Back in early March, when the war in Ukraine was only 10 days old, I asked whether it was wise for Western countries to pour arms into Ukraine, since this could easily prolong the conflict, leading to many more Ukrainian deaths. Other commentators have raised the same question, including the New York Times editorial board.
A common answer is that Ukrainians want to fight. In other words, even if pouring arms in does prolong the conflict, that’s a risk Ukrainians are willing to take. And certainly, many Ukrainians do want to fight. But is this true of enough Ukrainians to give the argument force?
After all, Ukraine is under martial law. As of 24th February, able-bodied men aged 18–60 are banned from leaving the country – a measure which arguably violates their human rights. Even citizens who live abroad but happened to be visiting on the date of Russia’s invasion have been unable to leave.
At the present time, only soldiers and reservists are obliged to take up arms. But as losses mount, others could be drafted. And evidence suggests that losses are mounting. Zelensky recently told Newsmax that Ukraine is losing about 600 men a day – 60-100 killed, plus 500 wounded. Over a month, this adds up to 18,000 men. These figures almost certainly underestimate total casualties, as they refer only to the Donbas, and may not include those who are missing in action.
In a recent interview with Channel 4, one British man who went to fight said he wouldn’t stop others from going “as long as you understand the reality that you will be used as cannon fodder”.
Supplying arms to a country that has banned men from leaving is fundamentally different from supplying arms to a country that has a wholly professional (i.e., volunteer) army. In the latter case, everyone who takes part in combat was aware of the risks when he signed up. In the former case, this simply isn’t true.
Weapons the West has supplied to Ukraine may end up in the hands of men who never wanted to fight. And some of those men may die. Back in April, the New York Times spoke to a number of men who did not want to fight. One said he had two nephews in the Russian army, and did not want to “kill my own family”.
If the West is to continue arming Ukraine, we should – at the very least – insist that those men who wish to leave the country be allowed to do so.
Discussion
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so all soldiers that fought in WW2 were all volunteers that knew exactly what they were getting into ?
and all the boys that went to vietnam had stood in line to be drafted, or didn’t they?
so you expect your country to protect you?
just like your country expects you to protect it.
In my opinion, Biden and the other Western Leaders should have minded their own businesses when it came to Russia and the Ukraine and NOT armed or provided billions of Dollars to support the war there – all that has happened is that many Ukrainians have died, their homes have been destroyed and their means of living, gone – as well as many more “refugees” who have moved to other countries, because of this war, not of their making.
Ultimately, Russia will probably win with nobody able to hold Putin accountable.
If things had been left to develop as they might, without any country being involved in that fight, then it would all have been over, done and dusted, months ago and we would not be having this drawn out war, where nobody wins.
More to the point, Biden gave 40 Billion bucks to the Ukraine, although that might have been 80 billion, I’m not sure on that point, but by removing that chunk of small change from America’s economy, that has put America’s economy and much of the world’s economies, by indirect result, in jeopardy with increasing costs for fuel oil and gas and food costs at the shops… Read more »
When Noah writes an article critical of Russia I’ll start reading his stuff again. Until then, he’s just another of Putin’s useful idiots, showing how “clever” he is by being a contrarian: not worth reading.
I am disgusted that my tax money is used to prolong a proxy war between Russia and NATO with Ukrainian lives expended. I want nothing to do with US regime change in the Ukraine nor in Russia.
If Putin was to launch an invasion of the UK, I wonder if Noah would say we shouldn’t accept armaments from other countries as it may prolong the conflict?
Is it ok now to take in male refugees from war zones?
There are reports of Ukrainian poorly trained conscripts refusing to go up against Russian heavy weapons with just rifles and equally scared about refusing for fear of execution. I guess they consider the Russian threat more immediate. Anyway, the point is where are the heavy weapons that are supposed to be pouring in? If we have been equipping them with appropriate weapons where are they? Also reports of Javelins appearing on the black market.
Who knows what is true when our own media is full of lies and propaganda.
Surely it would be sensible to pull back or just dig in somewhere and wait for the heavy stuff to push back. But I am no expert.
Arms “pouring in” to Ukraine are utterly useless without training. Training takes time which isn’t available when combatants are on the battlefront.
Javelin and stinger missile weapon systems are as much a liability as an asset when used by untrained personnel.
We have been here numerous times before. e.g. NATO (the US) supplied arms to combatant Mujahadeen ‘rebels’ fighting the USSR in Afghanistan. Those arms were stockpiled and turned against the US when they invaded the country.
We are witnessing the perpetuation of the military industrial complex at work and we are supposed to be daft enough to shrug and accept it.
Russia legally moved to assist another UN member nation under Article 51 which was legally exploited and notice delivered in accordance with its terms to the UN Security Council.
Western Ukraine is the aggressor, they mounted a seven day artillery barrage across the Donbass border for seven days before Russia intervened to stop it. Russia’s response was entirely consistent with Article 51 on the basis of those facts as we know them at the moment.
