine is a historical fiction, there are plots everywhere to split them off from Russia and that they need to forcibly reunited and driven to a satellite status - that was his interview with Tucker (I'm less impressed by his choice to devote all his airtime to ahistorical ramblings on Vladislav the Wise than you there) and his really odd paper in 2021 (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181). The problem of discussing his position is that... it isn't internally consistent, though it's certainly a mistake. For example, even if it was true (rather than bad historical fiction) his invasion was the perfect way to create a national identity, I literally couldn't plan anything better as a creation myth for Ukraine.
However, would you like a summary of roughly what the Ukrainian positions are vs people like Strelkov? It won't be why Russia launched the invasion (Prigożyn was pretty clear on that, and I think he was telling the truth), but it would give a steelman for both sides.
The_Golem101
2d ago
Russia's untapped capabilities here are pretty much just nuclear, their conventional force isn't enough to disable any significant section of Ukraine's industry - that's rather why we're here. And any strike on a nuclear facility is not a trivial act, it is one that would lead to incredible blowback - literally - across Europe. It would be very difficult to prevent all these small countries from acquiring weapons outside of diplomatic pressure, which abandoning Ukraine and thus undermining all your other commitments would remove any leverage across all these small non nuclear states.
It's unlikely to be a key factor in the current war anyway - Russia is likely to win or lose over the coming year conventionally and nuking your way out of sanctions isn't going to change that. It's more setting the scene for the next war - security guarantees or nukes I guess to underpin Ukrainian security. Russia has them, and if America does not wish to pay for Ukraine's guarantees isn't this the better option for thrifty US isolationist nationalists without a dog in the fight?
The_Golem101
2d ago
Nuclear latency (the time taken to acquire a nuclear weapon if a blank ish cheque is given and the government says go) is low for any country with nuclear reactors. Ukraine has several, as does much of East Asia. Under a year most likely, though there would be external signs that other powers would pick up on, probably.
As a general comment, a lot of commentators seem to miss that other countries than the US/NATO have agency, and this is one ways this crops up. If the US truly throws Ukraine under the bus, as some suggest would somehow both be the moral thing to do and in the USA's own interests, both Ukraine and other non nuclear powers would need to look to their full defense within a short period. Nuclear weapons might well be a part of that, and other countries are watching too. Zelensky himself may also have limited room to resist those calls either, Ukrainians I know have settled into an awakened wrath of Kipling fame, including those actively in the conflict, there's still a lot of fight there.
"I was surprised by the reverence the United States has for Russia’s nuclear threat. It may have cost us the war. They treat nuclear weapons as some kind of God. So perhaps it is also time for us to pray to this God." Oleksii Yizhak - who apparently was dropping rhetorical fire too.
The_Golem101
1mo ago
I think it's the correct thing to do.
First, it's far from clear that we're in the 11th hour here, though the war is moving towards an endgame. Russia's stated conditions do not align with the military reality on the ground, for example from the ISW on the recent talks in Turkey: "Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded to the initial reports of the Turkish peace proposal, stating that "freezing" the frontline is "a priori unacceptable" for the Kremlin and that Russian President Vladimir Putin's previously stated conditions for ending the war — which amounted to full Ukrainian capitulation — remain "fully relevant." ". A frozen front with protections for Ukraine aren't enough it seems for the Kremlin, they want far more, which means that this war is not ending in the next weeks or months. This is true for Biden, and this is true for Trump, unless you accept that the Ukrainian military is about the rout, which I don't. You may think so, but if that assumption is not accurate a lot of things you're confused about might slot into place.
Next, Russia has now received direct support from North Korea, which was taken as an escalation in the eyes of Biden's administration, which stated as much. Not only Russia gets to set red lines and act, and the US wants to show that Russia's dreams of forcing a full capitulation of a sovereign nation via escalating force isn't going to work. It seems likely that longer range strikes into Russia will have a marginal but material effect on the frontline - Ukraine has hit ammo dumps and airfields deep in Russia before, it's just able to raise the tempo now.
Ukraine is always the underdog, and now that Russia has got more meat into the fight vs mid 2022 there's unlikely to be sweeping advances into Russian held territory, but they're not out of the fight or broken. From the US point of view, the fastest way of setting the stage for peace might be:
A) Russia needs to understand that it has failed and will fail to achieve its full objectives, which were insane anyway. No escalation of force (further strikes on civilian infrastructure or drafting of their populations/the population of North Korea) by the Russian military will achieve this, and the US has solid escalation dominance in the conventional space if it chooses to use it.
B) Ukraine will be unlikely to see its 2022 borders at the end of the conflict, and needs to accept that unless the Russian military comes apart in its push (unlikely, but not impossible, their losses are staggering). However, a concession needs to come with serious support from the west attached, and the partnership needs to be maintained in order that Ukraine doesn't decide to take matters into their own hands and test their nuclear latency. Ukraine isn't a US puppet, they get agency too, and if NATO abandons them this is a more unstable scenario for NATO and Russia.
