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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26940 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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This is nothing compared to other Ukrainian public relation efforts.

First there was picking American transgender woman as official spokesperson for Ukrainian army, who then went on unhinged rant threatening to kill "Russian propagandists" all over the world.

(speaking in English, not Russian, so it is clear that it were not Russians in Russia who were target of this threat)

This speech is there, it is something you will hear from mouth of cartoon Evil Mastermind(TM) in corny B movie, just before Action Hero(TM) storms in and drops the villain into his/her/their/zir/xir own shark tank.

Someone in charge then noticed this does not make Ukraine look exactly like Avengers team and decided to suspend Cirillo.

So sanity prevailed and all will be good (optics) from now?

Well, Zelensky just decided to make honorary "ambassador of Ukraine", of all people, Marina Abramovic, world famous performance artist.

It sounds like 4chan fake news prank, but it is real, reported by mainstream media(and then vanishing from their pages).

Ukraine knows well what it is doing, Ukraine tries hard to signal it is on the right side and win hearts and minds.

Hearts and minds of people who matter, not yours.

edit: links

Zelensky is losing support. Also seems to realize that a stalemate that bleeds both Ukraine and Russia dry is not unpleasant outcome for his western allies. He also started to believe the fiction about himself up to the point where Poland had to subtly hint last week that he is going over the top.

He behaves as if someone owes him something and that is definitely annoying some powerful people. So I think he is running out of good moves and trying to cash whomever has some prestige left.

Ukraine is definitely losing the hearts and minds lately. And the pro ukrainian twitter is very vocal in abrasive way with hints of desperation in the last couple of weeks.

Given how hard the US right is now pulling for "1. feed Ukraine to Putin 2. ???? 3. PROFIT!" - it's hard to blame Zelensky for betting on the other side. He has people's lives at stake. If sucking up to whatever Western weirdo is what helps to get weapons to save a thousand of Ukrainian lives - worth it thousand times over. I mean, the US red tribe can't be both "fuck all those guys over the border" and then be wondering "why those guys over the border suck up to Democrats?!" Because that's their only option, if the right says upfront they want nothing to do with it. Ukraine is toast without Western help, they just don't have the resources to fight Putin alone, especially given they can't afford to get a million of their own killed people like Putin can. So yes, sometimes it would look stupid. Sometimes it will be stupid - desperate people don't always look very attractive.

I don't believe for a second that giving weapons to Ukraine is saving Ukrainian lives. Especially now that it's apparently devolved into a static almost trench warfare situation. Every weapon given to them prolongs the conflict by X amount, and certainly results in some amount of casualties during that interval.

Every weapon given to them prolongs the conflict by X amount

I believe you vastly overestimate Russian resources. The war is absolutely winnable for Ukraine + Western aid combination. If Ukrainians were more directly assisted or given even more advanced long-range toys, it'd have been winnable quickly. But alas, nuclear blackmail (increasingly non-credible) and so on, so they'll keep throwing men into the grinder, getting closer to the objective very slowly and at a staggering cost.

You know, there's the issue with the proposal of distant appeasers which isn't well understood, I imagine. You still live in 2022, if not in 1980s like some Chomsky. But this is late 2023. The war has not just eroded Russian credibility as a military power or a rational agent in the international arena, screw that – it has eroded the credibility of the state itself. It has become a clown show worse than any pro-Western transgender performance. Yes, muh "Ukraine is corrupt shithole failed state" is a cope, Russian rule has become an unambiguously worse option, and not only for nationalist reasons as it could be believed in 2004 or so. The thin, see-through veneer of "based traditional Orthodox white nation" or whatever, which still held for some delusional people, has cracked. It's a feudal absurdity that puts patriots in prison and has to cowardly assassinate near-successful insurrectionists after loudly pardoning them, an ostensibly democratic and by all appearances authoritarian polity where some Muslim warlord's fat son pummels insufficiently obsequious citizens and law enforcement sticks their tongues into their asses, as we put it, a superpower of wounded soldiers forgotten on tarp under the sun, propagandists who don't even try anymore, every promise broken. It cannot credibly offer you prosperity or freedom, but also cannot guarantee you peace and stability. It is no longer capable of bribing anyone into obedience, not even the most naive Eastern Ukrainians of Russian descent who have survived the last two years.

It is virtually politically impossible for Ukraine to give up on restoring at least 2021 effective borders, and for the West to give up on Ukraine.

Dollars to donuts, if we'd given the Ukrainians our entire arsenal the week the war started the current situation would not be different by more than 10%.

Please do not put words in my mouth - Russia is not the good guy. Ukraine is not the good guy. They're both essentially shitholes except now one is being propped up with my tax dollars for some reason. I would never choose to live in either.

As much as the war has eroded Russian credibility, it's eroded US and NATO credibility. We put sanctions on Russia and... well that doesn't seem to have collapsed their economy as promised, does it. We fed Ukraine all this training and money and materiel for a massive summer offensive and... basically nothing was accomplished.

Now BRICS countries have a wedge to build a non-Dollar denominated global trade system. Now we've shown China that THE ENTIRETY OF NATO, US INCLUDED, can't produce enough munitions to match Russia in a large regional war. What exactly have we gained here? How are we going to gain? I don't see how Ukraine even gets back to status quo antebellum without NATO boots on the ground and planes in the sky. And then we're in a shooting war with a nuclear weapons state, which is terrible enough that I will fight to avoid it at all costs. AND FOR WHAT? FOR WHAT? Some Eastern European mudhole?

nuclear blackmail (increasingly non-credible)

You think Putin would not start nuking things if the Ukranians were advancing across the boarder and throwing conventional cruise missiles at targets in the interior?

You think Putin would not start nuking things if the Ukranians were advancing across the boarder and throwing conventional cruise missiles at targets in the interior?

Why cruise missiles, why this specific modality of escalation and not any other? I mainly meant more drones for the interior, but even for missiles, what does it matter?

Reminder: Russian interior is being routinely attacked now. Sometimes it's an entire border region being wrecked, sometimes it's a military airfield many hundreds of kilometers from the border, sometimes it's Moscow proper, and not just «a building» but a part of the city's business core, where progressive and corrupt Muskovites exchange crypto for USD under the watchful eye of FSB minders on a direct line to their Seychelles office, a sacred place. Sometimes it's straight up Kremlin. Ukrainians are routinely destroying infrastructure, have assassinated more than one propagandist near the heart of Russia, and in general are acting with complete brazen confidence that Putin is a bluffing bitch ruling a pyramid of treachery, grift and sheer indifference. What is the reason to believe otherwise? Answer me honestly, would you have anticipated two years ago that all this can be done to the Second Strongest Military Superpower without triggering the Judgement Day?

No, I am not 100% sure there is no level of attack which will trigger a nuclear response. But I am mostly confident it's not about Russia. Touch Kabayeva's child, Shoygu or Zolotov, you'll risk a great deal. Leave them alone and you're free to win the war by any means available. Even nuking major cities might not be off limits. Putin does not give a shit about much of anything geopolitical, he's shallower than a right-wing Twitter influencer, has no commitments and values his own life dearly.

@Botond173, do you have any argument except a sneer that looks to be frozen since 26/02/2022, when steel columns of Russian forces were advancing towards Kiev?

It was clear that yes, they actually believed that the Russkies will not actually respond if their units are “accidentally” smashed by cruise missiles.

And? Where's the punchline that teaches us how they were wrong and you were right?

It was "advancing across the border" and cruise missiles -- with the advancing being the most important part. I do think if American cruise missiles were in frequent use by Ukraine rather than whatever bullshit they have cobbled together at the moment things would be considerably twitchier.

The point being that the fact that nothing so far has happened that approaches (what I imagine to be) Russia's nuclear threshold does not make me feel comfortable that the threshold does not exist somewhere in the near-ish possibility space.

I recall a quip from an acquaintance or maybe a channel in Telegram that "Ukrainians deliberately struck the Moscow skyscrapers outside of working hours because they were afraid of Retaliation otherwise". I suppose the Red Line is now at "you can drone our capital as long as you don't accidentally kill anyone".

The cruise missile strikes were accurate enough that no Russian units were hit. We know that. But it was possible for things to go a different way. Thankfully we didn't have to learn if those critics were right or not.

Yes, this is what ardent supporters of the Ukraine basically believe, unironically. Namely that, in the end, all Ukrainians lands can and will be liberated by force, and that either Putler will not dare to escalate the war so as to avoid complete defeat, or that whoever replaces him after a palace coup, revolution etc. will not dare either. You’d think that basing your entire policy on this assumption is lunacy, but this is where we’re at.

Incidentally I observed the same attitude when Trump ordered missile strikes on Syrian military bases back in 2017 and 2018. There were reasonable people who made the argument that launching cruise missiles at military targets in a country where Russian anti-aircraft and air force units are present might result in rather dangerous escalation if any of those units are hit by mistake. A bunch of people on the net immediately waved these concerns off and trivialized the whole issue, saying “nah, everybody involved is just posturing, it’s just bullshit, if anything happens, they’ll just sort it out in some backroom deal”. But based on their opinions voiced before, it was clear that what they actually mean is “nah, the Moskal will not dare to do anything”. It was clear that yes, they actually believed that the Russkies will not actually respond if their units are “accidentally” smashed by cruise missiles.

Russia isn’t going to nuke Washington DC or New York if the Ukrainians fire some missiles into the interior, and in any case they don’t have the manpower to attempt a land invasion or anything close to it. But I don’t think @DaseindustriesLtd is a particularly ill informed NAFO shill and, in any case, I’d wager he knows more about Russia than you.

You're right, but that's not what I've meant. It's conceivable that the Russians would deploy nuclear weapons against Ukrainian units if the collapse of the Crimean front seems imminent.

I have actually bet money, on terms that seemed favorable, on Russia nuking major bridges over Dnieper (yes, including Kiev), more than a year ago. You can imagine how it went.

Anyway, the most important question is: does the US need to make totally sure that Russia won't nuke Ukraine? Because I think "oh shit, Russians have nuked Ukraine in desperation" is not the worst piece of news for the State Department.

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Surrendering seems unlikely to be good solution or better solution.

That’s far from clear

Well, I assume that if Ukraine would surrender and be digested by Russia - then Russia would proceed with next invasion. So Ukrainians would be dying in large numbers in stupid war started by Russia anyway AND you would have Russian occupation with all its consequences.

Well, I assume that if Ukraine would surrender and be digested by Russia - then Russia would proceed with next invasion.

You assume that (at least in part) because that's what you've been told -- upon which first principles do you base this assumption?

Declarations and behaviour of the current Russian government. And history of what Russia did in the past.

Also, if Ukraine would surrender without fight it would definitely embolden them to repeat this trick on other countries. And sooner or later there would be a war, worst case scenario is NATO dissolving, with direct NATO-Russia war being also quite bad thing.

upon which first principles do you base this assumption?

Observed behavior of the current Russian government.

Is this meant to be a reference to the South Ossetian war? Which was started by Georgia?

Dunno man, they aren't exactly blitzkreiging into Paris -- it's been almost ten years and so far they are mostly just messing around in areas that have a lot of ethnic Russians anyways. Not that any of this is right, but if Putin is Hitler it's 1949 and he's farting around in the Alsace or something.