Evidence of the legality is inherent in the reluctance of the US/UK and EU to put boots on the ground in Ukraine. They… Read more »
‘Russia legally moved to assist another UN member nation under Article 51 which was legally exploited and notice delivered in accordance with its terms to the UN Security Council.’
Which fellow UN member nation did Russia move to assist on 24 February 2022?
This is almost impossible to answer. What defines martial law anyway? If a country is at war having been invaded it’s effectively under martial law regardless of what laws are in place. The question is do enough Ukrainians want it continuing? It is likely at the outbreak many wanted to fight, it may be different for those who have lost people, homes and income or those sent to fight and die in disorganised militias without proper weapons.
But … how did the UK feel during the WW2. I don’t think it was always clear cut for everyone. According to the film, which may be BS, even Churchill had his doubts at times.
As an outsider I think we should be stopping it not prolonging it. Ukraine will have to relinquish the East, the alternative brings a high probability of WW3.
a high probability of WW3
Between who? Russia and America?
When China, India, Africa and Latin America have refused to condemn Russia’s intervention in Ukraine?
That’s well over half the world’s population telling the west it’s wrong.
This conflict was provoked by one man, Joe – Lets go Brandon – Biden.
The weak, demented, congenital idiot provoked Russia and, in the full knowledge that he and his neocon hawks are desperate to impose a New World Order before Trump is elected in 2024, Putin retaliated.
Biden has shot himself in the foot because at least 6 months have been ripped out his playbook. The crushing victory he expected over Russia in Ukraine before the mid term elections has turned into a disaster which will be reflected in November when Republicans will control the Senate and Congress.
The Democrats have painted themselves into a corner. They can’t have Biden step down as Harris is even more unpopular that he is, with his 30% approval rating.
They can’t possibly allow Nancy Pelosi, the next in line for the Presidency after Harris, to become POTUS because she’s even less acceptable to the international community than Biden, so where else do they go?
The… Read more »
Since when has the CIA , US Deep State, Nato and the EU been about “morality”?
The US deep state has less to do with the CIA, FBI, NATO etc. than it has to do with government/corporate interests.
Why do we imagine Silicone Valley is so keen to run interference for the left? Because all corporations recognise the opportunity for fascist government cooperation when they see it. We are living through it now, it just hasn’t yet been officially declared.
Is that where they do all the breast implants?
It’s Silicon Valley, idiot.
Intel Slava’s report of Putin’s comment today on US heavy weaponry supplied to Ukraine:
“We’re cracking them like nuts. Dozens have been destroyed.”
Several million dollars in commission payments to Biden, and counting.
You spend decades turning your own people into beggars of one sort or another and you make an art of it. This is understood all over the world. Western liberalism is a difficult enemy to grasp but we are reaching a point where countervailing forces are starting to get a grasp of it.
You run away from Afghanistan. You slash and burn countries and economies and yet you seem to lack any understanding of karma. Believe me, well within the next five years westerners will get a true taste of karma. There is no neutral position in the grand warfare. You thought that by sitting idly by somehow world events slouched like you did. You lost your dynamism.
Iti s like the toilet where the sicknesses of the West could be kept hidden for a short time. It fits perfectly with the model that we have of our ruling class. On every level their perfidy is being laid bare. We should be happy about that
A little anecdote about life in Kiev before the SMO.
My son was learning Russian on line and one of the on-line Russian coaches was a woman from Kiev whose day job was hairdressing. They met up when he visited Kiev a few years back and she explained that she had to start doing on-line tutoring becuase hairdressing didn’t pay. It wasn’t so much that it was poorly paid but her profit margin was way down because of the protection money she had to pay the local mafia in order to keep her salon open.
She confirmed that this was a fact of life for all small businesses in Ukraine. And you wonder why so many were happy to have a legitimate excuse to leave.
Unless one believes the western propaganda that Putin is the new Hitler who will send his tanks through to the Channel given half a chance then it is hard to see how any British interest is served by arming Ukraine. But he lacks an army of the right size and set up to do anything of the kind. His logistics (for example) are rail based and the Russian gauge is different from most of Europe’s. Such ideas are fanciful but designed to scare the masses and invoke the British interpretation of Munich in 1938 if anyone stands against the hawks.
We do not really know what Ukrainians think either. There has been a civil war since 2014 and western hands (plus probably Russia’s) have been all over that fomenting it and intensifying it. No doubt some Ukrainians hate Russia (there is complex history) but many others see them as liberators. The morality is deeply ambiguous as to who is right and ought not to be any of our business really. But western leaders clearly have an agenda to fight Russia, and the Biden administration seems to have a particular hatred of Russia and of Putin. Silly and flighty Johnson… Read more »
It will be interesting to hear the outcome of the talks between the African Union and Putin this afternoon. It is rumoured that Putin will facilitate a similar system of payment using twinned dollar and rouble accounts to enable the African nations to buy grain and fuel, thereby sidestepping the SWIFTrestrictions.
What’s needed is for Putin to agree to stop attacking Odessa so the sea route can open up. There’s no way more than about a fifth of the grain is going to come out by land.
