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Every war in history has ended in a negotiated settlement in which the winner keeps the territory and prizes they took. The exceptions are things like Troy, Carthage, and Berlin... and the Ukrainians aren't making it to Moscow.
The most likely scenario if Ukraine doesn't negotiate is this continues until America stops funding them, and Europes economic aid stops working... at which point they collapse, Russsia takes vastly more, and they become a warlord run failed state for the next several decades.
Wars are either won in the maneuver or the economics and logistics... the maneuvering has stopped and Ukraine's economic position is only going to get worse. America isn't going to give them another hundred billion dollars, perhaps even a majority of that disappeared into bribes, and what's left of their economy is going to collapse in the next 6 months.
Russia taking its land corridor and the republics, and crimmea now, and then Ukraine getting a few years to actually have an economy, rearm, and ideally set u psome trade ties so they aren't on constant edge with russia is a massively better idea than them fighting til they collapse on some lie Europe told them about an EU membership they were never going to give a country with nothing to offer and a GDP below 5k per capita (ask the Turks about that one)
Meta: I hope we can maintain norms that downvotes aren't for mere disagreement. This thread has some heavily downvoted comments that as far as I can tell aren't arguing in bad faith, breaking rules, or violating other norms. This is one such comment, there are many others.
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The opening premise is false and thus the rest of the argument is false.
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The UCDP Conflict Termination dataset (link, paper) has this data:
Most wars fizzle into low-level unresolved stalemates without formal concessions or recognitions. Only half or so of interstate conflicts end in a ceasefire or peace agreements (typically the former).
In suggesting a negotiated solution, one should also be aware of the statistics and factors regardings the durability of peace agreements, and particularly the tensions over incompatible interpretations of Minsk II that failed to be resolved in the Normandy format talks that initiated this conflict.
So a negotiated settlement or a defacto settlement which saves face by not signing a paper. the point remains: there is no way you magically get lost territory back by wishing, and unless you keep escalating til you lose everything you have to accept your enemy controls what they control.
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Certainly not. Troy, Carthage, and Berlin are not the only wars where one side was vanquished. There have been many successful wars of conquest.
America can fund them at these levels (tens of billions, not hundreds) indefinitely. There's no point in them negotiating until they can be assured it means more than "we'll take what we have now and the rest later". And there is another option -- the Russian invasion and occupation force collapses and Ukraine drives them out of the country. It is not a foregone conclusion that Russia wins.
Russia has made it clear that Ukraine is not a legitimate entity to them. If the war were somehow to stop now, it would be Russia which would take a few years to re-arm and re-group and then take the rest of Ukraine.
That seems highly unlikely given how poorly the war has gone so far, and could be prevented simply by inviting Ukraine into NATO.
What does that have to do with anything?
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No it is not, but it's important to remember that there a sizable contingent of Red Diaper Babies amongst the "Gray Tribe" who's belief in Materialism, IE a rational world ruled by inductive reason, requires the Russians to win.
Why is this?
Why are the Red Diaper Babies amongst the Gray Tribe? chock it up the the academic mindset and the shit I'm always going on about Hobbes vs Rousseau.
Why is it important? It isn't in the grand scheme of things, but it does explain why rationalists in general and mottezens in particular seem to skew pro-Putin and pro-CCP despite their ostensibly libertarian backgrounds.
you are aware my Seniors thesis was on Hobbes and I'm a biological determinist?(completely antithetical to Russeau)
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Note: I don't "Identify" as a biological determinist... I am a biological determinist. My biology is deterministically making my mind process the sum of all available evidence and conclude biologically deterministic conclusions.
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Ps. For those of you wondering how one could be a Hobbesian and a libertarian, Royalist in the 17th century would be think they naturally follow. Most absolutists hated Hobbes and described Leviathan as a "Rebel's Catechism" (Ie. Justification for almost all rebellion)
To give just one example Hobbesian analysis preclude conscription, or atleast allows that armed rebellion against conscription is justified and logical, unless the person being conscripted is in immediate danger of an opposing force (such as a besieged city or alien invasion)
...and, the definition of "biological determinism" you give in the following paragraph is so broad as to be functionally meaningless.
Nothing in it precludes you from being a member of the Rousseauian faction.
I didn't offer a definition of Biological determinism. You're just humourless.
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I meant more "why does Materialism imply support for Russia?"
Because the soviets were in many respects "the great white hope" and this vibe has been carried over to neo-soviets like Putin. Couple this with the rationalist attachment to inductive reason IE that the side with superior numbers/weapons must win. that the underdog must loose, and you explain the rationalist support for Russia.
That said, if I wanted to be uncharitable I'd explain it away as a general affinity for technocratic authoritarianism amongst the intellectual class.
This feels exactly backwards to me.
My survey of westerners who think Russia will/should win includes old school Chomskyites and the deep/distant/far/dissident-right types. Both for the same reaons: they like to think of themselves as realists and/but despise the American foreign policy establishment too much to think of them as competent.
Your invocation of Hobbes/Rousseau I'm either reading incorrectly or is really out of step with reality given the people affecting this belief in this very thread count some of the most radical Hobbesian libertarians we have (or likely, exist).
The people who even have a shadow of sympathy for the original soviets here to carry over would be the Chomskyites, but not only does it feel a bit harsh to accuse them of liking authoritarianism, the idea that they would be enamored with Putin seems delusional.
If you mean to say that the dynamic of dissidents being sympathetic to ennemies of the regime is similar to communists during the cold war, you do have a point, but the analogy stops there. The ideological reasons, class of the people involved and power dynamics outside of that are either completely different of straight up the other way around.
If you're talking about @KulakRevolt, he's an old school bourgeoisie anarchist type, which is about as explicitly Rousseauean as one can get without actually participating in the French revolution.
The Hobbesian mindset holds that violence, oppression, strife, etc... is the default state of human existence, and that it is only through building institutions, social hierarchies, and other constructs that we can hope to escape/rise above it.
The Rousseauean mindset basically takes the inverse. That rather than providing refuge, institutions and social hierarchies are the cause of all violence, oppression, strife, etc... and that the only way to escape is to tear those institutions and hierarchies down.
Libertarians in general, and Kulak in particular fall into the latter camp more than the former.
As for sympathy for the Soviet Union, that comes back to what I was saying above about "Red Diaper Babies". Academia has always skewed secular and authoritarian relative to the rest of the US population, and the gray tribe is very much a product of that cultural milieu. Accordingly I can't help but notice that right up until this most recent debacle, a lot of Berkley-educated Marxists turned Bay Area Strivers, were holding Putin up as a sort of ideal of who a "rational" and "intelligent" world leader should be, and rather than being out of character it was perfectly on brand.
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