Of course, if Ukrainians gave up immediately, most of their lives - except those who Russian would execute, torture to death or otherwise "disappear", but how many could they realistically kill? probably not too many, right? - would be saved, and they would live happily ever after under the benevolent rule of Putin. Too bad they are too stupid to realize that and give up finally...

I don’t think anyone supposes that Putin is a benevolent leader.

I don’t see Ukraine being particularly worse under Russian suzerainty than under some other conditions. It’s never going to be paradise.

That's one part of it. Another is that it's not like the alternative is between slaughter and no slaughter. Based on the observed behavior of Ukrainian national guard and police units and paramilitaries, any Ukrainian territory being recaptured would also result in mass executions and torture, "disappearances" etc.

What's your estimation on the amount of these that have happened in the territories Ukraine has already recaptured from the invasion?

How am I supposed to have estimations? After all, I'm sure nobody dares to try keeping track or count of these. In fact, nobody involved in any way has any incentive to raise the issue at all.

An excellent point. The Ukrainian ultra-nationalists have not been kind to the Russian speaking populations over the last decade plus.

get weapons to save a thousand of Ukrainian lives

This is a bit off topic, but as a realist I really wonder at the neocon thinking here. I'm asking you since you are vocal about your beliefs, but really anyone jumping into this question would be fine.

Assume you are an average Ukrainian. For reference that is someone probably working Ukraine's most common job, a factory worker, making the Ukrainian median salary of 600usd a month. If you live in the South from Odessa to Dontesk, or the east from Donetsk to Kharkiv than you more than likely already speak Russian, especially if you are in a city. You've lived in a country that was a Soviet territory, then a Russian puppet state, and now a western puppet state. What would most likely happen to you in the following scenarios:

-Russia invaded and the Ukrainian leadership completely capitulated and the war was over before it even started.

-Russia invades and you fight back, the west is initially supportive but pulls its support when it becomes clear the war has become one of attrition and there is no path to victory. You lose the war a couple years later, sometime in 2024-25. (current timeline)

-Russia invades and you fight back, the west gives you whatever support you want, the war drags on for years and years as more and more are sent to a front increasingly supplied by more modern and deadly weapons systems.

To me if I'm the average Ukrainian I prefer scenario 1. I probably still have a pretty below average life, maybe I keep a good mindset about it, maybe alcohol is cheap enough it doesn't matter. I don't die though, no conscription, and as long as I'm not part of the ultra nationalist movement I'm unlikely to see much of a difference, there is a new set of corrupt officials to bribe here and there to get through daily life, but life is mostly the same. At worst there is a major uptick in terrorist attacks as ultra nationalists shift to insurgency type tactics. Though without western support it's not clear how long these would last.

Since I anticipate you will take issue with the framing and suggest a hypothetical where Ukraine gets all the aid it wants and then wins and takes back all it's territory and for some reason Russia decides to never look west again... What wonder weapon would result in this actually happening? Even if we gave them nukes that seems to just result in a stalemate, since if Ukraine nuked Crimea* or Moscow, surely Russia would make sure Kiev no longer existed. In fact given the sheer number of nukes Russia has it might make sure most of Western Europe and the US no longer exist as well. Other than that there doesn't seem to be any conventional weapon that doesn't simply result in more escalation. They are already scraping the bottom of the barrel for conscripts and are at a serious population disadvantage. Sometimes surrender is the better move and the one that saves more lives, if it didn't and everyone that surrendered instantly died than it really wouldn't exist as an option.

I think your options are too limited. Right now, it seems that Russia doesn't have the combat power to push much further into Ukraine than it already has, at least not faster than a snail's pace, nor to do anything dramatic like capture Kiev, regardless of how much help we do or don't give to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Ukraine doesn't seem to have much chance of pushing the Russians back any time soon, regardless of how much help we do or don't give them. I don't think this is going to change either aside from large-scale direct intervention from Western troops, or several decades training up Ukrainian forces.

So the only practical options are probably 1. Continue to feed men on both sides into a pointless meat grinder, or 2. Sign some sort of peace treaty giving Russia at least most of what they already captured officially.

Zelenski has of course ruled this out completely, publically and repeatedly -- it's probable that this is kayfabe to some extent, but he certainly gives the impression of being drunk on koolaid.

I guess he's an actor -- maybe a better one than I'd assumed?

  1. Sign some sort of peace treaty giving Russia at least most of what they already captured officially.

Why you think that it does not end with Russia restarting pointless meat grinder few months or years later?

I don't think they have to push further into Ukraine though. They have the combat power to maintain the pressure they're putting on Ukraine, whereas Ukraine does not. Ukraine lacks any industry to produce more weapons so without western support they'd be short on those. They also lack people, so even with western support if its just a long war of attrition eventually Ukraine collapses. Attritional wars are ugly and boring, which makes western public interest less likely to stay high. If Russia were to make big gains the western MIC could sell that as a threat and push for more support, if Ukraine makes gains people keep supporting them because they think they can win. Long ugly stalemate of a meat grinder with Ukraine eventually collapsing seems the most likely outcome with current western support.

I don't know that they'd go for a peace treaty after the last one was just used to arm and organize Ukraine. If they did it'd be seen as just a pause in the war while both sides reorganized imo, not a real peace.

We will see.

You left out (4). The west gives you proper weapons and you win the war. 30 years later your children are richer than England.

This has happened before. Poland is on path to be wealthier than England in 10 years. The average dude might already be there.

Your preferred option sounds like I’ll accept be a drunkard and survive my life. (4) provides the option to have a large successful family. The EV is much much higher.

What haven't we given them that would actually make a difference? The First Marine Division?

What weapons the west gave to Poland that allowed it to beat Soviet military and throw their shackles? What military strategy was used?

(4) provides the option to have a large successful family. The EV is much much higher.

Why wasn’t Ukraine on this path before the war? Poland started off around where Ukraine was in early 1990s. It failed to thrive, to put it mildly, and the pre-war trajectory was not optimistic. The neighboring puppet state of Russia, Belarus, has done much better for itself.

If the plan is to build stronger ties with the West, join EU etc similarly to what Poland did, isn’t better strategy to cut the losses, stop the bleed, and negotiate peace with Russia, where you cede some territories in exchange for Russia acceding to your western strategy in future?

Ukraine never left Russias orbit. They only reoriented to economic integration with Europe after Maiden. Poland well the breakup of the USSR made it not possible for them to do war so they had an easier route.

I specifically mentioned the Russian puppet state of Belarus to point out that you can do much better than Ukraine while remaining in Russian orbit. My point was that if Ukraine experienced decades of stagnation while in Russian orbit while Belarus grew, why expect much different outcomes in western orbit?

Poland well the breakup of the USSR made it not possible for them to do war so they had an easier route.

Poland left the Communist Bloc years before USSR broke up. They managed that through diplomacy and negotiations, not western warmongering. Ukraine should try the same.

Ukraine should try the same.

They did. Russia invaded.

Twice.

Yeah, they signed agreements, and then didn’t keep to them. That’s not how you conduct diplomacy.

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Again, though, we're back to the question of why it is that "not surrendering when you're invaded" is "Western warmongering".

The person I replied to suggested that Ukraine should take western weapons and win the war, and gave Poland as an example of this as a successful strategy. I pointed out that Poland achieved success by peaceful diplomatic means. If the West pushed weapons into Polish hands at that time, that would have been clear warmongering, because history proved that peaceful solution was possible. I did not refer to the recent events in Ukraine as western warmongering, only the hypothetical scenario where west pushes citizens of Polish People’s Republic to war with Soviet Union.

Now, let me explicitly say here that the current western strategy of funding Ukrainian military with the explicit, openly repeated goal of weakening Russian state and military, under the assumption of good ROI in terms of monetary spend/materiel relative to achieved damage to Russia, and with zero concern for Ukrainian blood being spilled to achieve these goals, and disregard for ultimate likelihood of Ukrainian victory, very much is warmongering.

Without the western “support”, the (stupid and evil) Russian invasion would be over with by now, and much less blood would have been spilled, and wealth and livelihoods destroyed, for pretty much the same ultimate geopolitical outcome. However, the West has clearly chosen strategy of slow trickle of support to pull in and attrit Russians as much as possible.

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Did you not read the rest? I want an explanation of how that is possible before we entertain it. Since there doesn't seem to be any weapon that would win the war for Ukraine and every new weapons system we supply further risks nuclear apocalypse.

Since I anticipate you will take issue with the framing and suggest a hypothetical where Ukraine gets all the aid it wants and then wins and takes back all it's territory and for some reason Russia decides to never look west again... What wonder weapon would result in this actually happening? Even if we gave them nukes that seems to just result in a stalemate, since if Ukraine nuked Crimea* or Moscow, surely Russia would make sure Kiev no longer existed. In fact given the sheer number of nukes Russia has it might make sure most of Western Europe and the US no longer exist as well. Other than that there doesn't seem to be any conventional weapon that doesn't simply result in more escalation. They are already scraping the bottom of the barrel for conscripts and are at a serious population disadvantage. Sometimes surrender is the better move and the one that saves more lives, if it didn't and everyone that surrendered instantly died than it really wouldn't exist as an option.

Did you not read the rest? I want an explanation of how that is possible before we entertain it.

We keep supplying Ukraine, Russia runs out of will, manpower, or materiel before Ukraine does.

every new weapons system we supply further risks nuclear apocalypse.

Which doesn't mean they can't be supplied. "Putin might push the button" isn't an insta-win for Russia.

They have around 4x the population of Ukraine, for Russia to run out of manpower before Ukraine they would need to have a more than 4:1 loss ratio. I don't think even the Ukrainians are claiming that and they're been claiming absolutely absurd things the whole time.

The military production is up in the air, but so far Russian production appears to be up significantly from what it was prior to the war. They might've exhausted soviet stockpiles but they're producing 1k tanks per year, we're sending 31 Abrams. The US is trying to up artillery shell production but it costs 10x as much to make a single shell here. We've gone and strong armed basically every ally we have to provide them with their spares and even sent cluster munitions when that ran out.

It's just not realistic thinking. It's cynical as hell to boot, basically saying eventually enough Ukrainians will die that Ukraine will win.

They have around 4x the population of Ukraine, for Russia to run out of manpower before Ukraine they would need to have a more than 4:1 loss ratio. I don't think even the Ukrainians are claiming that and they're been claiming absolutely absurd things the whole time.

My dad recently complained to me that Western artillery has a higher effective range than Russian artillery. Maybe by 50% or so.

How much do you think this means in terms of k/d ratio? 30%? What about a 100% range difference? 200%? At what point does it become clear that technological superiority can, in fact, offset virtually any difference in manpower?

They have around 4x the population of Ukraine, for Russia to run out of manpower before Ukraine they would need to have a more than 4:1 loss ratio. I don't think even the Ukrainians are claiming that and they're been claiming absolutely absurd things the whole time.

The Ukrainian government has not generally reported losses but in December 2022 estimated 13k lost. Meanwhile the UK MoD figure for Russian casualty estimates from December 1st 2022 was 89k. If you were to accept their claims then by those loss ratios they could. Which isn't to say the claims are close to accurate but that it is not more absurd if taking those absurd claims as true to believe (or that they could claim) that they would win by attrition.

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Since there doesn't seem to be any weapon that would win the war for Ukraine

Why you think so? Handful of outdated HIMARS was quite significant, handful of Storm Shadows keeps participating in meetings of Russian generals and so on.

every new weapons system we supply further risks nuclear apocalypse.

that is blatant nonsense and repeating russian propaganda warmongering

You referring to the Admiral that showed up on tv today?

