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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Do Russian diplomats really read this forum? News to me.

Do Russian diplomats need to read this forum for your proposals to be unworkable because of poor modeling of the interests and concerns of participants?

In any case your model of the motivations of the belligerents is not the same as mine so I don't really think we can reconcile the reasoning for any of this.

Sure we can. We can work to justify the models based on key actor behavior, contexts that the proposed models will work within, and past iterations.

For example, you made a concession that if Putin is interested in clay instead of all his declared war goals, then peace is a non-starter. I noted that it is impossible for Putin to achieve all of his declared war goals, and that in lieu of those he has significant interest in the clay in order to declare victory. You have not disputed these points on all of Putin's war goals. If Putin has many interests in the conflicts, and many/most have fallen away, then the reason to continue the conflict remains the rest- which includes the clay.

This is a synthesis, not a refutation of your model, and thus allows the conversation to reach your own conclusion. Putin cares about the clay, and thus peace is hopeless.

From this point, we can discuss what that means for reasonable peace talks (which have a purpose even when an adversary has no interest in fulfilling them), assumptions of terms they can be approached with, and so on.

I will say however that taking the current declared terms from both sides as immutable gospel as you do here is absurd. Diplomacy never works like that.

Fortunately I am not arguing on the immutable gospel of declared terms, but rather past iterations, interests, and incentives... which is how diplomacy routinely works, absurd as that may seem to you.

Moreover, you seem to be trying for a flawed reasoning of what is or is not considered subject for negotiation. Just because initial declared terms are 'never' final terms doesn't mean all parts of initial terms are subject to concession. Plenty of terms are not subject to trading way short of total capitulation- which is not the context Russia is faced with in the timeframe being alluded to. As such, the basis by which currently held Russian territory would be traded away with requires justification rather than going without saying, particular in light of past Russian policies in regards to frozen conflicts and relevant historical analogs to broad-front indefinite cease fires.