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The 'Western world' isn't asking anything of them. The Ukrainian people and government want to fight, and want the west to support them. If the Ukrainian government wanted to surrender, they could do so tomorrow without asking for anyone's permission.
Other countries have agency too.
Maybe the government wants this war. Maybe even the people do too. But not enough to go fight and die. That's why Ukraine is rounding up men and forcing them to fight against their will.
The people who seem to want this war the most are those for whom it costs nothing.
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Agency doesn't mean free choice. When they tried mere negotiations, Boris Johnson flew over to scream at them until they stopped.
...?
When the Ukrainians tried mere negotiations, the Russians were demanding a dismantling of the Ukrainian military and veto over any external security guarantors actually providing assistance in case of another continuation war.
Further, the timing of those Russian demands broadly coincided with the Ukrainians discovery of the Bucha massacre and forcing the Russian retreat from Kyiv, both of which changed the Ukrainian political appetite- governmental and popular- for negotiations.
By contrast, the power of Borris Johnson to coerce, compel, bewitch, or otherwise overturn the true desires of the Ukrainian political establishment was...?
You frame this as if it were absurd to think US had any way of influencing Ukrainians. I do find the focus on Johnson silly. The idea that at that pivotal moment US helped Ukrainians decide to commit themselves to the meatgrinder, not so much. Obviously Johnson himself would be little more than a mouthpiece.
My impression is that you never give an inch.
I frame it as absurd to think the US was responsible for the Ukrainian point of view when there is no indication the Ukrainians changed positions at all, other than claims generally fronted by Russian-originated sources which had every incentive to claim that the onus of the war continuing was on the Americans / Brits.
Characterizing negotiations breakdown as a result of the UK 'screaming at them until they stopped,' as opposed to the Russians demanding terms that would have prevented the Ukrainians from pulling a similar defense of the country in the future even as Russian atrocities were being recognized, is a silly when put in the context of what the state of negotiations were when they ended, and thus also silly when said terms and contexts aren't being acknowledged.
That the US had any way of influencing Ukrainians is truism: that's a bar so low you have to dig to not walk over it. That the US influence (by proxy, no less) was the determining factor is an appeal to the hyperagency/hypoagency framework that's a consistent flaw in understanding international affairs and especially the Ukraine conflict, which for nearly a decade has been a consistent series of Putin's Russia not recognizing Ukrainian agency and trying to attribute responsibility for resistance on others.
Just to clarify, the most recent source of the claim, that I'm familiar with, was some high-ranking Ukrainian official. There were also some German politicians saying things to this effect, but I think they were from the terminally pro-Russian faction, so I was taking that with a grain of salt until more recently.
OTOH, I probably oversold how confident I am in the claim, this is in the "something that popped up on my feed, and I never followed up" category.
But on this I have to push back. Framing it as a "the hyperagency/hypoagency framework" is a strawman, or a weakman at best. The point being made here isn't that Russians literally couldn't make another choice, it's that an American / Western move put them in a position where war seems like the best of all possible options. Normally this isn't a controversial framework, the US was justifying it's own invasion of Iraq in exactly the same way, not long ago.
I'll disagree, and maintain my criticism of your previous post.
On one level, the charge of hyperagency / hypoagency framework isn't a strawman as I'm not saying it's the argument being made, it's what I am characterizing the argument's form as in a meta-contextual description. And I made this point- and stand by it- because the characterization of reasonings for why Ukraine would continue fighting was because Borris Johnson screamed at them- a pejorative framing with connotations of aggression by the screamer and victimhood/submission by the target who acquiesces to it in an imposition of will- rather than multiple extremely more relevant factors. Like, say, Borris Johnson communicating the intend of the UK government to continue supporting Ukraine, and thus allowing the Ukrainians to make a more informed choice as to whether continuing to fight or submitting to the current terms offered by the Russians was better.
When the only relevant factor provided for a party's decision making is another party's verbal harassment, this is an agency framework that reserves true agency to the person who is the true decision maker, and subordinates agency of the other. Were the other relevant factors included and a less pejorative framing used, then the Ukrainians would have been presented as making a choice: the Ukrainians could consider what the Russians demanded (conditions following an unprovoked invasion that increasing risk of a follow on invasions with even worse terms should Russia choose to fight a fourth continuation war to complete the cassus belli war goals that this negotiation did not provide them), versus prospects of fighting on with external support. That would be a choice, even if someone disagrees that it was the better choice. But submitting to screaming is not a choice- it is an imposition of someone else's will.
Similarly, and equally relevant, is the movement of the onus of negotiation failure to the US and UK rather than Russia. The US and UK did not move to put the Ukrainians in a position where war seemed the better than Russian terms- the Russians did, multiple times. The Russians did so by launching an unprovoked invasion on false pretenses (the false-flag attempts of Ukrainian provocations that were leaked before they even occured, the false narratives on the Ukrainian suppression of the Russian-speaking minorities), the Russians also did so by conducting massacres like the Bucha massacre that demonstrated how they would treat the Ukrainians from a position of occupation, and the Russians did so by demanding terms that would directly facilitate the future occupation of Ukraine via demands that would cripple Ukraine's ability to resist occupation in exchange for a cease fire that did not meet Russia's stated or underlying goals when it initiated this war. Additionally, the Russians put Ukraine in this position because the current Ukraine War is no less than the third Russian intervention in Ukraine in less than a decade, and each one of those was a Russian choice.
Attributing the geopolitical context the Ukrainians found themselves in to the US and UK, rather than the Russians, is another form of the hyperagency/hypoagency paradigm that subordinates Russian agency- and thus responsibility for the situation- to the Americans and Brits. They are not responding to Russian agency to launch a second continuation war into Ukraine- rather, the Russian position and actions are treated as forces of natures that simply have to be dealt with pragmatically, and the US/UK actions are imposing an immoral choice on the Ukrainians instead. This is aligned with the previous choice of pejorative- Borris screaming- as the determinative factor, and that framework's issues with hyper- and hypo-agency.