Still desperately pushing the big lie, eh Fingal?. The Russians have always (since March at any rate) said that merchant ships are free to enter and leave, it’s the Ukrainians who have blockaded them in.
Russia, Ukraine trade barbs over obstruction of wheat shipments to Egypt
“However, Russia denied the Ukrainian accusations. The Russian Embassy in Cairo said in an April 5 statement that the Ukrainian army is laying mines in the sea of the ports of Ochakov, Chernomorsk, Odessa and Yuzhny, with the aim of halting shipping traffic from and to ports.
The Russian Embassy noted that its naval vessels are ensuring the commercial ships’ freedom of movement through a safe humanitarian corridor that has been operating daily since March 25, but it accused Ukrainian authorities of preventing ships from leaving the ports.”
No, The Ukraine War Has Not Stoked A Global Food Crisis.
Ukraine has mined the approaches to Odessa because Russia has been invading from the sea.
As Putin is still attacking Odessa, and offers no guarantees to stop, then Ukraine can’t drop its defences.
It’s entirely in Ukraine’s interests to export the grain. It’s in Putin’s interests to block it (so long as you don’t mind starving a few million Africans, which he does not.)
Putin has zero domestic pressure to take responsibility for the side effects of his invasion on the world food supply.
There’s no world in which Russia just sails its ships into port in Odessa – weren’t you just boasting about supposed Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian ships tens of miles away?
If they hadn’t panicked the Ukrainians could easily have kept a safe passage out of the port. That’s standard practice.
The reality, of course, is that the propaganda use of the “Russian grain blockade” is far more valuable to the Ukrainians than the money for the grain, given they depend completely on sugar daddy Washington anyway.
Well Mark, ships can sail back again closer to the coast, if they need to support a land attack.
Until Putin guarantees the safety of Odessa, it can’t operate as a trade port.
“Well Mark, ships can sail back again closer to the coast, if they need to support a land attack.”
That doesn’t appear to have any meaning relevant to reality. You see to think Russian warships could sail along a narrow designated mine-free path right up to the port, waving at the Ukrainian anti-ship missiles and artillery batteries pre-registered to the path, and then along the coast, with impunity.
To write it is to understand how ridiculous it is.
“Until Putin guarantees the safety of Odessa, it can’t operate as a trade port.”
The Russian aren’t going to “guarantee the safety of” anywhere, let alone in a naturally Russian area like Odessa, where pro-Russian protesters were mass murdered in order to suppress resistance to the Kiev regime in 2014/15..
Mark, no merchant navy in the world is going to sail into a port under active threat of attack, whether or not there is a mine free channel.
And yes, if that channel is wide enough for merchant ships, of course it’s wide enough for military.
“Mark, no merchant navy in the world is going to sail into a port under active threat of attack, whether or not there is a mine free channel.”
It’s called blockade running. See, it even has a name.
But in reality, the Russians have said from the start that they’ll cooperate with merchant ships. The whole point of agreeing time windows is to enable protection of merchants in transit.
The halting of merchant shipping is 100% down to the Kiev regime, and its US backers who can control the insurance issues.
“And yes, if that channel is wide enough for merchant ships, of course it’s wide enough for military.”
Not sure what the point of that drivel was. It has nothing to do with anything I wrote.
This is nonsense, insurance would be unobtainable.
It’s not a matter of couple of ships rushing in by night, it’s a huge operation.
You make the most unreal comments about Ukraine. None of this is remotely possible.
Insurance is wholly under the US sphere’s control. If they want to subsidise it, impose it, or negate it for particular situations, they can do any of those things.
Funny how they can use these things as weapons against Russia and you wouldn’t say a peep, but your kind still insists blindly that “oh they couldn’t possibly bend the rules in that way!”.
Wake up, FFS!
“It’s not a matter of couple of ships rushing in by night, it’s a huge operation.”
That’s why the Russians have been “ensuring the commercial ships’ freedom of movement through a safe humanitarian corridor that has been operating daily since March 25″. It’s not remotely difficult to do, it’s just that the Ukrainian side haven’t wanted to do it, and people like you wring your hands and pretend it’s so awful, while point blank refusing to accept any proposed solution that doesn’t involve you getting your way.
In many ways you are a perfect exemplor of US sphere regime thinking. Entitled, profoundly dishonest, and manipulative
Just like Putin claims everyone he’s at war with spend their time bombing themselves, now you’re claiming Ukraine is blockading itself.
Why?
Why?
Because you insist on twisting words in order to make them seem absurd and then asking, wide eyed: “why are you saying something that sounds absurd?”
But you knew that.
it’s a serious question – why would Ukraine blockade itself?
Of course it isn’t a serious question from you, because I’ve already explained the situation. It’s you that tried to make it sound silly as “blockading themselves”. As I pointed out, the Ukrainians mined their own ports – nobody disputes that, and the propaganda value of the “Russia food blockade” lie is evidently greater than any value in the exports.
But you knew that.