The only thing that has made a difference in the war so far has been numbers. Ukraine had more of them at the beginning of the war. Their offensive on Kherson pulled enough Russians from the north that they were able to roll through the Kharkov areas. Russia bailed on holding Kherson to make the front more defensible until they could catch up. Russia mobilized more and that mostly equalized the forces and since then Ukraine has made no real gains despite the huge injection of western kit for their Spring offensive.

that is blatant nonsense and repeating russian propaganda warmongering

This is childish and not an argument.

You referring to the Admiral that showed up on tv today?

no, I specifically not mentioned admiral but more generic term as I wanted to wait till it is properly confirmed before I treat this claim seriously (that some high-ranking people dies is pretty confirmed, as far as I know)

We’ve given them 1980’s weapon systems and they held their own against Russia. Modern stuff would do it. American has won its wars with air supremacy so modern fighter planes with the proper weapon systems would do that. It’s much tougher to take out all the Russian artillery with artillery.

and with what pilots would the planes fly? A massive airforce requires even more massive logistics to keep it running, Ukraine has had difficulties even keeping their tiny airforce from being targeted and is forced to regularly fly them from place to place so they don't get taken out by Russian missile strikes. There is no way we can just park a few 100 f16s somewhere in Ukraine and maintain them without them being targeted even if there was such a location where they could be kept and maintained which there isn't...

This is the problem with all the wishful thinking of the pro Ukraine side. There is no depth to it. It's just endless handwaving away all the issues. How do you completely and unanimously win against Russia? Oh just give them airplanes. Wow. Insightful. Meanwhile 200-400k Ukrainians are dead up to 50k just from this doomed summer offensive and all those fancy western Leopards and Challengers are useless because war has evolved and between drones and remote mining they are sitting ducks. Ukrainians are crawling through tree lines at night to lead assaults on trenches after softening them up with artillery. That's so far the only strategy that gets them any progress. So forgive me if I doubt that America winning against 3rd worlders via airplanes isn't a guaranteed win.

We have more air defense systems too.

400k won’t die if they are properly armed.

400k dead though is a reasonable price to pay to get to exists as a people. We fought our revolutionary war. Every people who have ever existed fought for their lands.

Belarus isn’t do that great.

Russia has plenty of AD systems but Ukraine can still hit them. Problem right now is that drones are too cheap relative to the cost of any of the intercept systems. Can easily just over saturate and overwhelm them.

To get to exist as a people

See this right here makes no sense to me. Are you claiming that all of Ukraine will be killed if Russia wins? Some kind of Nazi concentration camps but on an even grander scale? That seems incredibly unlikely, probably not even possible given logistics of attempting to round up all of the Ukrainians to exterminate them, unless Russia goes total mobilization or something.

If you're claiming some kind of more hazy spiritual collective sense, then I think you really misunderstand how divided things are in Ukraine.

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Given how hard the US right is now pulling for "1. feed Ukraine to Putin 2. ???? 3. PROFIT!"

The implication being that the pro-Ukraine side, by contrast, has a plan?

How'd Syria go?

Libya?

Afghanistan?

Iraq?

Iraq the first time?

Iran?

Afghanistan the first time?

...Like, what's your actual conception of how this is all going to roll out? Putin is couped by the competent, democratic statesmen who form his opposition and then Russia reforms into a functional capitalist democracy, thereby nullifying the threat of their considerable nuclear arsenal? Is that the road you're looking for?

If you want to defend the interventionist consensus, defend the results it has delivered over the last thirty years through the multiple fucking iterations it has played out, very publicly, at vast economic and social and human cost. Show how all the previous disasters were really just faulty perception, or working the kinks out, or something other than simply a blind-spot in your geopolitical perception the size of the fucking moon. I'll cop to not expecting the Russian army to be a shambolic trash-disaster, and sure, right now we are fairly thoroughly mauling that army for pennies on the dollar, given that Ukranian and Russian lives are considered to have no value in the equation. But what's the endgame, here?

What are you willing to call success, such that we can move on, job well done, no more entanglements and expenditures needed?

What are you willing to call failure, such that you agree that it's time to cut our losses?

Because I have heard this fucking song and dance before, where "these next six months are critical" for ten or fifteen or twenty years at a stretch, and my heuristic is that anyone selling that bullshit is either a braindead incompetent or a literal vampire who requires decapitation and a stake through the heart. I refuse to play this game where we pretend that all those previous disasters and betrayals and massacres and atrocities didn't actually happen or were just crazy random happenstance, where we pretend that American foreign policy and leadership should be presumed to be competent and efficient and generally on the ball. I can't pretend that hard, and I have zero respect for those who can.

That is their “plan”, pretty much. Or that there will be a glorious campaign of liberation ending in Crimea, and Putler will capitulate because he’s actually a paper tiger. Or that he’ll be couped by a second Gorbachev/Yeltsin who will do the same. Or that he’ll not actually be replaced by anyone, and instead there’ll be another Time of Troubles and the Russian state will disintegrate, and there won’t be any negative repercussions because it’s not like the collapse of a state with thousands of nuclear warheads would result in that. I’m not being flippant. That’s the “plan”, as expressed by their own words and narratives.

What precisely do you think happens when a state with thousands of nuclear warheads collapses?

Something definitely worse than, say, Ukraine agreeing to a ceasefire.

I assume you mean that "something" happens to Ukraine?

I recall the men with their hands on the buttons didn't launch even back during the Cold War when the chain of command was intact and clear. You think they will have more resolve/recklessness when it isn't?

That's not what I meant, but that would also be conceivable in that case, obviously.

I meant rogue states, terrorist groups, organized crime groups etc. gaining control of nuclear warheads and using them for blackmail etc. Nuclear warheads entering the black market. Ethnic conflicts, humanitarian catastrophe etc.

I don't think any of this needs to be spelled out actually, but I'll assume your question was honest.

My question was honest in that I wanted to hear what you had in mind when you alluded to that - some specific outcomes or just a generic nuclear scare.

It looks like whatever consequences there are would largely befall Russia itself. If the West can be confident that the concerted Russian nuclear stockpile is, at worst, MAD, surely they can laugh off a single straggler or two who tries to point a fraction of that stockpile at them?

More comments

...Like, what's your actual conception of how this is all going to roll out? Putin is couped by the competent, democratic statesmen who form his opposition and then Russia reforms into a functional capitalist democracy, thereby nullifying the threat of their considerable nuclear arsenal? Is that the road you're looking for?

I think it's more like this

What are you willing to call success, such that we can move on, job well done, no more entanglements and expenditures needed?

It is not a board game. USA will continue to have relations with all involved parties, it does not end.

...Like, what's your actual conception of how this is all going to roll out? Putin is couped by the competent, democratic statesmen who form his opposition and then Russia reforms into a functional capitalist democracy, thereby nullifying the threat of their considerable nuclear arsenal? Is that the road you're looking for?

No, not expecting that. I would settle for Russia defanged enough that they shut up about USSR-sized sphere of influence. And will stop thinking they can take on NATO or countries supported by NATO.

It appears that going through ginormous stockpiles produced by USSR may be needed before that will happen.

(obviously, settling for being corrupt and internally violent and sort-of-useful as sort-of counterbalance against China would be nice, but sadly they actually believed that they are still superpower entitled to rule over central and eastern Europe...)

that they shut up about USSR-sized sphere of influence.

USSR sized sphere of influence? Ukraine is closer to Moscow than Canada is to Washington.

They also made repeated comments and actions concerning Baltics and Poland. I am well aware that they have not invaded this countries outright, so far.

But I want them to stop completely and cease any military threats whatsoever (for start, stop repeated airspace incursion with their military planes). And ensure that their officials makes threats/jokes/suggestions about invading Poland as often as Germans ones are doing as of 2023.

And I want all US servicemen and equipment brought back to the USA, all foreign military entanglements ended, and for our supposed allies to defend themselves.

It is not a board game. USA will continue to have relations with all involved parties, it does not end.

Okay, what's your assessment of what we've achieved versus what we paid from this approach to date?

No, not expecting that. I would settle for Russia defanged enough that they shut up about USSR-sized sphere of influence.

We defanged Iraq very thoroughly in the first gulf war. Hussein no longer was able to exercise territorial ambitions. Do you find that this made the world a better place?

We defanged Iraq very thoroughly in the first gulf war. Hussein no longer was able to exercise territorial ambitions. Do you find that this made the world a better place?

My knowledge about middle east and wars there is far more limited than of eastern Europe so I do not feel very qualified to answer.

But my expectation was that Russia was going to start serious war with someone at some point (or recreate USSR by repeated invasions and countries surrendering). So funding defence of Ukraine is preferable in my opinion to fighting direct NATO-Russia war that would be far more problematic in many aspects.

Okay, what's your assessment of what we've achieved versus what we paid from this approach to date?

That it was worth spending this funds to achieve this, though less innocent lives would be lost if materiel would be provided earlier, on larger scale and more decisively rather then being dripped bit by bit.

(disclaimer: I am from Poland, not from USA - for me aggressive and too powerful Russia is top1 geopolitic problem)

but sadly they actually believed that they are still superpower entitled to rule over central and eastern Europe

How do you arrive at this conclusion from Russia invading what was literally their own satellite state for 20 years after the USSR fell until the US took it away? It's just completely out of touch with reality.

I base it on treating Ukraine as own satellite state and on their comments and actions concerning Baltics and Poland.

This "Russia = USSR" logic doesn't work out the way you think it does.

Firstly, it means inheriting the legacy of the Holodomor. Attempting to claim a moral right to rule a people after you attempt to genocide them is...something.

But even ignoring that, the USSR literally agreed to dissolve into independent states in 1991. If the Soviets "owned" Ukraine, then Russia inheriting their claims means it has no claim as such over Ukraine.

Also, the Budapest Memo had Russia agree to not use military force against Ukraine.

You can talk all you want about "satellite states" and what not, Russia already agreed decades ago it wouldn't do what it has been doing since 2014.

Firstly, it means inheriting the legacy of the Holodomor. Attempting to claim a moral right to rule a people after you attempt to genocide them is...something.

It's geopolitics, who the fuck cares. If tanks and jet fighters required newborns to be put in blenders in order to function, nothing about our world would change.

I think a great many people care about moral justification for a claim of rulership.

Indeed, we are all here because, centuries ago, some opportunistic Anglos and Scots had questions about rulership.

I'm not claiming that Russia = USSR.

USSR controlled Ukraine more or less directly up until 91.

Ukraine was then it's own state on paper, but in reality a Russian satellite state up until 2014. "A russian satellite state for 20 years" Technically 23.

It only entered the western orbit after the coup in 2014. (Well the western part of it)

Russia isn't trying to expand its sphere of influence to USSR levels, that would mean going as far west as Germany. It's just trying to maintain it at post USSR levels and even that is seen as some extreme aggressive act while NATO bombs and murders everyone outside of the west indiscriminately and people that think they're civilized make endless excuses for the abuse.

Ukraine was then it's own state on paper, but in reality a Russian satellite state up until 2014.

Doesn't really matter. Russia signed the agreements to let Ukraine be independent. Can't complain if it actually exercises that status.

