That’s a possibility, sure, but I would need a more solid argument for the likelihood of something happening in a hypothetical or counterfactual scenario. For example, if Ukraine managed to join NATO, would still Putin attack NATO out of anger? I doubt it and, as far as geopolitical actors are concerned, they seem to doubt it too:

↪neomac

People doubted he would invade a large country like Ukraine too. It’s a risk, we are talking about risks here. — Punshhh

indeed, the reason for Ukraine to join NATO was to deter Putin from attacking Ukraine, otherwise what would be the point of joining NATO if Putin would attack anyway just out of anger?

Again it’s about risks, probability. — Punshhh

Possibilities and risks are all we’ve got in a discussion like this. Yes there has been a decline in U.S. deterrence. This is probably the shift from the unipole to the competing superpowers we see now. — Punshhh

Also to assess risks on hypothetical and counterfactual scenarios you need arguments or evidences to support them.
Besides, pointing at a risk is not enough to discourage crossing alleged red lines: motivation is surely one thing, but also means and opportunities need to be taken into account. Indeed, Putin showed his anger in 2008 at the prospect that one day Ukraine would join NATO. But it took Putin 14 years to prepare and find the right opportunity (which include the divisions between EU and the US, with the EU and within the US, and the declining power projection of the US vis-à-vis of its challengers) to aggress Ukraine.
To my understanding, the risk you are referring to is more specifically grounded on Western divisions, decisional weakness, and military unreadiness, than on Putin’s anger. If the West showed a united front, stable resolve and readiness to make the needed military efforts, Putin could have been and could still be very much deterred in to pursuing a war against the West over Ukraine. And notice Putin frames this war mainly as a war against the West, but still Western public opinions are far from getting how existential this war can be to their prosperity and security. That’s why Putin can count on the possibility that the West gets tired of supporting Ukraine.

First of all, my claim was: “the more the European strategic interest diverges from the US national interest and the European partnership turns unexploitable by the US, the more the US may be compelled to make Europe unexploitable to its hegemonic competitors too.”

This is a complicated claim, I’m not even sure it’s saying anything.
Surely by helping EU and forming a stronger alliance with them. the U.S. would be making Europe unexploitable to its competitors. By contrast why would U.S. make EU unexploitable to herself and her competitors? — Punshhh

The logic is analogous to the one compelling military units to destroy their own military equipment, for example during a withdrawal, out of fear it may fall in enemies’ hands. To the extent Russia comes out emboldened and empowered from this war, the West may experience a surge of anti-Americanism which could further weaken the US power projection and leadership in Europe. So the US, along with Russia, will be compelled to try to play such divisions on their favour at the expense of the rival. Europeans experienced something similar during the Cold War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)

I’ve already agreed that Trump is crazy and could upset the apple cart. He’s not really a representation of the U.S. position. He’s an anomaly and I doubt he will make it to the election with any chance of winning. — Punshhh

Such a claim sounds overly bold given the available polls. I get that such polls can be wrong and there is still time for Biden’s campaign, but no chance of winning looks definitely as an overkill.

If it wasn’t a controversial issue between EU and US why didn’t Ukraine join EU and NATO yet?

That’s a non sequitur, I doubt that the fact that Ukraine is not now in NATO is due to squabbling between U.S. and EU. — Punshhh

Non sequitur?! Doubt because...? These are the facts I’m referring to:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/01/nato.georgia
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/02/09/german-chancellor-merkel-visit-obama/23115859/
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/14/politics/ukraine-nato-joe-biden/index.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/france-and-germany-are-split-over-ukraine-s-appeal-to-join-nato
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220404-merkel-defends-2008-decision-to-block-ukraine-from-nato
https://washington.mfa.gov.hu/eng/news/why-is-hungary-blocking-ukraines-nato-accession

I think you underestimate the strategic leverages of Middle East regional powers in the international equilibria, considering also the influence they have in the once called “Third World”. And, again, the closer hegemonic powers get in terms of capacity, the greater the impact of smaller powers can be over the power struggle between hegemonic powers.

When you say hegemonic powers here, specifically, are you referring to superpowers, at any point? Or are you just referring to hegemonic power players in the Middle East? — Punshhh

To me “superpowers” is a shorthand for the US, China and Russia. While Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are regional powers in the Middle Eastern area which are engaging in a hegemonic struggle in the Middle East. They are hegemonic because they are vigorously supporting military and economic projection beyond their borders to primary control the middle-east, but also in Asia and Africa (example: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240312-turkey-iran-morocco-joust-for-greater-role-in-sahel).

Can you point to a regional power who is in a strong position to influence international equilibria, or a coalition perhaps? — Punshhh

Iran is now military supporting Russia and pressing Israel with its proxies, related to two strategic regions which have compelled, still compel, and risk to compel further the US’ intervention at the expense of pivoting to the Pacific.
https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117148/witnesses/HHRG-118-FA13-Wstate-StroulD-20240417.pdf

The point is that the combination of persisting EU vulnerabilities plus incumbent weakening of the US leadership, will turn Europe into a more disputable area for hegemonic competition among the US and other rival hegemonic powers, and this could threaten both NATO and EU project.

You repeat this and I agree that there has been some political interference from Russia in these issues. But I don’t see this fatal weakness you keep alluding to in EU, or U.S. — Punshhh

We are talking risks, right? I argued for the risks I see through historical evidences (which you admit but downplay without any counter-evidence) and strategic reasons potentially appealing to geopolitical competitors (which you conveniently narrow down based on hopes).

It’s true there has been a complacency in Europe in becoming involved with Russia in various ways since the collapse of USSR. But the Ukraine war has been a big wake up call and this will be corrected. Likewise in U.S., although the political problems in U.S. recently are due more to populist opportunism and hopefully it will be a wake up call there too. — Punshhh

Besides “hopefully” doesn’t mean “probably”, the point is that this wake up call is too recent to have set a stable and compelling trend in Western security.
Furthermore also non-Western and anti-Western powers had a wake up call at the expense of the West: Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel are acting accordingly.

Sure that doesn’t mean they are hopeless vis-à-vis with climate change:
https://www.watermeetsmoney.com/saudi-water-investment-showcase-at-the-global-water-summit/

Desalination will never produce enough fresh water to replace depleted water tables. The quantities required are vast and desalination a trickle. — Punshhh

I didn’t reference that link to argue that desalination will produce enough fresh water to replace depleted water tables. There may be more methods available to tackle water crisis depending on available and evolving technologies. I limited myself to argue that governments in the Middle East show self-awareness wrt climate challenges (as much as geopolitical challenges) and are already making efforts to deal with them. So it’s not evident to me that in the next ten years or so the Middle East will turn into a Mad Max style location because of a water crisis, and will stop playing any significant role in international equilibria.

Besides, even though they compete for regional hegemony, yet the most acute and local problems they have to face coming from Islamism, environmental challenges, growing population

There aren’t any Middle Eastern powers competing for regional hegemony. — Punshhh

If you have evidences that support your claim, bring them up so we can compare.
I’m talking of evidences such as:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/irans-order-chaos-suzanne-maloney
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/breaking-out-its-box-washington-tehran-regional-influence
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/REPS-02-2019-0017/full/html
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/20/iran-khamenei-supreme-leader-strategy-middle-east/
https://www.fairobserver.com/world-news/middle-east-news/the-new-middle-east-a-triangular-struggle-for-hegemony/
https://isdp.eu/irans-regional-proxies-reshaping-the-middle-east-and-testing-u-s-policy/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/briefing/iran-proxies-israel-gaza-red-sea.html
https://epc.ae/en/details/featured-topics/navigating-the-iran-challenge-and-regional-instability-de-escalation-and-sustainable-development-strategies
https://thediplomat.com/2024/02/the-iran-factor-in-the-china-taiwan-us-triangle/
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/01/us-deterrence-against-iran-damaged-not-dead
https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/pivot-to-offense-how-iran-is-adapting-for-modern-conflict-and-warfare/

Notice that I do not need to argue for the emergence of a superpower in the Middle East. A dominating regional power can be already enough to contain the American power projection on the globe if the US' power projection is already offset by Russia and China's in Europe, Asia and in Africa.

It depends if China and Russia perceive Islam as a greater threat than the West. So far it doesn’t seem to be the case, given the support/cooperation China and Russia grant to Iran (the only country in which the islamic revolution thus far succeeded), Hezbollah, Houthi and Hamas.

I see this more as a case of “my enemies enemy is my friend”, Russia likes to engage in these ways. — Punshhh

Still that’s possible because the West is currently perceived as a greater threat than Islamism.
Besides the “my enemies’ enemy is my friend” between Russia and Iran is far from being conjunctural given the numerous treatises between them like this one
https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-irans-raisi-sign-new-interstate-treaty-soon-russia-2024-01-17/
And the fact that their strategic alliance is increasing since the end of the Cold War.

I don’t seek to downplay what you bring to the table, I just don’t find the suggestions that there are big geopolitical risks in the Middle East compelling. Or that there is not a big geopolitical risk in Ukraine compelling. — Punshhh

We didn’t agree on how to measure geopolitical risks. My arguments are based on my understanding of how threats are perceived and acted upon by the actual players. The US intervened in support of Ukraine and in support of Israel. And the latter even happened at the expense of former. This is not what one would expect if the conflict in Ukraine was evidently of grater strategic importance.
My argument is that, even if the stakes in the Ukrainian conflict may have greater impact in the hegemonic struggle between the US and China, than Israeli-Palestinian conflict one can’t reasonable use the former to downplay the latter for, at least, two reasons: there is a link between the two, and up until now the US never managed to disengage from both areas to pivot to the Pacific (and that, to me, doesn’t depend only on domestic factors like the pro-Israel lobby or the military-industrial complex)

1. Downplaying the evidence I bring is rather pointless since what matters is to what extent geopolitical actors take such evidence seriously and act upon it. If Middle East wasn’t important to the US, the US wouldn’t engage in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the conflict in Ukraine.

As I say, I don’t seek to downplay this evidence. I just don’t find it evidence of importance geopolitical developments at this time. (I’m happy to explain why if you remind me of some of it) — Punshhh

Concerning your reasoning, as long as the West and the Rest runs on oil from the Middle East, the Middle East is strategically important for geopolitical developments.
I think however that their importance goes beyond that since Middle Eastern’s power projection goes beyond the middle-east. So they can play a role on securing/controlling commercial routes (https://newsletter.macmillan.yale.edu/newsletter/fall-2010/american-grand-strategy-middle-east, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative), immigration trends and political networking (through Islamism, financial means, military aid, etc.).

You refer to Trump again, yes a Trump presidency might well try to go down such a course. It’s madness of course, a fools errand. Even if Trump does win a second term in office, it is an anomaly in U.S. foreign policy, which will be corrected after he has left office. — Punshhh

Some anomalies may be more than conjunctural events. See, also re-arming to face the Russian threat is an anomaly in EU foreign policy, yet it happened under the pressure of historical circumstances. And now you may wish to argue it will grow further into a stable, effective and comprehensive defence strategy. On the other side, the prospect of Trump running for a second presidential term suggests me the possibility that Trump’s political base may be wide, strong and persistent enough to survive him. As much as the burden of the imperial overstretch inducing the US to downgrade its commitments to global hegemony. Even more so, if the EU will remain structurally weak.

for a population vulnerable to populist rhetoric

This is often exaggerated and refers to a populist reaction to levels of immigration.

(and often pro-Russian)

Lol. — Punshhh

Here some more evidence for you to downplay (while you provided none as usual):
https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_putins_friends_in_europe7153/
Concerning pro-Russian populist parties also in Western Europe, Italy offers a good case:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/31/a-success-for-kremlin-propaganda-how-pro-putin-views-permeate-italian-media
https://theins.ru/en/politics/268921
https://www.euronews.com/2022/03/09/see-what-your-friend-putin-has-done-salvini-mocked-in-poland


Dude, we clarified our different positions enough. At this point we seem to disagree so much on what constitutes an interesting, if not compelling, argument in support of some claim that I really don’t see the point of dragging this exchange further.

The Russian spy network in Europe:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-spies-infiltrated-romania-disguised-230100892.html
https://apnews.com/article/poland-espinonage-ukraine-russia-zelenskyy-plot-a7e3f5944ba165dd30b271840ffa9f95
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68843541

Republicans denounce Russian propaganda within their own party:
https://www.aol.com/news/luxury-yachts-other-myths-republican-090000423.html

Let's fact-check the fact-checkers of the fact-checkers:
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/creature-of-the-right-james-ball/
https://hopenothate.org.uk/2024/02/22/revealed-the-shocking-tweets-of-gb-news-co-owner-sir-paul-marshall/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Responsible_Citizenship

I’m sure that I’m “not sure if that’s relevant”.

It’s relevant if that anger goes beyond the point of rationality. — Punshhh

That’s a possibility, sure, but I would need a more solid argument for the likelihood of something happening in a hypothetical or counterfactual scenario. For example, if Ukraine managed to join NATO, would still Putin attack NATO out of anger? I doubt it and, as far as geopolitical actors are concerned, they seem to doubt it too: indeed, the reason for Ukraine to join NATO was to deter Putin from attacking Ukraine, otherwise what would be the point of joining NATO if Putin would attack anyway just out of anger? Putin may attack NATO out of a more hawkish calculus though to the extent NATO countries show lack of resolve (due to economic dependency) and/or fear for escalation (for lack of readiness and will to fight for allies).

That there are differences in foreign policy between U.S. and EU, such that U.S. would seek to keep EU down, or weak. Again I’m just not seeing it. — Punshhh

First of all, my claim was: “the more the European strategic interest diverges from the US national interest and the European partnership turns unexploitable by the US, the more the US may be compelled to make Europe unexploitable to its hegemonic competitors too.” Secondly, I argued that the conflict in Ukraine and in Palestine are straining Western public opinion and nurturing conflict of interests among allies, to the point that for example a US candidate for the next presidential elections like Trump dared to say “he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies” if they do not comply with Trump’s demands.
Besides, I do not think EU governments and advisors are downplaying the gravity of such claims, or the US questionable commitment toward the Ukrainian conflict.
https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-nato-russia-attack-white-house-appalling-unhinged/32814229.html
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-nuclear-warfare-detterence-manfred-weber-vladimir-putin-ukraine-russia-war/
Poland's foreign minister on concerns the U.S. will abandon Ukraine, Europe 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHxjutEfhww)
If you do not see that, again do not bother answering me.

