Philosophy Now Forum

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -fly-zone/

'Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky played on America’s desire to be “the leader of the world” when he implored Congress on Wednesday to support a no-fly zone. Making references to the Declaration of Independence, Mount Rushmore and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he explained how his country has faced the equivalent of a Sept. 11 or Pearl Harbor every night for three weeks. “In your great history, you have pages that would allow you to understand Ukrainians,” Zelensky said.

'Wearing the olive-green T-shirt that has become his wartime uniform, and appearing virtually from a capital that’s under siege, Zelensky was David asking us to join his fight against Goliath. Make no mistake: That’s what the no-fly zone he wants would mean — a hot war between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.

'President Biden’s greatest skill is showing empathy, but the current crisis has proved that he’s also capable of hardheadedness. We must be clear-eyed about where our interests align with — but also diverge from — Ukraine’s. We climb the escalation ladder at our peril. That’s why Biden’s response to Zelensky was so wise: The most we can realistically do is give David more slingshots.'

And if the slingshots aren't enough?

Then the part where one imagines Putin as Hitler, going after all of Europe itself.

'Biden has made clear that his red line is NATO and that the United States will fight to defend “every inch” of member countries. The attack on Kyiv, grievous as it is, is not an attack on Berlin, Paris or London. We are not obligated by treaty to respond. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin almost certainly wouldn’t have risked an invasion of Ukraine if it were in the alliance.

It all comes down to "perspectives":

'American and Ukrainian interests overlap, to be sure, but not entirely. While Zelensky and Biden share an interest in making sure this war never becomes a victory for Putin, people in Washington and Kyiv likely differ in their interpretations of what constitutes defeat for Moscow. Americans might be somewhat satisfied if Putin paid such a high price in blood and treasure from this misadventure that he’s scared off from directly challenging NATO members. The Baltic states would be able to breathe easier in that scenario, but Ukrainians will consider anything less than maintaining their sovereignty to be a failure.'

Putin may win and Ukraine basically becomes a part of "Mother Russia" again. It's not what we want but at least we are still around to not want.

"Unfortunately our weak, and frail, and cognitively struggling president, Joe Biden, single-handedly nixed that plan,” Hannity seethed."

That's what he's supposed to say. Conservative talkshow numpties are supposed to say of any democrat that what they did, they shouldn't have done, and what they didn't do, they should have done. Had Biden ordered the no fly zone, he'd be hollerin' about sleepy Joe bringing us to the brink of war.

NYT headline:

"Biden Tells Xi There Would Be Consequences to Helping Russia"

Just what the world needs!!

On the other hand, it is estimated that China only has about 350 nuclear warheads at Xi Jinping's disposal. Not even close to the 4,500 to 6,000 that Putin can launch. Also, to the best of my knowledge, the Chinese leader is not construed to be a possible "madman".

Still, he is watching closely how the West reacts to Putin in Ukraine.

Depending on how that unfolds, it may or may not be an important factor in his deciding to invade or not to invade Taiwan.



Just imagine if he opts to invade in tandem with the Russian invasion of Ukraine?!!!

It doesn't get blunter than this...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/opin ... raine.html

Why America Should Not Deepen Its Military Involvement in Ukraine
By Tom Z. Collina
Mr. Collina is an expert on nuclear weapons, missile defense and nonproliferation

'Given the stakes, the United States can and should do more to end the war and help alleviate human suffering in Ukraine. We were already providing weapons for the Ukrainians to defend themselves, such as Stinger antiaircraft missiles and Javelin antitank missiles, as well as hitting Russia with huge economic sanctions. And soon after Mr. Zelensky’s speech, President Biden announced that the United States would send an additional $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine, as part of a $14 billion support package he had already approved.

'But there is a limit to how far we should go. Even as our hearts go out to the brave Ukrainian people, the Biden administration is right to resist calls to deepen American military involvement in Ukraine, because the consequences of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could be unimaginably dire. If Mr. Biden bows to public pressure and, for instance, attempts to create a no-fly zone in Ukraine, we could be stepping on the path to nuclear war. As the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said this week, “The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.”