So your idea is that the Ukrainians are sabotaging their own major industry, in order to make Russia look a little bit worse than it already does and…well, that’s it.
Wow.
Do you disagree that Ukraine mined its own ports?
Of course they did – why would Russia prevent their own attack?
Did any of the Allied amphibious operations in 43 or 44 involve sailing into ports?
What’s that got to do with it? Russia has already used its navy to assist attacks along the coast.
It means that mining their ports wasn’t about preventing Russian amphibious operations.
The Dieppe raid determined later operations.
How do you work that out?
How much do you think a few shiploads of grain are worth as a percentage of the ongoing US subsidy? Just wondering what kind of sense of perspective you have on this.
You do understand that they are also shipping grain out via other routes?
They are shipping what they can by land, but the estimate is 20% by this method at best.
If this goes on much longer it will wreck next year’s crop as well
What estimates. Show us Fingers.
But you won’t because you just make shit up.
Mark, do not feed the trolls.
Insurance has a clause for the event of war dummy. It’s null and void.
Do you imagine the convoys across the Atlantic in WW2 were insured?
What planet are you really from Fingers?
Terrific interpretation . 👍
nicely put
“he lacks an army of the right size and set up to do anything of the kind. “
Don’t know if you saw this previously, but it seems very apt to your point here:
NATO admits Russia focused on Defence
There is a more fundamental question: if you have a weapons industry can you have a completely amoral market driven approach to that industry. It strikes me that you can’t really shout your mouth off about this or that human rights abuse when you will sell your technology to anyone. Why do we just allow it that we arm the worst of people. You can’t just say that we manufacture and they buy. If you say that then you are asserting the neutrality of financial systems which contradicts any case for economic sanctions.
I agree. Many US Senators are funded by the military industrial complex. Hawkish Neo Con think tanks such as the ISW are also seemingly funded that way too. Another long war with an indeterminate outcome is almost ideal for defence contractors. The Neo Con ideology and economic self interest then go together. Very similar to how the interests of the Pharma industrial complex coalesced with “safety ism” ideology with respect to Covid.
Our situation is one in which we have no idea how to cleanse our system of these influences. They have mastered the mechanisms and captured things from top to bottom. And shortly we will see the fruits of their labour. Their pathology is like that of an addict. They know that it is all going down but they will do anything for that last buzz.
I agree!
20 members of Congress personally invest in top weapons contractors that’ll profit from the just-passed $40 billion Ukraine aid packageAt least 20 federal lawmakers or their spouses hold stock in Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin, which manufacture the weapons Western allies are sending to Ukraine to fight Russian invaders, according to an Insider analysis of federal financial records.
It’s the usual revolving doors…it doesn’t even surprise anyone anymore….
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, used to work for Raytheon…..plus ca change!!..
The basic truth is that the CIA want to keep the cold war going.
Just an empty statement. Putin shows more sign of wanting to bring back the old order.
Ukrainian citizens groaning under the hated Russian yoke in Melitopol:
Please help me wipe pieces of my exploded head off the computer screen!!!!!!!!
and facing the arrival of the hated and feared Russian monsters in uniform in Svetlodarsk.
What the hell is going on here???????
Are there Ukrainians who hate and fear the Russians? Of course. The point is that the simplistic narrative presented by the BBC et al is an intentionally manipulative propaganda lie, no different from all the covid fear propaganda or the nonsense about “saint” George Floyd or about supposed deaths from global warming.
That’s why we in the US sphere need places like DS, where the manipulative writ of the Official Truth does not run.
Jacob Dreizin is brilliant. Guess you also follow his You Tube channel.
The Duran, Military Summary and The New Atlas You Tube channels are also my other go to sources of information. Not sure if you have come across those.
The BBC is just fake news. Very sad. My father grew up in WW2 and always saw them as presenting the facts. That may have been true then (by and large) but they have totally lost it in the past couple of decades. With respect to Ukraine, they are like the TASS of the Cold War.
Fascinating that our society projects onto Russia much of what we are becoming!
“The Duran, Military Summary and The New Atlas You Tube channels are also my other go to sources of information. Not sure if you have come across those.“
Yes. I’ve also always liked antiwar.com as a news aggregating site. On the Ukraine SMO in particular, Defense Politics Asia is good for comparing with Military Summary’s analysis.
For the Russian pov, Southfront and (in Russian only but easy to machine translate via your browser), https://voenhronika.ru/.
Also for interesting discussion, Larry Johnson’s blog and on Russia, this one:
https://awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/
And Gilbert Docturow’s blog:
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/
“Fascinating that our society projects onto Russia much of what we are becoming!“
It is interesting. There are probably fundamentals of human nature at play there…
I tend to view it as Cold War in reverse – we are now the nations in the grip of an uncompromising, aggressively universalist ideology of extremists who will tolerate no dissent and no exceptions to the rule of their beliefs.