The alliance between them is strong and in lockstep. The status of Ukraine, or the expansion of EU and NATO to the east is not a controversial issue between them. — Punshhh

If it wasn’t a controversial issue between EU and US why didn’t Ukraine join EU and NATO yet?

The Middle Eastern regional powers are small fry, Turkey is not far off a failed state and the Arab states just want to hold on to their decadent lifestyles. — Punshhh

I think you underestimate the strategic leverages of Middle East regional powers in the international equilibria, considering also the influence they have in the once called “Third World”. And, again, the closer hegemonic powers get in terms of capacity, the greater the impact of smaller powers can be over the power struggles between hegemonic powers.

The point is that the combination of persisting EU vulnerabilities plus incumbent weakening of the US leadership, will turn Europe into a more disputable area for hegemonic competition among the US and other rival hegemonic powers, and this could threaten both NATO and EU project.

This is the flawed argument I was referring to.
I think the best you’ve got here is some sort of general malaise and internal collapse in the EU, or U.S. The EU is now rearming and stronger as an alliance due to the example of the U.K. (having left the EU). Also as I say if Ukraine joins, it will provide a considerable boost in numerous ways. The U.S. is in a more precarious position, (I see Trump more and more as a busted flush now) but is still strong militarily and can print money to pull itself out of the malaise. — Punshhh

You seem to be grounding your arguments mostly on possibilities, but that’s not enough to assess likelihood. Sure it could be just a malaise that the West will manage to overcome, but it is too soon to see in Western re-arming a new stable trend that will succeed in building collective strategic deterrence, despite all persisting conflict of interests. While the decline of the US deterrence and leadership has just kept notably growing since 9/11.

Yes, however there might be severe climate issues there in a few decades. Saudi has some dubious practices including building ski slopes in the desert and depleting water tables, something they’re doing to U.S. water tables too. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/16/fondomonte-arizona-drought-saudi-farm-water/ — Punshhh

Sure that doesn’t mean they are hopeless vis-à-vis climate change:
https://www.watermeetsmoney.com/saudi-water-investment-showcase-at-the-global-water-summit/

Besides, even though they compete for regional hegemony, yet the most acute and local problems they have to face coming from Islamism, environmental challenges, growing population (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/why-the-world-s-fastest-growing-populations-are-in-the-middle-east-and-africa/), plus the mediation of greater powers, like China, may also solicit greater cooperation among them to face shared future challenges, including the threats of a multipolar world like hawkish non-middle eastern hegemonic powers.

Sounds more like a liability for China, Russia etc.. Also it would mean them getting into bed with these Islamists you talk about. — Punshhh

It depends if China and Russia perceive Islam as a greater threat than the West. So far it doesn’t seem to be the case, given the support/cooperation China and Russia grant to Iran (the only country in which the islamic revolution thus far succeeded), Hezbollah, Houthi and Hamas.

This is the flawed argument I was referring to. — Punshhh

Weak argument, unless we are talking of a world slipping into distopia. Climate change might deliver this though. — Punshhh

Clearly mine is just a speculation. But a principled one because I take into account strategic logic of geopolitical players and historical circumstances to assess likelihood. And the conclusion is that we have reasons to worry about how things may evolve in Ukraine but also in the Middle East given the current predicament.
Your argument seems mostly about downplaying the evidence I bring, insisting on the need for the US to have a strong EU to counter Russia and China, insisting on the fact of European re-arming, and on the incumbent crisis in the Middle East due to climate change.
What I counter is:
1. Downplaying the evidence I bring is rather pointless since what matters is to what extent geopolitical actors take such evidence seriously and act upon it. If Middle East wasn’t important to the US, the US wouldn’t engage in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the conflict in Ukraine.
2. Insisting that the US needs something doesn’t imply it will get it. Besides the pivot to China, may lead the US to appease Russia’s hegemonic ambitions in Europe to turn Russia against China (which is the raising power, geographically closer to Russia than the US), as argued by various political analysts including Mearsheimer. Indeed, Trump's approach to Russia can be in line with such view (https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/05/24/donald-trump-s-plan-to-play-russia-against-china-is-fool-s-errand-pub-70067). Russia’s appeasement in Europe on the other side may be costly for EU/NATO/Ukraine, and also turn more destabilising than the US may tolerate (if not to Trump’s administration, to post-Trump’s administrations) , soliciting a hegemonic competition in Europe.
3. European re-arming is a recent phenomenon so it doesn't help much to assess the future and effectiveness of the collective European defence strategy (considering various strategic factors like defence industry, conscription, nuclear, etc.) given its controversial costs for a population vulnerable to populist (and often pro-Russian) rhetoric.
4. Climate change is definitely an incumbent challenge that concerns the entire world, and Middle East governments are aware of its risks and urgency, especially due to how exposed they are. That doesn’t mean they are doomed to succumb to a climate crisis or to geopolitical irrelevance, given how pro-actively and effectively they are already acting wrt climate change and evolving geopolitical challenges.

When speaking specifically about dissidents — those critical of their own countries — it’s kind of silly to ask “is there anything good about the US foreign policy?” The response, “All the countries we haven’t invaded — I like that,” and his explanation of why it’s silly is pretty obvious. In that context, it’s “not the job” of a dissident to discuss things he likes is clear. — Mikie

If that's the task of a dissident, then he can still be very misleading (because a balanced view should consider pros and cons of one country's policies and regime among existing alternatives) and exploitable by hostile and authoritarian foreign powers. But I guess it's not the job of a dissident to warn you about it, right?

Right, simple minded people admire dissidents for speaking truth against power in their own country where they have an impact, that's why rival powers support dissidents in other countries not in theirs.

Noam Chomsky, a leading American intellectual highly critical of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, meets Hezbollah mentor Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, in 2010 (credit: REUTERS)

I think here below Chomsky tells it quite clearly why this criticism against the US. — ssu

I find it rather perplexing:
1. He claims that credit is given to those who criticize their own government's foreign policies not other people's government foreign policies: so how about Palestinians criticizing Israel? Ukrainians criticizing Russia? The Rest's grievances against the West?
2. He claims at min 1:13 "to an extent I can do something about it especially in a pretty free country like this one now we understand" so despite all duping propaganda, no matter how massive, CIA conspiring, hypocritical, etc. but without considering any links between freedom and power. If authoritarian countries are insulated from internal criticism, people can't do much to change it so it will remain authoritarian. So an overwhelming foreign power is needed to contain hegemonic authoritarian regimes. While free countries are NOT insulated from internal criticism, so people can do something to change it which also includes the possibility of turning the free regime into an authoritarian regime. Besides, the free world can be infiltrated and intoxicated by foreign propaganda of authoritarian regimes to weaken the overwhelming foreign power that contains them .

What I find baffling is how certain people cling on the charicatural idea that
- the US is the world’s superpower and that is a major player in shaping world affairs, yet at the same time they keep reminding all foreign failures: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Palestine, etc.
- the US is the evil mastermind conspiring against states and people around the world through lies and bribes (which everybody non-brainwashed is aware of), and yet systematically failing to achieve strategic goals other than the self-defeating ones by wasting resources and reputation in failed (proxy) wars
- the US is driven by hypocritical and greedy people supported by a gullible majority (still?), lacking basic humanity principles, and which the entire world has to condemn (especially if Westerner) and to hold as the number one responsible for everything wrong there is in this world (including climate change)

What I find baffling is how certain people cling on the charicatural idea that
- the US is the world’s superpower and that is a major player in shaping world affairs, yet at the same time they keep reminding all foreign failures: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Palestine, etc.
- the US is the evil mastermind conspiring against states and people around the world through lies and bribes (which everybody non-brainwashed is aware of), and yet systematically failing to achieve strategic goals other than the self-defeating ones by wasting resources and reputation in failed (proxy) wars
- the US is driven by hypocritical and greedy people supported by a gullible majority (still?), lacking basic humanity principles, and which the entire world has to condemn (especially if Westerner) and to hold as the number one responsible for everything wrong there is in this world (including climate change)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-iran-begins-attack-on-israel-launching-dozens-of-drones-thatll-take-hours-to-arrive/ — neomac

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/jordans-air-defence-ready-shoot-down-any-iranian-aircraft-that-violate-its-2024-04-13/
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2024/04/14/iran-threatens-to-attack-jordan-if-it-cooperates-with-israel-report

Neomac, notice what Tzeentch argued:

Russia proposed to give back all the territory they conquered during the invasion in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. — Tzeentch


Where is this kind of argument was my question. Please read what I say. — ssu

AFAIK, there are no official documents about the negotiation proposal (which was not an agreement, of course, and far from being one) just reports, like this:

Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wants-fiona-hill-angela-stent

I don't recall hearing this. But please give an actual reference on it. — ssu

This is claimed to be part of the 10 points of Instambul Communque:
Proposal 1: Ukraine proclaims itself a neutral state, promising to remain nonaligned with any blocs and refrain from developing nuclear weapons — in exchange for international legal guarantees. Possible guarantor states include Russia, Great Britain, China, the United States, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Israel, and other states would also be welcome to join the treaty.
https://faridaily.substack.com/p/ukraines-10-point-plan

Then confirmed by Bennett and Arestovych among others (https://www.intellinews.com/top-ukrainian-politician-oleksiy-arestovych-gives-seventh-confirmation-of-russia-ukraine-peace-deal-agreed-in-march-2022-302876/)

Do historical aspects justify more or is it the will of the people? Which justifies more?

As having studied history I understand the role of history here quite well: history is usually used to push an agenda by focusing and giving importance to the details that makes the agenda important. Thus history is usually done from a national point of view that justifies the existing state and all little details that have made it so. If history is a tool for this, it still is a tool. Existence of a state and a desire for an independent state is a lot more. — “ssu

Your question intrigues me because it’s the kind of core question where apparently meaning looks so intuitive, and yet all sorts of ambiguities show up at a second thought. The shortest answer I feel comfortable to give is that I take “justification” as a normative claim which one appeals to in order to ground beliefs so that they do not appear arbitrary. Therefore, the will of the people needs to be grounded on a justifying system of beliefs, which is what I think we normally refer to when talking about “the narrative”, in order to not appear arbitrary, especially to those who do not share such will or worse have to lose. On the other side, the justifying belief system is also what helps identify whom the people are we are referring to when talking about the will of “the people” (also across generations). And this turns particularly problematic when sovereignty over a territory and the popular representativity of political decision makers are disputed. If a specific narrative justifying the right to land is what politically qualifies Palestinians as Palestinians vs Israelis as Israelis, discounting such a narrative would make the demand for a Israeli and Palestinian nation-state arbitrary. While taking it into account would make both demands incompatible. One might wish to say that both Israelis and Palestinians may find an agreement for a peaceful however unjust resolution (since narratives remain incompatible) but, so far, they didn’t manage to. On both sides there were/are elements strong enough to boycott such a resolution again in light of incompatible narratives. Invoking third party actors as mediators, instead of fixing the conflict, may be useless or worsen the situation, since also third party actors may be in conflict among themselves also due to incompatible narratives.

Finally, if Palestinians do want an independent state from Israel while not recognising Israel, then also Palestinians don't want a two state solution. — neomac

Umm... they did recognize Israel. At least the PA did. (Do you know the Oslo peace accords?)

Following the Oslo I Accord in 1993, the Palestinian Authority and Israel conditionally recognized each other's right to govern specific areas of the country.


This is the reason why Netanyahu just loved so much Hamas that he even financially supported them. For him the Palestinian that cannot be negotiated with is the Palestinian that he wants to have. Far more easy to ethnically cleanse when the other side are "human animals".

(And naturally many Israelis want to uphold the idea that they cannot negotiate with the Palestinians, that Palestinians just want to drive them to the sea. Or something like that.) — “ssu

We have discussed that already. Whatever agreement decision makers may have found at some point, they weren’t able to enforce them on either sides. The legal implications of such failures are also disputed. What we may still do, before drawing our conclusions in light of our moral standards and political leaning, is to assess the impact of Palestine and Israeli’s approach to their strategic goals in terms of efficacy. What we are seeing is that the Palestinians are bearing the greater material and human costs wrt the Israelis so far. While Israel resisted also foreign pressure and persisting resistance (Hamas keeps firing rockets against Israel, and holding Israeli hostages), so far. Which one is getting closer to its strategic goal?

Not sure if that’s relevant: Putin may have been furious and still deterred.

↪neomac

Are you sure about that? — Punshhh

I’m sure that I’m “not sure if that’s relevant”.

Especially in the firs years of his Presidential mandate, imagine during the Chechen war.

That’s unrealistic, you’re taking it back to a point where Russia was weak compared to now. Putin has been agitating in Ukraine for a long time. If Ukraine had been fast tracked into NATO that would have blown up on the eastern front. — Punshhh

If you are reasoning in terms of counterfactuals, I can do the same. There were US political advisors pushing for NATO enlargement (including Ukraine) way before Putin (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-105shrg46832/html/CHRG-105shrg46832.htm) and “relations between Ukraine and NATO were formally established in 1992, when Ukraine joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council after regaining its independence, later renamed the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations). So my counterfactual is not arbitrary.
On the other side if we are talking about starting from the current conflict, it would be certainly problematic for political and strategic reasons wrt NATO and wrt Putin, still I think Putin would have big problems to start a war against NATO if the non occupied part of Ukraine was successfully fast tracked into NATO (like Finland), as Putin is even having problems to end the conflict in South and East Ukraine.

