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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   33485 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Late Tuesday night, President Trump suggested that Ukraine was responsible in some way for starting the war:

In Mr. Trump’s telling, Ukrainian leaders were at fault for the war for not agreeing to surrender territory and therefore, he suggested, they do not deserve a seat at the table for the peace talks that he has just initiated with Mr. Putin. “You should have never started it,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it. “You could have made a deal.”

Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, he went on: “You have a leadership now that’s allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened.” By contrast, Mr. Trump uttered not one word of reproach for Mr. Putin or for Russia, which first invaded Ukraine in 2014, waged a low-intensity war against it through all four years of Mr. Trump’s first term and then invaded it in 2022 aiming to take over the whole country.

How seriously should we take this reproach? Is it just another tactic to extract concessions from Ukraine before sitting down with them to negotiate a potential deal?

This comes at a time when the President's approval rating is falling and there appear to some splintering among his voters. Though I don't think Ukraine by itself would affect midterm elections, rocking the boat too much and deviating too far from addressing the most important topic for most voters, the economy, may sour support for Republicans in two years.

If a peace deal is contingent on both sides agreeing about who started it, then there will be no peace deal. Both sides will doubledown on their stories. I don't think Trump cares who started it, but he is frustrated with Zelenskyy. Total defeat and withdrawal of Russia is unrealistic under the current circumstances, and nobody is willing to escalate further. Some concessions to Russia will be necessary, so might as well begin by conceding that Russia was not entirely at fault for starting the conflict. It doesn't matter whether it's true if it helps make a peace deal easier. At least, that's an alternate reading.

I struggle to understand the logic that Trump repeating Russian propaganda shouldn’t be taken seriously while Biden saying pretty much anything is a dog whistle for pedophilia. But struggle alas I shall.

  • Russian propaganda
  • Israeli propaganda
  • Syrian propaganda
  • Iraqi propaganda
  • Iranian propaganda

With this one weird trick, you too can avoid ever having to make a substantive argument!

Look, I want to have different perspectives around and I upvote you a lot even if I don't always agree, because you get dogpiled. But this is a pretty bad post and is really just waging the culture war. If you can point to a specific person who claims "Trump repeating Russian propaganda shouldn't be taken seriously", in those exact words, I will eat my hat. What I see people actually claim is that Trump is not actually repeating Russian propaganda, and that the claims he is should not be taken seriously. By all means disagree with that take if you wish. But you can't just go "I think what Trump said is Russian propaganda that was fed to him" -> "people say it's not a big deal" -> "people think Trump repeating Russian propaganda isn't a big deal". When people don't agree with your starting premises, you can't judge their actions based on the logical conclusions of your premises.

It's certainly true that there are people who do blow off everything Trump does while howling about things that Biden did. We have plenty of those people posting here. But while it's hypocritical, I don't really think the logic of it is something that's a struggle to understand. Some people are just plain partisan, and will overlook even the most egregious things their side does while bitterly complaining about even the most minor offenses from the other side. But it's important to remember that both the left and right do this with equal frequency. It's not a good thing, but it's not like Trump supporters have some kind of monopoly on this behavior either. People are real good at worrying about the speck in their brother's eye while ignoring the beam in their own eye.

If you can point to a specific person who claims "Trump repeating Russian propaganda shouldn't be taken seriously", in those exact words

This is a glib summary of my point of view. Crucially Trump has repeated Russia's talking points that Ukraine 'started it', and that Zelenskyy's leadership is illegitimate. Particularly for the former I do not believe Trump arrives at that point of view as an impartial outsider. I don't believe it should be taken seriously because Trump has a habit of saying anything, and his view of conflict mediation is probably closer to breaking up a schoolyard scuffle than Clausewitz. If Russia is given sanctions relief to stop its economy from cratering I will concede I didn't take him seriously enough.

Welp, fair enough. I stand corrected on that point.

Well I appreciate the upvotes, but please, upvote if you agree with my post. I genuinely don’t give thought to my upvotes and downvotes, and I don’t mind the majority of responses disagreeing with me. If I’m going to stick my liberal hand in the very-not-liberal crocodile mouth, I can’t cry when it bites down.

I reread your first paragraph and I legitimately can’t understand what you’re trying to say. I know you think I’m waging the culture war, but I’m stumbling over your explanation in the end of your first paragraph to form a proper response. Could you reword it for me?

Also, we are sooooo not going to agree that the left and right are equally partisan and that Trump supporters don’t have a monopoly over the behavior.

What I'm saying is that your thought process seems to be something like this:

  1. The things Trump says are Russian propaganda, fed to him by the Russian government in some way
  2. Trump supporters say "it's not a big deal"
  3. Therefore, Trump supporters think it's not a big deal that Trump repeats Russian propaganda

What I'm saying is that Trump supporters don't agree with point #1 to begin with, so reasoning as if they did is fatally flawed. I submit that what is actually happening in their minds is something like this:

  1. Trump says things that happen to line up with Russian propaganda
  2. Trump haters say he is just repeating propaganda, but he has good reasons for believing what he does. The fact that Russia agrees with him doesn't invalidate his reasoning
  3. Therefore, it's not a big deal that Trump says those things because nothing untoward is happening

I am not actually a Trump supporter, so I'm not claiming to perfectly represent their thoughts. Just trying to show how one might arrive at very different conclusions from you if they disagree with the idea that he is just repeating propaganda. And given that, it isn't necessarily hypocritical for them to be unbothered by Trump's behavior while vociferously criticizing Biden's behavior.

How is that not hypocritical to you?

How is it hypocritical? The hypothetical Trump supporter I've outlined has not violated any of his own principles. He is not criticizing Trump because he doesn't think anything wrong happened, and he is criticizing Biden on a separate issue where he does think something wrong happened. There's no hypocrisy in that. If hypothetical-Trump-supporter criticized Biden for supposedly repeating Russian propaganda while giving Trump a pass, that would be hypocritical. But it's not hypocritical to say "doing X is ok but doing Y is wrong", and to criticize people according to whether they have done X or Y.

The hypothetical Trump supporters' chain of logic you give is notable for its implication that Russian propaganda is actually true, or at least could be arrived as the result of Trump's good reasons.

So the charge of hypocrisy is just shifted to whether or not they will openly acknowledge a fourth point:

  1. Russian propaganda is true (at least the various bits of it that Trump happens to agree with).

Sure, that is fair. If someone thinks that what Trump says is ok, but denounces it as propaganda when not-Trump says it, that would certainly be hypocritical.

Yes though the more common case is they simply refuse to address the question of whether they are now Putin supporters, because it is too confusing.

I suppose it's been memory-holed and vastly unpopular both here and in the mainstream media, but Ukraine did take many actions in the lead-up to the 2022 invasion and the 2014 invasion and the period inbetween that reflects poorly on them. They're not blameless for all this (although most blame goes to Russia and the US liberal foreign policy establishment for fucking with Ukraine). I'm not going to go into detail about each point but they include:

  • Violating the terms of both the first and second Minsk agreements.
  • Facilitating and arming pro-Ukrainian/anti-Russian militias who would continiously shell Russian communities in the Donbas even during periods of ceasefire (if you're willing to dig through UN Security Council records you can find Russia complaing about this in many, many meetings over many years - this is honestly a major factor than has been completely ignored/forgotten).
  • Engaging in a cultural suppression of Russian communities in Ukraine, including the banning of the use of Russian in government, newspapers etc (also a perennial issue).

I have no lost love for Russia but it's been so dishonest how Ukraine over the past few years has been transformed in the media from a corrupt shithole to the bastion of European democracy (despite, you know, Zelenskyy destroying all his political opposition. If it wasn't for American and European interests meddling in Ukraine for the last two decades, this conflict would be indistinguishable from any other regional global conflict (India-Pakistan, Rwanda-Congo etc)

It always seemed to me that the Croatian Operation Storm, which terminated the separatist war in Krajina in 1995, was seen by NATO decision makers after 2014 as the ideal course of action to be repeated in the Donbass. Every decision was subordinated to this, and Putin knew it. It’s not a baseless idea, as the Russian state has been afflicted by internal crises before, and the central government normally becomes weak and wavering as a result. It seemed reasonable to assume that there will be no serious Russian reprisal once the Ukrainians are able to recapture the area in a swift operation abetted by the Americans in such a case. The problem, of course, is that this requires high levels of discipline and patience, and the Russians to be so dumb as not to think of preventive measures while they still can.

Perhaps it's unpopular because its the "WMD's" of the Russian invasion. Do Ukrainian and US actions/ provocations best explain the Russian invasion compared to belligerent revanchism and (ethno? lingo?) nationalism in the minds of Russian leaders? Or the significant ethnic/language/regional divide within Ukraine itself? Putin has stated his revanchist worldview in stark terms, but his casus belli was denazification? The Russia-supported conflict in Donbas killed around 15k people, the invasion has killed ballpark 1M. Stated another way: has the Russian state really pursued its own survival, or an ideological project? Just like the WMD in Iraq its probably a bit of both, but I can't fault people for thinking its mostly the latter.

Certainly Russia claims Ukraine violated the agreements, and they shouted about it loudly and at every opportunity, but didn't they attack Donetsk airport with heavy regular forces (including TOS-1 thermobarics), which was why Minsk 1 collapsed, and launched cross border artillery strikes plus regular army commitments throughout both agreements (while naturally denying everything even as the craters smoked)?

It seems harsh to describe Ukraine resuming fighting following these breaches and putting the agreed reforms on hold as critical violations, but not mentioning the Russian actions prior that the Ukrainians used as justification (right or wrong). That would be serious memory holing too right?

I certainly agree removing Russian as an official language was a huge own goal. Plus, the reliance on Azov plus other militias due to the weakness of Ukraine's regulars in 2014/15 was very poor optics.

In any case, the real devastation of the population across the Donbass seems to have happened post 2022, with mass conscription into poorly equipped units (the mosin brigades) and people fleeing en masse from the advancing Russians. The region seems pretty much wrecked now, in the arms of Russia but not seen as proper Russians - at least as per Strelkov (though he certainly liked to doompost - hence his arrest).

How seriously should we take this reproach?

Not very. Or at least, not as seriously as presented in the coverage of the reproach that wants you to take it very, very, very, very seriously for differing reasons of common propaganda interest.

Is it just another tactic to extract concessions from Ukraine before sitting down with them to negotiate a potential deal?

As much as it is to butter up the Russians to divert blame for any deal failures, though the actual target of concessions is far more likely to be the Europeans (who actually have concessions to give to the US).

People further down have noted that the language has been taken out of the context of Trump's point, and so that's not worth belaboring. The first Trump-Putin engagement was always going to be a propaganda fest, and as usual Trump is the gift that keeps on giving.

What's less noted below is that the talks earlier this week were not, in fact, a substantive negotiation. They were talking about having talks. It is a format for people raising what they want to have in talks. There's the reason the only significant output of the summit for the end of the Ukraine war- aside from the propaganda wave we are all riding- is... working groups. The sort of format that can go for not just months, but years, and fail.

Which, if- hypothetically and not at all based on common failure modes of things that go to committee especially if one party has demands of multiple different actors not party to the working groups- they don't work out, won't be something that will be taken to the Ukraine-skeptic American public as 'these had no chance to work because the American president was to blame from the start.' Who is to blame will vary on the context and the propaganda of the hour- the typical internal faction splits that alternatively blame the other or the russians- but it is less likely to be on Trump within the Republican political context, which is the one that matters for the next two years. Trump, after all, said all those nice things about Putin / mean things about Ukraine, and if even he thinks it's a bad deal...

...well, when the current peace movement, such as it is, hinges on the sustained support of Donald Trump, never a fickle man, and who certainly would in no way ever be so crass as to be open to a geopolitical bribe between two broader coalition parties...