Russia isn't trying to expand its sphere of influence to USSR levels

Yeah, because it can't. There's no going back in that regard unless NATO itself breaks up, and Putin's invasion literally reversed the flagging support for that organization. Talk about a strategic blunder. What it is doing, however, is trying to gobble up nations while it can to its west. Because once the NATO aegis is established, it's over, that country is not coming back.

NATO bombs and murders everyone outside of the west indiscriminately and people that think they're civilized make endless excuses for the abuse.

Which bombs are we referring to? Bosnia and Herzegovina? Serbia? Afghanistan? The Gulf of Aden? Libya? Syria?

Iraq?

I sometimes consider the hypothetical world in which the 2003 invasion was skipped. It's obviously hard to predict such outcomes, but I think it's not implausible a continued Hussein regime might not be better for the average Iraqi. It's not like they had a particularly good human rights record.

Sure, there was a lot of destruction from the war (which I'd generally agree was poorly-conceived), but how would Iraq have faced the Arab Spring? It seems plausible that could have ended less like ISIS and more like the still-ongoing Syrian Civil War, likely complete with Russia intentionally bombing civilian targets and waves of refugees fleeing to Europe.

For all it's faults in the invasion, the country now could be much worse than it is today. Which is distinctly not an endorsement of the operation, merely a pause for consideration.

For all it's faults in the invasion, the country now could be much worse than it is today.

It could be. The actual result was sufficiently awful that I would prefer to roll those dice. Certainly the difference between the predicted and actual outcomes leaves me with zero faith in the wisdom of further interventionism.

For the record, I agree with your take. The comment is more referencing cases in which people rhetorically imply that the country is worse off than otherwise, which I think is less clear.

Amusingly, in a late 200X with no Iraq War, then the Iranians still have a nuclear program in its later stages, only for it's initial target. Who would still be, at best, maintaining the strategic bluff of ambiguity in hopes of deterance, as they did before, but with the understanding that their most significant enemy truly was pursuing greater WMDs.

Black humor, but humor none the less.

The Arab spring was the US as well... Saying Iraq would've been destabilized anyways because the US would start destabilizing MENA countries again a decade later doesn't really make US foreign policy look better.

The implication being that the pro-Ukraine side, by contrast, has a plan?

Whatever plan they may or may not have, it's certainly less stupid than Carlson's "we feed Ukraine to Putin and he'll battle China for US" or Vivek's "We feed Ukraine to Putin and there would be peace in our time". But I suspect, different "pro-Ukraine" sides - many of which aren't as pro-Ukraine as they present - have different plans. US Democrats probably try to maximize the profit (both pecuniary and political) from the war while committing to as little as possible and not letting Russia become unpredictable (because that looks like work and who needs that), most of the EU tries to show off as much as possible while doing as little as possible, Ukrainians try to survive...

Like, what's your actual conception of how this is all going to roll out?

Given current players, likely pretty badly for all involved. Probably there will be some temporary ceasefire and then a new war in 5-10 years, and so on. Until Russia finally collapses, but that can take a long while - last time it took 70 years.

But what's the endgame, here?

We all dead, sooner or later? I mean, what exactly you expect the "endgame" to be? It's not some kind of Magic The Gathering match, where you sit down, play a round, then come up and go back home. Who told you there's such a thing as "endgame" at all? The war surely will end, one way or another, at least all the previous wars did. How it will end depends on a lot of things, and anybody who says they can predict it, are lying.

What are you willing to call failure, such that you agree that it's time to cut our losses?

If you approach any task with "when are we calling it a failure finally", then yes, the question would only be when you call it a failure. But then, why you are surprised there are so many failures? You're literally rooting for it, so you're getting what you asked for.

"we feed Ukraine to Putin and he'll battle China for US"

This would actually have been the best option, but only if it was taken several years ago. Russia and China uniting and working together are the only real powerbloc capable of dealing with the US - if they were in opposition to each other, or if Russia was firmly a part of the western community, the global situation would look very different right now. Russia has no motivation to go into Ukraine if NATO doesn't expand to their borders and they're a respected member of the western coalition - so in that universe the war just doesn't happen anyway, given that one of the roots of this conflict was over Ukraine moving into the EU orbit or the Russian orbit. There's a decent bit of evidence that Russia actually did want to be a part of the western community and would have preferred this to being part of the "global south"/jungle, and I think that world is a much nicer place to live in this one.

But that ship has sailed, and if Carlson is suggesting that the US try to pivot to that option now then he's deluded. China and Russia have a lot of reasons to be enemies, but the current situation has forced them together - and done so in a way that's going to be hard to disentangle. Both of them know that they're unable to take on the US individually, and at the same time they think that the US is impossible to negotiate with and an untrustworthy partner. Serious thinkers have said for years that one of the chief goals of US foreign policy should be to make sure that Russia and China absolutely hate each other, which isn't really that hard of a goal to achieve - but US policy over the last few decades has just brought them closer and closer together, and made it clear that continuing to use the US dollar and existing global financial infrastructure is a critical weakness. What can the US even credibly offer Russia to pull them away from China at this point? Even if Trump gets in and manages to overcome the deep state inertia preventing him from normalising relationships with Russia, I don't think they'd be willing to come back to the table because they've gotten too invested in their own alternatives.

Even if Russia and China disliked each other as much as, say, India and China (an immense long shot), Russia isn’t sacrificing millions of men, the entire Eastern third of their country, all their power in Central Asia and unfathomable amounts of treasure on some bullshit crusade against the CCP at America’s behest lmao. Ironically there’s nothing more neocon ‘game theory’ than trying to play CK2 or Civilization in real life and thinking the US can bait Russia into fighting WW3 for us.

Making peace with China is easier, more desirable and more in America’s interests than making peace with Russia.

Russia isn’t sacrificing millions of men, the entire Eastern third of their country, all their power in Central Asia and unfathomable amounts of treasure on some bullshit crusade against the CCP at America’s behest lmao.

You're totally right, but it isn't like the US would need them to be at war. They'd just need them to be mildly hostile to each other, to the point that they'd be more willing to work with the US than their immediate, border-sharing neighbour. There isn't even a need to go to war with China in this case - they'd be too economically dependent. If you made sure the US didn't ship their entire manufacturing industry to China in the 90s as well, the differential in capacity would be so massive conflict just wouldn't even need to happen.

Our current plan is to give Ukraine every weapon we have, regardless of whether or not the Ukrainians are able to win the war, letting the war drag on while we essentially use up our weapons in Ukraine (which will probably lessen our ability to defend Taiwan (and thus secure our chips supply), lose credibility as it becomes obvious that we can no longer actually deliver on our promises, and Ukraine will probably lose Donbas anyway.

I think it would be better to cede Donbas and arm the remaining and build NATO bases in West Ukraine as a deterrent to further incursions.

arm the remaining and build NATO bases in West Ukraine as a deterrent to further incursions.

wait

are you against sending weapons to Ukraine or not?

And combo "cede Donbas" and "send NATO soldiers to fight against Russia" is quite curious and new to me.

Our current plan is to give Ukraine every weapon we have

This is obviously false. On the contrary, the plan is explicitly not to give many weapons - such as long-range rockets, planes, and many other things - or at least delay giving them as long as possible. If the plan really were "to give Ukraine every weapon we have" it's impossible to explain why ATACMS rockets or modern planes were not given or why modern tanks were only given late this year - we certainly had them way before that, they weren't created this year.

regardless of whether or not the Ukrainians are able to win the war

"Win the war" is a very vague thing - and the extent of how much Ukrainians win right now is a direct function of how much weapons (and what kind of weapons) they have. Right now, their air capabilities are minuscule, and they long-range strike capabilities are such that they can only do sporadic one-off hits, after months of preparation. This is way short of "every weapon we have", unless US military has been lying to us for years about all those advanced weaponry they are supposed to have, and somehow instead spent all those billions on building mocks of all that weaponry that doesn't exist in reality. I don't think even the most committed conspiracy nuts go that far.

letting the war drag on while we essentially use up our weapons in Ukraine

Giving enough weaponry not to lose but not enough to decisively win - which was the actual plan for the last 1.5 years - is a great way to let the war drag on. You concept does not offer any explanation why we're discussing long-range rockets today and not in February 2022. Mine explains it perfectly. I think the concept that explains the available facts

I think it would be better to cede Donbas

Did you wake up yesterday from a 20 year coma? Ukraine has been "ceding Donbass" since 2014. That's when it came under Russian control (fun fact: the guy who organized it, Igor Girkin, is now being slowly tortured to death in Russian prison, because that's how Russian "thank you" looks like) and since then, Ukraine didn't have any control there and could do nothing about it. Just as they could do nothing about Russia owning Crimea (besides completely toothless and impotent "sanctions"). Presenting it as some kind of a "solution", while this was exactly the starting point of the war, is completely bewildering - it's like saying "we could avoid WW2 if only we let Hitler arm himself and signed a peace treaty with him and given him Sudetenland". And it didn't happen in the last century - it happened less than 10 years ago! And still you feel free to completely ignore it. Astonishing.

build NATO bases in West Ukraine as a deterrent to further incursions.

So, your solution is instead of having Ukrainians fight Russians with Western weaponry, is to have Western troops do the same? That would go just fine with German, French and Belgian voters. They dream about their soldiers dying on Ukrainian soil, I am sure, and despite now willing to send about 1 tank per month as soon as the war is out of TV screens, they will surely be glad so send hundreds of them and live bodies in the harm's way because... what? I am not sure how this makes any sense.

fun fact: the guy who organized it, Igor Girkin, is now being slowly tortured to death in Russian prison, because that's how Russian "thank you" looks like

according to unconfirmed reports they let Ukrainian POW to attack and beat him

If you approach any task with "when are we calling it a failure finally", then yes, the question would only be when you call it a failure. But then, why you are surprised there are so many failures? You're literally rooting for it, so you're getting what you asked for.

...I'm not sure where to even begin with this statement. I cannot form a sensible model of a thought-process that would have this statement as its output. Could you elaborate?

Do you agree that the american occupation of Afghanistan was a failure?

Do you think pessimism regarding American foreign policy or military competence or the general strategic goals in the invasion of Afghanistan is the primary cause of that failure? That if we had only pushed harder, been willing to commit more, worthwhile outcomes could have been secured?

We all dead, sooner or later?

We are all dead sooner or later no matter what policy we pursue toward Russia or Ukraine. You are acting as though your policy preferences require zero justification. That is a pretty wild response to someone pointing to three decades of extremely ruinous policy failure.

Why do you believe your prefered policy a good idea? Why is it a better idea than doing nothing?

Do you understand that your prefered policies have costs? That they have consequences? That if government is a coherent concept at all, you need to actually try to anticipate these things and steer a course toward positive outcomes? Is politics literally nothing more to you than good fucking vibes?

How it will end depends on a lot of things, and anybody who says they can predict it, are lying.

If no one knows anything, why are you criticizing the people who don't want to spend a lot of money and resources escalating this war and its attendant tail-risks? Why do you even have an opinion?

Whatever plan they may or may not have, it's certainly less stupid than Carlson's "we feed Ukraine to Putin and he'll battle China for US" or Vivek's "We feed Ukraine to Putin and there would be peace in our time".

Prove it. Support that statement. Why is it better? On the basis of what data? What leads you to this conclusion?

