3 ms·

You are just repeating the points of John Mearsheimer and Vladimir Pozner. I, too, fell in that trap in the early days of the Z-war. Those points are mostly bul

You are just repeating the points of John Mearsheimer and Vladimir Pozner. I, too, fell in that trap in the early days of the Z-war. Those points are mostly bullshit. Thankfully they do not appear to be as trending on YouTube as they were a month ago. I will not spend extra time explaining to you why those points are just Russian propaganda.

mindslight 5y ago
I think it's deeper than that. There is some truth in the above comment, certainly about the invasion of Iraq [0]. Where it goes astray is doubling down on this model to explain the entirety of the Ukraine situation with the US as the only actor, resulting in ridiculous backfit statements like "America ... forced Russia’s hand in order to claim victim/self-defense status". Relativism can be handy, helping you see biases and assumptions of your native culture, but you always needs to keep it subordinate to actual reality. The reality here is that Russia has aggressed beyond its borders [1] and is unequivocally committing genocide, at which point I have a hard time being concerned about the ways the West may have effectively hurt Russia's feelings and "made" them lash out. There is indeed a geopolitical game of economic empire that the US/EU have been succeeding at, but that does not justify Russia's flipping the table and reverting to early 20th century style mechanized slaughter. [0] In fact continuing the tangent, the memetic points of the original article are quite applicable to Iraq. Basically USG forcibly spreading the memes of "democracy", "corporate sanctity", and of course "USD as world reserve currency". Witness the overwhelming popular support for attacking Iraq in 2003 that has now been seemingly memory-holed by its one-time supporters. In 2003, the need to attack Iraq was manifestly implicit based on everpresent memes, which have now been de-emphasized. [1] We can examine the modern notion of the nation-state with fixed borders as itself being a modern-Western invention, but it's likely better described as a quality of the "centralized state" of the article. And pragmatically the concept seems to function as a reasonable Schelling point.
- watwut 5y ago
  I think it is way more wrong then that. It is fundamentally absurd way to interpret Russia even in theoretical alternate reality where Russia did not tried to commit genocide in Ukraine. Even if they won within 3 days, happily replaced government and executed/imprisoned "only" a few politicians/intellectuals. Because, that analysis is completely ignoring history of Russia itself, political system in Russia, prevalent ideologies there, the type of society, values, everything. You can not legitimately analyze a any state or group of people without engaging with those. > that does not justify Russia's flipping the table and reverting to early 20th century style mechanized slaughter. The "some truth" part in it is true only to the level of "yes, west done bad thing there". The claim that Russia would somehow behave much differently had Iraque not been invaded is not convincing at all. It is not just missing justifying power. It does not have explanatory power at all. It does not explain Russian return into authoritarian state over last 20 years. It is talking point targeted at people who do know American history and who do criticize those actions as bad - but who never really cared about Russian or Easter European history at all.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    > It is talking point targeted at people who do know American history and who do criticize those actions as bad - but who never really cared about Russian or Easter European history at all. Guilty as charged. I've never particularly focused on understanding Russia, apart from family stories about Russian occupation after WWII before they got out of East Germany to the West and ultimately the US (watching The Lives of Others is like the life I missed). So that talking point is targeted at people like me. And the points do resonate with me somewhat, since I do consider USG an empire. An economic empire that mostly keeps its territories in line through market effects and treaties, fundamentally nicer than an army-first directly-commanded empire of old, but still an empire. > You can not legitimately analyze a any state or group of people without engaging with those. I don't disagree, however earnestly engaging with those is a lot of work to sift through various opinions. What we're dealing with here is an ongoing torrent of superficial analysis that destroys consensus truth. So while I think most experts on Russia would seemingly agree with your analysis, a propagandist can stand up an equally-plausible expert that says the exact opposite. Without any social proof (eg in-depth study of Russia in school or independently), there's little way for an individual to sort through that muck. Enter relativism. > It is fundamentally absurd way to interpret Russia even in theoretical alternate reality where Russia did not tried to commit genocide in Ukraine Sure, but that wouldn't stop such analysis from carrying the day with many people. In order to eliminate relativism, one either needs to become an expert in the field (what I described above, impractical for most), or one needs to find objective points that can't be relativized away in our postmodern media environment. The blatant mass slaughter of civilians is such a touchstone - it puts all of Russia's countervailing narratives in stark relief.
  - etotolkoya 5y ago
    How can someone take you seriously after you speak of "genocide" in Ukraine? You are being dishonest as your country is.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      Let me guess - it's not "genocide" because there's no such thing as a "Ukrainian" ?
ComradePhil 5y ago
So, the fact that Russia has been against NATO expansion... and has consistently spoken and acted against it including in Georgia is "mostly bullshit"? Ok.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Russia invaded Georgia to grab a piece of Georgia, full stop. Russia invaded Ukraine (multiple times) to grab pieces of Ukraine (including the Crimea), full stop. Yes, the talk about NATO expansion was bullshit all the time. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine were going to be admitted, and all that Putin achieved was forcing at least Finland and Sweden to actually join NATO and the rest of NATO to continue to outspend Russia on military hardware...