He’s talking about the claim that there was a peace deal to address the disputed eastern territories and that Zelensky, at the recommendation/pressure of Boris Johnson, rejected it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/22/boris-johnson-ukraine-2022-peace-talks-russia

Dang, I wish we had some sort of organization that would contextualize comments like that so that less-informed people (like me) could come to a better understanding of the world. Lol, like that would ever happen, right?

More seriously, inaccurate or incomplete news articles have always annoyed me. I like being informed, but sometimes article length limits, different focuses, or pure lack of skill means that news pieces don't have the information I want to know. It's not perfect, but I'll deal with what I have.

Strategically incomplete articles that use their own lack of rigour to say there's nothing to see are a pet peeve of mine. I know that it's impossible to prove that the reporter knew about that peace deal, but loudly focusing on a point of ignorance is hardly any better.

(Also: nobody is going to correct it. A healthy news ecosystem would have a way to get the true information to me, regardless of whether it came from a correction there or a counterargument from a rival.)

Strategically incomplete articles that use their own lack of rigour to say there's nothing to see are a pet peeve of mine. I know that it's impossible to prove that the reporter knew about that peace deal, but loudly focusing on a point of ignorance is hardly any better.

I disagree. It's actually significantly worse. A reporter has the responsibility to know these kinds of things. If they write a lie by omission because they're ignorant of what they're omitting, then they're failing in their duties, and they're doing so in a way that allows themselves to feel like they're not failing. If they consciously omitted something in an intentional effort to mislead the audience, then at least they'd be aware that they're being manipulative and dishonest and have to acknowledge that they're looking at a liar every time they look in the mirror. And maybe that could compel some sort of change in behavior due to how it makes them feel (though probably not). But if they leave themselves ignorant, then they can freely spread lies without ever believing that they're being anything less than entirely truthful.

Dang, I wish we had some sort of organization that would contextualize comments like that so that less-informed people (like me) could come to a better understanding of the world. Lol, like that would ever happen, right?

Is expecting this to turn into an ad for Ground News a sign that one spends too much time on Youtube? :/

I really wonder how they decide where to advertise. Like it cant be too political an audience, but it cant be uninterested in it either.

It doesn't really matter what Trump actually believes, we know he intends to have a peace in Ukraine and if Ukraine has to get screwed he'll justify it somehow. This might be 'somehow'.

Trump doesn't have an ideology. He has intentions. Sometimes those intentions are poorly thought out but they precede his ideological views.

He does have personal ideology, it’s just much more limited than many think. He feels strongly about trade policy and tariffs, and that’s mostly it.

Trump has intentions for a favorable balance of trade, and if tariffs help that he’s for them, if they don’t then he’s not.

It’s not just that, if he was willing to tolerate a market crash he could just engineer a catastrophically restrictive import policy, currency controls etc and have a positive balance of trade overnight.

'favorable' does not translate to 'one particular metric reading above zero at all cost'.

The tariffs mostly died, didn’t they? If you were right, I think he would have fought harder for them. Did they stay after all? Or do you think the removal of the proposed tariffs is only temporary?

The tariffs are ideological, but plenty of politicians have ideological commitments they don’t act on, or only partially do so. Trump’s practical concern is the stock market, it appears to be the primary metric by which he judges himself, and I actually think it is - to him - the central source of his own legitimacy, maybe as much or even more than the vote. I also think he’s amenable to advice, at least from some people, and if a trusted adviser says some tariffs will cause a market crash, he’ll be cautious.

How seriously should we take this reproach? Is it just another tactic to extract concessions from Ukraine before sitting down with them to negotiate a potential deal?

Trump has a history of dealing extremely generously with Putin and taking him at his word. If Putin or his representatives told him it was really Ukraine's fault, I would expect Trump to repeat that. It's probably not helping that Zelenskyy recently pointed this out, since Trump is notoriously fragile.

“You should have never started it,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it. “You could have made a deal.”

The other half of this is that Trump has the mind of a thug. When the powerful threaten you, you make concessions. If you don't, it's your fault for whatever happens.

The other half of this is that Trump has the mind of a thug. When the powerful threaten you, you make concessions. If you don't, it's your fault for whatever happens.

This is how geopolitics works. There's no higher authority to appeal to. It's anarchy.

Antagonizing the guy with the bigger stick is an idiotic policy in a world where the weak suffer what they must. But people have this naive sense that one can appeal to "international law" or other such fictions, as if they aren't another word for the will of the hegemon.

Saying "that's how it is" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The US is, for the moment, part of a military coalition that has pretty effectively suspended international anarchy (at least for its members). It doesn't have to be how it is, but Trump and his supporters are moving us back in that direction because they apparently can't conceive of anything other than the most short-sighted self-interest.

Like, this is not an attitude that pays off for the US in the long run. (And, of course, it doesn't require bending over for Russia - Trump does that for free)

part of a military coalition that has pretty effectively suspended international anarchy (at least for its members)

I think what you mean here is that has protected its members through strength. But China has protected its people through strength without being a military coalition. You don't need a military coalition, you need strength.

NATO members are not exempt from international anarchy, but because they are in a position of strength they participate by causing it, not by experiencing it. Everyone understands the UN Security Council can't do anything about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite the fact it has been condemned by the General Assembly, because Russia sits on the UN Security Council. What people forget is that this absurd situation also was true of the US invasion of Grenada.

I think what you mean here is that has protected its members through strength.

Okay, sure. But crucially:

a) NATO members don't get invaded by external foes
b) NATO members do get into disputes with each other, but don't threaten each other with war over disagreements. Germany doesn't insist that the Netherlands and Denmark have pro-German governments on pain of invasion. Hungary is a toxic cyst inside the EU and NATO and the consequences are that other leaders complain a lot about Orban.

This adds up to NATO members not living in the jungle.

because they are in a position of strength they participate by causing it, not by experiencing it

There's no distinction between the two.

The USA blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines was an act of war against Germany.

b) NATO members do get into disputes with each other, but don't threaten each other with war over disagreements.

Yes they do! Turkey and Greece feud over territory in the Aegean and their current leader of Turkey says things like "well of course our missiles can reach Athens!" In fact, Greece actually shot down a Turkish F-16 in 1996, killing the pilot! English leadership started reassuring everyone that they would use military force against Spain in 2017 because Spain sensed an opportunity to get Gibraltar back! And I'm sure that's not an exhaustive list.

There's no distinction between the two.

I think there is – if you are strong enough you can create chaos and remain largely unaffected by the consequences. But perhaps I phrased myself poorly.

I am underwhelmed. Greece denies the shootdown incident, and while I don't believe them it points towards them seeing it as a big-time fuckup, not an embrace of violence as a tool for inter-state, intra-NATO conflict resolution. The Gibraltar kerfluffle is even less impressive. Per the article: Spain doesn't threaten to invade Gibraltar, the UK defense secretary says "if they attack, we'll defend our territory", and then May laughs off the issue.

So you think Greece's outsized defense spending (as a percentage of their GDP) is due to their grave concerns about Russian aggression, eh?

a military coalition that has pretty effectively suspended international anarchy (at least for its members)

This proposition is self-refuting.

If you haven't monopolized violence, you have abolished jack shit. You're just another temporary alliance between States who have "no friends, only interests".

I am here reminded of those maps of "the international community" that only include the West. Anybody can claim to have a universal empire if anybody that's outside of it is definitionally a barbarian. But if you don't see that as a transparent power play, I don't know what to tell you except "Gott mit uns".

If you are the hegemon though, people can appeal to you. People are appealing to Trump to pick the side of Ukraine but it doesn't seem in his nature to ever support an underdog.

'Might is right' is an ultimate fact, not an ultimate morality.

We may still be the most powerful country, but we're not capable of enforcing our will on all things. For about ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union this was perhaps the perception, but the new adventures in the Middle East revealed this was no longer the case, and perhaps it never was.

I think that time has passed actually. The US is still the most powerful military power, but they are no longer uncontested, which means that they have to start acting pragmatically instead of ideologically. Hence the pivot to the east, hence letting go of Ukraine, hence signalling that Europe should start to worry about itself.

How is it more advantageous to fight the powerful and risk losing more?

If I'm being mugged, I can hand over my wallet or I can fight. If I fight I might get beaten up and still lose my wallet. If the mugger is some 150 kg, tattooed musclebound thug known for his huge gun collection (while I am unarmed and substantially smaller), then it's very likely I'll lose. Getting helpful advice and some second-hand brass knuckles from onlookers isn't likely to change the outcome. It's likely to end with me bleeding out, unconscious on the ground.

Nothing about what's happening should be surprising. It is very rare for small states to defeat big states in industrial wars where both sides are determined to win. Observe that the conclusion of the Winter War was Finland losing all the land that the Russians demanded and more. Size matters.

Bless you for actually reading past the part where the badass Finnish sniper shot hundreds of hapless Russian mooks!

This was an extremely common argument on this board just before and during the early stages of the Ukraine war.

It would have resulted in fewer overall deaths but has plainly been disproven by what actually happened.

The longer the war drags on the worse it gets for Ukraine, but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight they made the right call to fight.

That remains to be seen, it depends on the peace deal they get and the real casualty figures, which we don't know.

'What actually happened' is still in a state of flux from the point of view of us observers who aren't privy to the secrets of the universe. It may be that the media is broadly accurate arguing that Ukraine enjoyed favourable casualty ratios due to high-tech western weapons and clever tactics. Or it may be that they were drafting men, shoving them into a trench and basically feeding them to Grad, Mista and Kalibr to buy time, that they suffer unfavourable exchange ratios. My suspicion is that the latter is more accurate, considering the preponderance of firepower on the Russian side and strong incentives for the media to lie in favour of Ukraine. If that is the case then Russia has a winning hand, they have suffered non-trivial losses and will be inclined to impose much harsher terms given the costs endured.

You're correct that we don't know, and I suspect the value of the war to Ukraine reached its apex earlier than today. Unfortunately I also agree with the rest of your post as well.

I suppose as a baseline though I still believe the value of Ukraine standing up for itself made it a net positive at some point in the past few years.

with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight they made the right call to fight.

How do you mean? I think they could have gotten out early giving up just the disputed Donbass areas plus land access to Crimea -- it's not great, but now they are in a situation where Russia has little reason to stop nibbling away so 'current lines of control' seems like the most they can get. That + a bunch of dead people and 2 years lost rebuilding time doesn't seem worth the squeeze to me.

I think giving up that early would have emboldened Russia or required enough compromises to make it effectively a vassal state. Not a foreign policy expert, just my impression.

I don't have an opinion either way on that -- seems to me to require advanced Kremlinology at best, literal mindreading at worst.

At this point on the other hand, I don't see any reason for Russia to want to stop what they are doing -- all the international capital has been burnt already, and direct war losses seem pretty sustainable for them. So they will need to either be offered something significant over and above what they've already taken (Zelensky seems reluctant) or threatened -- which Trump will probably try and might work, but there's a hard cap on how much they can be threatened for MAD reasons.

Obviously whether or not they made the right call to fight is actually a values question and I am not going to second-guess Ukraine if they think it was worth it.

But just from an economic perspective I think Ukraine would probably have walked away in vastly better shape if they had made a peace deal.

It appears that for all the blood and treasure spent since the early war peace deal was derailed, they're probably getting the terms of the early war peace deal.

That model is missing crucial components that make it inaccurate:

  • R's not a random mugger, but more like a neighbouring family / household. R has a history of forcefully occupying rooms that "belong" to others. R's also likely to come knocking at U's door (and at some other "owners'") later if U just gives away the current room that R's trying to snatch.
  • if R does manage to snatch away the current room, it'll become easier for it to snatch even more rooms from others later on.
  • if R does manage to snatch away the current room, others will become more likely to adopt a similar strategy too.
  • to U, it may be more preferable to keep fighting now and lose some family members, rather than for them to become trapped in the captured room and be slowly tortured / killed there under the guise of "peace".
  • apartment building "owners" have had kinda previously agreed on a "code of conduct" of sorts. There was a chance it would protect U from R, so U's decision to keep fighting was not entirely uncalculated.
  • the whole building is booby-trapped, and R, USA, and some others each hold a button that can blow it all up. So just stepping in and using direct force against R isn't viable.
  • USA and many others have bipolar disorder.