Honestly, Trump might well take similar steps when he is in if Russia doesn't accept point A), this isn't as clear cut a scenario as you think.
Finally, as a funny point given the length of all our posts, do we know that the US actually has authorized long range missiles? Nothing official seems to have come out, and the missile strike may not have been ATACMS. The fog of war is real.
The_Golem101
5mo ago
You may be missing some uniquely UK context here, being a late arrival to our fair shores and having no familial history of time we last stood alone in WW2.
It's not actually anything to do with Agincourt, it's from much later (possibly related to a cuckold's horns - calling your opponent a cuckold is an old sport - there's a brilliant banner from our civil war on the topic) but no one appears to have a definitive answer to its real origins other than the earliest photograph is from 1901 (it doesn't even appear in cartoons or drawings before). It was used a lot during WW2 as a more mocking form of the V for victory when we were standing alone against invasion, playing on Churchil's use of the symbol, and can be summarized as "Up yours".
It always signals disrepect, defiance (typically of authority) and a general "fuck off". It's not a number or related to archery, and it seems a bit... uncharitable to assume others are stupid here especially if you yourself are running off an urban legend yourself. The meaning is clear.
The_Golem101
7mo ago
I have to admit my belief in this being "bullshit porkbarrel politics" has dropped from a 80 to 20 on an indexed basis, based on your comments.
I do think that if Trump tried anything like this, especially following on from a similar policy being slapped down by the supreme court, there would be far more protests. However, that's kind of hard to prove.
Plus, loan forgiveness still seems a fairly bad idea, independant from if it's legal...
The_Golem101
7mo ago
That does sound more reasonable, is there precedent that the president does have the power to make this forgiveness without involving congress?
It seems risky if this becomes the norm from an outside view, and could well lead to tit for tat... is it just because they're technically loans (you owe the federal government) rather than a literal targeted payment from the federal government to a group chosen by the president? In economic terms they're kind of fungible, but I assume there's fewer special interest groups to neatly forgive so it constrains the president at least a bit...
One thing that confuses me as a non American is the details of how Biden ignored the Supreme Court here... did he find a loophole, or did just a drive a bus through the ruling and dared them to do something?
Surely it must be the first and its loopholery, but I'm not entirely sure how the rules work in these cases. For example it certainly seems like the court gets de facto ignored with New York gun laws, with high degrees of non cooperation from lower courts and law enforcement. To what degree can people just ignore the court and get away with it? That seems... odd.
The_Golem101
7mo ago
I mean, there's most of the rest of the Black Sea coast, including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Novorossiysk that doesn't get iced up. There are fully landlocked countries worldwide, they don't get to invade their way to the coast as a little treat. Now, moving the Black Sea fleet all there would involve expanding the port facilities, but that's not impossible (they already partly did it due to the constant Sevastapol attacks). Plus, they did already de facto have that warm water port and were in no position to lose it prior to their invasion.
Meanwhile, that warm water port is now being hit repeatedly by strikes, and the Ukrainians are working down the list of Black Sea fleet vessels one at a time, which are going to be a nightmare to replace. Fortifying its claims/access to Crimea were one of the aims of Russia's invasion for sure, it's just that it seems to have been totally counterproductive from a strategic point of view.
Possibly our difference here is that there's a different meaning to legitimate being used.
Firstly, it's probably obviously not legitimate for countries to just straight up steal strategic assets or resources from a neighbour, even if it's useful.
However, powerful countries cannot accept that their security would be at a partial or full veto from a small power, especially if they have the ability to stop it, so under this threshold some could argue Russia had a legitimate right to annex the port. Maybe the US response in the Cuban missile crisis was legitimate by that standard, and a similar case. However, my disagreement here is that Ukraine didn't have the ability to threaten Russia in any meaningful way as of 2022 or even 2014, other ports were available for the fleet, and Russia's navy is at best a very minor source of their overall security. It's hard to put this as a legitimate reason to launch a full scale war to annex territory and create a puppet state (their initial war goal at least), and in reality has been totally counterproductive, partly as Ukraine has a legitimate interest to fight back and sink most that fleet now, and NATO has a legitimate reason to help them. That's the issue with fuzzy or subjective legitimacy, both sides can seem to have it.
As a final spicy take to develop that prior point: their navy is kind of... crap? Pointless? Like, can it contest the waves versus a naval power equal or greater to Italy? What's it really for then? They can do expeditionary operations to friendly countries without it, they can't do expeditionary operations to hostile countries with it.
The_Golem101
1yr ago
So, perhaps this too much of a war question, rather than a culture war one, but I'm having trouble understanding why Iran is launching attacks on random cargo ships in the Red Sea via proxies in Yemen, and now apparently directly https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-67811929 .