How am I conflating “superpower status” with “the unipolar world”, if I’m intentionally stressing their difference, and what you wrote is again a paraphrase of what I just claimed to have understood from your views?

Your whole argument about U.S. looking to weaken the EU, rather than form a constructive alliance, (apart from it being a flawed argument) only makes sense from the assumption that the U.S. is in a unipolar position and doesn’t require that alliance.

I thought it was accepted knowledge that the U.S. isn’t in a unipolar position. — Punshhh

First, I was trying to understand your views, so I made explicit what I thought it was left implicit in your argument. And the point is that if the superpower status of the US in one-to-one comparison still holds in the current non-unipolar world, I’m not sure the US will preserve its superpower status so defined in the next decades if certain strategic alliances are necessary for the US to keep its superpower status: technological gap is already decreasing, military projection is already grown unsustainable, monetary dominance is challenged or worked around, and reputational costs are mostly against the US. So the US power projection as world power can be severely damaged in the longer run.
Second, if the US needs a strong EU as an ally to sustain its power projection wrt rival alliances, I don’t think it will evidently succeed either because a strong EU will never materialise, and if it will materialise it still will at best balance not overwhelm rival alliances, even more so, if the contribution of Middle-Eastern regional powers can weigh in.
Third, to be more precise, my whole argument is “the more the European strategic interest diverges from the US national interest and the European partnership turns unexploitable by the US, the more the US may be compelled to make Europe unexploitable to its hegemonic competitors too.” The point is that the combination of persisting EU vulnerabilities plus incumbent weakening of the US leadership, Europe will turn into a more disputable area for hegemonic competition among the US and other rival hegemonic powers, and this could threaten both NATO and EU project.

Other than oil, money, terrorism, control over commercial routes, criminal business, immigration, exporting islamism in Asia, Africa and the West, maybe nothing. That’s however may be enough to help a Russia-China alliance against a US and EU alliance, even more so with a weak EU.

Good luck (for this alliance) in holding all that together. Just more failed states. The only reason the Gulf states have their current prosperity and security is due to implicit support from the U.S. (the West) in return for oil. That oil will shortly become less important with the transition to net zero. By the way, Russia has the same problem with oil becoming a stranded asset. — Punshhh

Concerning the Middle East, I find at least the leaderships of regional powers like Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia, enough aware of their geopolitical role and strength, despite rivalries and vulnerabilities. They are open to balance the US hegemony in cooperation with Russia and China. They try to develop their sphere of influence even beyond the Middle East in Asia and Africa. And even though they will exploit their oil as a main source of revenues, they are already planning for a post-oil transition (https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/lists/the-middle-easts-sustainable-100/, https://www.dw.com/en/how-the-gulf-region-is-planning-for-a-life-after-oil/a-67067995, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-021-01424-x). Besides, even though they compete for regional hegemony, yet the most acute and local problems they have to face coming from Islamism, environmental challenges, growing population (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/why-the-world-s-fastest-growing-populations-are-in-the-middle-east-and-africa/), plus the mediation of greater powers, like China, may also solicit greater cooperation among them to face shared future challenges, including the threats of a multipolar world like hawkish non-middle eastern hegemonic powers.

Actually I’m more skeptical about the idea that whatever happens in the Middle East, it won’t play any decisive contribution in the power balance of major hegemonic powers.


So points 2 and 5, wouldn’t happen? Are you sure about that? Or that on the other side of the picture, that this could happen if Russia had lost in Ukraine and sleeked off with her tail between her legs?
(2, U.S. will be obliged to support EU, and be drawn into EU wars with Russia.)
(5, EU are vulnerable to Russia picking off states, pre-occupying EU while China can threaten U.S. play one off against the other.) — Punshhh

There is some logic into the 2 hypothetical scenarios you have described but given the current circumstances I’m less certain about their likelihood. And the end of the Ukrainian war may look more messy than an uncontroversial victory or loss.

But how much some Bohdan Khmelnytsky was an Ukrainian nationalist is an interesting question (especially when he allied with Russia). — ssu

My understanding is that back then Poland was perceived to be the oppressor and Russia the convenient protector. Unfortunately such an alliance didn’t play as expected, i.e. in favour of the Cossack state’s independence, because it lost progressively sovereignty, autonomy and then it got Russified (especially, the local elites), despite following resistance.

But here's the real question to you. The Zionist idea of Israel is very young. And so is the idea of independent Palestine. But the age of the idea doesn't matter, it's how many people genuinely believe in that cause. There is absolutely no prestige, no larger credibility or justification on this age issue. This is just the nonsensical debate that parties who want to thrash the other side in the Palestine/Israel debate. I don't understand at all the reasoning for this debate or why should it be important. The Palestinians do want an independent state from Israel. The Israelis don't want a two state solution.

We've actually seen just now a coming and going of one idea, an Islamic Caliphate in the form of ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh come, emerge and be squashed in the region. This isn't anything new, actually. Hence likely that the region hasn't seen the end of new nation forming. Likely in the year 2424 the map can be totally different from now. And those states will trace their glorious history back to our time and beyond to older history. — ssu

Despite your initial announcement, I don’t see any question.
Besides you are making claims that do not add up to me: if all that matters is what people believe, how is it possible that the age of certain ideas which are part of people’s belief systems and, actually, help justify and identify such belief systems doesn’t matter?
Finally, if Palestinians do want an independent state from Israel while not recognising Israel, then also Palestinians don't want a two state solution.

If Ukraine had joined NATO before now, there would be a war between Russia and NATO now.
— Punshhh

I don’t find this counterfactual evidently true. It can be argued that if Ukraine had joined NATO previously, Russia would have not tried to aggress it the way it did

How angry do you think Putin would have been if Ukraine had joined NATO a few years back? — Punshhh

Not sure if that’s relevant: Putin may have been furious and still deterred. Especially in the firs years of his Presidential mandate, imagine during the Chechen war.

I can appreciate your effort to clarify your views, but I still find your claims a bit misleading. On one side you support the idea that the US will keep its superpower status on the other the vulnerabilities of the US and the power balance against the US may increase for the US if the EU is weak.
So even if the US preserves a superpower status versus other superpowers in a one-to-one comparison, still you are talking about a scenario in which the unipolar world with the US on top of it is over and power balancing alliances are needed. Besides a weak EU would tilt the power balance AGAINST the US.

You seem to be conflating “superpower status” with “the unipolar world”. I haven’t once mentioned a unipolar U.S. I’m working from the assumption that that is over now and we have competing superpowers. Therefore the U.S. will rely on a strong partner in the EU to fend off potential challengers and maintain the status quo. — Punshhh

How am I conflating “superpower status” with “the unipolar world”, if I’m intentionally stressing their difference, and what you wrote is again a paraphrase of what I just claimed to have understood from your views?

Besides if one is reasoning in terms of alliance also an alliance between Russia, China and the Middle-Eastern countries can tilt the power balance at the expense of the US and EU alliance

I don’t see this. The Middle Eastern countries are incapable of reaching such a stature and control of the region is not of any importance In the power balance between U.S. and China. The times when gulf oil was of great importance are over, what else do they have to offer?(other than money laundering) — Punshhh

Other than oil, money, terrorism, control over commercial routes, criminal business, immigration, exporting Islamism in Asia, Africa and the West, good dates, and carpets, maybe not much. That however may be enough to help a Russia-China alliance against a US and EU alliance, even more so with a weak EU.

Still I expect the region to become an inhospitable wasteland of failed states once climate change bites. — Punshhh

It seems a good location for Mad Max style movies

As you seem to dislike the notion that the Ukraine war is pivotal in Europe, Russia and by extension the U.S. and China. — Punshhh

Actually I’m more skeptical about the idea that whatever happens in the Middle East, it won’t play any decisive contribution in the power balance of major hegemonic powers.

Yet, to distinguish Palestinians as a specific nation within the wider Arab ethnic group, Palestinians should also be able to see themselves as distinct from other Arabs, not simply as Arabs living in Palestine fighting against the Jews. — neomac

I still think that their history makes them quite different from Jordanians, Egyptians or the Lebanese. As I said, Swedes and Finns are both Europeans. Both are majority Christians and share a common past. Yet for example the Swedish speaking Finns do not consider themselves Swedes, but Finns who just happen to talk Swedish. (And btw. this has been a huge reason why there isn't any rift between these two ethnic groups in Finland)
And let's remember that Pan-Arabism was tried and it crashed. Just ask the Syrians how well did that experiment go with the Egyptians having a one-Pan Arab state. And the relations between the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) member states who all are also members of the Arab League show how brittle these relationships are. — ssu

This is a poor analogy. Independent Ukraine is 33 years old, Ukrainian nationalism and sentiment has definitely a longer history, much longer than the Palestinian nationalism. — neomac

And how was it shown in 1945-1991? Yes, there is a history of Ukraine, but so has Palestine even a longer history. And Ukrainian nationalism emerged only in the 19th Century. And do notice that Palestinians had the Arab revolt in 1936-1939 against the British, where actually the Jewish fought alongside the British and gained military experience and competence (the Haganah just didn't sporadically emerge from refugees from Europe). And prior to that they were part of the Ottoman Empire, just as everybody else. — ssu

I have no problems to acknowledge that historical circumstances are often more messy than narratives and ideas about them suggest. Yet to the extent such narratives and ideas inspire collective political consciousness and action they can play some explanatory role. My understanding is that Palestinian nationalism promoting 1. a national identity uniting all Palestinian Arabs in Palestine in a distinctive manner within the rest of the Arab community, and 2. dedicated nation-state institutions to represent such people didn’t become predominant until Arafat. And this didn’t happen just because the pan-arabist project failed and the treatment of the Palestinians prior to 1967 (like the Gazans under the Egyptian rule and the West Bankers under the Jordan rule) wasn’t that brotherly, but also because the USSR was pushing national liberation movements in the Third World to fight American imperialism (Israel being one expression of it). In other words, Arafat with his nationalist narrative managed to emerge thanks to the USSR financial, military, intelligence and propaganda aid. So much so that, back then, it became clear in the West that Arafat accounted for an essential undercover operative for the KGB for years to come (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine%E2%80%93Russia_relations).

There is an understandable motive for the Israeli skepticism about Palestinian nationalism. It's quite similar to the skepticism of Ukrainian nationalism by the Russians.Ordinary you don't give credence to the enemy you are fighting and his objectives. Actually it's quite natural. And this goes vice versa: the talk of Israel as an "colonial enterprise" is a way to diss Israel. — ssu

I don’t discount the psychological factor you are pointing out, but I’m talking about something else. The historical Ukrainian nationalism is much older than Palestinian nationalism there is no question about it. Here Timothy Snyder: Ukraine has a very old national idea, actually. The idea of Ukraine goes back into the 17th century at least. And one can talk about the history of Ukraine which is much older than that. The Ukrainian national movement comes from the 19th century and really it was a quite typical European national movement - anti-imperial, focused on the people as the subjects of of history.Ukraine, unlike other East European nations, was unable to establish a state in the early 20th century after the First World War. Its statehood only really emerges in a durable way after 1991. https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/radio-davos/episodes/ukraines-history-and-why-it-matters/
Of course the historical Ukrainian nationalism got politically updated when it merged with the Western idea of the nation-state as much as the Jewish national identity which stems from biblical times but got politically updated when it merged with the Western idea of the nation-state. Palestinian nationalism has its historical roots in Arab nationalism, and only after 1967 it redefined itself as a function of a Palestinian nation-state. To the extent people use history as a source of legitimacy for their political claims (Palestinians and Israelis do resort to historical arguments to support their rights to the land) we can’t ignore the history of such political claims either.

In 1948 yes, the neighbors didn't care a shit about Palestinians. But now I think it's different: nobody wants to be responsible of 7 million Palestinians. So OK for them to have their own country...as it's Israeli territory, anyway. — ssu

Mmm… not sure about that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bolehland/comments/17939xb/can_someone_explain_why_he_said_palestinians/?rdt=61460

1. its ideological roots are in pan-arabism and pan-islamism, both of which are broader ideologies than the idea of a Palestinian nation-state — neomac

I think that Palestines and Palestinians ideological roots have more to do with how the "Jewish Palestinians", the Israelis have gone with their own nation building. — “ssu

As I've said, Palestinian aspirations are reinforced how Isreal treats them, starting from the thing that Israel never was for them in any way. — “ssu

Sure, I also already acknowledged that the conflict with the Jewish colonisers and Israel shaped Palestinian Nationalism. Yet, to distinguish Palestinians as a specific nation within the wider Arab ethnic group, Palestinians should also be able to see themselves as distinct from other Arabs, not simply as Arabs living in Palestine fighting against the Jews. And my understanding is that until Arafat the pan-Arabist views were dominant (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Nationalist_Movement, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2009/7/13/the-nakba-catalyst-for-pan-arabism). Besides as long as Saddam Hussain was there and depicted himself as a pan-arabist leader (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA240117.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27ath_Party), Arafat’s call for Palestinian nationalism seemed locked with a regional power game bigger than the Palestinian cause (https://www.aljazeera.com/program/plo-history-of-a-revolution/2009/8/22/arafats-costly-gulf-war-choice). This may be seen as a necessary compromise to serve the Palestinian nationalism, even more so with the strategic alliance with Iran (which replaced Saddam Hussein) and contributed to somehow estrange the Palestinian cause from the Arab world. However the rise of Hamas as an extremist and islamist fringe off-shooting from the pan-islamist Muslim Brotherhood with tighter financial and military ties with Hezbollah and the pan-islamist Khomeini (as Khaled Mashal declared in 2007 “Hamas is the spiritual son of Khomeini” https://israel-alma.org/2022/10/18/hamass-role-in-irans-grand-strategy-of-multi-front-attack-on-israel/), make Hamas’ nationalist ideology look more compromised, although at the same time I believe Hamas has greater autonomy from Iran than the shiite Hezbollah.