There are probably some more that this list is missing in turn.

"Don't resist oppression because you'll lose anyway" is a tactical argument which may or may not be correct depending on circumstances; "it's your fault for trying to resist" is a moral argument. Most people would not say that if the mugger tries to move into your house, it's your fault for trying to kick him out instead of giving him the living room and kitchen in the hopes he doesn't ask for more.

Faced with a rational adversary, you should only resist if you can make it more costly to take from you than the value of what's being taken. In this Zaluzhnyi's long war strategy at least made some sense, but Ukraine is no Finland, the geography simply doesn't permit it to have the same sort of politics.

Most people don't live in anarchy, and have thus no good sense of how to behave correctly under such circumstances. Criminals are about the closest anybody can get to the condition of a Nation, and they bloody know that if you don't offer respect to the man who is more powerful than you, you get what you deserve.

I think this perspective misses the concept that the criminal might just rob, rape, and kill you anyways, regardless of how much resistance/obedience one puts up. How does one determine if an adversary is an Anton Chigurh versus a Viktor Sayenko?

Well there is a caveat at the beginning. Faced with an irrational adversary you should instead fight as hard and as viciously as possible. But I don't think this is relevant dealing with Russia in this case.

Observe that the conclusion of the Winter War was Finland losing all the land that the Russians demanded and more.

The result of the Winter War was that Finland did not become a Soviet puppet state and suffer under communism for half a century. I consider that a victory and worth the blood that was shed, and I am guessing most Finns would as well, even if from a tactical point of view it was a guaranteed defeat.

Why are starting from the assumption that the Soviet intent was to annex the whole of Finland?

I was not. My assumption was that Finland would have become a Warsaw Pact member under a nominally independent communist government if they had lost the war more completely.

Of course retaining independence is valuable but if you're giving up significant amounts of territory where much of the population lived, then it has to be considered a defeat. Finland was probably wise to fight and lose. But they still lost. That should be the expected outcome.

There is a possibility of an unarmed man inflicting significant harm on a big, strong attacker.

But this is not a general rule, it's a special exception.

Many, many, many Ukrainians would be alive if this principle was fully understood by leading figures in their government. Russia is not a totalitarian communist regime. It's not significantly more corrupt than Ukraine.

Finland was probably wise to fight and lose.

This is an interesting perspective, particularly when contrasted with Ukraine's repeated statements that Crimea needs to be returned (which to be fair could be part of a bargaining maneuver but it's...not very persuasive.)

Of course it's significantly more corrupt than Ukraine. Just look at the openness of Ukrainian elections versus Putin murdering his rivals.

They’ve had precisely two elections since the revolution in 2014, and the winner of the latter election has suspended elections until further notice. At this point it is impossible to tell the difference between ‘Ukraine is less corrupt than Russia’ and ‘the only other post-revolution president didn’t have enough of a power-base to pull it off’.

Yeltsin didn’t murder his rivals either.

‘the only other post-revolution president didn’t have enough of a power-base to pull it off‘

Or, you know, a war of conquest being waged on his country and half of it being occupied territory at the moment of supposed elections.

Sure, that’s what I’m saying. It’s too early to tell.

"You should have never started it,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it. “You could have made a deal.”

Man, I hate this modern trend of journalists smugly injecting their own opinion into reporting. I want to hear what happened and what was said, not what some midwit journalist thinks about it.

That Ukraine didn't start the war is a fact, not an opinion. You could, if you were so inclined, argue that Russia had a good reason for starting the war, but the only way to argue that Ukraine started it is to be very confused about which country is which.

Part of what happened is that Ukraine did not, in fact, start it. This is not a disputed fact. Trump is just lying.

"Donald Trump today announced that Incanto was a notorious paedophile and had been taken into custody" and "Donald Trump today falsely accused Incanto of being a notorious paedophile and took him into custody" are very different stories. You should respond to them differently. If a newspaper is able to distinguish between them in its reporting, it should.

"Who started it" is in general a notoriously slippery concept and not something a journalist should be so breezily "fact-checking". They can quote the Association of Very Serious People for a contrasting view if they want.

I think there are two separate issues.

  1. Unnecessary snarkiness that establishes the journalist as an unreliable narrator.

  2. Journalists inserting inaccurate or uncharitable fact checks, or fact-checking opinion.

Both things could potentially be solved by journalists having better training and professional standards. For example, they could have said something like this:

"You should have never started it,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it. “You could have made a deal.” But (insert expert here) has said Trump's remarks are inaccurate, pointing out that it was Russia who invaded Ukraine in February of 2022.

It's not that hard to adopt a neutral tone if you try.

But honestly, I don't even mind. Before, far leftists were skilled at smuggling their politics into journalism under the guise of neutral reporting. Today, they reveal their power level so quickly. Within a few sentences they will say something that lets me know to stop wasting my time.

Journalists are paid to try and find the ground truth, not to act as stenographers for the two sides.

If we had a decent news media (and I agree we mostly don’t) the whole point of reading the news rather than watching the tendentious blowhards on social media is that the news media do shoe-leather journalism and get information about what is actually happening that I can’t get for myself. “Tendentious blowhard X says that black is white, pointy-headed academic Y disagrees” is low-effort slop, not journalism.

Ideally, but we were having issues with this a century ago. Look at all the journalists who were blacklisted for talking about the Holodomor, vs the ones who talked about how lovely and equitable Stalin’s Russia was.

In the absence of mechanisms to compel objectivity, I prefer ‘neutral’ journalists to do data gathering without commentary, and to get commentary from level-headed partisans on my team.

Depends on how you're defining "it"

"Russia invaded Ukraine" Is a fact.

"Russia started it" (the invasion) Is a fact.

"Russia started it" (the war) is not a fact.

The definition of starting something isn't as clearly defined and the cause of the Ukraine war is more complicated than who threw the first major blow. They were already in a frozen proxy war after the events of 2014 with occasional shelling prior to the larger invasion.

Finding the exact causes for historical conflict is always more complicated. This is why the propaganda machine keeps trying to reduce it to simplistic terms. "Mommy! Timmy punched me!!!" type child reasoning. Any unbiased adult with any experience with people is going to question what Jimmy did to piss off Timmy.

Like Incanto I find the patronizing obnoxious.

As a parallel I’d bring up other wars.

Look at any narrative about the Six Day War / Third Arab-Israeli War that isn’t written by open anti-Zionists. None of them dispute that Israel started the war, in the narrow sense of the word, with a massive surprise attack. They also mostly see it as self-evident that Israel was merely preventing an impeding war of extermination by her Arab neighbors. In other words, they agree that Israel is either blameless or at least shares only part of the blame for the entire war, even though militarily they attacked first.

Or look at Atlanticist or Atlanticist-adjacent narratives about the South Ossetian War of 2008. It’s accepted as fact that the Georgians attacked first but also had no other acceptable choice.

Russia started the war in 2014 by invading Crimea. This should be a question of little doubt.

NATO started the war in 2014 by instigating a color revolution and replacing the elected leadership of Ukraine with western puppets. This should be a question of little doubt. Round and round.

Whether one considers the pre-Crimea events in Ukraine as a coup, a revolution or something else, they were, in the main, internal events within Ukraine, not war. The Russian invasion of Crimea, on the other hand, was a clear act of aggression by one state against another (and, counter to the Russian narrative of bloodless takeover, there were several clashes between Russian and Ukrainian troops), meaning that is when fighting between the states, i.e. war, started.

No.

When we instigate a revolution, it's in support of the people, of democracy and of freedom. When we invade foreign countries, it's to topple dictators and stop warlords. When Russia instigates separatism, it's aggressive hybrid warfare. When Russia invades a country, it's imperialism.

It's not difficult.

Seriously though, given that both sides do questionable things, can't they just all be bad?

No, that’s the propaganda. No country on Earth is so virtuous and only acting in the defense of others.

We’ve been mostly a benign empire, but make no mistake, we are an empire in the same sense as most other empires. Most of the “removal of dictators” and “support for democracy” have been in defense of our global hegemony. In fact, the biggest predictor of us removing a dictator is not what they do to their own people, or how they treat their neighbors. The invasions come when a dictator goes against our hegemony. Duerte can be as brutal as he likes, we don’t care because he’s a Western aligned dictator.

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Mongols started it when they invated Kievan Rus, in my opinion.

Kiev was always burning since the world was turning.

It depends on how you see the recent history of Ukraine.

First of all, Ukraine (with generous help from the West) had a color revolution in 2014. This was eventually to lead to Zelensky taking power in Ukraine. This leads to Ukraine becoming much more friendly to the West, and petitioning and working toward membership in the EU and protection from NATO. That’s a big shift from Ukraine as before it had a Russian friendly government and was aligned to Russian interests.

The "eventually" here involves Russia removing a large part of the constituency for pro-Russian parties by invading Ukraine and occupying the territory where their voters lived. Yanukovych was a viable candidate in an intact Ukraine (at least until he tore up the EU association agreement that was the only sane economic policy for Ukraine). Zelensky was the least anti-Russian candidate that was viable in a Ukraine that did not include Crimea or the Donbass.

If you uncritically accept Russia's position that they have the right to dominate Ukraine, then the Ukrainians did start it by not applying their tongues to Russian boots with sufficient vigor. However, I refer you to my remark about thuggish worldviews. Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico.

It's hard to see how a change of government in a neighboring country justifies invading them (twice!) and engaging in naked land grabs.

with generous help from the West

What exactly does this mean? The "Euromaiden was fake/astroturf" position runs aground on the absolutely massive, cross-spectrum popular participation.

It’s just quite simply reality. No state on Earth is going to allow a country on its border to make an alliance with a foreign country that it find hostile. We invaded Cuba because of missiles on our border, and Cuba is separated from the USA by the Gulf of Mexico and was and is a much weaker state. Had it been Canada or Mexico gone full communist and been importing weapons and getting trained by the USSR, it would be considered an act of war.

Ukraine is the same thing for Russia. It sucks for the post-Soviet states of Eastern Europe, but because they exist next to Russia, they’re not entirely free to do anything they want. If they get too friendly with the West, they’re getting the same thing. And on the other hand, Europe, Mexico, Canada, and South America are in our sphere of influence and we don’t allow them to get too far off reservation. We’re powerful enough to do so mostly by sanctions and soft power, but the longevity of a regime in our sphere of influence that openly sides with our enemies isn’t that long.

We invaded Cuba because of missiles on our border

No, we didn't. Bay of Pigs predated the Missile Crisis, and there was no subsequent invasion. Cuba is still communist. If the best equivalence one can draw is a failed covert op sixty years ago against a recently established dictator, America is looking pretty good by comparison.

Cuba isn't even a good comparison. Cuba was openly authoritarian and there's a fairly obvious asymmetry between nuclear missiles and a trade deal with the EU. A more appropriate one would probably be the coup targeting Arbenz in Guatemala. And, you know, the coup in Guatemala was completely unjustifiable. It didn't advance US interests or security in any meaningful way - it was simply a manifestation of anti-communist paranoia and extremely petty corporate interests.

Europe, Mexico, Canada, and South America are in our sphere of influence and we don’t allow them to get too far off reservation.

The reservation must be pretty fucking massive, then, because we've had anti-American governments in Latin America for decades. European governments routinely ignore US desires and if they told the US to get out the we would do so.

And yet we failed to overthrow the government of Cuba and it remains communist to this day. Just because every country wishes they had a sphere of influence and will take steps to obtain one doesn't mean we are under any obligation to give it to them. European nations freely ignored the Monroe Doctrine for decades after it was promulgated until they were too weak relative to the US to do so.

Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico.

You're just wrong on the face of it. It's realpolitik, lets not indulge in transparent lies. If China decided to have a little color revolution of their own in mexico, the us would be taking that government over faster than you can blink.

If you were Canada & Mexico would you be spinning up a nuclear weapons program right now? I ask because I can't imagine a world where Poland,Turkey,Greace and Germany are not arming themselves with at least 200 warheads each over the next 10 years.

If you were Canada & Mexico would you be spinning up a nuclear weapons program right now?

Right now? No. That window has closed.
A few years ago? Absolutely.

(The tricky bit about spinning up a nuclear weapons program is that it invites immediate reprisal, but dissuades longer-term reprisal. Spinning up a nuclear weapons program when your neighbor is dropping thinly-veiled hints of invasions is already too late.)

Now... quietly making sure you have the CFD horsepower available, and the people with CFD expertise available for said research, and ideally as much design and development as you are confident you can get away with doing quietly without the physical fissile material? Absolutely. Tricky bit here being that sims are a whole lot harder to do without calibration data that neither Canada nor Mexico have access to.

I’m not uncritical of the Russian version of the story. Both versions are likely at least somewhat true in the sense that while the Revolution seems to have been organic, it was helped along by the West. But to my mind, you really can’t engage with the war and the causes or likely outcomes unless you can explain what all sides actually believe is going on and why they’re making the decisions they’re making. The most important part of the Russian version of the color revolution story is that this is what Russia believes about the color revolution.

If I want to understand Vietnam and the American war in Vietnam, im going to have to know what Americans thought they were fighting for and what they believed was going on. Does that make Domino Theory true? No. But refusing to engage with that theory just means I don’t understand it.

it was helped along by the West

Again, in what way? Specifically. I suppose you could say that the EU created friction by offering Ukraine a trade deal that was liable to agitate Russia, but that just brings us back to the issue of Russia feeling entitled to dominate Ukraine.

But to my mind, you really can’t engage with the war and the causes or likely outcomes unless you can explain what all sides actually believe is going on and why they’re making the decisions they’re making.

When Trump says "You should never have started it", he's not engaging in cold-blooded causal analysis and I see no reason to pretend that he is. Like, yes, obviously Russia/Putin has a perspective on why the war is justified, but there isn't actually that much divergence between pro and anti-Russian positions on why Russia invaded Ukraine, just in how seriously you take their justifications.

Again, in what way? Specifically

Up to 2014 the US had spent at least ~$5 billion on 'pro-democracy', 'civil society' and 'independent journalism' operations directly and via NGO of the sorts to see their funding cut recently.

He is not engaging in causal analysis at all, he is criticizing Ukrainian leadership for not making a deal. This is literally his next sentence. Trump is not a guy who speaks precisely, you can’t read so deeply into his throwaway comments.

His 'throwaway comments' are backed up by a 'peace negotiation' where to all appearances he is planning on selling out to Russia. He's also doubled down on this line, so apparently more than just a throwaway comment.

More broadly, Trump is President of the United States. People are going to take him seriously, and they should take him seriously. That Trump says ten insane things a day and he only means three of them is not an indication that you should write off what he says.

It is, however, a perfect example of how (not) to engage in media coverage over him.

The domino theory was, quite literally, true- Laos and Cambodia became communist in addition to south Vietnam.

What exactly does this mean? The "Euromaiden was fake/astroturf" position runs aground on the absolutely massive, cross-spectrum popular participation.

That something was a color revolution doesn't imply that the participants were altogether fake.

Every country has its dissidents. An intelligence agency can help them to fund their activities, grow their networks, spread their message, etc. I would say that for something to be a color revolution it wouldn't have happened but for the covert participation of another state.

"Color revolution" is a just a term for a post-soviet/communist protest movement. Ukraine had a color revolution in 2004 as well (also involving Yanukovych, though that time it was about election fraud, not his backing out of an EU trade deal, but both cases involved the underlying perception of Russia violating Ukrainian sovereignty).

Every country has its dissidents

The Euromaidan protests involved hundreds of thousands to millions of active protestors from basically every part of the Ukrainian political spectrum except the pro-Russia faction. This is more that "dissidents > 0". Defending the claim that it was instigated by Western powers in a meaningful way is going to take more than allusions to possible foreign involvement.

I don’t think that means they didn’t get Western support though. Obama did support Euromaidan. And while I don’t think they instigated the events, I think they helped the people organizing the movement both morally and materially.

Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico.

And yet the United States has a long, long history of demanding subservience from both:

•Invading Canada twice in 1777 and 1813 for not sufficiently supporting the American revolutionary project

•Sponsoring and funding a breakaway republic from Mexico in 1836, then officially recognizing that breakaway republic

•Launching a Special Military Operation against Mexico in 1848 and extracting massive territorial concessions because Mexico tried to destroy that breakaway republic

•Threatening to invade Canada in 1862 because their mother-state was providing aid to America’s own attempted breakaway republic

•Allowing foreign insurgents to stage in Minnesota and perpetrate multiple massive cross-border terrorist attacks into Canada between 1866 and 1871 resulting in hundreds of deaths

•Invading Mexico in 1913 to try to rendition a high value target that perpetrated a cross-border terrorist attack against the US

•Seizing the port of Veracruz in Mexico in 1912 to ensure access by military shipping

•Stationing numerous troops and military facilities in Canada

•Extracting trade concessions from both Canada and Mexico

Sponsoring and funding a breakaway republic from Mexico in 1836, then officially recognizing that breakaway republic

The U.S. never officially recognized the republic of Texas. Annexing the republic of Texas came about because democrats needed a victory vs the whigs; the country supporting Texas nationalism full throttle was actually France.

There’s an interesting alternative history where the USA votes against annexing Texas. I’ve thought about writing it up and posting it on, like, a Friday fun thread. But the long and short of it is that president Tyler wanted to annex Texas to shore up a pro-slavery position, and the democrats in the next election successfully framed it as a referendum on US territorial expansion while they whigs wanted to punt the issue to try to avoid talking about slavery. Mexico in this era had many breakaway republics and it was generally thought that Britain and France would seek to weaken the Mexican empire to carve out new world spheres of influence by taking the breakaways as Allies; these were the two major backers of the republic of Texas, which spent its entire existence at war and heavily indebted.

And yet the United States has a long, long history of demanding subservience from both:

And? Leaving aside some of the dodgy specifics herein, it would be pretty brazen to suggest that, e.g. Canada was really at fault for the Fenian Raids. If the point is merely that sometimes powerful nations bully weaker ones, no one was contesting that.

The point is that powerful nations take an interest in the behaviour of their neighbours, especially when those neighbours are aligning themselves with rival nations, and act accordingly. America is no exception. See e.g. Bay of Pigs, or the medieval friction between England and the Scots (because the latter often allied with France).

America has lately been able to act as though it would never do this only because it's had no major rivals for 30 years and its neighbouring nations are thoroughly cowed. If Mexico or Canada start entertaining an alliance with China, perhaps involving the stationing of Chinese troops, America will change its tune VERY quickly.

I reiterate: And?

The problem with the thug's worldview is that they create the world they think they are merely describing. Nobody in Eastern Europe would be clamoring for an alliance with Uncle Sam if not for Russia's own behavior.

And therefore American politicians are hypocrites (wittingly or not) when they say that large countries like Russia have no right to exert influence on their neighbours.

If they believe the same for America (which I doubt, they’ve never been shy about steering their vassals allies away from getting involved with geopolitical rivals, see Nord Stream 2) it is because they are the proverbial man in a gated community patrolled by police who believes that nobody has the right to self-defence.

Now, it may be that you personally would strongly oppose any such behaviour by America as strongly as you oppose it when done by Russia. But I don’t think many Americans would, and I certainly don’t think America’s government would.

Personally, as an Englishman I would vote for taking action should Ireland or a hypothetical independent Scotland start discussing alliance with enemy nations for example. Letting yourself be put into a position of weakness just because nobody has actually used it against you yet is stupid. So I can hardly order that nobody else does so. Of course, one hopes it never comes to that, but part of making sure it doesn’t is that everyone has to take care not to tread on each others’ toes.

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It's hard to see how a change of government in a neighboring country justifies invading them (twice!) and engaging in naked land grabs.

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion would like to have a word with you.

If Russia started positioning missile batteries, and putting military bases in Canada and Mexico, and the governments of Canada and Mexico were not responsive to our protest, I have zero illusions that a competent administration wouldn't practice "diplomacy by other means" to stop it.

We used to understand that countries had legitimate security interest inside their sphere of influence. We didn't have to like it, we just had to be realistic that it's not always (or hardly ever) in America's national interest to intervene in every conflict on the face of the Earth.

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion would like to have a word with you.

At least with that one, we did have to go to the negotiating table a little sooner, and it also played into the conspiracy theory narrative of "JFK was so burned by Bay of Pigs that he considered disbanding the CIA, who in turn set up his assassination as punishment."

How seriously should we take this reproach?

If it comes out of Trump's mouth, it has been pulled straight from his ass, or may as well have been. There's very little coherence in the fine specifics of what he says. He doesn't exercise lawyerly-fine tuning of his language, which is what we've grown to expect from politicians (mostly because most of them are or were lawyers), and it's a bad mistake to operate as if he does. At most, look for a directional valence of the remark - here, "I'm willing to badmouth Ukraine because I'm trying to get the Russians to give me things I want - ending the overt war in Ukraine."

Trump is not a very smart guy and we know for a fact he is a twitter addict. The simplest answer is therefore the correct one , like Zelensky said , Trump has been captured by Russian propaganda. Probably as a result of who he talks to and what he watches. Watch how he pivots away from all former allies and befriends authoritarians like Putin and Xi. If any of you guys are European like me , better start running , digging and practicing how to dogde FPV's.

Really, what terrible thing will happen that causes drones to personally hunt us?

21st century trench warfare. Pay a visit to combat related subreddits.

And how, pray tell, will that come about in Europe proper? Will Putin live forever, will Russia suddenly find new strength and if so from where, and then they come to invade the EU?

Trump has been captured by Russian propaganda.

If you actually believe this then you may as well give up the entire American project right now and prepare for Putin's coronation ceremony. If the Russian propaganda system is so incredibly powerful that it can bypass Trump's direct access to all intelligence gathered by the United States military and surveillance apparatus, his direct access to all the people in the US military with full knowledge of the situation on the ground and the security systems in place to protect the president... there's no hope left, the Russians could hit anyone lower down in the government with the same weapon. If the Russians have a mind-control weapon which can capture the President without the US military or IC doing anything about it then they have already won and you may as well just roll out the red carpet for them now.

Of course, the alternative hypothesis, that the alternative media and other voices have been correct about the US' pivotal role in starting the Ukraine conflict and Trump is simply recognising the facts on the ground because he doesn't actually want the war to continue, is a lot more believable to me.

I have been following the war since 2014, so no the 'alternative' hypothesis is not correct and it's funny to me that 3 years later these things are still being said. Trump is not a serious guy , I get why that's controversial but it's simply the truth. Also something I noticed just now , you say ' the US's pivotal role in starting the Ukraine conflict ' well if that were the case then it's not Ukraine that started it right? It's Ukraine doing the US's bidding. So Trump is chastising your ally for doing your bidding? In any case it's all moot , the Russians have done a masterpiece in propaganda , kudos to them honestly.

you may as well give up the entire American project right now

The framers were very clear that the system they were setting up relied on the electors exercising a certain discernment in the choice of President. If mixpap is right about Trump's character, and he is susceptible to low-effort social media campaigns in a way which the vast majority of people who are paying attention and have 90+ IQs are not, then the willingness of the electors to elect a man like that to the highly responsible and sensitive office of President of the United States is a "you may as well give up the entire American project right now" level failure of the system.

there's no hope left, the Russians could hit anyone lower down in the government with the same weapon.

