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Thank you for coming clear about Russian aggression Which is why we need to up our defense spending, as I said. In your last comment you drop all pretenses. "We

Thank you for coming clear about Russian aggression Which is why we need to up our defense spending, as I said. In your last comment you drop all pretenses. "We can do whatever we want, no arguments necessary". I'm not sure what you are proud of though, you forced many neutrals or even friends - like me - into an antagonistic position. > On a more general point, I can see your point, you're most probably an idealist [1], I for myself I'm a realist, I personally think that realism is closer to how things actually work when it comes to international relations. You start with an attempt of arguments, laudable, but when you find they are easily defeated you jump to in the context meaningless generalities that don't even fit the previous comments in any way. . However, your comments do show one thing. There is little room for optimism that sanity and arguments are going to win anything here. I heard even on a German city's market square a German woman selling sausages argue about poor, poor Putin and how the West mistreated him so that he had no choice now but to fight back. Or just read the comments under a LinkedIn post of former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is a friend of Putin. There were quite a few comments there urging Schröder to continue to support Putin, and a lot of insane stuff in support of Putin and against the West. No idea if it was from real Germans, but there is no reason to suspect "bots", there really are plenty of people supporting Putin. Read the comments and despair: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gerhard-schroeder_der-krieg-und-das-damit-verbundene-leid-f%C3%BCr-activity-6902595819330248704-LNmn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gerhard-schroeder_der-krieg-u... > Dear Mr. Schröder, I think you being a close friend of Putin you understand that sometimes a man has got to do what a man got to do. I believe in putin and his insight on the security of Europe as a whole. Etc etc... not all comments are like this, but many (many are in German) - not least of which are the comments by the Ex-Chancellor himself.

paganel 5y ago
I’m Romanian myself, not Russian, sitting at the middle (ideologically and geographically) of all this madness. This being HN I was trying to “debug” the whole situation as an arm-chair geostrategist, and that entailed, imo, making sense of what drives one side of the conflict, the Russians. As I said, I don’t think they’re irrational, very, very few international conflicts are irrational on the face of it, nobody goes to war because “they felt like it” or because it “was written in the stars”, that would be trully irrational. I do think though that part of the reason Russia started this war is because they want to fight a war against some aspects of Westernization. They most certainly like Western cars and Western-designed iPhones but it looks like they don’t like certain Western ideologies, like the type of democracy that the West now professes. Again, I don’t see anything irrational in all this.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  But Russia went to war because Putin did it on a whim. Likely the last wish of a dying man. They could have gone along just fine without attacking Ukraine. It is a completely irrational move on their part.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  The irrational part is mixing Puylo, who might be rationally against "the West" for he likes to rule and true democracy does not allow that, and everyone else, who actually needs working courts and laws, but are for the war based on the pretenses Puylo put out. Now those are highly irrational, and they are quite possibly the majority there.

paganel 5y ago

I’m Romanian myself, not Russian, sitting at the middle (ideologically and geographically) of all this madness. This being HN I was trying to “debug” the whole situation as an arm-chair geostrategist, and that entailed, imo, making sense of what drives one side of the conflict, the Russians. As I said, I don’t think they’re irrational, very, very few international conflicts are irrational on the face of it, nobody goes to war because “they felt like it” or because it “was written in the stars”, that would be trully irrational. I do think though that part of the reason Russia started this war is because they want to fight a war against some aspects of Westernization. They most certainly like Western cars and Western-designed iPhones but it looks like they don’t like certain Western ideologies, like the type of democracy that the West now professes. Again, I don’t see anything irrational in all this.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
But Russia went to war because Putin did it on a whim. Likely the last wish of a dying man. They could have gone along just fine without attacking Ukraine. It is a completely irrational move on their part.
lostmsu 5y ago
The irrational part is mixing Puylo, who might be rationally against "the West" for he likes to rule and true democracy does not allow that, and everyone else, who actually needs working courts and laws, but are for the war based on the pretenses Puylo put out. Now those are highly irrational, and they are quite possibly the majority there.