'A product of the Cold War, Mr. Biden well understands that direct U.S.-Russian conflict could escalate to nuclear war. The Soviet Union may have disappeared 30 years ago, but its nuclear weapons did not, and neither did ours. If they are used, the consequences would be horrific — instant death for people in the immediate blast area followed by environmental destruction, possible famine and more death as the radiation spread. It could mean the end of civilization as we know it.'

And here's the thing...

Even if there appears to be little doubt that Biden would confront Putin directly in the event he were to attack an actual NATO member nation, the horrific consequences of a nuclear conflagration doesn't go away.

And once the nukes start flying what option is there but, as General 'Buck' Turgidson insisted, to go all out in annihilating them before they annihilate us?

Not only that but the greater the likelihood of economic sanctions crippling Putin and setting into motion the possibility of a failed Russian state, what will become of those nukes then? Who might get their hands on them if the state itself begins to collapse?

This would seem to depend on how the military functions there in relationship to the government. Are there measures in place to prevent "rogue elements" from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction?

Yet another opinion piece cautioning against going too far in confronting Putin...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/opin ... olicy.html

'The extraordinary actions of the Western powers are a natural and proportional response to Vladimir Putin’s reckless resort to force. Yet it is precisely their naturalness that should make us wary. When disaster breaks, leaders do not have time to dissect the fine print of every policy option presented to them. Crisis cascades: Each update from the front presents decision makers with a new demand for action. In such circumstances, it is natural for the snap assessment or the emotionally charged judgment to eclipse the careful calculation of cost and benefit.

'In columns and Twitter threads across the Western world, we read equally charged demands that Western governments do more to stop the Russian advance — and do it now. This too is natural, but it is also not prudent. Failure to slow down and examine the assumptions and motivations behind our choices may lead to decisions that feel right in the moment but fail to safeguard our interests, secure our values or reduce the human toll of war in the long run.'

And...

'Trapping a bear makes it more desperate, not less dangerous. Moscow, squeezed by sanctions and facing larger NATO military budgets, may resort to extraordinarily risky measures to forestall decline. It was precisely this logic — complete with the prospect of crushing restrictions by a superior economic power and weapons shipments to a weaker military foe — that led Hitler to Barbarossa and imperial Japan to Pearl Harbor. However, the authoritarian great powers of the 20th century, which gambled that escalating conventional military conflicts might bring Western rivals to the negotiating table before economic isolation reduced their own national power beyond repair, are unlike modern Russia in one key respect: Russia has nukes to gamble with.'

I suspect that what this reflects is the increasing realization that this conflict could in fact result in a nuclear conflagration that takes out...all of us?

Not just the grunts on the ground as in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, but those who write the opinion pieces too. And you and I.

Huffing and puffing at Saddam and the Taliban and the "terrorists" is one thing, but Putin...?

I dunno ya'll, but I think Ukraine might be kickin Russia's ass.

promethean75 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 19, 2022 8:09 pm I dunno ya'll, but I think Ukraine might be kickin Russia's ass.

Perhaps then prompting Putin to issue an ultimatum to Zelensky: He has 24 hours to surrender or Kyiv will be obliterated by nuclear bombs.

Then, afterward, he falls back on Truman's justification for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And, if it comes to that, would Biden then be justified in issuing the same warning in regard to Moscow?

Here's how it's gonna go, Biggs. Putin is finished no matter what he does. He'll end up getting assassinated, or isolated in a bunker somewhere for the rest of his life, or taken into custody for war crimes.

If he goes to push the button, there's gonna be a coup... either by the Russian military or the citizens (who are wisening up very quickly and fixin to start a Russian revolution 2.0 version).