No - the weapon doesn't work close to universally. We know that because Tim Pool and Lauren Southern had to be paid to spout Russian propaganda on Twitter. If Russian social media trolling worked on all MAGA midwits they would have done it for free.

Of course, the alternative hypothesis, that the alternative media and other voices have been correct about the US' pivotal role in starting the Ukraine conflict

I was alive and awake in 2014 and 2022. The troop movements were detectable by satellite - the invasion was definitely coming from Russian-controlled territory and not, say, the United States. The people saying now that the US started it were mostly spending January 2022 insisting that Russia wasn't going to start it, so I don't see why you find them so correct that you would believe them over your lying eyes.

he doesn't actually want the war to continue,

Nobody wants the war to continue. That Trump wants the war to end with a Russian victory is not in doubt - Trump has said it, Lavrov has said it, Trump's opponents have said it. That other people (including sufficiently many Ukrainians to sustain the level of war effort we are seeing) want it to end with a Ukrainian victory is also not in doubt. Russia is not currently open to peace without victory, and Ukraine probably isn't either. The rest of us can either shut up or pick a side. Trump has picked the Russian side, and the rest of us can judge him accordingly.

the key difference is Russia is, and always was, going to win this war absent direct military intervention by a large coalition of other countries which they're not going to do

nor would they really be capable of it anyway, e.g., I doubt the British could even raise a single equipped deployed division (likely struggle to even get 2 brigades) let alone supply it for more than 90 days let alone provide enough ammo if engaged for more than a couple weeks let alone replace wounded and killed soldiers

for some comparison, Ukraine lost an entire division of men defending Bakmut, a small fortified town in Donetsk

Trump has picked the Russian side, and the rest of us can judge him accordingly.

Trump is "picking the Russian side" because the alternative is a Russian victory anyway and an even more shattered Ukraine with an even more butchered population. Getting the Russians to stop now with only the the land they've already legally inducted into the federation and a guarantee Ukraine will never join NATO would be a feat and likely require some sort of comprehensive agreement (perhaps even a treaty) between Russia and the US.

the lunatic British establishment and the anti-Russia ethnics at the State Department who want every man, woman, and child to die in wave attacked against Russian invaders and still lose are on Team Ukraine

and yes, the rest of us can judge each party accordingly

the levels of tut-tut nagging, moralizing and demands by keyboard generals about other people's valor and sacrifice has hopefully reached its peak for a while

If mixpap is right about Trump's character, and he is susceptible to low-effort social media campaigns in a way which the vast majority of people who are paying attention and have 90+ IQs are not,

I don't actually think this is the case. There are real and serious reasons for Trump to hold the stance he currently holds on Ukraine, and social media campaigns just aren't one of them. Do you remember the Burisma scandal? Do you remember Trump getting impeached over it? Do you remember the entire Russiagate scandal? Do you remember Trump's stated policy positions, which involved pulling out of Ukraine? You mentioned being alive in 2014, but if you were actually paying attention since then it is abundantly clear why Trump hates Ukraine and wants the war over and done with. That's just so much more likely than the Russian hypnosis hypothesis I don't think you're going to be convincing anyone until you can explain what happened in a bit more detail.

No - the weapon doesn't work close to universally. We know that because Tim Pool and Lauren Southern had to be paid to spout Russian propaganda on Twitter.

Actually, in the sci-fi mind control weapon scenario you're proposing this isn't necessarily the case. It could be that the weapon is simply expensive to use and so only gets deployed on high value targets, or uses mechanisms which they don't want to risk revealing. Maybe it only works on people past a certain age, or maybe alcohol provides a protective barrier against it. We're already well into sci-fi territory here so we may as well have fun. As for Dim Fool and Lauren Southern, I think they're morons - just go have a read of the Kiwifarms threads on them.

The troop movements were detectable by satellite - the invasion was definitely coming from Russian-controlled territory and not, say, the United States.

Are you familiar with the details of Mearsheimer's position? Yes, I agree Russia sent their troops into Ukraine... but arguing that this means they're solely responsible is like saying that a bullied child who finally snaps and punches their bully in the teeth started a fight. Technically he was the one who went and punched the other child in the face, but giving him all the responsibility makes your understanding of the world worse. That said, I won't litigate it here - Mearsheimer himself actually wrote a much stronger version of the argument which I will just link https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-war

Russia is not currently open to peace without victory, and Ukraine probably isn't either. The rest of us can either shut up or pick a side. Trump has picked the Russian side, and the rest of us can judge him accordingly.

The alternative to a Russian victory would be a nuclear war that destroys advanced civilization. Ukraine and the West are not capable of defeating Russia in this conflict and to pretend otherwise has done nothing but consign a generation of young Ukrainians to pointless, wasteful deaths. Trump is simply recognising reality and doing what he can to minimise the death and wasted money - I think he's done bad things (see his plans for Gaza) but this really isn't one of them.

Are you familiar with the details of Mearsheimer's position?

Yes.

I am, in fact, familiar with several years of Mearsheimer's positions, having followed him for around two decades at this point, read into his earlier career, and been tracking his positions on the Russia-Urkaine issue since well before the current war, where his profile raised more for propaganda reasons than on the accuracy of his forecasts. My familarity not only with the details of Mearsheimer's positions, but how he goes about justifying them, is why I generally regard him as ranging from unexceptional to inept outside of his specific area of expertise- which is geopolitical theory, independent of actors. As soon as the man gets into geopolitics from an analytic, diplomatic, policy, or even political level, his limits show, particularly his lack of subject matter knowledge on issues he opines on, or his ability to acknowledge the validity of arguments that contradict his own.

Rather than a foreign policy expert who should be considered a wise man and whose views should be heeded by all, Mearsheimer has a history of some particularly bone-headed policy proposals, which variously entailed items that would provoke Russia far more than the post-cold war NATO expansion (such as the proposals for nuclear proliferation to germany and Ukraine), presumed American hyperagency to force and affirm deals (such as the proposals to trade influence in Europe for a combined Europe+Russia military alliance against China for Russia to fight), and his later-career tendency to critique the application of his own models for policies he didn't like while simultaneously calling for greater deference to his model despite it's inability to model relevant actors.

Mearsheimer is a classical 'black box' realist, who models states as unitary actors (the black box whose inner workings are unknown / irrelevant) who act according to his realist principles, as opposed to overlapping coalitions of groups which frequently don't (and thus make Mearsheimer's claim to analytic relevance- the accurate modeling of states- irrelevant). When Mearsheimer tries to build a model to justify the box, he tends to make gross oversimplifications that reveal the limits of his inputs. Among them is a not-particularly curious tendency to credulously take at face value things government and politician statements that support his argument and ignore / dismiss the same level of statements that do not, sometimes even from the same politician.

Yes, I agree Russia sent their troops into Ukraine... but arguing that this means they're solely responsible is like saying that a bullied child who finally snaps and punches their bully in the teeth started a fight.

This framing presupposes that Russia is the bully, when both the Russian position and Mearsheimer's thematic echoe is that they have been the bullied child variously forced and ignored into lashing out for not being protected from the (western) bully.

This framing is often falsely claimed- both in geopolitics and in schoolyards- to offset the responsibility on the ambiguous force that 'snapped' the child, and is why the Russian framings of the war was that it was an attack against the Anglo-Americans and why the crux of Mearsheimer's thesis is to shift the blame to the western coalition rather than permit events be a consequence of Russia's own actions and mistakes.

That said, I won't litigate it here - Mearsheimer himself actually wrote a much stronger version of the argument which I will just link https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-war

Why so down on yourself? If Mearsheimer tried to make a hobby of posting on the Motte, he'd get eaten alive.

Mearsheimer is already engaging in various forms of confirmation bias and other fallacious tehniques as early as his first major line of argument, which itself exists as a way to retroactively defend/justify Mearsheimer's own (disproven) positions before and early in the war, such as the Russians wouldn't invade / wouldn't try to take territory / wouldn't try to take over all of Ukraine.

Mearsheimer does this in multiple ways as early as the very first main line of argument, from gerrymandering the criteria of acceptable evidence ('anything Putin wrote or said', which disqualifies things Putin directed or approved of written or said that would proxy Putin's views'), bounding the views of those he will consider (proponents of the 'conventional wisdom'- as opposed to unconvention wisdom, or just wisdom not needing the caveat), and cherrypicking the evidence he chooses to engage or acknowledge as 'evidence' (such as focusing on Putin's dismissal of Ukraine as a non-state as opposed to the claims of the Ukrainians as Russians... and then disproving the former with the quote of the Soviet Union, which itself does not disprove any point on conquest).

Mearsheimer's tendency to simply reject evidence and then claim there was no evidence at all or that the evidence only supports his own conclusion carries forward.

In his second rebuttal, for example, Mearsheimer sets up a position-

SECOND, there is no evidence that Putin was preparing a puppet government for Ukraine, cultivating pro-Russian leaders in Kyiv, or pursuing any political measures that would make it possible to occupy the entire country and eventually integrate it into Russia.

And rebuts-

Those facts fly in the face of the claim that Putin was interested in erasing Ukraine from the map.

-when there are three basic competence issues in this argument structure.

First, Mearsheimer attempts to smuggle in a conclusion in the claim he will rebut. The conclusion is 'there is no evidence that Putin was preparing a puppet government,' which is not defended at all in the rebutal.

But there is! It might not be evidence that Mearsheimer or many others were aware of at the time (which is different from 'no evidence'), and it might not be evidence Mearsheimer cares to acknowledge, but there were multiple data points that serve as grounding for the theory of a puppet government approach to further incorporation. These include, among others, the Russian attempt to invade Kyiv in the first place, the Russian riot police who memorably tried to storm Kyiv after driving past the Russian front lines because that's what the plan had them to do, the Russians in the initial invasion bringing dress uniforms for anticipated ceremonies in Kyiv, the Russian automated-release propaganda that released about a week into the invasion claiming and characterizing victory, and so on. These are all compatible with the forecasts of Russia attempting the proxy-imposition strategy as a means to an end.

These elements DO exist, and they exist regardless of what Mearsheimer or others knew (or admit to knowing) beforehand, let alone dynamics that were very much observable not just months in advance (Belarus buildup, the Nazi regime needing to be replaced narrative line), but years (the nature of the Nova-Russia uprising after Crimea, the efforts to formalize ever-tightening ties with Belrus in the federal-state structure, etc.). What Mearsheimer does is attempt to discredit both clauses (proxy state and purpose of the proxy state) by tying them together and insisting there is no evidence for the later (the purpose) by time-bounding ('preparing'- as in apparent in advance) and ignoring elements that support the thesis (such as Putin's proxy-support for factions for whom territorial incorporation into Russia is an explicit goal).

But Mearsheimer's tactic- the second error here that is actually common to many of his arguments- is to claim an absence of evidence that he might have to address. Often he does this by gate-keeping criteria such as things he will present as reputable ('serious people') or timely ('before the invasion'). But not only does he not make even a caveat to credibility here, he doesn't even go into things that were available beforehand, such as the size of the Russian force (which is consistent with a 'prop up a puppet government' strategy but which Mearsheimer- inaccurately- insisted was proof against an invasion intent from the start), or the Russian-fronted corruption for local leaders to flip to Moscow (as some did), or the various pre-war Russian propaganda narratives (and the expectation to be greeted as liberators).

But the third fundamental error is that Mearsheimer's response to his own setup not even a rebuttal- or even a defense against the claim. The claim, after all, is that the proxy is 'make it possible to occupy the entire country' is an interim step for 'integrate into Russia.' Mearsheimer's sole objection is that this is at odds with erasing Ukraine from the map- even though 'erasing from the map' is consistent with what many people would consider integration of the entire country of Ukraine into Russia to mean. Mearsheimer is basically pointing at a mid-point in a process to claim that the theory that it is a process is false.