Independent Ukraine is only 33 years old. And many Russians are totally confident about the utter artificiality of the country as you are of the Palestinians...when compared to the Israelis. — “ssu

This is a poor analogy. Independent Ukraine is 33 years old, Ukrainian nationalism and sentiment has definitely a longer history, much longer than the Palestinian nationalism. Besides the historical Ukrainian nationalism is also about refusing to be identified with the Russians (as an ethnic group), while Palestinian nationalism defined in opposition to Zionism was not about refusing to be identified with the Arabs (as an ethnic group), at least not at the beginning. In any case, I do not believe in the “utter artificiality of the Palestinians”, not even “when compared to the Israelis”, reason why I didn’t express myself in these terms. I simply get to the plausible roots of Israelis’ skepticism about Palestinian nationalism. Yet I also questioned the excesses of such skepticism on several grounds: 1. All nations are “artificial” as cultural products 2. The short history of Palestinian nationalism doesn’t make it deeply felt and bloody conflict with Israel made it sure that Palestinian feelings sedimented in Palestinians’ hearts 3. Palestinian nationalism is not only grounded in the opposition to Israel, but also in how the predicament of the Palestinians has estranged them from the Arab world enough to give greater credibility to their nation-state aspirations. 4. Zionism as a colonialist enterprise run mainly by non-indigenous European jews has its own degree of artificiality.

Yet it's very typical in a world made of nation states, people think that there must be something wrong with the people that don't have their own country. Either they are weak, incapable or not actually genuine. This silly argumentation on who has more moral right to the land where they now live and have lived for generations shows this. — “ssu

That’s not my argument, though. My argument is that Palestinians and Israelis have to fight for their right to the land if their demands are incompatible, because there is no way to consistently ground both demands on the same justifying narrative. Notice also the following ideological asymmetry between Palestinians and Israelis: even when Palestinians claim to acknowledge Israel statehood (in favour of a two state solution), this is not grounded in a change of their anti-Zionist narrative about Israel. On the other side the more original and secular Zionist narrative was compelled since the beginning by the Palestinian Arabs as majoritarian indigenous people to Palestine, so it was more amenable to a compromise than Netanyahu’s approach.

I think however that there are other factors that Israel can’t discount: 1. How the Arab states’ questionable attitude toward the Palestinians (and Palestinian refugees) may reinforce the Palestinians’ aspirations to a distinctive Palestinian nation-state. — neomac

Yet is it questionable that Arabs now see Palestinians differently from them? Finns and Swedes are surely European, even Nordic, but two different countries and people still. Are Palestinians then Jordanians? — “ssu

What I care to focus on is to what extent Palestinians can see themselves as a distinct nation from the larger Arab community. I think the way they have been treated by other Arab governments and people may have contributed to a reciprocal estrangement which reinforced Palestinian Nationalism.

Which is more pro-Israeli and which would be more neutral? Just asking. — “ssu

It doesn’t matter if it is pro-Israeli to me, it matters if you have more compelling counter-arguments on the merit of what the article is arguing.

What is the present Europe is happy about? — neomac

Hmm... prosperity, peace, integration. When compared to Middle East, which is the more happy story?

What is so confusing in calling for “pivot to Asia” by American ‘pivot-people'? — neomac

Because the US is already there in SE Asia. So continuously repeating about "turning to Asia" that focus isn't here but there. What is message you try to say here? That's the thing confusing. — “ssu

It’s not me who is calling for “pivot to Asia”, but US administrations and advisors.

U.S. President Barack Obama's East Asia Strategy (2009–2017), also known as the Pivot to Asia, represented a significant shift in the foreign policy of the United States since the 2010s. It shifted the country's focus away from the Middle Eastern and European sphere and allowed it to invest heavily and build relationships in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, especially countries which are in close proximity to the People's Republic of China (PRC) either economically, geographically or politically to counter its rise as a rival superpower.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administration

Ideally Biden would support it:
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/06/1043329242/long-promised-and-often-delayed-the-pivot-to-asia-takes-shape-under-biden

But there are thorny issues with that: https://thediplomat.com/2024/03/the-lost-decade-of-the-us-pivot-to-asia/

Besides it’s not me to introduce the idea of “pivotal” (vs “distraction”), but Punshhh.
I find such distinction potentially misleading for reasons I’ve argued.

We have two ongoing conflicts one in Ukraine and another in Israel, and many in the Rest and in West (including in the US) are blaming the US for one reason or the other.

↪neomac

What’s new. This has been going on for decades with every conflict the U.S. has been involved in. — Punshhh

All right, so it’s not that you do not see. You do not see anything new. Even though foreign policies can be inherently controversial, especially if motivated by aggressive hegemonic ambitions, maybe the Gulf War was the least controversial among them.

What issue? The US and EU diverged on the case of Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia to the point that Ukraine didn’t manage join NATO up until now, even if the US was warmly supporting it.


The partnership between the U.S. and the EU will have tensions, so what? — Punshhh

There have been tensions between the US and the EU about economics.
Now we are talking divergence about security needs, military alliance, wars, genocides on top of the economic tensions. That’s the reason of concern especially if power balance wrt aggressive competitors is at stake as you too pointed out.

If Ukraine had joined NATO before now, there would be a war between Russia and NATO now. — Punshhh

I don’t find this counterfactual evidently true. It can argue that if Ukraine had joined NATO previously, Russia would have not tried to aggress it the way it did (example: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/oa_edited_volume/chapter/3881915)

That's the kind of foreign policies I'm referring to.

So am I, the Israeli conflict won’t have big geopolitical consequences.
The Ukraine conflict will have big geopolitical consequences, but the direction of policy here hasn’t changed for decades. It’s the fallout from the Cold War and the U.S. and E.U. are pretty much in lockstep. — Punshhh

So you mean that no matter how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes, it doesn’t change the superpower status of the US, while the conflict in Ukraine may change the superpower status of the US, is that it?

Not U.S. superpower status, rather the strength of the anti China alliance. — Punshhh

if Russia wins the war in Ukraine, then the US might lose its superpower status, that’s why the US wants to the hegemonic conflict against Russia in Ukraine, and a strong EU and NATO are kind of necessary to achieve that. Is it that what you mean?

At no point have I said anything about the U.S. superpower status. Its position as a global superpower is secure and isn’t going to change.
I’m saying if Russia wins in Ukraine, it will greatly weaken and threaten the EU (as opposed to EU status if Russia loses the war). This will leave the U.S. vulnerable on two fronts, the Pacific and the Atlantic..
Perhaps bullet points will help.
If Russia wins;
1, Russia strengthens, becomes a threat to EU on her borders.
2, U.S. will be obliged to support EU, and be drawn into EU wars with Russia.
3, Russia becomes strong re-establishes the Russian empire forms a strong alliance with China.
4, U.S. is vulnerable on two fronts from China and from Russia via threat to EU. While China and Russia are in strong alliance
5, EU are vulnerable to Russia picking off states, pre-occupying EU while China can threaten U.S. play one off against the other.

If Russia loses;
6, Russia is greatly weakened, may even collapse.
7, Putin is seen as a failure, pariah
8, Ukraine becomes part of EU, NATO.
9, EU becomes strong with no threat on her border.
10, EU forms strong alliance with U.S.

In both cases a strong alliance is formed between two large powers. In the first case between China and Russia in the second case between U.S. and EU.. — Punshhh

I can appreciate your effort to clarify your views, but I still find your claims a bit misleading. On one side you support the idea that the US will keep its superpower status on the other the vulnerabilities of the US and the power balance against the US may increase for the US if the EU is weak.
So even if the US preserves a superpower status versus other superpowers in a one-to-one comparison, still you are talking about a scenario in which the unipolar world with the US on top of it is over and power balancing alliances are needed. Besides a weak EU would tilt the power balance AGAINST the US.

Now going back to the Israel Palestine conflict.
There is no global shift in power, with either outcome in the conflict. Israel either becomes an isolated country bristling with weapons. Or Israel collapses and becomes another failed state in the Middle East. Either way it makes no difference to the geopolitical balance in the world.
Let’s say Israel goes to war with Iran. Again two more failed states with no change in the global power dynamic. There are other things that can happen in the region which could have geopolitical consequences, like oil, or conflicts between larger regional players. But they are not influenced that much by what happens in Israel Palestine. — Punshhh

Everything that happens in the Middle East often has often links with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
And even though Middle-Eastern countries individually have no superpower status, still they can very much weigh in not only in hegemonic conflicts in the Middle East but also in other parts of the world including Europe (see the support of Turkey alone to Ukraine and the support of Iran to Russia). Besides if one is reasoning in terms of alliance also an alliance between Russia, China and the Middle-Eastern countries can tilt the power balance at the expense of the US and EU alliance. The closer Western and anti-Western alliances get in terms of overall capacity, the greater the influence of yet unaligned minor powers is when it's time to pick sides. So I wouldn’t discount this factor when talking about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And what a genius plan to ignore such warnings! — Tzeentch

Despite all the grievances Russia may have voiced out loud about NATO enlargement (but let’s not make a drama about it https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1398379/Putin-lets-Nato-recruit-in-Baltic.html), Putin’s complaint would have made more sense if Ukraine had joined NATO. But that didn’t happen. Besides Putin was pretty sneaky about his war lord appetites (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-putin-invasion-after-denials-now-says-no-occupation-plan/). All the more reason to be skeptical about Putin’s honest dispositions toward peace settlements.

European leaders themselves have admitted they treated the Minsk accords as a temporary armistice during which Ukraine could be armed and prepared for war. — Tzeentch

That's another mischaracterization. Minsk accords were meant to solve a conflict between Russia and Ukraine peacefully. But neither the West nor Ukrainians trusted Russia given the outcome of the Budapest Memorandum and other agreements between Russia and Ukraine (like The Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation), the problematic nature of the Minsk agreements (especially for the Ukrainians https://ecfr.eu/article/ukraine-russia-and-the-minsk-agreements-a-post-mortem/), and its violations (especially by Russia https://cepa.org/article/dont-let-russia-fool-you-about-the-minsk-agreements/).

You're completely ignoring the West's provocative role in all of this. — Tzeentch

You should completely ignore it too, for the reasons I already clarified. Besides we shouldn’t forget the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset happening in those 15 years you are blabbering about.

Ukraine was simply a mechanism by which the US could sow instability in Eastern Europe, which is clearly the reason it sought to change Ukraine's neutral status - the key to stability between Russia and Europe - because it's the only reason the US would pursue such a policy in a geopolitically sensitive region. — Tzeentch

This may be true to some extent. But again the framing is very much disputable.
First, as Mearsheimer would argue "the only reason the US would pursue such a policy in a geopolitically sensitive region" implied sacrificing an alliance with Russia to contain China. So the calculus implied significant strategic costs for the US too, actually a strategic blunder some might argue. At the same time keeping the EU down ain't going to help the US, so the US may be forced to empower Europe to counterbalance anti-US forces.
Second, the Europeans exposed themselves to Russia's hegemonic ambitions without much concern of their protector (the US), which ain't that smart either. Besides Russian political influence is dangerous for the European political stability since Russia is fomenting populist movements in the West to turn against Western institutions (NATO and EU) and Western democracy (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-germany-far-right/675838/, http://pdc.ceu.hu/archive/00007035/01/PC_Russian-Connection_2014.pdf, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-03-25/putins-western-allies).
Third, Ukraine may very much bring its boon to the West, if it manages to join it. So that the loss of business ties with Russia wouldn't have come without some compensation for the EU and the Ukrainians.

No one here is arguing that Russia is right in what it does.

This is what you can't seem to understand: my argument is not that we ought to look more favorably on Russia's actions, but that we ought to look more critically at the United States' — Tzeentch

Playing dumb ain't gonna help you, dude.

First I doubt you are intellectually honest in claiming that you are not arguing that "Russia is right in what it does" given claims such as [1]

Second, your complaint can be easily retorted: my argument is not that we ought to look more favorably on the US's actions, but that we ought to look more critically at Russia. And if that is what makes me pro-US, then the opposite argument, namely the exact argument you just made makes you pro-Russian. You take Russia to be a lesser evil than the US. I take the US to be a lesser evil than Russia. To call mine a bias and yours not a bias, you have give compelling arguments, so far you offered questionable arguments.

[1]

I do believe the matter of Ukraine becoming part of the American sphere of influence represented a legitimate security concern to the Russians. — Tzeentch

Again with your piece of pro-Russian propaganda? — neomac


You're responding to a simple statement of fact.

So obviously the Kremlin believed it was their business, and whether you agree with that or not, if you do not take warnings like these seriously, you're a fool, or you're the United States preparing to sacrifice a pawn. — Tzeentch — boethius

More loaded than simple. The framing is suggesting a questionable alternative: either Westerners didn’t take the Russian warnings seriously or they were serving the evil US at the expense of the Ukrainians. Unfortunately neither Ukrainians were pawns (the image is used to stress that Ukrainians have no agency like mechanical puppets or are just gullible/corrupted) nor the Russian warnings have been disregarded (indeed, Russian warnings HAVE BEEN TAKEN SERIOUSLY, if that means act in accordance to Russia’s demand DO NOT LET UKRAINE JOIN NATO and Ukraine never joined NATO until now, also Ukraine remained neutral by constitution and popular support until the occupation of Crimea, and yet the EUROPEANS WERE RELUCTANT TO COUNTER RUSSIA, even then, that’s how seriously they took the Russian warnings [1]). The further questionable implicature is that the US is the evil mastermind exploiting Ukrainians to aggress Russia. Such assumption is questionable on geopolitical and common-sense grounds: if the geopolitical arena is inherently competitive and conflictual then ALL players (including minor actors like Ukraine or Hamas) are expected to do competitive and controversial things, especially when pursuing hegemonic goals (like Russia and the US). So claiming that the US is “provoking” Russia equates to claiming that the US is doing something competitive and controversial wrt Russian hegemonic ambitions, and therefore it is to be blameful and evil, it means you do not understand the game or you're spinning pro-Russian propaganda. Besides the West (including the US) wasn’t that confrontational with Russia, as I’ve argued: the Western-led globalization enabled and encouraged Putin’s aggression of Ukraine WAY MORE than whatever grievance Putin had. As far as common-sense goes: if you were to choose based on avg standards of life, where would you prefer for you and your beloved ones to live, under US hegemony or under Russian hegemony? This is not to say there are no third alternatives, but that if there weren’t I would still prefer to live under the US hegemony than under the Russian hegemony. To that extent I’m pro-US and reason accordingly. That’s the only “exceptionalism” I can readily accord to the US vis-à-vis Russia.


