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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28786 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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If you are referring to the claim that Britain only got involved to defend Belgium, that is literally just British propaganda. They wanted to get involved from the very start and the Belgium thing was a convenient excuse.

The public and political mood was ambivalent until the invasion of Belgium. The British were horrified by the Sarajevo assassination and inclined to see AH's actions as justified.

Yes, Britain probably had anti-Germany as more of a motive for intervention than genuine support for Belgium. But reacting to the invasion was grounds for war according to anyone who isn’t a pacifist.

To put it another way, US aid for Ukraine is predicated more on the fact that it’s being shot at Russia than on concern for Ukrainian sovereignty, but it’s certainly justified morally because defending Ukrainian sovereignty is a good moral ground for war, even if it doesn’t happen to be one we care very much about.

Agreed.

In the rare situations where realpolitik/strategic practicality actually align with moral imperative and long-standing norms it strikes me particularly stupid and short-sighted to not at least plan for the contingency in which the opposing party follows through on those imperatives/norms.

I think you've chosen a very interesting place to stop your chain of logic here, not examining why Britain "wanted to get involved from the very start". Given that Britains war aims were essentially to keep the continent pretty much as it was before the war and preserve the balance of power in Europe, it is in fact accurate to say that Britain chose to use the excuse of maintaining Belgian independence in order to join the war in support of Britains true goal of supporting Belgian independence.

Given that Britains war aims were essentially to keep the continent pretty much as it was before the war and preserve the balance of power in Europe

"We want Austria-Hungary to keep oppressing everyone because the status quo is profitable to our top-hat class" is not exactly my definition of Just War.

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