Even framing the negotiations as 'the US and UK made war seem the best of all possible worlds' is a negation of the other parties agencies. The recent Afghan war quite nicely demonstrated that the US aid can't make people who don't want to fight actually fight- and thus it's not the agent as to why Ukrainians formed in the streets of Kyiv to make molotov cocktails in mass in the opening month rather than Ukrainians protesting against fighting the Russians like Putin thought would happen. Nor can the Americans dictate the other side of the table, the harms Russia could do in war. No one in the region is unfamiliar with what Grozny refers to, and the Russian treatment of temporarily occupied areas was already entering awareness. All the Americans could do is offer military support for the Ukrainians to fight if they already wanted to, they couldn't dictate the cost-perception of the Ukrainians continuing to fight.
But the Russians could- and did- both by the content of their negotiations and the conduct of their forces. I made a point a few years ago- I believe on the old site- that Bucha was a disaster for the Russians whose cost was nowhere near worth whatever benefit was perceived at the time, and this is why. Bucha was a demonstration of what the Russians were willing to do if in a position of military superiority, and Russian terms were to dismantle Ukraine's ability to resist a future incursion where it could be done again. The US did not put Ukraine in a position where future Buchas were an easily foreseeable consequence of avoiding the war at hand: Russia did. That Russia might continue to further areas by continuing this war did not change that Russia's alternatives were to set conditions for Russia to claim more more easily going forward. And the perception that Russia might fight a third continuation war in Ukraine, and thus diminishing the value of peace talks in this war that would make a fourth Russian intervention even easier, is solely a result of Russia's repeated choices.
But it's exactly your characterization of the argument's form that I'm objecting to, not any specific claim you're making about the lead-up to the conflict, or the invasion itself. Hyperagency / hypoagency is something that's wrong on it's face. Generally in life there's few situations where someone has all the power while someone else has none, let alone in geopolitics, let alone when the country with hypoagency is supposed to be one like Russia. The reason why I'm objecting to the characterization is that portraying the argument's form this way allows for dismissing the actual argument, without touching it's substance. So even if this isn't technically a strawman, it ends up working in a very similar way.
A more accurate characterization of the argument's form is something like a "pawn sacrifice". Every game with even the most basic strategic element will involve making a move, and hoping your opponent will respond in a way that you can take advantage of. That's what the US / the West is being "accused" of here, except it's not really much of an accusation, because that's just politics. Nowhere in there is "hypoagency" being attributed to any actor. If we go with the example of Johnson's visit, I'll apologize for intuitively reaching for a portrayal of the affair that makes it look like the west was imposing it's will, but it doesn't matter whether they did it by screaming or sweet-talk, threats or bribery, the point is that they made a move hoping for certain results. If the whole thing ends up being a quagmire for Russia, and Ukraine gets out of it with just a few bruises, I will have to tip my hat to the western establishment, and congratulate them for a game well played. If it turns out to be a disaster for Ukraine, on the other hand, they will end up looking incompetent. If it turns out they always knew it would be a disaster for Ukraine they will end up looking callous. You can attribute the majority of agency in the situation to Russia, and I don't see how it changes the above calculus.
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Okay, so how, exactly, did Boris Johnson stop them? What's the specific mechanism? Screaming? THat's not really enough to force anyone to do anything in geopolitics.
How am I supposed to know? It's not like I was in those behind-closed-doors meetings, but that those meetings took place in response to the Russian peace offer is not in question, as far as I understand. I would imagine he did it the way countries usually do - the threat of withholding some carrot, or applying some stick, or both.
Two can play this game - why did he go there if he had nothing to say, offer, or threaten with?
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What carrot would he have had? Weapons shipment? Little need for those if Ukrainians were hell-bent for peace. NATO membership? Explicit Russian demand was for Ukraine to not be in NATO, at this point. EU membership? There was a certain event some years ago that means Boris Johnson did not exactly have leverage on this point.
I'm not sure what other stick there would have been apart from UK actually invading Ukraine itself, which, uh, would have certainly caused a lot of questions, home and abroad.
I never said they were "hell bent".
"Either you go balls to the wall with this now, with Europe's and USA's full support, and potential rewards if you manage to win, or you're out on your own" is a pretty compelling carrot/stick combination. I don't see how Brexit enters into the picture if the Western establishment was of more or less of one mind on this.
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Why do you assume they threatened Ukraine, as opposed to Zelenksy directly? The position Boris allegedly expressed was clear. The West was not ready for the war to be over. You think if Zelensky declined their generous offer for "help", they wouldn't have found someone who would accept it? Or would have even threatened to?
If the theory is that someone would have taken over and continued fighting anyway, sure, but you don't even need the West in that participation at all. There were plenty of figures in Ukraine who had already been convinced for years that Zelensky was a Russophile traitor. One does not take the job he did if they are that concerned over their own physical survival.
The point is that a lot rests on the assumption that the Ukrainians would have been ready to make peace - would have probably made peace - at this point, but the West somehow stopped them from doing this. This assumption is not built on particularly solid ground.
And yet those talks, allegedly, were the closest Ukraine and Russia had gotten to a negotiated peace. "The Ukrainians" would have no more to do with ratifying the peace than the average American has in constantly sending them weapons.
And yet those talks, reportedly, had multiple Russian demands no Ukrainian politician has indicated a willingness to agree to, and thus had no claim to approaching a negotiated peace.
Hyperagent Americanism strikes again! Truly it was only because of them that the Ukrainian politicians decided to keep on fighting with over 80% popular support.
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