[1] Pro-Russian propaganda complains a lot about Western intelligence and military interference in Ukraine and then argues for Ukrainian neutrality, but it forgets Russia’s massive interference in political countries, especially in their neighborhood (including Ukraine), and the main military naval base in the Ukrainian territory. It's like Germany or Italy declaring to be neutral with an American military base in their territory.

For example, if you pull a gun on me and warn me you'll shoot me if I take another step, I'd be a fool to ignore that warning whether I feel you'd be justified in shooting me or not. At the end of the day I don't want to be shot and I need to navigate the real world and not the world as I wish it was. I may wish you wouldn't shoot me despite your warning or then wish that someone would jump in front of me to take the bullet and so I don't suffer the consequences of my own actions, but if that's not what reality is like then I'm a fool to make decisions based on delusional wishes. — boethius

First, as I said Russian warnings were taken seriously, but obviously neither the US nor Ukraine could accept whatever condition Russia would require for peace: the US is the hegemon (so submission to Russia’s demands aren’t expected, not even respect for its sphere of influence, China is complaining about the same), Ukraine was/is open to Westernisation precisely to get rid of Russian oppressive hegemony, and Europeans are arguably interested in Ukraine for the same compelling reasons Hitler was (“Ukraine is a God-endowed country. For centuries she has excited the envy of her neighbors because of her unique situation, her fertile soil, her abundance of raw materials, and her gentle climate” https://www.amazon.fr/Hitlers-Occupation-Ukraine-1941-1944-Totalitarian/dp/125802585X). So there was a convergence of interests at the expense of Russian imperialism.
Second, there are military miscalculations, divergence of political interest, divergence in political decision making and/or divergence in marketisation of political decisions among all major players. But the degree of resilience may vary significantly (e.g. I take Western democracies as more vulnerable, individually and collectively, than autocracies like Russia). The West was overconfident Russia wouldn’t attack, because NATO arguably wasn’t an incumbent military threat to Russia in any meaningful way and, even less so after the occupation of Crimea, which was tolerated by Western Europeans. Unfortunately this encouraged Russia to raise the stakes (and any future attempt to appease Russia can turn against the West in the same way). This is called: OPPORTUNITY. So we should stop talking about provocation and talk of OPPORTUNITY. Putin (with the blessing of his Chinese boy friend) took the OPPORTUNITY to aggress Ukraine because the West was/is perceived as WEAK and DECADENT. Then you have to explain to me how a weak and decadent West constitutes a serious threat to a strong and non-decadent Russia.

That the US would drop Ukraine like a hot potato the moment the war no longer serves US interests was as obvious at the start of the war as it is now.
You can complain about "complacency" all you want, but unless it's a surprise betrayal, which is not in this case, then that's not a basis for decision making.
People should do A, B, and C and therefore I will do D based on the assumption they will do what they should, is only valid if there's reason to believe people will actually do that. — boethius

I’m not a decision maker and I do not pretend to know or to know better than political decisions makers. Besides I think no decision maker involved in this conflict is deciding without considering a pool of advisors more competent than anybody I hear in this forum in all relevant domains (economics, propaganda, military, etc.), secretive diplomatic channels and classified information (not available to the general public). So even when mistakes may look trivial, the reasons why such mistakes happen may not be as trivial.
For that reason I just limit myself to understand the ongoing events based on certain geopolitical and historical arguments because they are the kind of arguments actual political advisors (like Kissinger, Brzezinski, Wolfowitz) and their critics (like Mearsheimer or Walt) take to be relevant in foreign policy decision making, besides information from sources I perceive as reliable enough. I think this is the kind of critical examination should be welcomed in such a philosophy forum.
In accordance to what I said earlier, claiming “the US would drop Ukraine like a hot potato the moment the war no longer serves US interests was as obvious at the start of the war as it is now” doesn’t seem anything more than claiming “the US is doing something controversial during a hegemonic competition with Russia”. I find such claim rather USELESS to pin responsibility or evilness, since that’s the “anarchic” game being played (and I would argue it MUST be played also for moral reasons, despite the dangers, the tragedies and human fallibility) as if one sitting in the stands complained that that dude on the ring started punching the other dude in the face for no reason and that’s immoral, without realising he is watching a boxing match.
So if it gives the impression to be a good argument to pin responsibility or evilness , then either the game is not understood or it’s a case of pro-Russian propaganda.

The Ukrainians see the US abandon their "close allies" and "deal friends" in Afghanistan, watch Afghanis literally fall off the last airplanes, and then tell themselves: hmmm, I want me some of that. — boethius

Your conclusion holds if the analogy between Ukraine and Afghanistan holds. But to me it doesn’t because the conditions of the conflict are significantly different in the two cases: in the former, the US antagonist is primarily Russia and the concerned sphere of influence is Europe, in the latter it’s respectively Islamist terrorism (or more specifically Al-Qaeda and Talibans) and Middle-East. Islamist terrorism doesn’t arguably look as challenging to the US hegemony as Russia. Europe is an area which (still) is not as disputed as the Middle-East and its integrated institutional, social, economic assets can more readily serve American economy and politics (this aspect can likely develop further with a Westernised Ukraine) than what the US could find in the Middle East.

Making decisions based on reality and not wishes or assuming what other people "should do" when they have no track record of dong it, is a principle of decision making so basic it even appears in Disney movies:

The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can't. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you'll have to square with that some day. And me, for example, I can let you drown, but I can't bring this ship into Tortuga all by me onesies, savvy? So, can you sail under the command of a pirate, or can you not? — Captain Jack Sparrow


Which I've quoted before but clearly the lesson remains lost, but your philosophical compass should definitely point directly at this paragraph to see you through these conceptually rough seas. — boethius

You argument would sound more compelling if one aimed at understanding politics through propaganda. But I understand propaganda as a tool of politics (not the other way around), and this implies two things: first, the standard is not necessarily accuracy but effectiveness and, second, propaganda is not the only tool or the most important tool for political decision making. So criticism of propaganda based on accuracy or relevance may remain questionable even when sounding plausible.
Besides my understanding of politics relies more on geopolitical and historical considerations than on propaganda highlights one can read in the news. I would like to understand political reasoning prior to communicative needs addressing national audience, and transversally or comparatively wrt ideologies and regimes. So such reasoning is definitely part of what politicians can and are arguably expected to take into account in their decision making.

Putin will be forced to use tactic nuclear bombs, now. European populists and men-of-honor save Europe with your indisputable all-knowing wisdom! — neomac


You still don't get it.

As Ukraine loses the capacity to legitimately threaten Russia, NATO can therefore augment whatever doesn't change the outcome. — boethius

I wouldn’t take the current snapshot of the conflict as definitive. The war isn’t over yet and its future consequences may take years, if not decades, to manifest. Westerners, Ukrainians and Russians are not just fighting for their present but also for their future which is something we do not see yet.

Why is Steadfast Defender, the largest NATO military exercise since WWII, happening now rather than last year ... or the year before that ... when it would have actually been a legitimate threat of intervention as well as legitimate threat of moving even more more equipment and weapons into Ukraine? A threat that would have genuinely applied a lot of pressure on the Russians.

Because Russia is no longer under pressure in Ukraine and so this additional NATO pressure is no longer all that meaningful. — boethius

So you are claiming that even though Russia is complaining:
https://tass.com/politics/1740307
https://tass.com/politics/1743107
https://tass.com/defense/1756871
the West shouldn’t take Russia seriously?

More existential provocations against Holy Russia by the Great Satan and its European servile coward minions:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/222847.htm
https://tass.com/politics/1737915
Putin will be forced to use tactic nuclear bombs, now. European populists and men-of-honor save Europe with your indisputable all-knowing wisdom!

You have even in this thread many examples of people believing the Palestinians being something "artificial" construct, and that Palestinians simply should move to somewhere else in the Arab world. — ssu

To the extent nations are cultural phenomena, they ALL are artificial construct. There are however some traits about the Palestinian nationalism which make it more easy for Israel to question its ideological credibility: 1. its ideological roots are in pan-arabism and pan-islamism, both of which are broader ideologies than the idea of a Palestinian nation-state 2. Palestinians didn’t branch out as a separate politically self-conscious nation from within the Arab world, as the Ukrainians branched out from the Russian empire, the Argentinians from the Spanish empire, the Brazilians from the Portuguese empire, the Americans from the British empire despite the ethnic ties. So their national ideology looks very much shaped by a struggle against a foreign power (the Zionist one) with no ethnic ties, not because non-Palestinian, but because non-Arab (indeed, at the end of the Ottoman Empire Palestinians were mostly just fine to be part of Great Syria). That’s why there seems to be no Palestinian national identity, widely shared and politically conscious, prior to the conflict with Israel. 3. The link to Iran which may have hijacked the nation-state aspirations of the Palestinians (Hamas Islamism superseding the PLO secularism isn’t a good sign).

I think however that there are other factors that Israel can’t discount: 1. How the Arab states’ questionable attitude toward the Palestinians (and Palestinian refugees) may reinforce the Palestinians’ aspirations to a distinctive Palestinian nation-state. 2. How couching the Zionist project as a ethnocentric and Western-supported colonialist project is now more than ever detrimental to its perceived legitimacy, even in the West not only in the Rest. It feels now like fighting for Israel is done in the wrong time, in the wrong place, by the wrong people.

The obvious thing here is that there's not just one way to fight a war. There are many ways. Starting from the way you approach the civilian population. I've made the point right from the start in October last year that Israel should approach the fighting just like the US approached it's fight against Al Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq: to take into consideration the civilian population. But it didn't. It went with no political goals, hopes of "voluntary transfer" of Palestinians somewhere else and the creating a famine. This has been a strategic mistake in the long run, but this government isn't thinking in the long run. It's thinking about the next day and it's popularity among the voters. — ssu

This article offers a critical reading of such comparison with the Americans fighting in Iraq and Syria: https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-devastation-of-gaza-was-inevitable-a-comparison-to-us-operations-in-iraq-and-syria/ On the other side, other Western articles share your concern about the post-war scenario: https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/remaking-mistakes-in-gaza/
My understanding is that even if Israel had the sort of post-war plan the latter article is talking about, it still looks unlikely that Netanyahu will politically survive after the war ends to pursue any post-war plans. The uncertain support from Biden (and now even from Trump) is putting Netanyahu in a difficult spot which will hardly soften his resolution to pursue his war against Hamas and, possibly, other neighbouring enemies. So what the US, Arab and Israeli representatives may more easily work on is a post-Hamas and post-Netanyahu situation. And for such representatives may be enough to distance themselves from Netanyahu more than really trying to shut his personal mission in Gaza down.

Hence even if Egypt is an ally of the US, Saudi-Arabia is the ally of US (and Iraq was occupied and should have a Pro-US government), the US does feel cautious about how strong this relationship is. Iran and the fall of the Shah and the present relations with the country tells a lot. So could it happen in Saudi-Arabia? Or Egypt? — ssu

I get the need of being cautious, but to what extent? For example, how likely is that the US will call what is happening in Gaza a genocide as it did for genocides in ex-Yogoslavia with the ensuing NATO intervention, really?

American controversial policies are also what Europeans must swallow to keep the front united, otherwise they have to struggle for greater decision power on the coalition, but what are the odds to succeed, really? — neomac

Actually here NATO works (...or doesn't work as a tool of US policy): only few American endeavors have been so that all NATO participates in them. And many times allies can opt out or simply give no actual support. Hence when an American President comes up with a too controversial policy of striking someone, it can be so that nobody shows up. This happened humiliatingly to Obama with Syria, if you remember. Not even the UK showed up and Obama had to backtrack away from his line drawn on the sand. — ssu

If Europeans opt out or not support, that means Europeans’ interest diverges from the US wrt certain foreign policies, but then Europeans should wonder how the US might react if they care about the US military support. On the other side, if we are talking about partnership, this doesn’t mean to co-lead.

Besides, it has been more of the US simply changing it's mind without consulting to it's allies. Here Afghanistan is a great example: the US withdrawal came as a surprise to the other alliance members and they had to react to the whims of the US policy. Something that can be seen now in the support of Ukraine too. — ssu

I’m neither claiming that the Europeans should submit to the US foreign policies nor that the US is a reliable leader. I’m claiming that there are costs for Europeans, at worse, in terms of their own security for their attempts to question the US leadership or opposing US foreign policies.

On the other side, the more the European strategic interest diverges from the US national interest and the European partnership turns unexploitable by the US, the more the US may be compelled to make Europe unexploitable to its hegemonic competitors too. — neomac

To me this sounds a bit confusing. I think Europe is quite happy with the present, but it's the US who has these 'pivot-people' calling for 'pivot to Asia' all the time. Which is confusing. — ssu

What is the present Europe is happy about? What is so confusing in calling for “pivot to Asia” by American ‘pivot-people'?

Yes, but I don’t see any controversial policies on the horizon. I say this because the foreign policies of the U.S. which have led to the majority of conflicts they have engaged in over the last period, since WW2, have now faded. Namely the struggle against the commies. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if an equivalent paranoia regarding China were to develop. Although I would expect this to be trade wars rather than land wars. — Punshhh

We have two ongoing conflicts one in Ukraine and another in Israel, and many in the Rest and in West (including in the US) are blaming the US for one reason or the other (examples: https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/wgtgma5kj69pbpndjr4wf6aayhrszm, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/18/america-root-cause-war-israel-gaza-palestine/ ). That's the kind of foreign policies I'm referring to. If you do not see that, do not waste time answering me next time.
Imagine if Israel is not submitting to the UN security council’s resolution for a cease-fire so the next resolution is economic sanctions, diplomatic sanctions and/or an arms embargo. What if the US vetoes it? What should European countries like France which voted for the cease-fire do? Condemn the US and sanction Israel anyways?