Also, for the indy leftist, anti-imperialist pov, MoonOfAlabama and The Saker, though the latter has a tendency to be a little over the top.
consortium news publishes some good pieces on Ukraine. If you’re already at the level when you suspect BBC might not be totally honest and impartial, this article can be a good start.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/06/02/us-state-affiliated-newsguard-targets-consortium-news/
Yes, also TheGrayzone:
https://thegrayzone.com/
I’m not always fully on board with the politics and wider viewpoints of these sites, but they do publish genuinely independent coverage.
When a county is at war being invaded and threatened with destruction, it has a the right to declare marshal law and call up male citizens to defend the county.
If you want to campaign about human rights then, the suppression of the opposition and rounding up of state enemies would be more relevant lines of approach.
Ukrainians are entitled to debate whether to conceed all that Russia demands but Ukraine has decided to defend itself. This article suggests citizens of a country are entitled to leave the fighting to others and themselves escape to safety in the west. From there to criticise and undemine their own country. I do not agree with that as a general principle.
From what we know Ukraininans in Ukraine strongly support theiur government, whatever criticisms might be made of the way it came in to being. If is hardly less democratioc than its northern neighbours.
you’ve hardly done any research before posting this. pretty much every major political party has been banned by Zelensky and if you voice any alternative opinion re the war or support any sort of compromise, your life is in real danger. Ukraine is as far from Democracy as a country can be.
Surely you mean Russia here.
They’re not even allowed to call it a war at all.
it is not a war as surrender was not an evacuation. if BBC says so, it doesn’t mean it’s true.
OMG. You actually think it’s a ‘special military operation’.
Both sides are as bad as each other. Neither is a shining, wonderful democracy with exemplary values. There again, nor is modern Britain.
Having accepted that, Russia is winning the war. The wunderwaffen will not change the tide. So, what do you want to do? Carry on with the killing for ever?
How many wars has Britain fought where we were losing at first, but went on to win? Look at Germany in WW1 in the first weeks.
Putin determined the day of the attack, the location, and he had a massive advantage in material. Of course he’s winning so far.
But in so many other ways he’s also losing. Above all, he has driven Ukraine forever towards Europe. He may be able to occupy some areas for awhile but it will also be just that – an occupation.
That’s Fingal’s world.
Reality is probably a lot more like:
Ukraine Beyond Day 100 – Breaking Resistance, Deep Operation, A New Country
As for speculation about the likely future:
“Disarming Ukraine
Looking at this map I believe that the most advantageous end state for Russia would be the creation of a new independent country, call it Novorussiya, on the land east of the Dnieper and south along the coast that holds a majority ethnic Russian population and that, in 1922, had been attached to the Ukraine by Lenin. That state would be politically, culturally and militarily aligned with Russia.
For economic reasons I later added a bit to that:
Novorossiya roughly includes the red and yellow areas in the above map. It also includes the valuable Soviet developed iron ore mines and factories of Kryvyi Rih west of the Dnieper river.
Iron ore from Kryvyi Rih, coal from Donbas, oil and gas from the eastern coast and the port of Mariupol together constitute the heavy industry that was the economic heart of Ukraine. Together they would constitute a viable and even well off country with 80+% of the GDP Ukraine previously had.
Russia can now afford go slow with this project. Time is on its… Read more »
What’s the point of this? Pick a date, pick a boundary.
The whole of Eastern Europe has changed boundaries times beyond counting.
Let’s put it this way. Odds are the boundaries next year, or within a very few years, will look a lot like some of those on that map.
If they are, then the war will still be going on.
Doubtful.The present dead ender Kiev regime will probably be long one and replaced by sane moderates.
It will be just a matter of cleaning up the few fanatic terrorists Washingtion has (yet again!) ensured have access to huge quantities of black market military weaponry. But that’s a policing issue, not a war.
What is it Fungus?
‘Ukrainian’ – is there a homogenous Body Politic? Looking at a demographic there appear to be a number of different groups by ethnicity, language, locality.
It also appears they are not in agreement en bloc.
‘This article suggests citizens of a country are entitled to leave the fighting to others and themselves escape to safety in the west. ‘
And what would your opinion be if German citizens in 1940 onwards had left Germany, leaving the fighting and guarding the concentration camps to others, and themselves escaping abroad?
I’ve largely ignored all the Ukraine/Russia stuff as I know there is a lot of hatred and corruption in the area and I don’t trust our MSM.
But hasn’t Russia now tried and tested its hardware and now has battle hardened troops? Where as we can only field less than 30k troops with no battle experience with no or little battle hardware testing.
It’ll be fine. Our rulers are making sure our militaries are politically correct.
It seems to me Noah Carl’s argument re-Ukraine is like saying, if a friend gets set upon and gets beaten up by a gang, we should stand to one side and tell him he should have seen it coming, could have avoided it if he wanted to, and – oh dear, knives could come out – so, other friends, don’t get involved, because he’s not “that good enough” of a friend and intervening might just encourage the gang to use knives.
“I’m pretty sure it will be safest and best if we stand back and let him get knocked out quickly, at that point they will probably leave him alone and hopefully won’t stab him. I’m pretty sure it will be over quicker if we do nothing. It would be really silly to help because then we might just be encouraging them to use the knives and goodness, we might also get stabbed.”
