This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yeah, it's likely this is what Biden's handlers think. What a great chance to bomb our enemy for free!
I can see the strategic logic, as long as we assign no value to human suffering. But in my opinion, it's the same sort of thinking that got us embroiled in Vietnam and Iraq. These people think they have it all figured out. And it goes without saying that they never seem to learn any lessons or bear any personal cost for their warmongering.
Neocons delenda sunt
The only way Trump is ending this war is if he forces Ukraine into a settlement that is essentially a capitulation to Russian demands, and I don't see that happening. There's no incentive for Ukraine to give up territory without some kind of Western security guarantee (lest Putin decides to pick up where he left off at a later date), and there's no way Russia willingly accedes to Ukraine being part of any Western alliance. Furthermore, Trump didn't show anything in his first term to suggest that he's the master dealmaker he makes himself out to be. He shook hands with Kim Jong Un on television but this did nothing other than alienate South Korea. The North kept on ramping up their nuclear program like nothing happened. The Abraham Accords were a nice story but those were a UAE proposal, and it's hard to see what they accomplished in terms of Middle Eastern peace. And the Afghanistan deal was a disaster. To be clear, the US had to pull out, deal or no, but there was no real attempt at ending the civil war or even setting a schedule for withdrawal. All he got in return were some vague promises to not fire on US troops before a certain date. He couldn't even get them to agree to stay out of Kabul until the withdrawal was complete. Then there's the matter of the Iran deal which he claimed to be able to renegotiate, though all he really did was pull out of it, and I'm not aware of any attempt he made at diplomacy.
There's an anti-incentive, even. Perun had a good section recently on the risks of a ceasefire, on how the nature of a ceasefire can actually increase risk over a short-to-medium term (months to a few years) absent other items to prevent a return to conflict.
In short, the current conflict has been as stable as it is because while Russia's force generation rate outpaces Ukraine's, so has its force expenditure. As such, even as Russia raises more stuff (men material), it expends more stuff faster (casualties / ammunition) such that the relative balance stays relatively stable (Russia having slow advances on a small part of the front) as opposed to decisive relative advantage (the opening months of 2022 where the hypermajority of Russian offensive gains were achieved).
In a ceasefire, force generation infrastructure is still there to build up advantages, but expenditures stop and transition to stockpiling. This allows periods of rest / refit / reorganization / retraining which can allow a force to constitute both greater quantity and quality for overmatch than it would if the conflict just straight continued. Because of how numeric advantages can scale non-linearly (the relative advantage of having a 3-to-1 advantage is considerably more than a 2-to-1 advantage despite having the same unit of relative advantage above 2 that 2 has over 1), a current-but-lesser disadvantage can be less dangerous than a later-but-larger disadvantage.
This is especially true if the larger force generator continues generation systems (the already established Russian 2025 war economy budget) while the smaller force ceases force generation (such as foreign supporters cutting aid flow on cost-saving grounds). It's also true if the larger force generator has reasons to believe long-term disadvantages await, and thus limited time-window incentives to act sooner than later.
This is how Russia can be (paradoxically to some) both a higher short-term threat and a lesser long-term threat in its current state circa late 2024. In the long-term, the Russian loss of much of the Soviet inheritance has degraded its strategic center of gravity, the Russian economy will go through painful rebalancing, and when the current war reserves are put back into stock there will be a long and hard period of recapitalization to get back to a post-soviet military. In the short-term, however, it retains enough that it can continue to generate forces at a rate that it's neighbors do not match. The awareness that there is an only short-term advantage in turn drives a 'use it or lose it' opportunity window.
This is why I've noted in the past there's a considerable European security interest in not having the war end in the near term. From the European security interest, the Russian force generation potential needs to be matched / beaten, and that requires the time for them to scale their industrial base even as Russia does not have the opportunity to turn attention to them before complete. And the Ukrainians, in term, have a security interest in not having a Russia able to simply out-generate them and come back for march on Kyiv but with better planning.
This is why, absent security guarantees that would credibly prevent a Russian aggression, the logic of continuing to apply an economic-attritional war still applies, even if the US reigns in support. It's not that slowly losing the Donbas is good, or wouldn't happen faster with less US aid, it's that the costs of doing so are lower than the costs of trying to stop Russia attempting march on Kiev v2 with a year of buildup and reset. (Not least of which because a slow but steady series of bad news can change the US political calculus to re-enable aid, but more rapid defeat in the later scenario would preclude the time for American aid to make as much of a difference before whatever status quo extension hits.)
The question of how likely that is will matter quite a bit to people who dismiss the risk... but this in turn returns to the question of who expected the Russians to invade in 2022. And this, in turn, turns to Putin, and his credibility of convincing other actors that he totally wouldn't break his word that he poses no threat to Ukraine yet another time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link