It's a terrible argument structure that is made worse that it's best defense is front-loading accuracy issues on the front end that- if engaged in order- obfuscate his structural issue.

Techniques and trip-ups like this continue unabated.

According to Mearsheimer, Putin's pre-war diplomatic maneuvers were proof he was trying to avoid war, as opposed to the very classical diplomatic trick of using the refusal to engage with unreasonable demands as a measure to reduce the cost of a pre-planned war, while Western (and American) maneuvers like offering guarantees that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO for the foreseeable future were a 'refusal to negotiate.' Putin's withdrawal from Kyiv was a good-will gesture, rather than the failure of the axis of advance that couldn't defend its flanks due to the general forces shortage. 'Hardly anyone in the West argued that Putin had imperial ambitions from the time he took the reins of power in 2000 until the Ukraine crisis started on 22 February 2014...' ignoring the non-trivial amount of people who did (and were mocked for it by people including Mearsheimer), while 'a substantial number of influential and highly regarded individuals in the West recognized before the war...' aligned with Mearsheimer's favored position (with no equivalent screening or consistency for the 'hardly anyone' criteria). Objectivity and subjectivity trade places at argument need: Russia's view of an existential risk is an objective reality to be accommodated, how such an existential risk is supposed to be existential to a nuclear power is a trifling matter, let alone had the nuclear power not repeatedly attacked and invaded.

The usual Mearsheimer tics aside, I particularly enjoyed this one as representative-

All the available evidence indicates that the Russia was negotiating seriously and was not interested in absorbing Ukrainian territory, save for Crimea, which they had annexed in 2014, and possibly the Donbass.

Not only is there no mention of what the terms offered in the 'negotiating seriously' were- such as the demilitarization of the Ukrainian military to fewer tanks than they would lose in the next year of the war, and thus render them unable to credibly resist a third Russian invasion- a balance of power with implications that a nominal offensive realist practitioner would pay considerable attention to, but which Mearsheimer himself has never cared to-

-but not even Mearsheimer can defend the claim of 'not interested in absorbing Ukrainian territory' with a straight face, and had to include the caveat that include a re-framing of 'except where they were invading and not being forced to withdraw' in the same sentence.

And this is without discussing the political relevance of the Bucha massacre, and how the public awareness of a visible-from-orbit Russian war crime in territories the Russians believed they would not be driven from would not only shape the decision maker perceptions against a Russian deal (the onus of which is instead pushed to western political elites), but the domestic political capabilities of the Ukrainian government. I.e., the sort of black box consideration that realists like Mearsheimer struggle to grapple with, and which Mearsheimer will retreat to abstractions rather than actually deal with.

Rather than being well-argued, Mearsheimer's article is a sophist's grab-bag of framing techniques to try and defend Mearsheimer's early-war and pre-war positions, which he repeatedly got wrong compared to people and predictions he dismissed at the time and is still trying to dismiss as irrelevant now, which has the not-exactly-selfless side effect of maybe defending his reputation and credibility from those who might remember. It is structurally set up to insist that no one could have reasonably known better beforehand, things that happened afterwards don't count against his previous assessments, and that since he was the soundest thinker at the time as evidenced by his thorough referencing and framing of past things that agreed with him, he mains the most reasonable expert and people should defer to (and consider paying for that substack subscription for) his geopolitical expertise.

The alternative to a Russian victory would be a nuclear war that destroys advanced civilization.

Motte, bailey.

Russia has lost wars before. Russia has lost wars since being a nuclear power. Russia has even lost wars in its post-colonial space after the fall of the Soviet Union while being a nuclear power. By its own standards of what victory were at the start of the war with its pre-emptive victory propaganda, even a current ceasefire with the capitulation of all the uncontrolled provincial territory that Russia has 'annexed' would be an alternative to victory.

There are certainly reasons to oppose opposing Russia's war in Ukraine, but the alternative being 'nuclear war that destroys advanced civilization' is not a sound one, particularly for anyone who puts any particular weight on russian strategic thinking (which makes no such premise) or realist paradigms (in which case over-caution to such nuclear threat increases rather than decreases the threat of nuclear armegeddon by incentivizing nuclear bluffing until it is called).

That Trump wants the war to end with a Russian victory is not in doubt - Trump has said it

Can you back this up with a source? Has he started sending military aid to Russia? Imposed sanctions on Ukraine? Or is he in fact sending military aid to Ukraine, which would suggest that he wants Ukraine to win?

I cannot help but feel like "either the Russians have a mind control device or else the alternative media were right about everything" is a bit of a false dichotomy. The alternative alternative hypothesis, born out by his behavior during his first term, is that Trump is a simp for authoritarians in general and Putin in particular. It doesn't take a mind control device to explain how a not-very-bright 78 year old conspiracy theorist might fall for bullshit that flatters his preferences.

I cannot help but feel like "either the Russians have a mind control device or else the alternative media were right about everything" is a bit of a false dichotomy.

You're right - fortunately, that's a bit more extreme than what I actually said. I think John Mearsheimer presents the strongest version of the argument that the Potus and his administration seem to believe, and I've heard that a lot of people in Trump's orbit agree with his views. By far the most likely situation to me is that Trump and his team, after gaining access to the Federal Government's resources on the topic, think that he's correct as well.

The alternative alternative hypothesis

You mean the mainstream hypothesis promulgated by the legacy media organisations.

Trump is a simp for authoritarians in general and Putin in particular

I don't think that's an accurate characterisation of his thinking. If he prefers authoritarians, why is Vance out there telling Europe to roll back their incredibly authoritarian hate speech laws? Why is he telling Zelensky that he needs to have free elections - wouldn't he prefer Zelensky more if he just proclaimed himself Caesar for life? I don't think that whether or not someone is an authoritarian is what decides Trump's view of them. As for Putin in particular, do you want to go talk about Russiagate? I've made a lot of posts on the topic both here and on the old site we can go through first.

how a not very bright 78 year old conspiracy theorist might fall for bullshit that flatters his preferences.

The POTUS is a conspiracy theorist? Bro, were you alive during Russiagate? The feds really were listening to his phonecalls and trying to take him down - we have the texts and the documents (ever read the Peter Strzok texts?). The Big Guy really was getting a cut from the Burisma scandal, and Trump was totally right to attack Ukraine over it in his first term. When you use the term conspiracy theorist to describe someone with multiple government agencies making spurious attempts to throw him in jail or stymie his efforts and who survived multiple legitimate assassination attempts you're just making the term even more useless than it already is. I mean, sure, the statement is literally true - but the conspiracies in question weren't just real, they were thoroughly documented and some people even went to prison over it.

You're right - fortunately, that's a bit more extreme than what I actually said.

No, it's literally what you said: " If the Russians have a mind-control weapon which can capture the President without the US military or IC doing anything about it then they have already won and you may as well just roll out the red carpet for them now.

Of course, the alternative hypothesis, that the alternative media and other voices have been correct about the US' pivotal role in starting the Ukraine conflict"

Now, I think you're probably smart enough that you don't think the Russians have literal mind control, but you unambiguously presented that as the only alternative to the Russia apologist POV being correct, despite there being some very obvious reasonable alternative explanations. Thus: a false a dichotomy between your preferred conclusion and a ridiculous one.

The POTUS is a conspiracy theorist?

There's a laundry list, but the most prominent and undeniable are the Birther conspiracy theory and the 2020 stolen election conspiracy theory.

No, it's literally what you said:

What I was objecting to was the claim that the alternative media were right about "everything". There's plenty they were wrong about - just ask Sidney Poitier. There was a lot of nonsense and misinformation spread on both sides of the Ukraine conflict, and just because one side was ultimately correct in the end doesn't mean that they were right about everything.

despite there being some very obvious reasonable alternative explanations.

Are there? I haven't seen any. The idea that Trump was captured by Russian propaganda falls outside the "reasonable" camp to me, and it falls especially far out when I cast my mind back over the Russiagate scandal and what actually happened there.

Birther conspiracy theory and the 2020 stolen election conspiracy theory.

My reading of the Birther conspiracy theory was that he was testing the waters for an eventual political run and building up some goodwill with the republican base. I don't think he actually believed that, but I'm open to the possibility that he did (it doesn't actually change my estimation of him though). As for the 2020 election, I'm not sure how much of that is "conspiratorial thinking" or whatever pejorative you want to imply with use of that language as opposed to trying to win and retain power.

But the bigger problem with accusing Trump of being a conspiracy theorist is that there actually were several conspiracies against him from inside the federal government. There really were spies listening to his communications and cooking up ways to prosecute him on spurious charges! I think you're really further destroying the value of "conspiracy theorist" as a pejorative here - was MLK a conspiracy theorist when he thought the government was surveilling him?

there's no hope left, the Russians could hit anyone lower down in the government with the same weapon.

It's not that bad. If you're not a near senile boomer with notoriously little concern and knowledge about foreign affairs, your gullibility should be lower.

The problem with this approach is that if you actually believe it then there's no point having the CIA, FBI, NSA or Secret Service. What's the point in having an intelligence apparatus at all if the person who it is meant to be informing just believes what your supposed greatest adversary posts on social media? This argument would work if we were talking about an actual old boomer watching Fox News reruns on their iPad, but we're talking about the POTUS. If the safeguards around the president are so lax that Russia can do this then you end up in the same position - Russia has already won a total and complete victory.

To what an extent can a Republican president in general and Trump The Great Adversary specifically actually trust the intelligence agencies, though?

Trump is a well known oddball, an oddball of the same age Biden was when he started his first term, I might add. Did you not elect him to crush the deep state, banish drag-queens from schools, deport every illegal immigrant or whatever and defy hostile parts of government?

Here's your based, unyielding chieftain. He has already figured everything he needs out, as he was meant to. Did you expect him to listen to something so silly as secret services? Down with that woke nonsense!

Did you not elect him to crush the deep state, banish drag-queens from schools, deport every illegal immigrant or whatever and defy hostile parts of government?

No, I'm not American. I'm not even a right-winger - but I am a populist, and I hoped Trump would got re-elected because he would smash and destroy the infrastructure of the American Empire. I'm not exactly shedding tears over the shutdown of USAID, an organisation which provided both generators and torture training to right wing regimes so that they could prevent the socialists from taking power and charging Americans slightly higher prices for fruit.

Did you expect him to listen to something so silly as secret services? Down with that woke nonsense!

I think the ironically named intelligence community in the US is full of shit and actively hostile to Trump, as they revealed in their text messages. But if your position is that the intelligence community can (and should) defy the will of the voters and implement the policies they prefer in the face of popular opposition, I think you're defending something far worse than Trump is even threatening to be.

Sigh. Fine, I'll repeat myself while filtering the irony out: while it's true that POTUS has better access to knowledge than anyone, it's still up to him what to do and believe. You'd think that wide access to the internet would kill and bury many falsehoods, but this isn't how it works. Trump campaigned specifically on his opposition to corrupt, hostile branches of the government. That he doesn't appear to take much advantage of his special access, or of a google search for that matter, shouldn't be surprising

This argument would work if we were talking about an actual old boomer watching Fox News reruns on their iPad, but we're talking about the POTUS.

...But, is Trump not both? I think he spent quite a bit of his first term watching Fox News, IIRC.

I think that the President of the United States has access to intelligence resources and briefings that aren't accessible to the public.

I doubt that Trump has access to any SECRET KNOWLEDGE about the origins of the Ukraine war (or if he does it's probably not stuff that involves "Ukraine starting it.") I think he's just looking at roughly the same facts everyone has access too and coming to his own conclusions (and also talking imprecisely).

If he has any SECRET KNOWLEDGE ABOUT UKRAINE STARTING THE WAR I bet it would be something along the lines of that Ukraine had massed troops in an attempt to retake their lost territories in the Donbass, and that is what spurred Putin to launch the "SMO." But I've read people speculating about that on The Internet, so the secret knowledge would be concrete evidence of intent, like declassified SIGINT intercepts or something.

