Why would any state be concerned about casus beli (FYI you keep misspelling it) when the big dog in the room doesn’t give a shit?

Because international politics is still politics. Your argument doesn’t make sense in the same way that “Iran’s only goal ever is to wipe Israel off the map and if we don’t do something right now they’ll do it tomorrow” doesn’t make sense. It’s because every country weighs the risks and consequences of an action. These things matter in as much as the reaction to them by other states. That’s literally the lynch pin of international law. There is no big mommy, the only potential mommy is a complex calculus of geopolitics.

You’re arguing international law like we’re in some kind of 4X.

If you don’t understand that’s what Russia (and Kuchinich) is also doing and from a point of realpolitik rather than international law then this conversation is pointless. I did not drag us to this crossroads. I merely saw some people yelling and decided to join in the fun.

If the problem Russia has is that it feels NATO is attacking it, then in reality Russia has no real leg to stand on, because it’s complaints are “this is a shadow war”, and a rectification of that is to just make it into a real war. They’re pushing an issue they would heavily stand to lose in if they actually believed it was a real issue.

To rephrase Russia is only making the case that NATO is being unfair by playing in the shadows because it has extreme certainty that NATO is not going to enter the war over Ukraine, and it also knows that the Russian escalation that they are threatening would change that calculus for all NATO countries overnight. Also the situation that they themselves would use that escalation in, isn’t happening and is not going to happen unless NATO heavily joins the war and digs into Russian territory. So it’s not going to actually make good on its threats.

While I agree that NATO should not provoke Russia, understanding the motives behind these political plays and consequences of what could happen in response shows that Russia itself doesn’t believe this is a provocation. What’s happening right now is there’s 3 kids in a back seat one is 5, one is 12, and one is 16. The 12 year old is beating the shit out of the 5 year old for agreeing with the 16 year old who goaded the 5 year old to do so. The 16 year old is doing the “I’m not touching you” to the 12 year old and the 12 year old while still beating the shit out of the 5 year old is saying “MOM HE’S TOUCHING ME”.

Yeah and a national budget is like a family budget so that’s why you must do austerity.

I think it’s very funny that a lot of people will post “omg communism boogeyman? is this legal???”, but they won’t do a very basic introspection of ideology and online community moderation which is at the core the entire intent here.

Almost every lemmy instance has the same rule 1, those rules textually are often the same, those rules are often have the same meanings, but those rules are unevenly enforced between instances based on the ideology of that instance. That’s why you can be a transphobe on .world without actually getting the same amount of mod action going your way as if you were a transphobe on hexbear/lemmy.ml/lemmygrad/blahaj.

Furthermore there’s sociopolitical drama between the instances like between blahaj and hexbear on what transphobia actually is and what level of irony is allowed.

A lot of people interpret rule 1 as “don’t be mean” rather than “be mean in ways that aren’t racist/bigoted/sexist/transphobic/etc”. Which is why they often complain that certain communities they can’t post certain words, but user can dog pile them with community approved shitposting.

And then there’s the lib instances who think that being mean to the Ukrainian war effort online is rule 1 and if not it’s rule no disinformatsiya.

It’s like when Twitter had to clarify, you cannot call for violence unless it’s a call for violence that is part of the United States of America’s foreign policy, because Trump as POTUS called for violence over Twitter as part of US FP. But we gotta always put the the damn commies under the microscope for making us copypasta Marxist thought.

Freakin epic bacon sauce.

Average age of Ukranian Army 42.

Average age of the 1st Galician Grenadier Grandpa Battalion: 55.

Zelenskyy trying so hard not to draft anyone under 25 so that the war support doesn’t crater and he doesn’t cause a demographic crisis for Ukraine’s labor mix.

Russia’s “Peace Plan” is to actually take over Ukraine, and then the Baltics, and then Poland, and then Germany and the rest of the Central Europe, and then France and the UK, and rest of Western Europe, and then they’ll take over the Atlantic Ocean and Iceland and Greenland, and then they’ll come and take over the United States, state by state starting from the East Coast going to the West Coast, and then Hawaii, and then Japan, and then they’ll autocoup themselves oblast by oblast starting with Vladivostok where they’ll be dug in for months trying to make roads that connect to the rest of Russia but then they’ll keep marching West and when they finally loop all the way back around to Lviv the whole West will be defeated and we’ll all be speaking Russian and saying Hail Putler and the brave Galician racists will be rolling in their graves saying I told you so.

And that’s why at least 4 generations of Ukrainian men need to be eradicated for American interests in Eastern Europe.