And yes we might. If life is a dead cert. there is no such thing as bravery.
one of those most flawed arguments. No one’s preventing US/NATO/Europe to enter full scale conflict with Russia with boots on the ground, risking nuclear annihilation. That would be the metaphorical ‘standing up to a gang…’. Instead, US/NATO/West cowardly sends weapons (a lot of them old and outdated) which only prolongs the conflict and cause more Ukrainian solders and civilians to suffer.
Something tells me you’re not on the front line either calling for more deadly supplies. A bit pathetic.
No, Noah Carl’s argument is don’t even throw your friend a weapon to protect himself with in case the gang notices and comes for the friends. Let’s just hope he get’s beaten up quickly and the gang stop there and don’t notice the group of “friends.”
A good illustration of the dangers of abuse of the domestic analogy.
That analogy is inherently questionable, bu especially so when, as you do here, its terms are structured in order to predetermine the outcome you wish to see.
A structure closer to the reality here would be that the city mafia boss living on the other side of town (US) encourages a little guy (Ukraine) to pick a fight with his much bigger neighbour (Russia), who has been obstructing the mafia’s operations, and then uses [Russia’s] resistance as a pretext to accuse him of violence and to whip up a mob against him.
*Every* analogy is limited and not wholly applicable (it would have to be the thing itself rather than an analogy not to be) and also almost every analogy is chosen to point out the side to the argument the person using it wishes to convey. That is rather the point of making an analogy. It doesn’t predetermine the point though because anyone reading it is free to compare and contrast. That is also the point of an analogy.
Yes it is a domestic analogy. The interesting thing is the point you have made and the link you have provided do nothing to counteract the central point the analogy makes. The academics try to sound smart but being academic doesn’t make them right. Indeed when it comes to standing up to someone making a fight, they are all too likely to have no idea. The domestic analogy becomes entirely applicable because it is base human emotional drives of those involved more than the pretence of sophisticated politics that actually drive the outcome. Something Trump inherently understood when he childishly, but practically got right to the point the time he told Kim Jong-Un “I have a red button too only mine… Read more »
“*Every* analogy is limited and not wholly applicable (it would have to be the thing itself rather than an analogy not to be) and also almost every analogy is chosen to point out the side to the argument the person using it wishes to convey. “
Of course, but some analogies are better – more apt – than others.
“The domestic analogy becomes entirely applicable because it is base human emotional drives of those involved more than the pretence of sophisticated politics that actually drive the outcome. Something Trump inherently understood when he childishly, but practically got right to the point the time he told Kim Jong-Un “I have a red button too only mine is bigger than yours and it works.””
The problem is that the domestic analogy is a naturally appealing one, but is inherently false in certain core particulars that make it inherently potentially misleading. In this case one of the core differences is central to Carl’s argument that you are trying to analogise here – namely that humans are unitary, unlike states. There is no meaningful equivalent in humans to the constituent people of a state, which in turn are central to the argument made by Carl.… Read more »
“In this case one of the core differences is central to Carl’s argument that you are trying to analogise here – namely that humans are unitary, unlike states. There is no meaningful equivalent in humans to the constituent people of a state”
I would disagree with this point in relation to Putin because he is a dictator and is an individual, one man, who has determined this conflict should occur. Indeed, one way to put the point I am making is, that, Noah Carl raises various recent historical points (and continually talks as though the motives and intentions of men are entirely indisputably perspicuous from those points – and Putin didn’t want war but was forced into it by Nato). Of course there is some historical context and background and it is to a greater or lesser degree relevant, but IMO it is all *entirely* secondary to the primary base emotional drives. Is Putin really concerned to revive Russian historical splendour and pride over and above the desire for power and willy waving? Anyone who thinks he is driven by intellectual purity and sophisticated tsarist historical revaunchist concerns as distinct for a concern to further his own power and myth, is… Read more »
“I would disagree with this point in relation to Putin because he is a dictator and is an individual, one man, who has determined this conflict should occur.“
No, and on this rather fundamental point you are just flat wrong, like someone who believes the Earth is flat. Russia is not a dictatorship and Putin is not a dictator. He’s a powerful executive President, much like the US or French presidents but more personally established, who can certainly choose to take his country to war (as Bush did in Iraq) but whose decisions invariably take into account wider political issues and views and rely on constitutional approval, and cannot be implemented in isolation from that kind of political basic sanity check.
There’s no way I can persuade you of your error because like the flat Earther you are just ignorant of the reality and determined to remain so, and will just insist that any source disagreeing with your belief is lying.
“This is why a basic analogy at the level of individual human conflict is entirely appropriate and why he should be treated as a man-child bully.“
This is exactly the kind of childishness that the propagandist’s insistence on personalising… Read more »
I use the walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck definition of a dictator and on that score I am *definitely* right.
No doubt, but you do so based on uncritically believing sources that lie to you, because it’s in their interests to establish a false understanding of the situation..