There are a lot of people in the Trump campaign who followed what John Mearsheimer was saying about the Ukraine war, invited him to speeches, etc. Seems to me Trump is just saying what they are saying.

For reference, https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-war

From a CW perspective its also fascinating that a speech Mearsheimer had given years prior went super viral after the Russian invasion. The content is pretty dry, and nobody seemed to consider whether Mearsheimer was just flat wrong. I don't think he was, but it was a surprising chain of events.

The video did induce me to read a popular 2018 book by one of Mearsheimer's contemporaries "The Hell of Good Intentions". There was a lot I agreed with in both Mearsheimer's talk and the book, and some that I didn't. AFAIKT the "not one inch east" talking point is bullshit (is was a non binding quip from a powerless US functionary made to the USSR only in reference to German reunification, with the understanding that the Warsaw Pact there to stay). And while I think modern US influence in the region can fairly be questioned, it never came close to justifying a full invasion. However, realists would argue that states cannot know the intentions of other states, and so often over-react.

However, realists would argue that states cannot know the intentions of other states, and so often over-react.

True. Unfortunately the United States pillaging the Russian economy, rigging their elections, funding separatist movements, loudly and publicly stating through various think tanks that they intended to cause the collapse of the country, and harboring child-murdering Chechen terrorists all combined to give the misplaced appearance of ill-will.

Yeah, for me I gravitated towards his explanation because it seemed like a reasonable explanation of the events among all of the hysteria at the time (and now too), and I'm sure a lot of other people did the same. Also, Keith Kellogg, who seems to be coordinating the Ukraine peace talks, keeps repeating that he is from the realist school. Mearsheimer says the same thing too, so my sense is a lot of people around Kellogg has similar thinking as well.

Zelensky never wanted a war with Russia, won on a campaign of rapprochement with Russia, speaks better Russian than Ukrainian, had prewar business interests that extended into Russia and refused to believe Russia was going to invade until it pretty much happened (the CIA and MI6 tried to convince him months before he believed it). Then, after Ukraine’s surprising successes early on, it took Boris Johnson LARPing Churchill to persuade him into not signing the first reasonable deal Russia put on the table. This is all a matter of public record.

I think accusing Zelensky of being a warmonger seems therefore unreasonable. It seems very unlikely that a Russian-speaking PMC Jewish comedian and entertainment executive is some kind of hardcore blood and soil maximalist Azov Ukrainian ethnonationalist.

it took Boris Johnson LARPing Churchill to persuade him into not signing the first reasonable deal Russia put on the table. This is all a matter of public record.

footnote made in tiny script: best we know, the reasonable deal was "we invaded you once, then again, but if you cut your army and promise to not enter mutual defense alliances we pinky promise to not invade you again"

And now there is this gem.

Starting to understand Putin's complaints about how US foreign policy seems to swerve wildly depending on who's in office.

The bigger problem is that foreign policy stays exactly the same regardless of who is President. Clinton, Bush II, Obama and Trump all wanted détente with Russia. And yet, the State Department undermined all of them and continued pursuing its own aims of unlimited hostility and NATO expansion.

Overall I think you’re right, but I suspect he took the CIA’s warnings a lot more seriously than he let on, and was just messaging that way in public to prevent panic.

This was all true. But it's also hard to square that with the Zelensky of today asking for every weapon under the sun, wanting to make zero territorial concessions, and even "retake" Crimea which was only ever Ukraine's on paper. Like Trump, it's hard to tell if this guy got high on his own supply, or is merely bluffing to try to negotiate from a position of "strength". In which case, I don't much mind Trump bullshitting back. Zelensky wants to bullshit like they can push Russia back to 2014 borders? Fine, Trump can bullshit that he's 4% popular and started the war. If everyone is just making up bullshit, why not? The only one unhinged IMHO is the guy pissing off the state that has backstopped the defense of his nation. Maybe he's counting on the EU acting on their TDS and making up for this historic folly with material support that has thus far failed to materialize.

Either way I'd consider it a victory, so long as the US is disentangled from the whole enterprise. Although I'd be more happy with the war over so that the next Democrat in office doesn't just jump back in with both feet.

Like Trump, it's hard to tell if this guy got high on his own supply, or is merely bluffing to try to negotiate from a position of "strength". In which case, I don't much mind Trump bullshitting back. Zelensky wants to bullshit like they can push Russia back to 2014 borders?

I don't see how not premptively and publically conceding Crimea to Russia prior to entering private peace talks counts as bullshitting that ought to be responded to with derision. This is just diplomacy 101. Formal recognition of the line of control as the official border between Ukraine and Russia is a major concession on the part of Ukraine, and should not be given without getting something in return at the negotiating table. After they wring whatever they can get out of symbolic gestures, they can start making more material concessions, but that's not where you want to begin haggling if you have the option.

I have never understood this insistence by his detractors that Zelensky speak completely truthfully about the strategic and military situation all the time. If my government were on the cusp of losing a war, I wouldn't expect them to shout to the heavens that supply lines were stretched to the breaking point, that there were mass desertions on the front, and that some loss of territory was inevitable. Their job would be to project the illusion of control and maintain public order while entering talks to obtain the least bad outcome, and to do otherwise would be a gross dereliction of duty. [Insert your preferred proverb about warfare and deception here].

But it's also hard to square that with the Zelensky of today asking for every weapon under the sun, wanting to make zero territorial concessions, and even "retake" Crimea which was only ever Ukraine's on paper.

It’s pretty easy to square when you notice that the hardliners in the SBU started killing anyone trying to make peace. Zelensky had two choices: relentlessly prosecute the war himself, or get shot in the head by a “Russian assassin” and have someone else relentlessly prosecute the war in the name of his heroic martyrdom.

When did Zelensky ask for 'every weapon' under the sun? He clearly didn't, so what exactly do you mean? He is asking for what makes sense, the US and EU to assist in defeating or at least deterring Russia. If you ask me why that makes sense it would indicate a lack in your geopolitical knowledge and it would induce me to ask why you think you are capable of taking a position on this if you can't understand something as simple as that? Bullshitting and 'trolling' your ally and the person whose side you are supposed to represent in negotiations while supporting the other side's propaganda is the most insane thing you could say to support the lunatic's ramblings. Your last paragraph again indicates your lack of understanding of the greater picture. Would you be ok with Trump disentangling from NATO if the Russians decide to attempt to get a chunk of estonia? Because this is where this is heading when your own president is parroting enemy propaganda verbatim. I am sure you are also trying to explain away the guy's ramblings on Greenland and Canada. You guys elected a dummy that watches too much nonsense on twitter and you will say anything other than " oh shit we fucked up"..

I'm also european (german) and tbh this is exactly the attitude that pisses me off about the current EU. We're the equivalent of a guy who moved in with a friend because "it just makes sense, we save lots of money and we get along great". But as our friend moved forward, has a great job and pays more and more, we got stuck in place and increasingly skimp on the rent. And then we pretend to be surprised when he moves out to the big city, disgusted with us.

The US kept their backyard reasonably clean (Mexico and Canada), their economy has been growing tremendously compared to ours, and they invest appropriately in the military to safeguard their interests. We did none of those things. Russia is pathetic, we should have been able to easily defend Ukraine, but we couldn't, so the US had to jump in despite the fact that keeping Russia at bay is far, far more important to us (even if it may be one interest among many for the US, it's their decision whether they continue investing in this one).

Just to be clear, I want the war to continue, I want Russia to get nothing but a bloody nose. And if we had kept our house in order, we could let the US and Russia have their little peace talk, tell them to fuck off, and continue the war in Ukraine on our own anyway. But we didn't, so we depend on them, and we have no-one to blame but ourselves. WE are the dummys, not them, and we're way too far up our own asses to realize that.

First of all I completely agree, I hate the current European culture of naive pacifism and hyper-leftist tendencies. In my mind the situation is unsalvageable but anyway. What I believe you are missing though is that the US is not doing anything out of it's good heart , instead it's influence and protection over the continent is a big part of why it's still the global hegemon. Giving that up is not a result of ' you dummies fend for yourselves I am done paying ' but more the result of bad policy and a senile president whose understanding is clouded by Russian propaganda. In fact there is an interesting book by Alexander Dugin that talks about how it should be a Russian plan to disentangle Europe from the US by destabilization and sabotage etc. In fact it's not just a book but something of a manual to the Russian geopolitic influencers. Other then that even though I agree with you in principle I believe no European would like to see the eastern front repeat in the 21st century , well a US-EU breakup brings that infinetly closer in my opinion.

Would you be ok with Trump disentangling from NATO if the Russians decide to attempt to get a chunk of estonia?

As a European - yes. GTFO please. Europe should be able to defend yourself. And Russia is pathetic foe anyway.

Not sure I understand , are you European or are you referring to me being European? Whatever the case may be , Europe is not ready to defend itself and if we are abandoned by the Americans we will suffer very very badly in a war we might not even win. Forget our militaries , we are culturally unable to actually fight , and the Russian propaganda machine will have a field day destroying our democracies.

Whatever the case may be , Europe is not ready to defend itself and if we are abandoned by the Americans we will suffer very very badly in a war we might not even win

we are culturally unable to actually fight

I am European. Not everyone in europe is globohomo. If push comes to shove Moscow will burn. Ankara too if it comes from the south.

Now we may have to execute majority of current elites and do some nasty stuff with the refugees, but it is doable.

I am Greek by the way, I hope your optimism is not misplaced , it will certainly not be easy.

Forget our militaries , we are culturally unable to actually fight , and the Russian propaganda machine will have a field day destroying our democracies.

These sound like very serious problems. I would be in favor of trying to cooperate with Europe in trying to fix them, if Europe hadn't convinced me that they are implacably dedicated to the destruction of my society and my values. Given that they have done that, why should my tax dollars, the attention of my politicians, and the lives of my fellow countrymen go to propping up a system whose agents absolutely would see me persecuted by the full power of the state for exercising what I perceive to be core human rights of conscience and liberty?

We are able to fight, and we are not helpless in the face of foreign propaganda, or domestic propaganda for that matter. Maybe you should have done things differently somewhere along the line, if this is where your choices have led you? If you have nothing to offer Red Tribe but scorn, why should Red Tribe cooperate with you?

I will say that 'Europe' is of course ultimately a collection of people and tribes, layered over with a set of NGOs. Many of us are not implacably dedicated to the destruction of your society and values - quite the opposite. If America were to make military aid conditional on European progressives shutting down shop a la Vance, many of us would be quite happy to take that offer. It wouldn't be frictionless or permanent, of course, relationships between vassal and master never are, but relationships with Red Tribe could surely be better than they are.

What are you talking about? Who wants the destruction of your society and your values? Do you spend too much time on reddit? Europeans would love to visit the US and shoot guns and shit , even the left-wingers . I believe that these statements you make come in direct contradiction to your statement ' we are not helpless in the face of foreign propaganda ' , the literal russian playbook is sowing discord , confusion and making us enemies and it seems to me that it's working, if not on you at least on a lot of MAGA Americans. The issues you have with the European left-wingers are the same issues European conservatives have with them , the same exact way I dislike the American left, so what exactly is the problem? If anything the problems are internal for each of us. I guess you can make the case that Europe is more left-leaning etc but so what? You want to give up on the entire continent over what exactly? The Danish fought in afghanistan for you and your dummy of a president just keeps on going at them and here you are speaking over tribes and value theories. In fact the whole Ukraine thing can certainly be blamed on you since you are the NATO member that decides on policy and now after setting the chess board you want to remove the queen and leave the pawns to get fucked?

In any case all of these morality talk is unnecessary. The US holds the role of global hegemon in part because of it's influence over Europe, alienating us and losing that is not only morally wrong but most certainly also bad geopolitics. That's the issue , your president making bad decisions one after the other and bowing down to Putin , not whether my feelings are hurt.