Yeah every Western analyst has been saying: You’re stupid and propagandized to think that the meat grinder war can be won by the country with the most meat.

Doubt he’s “from” Odesa. The country side around Odesa spawns Ukrainian Nationalists like crazy.

The language wars have been the funniest shit to me since I was a kid in Odesa. Especially with what happened now, half the country goes on Duo Lingo overnight. Having grown up with this stupid shit, it was really funny to immigrate to the US and learn about like the slave trade and Jim Crow, and be like “damn Ukrainians really do love to complain”.

Which is heavily ironic because my dad immediately went the other way and just became mildly racist about how “black people be demanding things”. Shit’s hilarious because it was always like “in 1876 we were forced to cut out our tongues with the Ems decree, and we couldn’t celebrate the Taras Sevchenko centennial, and the evil Soviets made Russian the academic lingua franca”. But the people who literally couldn’t vote until 1964 and couldn’t live in certain neighborhoods (even to this day) are entitled.

It’s such a silly fucking position because of it’s wishy washy historicity once you start to “collect evidence” and ultimately it’s like if all complaints of oppression in America by black people were summed up with “they wouldn’t let us talk jive”.

It’s also really funny because if Ukraine fulfills it’s wildest EU/NATO/US FREEDOM dreams, in 10 years there will be less Russian and Ukranian than there is now. It will be like Iceland or Ireland where it’s fully colonized by capitalist English due to the economic realities, and there will be a large language divide between the younger and older generations in the country. Ukrainians only cling tightly to their traditions for their traditional enemies. They’ll gleefully shed all that for Westernization because it’s “the way of the world”. Sure they’ll be the classic holdouts of Galicia, but practically the country will erase its own language and culture much like Iceland and other countries suffering from success under neocolonialism.

Sure but you’re dodging the question now.

The point is if we want to talk about what’s legal on the international stage. Russia’s views have consequences. There’s nothing that about US’s support of Ukraine that is illegal. So Russia is saying that the US is escalating and is a direct party in the war, which I can see an argument for. Which means that because North Korea has joined the war on the side of Russia, America has a legal reason to bomb Pyongyang in the same way it bombed Bryansk (in Russia’s view).

See Russia is advocating for Russia. It will throw North Korea under the bus in this scenario, the question is, is that fair to North Korea?

Sure. You’re right. So you have 2 theoretical worlds

1. There is no system, America does what they want because they’re the strongest evilest ever
2. There is a system that we agree on and that defines what is lets say “polite” and “impolite”.

By arguing about the “realpolitik” of it and the “akshually there’s direct Involvement from Americans” you’re arguing in world 2. By arguing about how the US does what it wants you’re arguing in world 1.

My point is that by arguing in world 2 and agreeing to the Russian points, you must also agree to their consequences in that by agreeing that America has direct involvement, and North Korea having direct involvement gives America a rightful cassus beli.

I don’t disagree with your point at all. All I’m saying is that you either need to agree to a system that may have side effects you don’t like / don’t support, or you need to agree to might makes right and there’s no real argument that America “cannot do these things”.

In short, tell me why this matters, you can decide the terrain and I’ll conceed a fair amount of points, but you just have to accept consequences. World 1 America does what it wants, the question doesn’t matter. World 2 if we’re taking your argument at face value that the Russians are right, America is actually a direct party to the war, which means America can rightfully drone strike Pyongyang tomorrow

My argument here in general is that regardless that America has the biggest swingingest dick in the room, doesn’t mean that other countries aren’t all also swinging their dicks, and we have to make sense of this somehow otherwise there’s no point and America should just win because it’s the biggest evilest guy.

Okay let’s say you’re right, the US has de facto direct involvement in the Russia-Ukraine War on the side of Ukraine.

Does that mean US currently has a valid cassus beli against North Korea?

It does insomuch as they are operated by US personnel.

They aren’t.

If the US pulled all support tomorrow, would Ukraine still be able to use HIMARS and ATACMS? Yes. Would they be as effective using them? No. And it’s not because of a lack of training or US personel pushing the buttons. It’s about the fact that US main support is providing intelligence and target selection capabilities that Ukraine cannot practically do itself.

No President has the right to use unilateral executive authority to permit a U.S. missile strike against another nation. It invites a retaliatory attack. It is an impeachable offense.

And this is not happening – the US President is telling Ukrainian forces that they no longer have limitations on targets they can use American supplied weapons on. There is no US missile strike. The US no longer owns those missiles. Ukraine plays within the rules because if it doesn’t there’s a chance it might not get more weapons later.