I would think that this depends on the outcome of the Ukraine war and whether Russia can retain some sort of superpower status. Hence my description as pivotal. — Punshhh

So you mean that no matter how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes, it doesn’t change the superpower status of the US, while the conflict in Ukraine may change the superpower status of the US, is that it?

But I acknowledge it, although I don’t see any reason why the U.S. and EU interest would diverge much on this issue. — Punshhh

What issue? The US and EU diverged on the case of Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia to the point that Ukraine didn’t manage join NATO up until now, even if the US was warmly supporting it.

I reiterate though that the U.S. seeking to weaken or exploit the EU, or NATO for some political reason does seem nonsensical here. — Punshhh

Reiterating claims doesn’t help clarify them. Given what I understood earlier from your claims, I guess your reasoning is the following: if Russia wins the war in Ukraine, then the US might lose its superpower status, that’s why the US wants to the hegemonic conflict against Russia in Ukraine, and a strong EU and NATO are kind of necessary to achieve that. Is it that what you mean?

So obviously the Kremlin believed it was their business, and whether you agree with that or not, if you do not take warnings like these seriously, — Tzeentch

Again with your piece of pro-Russian propaganda?
Ukraine couldn't join NATO because Russia had ENOUGH Western/NATO complacent parties and issues (corruption, border issues, far-right movements) to prevent that from happening. So much so that Ukraine didn't join NATO since the collapse of Soviet Union until now.
Besides the reasons to keep NATO alive and NATO military capacity were declining. See how slow and reluctant is the West to support Ukraine? Russia is counting on the West getting tired of supporting Ukraine. Isn't it? How does "existential threat" make any sense in such circumstances other than Russia saying so?
And Ukraine was neutral until Russia annexed Crimea (https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-parliament-abandons-neutrality/26758725.html) as much as Finland did, pushed by Russian aggression of Ukraine.


These are THE FACTS. Suck it up and move on.

BTW since Russia has won and all it wanted, it has now occupied and annexed, its black sea fleet is dominating all the black sea like a boss (right?), Ukraine is a disaster and depending on the West, can what remains of Ukraine join NATO? What is Putin saying?

And, why does the US need to damage the North Stream (which can always be repaired right?) instead of simply ordering the Germans to stop doing business with Russia. Germans are servile coward minions of the Great Satan so they would do anything to please the Great Satan, right?

The U.S. needs a strong Europe just as Europe needs a strong U.S..As I say, the post WW2 settlement is in the past now thanks to Putin. — Punshhh

The problem is that as long as the US is leading a military alliance , the US will have greater influence on the foreign policies of such alliance in the face of world crisis that threaten Western security, ALSO in other areas of interest: so e.g. if the US supports Israel even if Israel is accused of committing a genocide and Europeans do not, that’s a problem. There are also reputational costs into a military or strategic alliance with the US, European states must not ignore. American controversial policies are also what Europeans must swallow to keep the front united, otherwise they have to struggle for greater decision power on the coalition, but what are the odds to succeed, really?
The other issue is that Europeans need their own defense industry to gain strategic autonomy from the US, beside its economic return.
So, yes, the fact of the European rearming sounds good wrt the Russian threat, but this brings other political and economic concerns too, some of which are about the US leadership. On the other side, the more the European strategic interest diverges from the US national interest and the European partnership turns unexploitable by the US, the more the US may be compelled to make Europe unexploitable to its hegemonic competitors too. And if jumping on the US bandwagon doesn’t sound as good as balancing the US power, not doing so may have even nastier consequences for Europeans.

But I really don’t see this talk about the U.S. wanting to keep the EU weak. Or that she would not see the benefit of an alliance with a strong EU? — Punshhh

You are introducing the idea of a race to world domination, or something, we’re not playing a game of Risk here. Why would U.S. “push European hegemony”, more like U.S. would work with EU as a partner and friend. — Punshhh

I limit myself to point out that Europeans can’t give for granted the U.S. partnership, if that means equal partnership, especially in matter of security, as history has shown, starting with NATO (“created to ‘keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’”) and all other examples of unilateralism in Middle East or toward Russia. Concerning NATO, the US is currently struggling between a historical intent “on preserving a 70-year-old framework that lets Washington call the shots and put its interests first” (https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-nato-problem-defense-procurement-training-research/) at the expense of American tax-payers, represented by Biden, and Trump’s America first approach (https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-foreign-policy-puts-america-first/) which arguably aims at preserving NATO but more at the expense of European tax-payers (while threatening to withdraw from NATO otherwise).

Trump is an idiot and a populist, so he will certainly destabilise the situation in his personal interest. But if you look at what he said about NATO, it was just him playing hardball to get EU countries to stump up their fair share to NATO funds. This is not an issue now, as these countries will be making these investments, care of Putin. — Punshhh

We will see what Trump’s game about NATO and Ukraine is, if he gets another chance, but for Europeans it is risky to rely on Trump’s leadership on security matters, so better for them to prepare for the worse. There is however a strategic issue here one may overlook: the problem is not just how much the Europeans spend for their defence and NATO, but how much they buy from the US defence industry at the expense of the European defence industry.

So bombing and killing more than 30K Palestinians is not a genocide according to your very high bar, but the starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens is, right?

You seem to be shouting here, I’ve given my take on this. — Punshhh

I’ve also given my take on your take: “you didn’t clarify in a principled way what your very high bar is, nor offered evidence that ‘the deliberate starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens’ is a direct consequence of Israel’s decision”.

Do you have a list of Azov members and where they come from? — boethius

I gave you the evidence I have. Besides the founder of Azov Battalion is natively Russian-speaker (as Zelensky) and comes from Kharkiv. The same goes for other Azov Battalion commanders (some listed here https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/5-azov-battalion-commanders-return-to-ukraine-in-prisoner-exchange/2940501) who come from Luhansk, Crimea, Kharkiv.
If that's not enough to you, that's your problem not mine.

Probably a better indication of where support for these groups draws from is the Svoboda's election results.

Here's a map for 2019: — boethius

I have no doubt that the West Ukraine is more anti-Russian that the East, and that can reflect also in the support for the neo-nazi movements. But, despite some links between the two, I don’t find your stats about the popularity of Svoboda more useful to draw conclusions about the Azov Battalion recruits, given their different regional roots: indeed, the founder of Svoboda is from West Ukraine and the founder of Azov Battalion that fought the pro-Russian separatists is from East Ukraine. Besides, the support to Svoboda doesn’t prove that neo-nazis are/were governing Ukraine as Hamas (an Islamic terrorist group massacring Israeli civilians in Israel proper) is governing Gaza. Indeed, Svoboda “played a role in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Euromaidan protests but its support dropped quickly following the 2014 elections. Since then, the party has been polling below the electoral threshold, and it currently has one seat in the Verkhovna Rada.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svoboda_(political_party)
So the Ukraine got rid of Svoboda prior to the war Putin started a “special military operation” to denazify Ukraine.

West wants to provoke a war with Russia then you need to back the most radical elements of society. — boethius

The logic of “provocation” which Russians refer to has NO base in international law. I doubt that it even makes military sense to the extent NATO military exercise/aid, neo-nazi militia, nuclear weapons deployment were far from constituting an imminent or existential military threat to Russia. It makes more sense if one reasons in terms of “spheres of influence” as an answer to prospective/hypothetical threats. But if we are reasoning in terms of “spheres of influence” we must also accept its competitive logic: 1. Defensive moves over anticipated threats can be perceived as offensive and if Russia feels threatened by possible future NATO expansion then also the West may feel threatened by possible future Russian imperialist and revanchist campaigns 2. As far as the West is concerned, it shouldn’t surprise that the US is not going to curb its hegemonic ambitions just because Russia wishes so, the US is and aspires to remain the dominant hegemon, yet the US wasn’t that confrontational toward Russia either (see economic and diplomatic ties of the West with Russia at the end of Cold War, NATO and Russia cooperation at least until the Orange Revolution, returning the post-Soviet nuclear arsenal from Ukraine to Russia, the common enemy of Islamism). On the other side, Western Europeans and Ukrainians have been enough conciliatory toward Russia: Germany and France refused to have Ukraine joining NATO, while Ukraine remained neutral until Russia invaded Crimea and it also acknowledged Donbas region’s independence before the special operation started 3. If Ukrainian political leaders pursue territorial sovereignty and integrity which Russia has repeatedly acknowledged (until it didn’t), Russia can’t reasonably expect that permanently violating Ukrainian sovereignty even without prior attack by Ukrainians against Russia proper, will be tolerated by Ukraine and its INTERESTED supporters due to hypothetical future threats of the Ukrainian Westernisation 4. Ukrainian far-right and anti-Russian fringes are less threatening to the West than Russian imperialism. And actually Westernisation was the Western way to also “denazify” Ukraine, while Russia has no problems to support neo-nazi militia if they are pro-Russian.

If you don't want the war, then it's quite easy to make support contingent on concrete reductions of Nazis, and if Ukraine doesn't achieve that, well then no support, no weapons, no hundreds of billions of dollars if you get attacked. — boethius

There are 2 questionable assumptions in your reasoning: the first one is that war started because of the Ukrainian anti-Russian neo-nazi. But I (and others in this thread, if I remember correctly) argued that’s the other way around: Russian neo-nazi and imperialist groups started the war, which in turn triggered the Ukrainian anti-Russian neo-nazi. Second, both Ukraine and the West made efforts to purge the neo-nazi elements exploited by the Russian propaganda (https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis/, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/azov-battalion-drops-neo-nazi-symbol-exploited-by-russian-propagandists-lpjnsp7qg).
What you keep missing is that neither Ukrainians, nor the US, nor the West aim at reaching WHATEVER peace if that implies unilaterally appeasing WHATEVER Russian demands. On the other side, Russia is not just passively reacting to perceived (and questionable) threats or offences in retaliatory ways: Russians pro-actively and competitively aims at restoring a sphere of influence by any means (which is what also Western Europeans are increasingly fearing). If territorial annexations (plus nuclear blackmailing) do not prove this in the most unequivocal possible way, I don’t know what is. As far as I’m concerned, the problem is not the kind of hegemonic PROVOCATIONS which Russia is growling about since in geopolitics they are part of the game (China feels provoked in the Pacific too, go figure!) as much as the pro-Russian propaganda built around such provocations (even the Ur-Nazi Hitler was provoked to invade Poland, as the anti-Ukrainian-nazi Putin reminds the West, go figure!). The problem is the many perceived weaknesses of the US and the EU (including NATO disarmament and NATO disaffection, the embarrassing end of the US’s infamous war on terror, the domestic crisis in the US, the disunity among Europeans, the rising populism in the West, the Chinese threat in the Pacific, the dependency of Europe to Russian oil, the Western mild reaction to the annexation of Crimea, etc.) which offered to Putin a window of OPPORTUNITY to pursue Russian hegemonic ambitions after a military build-up which was fuelled by business ties under Western-led globalization. In short, OPPORTUNITY explains Russia’s hegemonic gamble over Ukraine better than PROVOCATION.

You're presuming the West owes Ukraine something come-what-may and so if Weapons find there way to Nazis despite trying to make that "illegal" then there's nothing that can be done, we all just have to throw our hands in the air and just accept the situation. That's not the case, we could send no weapons at all. The West doesn't owe Ukraine any weapons at all. — boethius

I never argued that the West owes anything to Ukraine. Or that the US is not pursuing hegemonic goals in a war where Europeans and especially Ukrainians are bearing the greatest costs. What I argued is that there are strong security, political and economic concerns that push the West (Europeans included) to support the Ukrainian Westernisation and the containment of Russia’s hegemonic ambitions over Ukraine.

Now, if you want to say "well maybe Ukraine did have a lot of Nazis, concerning amount anyways, and tolerated and armed those Nazis, and the West did too, and maybe they were waging war against Russian speakers in the Donbas, but still!! — boethius

Hum...
Paradoxically—at least for purveyors of Kremlin propaganda, which holds that Ukrainians have been oppressing ethnic Russians—most Azov members are in fact Russian speakers and disproportionally hail from the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/defenders-of-mariupol-azov

About Andriy Biletsky, founder of the Azov Battallion:
A native Russian speaker born in the predominantly Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv, Mr Biletsky refused to identify himself as a neo-Nazi instead preferring to call himself a Ukrainian nationalist - but some of his public statements speak for themselves.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/03/18/inside-azov-neo-nazi-brigade-killing-russian-generals-playing/

we've provided excellent propaganda material to Russia that materially helps it execute on its expansionist ambitions — boethius

The West can’t reasonably troubleshoot everything the Russian can use as a pretext. They do not lack creativity and can literally spin anything in their media (as we have seen, the Isis-K terrorist attack is readily associated to Ukraine, and do you remember the "bioweapons labs" in Ukraine?), while the West can’t do much about it no matter what it does (https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis/) nor Ukraine (https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-parliament-adopts-law-on-self-rule-for-eastern-region/2451232.html, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/azov-battalion-drops-neo-nazi-symbol-exploited-by-russian-propagandists-lpjnsp7qg).
Besides, if we’ve provided excellent propaganda material to Russia, you should most certainly agree that “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault”, “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline”, “The War in Ukraine Was Provoked” are also excellent propaganda material provided to Russia by the West.

Sure. But maybe you didn't get the sarcastic intent of my comment.

Palestinians should surrender before they lose whatever they have left. What a shame it didn’t happen years ago. So many lives could have been saved.

It’s frustrating that Israel will win this and seemingly get away with all the crimes it has been accused of. I feel for the Palestinian people being caught up in this proxy war between Iran and Israel.

I feel so Mikie now. Sigh.