Zelenksy blew past several red lines we had previously had in terms of aid because we didn't want the conflict to escalate. And time after time, he got what he wanted anyways, and often used it in ways to try to drag the US deeper into the conflict. Tanks, long range missiles, fighter jets. About the only thing he hasn't been given are nukes, so I suppose, yes, he hasn't been given literally every weapon under the sun. Previously the Biden administration has at least postured about not wanting Ukraine to use our long range missiles to strike inside Russia... which they did anyways.

Maybe the whole thing has been a pointless exercise in half measures. Maybe we shouldn't have slowly trickled increasingly sophisticated and destructive weapons into the conflict, and just gone all in. Maybe we shouldn't have kept up this pretense of trying not to escalate, and not enable strikes deep inside Russian territory, and just bombed the fuck out of a nuclear power. Maybe we should have just gone mask off and thrown all the US troops we had into the conflict and gotten it over with.

I mean, I don't think so. But maybe I'm wrong.

And if you don't think that's what we should have done either, the really only leaves winding this up. Most sober strategist now admit the war is unwinnable. The most we can get out of it is encouraging the Ukrainians to genocide themselves in the trenches to try to bleed Russia. Might be good for the US geopolitical interest, but it won't look like Ukraine "winning".

I have reiiterared my opinion on the issue I believe a couple of times. Both sides (biden and trump) are equally bad but for different reasons. 'Zelensky blew past several red lines ' like which? The only red lines he blew past , way too late in my opinion , were red lines that shouldn't have existed in the first place. The Biden admin was a weak admin headed by a bunch of peace loving staffers that had no idea what it takes to prosecute and ultimately win a war , they drip fed Ukraine and as a result we have the mess we have now. In regards to what you said , not drip feeding Ukraine is exactly what we should have done. Give them everything they need to shatter the russian force in Ukraine early in the war at the kharkiv counteroffensive and if Putin doesn't take the L and decides to go nuclear ( which he probably won't) , then you implement a no fly zone over Ukraine and merk everything with a Z on it. Sounds too risky? Well then I guess you can take half measures but don't be surprised when it backfires.

On the other side let's not fool ourselves that Trump is a man of logic and red lines. He is an impulsive guy with a bully mindset, sometimes if channeled correctly it can work , sometimes it won't. In this case it's backfiring since the man has clearly been corrupted by russian disinformation operations and so the bullying is focused on Ukraine. What does the war being unwinnable mean to you? Do you mean for the Russians? Because sure , the Russians unless we remove all assistance will literally never get exactly what they wanted and by default we win. Ukraine gets to live and fight another day so again that seems like a victory to me. The fact that Russian propaganda has convinced even you that the war is somehow unwinnable is maddening, this line of thinking is so problematic. Hearing ' to the last ukrainian ' and 'poor ukrainians are dying' from the people whose biggest celebration is their fanatical resistance to nazi germany and who today are getting slaughtered in the thousands for meters of empty land is absolutely wild.

I do have a couple of ideas on what the current best avenue of approach would be for NATO in Ukraine , but that would take too much writing and be speculation. What I am certain of is that Trump's position and rhetoric ensures that Ukraine gets fucked and that russia gets a blank check to do it again and unless he stays in power and goes full isolationist the next goverment will have to decide whether Estonia , Poland or Taiwan is worth dying over, because the message you give will be clear " Pump the air full of propaganda , and you can take whatever ".

if Putin doesn't take the L and decides to go nuclear ( which he probably won't) , then you implement a no fly zone over Ukraine and merk everything with a Z on it. Sounds too risky? Well then I guess you can take half measures but don't be surprised when it backfires.

Risk management 101:

Strategy A backfires and causes some land in Eastern Europe (not part of NATO or any US treaty ally) to change hands. And some people on the internet will complain about being betrayed.

Strategy B backfires and results in the incineration of Europe and North America, hundreds of millions of deaths by fire and famine. Western civilization is finished. And Ukraine especially is finished, they are at the front line. Zero good outcome for them. There are other delightful possibilities, like a still-bloody war of tactical nukes where Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe gets wrecked but most cities survive more or less intact.

Hmm, which is preferable? How should we reduce the risk here?

Yours is a genuinely dangerous line of argument. No Russian leader would think that the US would extend its nuclear umbrella so far beyond its treaty allies in the fashion you're proposing. It makes a complete mockery of nuclear strategy to signal totally uncredible deterrence and then back it up like this. Why so cavalier about a nuclear exchange? Why should anyone in Dallas or Manchester risk being incinerated over towns nobody can even name changing hands in Donetsk? Nobody promised to do this, there was no treaty, no deterrence.

Normalizing this hyper-aggressive attitude is one of the greatest dangers to civilization on the planet. Just because Ukraine made a fatal error, it does not follow that the entire Western world needs to double down and make an even bigger blunder.

I guess the end point of that is Poland,Itally, Japan and every other major (former) US ally that doesn't already have nukes telling the US to shove non-proliferation right up its ass and developing there own nuclear weapons stockpiles. They would probably even work together doing this.

To me normalizing the defeatist attitude you espouse is more problematic for NATO. Are you suggesting that the west/NATO can never again win a conventional war? Because whether it is the Iranians , the Russians or the Chinese they will always hold the nuclear stick over our head. What happens if the Russians invade NATO territory in a couple of years? Are we allowed to take back anything they take ? Or will they call it Russian and hold nuclear war as the ultimate card. Do you agree that at some point , if it comes to it, people in Dallas or Manchester WILL have to risk being incinerated over towns nobody can even name? Maybe these towns will not be in donetsk ok let's agree to that but certainly at some point you have to draw a line and risk getting nuked , correct? I hope you see the issue , the dichotomy of strategy A and B you mentioned will exist whether its NATO territory or not, it's just that I assume when it comes to NATO territory you will be ok with the risk? If your answer is no then I hope you are ready to always be bullied by autocrats and their absolute control over the population.

When it comes to Ukraine, the only thing I said is that we should have given them more from the start instead of half-assing it. If we had done that I believe they would have been fully more capable in destroying Russian forces during the early counteroffensives instead of stalling out and letting the Russians off to fight another day. At that point I seriously doubt Putin would have nuked ukrainian forces , let alone ukrainian civilians and certainly no way he nukes western capitals over a conventional loss by his actual enemy. If he did actually nuke (tactically , the other two situations I consider almost impossible ) them I believe even the Chinese would have been on his ass to end it. But in any case it would have been moot , nukes as I said are strategic weapons and offer no real tactical advantages so no point using them as a result of a conventional loss. The ground you lost is still lost and your army no more capable then before. You just made yourself an international pariah.

There's a huge distinction between a country invading an ally and a country invading a non-ally. That's the whole point of alliances. Russia doesn't throw a massive tantrum when the US invades or bombs countries that aren't Russian allies, even with borderline Russian allies like Syria they show a level of restraint. They didn't give the Syrian government Smerch or Kalibr missiles and encourage them to kill all the US troops based in Syria. They didn't start handing out Manpads in Iraq and tell them to kill every Coalition soldier they saw.

Nukes are literally just big bombs, the 'nuclear taboo' is a social construct designed to keep the little countries servile before the big powers. The US seriously considered using nukes in Korea and Vietnam, wars that were very far from the US, wars the US could afford to lose. Even then they incinerated North Korea such that the entire country was wrecked and all cities were razed, via incendiaries rather than nukes. They wrecked much of Laos and Cambodia in the Vietnam War. Yet the US is not an international pariah because the US is a strong power and has things people want.

Russia isn't a pariah today outside the world of US allies. Even amongst them trade continues just via Azerbaijan or various stans. It doesn't matter whether you kill people with 155mm shells, drones, small arms or H-bombs, it's the same outcome. Russia still has oil and people want energy, minerals, food - even in China.

There are of course disadvantages to using nuclear weapons and various risks (Ukraine assembling a dirty bomb or launching various radiological attacks amongst other things) but it's not unthinkable that Russia would go nuclear over a high-intensity conventional war right next door to them if they judged that conventional victory was unattainable. They could be used for signalling purposes to compel immediate negotiations or en masse tactically to smash offensives, wipe airfields off the map, destroy command and control or logistics hubs, for the EMP effect... These are the ultimate weapons for a reason.

The US doesn't have a monopoly on massacring people and razing cities when easy victory becomes elusive, that's not how it works.

Furthermore, it's unlikely that 'maximum aid' could even achieve that outcome. It takes a long time to train people to use Patriots, tanks, F-16s and so on. Russia could assemble large new formations and try again, just as we've seen in 2023 and 2024.

Each evening before going to sleep I pray that during the night our leader gives the order to launch every ICBM at you.

  • -18

Well that was uncalled for.

I'm escalating this to permaban - we know who you are.

Nope. Previous warning in the mod log for this same issue. Banned for a day, and the bans will rapidly escalate if you continue to communicate in this fashion.

Why not become useful and go get turned into pink mist by a Ukrainian FPV? At least then your leader will get his money's worth out of you.

  • -16

Also nope, and "he started it" doesn't cut it. Four warnings in the mod log, no quality contributions, one note recently with "ban next time". This is next time. Banned for a day, and the bans will rapidly escalate if you continue to communicate in this fashion. Next time report and move on.

And if you don't think that's what we should have done either

I see I have misjudged you. I didn't realize I was speaking with a "Putin is too much of a pussy to go nuclear" kind of guy.

Uh... alright then. I mean if that's what you actually believe. Glad it's out there.

The position is MAD, which is still the only real response to nuclear threats. If Putin gets what he wants in Ukraine, every capable nation in the world starts its own nuclear weapons program. How does that fare for global nuclear war?

Every capable nation in the world is already working on it's own nuclear weapons program. The precedent was set when Ghedaffi disarmed, and ended up with a bayonet up his ass inside a decade. North Korea brings it up every time we try to get them to disarm. History didn't start 4 years ago. Nukes have gotten you a seat at the table, and some level of caution for your sphere of influence. Disarming gets USAID sponsoring a color revolution in your country. The US will literally fund the same terrorist organizations that launched the largest terrorist attack on our own country, if it means they also get to coup some petty dictator that pissed them off once and then was foolish enough to back down.

I mean, who's even left to worry about getting nukes, that isn't already trying?

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Spare me your irony ,you got any actual arguments other than twisting my words? You think Putin would go nuclear over a conventional loss in Ukraine? Ukrainian soldiers have captured Russian villages for months and they are still there , and you think he would use nukes ( even tactically) because the Ukrainians won inside Ukraine? I highly doubt it, and if you are ready to be bullied on a MIGHT then you might as well disolve NATO right now and go home.

ready to be bullied on a MIGHT then you might as well disolve NATO right now and go home.

I mean, yeah, that's kind of my thinking.

Just what exactly is your theory of mind with Putin? That he's this bloodthirsty thug that will only respect coming down on him with the full force of the US and NATO combined forces, but that he's also too scared to use his nuclear weapons to backstop a conventional loss on the battlefield a days drive from Moscow? I just don't get it. He's simultaneously this enormous belligerent and also a pushover to you.

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Zelensky also finally broke and criticised Trump back, saying that Trump is in a 'Russian disinformation bubble' (this appears to be simply factual based on Trump's recent Russian propaganda style claims such as that Zelensky has 4% domestic support; there is no source for this and it other polls show over 50% trust him). When the current object of Trump's ire bites back at all, based on past experience, Trump is likely to double down, get vindictive, and may be unable to act constructively, so I predict that, even if it was a negotiation tactic on Trump's part, he will be sucked in emotionally and move even further towards trying to give Russia a sweetheart deal, one neither Ukraine or the EU will be able to accept.

Or maybe there is someone, somewhere in his orbit who'll manage to advise him differently, but we'll see.

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