...I'm not sure where to even begin with this statement. I cannot form a sensible model of a thought-process that would have this statement as its output. Could you elaborate?

Elaborate what? You pre-declare that US intervention must be a failure and the only question is when we recognize that failure. In that model, of course it'd be a failure. I just don't accept that model as something having to do with the reality.

Do you agree that the american occupation of Afghanistan was a failure?

Irrelevant for the question being discussed.

That if we had only pushed harder, been willing to commit more, worthwhile outcomes could have been secured?

No, I think if they pushed smarter, and been willing to do different things, then yes, they could be. It's not a direct function of dollars spent or boots standing on the ground. At least not that alone. But again, this is irrelevant for the question discussed.

That is a pretty wild response to someone pointing to three decades of extremely ruinous policy failure.

Again, policy failures in Afghanistan are not relevant here, as we're not talking about Afghanistan.

If no one knows anything,

I didn't say "no one knows anything", I said exact picture years ahead is not possible to predict right now. That's not the same thing at all. If you demand "before we do anything, tell me and guarantee me you can exactly predict what would happen in a multi-factor hyper-complex event 10 years ahead" - then of course you won't be able to do a single thing. That's not how things are done. You have a general goal, and general means of achieving it - in this case, trim Russia's ambition of territorial conquest in Europe, and giving Ukrainians the weapons - and then you adapt your tactics depending on the circumstances arriving.

you criticizing the people who don't want to spend a lot of money and resources escalating this war

The war is already "escalated". That choice is past us. The question is - does the "collective security" arrangement in Europe survive, or do we go back to "every little country for themselves" and the inevitable endless bloodbath that follows that. There's still a chance to preserve that order, but it is going away fast. And more we talk about "when we already recognize we lost everything and should give up?" the sooner we lose everything, including all this nice cushy civilization we enjoy so much. It's much more fragile than commonly thought.

Is politics literally nothing more to you than good fucking vibes?

I can't even begin to understand what you mean here, but let me assure you in one thing. Contrary to the belief popular on many college campuses, adding swearing to your argument does not make it more convincing, it just makes you look more unhinged.

Prove it. Support that statement. Why is it better? On the basis of what data? What leads you to this conclusion?

Observation of the existing facts. When somebody literally proposes as a solution for the war the situation from which the war started, I conclude he's either ignoramus or is lying to my eyes. When somebody proposes a bunch of non-sequiturs as a supposedly logical argument to a goal - I assume he is either bad at logic or is lying. Carlson has been proposing wildly illogical concept of if we let Russia consume Ukraine, Putin somehow would be friendly to the US (this is laughable to anyone who listened for the last 5 years of Russian propaganda, which has been full of mouth-foaming anti-Western paranoia, and their whole geopolitical concept is rooted at opposition to the West, which is weak and decadent and soul-less) and somehow commit himself to fighting China (despite Russia having zero motive for that and tons of motives to the contrary) - and doesn't even bother to support his fantasies with anything but other wild stories (like the stupid biolab shit). That makes about as much sense as saying if only we helped Hitler to introduce common sense banking regulations, he'd be off the whole Jews thing - about that level of silliness. Vivek is simpler, he's just playing ignorant. He's proposing a solution which he must know - since he is not actually dumb - is not solving anything because that's where the war started. But it sounds nice to people who are ignorant in the matter, and makes him sound like he has solutions for everything to people that want somebody to have solutions. And also to the people who think "fuck Ukraine, better give that money to me!" but are ashamed to say it aloud, so they are looking for someone to say the same but in a smart way, so it doesn't sound asshole-ish but geopolitically smart. That's all his play, the whole con. Fortunately, he's also irrelevant since there's no chance he'd be anywhere near any real power anytime soon.

Why do you believe your prefered policy a good idea? Why is it a better idea than doing nothing?

Do you understand that your prefered policies have costs? That they have consequences? That if government is a coherent concept at all, you need to actually try to anticipate these things and steer a course toward positive outcomes? Is politics literally nothing more to you than good fucking vibes?

You're cheating.

  1. You point out instances where we intervened and shitty situations failed to improve or did, in fact, get worse. What about instances where the isolationism and appeasement carried the day?

How'd Rwanda go? I guess there weren't any stars and stripes draped caskets flying home, but at the same time hundreds of thousands of people died in large part due to the apathy of the West - your choice to do nothing also carries consequences. I can even imagine a hypothetical counterfactual where we did intervene, and after averting genocide and saving a quarter million lives, the isolationists could still I-told-you-so about the failed Rwandan state, neocolonialism, continued ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis, incompetent American foreign policy wonks, whatever.

Similarly, there's a parallel universe where we failed to arm South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and any or all of them fell into the orbit of China/USSR. Any of these countries could easily have been failed states suffering under communism rather than the prosperous, developed nations they are today. Airlifting supplies to West Berlin? Fuck that, have you seen the price of sugar in New York?

  1. Many of the examples you give are just categorically different from Ukraine. Selling/donating a country arms to defend it's right to self-determination is distinct from us putting boots on the ground and invading a sovereign nation ourselves. If the Ukrainians decide the juice isn't worth the squeeze, and hey, whatever, those Russians aren't that bad anyways.

  2. Implicit in your writing is that Ukrainians lack agency and are just useful pawns for the West to push around a board. My impression is that support in Ukraine for prosecuting the war is fairly high. Internationally, many loathe Putin even more than they used to and support for NATO (cold comfort to you, perhaps) and the West are boosted. Again, the inverse of many of the examples you gave, no?

Failure would be Ukraine being completely conquered and subjugated by Russia. Failure would be the Ukrainian army deserting en masse, as they lose a sense of national unity and their appetite for the war. Failure would be swathes of the world aligning with Russia, China and/or communism/authoritarianism.

As you point out, it's harder to paint a rosy picture of success. Childish dreams of kumbaya moments where Russia and China join our big hugpile and all the nations of the earth are buddy-buddy as we blast off in SpaceX rockets to other solar systems are unlikely to follow from sending Ukraine some artillery shells and tanks. Success may just be another frozen conflict and DMZ around Crimea and the Donbas. But the Ukrainians can make that decision for themselves, and if they decide to fight, I believe that they should be given the means to do so within reason.

Overseas military adventures don't particularly interest me, and I align with you in large part in your condemnation of the wars we have prosecuted in the last half-century. But I disagree that absolute isolationism in every scenario is the appropriate heuristic to pull from that. s

You have to feel for him, ever so slightly, in that he was elected on a peace platform of negotiating with Russia and the breakaway republics... and then was forced into the war by the Ukrainian ultranationalist in the Ukrainian perma-government who would have 100% assassinated him if he'd actually negotiated agreeable terms or peace.

You have to feel for him, ever so slightly, in that he was elected on a peace platform of negotiating with Russia and the breakaway republics... and then was forced into the war by the Ukrainian ultranationalist in the Ukrainian perma-government who would have 100% assassinated him if he'd actually negotiated agreeable terms or peace the Russian tanks rolling across the border and the associated demands for concessions from NATO that Zelensky wasn't in a position to make.

FIFY

Can’t blame them for doing what they have to do in a desperate situation.

Of course, if Zelensky had been more pusillanimous / conciliatory to the Russians the same online dissident rightists would be decrying him as a disloyal Jew who sold out brave Ukrainian nationalists to Putin and the (((Oligarchs))) in exchange for shekels wired to his Israeli bank account, so ¯\(ツ)/¯

This is just excuse for any form of bad behavior showing motivated reasoning.

There is obviously a big difference with promoting people who are seen as Satanists with being a more traditionalist figure.

If Zelensky managed to avoid war while being more conciliatory towards the Russians most of the people complaining today about him would ignore him. Generally, you must be a massive prick to get plenty of the online right to hate on you. And especially a massive prick in a manner that offends right wingers. Even during the war he could have done certain things differently and been more likeable that is certainly the case.

The number of rightists who will hate any figure just for their ethnicity no matter what they do is rather small. There is a bigger number of people who will excuse any form of bad behavior because of the ethnicity of the person involved and pretend rightists are just full of blind prejudice.

Politicians and influential people who in any way pander even to some extend to the desires of rightists end up with rightists liking them more. Including some of the far right crowd. Suspicions exist for valid reasons. This is the big issue among all the people whining about rightists haters and bigots. They are the hateful ones actually and their complaining is nonsensical. Do you and the people you whine of being unfortunate targets of excessive hatred, ever try to be friendly to at least some of the people you complain about? Of course not.

You can choose to hate on the rightists and excuse pandering to who Zelensky panders towards but then don't complain when they hate back. You aren't owed nor deserve unconditional support.

In the case of Zelensky, the man banned political parties, betrayed the promises he was elected for, shelled civilian areas and let loose war criminal groups and will not allow elections in 2024. Moreover by making his country a thrall to the extreme agendas of factions of western establishment he is doing his country a great evil.

I would have hoped people would have realized by now that it matters who you put in charge in key institutions and it does change the trajectory of a country. The model of these far left circles has self negation of national identity, that is cultural genocide, self hatred, mass migration and promotion of all sorts of far left pathologies which include in the mix discrimination against the natives, hate speech laws, and promotion of LGBT ideology and preferential treatment for them.

Choosing to do this because it is a desperate situation is a stupid choice, but also it downplays Zelensky own complicity.

if Zelensky had been more pusillanimous / conciliatory to the Russians

Do you mean before or after the war broke out?

After, as before he was comparatively pro-Russian by the standards of post-Maidan Ukrainian politicians.

In that case it's clear that your assumptions about dissident rightists bear little resemblance to reality.

Considering that Zelenskyy won the 2019 election in a landslide on a peace platform, committing to peace talks with the Russian separatists in Donbas, I wouldn’t call ‘following up on his campaign promises’ to be selling out the large majority who elected him for that purpose.

As John Mearsheimer has noted, it was only once Zelenskyy departed from his peace posture, sabotaged by NATO minion Boris Johnson in April 2022, that he no longer represented the wishes of the Ukrainian electorate and only then betrayed them.

I would hazard a guess that a peace platform with "Russian separatists in Donbass" in 2021 and a peace platform with Russia shelling you and rolling the tanks in in 2022 are two different peace platforms.

Politicians should follow election platforms blindly without regard to changing circumstances like enchanted broomsticks from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" until an election gives them the opportunity to adopt a new platform.

There is evidence Russia was positioning for a large scale war and being isolated for years. They cleaned up their finances a lot since 2014. Still had 350 billion to be claimed out there but they had positioned their budget to be able to handle being cutoff.

The whole peace thing makes sense if Russia was willing to take a deal on Crimea plus breakaway republics but their actions indicate their peace condition was Ukraine not being in the EU and orienting their trade to Russia instead of the richer west.

There is evidence Russia was positioning for a large scale war and being isolated for years.

I don't understand why this makes them less likely to want a peaceful solution. If I wanted peace and felt threatened that's what I would do, were I big or small.

It’s evidence that Russia wasn’t looking for a “reasonable” peace deal but were always angling to conquor the whole thing.

Yes Ukraine should want peace. Nobody disagrees with that but it feels a bit like a Jew wanting peace with Hitler. He was only offering them the gas chamber.

Once you've invested sufficiently in military build-up, you need to somehow translate that buildup into some sort of gain for yourself, or you've wasted a lot of money for nothing. Armies have inertia.

That's fair enough, although one would expect that using them as leverage in negotiation and the odd colonial intervention would be enough right?