Also how was this line of argumentation applied in the last like 25 years for like:

• Yemen
• Iraq
• Afghanistan
• Syria
• etc.

Sure it happened, but nothing came of it, because it’s just not a real argument anyway. It holds no power. It’s liberal cope.

My brother in Christ we (the US) are the bad actors.

Zelenskyy literally cannot advocate for negotiated peace. The Right wing nationalist elements of Ukraine’s coalition will effectively murder him if that becomes his position. It remains to be seen what will happen to him when he’s forced into it by the reality of the war and the waning of international support by his patron states.

The West is in complete denial that the Houthi movement is one of the most battle hardened and effective factions against US style war tactics in the World. Their ability to procure, build, and strategize and their experience fighting US tactics in sea and air they’re punching heavily above their weight limit. It’s seriously impressive.

Part of this denial is the heavy investment in the military industrial complex which has effectively destroyed war economics from the US point of view, but nobody wants to admit that it’s more expensive field an $11M Aegis launched SM-3 vs the Quds-3/Quds-2. While the Quds-3/Quds-2 has no public dollar amount that I can find, it’s unlikely to cost more than a Iranian produced Zolfaghar or Qadr missile which western analysis peg at $0.5 to $1.5 million dollars.

Oh and you launch multiple interceptors per ballistic target if you want to intercept, so the economic comparison is for perfect interception with no backup.

The US likely loses more money by having war ships in target range of the Houthis than the Houthis spend yearly on their weapons production.

You’re talking from a relative position of understanding of these concepts. You’re not talking from a blank slate. Even in professional environments that I’ve been in where everyone went to college and theoretically is fully literate, you would have trouble getting people to retain these concepts even if you used friendlier technical language. You’re overestimating the amount of time it takes to actually achieve understanding, there are people on this site that constantly mix up these words and concepts, have a hard time applying them to the real world and misapply them regularly and are self professed Marxists. You’re also mistaking cultural policing of agreeing/using these concepts for understanding of them. Just think about how many people in America agree with capitalism but can’t adequately explain what capitalism is. They agree with freedom but don’t have a working definition or framework of what freedom means. On a societal level this often becomes bromides. My parents and grandparents read Marx in school but couldn’t give you an accurate basic run down of Marxist concepts.

Marxism isn’t some magical thing. There were plenty of people in the USSR that also didn’t understand the system they existed under and it’s concepts but reflexively or sheepishly agreed with it.

Audiobooks aren’t really a good solution to be honest. Reading / writing literacy are the basis of scholarship. We have centuries of research and examples that we’ve turned our back on that efficient learning happens only when you can unlock good literacy skills. Specifically the aspect of reading/physical writing/sublingualization is a cornerstone of comprehension of complex ideas. With something like Marxism that’s based on understanding both technical and archaic language and social constructs it becomes really hard. There are tons of self professed Marxists that couldn’t tell you what commodity fetishism actually means in simple terms.

Great example is the Communist Manifesto itself, meant to be a pamphlet for factory workers in the 19th century, but is typically a mildly difficult text to approach for the average person today.

Audiobooks can replace something like pleasure reading where you’re just reading pulp garbage, but they’re not really a good replacement for learning.

The parentposting is the worst with math.

My favorite flavor is the “THIS 5th GRADE HOMEWORK IS TOO HARD” when the adult clearly has never learned basic concepts like order of operations (PEMDAS) and cardinality of logic (e.g. how you solve sudoku where you order working through the solution always taking the smallest number of unknowns, first solve places where only one numbers missing until there are no first rank order problems, then move on to second rank order problems where two numbers are missing).

But there are definitely parents answering ‘she was looking for Romeo when she said “wherefore art thou Romeo?”’.

You can 100% see this degradation with adults in real time if you look at popular reality TV shows that have puzzle/knowledge/trivia components like Survivor and The Challenge and just binge watch the whole back catalog. You’ll see things getting harder until the game hits its stride and identity but then at one point just simpler and simpler and simpler.

Survivor is actually pretty bad now because the entire show started cheaping out and reusing things over and over again. So people just started 3d printing the puzzles and memorizing them. Literally No Reality TV Contestant Left Behind style pipeline. The other thing is that they completely devalued the actual survival aspects of the show, and it’s a game of attrition where it’s who can think straight on the lowest amount of calories. The only reason to know any actual survival skills on that show anymore is just in case of tie breakers where they have to make fire from flint.