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Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

economist.com

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Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#181

Post by tpoacher »

From wikipedia:

Bulverism is a term for a rhetorical fallacy that combines circular reasoning and the Genetic fallacy with presumption or condescension. The method of Bulverism is to "assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error." The Bulverist assumes a speaker's argument is invalid or false and then explains why the speaker came to make that mistake (even if the opponent's claim is actually right) by attacking the speaker or the speaker's motive. The term Bulverism was coined by C. S. Lewis[1] to poke fun at a very serious error in thinking that, he alleged, recurs often in a variety of religious, political, and philosophical debates.

Similar to Antony Flew's "subject/motive shift", Bulverism is a fallacy of irrelevance. One accuses an argument of being wrong on the basis of the arguer's identity or motive, but these are strictly speaking irrelevant to the argument's validity or truth.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#183

Post by ericb »

sudosysgen wrote: post #105
ericb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only the US & allied governments are actually actively promoting the idea of going to war. It's incredibly costly to park 150,000 troops and armor in a position to invade. But your issue is with the governments saying "excuse me, why does it look like you're positioning your troops for an invasion?" OK.

Don't overestimate the cost. If the units weren't there, they'd be doing large scale exercises and maneuvers, which can be even more costly. From the perspective of the Russian army, stationing a medium-sized force within their own borders is not going to be that expensive. Also, the corresponding increase in gas prices is going to counteract that perhaps even completely.

The average US town has 6k people, so this is like relocating the population of 25 US towns to new, temporary housing.

Then you have to set up logistics to provide continual daily food and fuel to the new location for all those people. Then you have to relocate tanks which get about a mile per gallon of fuel, as well as people carriers, weapons, aircraft, missiles, ammo, field hospitals, blood and medical supplies, etc.

Armies rarely do "large scale exercises and maneuvers" precisely because they are so expensive.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#184

Post by jaybrendansmith »

jcranmer wrote: post #49
conradev wrote: post #26

John Mearsheimer has a really great video from 6 years ago about Ukraine that I found fascinating: https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4 Basically, he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO, and he thinks it should remain a buffer state between NATO and Russia

> he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO NATO doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO (at least, not for the foreseeable future). That's why, even now , when Ukraine is more or less begging to join NATO, NATO has done diddly squat to do so. A lot of the pressure to join NATO within Ukraine has increased since Russia invaded Georgia and then Crimea. Russia only has itself to blame fo…

I see a lot of opinions here that seem to want to a) blame the current administration, b) blame NATO for the current threat of war. That's like blaming the victim in an abusive relationship as nobody in the west wants war. What these opinions miss are the following relevant facts: 1. NATO has consistently pushed back on Ukraine's interest in joining NATO for fear of the geopolitical impacts, specifically Russia. 2. Ukraine has become steadily more European and less Russian in the last decade, and has slowly been falling away from Russia, both culturally and economically. This is Putin's last-ditch attempt to keep Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence. It is destined to fail, because the Ukrainian people have started to move on, although there is a very large, aging contingent of former Soviet, pro-Russia people who don't like what has been happening from a cultural standpoint. However the best way to tell where a country is going is to ask the youth. They often speak English and would prefer to be a modern democracy. We in the US at least should continue to do what we've done for 70 years and work for democracy with all the tools at our reasonable disposal. The world largely moving to democracy did not happen by accident.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#185

Post by shagmin »

gfosco wrote: post #147
throwaway6734 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Russia isn't the one starting this conflict >Russia made it very clear, that ain't happening and they'll go to war over it. Which one is it? >The zero-evidence claims that Russia was about to invade sure look like pure propaganda from the same people who are thirsty for it. The massive troop build up along Ukraine's border and in Belarus? You're spreading Russian propaganda.

Look I think you're missing the point. Chew on it for a bit, don't respond half-cocked. You: I want do to X. B: If you do X, I will do Y. You can try to convince B not to do Y if you do X... but if B is prepared to do Y, and is showing you he's prepared to do Y... and you can't convince him not to... then you have to consider, that if you continue trying to do X, that You are the one agitating.