... and he might even off himself. If he does, it'll happen like this. One evening he'll sit alone at the far end of that long ass table in the Kremlin with a shot glass and a decanter of premium vodka. Some excruciatingly lame 18th century Russian classical music will be playing. He'll have a long moment in which he will submerge into the depths of his existential crisis. What of the motherland? The hopes and promises of my country, my people? What would god have me do? So many years I have been a leader coughuselessparasitecough of the Raashin people... and now, luke at me. Sitting here alone scratching my disproportionately underdeveloped chin as I come to recognize my inescapable fate. I have nahsing left. My oligarchs have all bailed on me and that guy I tried to poison is rousing the rabble against me. Course I could escape to Argentina in a submarine like those Nazi war criminals but shit ain't like it was in the 40s. Prolly send some guy like Jason Bourne to rub me out, if I do.

These thoughts of the last Raashin tzar will eventually reside, and he will take the KGB issued Makarov from the walnut gun case over by the yuge picture of Shtalin thirty yards from where he sits in the other side of the room. As he turns the pistol over in his hands and examines it, he'll make one of those sounds you make that's half light hearted and half surrendering. One of those 'hmpf' sounds. You know, the 'never thought it would end like this' hmpf.

So Pootin has stowed Alina Kabaeva away in Switzerland for the time being. I wonder if she gets to have her own opinion or if she's like Trump's dingbat, Melania.

Nuclear options?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/21/scie ... raine.html

'In destructive power, the behemoths of the Cold War dwarfed the American atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Washington’s biggest test blast was 1,000 times as large. Moscow’s was 3,000 times. On both sides, the idea was to deter strikes with threats of vast retaliation — with mutual assured destruction, or MAD. The psychological bar was so high that nuclear strikes came to be seen as unthinkable.

'Today, both Russia and the United States have nuclear arms that are much less destructive — their power just fractions of the Hiroshima bomb’s force, their use perhaps less frightening and more thinkable.

'Concern about these smaller arms has soared as Vladimir V. Putin, in the Ukraine war, has warned of his nuclear might, has put his atomic forces on alert and has had his military carry out risky attacks on nuclear power plants. The fear is that if Mr. Putin feels cornered in the conflict, he might choose to detonate one of his lesser nuclear arms — breaking the taboo set 76 years ago after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

'Analysts note that Russian troops have long practiced the transition from conventional to nuclear war, especially as a way to gain the upper hand after battlefield losses. And the military, they add, wielding the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, has explored a variety of escalatory options that Mr. Putin might choose from.

'“The chances are low but rising,” said Ulrich Kühn, a nuclear expert at the University of Hamburg and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The war is not going well for the Russians,” he observed, “and the pressure from the West is increasing.”'

Stay tuned?

But ever and always [for me] going back to just how problematic this can all be given what we simply do not know about what is unfolding inside Putin's head. The "dasein" factor. One man in relationship to the rest of the world.

Imagine a scenario where someone becomes the leader of a nation in possession of nuclear bombs. For whatever personal reasons he or she decides to plunge the world into a nuclear conflagration simply because given their own psychological proclivity they decide to. We can't imagine doing it ourselves...but them?

Maybe he or she is at death's door and having no religious convictions decides to take as many of us tumbling over into oblivion as he or she can. The sheer uncertainty of what is possible given all the variables we can't either grasp or control in others.

Nuclear war and human psychology!

Perhaps it's a fucking miracle we have lasted this long, right?

Or, going way out on the metaphysical limb, nuclear war because given the laws of nature, it was never going to not happen.

Here and now for example.

Plan C and plan D...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/opin ... raine.html

'I say “maybe” because Putin may feel he cannot tolerate any kind of draw or dirty compromise. He may feel that anything other than a total victory is a humiliation that would undermine his authoritarian grip on power. In that case, he could opt for a plan C — which, I am guessing, would involve air or rocket attacks on Ukrainian military supply lines across the border in Poland.

'Poland is a NATO member, and any attack on its territory would require every other NATO member to come to Poland’s defense. Putin may believe that if he can force that issue, and some NATO members balk at defending Poland, NATO could fracture. It would certainly trigger heated debates inside every NATO country — especially in the United States — about getting directly involved in a potential World War III with Russia. No matter what happens in Ukraine, if Putin could splinter NATO, that would be an achievement that could mask all his other losses.

