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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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On what basis do you figure that Russia did not invade Ukraine in 2014 due to "not being ready", as opposed to still holding out hope that they could achieve their objectives for it (at the time, they openly angled for a reintegration of the DPR/LPR with the rest of Ukraine under a federal model that would give them a veto over any future attempts to realign Ukraine with EU/NATO and away from Russia) in a cheaper way? If that was the case, Ukraine rushing to go nuclear would have surely just expedited the invasion before Ukraine was ready to defend itself (per the European assessment), and moreover might even have resulted in much more limited Western support as the narrative work to make general populations accepting of proliferation had not been put in yet.

rule-based world order

Rather than using the propaganda term that has a flexible interpretation, could you explain what the specific type of world order you are wishing for is? Is it just the "US playing world police"/pax americana model, where major wars are only to be started with US approval (under threat of US support for the defender) and we have to trust that the US will mostly remain sensible enough to not approve of wars that create too much trouble for us Western forum-goers? As far as I'm concerned, that trust had been long eroded by the wave of terrorism splashing everywhere from their own Middle Eastern misadventures.