Well the difference in outcomes is enormous for the EU and Russia. It is important for the balance of power between the U.S. and China because if Russia wins, it will bolster Russia’s position on the world stage and become a serious threat to European security. This would weaken the EU and probably lead to another European war in a decade or so. Where as if Russia loses in Ukraine, it will likely result in Russian collapse, splintering of her client states etc, strengthen and clearly define the EU to include Ukraine. This will likely put the EU on course for superpower status and a strong ally of the U.S. The U.S. and EU working together in coalition through NATO would be a formidable foe for China. — Punshhh

I find your scenario questionable on two grounds. First, I doubt that it’s the more likely than a frozen conflict scenario where victory and loss remain uncertain, controversial and exploitable at the expense of Russia and/or EU. Second, the US likely doesn’t want Russia to win (too much), but maybe not to lose (too much) either, because China could profit from Russia's weakness to increase even more its hegemonic influence in Central Asia, at the expense of the US. Russia may be reluctant to lean too much on China as well. Besides the US can exploit the Russian threat to keep its grip on the EU, to prevent it either from becoming a competing hegemonic power or serving another competing hegemonic power, a the expense of the US. In short, there is some balance to be found between competing interests which may not be one where the EU is likely the kind of superpower you are suggesting. This balance however may still serve the US hegemonic interest.

I already answered that question. Russia and the US are the first ones to come to mind. Both may have strong incentives to play divide et impera strategies in Europe to preserve their supremacy.

Nonsense, the U.S. is most powerful working alongside a powerful successful EU. If the U.S. were to go down this line you suggest, it would lead to the break up of the EU, the advance of Russia, and a generation of wars in Europe, which would try to draw the U.S. in many times and which would guarantee China’s hegemony with Russia as her side kick. Regarding Russia, she has been trying to meddle in Europe for a long time, nothing has changed in that. — Punshhh

The isolationist trend in the US politics which Trump likely aims at representing doesn’t seem to worry much about the fate of the EU and NATO, even less motivated to push European hegemony. In this predicament, Europe can very much turn into an arena for hegemonic conflict. Better to not confuse expectations with wishes about the outcome of this hegemonic race. Meanwhile, France shows some intent or velleity to replace the US in safeguarding/leading the EU, we will see.

What act are you talking about? The massacre of October 7 is the act carried out by Hamas. This act can be accused of being genocidal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel . Is such act genocidal or not, to you? If not, what DEMONSTRATES that it is not, to you?

Yes the supporters of Israel and the Jewish lobby etc will naturally claim October 7th as genocide. But if we set the bar so low it will bring thousands of small conflicts around the world into the definition. My bar is very high and I have heard numerous legal specialists on the media casting doubt on what is a genocide in this situation. As I say, for me it is the deliberate starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens, happening as we speak. — Punshhh

So bombing and killing more than 30K Palestinians is not a genocide according to your very high bar, but the starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens is, right? And such predicament trumps whatever security concerns Israel may have, right? Yet you didn’t clarify in a principled way what your very high bar is, nor offered evidence that “the deliberate starvation of probably now 1 million Palestinian citizens” is a direct consequence of Israel’s decision.

During the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt the Palestinians fought against the British, hence then you could argue that the ideology was “anti-British”. — ssu

Yes, I would argue that. However, differently from the British empire, Israel is fighting for its own nation state in Palestine, not to preserve an empire. Both Israelis and Palestinians want to build their nation state in Palestine arguably at the expense of the other and are both locked in a vicious circle of retaliations that still is instrumental to their ideological goal. The Israelis are in relative advantage over the Palestinians in terms of casualties, suffering, means of subsistence and territorial losses.
Now, one may want to say that since Palestinians and Israelis are locked in a brutal conflict, other international players may press Israel, the stronger side, to tread more lightly. But the predicament which Israel and Palestinians are stuck in can occur at the international level in an analogous form: i.e. the international supporters of Israel may be compelled to not abandon Israel if supporters of Hamas are not abandoning Hamas either. So my conclusion is that the US may STILL be compelled to support Israel against Hamas because Israel is a strategic ally either for power balance in the Middle East and/or for domestic power balance. What I conceded is that Biden has now greater leverage over Israel, given the domestic pressure from his base, and he’s trying to use it as we are seeing.

The "stuck in a war it cannot win" is basically because the Netanyahu government hasn't any policy what to do after the military operation. Here what is forgotten is that war is the continuation of policy. Just saying "destroy Hamas" isn't enough when you have no idea, no political objective what to do afterwards. It is as simplistic and stupid as Bush going to Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda and then declaring that he won't do anything else and isn't interested in nation building. Well, it didn't go so and it's naive to think that once the IDF declares that it has destroyed the last Hamas battalion, then it can go home and everything is back to normal. — ssu

You are making it all about Netanyahu. To me it isn’t. Even though Netanyahu is politically hawkish, and willing to exploit the current conflict for political convenience, STILL he has the support of the Israelis.
The same for Bush, after Bush the US didn’t pull out immediately from Afghanistan (no matter how problematic the nation building prospects were). Israel is still supported by an American and bipartisan anti-Islamist front. Even more so if religious extremism (both Christian and Judaic) is pushing the US foreign policy and the Zionist agenda in the Middle-East.
What you keep discounting is that people may not pursue peace, if that means WHATEVER peace. That’s what Palestinians (and Israelis (and Ukrainians)) are teaching us. And if this is true for Palestinians why shouldn’t it be the same for Israel? If everything is not going back to normal for the Israelis, the same goes for the Palestinians. Yet, the Palestinians are the ones to lose the most in terms of material and psychological damages.
Gaza will turn into another West Bank, that’s the policy Netanyahu probably aims at pursuing. And others (Israeli and pro-Israel politicians) could likely let him execute his dirty job long enough, so that any post-Netanyahu’s Israeli regime (and other potential partners in the peace process) can more easily take the initiative into relying on Palestinian authorities (other than Hamas) and have a greater appeal than Netanyahu in any peace settlement to the Palestinians.

This isn't an anti-Israeli view. I think who makes this quite clear and obvious is former prime minister Ehud Barak. He states that the military side of might go as now, yet what is lacking is the political side of what to do. Many have stated similar thoughts, but Barak I think gives the most straight forward analysis (even if his English isn't the best). If you have time, you should listen to the former prime minister says here: — ssu

Thanks for the link. It was interesting and it seems to support your views more than mine, until it doesn’t. At min 37:49, the former prime minister says: so people tell me, Barack I got convinced that you are convinced but you're not the only person around, what do I and the other said citizen know that Gantz doesn't know, Eisenkot doesn't know, president Herzog doesn’t know, head of opposition Lapid doesn't know, Lieberman doesn't know? AS LONG AS ALL OF THEM ARE QUIET, me the ordinary citizen thinks that probably TIME HAS NOT YET COME, that's tragedy because there is urgent need to stop this drift to the abyss and the public doesn't see a personal example, energy, focus and determination. Even in political worlds you have first of all to clarify to yourself what you want to achieve so it's not easy.
So again the problem is not Netanyahu, but the surrounding domestic (and I’d add international) political environment that let Netanyahu do what he is doing. I find these circumstances intelligible to the the extent they are also significantly driven by the kind of geopolitically reasons and security concerns I discussed.

And btw many of your links look at states like Syria (prior Iraq) and their WMD projects. Understandably the objectives of these countries has to do a lot with having some kind of parity and deterrence towards Israeli WMDs. — ssu

Yes, understandably. The same goes with the Iranian nuclear program. That’s why I wouldn’t disentangle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the wider hegemonic conflict in the Middle-East. And threats do not need to be actual to guide policies, because when they are actual it may be already too late (also because intelligence failures can happen). We have seen how Hamas and Houthis managed to upgrade their military threats against Israel and the West, and how they want to have a role in the international arena, so we can’t underestimate how their threat can evolve in future scenarios.

Your arguments don’t sound consistent to me: on one side you readily concede that “Deadly terrorist strikes are usually made to get a complacent actor to lash out in revenge and get itself stuck in a war it cannot win”, on the other side you seem to refuse to accept the consequences of such logic. — neomac

I'm not seeing anything inconsistent here. Terrorist want that their target governments lash out in anger and thus show how evil they are. That's their thinking.

Or you don't understand how Al Qaeda or ISIS work? Or how fringe terrorist groups of twenty people think they can change things and move millions of people in their favor?

Al Qaeda and ISIS aren't states, even if the latter insists being the Islamic State. They want publicity for their cause and anticipate the crackdown on themselves and hope that the crackdown will create itself support for their cause. They want an Islamic Caliphate to rise allover, hence their objectives are quite messianic (and really out there). It's quite consistent, so I'm not understanding what is so confusing to you.

Hamas and the PLO have the objective of creating an independent Palestine. The PLO has used similar terror tactics, until it choose to attempt the peace process way. Hamas is still using terrorism. — ssu

First, the distinction you draw between Hamas and Al Qaeda/Isis is disputable, even though the former pursues a nation state while the latter pursue a Islamic caliphate. Indeed, Hamas is a Islamic jihadist group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism_in_the_Gaza_Strip) branching out from another Islamic jihadist group pursuing an Islamic caliphate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood) and heavily supported by Iran which pursues its hegemonic goals in the region. So it looks more as if the secular demand for a Palestinian nation state from PLO has been hijacked by the Islamist cause of Hamas. This is a source of ambiguity that doesn’t help the Palestinian cause at all. Hamas is part of an Islamist network which may strategically fail the pursuit of a Palestinian nation state. So it is myopic to not recognise the agency of Middle Eastern actors and their strategic failures too.
Second, you didn’t get my objection. You seem to claim that Hamas/PLO terrorism is a trap to an endless war and this would be a Israeli failure. But if that is true for Israel, then that is evidently more true for the Palestinians because they are the ones losing the most in terms of life, suffering, means of subsistence and territory. And if that’s not enough to call embracing terrorism a Palestinian strategic failure, or demand a Palestinian surrender at the expense of their nation-state ambitions, then why should it be enough to call the brutal repression of Hamas a strategic failure of Israel, or demand for Israeli mercy at the expense of their own nation-state ambitions?

You have introduced the distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction”, without clarifying its implications, at least to me.

↪neomac
— Punshhh

The implications are that in the case of the Ukraine conflict the difference between the two outcomes, 1, that Russia wins and incorporates Ukraine into Russia and 2, that Russia fails to win Ukraine and Ukraine becomes incorporated into the EU. Would have far reaching and profound implications for the geopolitics between Europe and Asia (and by implication between the West and the East) for a generation or more.
By contrast, the difference between likely outcomes in the Isreal Gaza conflict will not make much difference to geopolitics either way. I don’t see any significant wider geopolitical ramifications. (Please provide some, if I’m wrong). Any linking of these alternative scenarios to a swing of power towards China, or away from the U.S. is weak as the struggle between the two is primarily elsewhere. Russia and the U.S. have been playing proxy wars in the region since WW2. This is just another of those. — Punshhh

I get that the conflict in Ukraine is of primary importance for the EU and Russia, but if you are focusing on the swing of power between China and the US, I’m not sure that the difference between likely outcomes either in the Ukrainian conflict or in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would make a difference for China and the US. As you say “the struggle between the two is primarily elsewhere”. Besides the conflict in Ukraine still looks far from being settled in a way that is amenable to most certainly boost China's or the US's hegemony.
Concerning the “contrast” between the Ukrainian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (or the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for that matter) you highlight, it doesn’t look that compelling to me. One reason is that the pro-Israeli political front in the US is arguably very strong (https://www.timesofisrael.com/congress-is-now-three-times-as-jewish-as-the-us-is/) and it can keep the American focus more on Israel than on Ukraine. Another reason is that the ramification that may have an impact in both rebalancing the power struggle in the middle east between regional powers is for example the normalisation between Saudis and Israeli, with cascading dividends for world hegemonic powers (the US, China or Russia) because the US then would be facilitated in pulling out from the middle east and re-invest its military capital/troops elsewhere to contain China. Yet, as I anticipated, it’s not easy to pull out from the middle-east:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/24/america-is-planning-to-withdraw-from-syria-and-create-a-disaster/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-13/the-us-needs-to-get-out-of-the-middle-east-soon
https://www.theglobalist.com/iran-united-states-middle-east-geopolitics-security/

Germany is making a rapid move away from Russian energy supplies, it will take a while to make the adjustments. Their trade with China is mutually beneficial. If China ceased trading with Western powers such as Germany, it would provide an economic boost and opportunity for whomever replaces the supply, markets would adjust. As I say, China undercutting Western countries with their manufacturing is the main drag on economic activity and growth in those countries. Not to mention China’s economy being dependent on such trade. — Punshhh

Maybe Germany won’t find any replacement, because other foreign markets will be increasingly dominated by competing regional/world hegemonic powers (as it happens in Africa and South America and Asia)

They can try to exploit European vulnerabilities AGAINST Europeans at convenience.

Who will be doing this? — Punshhh

I already answered that question. Russia and the US are the first ones to come to mind. Both may have strong incentives to play divide et impera strategies in Europe to preserve their supremacy. And what’s worse is that the conflict between the two can move from European borders to the heart of Europe in the most insidious ways, through all sorts of political/military/economic blackmailing and/or proxies. The conflict in Ukraine can arguably be considered a case of divide at impera strategy played by the US against Germany (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202210/1277488.shtml). A specular argument can be construed against Russia: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/30/why-russia-wants-to-divide-united-states-and-germany.html
The same game can be played ad libitum with other European countries.

So even if there is a potential for growth, there is also a potential for decadence. Indeed concerns about EU’s decline are persistent and widespread in all domains: population, economy, politics, technology. Here some related readings:

Quite, issues faced by many countries around the world at this time. — Punshhh

The prospects vary among superpowers. But only in the EU the situation looks so worrisome in all domains at the same time, at least now.

I know, I can’t see the EU failing to provide enough support.
— Punshhh

Most certainly not enough to support a Ukrainian offensive, right?

