2
points
crateless
Joined 53 karma
- crateless parentAs long as they go into it fully informed, that is the best one could hope for.
- Well, they have been bullshitting for loooong time if that is the case. I recall watching a video of Gorbachev talking to the US Congress and warning about NATO/US expansion. This was in 1997.
There is no credible threat of a NATO invasion but there is the First-Strike issue now that hypersonic missiles are being developed. Putin has been moaning about this for a while now. A security-conscious/pragmatic state models "what is possible" vs "what is probable". If it seems likely that future Finland could host hypersonic missiles pointed at St.Petersburg, well it becomes incumbent on Moscow to attempt to prevent that. It seems unwise to dismiss their concerns if said dismissal would lead to Ukraine 2.0.
Lots of people seem to think that the Russian unwillingness to flatten Kiev means they could not do it.
How many people have to die for Finns to feel like they stood up to a bully?
- > Russia does not want to engage in conflict with a NATO country. If Finland joins NATO then Finland will be at piece for the next century, guaranteed.
Russia has not engaged in conflict with a NATO country, so far. If the stakes are raised high enough, I don't think this will continue to hold.
> Russia has very little reason to invade Finland now, and if Finland joins NATO, it cannot.
I would go so far as to say that if Finland applies to join NATO, they'd have to. That is, if it is truly part of their doctrine that NATO/US is an existential threat to the Russian state.
- It is better to call Putin's bluff now rather than wait for Ukraine to fall which might force cooler heads to prevail. Also a dual ascension dares Russia to go to war on two perhaps three fronts?
For Russia, the choice is: war now or war later?
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.
- Of course nations should be free to choose their own path. No-one is arguing against that.
Mearsheimer argues that when the path that a country chooses comes into conflict with a great power's security interests, those interests become the overriding concern of both parties. He points out that Cuba was not allowed to ally itself with USSR with nuclear war being put on the table.
I can't help but wonder what the US would do if Mexico signed a security pact with China to put a military base on its soil.
As a minor example consider the Solomon islands brouhaha[1].
- CIA Director, William Burns wrote this in 2008.
Edit: Nyet means Nyet: Russia's NATO Enlargement Redlines : https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
- I don't see how Ukraine being democratic is an existential threat to Putin in any meaningful way. This situation has been almost 14 years in the reckoning since April 2008.
The NATO-US acting from Ukraine possibly attempting to foment "color" revolutions in Russia, NATO missiles on Ukraine soil, an increasingly belligerent leader in Ukraine renewing the push to join NATO and NATO-US arming and training Ukraine troops. These seem to be more likely factors in the invasion.
Given that the "West" has been frothing around the mouth for his ouster (he did once ask to join NATO btw), one could conclude that "He who goes first wins" was a viable strategy for him.
- I was wrong. I admit that. I spoke from a position of superficial knowledge at the time as I ignored the wider context of the situation and was commenting from a position of received wisdom as I was unaware of what a parent post mentioned regarding a widely known fact that NATO was in Ukraine providing thousands of weapons, I was not aware of that and was only commenting on the basis of "received wisdom" on a particular situation.
I have examined my bias against mainstream media and still find them completely warranted, thank you.
- I think the rescript forum is more active and would probably have an answer to your question.
- The diplomatic ultimatums as well as the Belarus deployment are in response to the mainstream media's assertions of imminent attack and could also be interpreted as Putin trying to leverage the situation to his advantage to try for concessions of some sort to further his agenda. At this point in time, to be fair, one could argue for invasion but that calculus is so grim for Russia that it seems far-fetched.
Anyway my point is that the initial clamour of "imminent invasion" was unwarranted based on the evidence at the time based on historical troop movement at the border. Therefore there must be another reason underlying the media's outcry which is beyond my ken.
- There is basically no escalation from Russia. The troop deployment on the Ukraine border mirrors a similar deployment in April last year[1].
It is just convenient (Biden's domestic issues/Nordstream 2/other unknown reasons) to claim imminent invasion and the media is incentivised to fuel that narrative since it seems to have captured the attention of the populace at large (perhaps based on the Russophobia that is prevalent in mainstream media).
- > Most will never be under threat of a state actor that necessitates getting their friends and family "the hell out of Telegram as soon as possible".
I think you should qualify that as "most people - in the western hemisphere/democracies - will never be under threat of a state actor that necessitates getting their friends and family "the hell out of Telegram as soon as possible"
- You are right. What is happening in the major universities is not representative of the majority of universities. Therefore I agree that, depending on where you look and how you look at it, the state of the humanities is largely intact.
I think, though it is a leap, that the current <insert-dogma-of-the-day> will extend downstream but who knows...
- I have been recently picturing a dystopia (utopia?) wherein women sell their eggs to some kind of govt. agency which in turn hires women who are willing to carry babies to term.
These babies are then raised in child group homes by state employees all the way from infancy. Meanwhile the state pays for their education until they either graduate or until some kind of arbitrary deadline.
Thus the problem could become cost effective due to economies of scale thereby partially mitigating the cost problem.
However, it is still unclear whether to then make childbirth opt-in or something along those lines.
If we are going to farm kids, then why not do it properly?
/s
- > "Another open question is whether the Virtuous Victim effect occurs across cultures, including in populations that are not “WEIRD” (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic). As just articulated, our theorizing predicts that the generalizability of the Virtuous Victim effect across cultures is likely to depend on the universality of incentives for punishing perpetrators and helping victims. For example, in cultures and contexts where victims are seen as contaminated and helping them is not socially rewarded, we predict that the Virtuous Victim effect may disappear (or even reverse)."
This would be the more interesting question to study as I frequently find that social justice (as projected in the popular culture) is perceived somewhat differently, especially around situations where a victim acted in a manner that was more likely to lead to the bad outcome i.e. "victim-blaming"