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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   32004 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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Wanting to win is not a sufficient condition for conflict. Someone’s wrong, someone’s making a mistake. Else the parties would agree on the end-state of the war and save themselves the costs of war.

It is true that they have both made fancy claims. How then do you tell a Tough Negotiator from a Delusional Man? The former makes optimistic claims as an anchoring, negotiating tactic, while the latter actually believes his own bullshit. One way to tell them apart is getting a mediator, and when he presents his relatively unbiased, fair compromise, one will accept it, the other will reject it.

Tariff digression: @Dean thinks Trump is a tough negotiator, I think he is a delusional man (on tariffs specifically). He wants to be paid for buying stuff. That’s not how buying works. The phones aren’t ringing, and his trade partners aren’t going to hand over the crown jewels because he threatened to blow up the economic bridges. Trump is sincere, he has been proclaiming his love of tariffs for decades, way before it could have been a negotiating tactic. The lack of progress on tariff negotiations will be evidence of incompatible views on reality between trump and partners, therefore of trump as the delusional man. And vice versa of course, quick tariff relief based on partners' concessions will be evidence of compatible views, therefore of trump as the tough negotiator.

getting a mediator, and when he presents his relatively unbiased, fair compromise

Specifically in the case of the war in Ukraine? Russia keeps invade and taking territory. A "compromise" in which Russia gets part of Ukraine and Ukraine keeps part of Ukraine is merely the starting point for the next invasion in a few years.

If Putin were willing to abandon the idea of eventually conquering all of Ukraine, there could be a compromise where Russia gets a chunk of Ukraine and Ukraine join NATO to provide a guarantee that Russia won’t take the rest of Ukraine in the future. I don’t think that Putin will go for that.

If you're into schizo-kremlinology, some people floated theories that he might go for that, and even made the offer in a plausibly-deniable way, but the "chunk" would include everything right up to the Dniepr river.

One way to tell them apart is getting a mediator, and when he presents his relatively unbiased, fair compromise, one will accept it, the other will reject it.

What fair, unbiased mediator is there in the entire world for a conflict this big? China and India are vaguely pro-Russian, EU and US are pro-Ukraine.

Just today we had US politicians firing shots into Russia. Cringe aside, the US certainly isn't capable of resolving this diplomatically: https://x.com/RepBrianFitz/status/1913299824494944423

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