Imagine the response from European countries should Russia start to make substantial ground and look likely to occupy Kiev. — Punshhh

Still, EU’s military aid wasn’t enough to support a Ukrainian offensive, so far. No matter how badly wanted by Zelensky.

I have said more than once that it is only for the specialist investigators who will testify to the ICJ to determine what is in the heads of these terrorist groups. Maybe I should get back to you in 10 years when they have concluded their work. I’m the meantime all we have is personal opinion, or judgement. — Punshhh

You said it more than once to me? Don’t you need “the specialist investigators who will testify to the ICJ to determine what is in the heads of” Netanyahu too before claiming that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza?
As for your opinions, actually I didn’t ask you a legal account, but for your compelling reasons to claim Israel is committing a genocide, while Hamas didn’t in the massacre of October 7. You didn’t offer anything else than your ability to scan “intentions” in people’s heads which is not compelling to me. Do you have other more compelling than this?

I think it is important to bear in mind that genocide is not the intent in itself, but intent and the carrying out of the act intended. So even if it can be demonstrated that Hamas had the intent, I don’t see it being demonstrated that the act, (according to the Israeli’s), intended was carried out. — Punshhh

What act are you talking about? The massacre of October 7 is the act carried out by Hamas. This act can be accused of being genocidal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel . Is such act genocidal or not, to you? If not, what DEMONSTRATES that it is not, to you?

In other words, it doesn’t matter what intent there is, it only becomes genocide when that intent, sufficient to meet the bar of genocide, is acted out on the ground. Hamas was not capable of acting out a genocidal act, all they were capable of was an incursion across the wall, to massacre anyone they found and return home for their evening meal. Doesn’t look like genocide to me. — Punshhh

What is the genocidal act which Hamas would not be capable of acting out, despite having a genocidal intent and committing massacres with genocidal intent? What is the bar of genocide you are referring to? Are you grounding your notion of genocide on the legal definition or on another one?

Security Council Fails to Adopt Resolution on Imperative of Immediate, Sustained Ceasefire in Gaza, Owing to Vetoes Cast by China, Russian Federation
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15637.doc.htm

What Hamas could do was to breach a wall that had lulled the Netanyahu goverment not to focus on Gaza and Hamas. And basically it seems that the Israelis were confident about the inability of the simpleton ragheads to do any kind of coordinated military strike against the wall. And then the wall was breached in a humiliation manner. — ssu

The "destabilisation power" that Hamas had was only because of the Israeli unpreparedness. This simply isn't at all an existential danger. A simple infantry/security team with enough ammunition could fight off the Hamas terrorists, as it in few places happened. — ssu

Notice that I didn’t take my 4 points as individually sufficient reason to consider Hamas an existential threat to Israel. Some of my most basic assumptions are that the first purpose of a state is the monopoly of coercion over a territory, and that people under a state rule are expected to support it at least to the extent the state keeps them safe. Challenging the Israeli territorial sovereignty is built-in Hamas’ declared anti-Zionist ideology. And by indiscriminately killing Israeli civilians Hamas is both challenging Israeli territorial sovereignty and its popular support. Even more so if Hamas can manage to pull into this conflict foreign military support and international support to pressure Israel. In that sense, Hamas is an existential threat to the Zionist state project.
Sure, the disparity of military capacity isn’t in favor of Hamas in a conventional sense, so one could argue that it’s a threat that Israel can easily contain. However, that conclusion doesn’t add up with what you want to claim later (which I don't discount). Indeed, if Hamas succeeds in getting Israel “stuck in a war it cannot win”, something like an unsustainable or endless war for Israel, with ever growing material and reputational costs for Israel, then this would be a strategic failure for the Zionist project. And that still is what makes Hamas an existential threat to Israel as a Zionist project.

Ah, sorry to say this, but I've heard this so many times this lurid narrative during the war on terror. But let's think about this.

Biological weapons, really? I wonder which people have more safety measure to deal with HAMASCOVID+, the Israelis and their efficient health sector or the Palestinians now starving to death?

Then chemical weapons? So Hamas have their made at home rockets, which have a tiny warhead. Now filling that up (which would likely kill more Hamas fighters when making them), but what would be the purspose? To freak out the first responders coming to a scene of a rocket attack? Besides, the rockets can go wildly offcourse and aren't precision weapons in any way. And chemical weapons aren't simply very efficient. That's why they haven't been used much after WW1. The real way would pour some nerve gas in the water system of a big city, if you really want many casualties. — ssu

I don’t know what the chances for Hamas to get and use bio/chemical weapons are,
but I can still argue that there are persistent concerns about bio/chemical terrorism which I have no strong reason to dismiss since they come from both the West and the Middle East:
https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15396.doc.htm
https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3697.doc.htm
https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/International%20Law/ILP0904bp.pdf
https://www.prif.org/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_downloads/A_WMD-DVs_Free_Zone_For_The_Middle_East.pdf
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/cia-report-on-proliferation-of-wmd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

Besides related technology can evolve, so what is costly and unpractical for Hamas today, may be cheeper and handy tomorrow:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/the-u-s-is-defenseless-against-a-drone-terror-attack-be1fabdb
https://warontherocks.com/2019/02/drones-of-mass-destruction-drone-swarms-and-the-future-of-nuclear-chemical-and-biological-weapons/
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Islamic-State-and-Drones-Release-Version.pdf

Yet how does this help Hamas? That Bibi's administration has more credibility when saying that they are human animals that one cannot negotiate with? That the media would be even more fixated on the terrorist attacks and turn a blind eye to the response of more intensified ethnic cleansing? That the US and the West would be more firmly on the side of Isreal?

Deadly terrorist strikes are usually made to get a complacent actor to lash out in revenge and get itself stuck in a war it cannot win. — ssu

But if you want to believe that Hamas and the Palestinians supporting Hamas is this rabid death cult who hate democracy and want everybody to be dead, including all Palestinians, then there's not much to argue with you. Because obviously it just then repeating the mantra we heard so many time during the War on Terrorism. — ssu

Your arguments don’t sound consistent to me: on one side you readily concede that “Deadly terrorist strikes are usually made to get a complacent actor to lash out in revenge and get itself stuck in a war it cannot win”, on the other side you seem to refuse to accept the consequences of such logic. If Hamas’ terroristic attacks aim at indiscriminately killing civilians with the purpose of having Israel lashing out and kill Palestinian combatants and civilians in larger numbers (whom are then called “martyrs”), and yet that’s not enough for you to take Hamas as a “rabid death cult”, all right, so what?! Still the issue is that Hamas’ mindset is alien to humanitarian concerns as Westerners understand them, no less than Israel, and arguably worse than Israel because Hamas can even be accused of committing war crimes against its own people.
Besides, if Israel can not win this war against Hamas, can Hamas win this war against Israel while bearing greater costs in terms of life, suffering and territorial losses? The exchange rate of offenses can still favour Israel, no matter if the feud between Israel and Palestine could last for an undetermined number of generations. In any case, it’s not me who is going to settle what is bearable to Israelis or Palestinians, since Israelis and Palestinians are putting their skin in this game, not me.

OK, first of all, nobody else has territorial demands on Israel than the Palestinians naturally, who want their own independent state and Syria, which lost the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967. Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt or Saudi-Arabia or Iran don't have territorial demands on Israel. — ssu

Still there are disputed territories between Israel and Syria or Lebanon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_occupation_of_the_Golan_Heights
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/13/why-is-there-a-disputed-border-between-lebanon-and-israel

Secondly, do you understand that with nuclear weapons those hostile to Israel seek nuclear parity? If they have nuclear weapons, perhaps Israel won't so casually bomb them as it does Lebanon. Or do you go with argument that Iranians are these rabid mad mullahs who want to destroy Israel and don't care that millions of Iranians could die in the Israeli counter-attack? Is this the death cult argument again?

Why is it so hard to understand that nations seek nuclear weapons for deterrence reasons, especially when a country hostile to them wanting regime change have them? We already see in Ukraine what happens when one country that has ambitions over another one's territory has nuclear weapons and the other one hasn’t. — ssu

States driven by security concerns are not necessarily pursuing deterrence means (e.g. by getting nuclear weapons) just in legitimate self-defence as you seem to suggest. Indeed, we have seen authoritarian regimes (like Russia and North Korea) use the nuclear threat to get other countries satisfy their predatory demands. So, once nuclear deterrence works to prevent interstate wars, yet the conflict with predatory intents can continue in asymmetric ways (like terrorism) and proxy wars (again see the case of Ukraine wrt the hegemonic competition between US and Russia, both with nuclear weapons).

Ukraine is pivotal for both Russia and Europe and by extension for the U.S. and to a lesser extent China. — Punshhh

Again, I don’t see what is happening in the Middle East as pivotal, even though it can generate an awful lot of hot air. — Punshhh

You have introduced the distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction”, without clarifying its implications, at least to me. As far as I’m concerned, analogies are good to complement not to replace analytical arguments when it’s matter of clarifying meaning. And your analogical distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction” doesn’t help me understand why the US looks concerned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict way more than about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict even though both would arguably be equal distractions wrt the competition with China in the Pacific.
Besides, your argument makes me seriously doubt that your views are congruent. For example the Middle East is pivotal to Israel and the Jews as much as Ukraine is pivotal to the Europeans, right? To the extant the pro-Israel community in the US (Jews and Evangelicals) is influential to the US foreign policy (and arguably it is), then the US can’t simply pull out from the Middle East just because Middle East is a distraction wrt the competition with China in the Pacific. To use your own words, since Israel is pivotal for pro-Israel Americans then, by extension it is pivotal for the U.S., right? If so, what was the point of invoking the distinction between “pivotal” and “distraction” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, again?

In the meantime, which was my point, Europe will have rearmed and with the appropriate weaponry for such a fight. — Punshhh

I’m not making specific claims just making broad observations. For Europe to rearm over the next ten years would be easily financed from the current level of economic activity. Provided there is sufficient incentive( which Russia provides). — Punshhh

You sound more convinced than convincing. I understand that circumstances are motivating Europeans to think more strategically and re-arm. However geopolitical analyses sound more uncertain about the outcome of this wake up call. Here an example: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/27/russia-ukraine-nato-europe-war-scenarios-baltics-poland-suwalki-gap/

Also Europe in the longer term, which I was referring to when I said it would become a super power is inevitable. With a population over 500 million and wide ranging resources including the longer term opportunities for growth, why wouldn’t it? — Punshhh

I already answered that question. You seem to observe “inevitable” trajectories based on a couple of approximative parameters (what are the “wide ranging resources including the longer term opportunities for growth” you are referring to?) without considering the influence of historical circumstances and the implications of hegemonic competition. Europe is still a contended space for hegemonic competition, from within (conflicting interests among European states) and from outside (under the pressure of Russia and the US to begin with). The European economy relies on foreign markets of commodities for their input and/or final products for their output, which are already either under control by regional/world hegemonic powers or contended by regional/world hegemonic powers (example, Germany depending on Russia for oil and on China for export). Besides regional/world hegemonic powers are not just going to sit and watch what Europe will do in the longer term, just to give Europe a chance to “inevitably” become a competing superpower. They can try to exploit European vulnerabilities AGAINST Europeans at convenience.
So even if there is a potential for growth, there is also a potential for decadence. Indeed concerns about EU’s decline are persistent and widespread in all domains: population, economy, politics, technology. Here some related readings:
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/04/china-sees-first-population-decline-in-six-decades-where-does-the-eu-stand
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/10/11/brussels-sounds-alarm-about-eus-rapidly-ageing-population-recommends-migration-to-fill-vac-
https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/very-worrying-trade-unions-alarmed-by-eus-industrial-collapse/
https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/european-issues/642-the-european-union-s-declining-influence-in-the-south
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/15/majority-of-europeans-expect-end-of-eu-within-20-years
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12286-021-00481-w
https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/digital-tech-europes-growing-gap-eight-charts
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/securing-europes-competitiveness-addressing-its-technology-gap
https://www.ft.com/content/d4fda2ec-91cd-4a13-a058-e6718ec38dd1

Conclusion: again you sound more convinced than convincing.

I know, I can’t see the EU failing to provide enough support. — Punshhh

Most certainly not enough to support an Ukrainian offensive, right?

Yes, it could be argued that Hamas committed genocide on October 7th. — Punshhh

And it is argued by various legal experts and genocide studies scholars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel

Firstly, the intent, I don’t see those Hamas insurgents having in their heads an intent to harm the racial group of Israel. But rather to commit a violent raid in a small area outside the wall. I know there are calls from people in important positions in the Hamas hierarchy who have called for the eradication of Israel etc. But this is sounding off, hot air. Arabic people often engage in this kind of rhetoric. — Punshhh

So you can scan “intents” directly from people’s heads now? If you dismiss evidences of Hamas’ massacre and declared intents against Israel, others can dismiss your capacity of scanning intents from people’s heads or even retort it against you: one can scan in Nethanyahu’s head he has no intent to commit a genocide and calling Hamas animals is just hot air.

Secondly, the act of genocide, The Hamas attack was not capable of hurting the racial group of Israel. Yes, it did hurt the people in and connected to the incursion. Who have been very vocal and it has caused a lot of turmoil within Israel. But there was no way in which the racial, or ethnic group of Israel, or the Jews was under threat, or being harmed. In a genocidal sense. — Punshhh

For what reasons “there was no way in which the racial, or ethnic group of Israel, or the Jews was under threat, or being harmed. In a genocidal sense”? Yours is just a claim. There are people claiming that Hamas committed a genocide. Why should I be more compelled by your claims than by others’? What’s the argument? Dude, I didn’t join this forum to make a survey about people’s opinions or to socialize. I welcome actual arguments if you have any. If you don’t, we’re wasting time here.

I think it is important to bear in mind that genocide is not the intent in itself, but intent and the carrying out of the act intended. So even if it can be demonstrated that Hamas had the intent, I don’t see it being demonstrated that the act intended was carried out. — Punshhh

Again you didn’t offer any analytical criteria nor evidences about what DEMONSTRATES genocidal intent when people are massacred.