Also every war for independence is a mistake by that logic.
Castro was pushing for the Soviets to take a harder line during the crisis, so I’m sure you’re right. But, personally, this strikes me as an unwise stance for someone looking out for the best interests of the Cuban people.
Not if you win. And maybe the Ukrainians will win here, I have no idea.
We all knew BLM protesters would get the shit beat out of them and arrested by police holding batons, tasers, and guns.
Therefore the smart thing to do is for all of them to stay at home. And once they started hitting the streets, what’s most important to focus on is to criticize how wrong they are to do so.
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I think it’s probably the second. But it depends on the actual balance of power in the region, which Mearsheimer might be ignorant of. If Ukraine had actually grown more capable that he thought, it might explain both why the Russians invaded (Ukraine is already worryingly strong and will only get stronger with the US giving them a billion dollars of weapons each year and US special forces training Ukrainian soldiers) and why the Ukrainians were willing to stand up to the Russians. It makes more sense if they have a chance to defeat the Russians than if fighting them is suicide. But if Mearsheimer is right and the Russians have overwhelming force then Ukraine’s actions were foolish using his framework.
I do think the people fighting the Russians are brave and admirable. That is a different question from analyzing the choices of their leaders before the war.
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Prosecuting war crimes is a form of moralizing in international relations.
How interesting that his emphasis here is on Palestine to have a free state, not on how foolish it is for them to not acquiesce to a much stronger neighboring power.
I don’t understand why you think that statement on the Israel/Palestine situation is at odds with his analysis of what sort of foreign policy Ukraine should have had for the last decade or so.
How much is that amount of scrap metal worth?
I assume it’s quite a haul.
I’m still completely mystified by the concept of just leaving a perfectly good battle tank abandoned in a warzone. I don’t understand how that comes about.
Isn’t there some way to scuttle a tank before abandoning it? I remember when the helicopter crashed in the Bin Laden raid, the SEAL team put explosives in the chopper to destroy as much of the technology inside as possible. And there was still a mini-concern that Pakistan could recover good intelligence from the wreckage. Maybe this is dumb but it seems like there should be a way to render these tanks inoperable/immobile such that Ukrainian farmers can’t tow them away.
Maybe a lot of them are being deserted. If your plan is to poke some holes in a gas tank, or drive into a muddy field and get stuck, so that you can desert and GTFO, you’re probably not very worried about scuttling the tank.
Story of the Ukrainians repelling an attack on an airport
Can I get cliffs on this mearshmeir dude?
Are they deserters? Can’t tell if they’re deserting or just ran out of gas or there are mechanical problems or what. It’s just wild that there are dozens of perfectly good tanks abandoned out there.
If you want to click on the thread bobman linked, that has pretty good details, but as best I can tell, he’s worthless. His framework is, at best, descriptive, not predictive, and appears to be unfalsifiable. It’s not exactly self-consistent, either.
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Well, if you’re a Russian soldier, you can hang out in your unmoving tank in the middle of a field until an NLAW takes you out, or you can make your way back to the friendly lines. Doesn’t seem preposterous to choose #2.
West Point graduate, US Air Force veteran and political scientist with degrees from Cornell & Harvard and now teaches at the University of Chicago. Prescribes to the realism view that the big boys with the big toys do what they want.
He posits that great powers are predators ensuring that their smaller neighbors are not free to pursue policies of their own choice.
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My understanding is that a battered wife finally received a divorce many years ago, but due to circumstances was forced to live over in the next building. The batterer kept making threats towards her, so she finally began to seek the friendship and protection of some of the tougher guys in the neighborhood.
This pissed off the batterer, and he told her to stop hanging around these guys. When she refused, the batterer and his gang began vandalizing her car and eventually breaking in to her home to beat her and her kids. The tough guys are indirectly helping but are afraid to create an all-out gang war.
Mearshmeir then says, “How could you be so stupid to provoke your ex like this when you knew how it would end?”
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Why is the tank unmoving? Did Ivan forget to fill up before driving off to Kiev? I don’t think this is how mechanized infantry is supposed to work.