Ukraine-Russia War Take 2
Here is what the preliminary take on the Ukraine thread disappearing is:
The site was hit with a massive spam attack where hundreds of spam threads were created. In the case where, for example, I see a single spam thread and delete it, that is called a soft delete, and mods can still see them but forum members cannot. Those deletion can be undone.
When a massive attack hits with hundreds of threads, an admin uses a different procedure where the hundreds of spam threads are merged and then hard deleted, where the threads are gone, and no note is left behind. As I have mentioned with my own experience of just soft deleting a large number of posts, sometimes a post or thread gets checked or merged accidentally and is deleted by mistake. Dealing with hundreds of spam threads takes a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.
It appears that our Ukraine thread may have gotten caught up in that recent net of spam threads. If so, it is likely gone for good. I cant say this for sure, and am awaiting comments from admins on this issue. Yes, this sucks. And hopefully there was some other software glitch that caused the disappearance, and we may recover it in the future.
But in the meantime, I have created this new Ukraine-Russia War thread to enable the conversation to continue. Obviously continuity with earlier discussions will be lost. There is no way around that. So as best as possible, let's pick up the conversation with recent events and go from there.
If you have any questions about this, please post them in the mod thread, not here. Let's keep this thread going with posts about the war, not the disappearance of the old thread.
Thanks.
The action has to be wrong.
Making it clear they would do nothing if putin invaded. That was wrong
Failing to act to stop putin invading despite the clear danger. That was wrong
Enabling putin by the USA being untrustworthy when it comes to interantional law. That was very wrong.
All these things were wrong and confer responsibity for the invasion. None of them are a defense of putin.
And the failure to do everythign to make damn sure that russ
? enabling putin ? you mean if the USA had followed international law more precisely in the past then Putin .. wat? what's the logical causal chain? do criminals avoid doing crimes against law abiding people? since when? in geopolitics everyone does exactly everything he can to get an advantage, there are no gentlemen agreements. That's the rule of realpolitik and acting "good" doesn't change that when an evil person takes his choices.
As for "failing to act to stop putin invading" what do you mean, doing what exactly?
And yet some people insist it is actually warmongering to not allow Putin to warmonger.
You are going the complete opposite direction than the Putin apologists: USA did not do enough to prevent the invasion.
If USA provoked Putin into acting (a common propaganda point) then USA or allies are the responsible party for this war because Putin HAD to act.
Sure. I just dislike the use of percentages when rebutting those defending putin because it also argues against us adressing our real failures of which there are so many.
Wd didn't provoke putin. We helped create putin and enabled putin.
Agreed, extremely ironic that Sachs is now an "expert" in how the West provoked Putin.
How would you address the car crash fallacy?
? enabling putin ? you mean if the USA had followed international law more precisely in the past then Putin .. wat? what's the logical causal chain? do criminals avoid doing crimes against law abiding people? since when? in geopolitics everyone does exactly everything he can to get an advantage, there are no gentlemen agreements. That's the rule of realpolitik and acting "good" doesn't change that when an evil person takes his choices.
putin would have had much less chance of taking power.
As for "failing to act to stop putin invading" what do you mean, doing what exactly?
Clear commitments. Troops on the ground. Real defenses that meant an invasion would clearly fail. That's what I mean exactly.
I'd go back even further and say that Europe, particularly Germany, funded Putin even as he repeatedly showed them exactly what they were funding.
because there was a politcal battle in russia between those who wanted to join the democractic international community and those who wanted to go back to the cold war disctatorship days
We sold our side down the river when we blew up any idea that we were committed to international law/organisations. That's our fault.
because there was a politcal battle in russia between those who wanted to join the democractic international community and those who wanted to go back to the cold war disctatorship days
We sold our side down the river when we blew up any idea that we were committed to international law/organisations. That's our fault.
We were never committed to international law when it didn't suit us since day 1. The whole edifice of international law was built by us to further our interests, explicitly. It's a tool for western domination of the world not something abstract about "good".
Ofc we do believe western domination of the world is better than any other arrangement, but that's a different kind of "good" than that which you have in mind.
The principle in geopolitics is always rational self interest. There is nothing else, becaue they few actors that don't act according to that principle very quickly disappear from the international scene.
Well if we're happy with the outcomes than good job. Well played. Why on earth would we not want to take a solid chunk of responsibility for it?
Maybe if we work hard we can get a good world war or two out this rational self interest lark.
Well if we're happy with the outcomes than good job. Well played. Why on earth would we not want to take a solid chunk of responsibility for it?
Maybe if we work hard we can get a good world war or two out this rational self interest lark.
In retrospect the main mistake was being optimistic about Russia and China capability of becoming normal (ie first world, ie western) nations.