You are certainly right about your basic mind.
what about the other Ukrainians? You know, from the Donbass, Crimea, etc?
What about the other Russians who don’t want to be Russians?
Always, you see only one side.
I wholeheartedly approve of this analogy.
I find it refreshing that a country fighting an aggressor has banned it’s primary resource for combatting the aggressor from leaving, in fact it makes perfect sense both morally and militarily.
Is this ‘moral’?
PARIS
Interpol expressed serious concern on Wednesday about the delivery of small and heavy weapons to Ukraine that can end up in the hands of criminals in Europe.
Agency head Jurgen Stock urged countries supplying military equipment to Kyiv to focus on tracing mechanisms.
The European police agency Europol is concerned about who will end up with the weapons supplied by the European Union to Ukraine, Deutsche Welle reports.
Director, Catherine de Bolle said her department plans to create an international working group to develop a strategy in this matter. She noted that Europol records the secret movements of terrorists known to the authorities and extremists ready for violence between Ukraine and the European Union.
The US government is struggling to track large quantities of “lethal aid” shipped to Ukraine in recent months amid raging conflict in the country, according to a stunning new revelation.
Top security officials were quoted as saying by CNN on Tuesday that the US intelligence agencies had “almost zero” ability to follow the consignments to their final destination, referring to it as “the largest recent supply to a partner country in a conflict.”
“We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters… Read more »
There is no way Ukraine will be allowed to join the EU any time soon with all the weapons freely available to anyone.
Morality doesn’t come into to it – we are talking Political Theatre and cheap propaganda.
It simply doesn’t matter to us where the border between Russia and Ukraine is, and our behaviour in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria reveals our government as utter hypocrites when they claim to be upholding the sovereignty of states or international law.
Deaths would clearly be minimised by a swift Russian victory.
And even more so by a swift Ukrainian victory, as it will prevent the creation of a new Palestinian-style diaspora.
” a swift Ukrainian victory” isn’t going to happen.
Er – in case you haven’t noticed, neither is a swift Russian victory.
But they are on their way to a victory nevertheless. I don’t believe it was the Russians who said it would be quick. That was one of the many claims made by the West that have proved to be way off the mark.
The Russians are moving slowly forward through in-depth defensive lines that the Ukrainians have been constructing for years as if they knew they were going to be needed.
Niether the terrain nor the defences are conducive to blitz-krieg tactics, that will come once the Russians move past Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
And none of this is something 4 HIMARS systems can do anything about, the Ukrainians will need tanks and they are pretty much on their uppers in that respect. Perhaps they should order some more from Russia, but with extra reverse gears.
But more than that. They are losing experienced troops at quite a rate and conscripts even faster.
It is frankly totally foolhardy for St Z to prolong this conflict, and the longer he does the worse the settlement terms will become and the more young and not-so-young men will die.
Anyone who says they know how this war is going to end is kidding themselves.
Russia started with a massive advantage in almost every type of equipment. But their heavy armour advantage seems to have been neutralised, while their aircraft are not operating as freely as you would expect. However they retain a massive advantage in artillery and missiles, and this is where almost all their success is coming from.
Are they going to keep that advantage? You absolutely can’t assume that. In this war, Ukraine’s equipment is actually improving, while Russia’s is degrading.
But the fog of war is thick so it’s hard to see how’s going to play out.
The greatest advantage they have over the West is that their leader has said that ‘Mothers are Women and Fathers are Men’. It puts them streets ahead of the West morally, ideologically and also biologically.
Just to remind you, one of Hitler’s big mistakes till late in the war was to basically leave the women in the kitchen, rather than build them into the war machine.
Irrelevant burbling. You misunderstand my point.
Social conservatism doesn’t help you win military victories.
Do you seriously believe what you are saying?
I posted this here a few months back (I think before the SMO), so apologies if you’ve seen it already. An interesting Russian pov, though, I think.
The Right to Insanity: A New Ideology of “Woke” Western
Elites and Its Consequences
I don’t think anyone thinks Ukraine will achieve a military victory, and that includes the Yanks who are desparately seeking an off ramp that doen’t completely sink the Dems in the mid-terms.
I have no idea how you came to the conclusion that Russia’s equipment is degrading. Their factories are operating flat out to supply munitions and equipment via secure, established supply chains and are clearly not running out of cash thanks to inept financial measures from the west. Contrast this with Ukraine’s position of taking hand-out from their puppetmasters.
But the most crucial factor is that the Russians have professional military people running their campaign, and Putin lets them get on with it. Not only that, but they are also being allowed to develop their tactics in such a way that they are going to be a much more formidable opponent to any agressor in a conventional European war. I am sure that is another one of the unforeseen consequences of the West’s ineptitude.
Our government don’t appear to be too worried about upholding the sovereignty of Northern Ireland, or doing anything about the incursion of thousands of invaders across the south coast of England, which is also an issue of sovereignty.