Ok, at least some of the vessels are Israeli linked, and they're hitting at US warships, but my confusion is what this hopes to achieve. Operation Preying Mantis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis seems an apt concern for the Iranians as a repeat: they cant hope to exert serious pressure on Israel's economy, and the moment they sink or damage a warship they're getting hit hard surely? And is it earning them any friends?
Meanwhile Hezbolah is Iranian backed and maybe directly controlled, and has done little in the current conflict. If you want to apply pressure to Israel, isnt that the way, especially given that Hezbolah has resources Hamas does not and could seriously threaten another front that would need actual Israeli resources. Iran isnt going all out with its assets, or the assets in cases are refusing to for self preservation.
So why hit ships? Is it really all they can do? Do they assume the US cant respond? Maybe it earns them some respect from the muslim world for standing up, but it just seems... odd. I'm not exactly Bismark, but I'm clearly missing something.
The_Golem101
1yr ago
Germany declared war on the United States, which was very welcome to the UK and Winston Churchill. There was actually some debate in congress I believe about whether Pearl Habour meant that the US should get involved at all in Europe, and it may have hypothetically gone the other way. The Soviets did not declare war on the Japanese until late in the war, and visa versa the Japanese did not feel under obligation to declare on the Soviets when Hitler launched Barbarossa.
Hitler for some reason thought the US was weak and it was in Germany's interests to openly declare war, which was... bold.
The_Golem101
1yr ago
I agree, it's a different point I'm trying to make. You may be asked if you want to be poly or join a polycule at an EA party, some may claim it's better, but not nothing will be gated from you if you say no in my experience, the seniors (other than Elizer? Who isn't a central EA example) aren't.
The_Golem101
1yr ago
It's true - that possibly needs a bit of context. Broadly:
It was an EA party in a big city hosted by an EA figure (who wasn't poly).
I went, talked to people and socialized. Some of that was interesting in the context of their work (that a solid part of the challenge of cultured meat is not the science, but the law, that was my legal policy comment, but it's not a work setting).
There were poly people at the party, making out in one corner of the room. They were maybe 5 out of 100 people. More were probably poly there but not so... in your face about it.
I can see how it's a bit offputting, it was to me, but it's more "those crazy kids" than pressure to be poly from my experience.
The_Golem101
1yr ago
Without doxxing myself too hard, my experience of EA has been a bit different to what's described above in relation to polyarmory at least. N=1, but my perspective might be of use for a few people who have not experienced the EA subculture themselves.
It's possibly due to the fact I was not in AI risk or anything Bay Area related/rationalist adjacent, but the majority of people I've interacted with in EA are not poly. In addition, while younger EA parties have fair amounts of poly people (which can be a bit jarring, you're discussing legal policy with someone and four people of various genders are making out in lingerie in the corner), the high ranking figures who control donations and jobs I've interacted with are either explictly monogamous or they show no sign of being poly. The higher ups tend to be older (poly tends to be a young persons' game), and those with standard academic careers, lots of papers and titles tend away from poly as well (one girl rising in the movement who I know fairly well made sure she was not seen to be poly when dating as it would undermine her respectability, and is now in a mono power couple with another senior EA).
However, it's certainly possible I've missed out on the pressure from polycules, being male, already established skill wise and not just out of college, not living in a EA house, and now married. I'm not sure if there are any published figures on how many EAs are poly, I would be very interested to see them, but my guess is its far less than people expect, and it tapers off as you go up the ranks/experience.
The feel of EA orgs and their culture also varies hugely, from things like assessing grants/admin, to interventions and direct giving today, planning for unlikely but still grounded scenarios, all the way to the very theoretical work on philosophy, AI and X risks, EA is far larger than the Bay Area and its culture. EA orgs tend to be pretty male (maybe 70:30 by my guess), but I think that's mostly due to the nature of what is being researched rather than hostility to women, and are pretty desperate to appeal to as diverse a group as possible.
There a few interesting dynamics however - one is that there is far more smart grads right out of college who want to be EAs than there is useful work for them to do, unless you have some rare skills, experience or papers under your belt it can be hard to get a position, and that can eat you up and generate unhealthy pressure. Secondly, the nature of the work can make it very seductive and high pressure - you're working on catastrophic scenarios and some potentially very interesting and serious things - and that has burnt out good people that I know. They felt that if the catastrophe happened tomorrow their guilt that they had not done more would consume them forever: they would literally have damned civilization. The pay is lower than for other equivalent positions and the work life balance can be odd, especially if you only live in EA houses.
By tactics I meant that those beliefs could actually have utility under some circumstances. Again I'm sure that people believe that classes of their opponents are deluded or illegitimate, it just doesn't really help much and launching a war on the belief your opponent isn't a real country anyway doesn't stop them fighting back.
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