We aren't responsible at all for them failing to achieve that, but in retrospect we would have been better off keeping them crushed under our boots.
Now there aren't cheap options and we have to deal with reality as it is, not how it should be.
Can't learn anything from unique junctures in history, actually what we learnt in Germany and Japan after ww2 (that it's possible to regime-change evil countries and make them compatible with us) misfired dramatically for Russia and China.
There aren't "history-repeat-itself" patterns because the technological and so resource access scenario is different from ever before. We can think it will be about "AI" (or not), we have no clue how important fossil fuels will be 30 years from now, we have no idea if the demographical decline/collapse of Russia/China will be fixed by robots decades down the line and so on.
In general with fast transportation and power projection, there is either one entity that controls all main events worldwide, or a "multipolar" instable partial temporary equilibrium that can always explode (locally or globally).
We gave up the chance of being uniquely dominant with no possible opponent in the 90s , hoping to "westernize" all the main economies in the world, we failed because THOSE PLACES FAILED, now we play the game we have at hand.
We were never committed to international law when it didn't suit us since day 1. The whole edifice of international law was built by us to further our interests, explicitly. It's a tool for western domination of the world not something abstract about "good".
Ofc we do believe western domination of the world is better than any other arrangement, but that's a different kind of "good" than that which you have in mind.
The principle in geopolitic
tankie take. I agree with it and applaud it.
In retrospect the main mistake was being optimistic about Russia and China capability of becoming normal (ie first world, ie western) nations.
We aren't responsible at all for them failing to achieve that, but in retrospect we would have been better off keeping them crushed under our boots.
Now there aren't cheap options and we have to deal with reality as it is, not how it should be.
Can't learn anything from unique junctures in history, actu
I dont think there's any retrospect about it. It was in our rational self interest to work very hard to build up international law and organisations. To work really hard to support our democratic allies within china and russia etc to become a full part of it. It was also in our rationals self interest to prevent russia's invasion of ukraine. And so much more.
we chose not to and we are responsible for that.
You are going the complete opposite direction than the Putin apologists: USA did not do enough to prevent the invasion.
If USA provoked Putin into acting (a common propaganda point) then USA or allies are the responsible party for this war because Putin had no choice but to invade Ukraine. This is a common propaganda point, and it repeated often, but for some reason no one can really explain what exactly happened that made Putin invade Ukrai
I don’t know if you know this but to provoke someone and to leave someone no choice are two completely different things.
The US encroaching on what Russia sees as its territory is the logical excuse Russia uses.
You haven’t heard that before?
PW: that's an excellent point. I don't know if you know this, but you should address the lack of logic behind the argument with those who actually believe the argument; not me for repeating what they're arguing.
I've mentioned several times that this is an excuse.
I dont see there being a lack of logic. I find people are just incorrect in the logic they are using
Id prefer to address the mistakes they are making as opposed to arguing about why they dont have logic.
Sure, the point was you should address the mistakes with the people who believe and argue it, not with me.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/23/europ...
Gunmen opened fire on places of worship in two cities of Russia’s southernmost Dagestan province on Sunday, killing at least 15 police officers and four civilians, including an Orthodox priest, in what appeared to be a coordinated attack.
I dont think there's any retrospect about it. It was in our rational self interest to work very hard to build up international law and organisations. To work really hard to support our democratic allies within china and russia etc to become a full part of it. It was also in our rationals self interest to prevent russia's invasion of ukraine. And so much more.
we chose not to and we are responsible for that.
No, it's Putin's doing and Putin's fault. Western policy is to avoid all-out war with Russia, for sufficient reason. The diplomatic 'prevention' you're talking about is precisely what Putinists like you and Nigel Farage claim to be 'provocation'. Anything to excuse Putin.
No.
You appear to be on putins side as you don't think we should have stopped him. You got waht you wanted, Ukraine deserved far better.
chez: what (realistic) steps could have been taken to prevent Putin's unprovoked invasion?
The action has to be wrong.
Making it clear they would do nothing if putin invaded. That was wrong
Failing to act to stop putin invading despite the clear danger. That was wrong
Enabling putin by the USA being untrustworthy when it comes to interantional law. That was very wrong.
All these things were wrong and confer responsibity for the invasion. None of them are a defense of putin.
And the failure to do everythign to make damn sure that russ
When did this happen?
"nothing" is not correct, but USA policy was "Strategic Clarity" (opposite of "Strategic Ambiguity" which Macron has been attempting recently) and it was announced by USA and others that they would not deploy troops under any circumstances. USA especially took this to an extreme and has refused to even send observers, likely due to the ridiculous proxy war allegations and USA's desire to not feed that propaganda.
Nothing meaningful was clear. We've been through all this much earlier.
Also at length the need for real forces on the ground to provide real deterrence.