Is it moral to spaff £Billions of taxpayers money on weapons of war for another country when you have already shut down the economy in your own country by imposing needless lockdowns, causing the destruction of the economy, the NHS and the national work ethic apparently, incurring a huge national debt and rampant inflation?
There is no point debating the morality of the war until you end the war. That means getting the US and UK (predominantly) to stop interfering…The Ukrainian government must be allowed and enabled to make peace.
As part of that enablement the west should drop all sanctions, return stolen foreign reserves, and work to stabilize the world economy.
Only after peace is secured can a rational discussion take place over the morality of ALL the actions (Russian, Western, and Ukrainian) that led to conflict……
(what will happen though is simple…if you want a fire to keep burning…just throw on more fuel……)
I get that you’re pro Russian, but how you can come up with this as a credible solution beats me. You’re asking Ukraine to completely give up – let Putin take control – and then see if he’s willing to be nice.
It’s called the Surrender Strategy.
This is every bit as pointless as those who argued we should talk peace to Galtieri while he was in possession of the Falklands. He was never going to withdraw by negotiation.
If Putin gets control, he’s never going to give it back voluntarily.
As I never agree with a single thing you say, I will reply once and once only.
You think anyone who doesn’t think that Ukraine and Elenskyy are whiter than white, totally right and moral…is pro—Putin, so forgive me, but you are talking nonsense…but not only nonsense, but trying to stifle any debate with the ‘righteous indignation’ of a ten year old.
When this is all over and Ukraine is either no more, or fighting continues into year seven and eight…come back then and tell me how they ‘won’…
Who do you see stepping up to stop what is happening? How long do you think it can continue? How many Ukrainians have to die so you feel they have a win?
Elensky himself is talking, constantly, of the need to find a diplomatic solution…why won’t the West let him, or assist him?
I appreciate you can’t/won’t think about that because it would necessitate having to look at the West’s agenda for Ukraine….something you pretend isn’t happening….
The agenda for the West is that Ukraine should be free to run its own affairs and one day, perhaps, be eligible to join the EU.
Not exactly evil.
That may be what the west says its agenda is (and I am not sure that that is actually what they said) but you have to be extremely naive to accept that at face value.
Do you think Putin is ok with Ukraine running its own affairs including applying to the EU, if it wants to?
I think it’s all tied into the Great Reset one way or another.
No it’s not but …
How about if Scotland wants to join the Russian Federation and have exercises with Russian troops?
OK not identical but principally similar.
The only thing our government’s support of Ukraine usefully demonstrates is our political class are selected not elected. They promote the aims of distant overlords of various types, none of whom care about us or Ukrainians.
If we were sincere about tackling existential crises here or anywhere else, this is the top list of things that are an actual threat to the existence of Britain as a sovereign nation and the British as a distinct people:
Mass immigration from the third world
the demographic changes we already see may not be survivable; the promotion of diversity and inclusion is propaganda to excuse what most historians would recognize as colonization of the UK by foreigners; every major western nation is facing this Economic ruin
multiple causes, but the effects are visible and difficult to fix; this will cause very real economic hardship to ordinary people The destruction of individual responsibility and the downplaying of resilience
these are the traditional hallmarks of the British; our own grandparents would not have accepted lockdowns and related commands; we are mentally weaker than that generation I don’t care about Ukraine. I do not want the UK government to be involved at any level. We have… Read more »
Amen to that.
This conflict started because some Ukrainians wanted to fight other Ukrainians, and this is still the case. The West decided to support and arm one group, Russia chose to support and arm the other group.
And if Putin hadn’t armed the rebels back in 2014, the whole thing would never have started.
lol better go fact check ABCnews
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/04/ukraines-offensive-falters-as-elite-units-defect-to-pro-russia-side
Check some more, and you’ll find massive Russian involvement both before and after that date.
Well of course, they were all part of the same Soviet Union not many years ago.
So you think we should bring back the Soviet Union?
Did I say that? Of course I didn’t. There you go making it all up again.
Fingal? Make shit up?
Never……
Show us the evidence Fingers.
Oh wait, you never provide evidence for anything.
You just make shit up.
As if the US hadn’t already got its sticky fingers in the pie. How long will it take you to realise that this is not simply big, bad Russia repressing poor little Ukraine?
Russia has always been vastly more interventionist in Ukraine than the US – just off the scale in comparison.
Colour me totally unconvinced by your lack of cogent argument. An assertion is not fact without at least a little bit of evidence, and the trouble with finding evidence is that people hide it, so you never get to see a lot of it.
Following the end of the SU, Russia ran proxy governments in Ukraine using the massive hydrocarbon bribes which turned the country into one of the most corrupt in the world (as Belarus still is).
Russia never allowed Ukraine to be a true independent country, and intervened to prevent them gravitating towards the EU.
In recent years Russia intervened in the most destructive way possible, with multiple invasions.
Whatever funds or encouragement the US may allegedly have given, it wouldn’t touch the sides of the Russian bribes which came in barrels of oil and cubic metres of gas.
Just keep making shit up dummy.
Never, because it’s not an opinion, it’s a script.