This is why I didn't expect the war to happen in the first place. Sustained wars have the ability to sap your military standing and it is almost always better to use strength as a diplomatic tool if you can.

I guess Boris was sent to call the bluff, and not without reason when we look at the Russian performance.

Do you think that Zelensky's attitude to Russia changed because a disgraced British politician sat on him, or because the Russian army invaded his country and committed the normal (i.e. large) number of atrocities that ill-disciplined armies commit when they invade a country.

Wait, so is supporting the hardcore Ukrainian Azov/Banderite nationalists who want to fight to the end and never surrender the democratic or non-democratic decision now? It’s hard to keep track with the endless flip-flopping of ‘realist’, isolationist and general contrarian Twitter takes. Should Zelensky have been a citizen-of-nowhere globalist who sold out to the Russians and expat-ed to Israel at the earliest opportunity, or should he have stayed and allowed the hardcore nationalists to fight to the end (and tried to get them more weapons) as he has done?

There’s no real consistency to criticism of him. His detractors can’t seem to decide whether he’s too weak, too stubborn, too much of a NATO cuck or too powerful and humiliating western governments who are trying to rein in his maximalism. Usually it’s whatever’s convenient for their argument. To me, he seems to be committed to doing what the people of Ukraine want, which is to exercise their bloodlust and to fight, whatever happens and whatever is strategically ‘right’, to the last man.

There is no such thing as popular will. Nor is there any such thing as the people, of Ukraine or anywhere else.

Zelensky is a fairly standard if aesthetically eccentric eastern european politician who will do whatever it takes to stay alive and in power, in that order.

To that end, and like every politician, he has to reach an equilibrium between the interests of national and international powers and factions, which leads him, like every politician, to seemingly contradictory policy and criticism for said policy. You should expect contradiction, since it's inherent to the exercise of power.

If you want to get an analytical answer as to why Zelensky makes a decision and if that was effective for his goals, you need to look at those actions in the context of interacting with those surrounding established factions and powers. Not ask theological questions such as "what do the people of Ukraine want".

There is no such thing as popular will. Nor is there any such thing as the people, of Ukraine or anywhere else.

What do you call the 1991 independence vote in which 84% of people voted and 92% of those voters voted for independence?

A justification ritual.

Only someone who believes in the metaphysical claim that votes can reveal the will of the people feels bound by them. Since I understand the mechanics of democracy, I believe no such thing. People can be made to vote for anything.

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There is no such thing as popular will. Nor is there any such thing as the people, of Ukraine or anywhere else.

What utter Thatcherite nonsense.

Remember September 11? Did Americans go "Huh, something happened over there in New York? How about that, good thing it's got nothing to do with me"? Or did they go "OH YOU WANT A FIGHT BOY, LET'S GO"?

Was that before or after they were told how to think about it by the authorities and who the object of their ire should be, at times on completely false pretenses?

The media demanded a war neocons had wanted for a while and they got it. Had the elite of the time been radically against the intelligence community instead of for it they probably would have asked for the dismantling of the CIA and got it on also perfectly justifiable grounds.

"Americans" are perfectly unable to "want" anything because they are a category made up by a civil religion whose "will" is tied to the interests of institutions. They "want" what the NYT says they want and if they do not are ignored and marginalized.

Individual Americans may have wanted a whole lot, including a full investigation of those events, but they only got what they were told they wanted and what few they could organize to make happen. Because that is how power works.

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Somehow the Ukrainian electorate has no idea about it... That's no problem, there are enough Americans who can explain Ukrainians what they really want.

Hearts and minds of people who matter, not yours.

No shit. They need cash and weapons now, not the support of internet contrarians who will always hate them because they had the audacity to be invaded by the Russians.

Zelensky is playing the American culture war. This isn't an indictment of Zelensky, who is in a desperate position. But it's an interesting glimpse into who really matters (and who doesn't). In Zelensky's belief, pandering to the most ridiculous beliefs of American leftists is a winning strategy. I think he's wrong about this, but it's revealing glimpse into the state of affairs.

Why do you think it is wrong? On the one side, he may gain some support from people to whom the White House may listen. On the other side, he loses the support of people who has repeatedly declared they hate him and won't give him a dime anyway. Why do you think his strategy is wrong? Not from American, but from purely transactional side with the goal of getting the most help possible the fastest way possible?

It is possible that part of the establishment does listen to the right. The movement shitting on vaccines and lockdowns was shut upon but eventually things moved a little bit more in line with their view.

By pissing plenty of people online, and acting unreasonably, Zelensky is influencing people who matter too.

Plus it matters to his country who he panders to. You aren't Ukrainian neither incidentally, and Ukraine is not a democracy.

Most importantly this kind of logic you are promoting of it doesn't matter what you do so long you pander to the far left leads to very dark path and it does imply that the people who you act as they don't matter have a license to act in a more brazzen way so they actually can matter. Just like you and the people you support like Zelensky, and the people who he aligns with have been acting quite aggressively.

People can be diplomatic with it, but we haven't yet degenerated to the point that no matter how unreasonable you are if you align with a certain faction, you won't lose support. Indeed, like most obsessions of parts of American establishment, whether covid, russiagate, or indeed foreign conflicts, eventually they will focus on a new current thing.

I think he's losing mainstream Republicans who were firmly on Ukraine's side before.

I feel it's more the reverse - more Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon of "we are sending billions to Ukraine while (insert your actual point)" - which btw is a good example of "technically true as accounting goes but wildly misleading in substance" - mostly because it's easy and resonates with certain contingent. And that locks them into anti-Ukraine position, because you can't say that and then vote for sending more help to Ukraine - you'd be called a blowhard and a hypocrite (which most politicians are, but they hate that fact being highlighted). And given that, Zelensky doesn't have any incentive to take them into account anymore - if they are locked in into a position that doesn't help him anyway, they are lost cause, and there's no reason not to suck up to their enemies - with those at least there's a chance.

which btw is a good example of "technically true as accounting goes but wildly misleading in substance"

Misleading how? We now know for certain that billions are being spent to payroll Ukraine's entire civil service as well as provide direct subsidies to small businesses. It is definitively not all expired weapons writeoffs.

Again, these are very vague "billions are being spent". Which billions we are talking about? There are military aid packages. There are non-military aid packages. There are US money. There are World bank money. There are European money. If you want to audit that and point out certain spending you object to - fine, but you can't seriously discuss it in the format "our children are starving while Ukraine gets billions" - because children wouldn't benefit neither from stopping HIMARS shipments to Ukraine (children, even very hungry ones, can't eat a HIMARS rocket [citation needed]), not from stopping World Bank programs - because those programs, if not going to Ukraine, wouldn't be directed to the starving children you care so much about. If there's specific objection to specific spending - fine, it's completely OK to discuss it, but talking about all the financial help altogether as an amorphous blob of "billions" that can be freely converted and directed to any purpose is exactly what I call misleading. It doesn't work this way.

Are you referring to the Ashton-Cirillo affair? I'm pretty sure Zelensky's not personally in charge of picking spokespersons for a minor branch of the Ukrainian army that essentially, if I've understood correctly, serves as the actual frontline army's farm team (or for getting rid of such spokespersons if they cause issues, either).

Zelensky

I suppose I am using the metonym. By Zelensky, I am referring to the war strategy for the country as a whole.

Are you suggesting that the transwoman was picked as the English spokesperson because she just happened to be the best person for the job? Clearly, there is a culture war angle at play here, and that whoever is calling the shots thinks that these cheap tricks will lead to more funding.

Similarly, Zelensky (actual Zelensky here) is not choosing to wear the ridiculous military fatigues because they are the most comfortable clothing available to him.

A show is being put on, and the audience is not the U.S. people as a whole, but only left wing of the Democratic Party. It's a strategy. I don't think it's the correct one personally. Zelensky should play it more straight. Ukraine is naturally sympathetic here and shouldn't alienate any of their natural allies.

A rather simple explanation for choosing Ashton-Cirillo as a spokesperson would be being one of the few native English-speaking volunteer fighters with media experience compounded with a distinct lack of military experience.

Sure, the military fatigues are a media strategy, but do you really think that the main audience for that one is "only left wing of the Democratic Party"?

but do you really think that the main audience for that one is "only left wing of the Democratic Party"?

Yes? This is literally Dylan Mulvaney of war propaganda, who else would take it seriously?

I meant the military fatigues, specifically.

Insofar as I’ve observed on social media, the online American factions really playing attention to Ashton-Cirillo are NAFO shibas, who would support anyone talking about killing Russians, and American conservatives who are casting out to find any evidence of Ukraine being ‘work’ for domestic culture war reasons and also probably because it makes them feel better about implicitly supporting the invading side.

I meant the military fatigues, specifically.

Oh... Well, if the comment you're responding to mentions several things, and you only mean to respond to one, it's a good idea to quote the relevant part.

Yeah, the fatigues are funny, but don't move me either way.

Actually Zelensky does need the support of the people funding his stupid war. It’s becoming a major issue in American politics, to the point where people are getting pretty annoyed with him.

Poland recently told him to pound sand, and compared him to a drowning person who is going to take anybody who tries to save him down with him.

Instead of playing war hero, complete with his idiotic green costume her wears all the time, and constantly referring to Russians as “invaders” like some sort of marvel movie speech, Zelensky should be negotiating a truce, or laying out reasonable pathways to ending the war, not making absurd claims like that he, who has been losing his war, is going to push Russia completely out of the LPR and DPR (areas occupied by Russians since long before Putin invaded), and somehow retake Crimea.

The whole thing is absurd. It’s a ridiculous, nationally suicidal vanity project by a former television actor, and an American president who seems to be looking for a surrogate to fulfill the fantasy version of his dead son.

constantly referring to Russians as “invaders” like some sort of marvel movie speech

This is entirely accurate, as Russian army invaded Ukraine. If Russians dislike being in position of villains, maybe they should stop invading, murdering, looting and raping.

Or at least stop being surprised why noone wants Russian little green men visiting and why everyone in regions funds Ukrainian defense. (that is because funding it now is preferable to covering both human and financial costs of being invaded by Russia)

Zelensky should be negotiating a truce

Yeah, lets negotiate it in Budapest. Maybe call it Budapest Memorandum.

(in case above line is unclear: Russia has negative credibility and any promises of no invading they would make are useless. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum )

who has been losing his war, is going to push Russia completely out of the LPR and DPR (areas occupied by Russians since long before Putin invaded)

??? 2014 invasion was Putin's invasion. Also, right now Russia seems losing war if anyone is doing it

his stupid war.

Just double-checking here, but you do know that Putin did, in fact, invade Ukraine, correct?

Can you make your clear? Are you suggesting that the person you are replying to might genuinely not be aware of that, or are you just engaging in petty language policing?

Are you suggesting that the person you are replying to might genuinely not be aware of that

I think it is likely that they know this fact, but pretend that reality is different.

Or rather, they understand that repeating words and formulations that give a one sided view of events is one of the classical principles of propaganda and you're pretending not to.

constantly referring to Russians as “invaders” like some sort of marvel movie speech

Are you suggesting they're not invaders? "One who invades", and all that? Surely if an accurate description of actions makes them sound like Marvel villainy, the way to correct that is "don't take villainous actions", not "hope they won't be described accurately".

