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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?
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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 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
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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-
And rebuts-
-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-
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.
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).
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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?
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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.
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.
You mean the mainstream hypothesis promulgated by the legacy media organisations.
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.
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.
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.
There's a laundry list, but the most prominent and undeniable are the Birther conspiracy theory and the 2020 stolen election conspiracy theory.
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.
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.
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?
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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?
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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!
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.
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
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...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.
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