mindslight 5y ago

I think it's deeper than that. There is some truth in the above comment, certainly about the invasion of Iraq [0]. Where it goes astray is doubling down on this model to explain the entirety of the Ukraine situation with the US as the only actor, resulting in ridiculous backfit statements like "America ... forced Russia’s hand in order to claim victim/self-defense status". Relativism can be handy, helping you see biases and assumptions of your native culture, but you always needs to keep it subordinate to actual reality. The reality here is that Russia has aggressed beyond its borders [1] and is unequivocally committing genocide, at which point I have a hard time being concerned about the ways the West may have effectively hurt Russia's feelings and "made" them lash out. There is indeed a geopolitical game of economic empire that the US/EU have been succeeding at, but that does not justify Russia's flipping the table and reverting to early 20th century style mechanized slaughter. [0] In fact continuing the tangent, the memetic points of the original article are quite applicable to Iraq. Basically USG forcibly spreading the memes of "democracy", "corporate sanctity", and of course "USD as world reserve currency". Witness the overwhelming popular support for attacking Iraq in 2003 that has now been seemingly memory-holed by its one-time supporters. In 2003, the need to attack Iraq was manifestly implicit based on everpresent memes, which have now been de-emphasized. [1] We can examine the modern notion of the nation-state with fixed borders as itself being a modern-Western invention, but it's likely better described as a quality of the "centralized state" of the article. And pragmatically the concept seems to function as a reasonable Schelling point.

watwut 5y ago
I think it is way more wrong then that. It is fundamentally absurd way to interpret Russia even in theoretical alternate reality where Russia did not tried to commit genocide in Ukraine. Even if they won within 3 days, happily replaced government and executed/imprisoned "only" a few politicians/intellectuals. Because, that analysis is completely ignoring history of Russia itself, political system in Russia, prevalent ideologies there, the type of society, values, everything. You can not legitimately analyze a any state or group of people without engaging with those. > that does not justify Russia's flipping the table and reverting to early 20th century style mechanized slaughter. The "some truth" part in it is true only to the level of "yes, west done bad thing there". The claim that Russia would somehow behave much differently had Iraque not been invaded is not convincing at all. It is not just missing justifying power. It does not have explanatory power at all. It does not explain Russian return into authoritarian state over last 20 years. It is talking point targeted at people who do know American history and who do criticize those actions as bad - but who never really cared about Russian or Easter European history at all.
- mindslight 5y ago
  > It is talking point targeted at people who do know American history and who do criticize those actions as bad - but who never really cared about Russian or Easter European history at all. Guilty as charged. I've never particularly focused on understanding Russia, apart from family stories about Russian occupation after WWII before they got out of East Germany to the West and ultimately the US (watching The Lives of Others is like the life I missed). So that talking point is targeted at people like me. And the points do resonate with me somewhat, since I do consider USG an empire. An economic empire that mostly keeps its territories in line through market effects and treaties, fundamentally nicer than an army-first directly-commanded empire of old, but still an empire. > You can not legitimately analyze a any state or group of people without engaging with those. I don't disagree, however earnestly engaging with those is a lot of work to sift through various opinions. What we're dealing with here is an ongoing torrent of superficial analysis that destroys consensus truth. So while I think most experts on Russia would seemingly agree with your analysis, a propagandist can stand up an equally-plausible expert that says the exact opposite. Without any social proof (eg in-depth study of Russia in school or independently), there's little way for an individual to sort through that muck. Enter relativism. > It is fundamentally absurd way to interpret Russia even in theoretical alternate reality where Russia did not tried to commit genocide in Ukraine Sure, but that wouldn't stop such analysis from carrying the day with many people. In order to eliminate relativism, one either needs to become an expert in the field (what I described above, impractical for most), or one needs to find objective points that can't be relativized away in our postmodern media environment. The blatant mass slaughter of civilians is such a touchstone - it puts all of Russia's countervailing narratives in stark relief.
- etotolkoya 5y ago
  How can someone take you seriously after you speak of "genocide" in Ukraine? You are being dishonest as your country is.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Let me guess - it's not "genocide" because there's no such thing as a "Ukrainian" ?

ComradePhil 5y ago

So, the fact that Russia has been against NATO expansion... and has consistently spoken and acted against it including in Georgia is "mostly bullshit"? Ok.

bayesian_horse 5y ago
Russia invaded Georgia to grab a piece of Georgia, full stop. Russia invaded Ukraine (multiple times) to grab pieces of Ukraine (including the Crimea), full stop. Yes, the talk about NATO expansion was bullshit all the time. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine were going to be admitted, and all that Putin achieved was forcing at least Finland and Sweden to actually join NATO and the rest of NATO to continue to outspend Russia on military hardware...