It’s a ridiculous, nationally suicidal vanity project

"Resist invasions by foreign armies" is almost definitional to being a nation. Don't do that and you're just prey.

by a former television actor

Do you really not understand that it's not inherently ridiculous for a former television actor to stand up to Russia? This is even more obviously reaching than your sartorial complaints.

Reagan was ridiculous and he totally failed in the long run. Granted the other options were likely worse.

Reagan was ridiculous and he totally failed in the long run.

When I was a child, Reagan calling out the Soviet Union was ridiculous "cowboy diplomacy", anti-Communism was the hateful thing we read about in "The Crucible", the Berlin Wall had been helping imprison East Germans for a generation and a half, half of Europe was behind the Iron Curtain, the world had 60K nuclear warheads ready to obliterate half of humanity 45 minutes after someone got angry enough (or 45 minutes after a simple mistake, depending), anti-missile systems were "reckless Star Wars schemes", and tankies were still trying to get away with "both sides" false equivalences.

When I was a young adult, there was no Soviet Union, declassification was revealing more historical Communist spies and atrocities than we'd imagined, there was no Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall was a street party, the superpowers were dismantling thousands of warheads a year and no longer had the rest on a hair trigger, tactical missile defense was saving lives and theater missile defense was starting to make intercepts, and (at least for the next couple decades) it seemed like we'd seen the last of tankies.

In the long run maybe we're all dead anyway, but that was an unexpected reprieve for a couple generations at least.

Reagan's anti-communism was his redeeming quality, to be clear.

Well, that was the one quality I was referring to. And it's hard to fault him for less successful attempts to improve the country ... although if I had to pick one ticking time bomb I'd say it's a bit damning that his terms in office were (due to Congress as much as him, to be fair) when US fiscal policy stopped being "borrowing has been an indispensable tool during major wars and the Great Depression, so it's important to stay prepared by getting ahead of our debt burden the rest of the time" and transitioned to the more modern "haha T-bill printer go brrrr".

How did Reagan fail? Reddit loves to act like he was the worse POTUS ever but he did contribute to USSR collapsing. His economic reforms caused growth to increase versus countries that failed to do the same.

He’s one of the great ones in my book.

Sometimes I just want to bash my head into the wall when people say Reagan was a failure. He was the first neoliberal/Milton Friedman back Potus. He was so incredibly successful Democrats became neoliberals and it’s now a slur against them. I had to quit being a neoliberal because my enemies stole the term. I’d argue they aren’t true neoliberals but ordoliberals would likely be more accurate but still.

The guy with the 1986 amnesty for 2.7m undocumented immigrants? Who as Governor signed the first No Fault Divorce law in the US? Traded the Hughes Amendment for the toothless FOPA? That guy is one of the greats?

Reagan failed to roll back any of the 'civil rights' era disasters in any significant way. At a minimum, he should have been able to end with a period all of Johnson's "Great Society" nonsense, and destroy the entire 'civil rights' apparatus that had been built. Instead we got modest tax cuts and huge military spending.

What civil rights era disasters and/or apparatus are you referring to here?

The whole of the civil rights era was a disaster that broadly lead us to where we are today. The apparatus I'm referring to are the Justice Departments various offices that investigate and prosecute civil rights crap, the NGOs that feed them, etc.

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I think he means that he didn't deliver on what he was elected to do. Bush Jr. was a meh president all things considered, but if you consider "no nation building" that he ran on, he was an unmitigated disaster.

I’m saying that constantly referring to them as “the invaders” instead of The Russians is performative.

Ukraine is prey now and their “resistance” to Russia’s invasion is going to lose them their nation, not keep it.

As soon as Americans have had enough of Zelensky’s adventure, it’s going to be over and he’s going to be left with a generation of lost men, every western investment bank salivating at helping The Ukrainians rebuild, and a bunch of destroyed cities.

I’m saying that constantly referring to them as “the invaders” instead of The Russians is performative.

No; it's precise. Most Russians, even considered by nationality, have not invaded Ukraine, and something like a third will admit to pollers that they don't even support the invasion. There's little reason, when concerned with the armies who have invaded Ukraine, to use a less precise term for them. When considering Russians by ethnicity the distinction becomes even more important: many have been among the victims of the invasion. It might be an understandable accident to lump them together with their killers when speaking imprecisely, but why would anyone ever want to do so on purpose?

their “resistance” to Russia’s invasion is going to lose them their nation, not keep it.

That's not how game theory works.

Do you think that, if they'd allowed their capital city to be taken by the columns of invading tanks, that would have allowed them to keep their nation? Don't you think that's quite gullible? Putin made no such promises, and it's not even safe to trust agreements he does make.

Zelensky’s adventure

This word choice is performative nonsense. Nobody thinks that shooting back at the people sending bombs and missiles and tanks and soldiers to try and conquer you is an "adventure".

It's weird that you assign so much agency to the Ukrainians here, and yet I haven't seen you assign any to the invaders. Since your concern for the Ukranian men isn't feigned, surely you agree that the choice to invade was an atrocity, right? Even the most ardent honest pacifists will agree that starting a war is more evil than fighting back instead of surrendering.

generation of lost men

Ukraine has had those before. If we assume for your sake that the low death estimates there are correct and the high death estimates of the current war are correct, the war has to get about 30 times more deadly before the death toll of opposing Russia exceeds the death toll of being controlled by Russia.

Ukraine has had those before. If we assume for your sake that the low death estimates there are correct and the high death estimates of the current war are correct, the war has to get about 30 times more deadly before the death toll of opposing Russia exceeds the death toll of being controlled by Russia.

Obviously there is no good reason to suppose that being controlled by Russia will lead to a new Holomdor. And a peace settlement does not result in Ukraine being controlled by Russia.

I get it. Putin is the bad guy. Russia is the bad guy.

But in the real world: Zelensky has no path to realistically expelling Russia from the land they want, short of dragging the rest of the world into WW3.

If you really want to game it out: Zelensky has every reason to try and escalate this conflict. His best option is to drag my children into a war so that he can take some land back from Russia. The problem is: I’m not willing to send my children to their death so that Zelensky can have a little bit more land in the northeast of Ukraine. I’m also not willing to risk an all out nuclear conflict so that Zelensky can have more land in northeastern Ukraine.

Lock Zelensky and Putin (the bad guy Russia is bad Russia invaded Ukraine Russia bad) in a room together and demand that they hammer out a peace deal. That IS going to result in Russia keeping some of the land they’ve taken. In exchange Ukraine gets to keep a couple of hundred thousand young men alive.

As far as what is a nation: The United States is a nation too. It is not in our vital national security interests to escalate a regional conflict to the point where we are sending our children to their death. If Zelensky wants to continue his national suicide then go for it, but I’m not funding it anymore, and if he succeeds in escalating it to WW3, no promises he doesn’t end up on the other side when the US has gamed out her interests.

Zelensky has ...

His best option...

so that he can ...

so that Zelensky can...

so that Zelensky can have more...

It's astonishing the level of dishonesty that goes into writing a paragraph like this.

It's not Zelensky doing this. If Zelensky negotiated a surrender to Russia right now, the Ukrainian people would toss his ass to the curb and probably kill him for it.

Ah so he has no option to negotiate?

Have you signed yourself up for the Ukrainian foreign legion yet or no?

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If by the "Ukrainian people" you mean the people in charge behind Biden and Zelensky. There's a surprising number of people in Biden's inner circle that seem to have ties to a certain region West of Russia.

Blinken told the story of his stepfather, who was the only Holocaust survivor of the 900 children of his school in Poland. Pisar found refuge in a U.S. tank after making a break into the forest during a Nazi death march. Nuland was born Shepsel Ber Nudelman in The Bronx, New York City, on December 8, 1930, to immigrant parents, Meyer Nudelman (a Moldovan Jewish garment repairman, 1889–1958)[5][6] and Vitsche Lutsky (a Belarusian Jew, 1893–1941).[5][7] Merrick Brian Garland [...] grandparents left the Pale of Settlement in the western Russian Empire in the early 20th century, fleeing antisemitic pogroms in what is now Ukraine and Poland, and seeking a better life for their children in the United States. ...

Realistically speaking, the men getting sent to the meat-grinder at gun point are not a threat to Zelensky. Only people close to him, you know, whoever flies him around to Canada and the US etc.

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But in the real world: Zelensky has no path to realistically expelling Russia from the land they want, short of dragging the rest of the world into WW3.

Making it a financial drain is all you need. Russia only has so many tanks, planes, etc. in storage that can be re-activated. While there are efforts to step up defense production, it's not easy and Russia is a thoroughly corrupt nation whose government hemorrhages money into the pockets of whoever holds it at every step.

Zelensky, meanwhile, gets the financial, material, and ideological support not only of many different powerful nations to keep the war going, but their populations as well.

As far as what is a nation: The United States is a nation too. It is not in our vital national security interests to escalate a regional conflict to the point where we are sending our children to their death.

It is 100% in the US' interests to ensure the world order isn't realigned to favor Russian tactics. Every country planning on doing something similar is going to realize that going to war against the combined power of the Western order must be done with far more care.

If you only care as that your own nation isn't invaded, so be it, but much of the prosperity America enjoys stems from America's export of security to the numerous smaller players. Take that away and you've got a poorer America. Those players each contribute to that defense in their own ways as well, even if they don't spend enough directly on their own militaries.

Making it a financial drain is all you need. Russia only has so many tanks, planes, etc. in storage that can be re-activated. While there are efforts to step up defense production, it's not easy and Russia is a thoroughly corrupt nation whose government hemorrhages money into the pockets of whoever holds it at every step.

Yes but as few tanks and guns and ammo as Russia has, Ukraine has even fewer, it's why they are entirely depending on Zelensky flying around the world in his green outfit and begging/shaming other countries into funding his war.

Look it's horseshit that Putin invaded. That sucks for the Ukrainian people that are suffering, but Zelensky is only prolonging the suffering. This is not a marvel movie where the good guys win. The guys with more artillery, more land, more calories for their troops, more money, and more ability to threaten the rest of the world win. In this case, that is Putin.

Putin is going to win, the only question at this point is how long it's going to take, and how many young Ukrainian men are going to die.

The only way that doesn't happen is if Zelensky succeeds in starting WW3. I hope that nobody is deranged enough to think that is a reasonable sacrifice for the rest of the world so that he doesn't have to go to the negotiating table.

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It’s not about a little bit of land in the northeast of Ukraine. It’s the entire country. They would cease to be a people. It would be a choice between mass emigration and living under an Iron curtain.

It’s like the supposedly realist don’t know anything about how Russia has treated them historically.

It’s not about a little bit of land in the northeast of Ukraine. It’s the entire country.

I thought they wanted half, and that they periodically send messages through unofficial channels that they'd be ok with NATO rolling into the other half?

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Zelensky was always much more conciliatory to Russia than the vast majority of other post-2014 politicians, he seemed not to even believe an invasion was coming until it actually happened. Describing him as embarking on a

ridiculous, nationally suicidal vanity project by a former television actor

...is really weird, he was much less jingoistic or nationalist than Poroshenko. Ukrainian nationalists really didn't like Zelensky (and many still don't) out of perceived weakness versus Russia before 2022. He also has no real choice but to keep fighting, he'd be shot in the back if he pursued major concessions now.

an American president who seems to be looking for a surrogate to fulfill the fantasy version of his dead son

Do you think US support for Ukraine would be different if Donald Trump was still President?