'If Putin’s plans A, B and C all fail, though, I fear that he would be a cornered animal and he could opt for plan D — launching either chemical weapons or the first nuclear bomb since Nagasaki. That is a hard sentence to write, and an even worse one to contemplate. But to ignore it as a possibility would be naïve in the extreme.'

Okay, he opts for Plan D.

What have you got in mind, if it does come to that? How far will you be from the bombs?

Me? I'm from Baltimore. About 40 miles from Washington D.C.

And you know for sure the bombs will land there. So, will it then come down to which direction the wind is blowing [shades of Three Mile Island]...or is there just no fucking way I am not toast?

"Maybe he or she is at death's door and having no religious convictions decides to take as many of us tumbling over into oblivion as he or she can. The sheer uncertainty of what is possible given all the variables we can't either grasp or control in others."

Indeed, one of us might well be rooting for this nuclear conflagration. As, for example, they might root for the "big one" hurtling down from space -- Don't Look Up -- ushering in the next extinction event...the one that takes out the human species as well all the rest of them. And it's always only a matter of time.

It's that enigmatic relationship between you and everything else. What you want to see happen because [for whatever reason] it pleases you...regardless of the fate of everyone else. Is this now Putin's frame of mind? If he can't get what he wants will he have no qualms whatsoever in destroying all who get between him and his own selfish wants and needs?

Might that explain what he is doing in Ukraine right now...seemingly targeting civilians -- even children -- in order to spur his enemies to concede defeat. If only in order to end the ghastly horrors of what comes to us on the nightly news.

And tell me this isn't all the embodiment of dasein.

So, what's your own "grand theory" regarding Putin's motives in Ukraine?

Here's hers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/opin ... anism.html

Jane Burbank
Dr. Burbank is a professor of Russian history, recently retired from New York University.

'President Vladimir Putin’s bloody assault on Ukraine, nearly a month in, still seems inexplicable. Rockets raining down on apartment buildings and fleeing families are now Russia’s face to the world. What could induce Russia to take such a fateful step, effectively electing to become a pariah state?

'Efforts to understand the invasion tend to fall into two broad schools of thought. The first focuses on Mr. Putin himself — his state of mind, his understanding of history or his K.G.B. past. The second invokes developments external to Russia, chiefly NATO’s eastward expansion after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, as the underlying source of the conflict.

'But to understand the war in Ukraine, we must go beyond the political projects of Western leaders and Mr. Putin’s psyche. The ardor and content of Mr. Putin’s declarations are not new or unique to him. Since the 1990s, plans to reunite Ukraine and other post-Soviet states into a transcontinental superpower have been brewing in Russia. A revitalized theory of Eurasian empire informs Mr. Putin’s every move.'

The "theory of Eurasian empire" assessment of history.

Though what always fascinates me is not the particular theory one subscribes to but how existentially one comes to subscribe to this theory rather than another.

And how these overarching theories are often rooted in turn to theories about race and ethnicity and gender and imperialism and conquest. You come to see the world in a particular way. And then, for some, it becomes important that others see it in the same way.

Or else.

And then once these Kingdoms of Ends are subscribed to existentially some will make no distinction between means and ends. The end justifies any and all means. So, while some see Putin as just a brute or a thug, he himself is able to attach the means that he employs to his own "overarching theory" of human history.

As opposed to those moral nihilists in Russia who make it all about "show me the money":

'The end of the Soviet Union disoriented Russia’s elites, stripping away their special status in a huge Communist empire. What was to be done? For some, the answer was just to make money, the capitalist way. In the wild years after 1991, many were able to amass enormous fortunes in cahoots with an indulgent regime. But for others who had set their goals in Soviet conditions, wealth and a vibrant consumer economy were not enough. Post-imperial egos felt the loss of Russia’s status and significance keenly.'

And I suspect that once you come across one or another fulminating fanatic attached to their own pet theory, there's no reasoning with them. They see the world only as "in their head" they know it to be.

And how exasperating that can be for those among us who really do believe that through, say, philosophy we can bring the world to the best it can possibly be.

We've got our fair share of them here in fact.