The problem I have with this is it seems like you're arguing for might makes right. B is basically a bully and is making a choice for both parties then (B's way or war). Meanwhile I just don't want to be bullied or feel vulnerable to my bully neighbor.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#186

Post by invalidname »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #56

The Economist has traditionally the worst coverage of Russia amongst Western media. To the point where it starts looking like it is something personal for the editors: always the same narrative, facts and opinions that not fit in the picture are conveniently ignored etc. This article has a lot of pure speculations, that oversimplify the internal politics and decision making process in Russia. Yes, there’s a relativel…

Literally everything the west said is happening before our eyes. Russia is mounting a false flag operation trying to find an "excuse" for war.

They were supposed to finish the "exercise" and instead they're adding troops. Will you "accept this as facts" when they march through the entire country or will that just be "an extended exercise". I understand it's hard to admit your own country is run by a power hungry dictator. Mine is too. It sucks.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#187

Post by invalidname »

bsenftner wrote: post #65

"Elites have hijacked Russia and conflated the country's interests with their own" Um... Replace "Russia" with the name of any nation on earth, and the sentence remains true. As an individual with an Economics graduate degree, The Economist strikes me as such a flimsy propaganda rag, it's sad and pathetic it has any attention at all.

Nonsesnse. That's a false equivalency.

Elites have power everywhere. True. But Russia is right now a dictatorship where the elite who kiss the ring of Putin are protected. The others get jailed or worse.

There's an inner circle that decides to go to war and can make that decision without congressional approval. They can mount false flag operations (as they are doing right now) and literally attack unprovoked against the interests of the Russian people.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#188

Post by HWR_14 »

gfosco wrote: post #147
throwaway6734 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Russia isn't the one starting this conflict >Russia made it very clear, that ain't happening and they'll go to war over it. Which one is it? >The zero-evidence claims that Russia was about to invade sure look like pure propaganda from the same people who are thirsty for it. The massive troop build up along Ukraine's border and in Belarus? You're spreading Russian propaganda.

Look I think you're missing the point. Chew on it for a bit, don't respond half-cocked. You: I want do to X. B: If you do X, I will do Y. You can try to convince B not to do Y if you do X... but if B is prepared to do Y, and is showing you he's prepared to do Y... and you can't convince him not to... then you have to consider, that if you continue trying to do X, that You are the one agitating.

Depending on what X and Y are, we condemn different actors. Agitating not really a word I would use for any pairing.

"Keep me from taking your purse" and "shoot you" we condemn B as a mugger.

"Leave me and meet someone new" and "shoot both of you" and we condemn B as a domestic abuser and potential murderer.

"Return a library book late" and "charge you $0.10 a day as a fine" and we condemn A lightly.

I would contend Russia's current actions fall squarely in the first two examples.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#189

Post by aww_dang »

invalidname wrote: post #180
aww_dang wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

This is a false equivalency. I get into this a lot with Russian immigrants. They're so used to distrusting the government they distrust everything. Sure, our politicians lie. But with the exception of Trump this is at a "reasonable" scale and they're usually held accountable. You can check them up. In the case of dictators lying is the default and if you try to hold them to account you'll breath Polonium pretty soon.…

No post body was provided.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#190

Post by gfosco »

shagmin wrote: post #185
gfosco wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look I think you're missing the point. Chew on it for a bit, don't respond half-cocked. You: I want do to X. B: If you do X, I will do Y. You can try to convince B not to do Y if you do X... but if B is prepared to do Y, and is showing you he's prepared to do Y... and you can't convince him not to... then you have to consider, that if you continue trying to do X, that You are the one agitating.

The problem I have with this is it seems like you're arguing for might makes right. B is basically a bully and is making a choice for both parties then (B's way or war). Meanwhile I just don't want to be bullied or feel vulnerable to my bully neighbor.

I'm not arguing in favor of might makes right, but global politics isn't simple and many of the players aren't rational or reasonable. I'm arguing for dealing with reality, and acknowledging reality. I don't have a strong position either way, to be honest, and I don't think really any of us know enough to be so confident.
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