Let's wait and see. A suspension is just a suspension.

Think you mean this as a reply, rather than a top level thread.

MartyrMade, who occasionally says interesting things but has gone off the deep end recently, wrote an unconvincing substack article about Pizzagate. First, his main target, John Podesta, isn't even the guy that owns any of the artwork he portrays as sick and demented. That would be Tony, his brother.

I don't really know what to make of him. He's extremely rhetorically gifted and whenever he writes about something I'm not familiar with he sounds super convincing. When he writes about things I do know about he makes bizarre errors like the ones you noted, like claiming Zbigniew Brzezinski was the Secretary of State, or dramatic, unsourced assertions, like that exporting to global markets is bad for farmers in the global south (if anything the opposite argument that it increased farming sector dependency is more common)

The only time I've seen him called out for playing fast and loose with his claims, he didn't respond in a way that built confidence in his research process. It was from an essay on the history of mythology that to a large extent revolved around the claim that the central religion of the early Bronze Age was a belief in a universal Mother Goddess. One of the commenters pointed out that the Great Goddess theory has decreased in popularity, and he responded that he flat out didn't read anything on mythology written after 1950, and was wary of most things written after 1850.

1850 onward would of course include the Great Goddess hypothesis he's writing about, and as far as I can tell we just found a bunch of ancient female figurines and filled in the rest of the narrative ourselves. I don't know much about ancient religions so I have to trust authors here when they don't provide sources, which he didn't. Authoritatively claiming the existence of continent spanning religious traditions while openly saying you didn't even do a google search to check if we've found evidence they're real is not the kind of stuff that builds that trust for me.

This is nothing compared to his twitter, where I've just seen him sharing the laziest of disinformation, like videos splicing together separate clips of Lindsay Graham speaking to make him say homicidal things about Russians, fully emblazoned with community notes warning of this.

First, his main target, John Podesta, isn't even the guy that owns any of the artwork he portrays as sick and demented. That would be Tony, his brother.

Is that even a meaningful difference?

Yes, given that the naming of various high-powered Democrats as Pizzagate child abusers was based on John Podesta's e-mails, not Tony's.

"Tony Podesta is a paedo, so everyone in his e-mail address book has some 'splaining to do or else they go down for aiding and abetting" is a claim of guilt-by-association that doesn't stand up in court, but is a reasonable approach to take when deciding who is allowed access to your kids (or would be, if the evidence that Tony Podesta was a child molester was at least circumstantial rather than just vibes). "John Podesta's brother is a paedo, so everyone in his e-mail address book has some 'splaining to do or else they go down for aiding and abetting" is nonsense. I would have no idea if any of my main professional or social contacts had a brother who is a sex offender, because I don't vet my contacts' siblings, and apart from spouses probably never meet them.

I agree it isn't a meaningful difference to the question "Is Marina Abramovic a fit and proper person to be an honorary ambassador of Ukraine" because she was tight with both Podestas.

That's not what I meant. How is it relevant that he wasn't the one who technically purchased the paintings?

First, his main target, John Podesta, isn't even the guy that owns any of the artwork he portrays as sick and demented. That would be Tony, his brother. Second, the two pieces of artwork that were pictured in Tony's house are quite milquetoast. I'd say something like the Garden of Earthly Delights is far more disturbing than anything Podesta has in his home, but I doubt MartyrMade would find that painting objectionable.

I think the thing that gets me about Pizzagate is that (like the Tim Ballard / Sound of Freedom stuff) it completely misunderstands who the victims of the 'real life' versions of these things are. They're pretty much never middle-class white American or Western European kids. This is the 'Taken' fantasy. When rich and powerful people commit this kind of sexual abuse, they go abroad to do it, the victims are powerless people from third-world countries born into impoverished families in remote communities usually already connected in some way to organized crime. Nobody super rich is risking jail by abusing white american kids in the basement of a DC restaurant, just like no child trafficker is risking a mega police operation, arrest and a long, long, long time in jail by kidnapping Liam Neeson's rich white American daughter off the streets of Paris. Even Epstein switched very quickly from preying on Manhattan private school girls to largely pursuing penniless (often illegal) Hispanic migrants in the dirt poor West Palm Beach suburbs.

But sex trafficking of poor Guatemalans or Cambodians is a lot less interesting to the conservative audience than blonde whites having it happen to them, so storytellers are forced to improvise.

They're pretty much never middle-class white American or Western European kids.

Jeffery Epstein was picking up local white girls in Florida. I don't think any of them would have qualified as middle class, but several of them lived with at least one gainfully employed parent. Virginia Guiffre (the girl in the famous Prince Andrew picture) was working at Mar-a-Lago when Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her, which makes her at least respectable working class.

OTOH, it does look like he was picking on girls who were screwed up in various ways. For example, Virgina Guiffre had already been sexually abused by two men (one in her mother's house, one while living as a runaway) before moving in with her father, and was trying to become a masseuse.

The Roman Catholic Man-Boy Love Association targetted some kids from normie families who were sufficiently functional to be regular churchgoers. (Although the majority of the victims were children in Church-run children's homes, it was buggering the altar boys which gave the scandal legs). In the UK, the sexual abuse extended to pupils at Ampleforth, which was the most expensive and socially prestigious private school in the north of England. The other smaller religious sex abuse scandals tend to follow the same pattern.

The Penn State sex abuse scandal and similar scandals in youth sports (which is as lousy with sex abusers as the RCMBLA) involved student-athletes as victims, who tend to be middle-class, or at least respectable working class.

So although the "Taken" fantasy is almost entirely a media creation, it definitely isn't the case that normie middle-class white American kids are safe from sex abuse. It's just that it tends to involve corrupt authority figures, not stereotypical predators.

WARNING FOR PARENTS - THIS IS IMPORTANT - YOUR KID IS NOT PROTECTED FROM SEXUAL ABUSE BY CORRUPT AUTHORITY FIGURES BY YOUR MONEY, POWER OR COMMUNITY STANDING UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY DO THE WORK OF PROTECTING THEM. This starts by giving them the tools to talk to you about dodgy shit, and making sure they feel safe doing so.

I thought Sandusky was recruiting victims from Second Mile the charity he founded for at risk youth.

Having checked, you are right. From the UK I had always assumed that Penn State was another "coach sexually abuses athletes" scandal similar to the US gymnastics scandal or the (boys) youth soccer and (girls) swimming scandals going on in the UK at the time.

The Penn State sex abuse scandal

Was the Penn State sex abuse scandal real? I remember reading a very convincing takedown which suggested that it was not. But of course it's been memory holed.

Does anyone have a link?

Yes, it was very real. There are a certain segment of Penn State football fans who refuse to believe anything negative about the program, and while this is usually limited to making excuses for Joe Paterno, a few have gone off the deep end and claimed that the abuse never happened. There is some question as to what exactly Mike McQueary witnessed that led to the coverup that got higher-ups indicted, but without that there are still enough known victims that it's clear Sandusky was an abuser. The allegations that kicked off the grand jury investigation were recent and unrelated to those that were reported on the most.

The vast majority of sexual abuse is, of course, committed within the family and community, so I certainly wouldn't suggest that 'middle class white kids' are 'immune' from it. But when it comes to the group-based sexual trafficking of children by strangers (ie. the Hollywood/Operation Underground angle) then yes, it's almost never the 'Taken' demographic. The same thing was true in Rotherham and the other UK grooming gang scandals; in those cases many of the victims were indeed white British, but they were from broken homes, most had been in the care/foster system, had drug issues, previous sexual abuse, were children of single mothers etc etc.

The other smaller religious sex abuse scandals tend to follow the same pattern.

Yes, the pattern being that in the church cases, the abused boys were most typically, as you say, from children's homes and/or from broken families in the community (and this is very evident too in eg. the Boston Catholic child abuse scandal as portrayed in Spotlight etc).

Jeffery Epstein was picking up local white girls in Florida.

Whether poor Hispanics from oft-broken families in West Palm Beach (who made up a substantial proportion of Epstein's younger victims) are or aren't huwhite is the kind of question I leave for dissident rightists on Twitter, but the main point is that, again, the 'narrative' of child sex trafficking as affecting nice middle class kids in nice areas lured off the street by a predator in a white van offering ice cream is wrong. And even in Epstein's case, it's alleged that many of his non-American victims were trafficked from Eastern Europe or were poor Eastern European models in New York whom he promised Victoria's Secret contracts via Wexner etc; the courts are just less able to pursue those cases in the US and the victims less likely to speak out.

It's also more broadly true that middle class people are much more likely to speak out than working class ones. So judging the distribution of risk from media accounts is extremely likely to present a skewed picture of the relative likelihood of victimization by class.

The vast majority of sexual abuse is, of course, committed within the family and community, so I certainly wouldn't suggest that 'middle class white kids' are 'immune' from it.

I would say kids raised by their married biological parents are pretty safe from family-based sex abuse, and in the current year being raised by married biological parents is strongly correlated with being middle-class.

But my impression is that sex abuse (of children and young adults) by corrupt authority figures is enough of a problem that saying the "vast majority" of sex abuse happens in the family and community is misleading. I have no idea whether the ratio of "family and friends abuse" to "corrupt authority figure abuse" is 1:3 or 3:1, and I don't think anyone else is keeping count either. As a parent, I would like to know.

Part of the problem talking about this in places other than the Motte is that the media narrative about this kind of thing tends to be heavily vibes-driven, so trying to draw this kind of distinction, or even to try and draw a distinction between abuse of pre-pubescent children vs abuse of young adults, gets your head bitten off by enraged mothers. And of course, if you reduce Pizzagate to vibes, there is zero doubt that Hilary Clinton really did help cover up sexual abuse of young adults by powerful politicians - her husband was impeached over it. If it turns out that the takeaway pizza Monica brought to Bill before blowing him came from Comet Ping Pong Pizza, a lot of people would say that this makes Pizzagate "true", even though none of the lurid accounts of sex abuse of pre-pubescent children being talked about by Qanon types actually happened.

Unless you are really willing to commit to modern Twitter age gap discourse, there is really a huge difference between 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky and prepubescent sex slave children.

I agree with you. The whole point I was trying to make was that in a vibes-based discourse trying to make the distinction between different types of sexual misconduct is likely to get you in trouble for minimising/excusing one end of the comparison, but it is actually important if you want to understand what is going on.

Does the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, to the extent that it even exists as an unironic and coherent one, claim that the primary/exclusive victims of the pedo cult are "middle-class white American or Western European kids"?

Considering the Clinton Foundation activities in Haiti are somewhat central, no, I don't think it's every been limited to middle class white Americans (but I repeat myself).

I'm pretty familiar with Pizzagate and I don't think it was ever a widespread assertion that it was primarily Haitian kids getting abused in the Comet Pizza basement; the Clinton Haiti stuff was more an additional, related Qanon obsession.

Let's not mix up what is being claimed. I am not claiming that Haitian children were the primary victims. I am saying because the Haitian children are a common part of the story, it cannot be that American children are the primary victims.

I also think you're trying to differentiate between two things that are the same. The Pizza from pizzagate was Comet Ping Pong, yes, but it was also the tens of thousands of dollars of pizza and hot dogs that Obama had flown in from Chicago. It was the creepy coded messages in the Podesta emails. And it was the Clinton Foundation's in retrospect disturbing focus on children in Haiti.

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