Bulverism is a term for a rhetorical fallacy that combines circular reasoning and the Genetic fallacy with presumption or condescension. The method of Bulverism is to "assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error." The Bulverist assumes a speaker's argument is invalid or false and then explains why the speaker came to make that mistake (even if the opponent's claim is actually right) by attacking the speaker or the speaker's motive. The term Bulverism was coined by C. S. Lewis[1] to poke fun at a very serious error in thinking that, he alleged, recurs often in a variety of religious, political, and philosophical debates.
Similar to Antony Flew's "subject/motive shift", Bulverism is a fallacy of irrelevance. One accuses an argument of being wrong on the basis of the arguer's identity or motive, but these are strictly speaking irrelevant to the argument's validity or truth.
Basically, he thinks the west precipitated the crisis by pushing to have Ukraine join NATO, and he thinks it should remain a buffer state between NATO and Russia
NATO doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO (at least, not for the foreseeable future). That's why, even now, when Ukraine is more or less begging to join NATO, NATO has done diddly squat to do so.
A lot of the pressure to join NATO within Ukraine has increased since Russia invaded Georgia and then Crimea. Russia only has itself to blame for the fact that its neighbors are terrified of Russia violating their territorial integrity and want to run as fast as possible from its sphere of influence.
Eventually, Euromaidan happened and Ukraine tried to cash into those overtures, but the West wasn't ready to back it up.
I would lean toward avoiding that situation, if possible.
The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP): "Berlin plus agreement" from March 2003, which allows the EU to use NATO structures, mechanisms and assets to carry out military operations if NATO declines to act.
The European Defence Agency (EDA): established in July 2004 and is based in Brussels. It supports the EU Member States in improving their military capabilities in order to complete CSDP targets as set out in the European Security Strategy.
The European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement (EUUAA): The agreement commits both parties to promote a gradual convergence toward the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and European Defence Agency (EDA) policies.
This is a downright lie. Anyone who follows NATO knows that there has been very little desire to allow Ukraine to join.
The move away from NATO/EU ambitions was unpopular domestically in Ukraine and led to Euromaidan, after which it turned out that NATO and co. weren't willing to back up their posture anymore.
You should listen to the talk by Mearsheimer, it's very instructive and interesting. There is a reason he is such a respected mind on geopolitics.
M. E. Sarotte wrote a whole book on it.
I haven't finished reading the whole thing, but it starts with the fall of the Berlin wall, and reunification, where US and Germany figured that it was possible to have their cake and eat it - Soviet troops out of East Germany, NATO being allowed to stay, Warsaw pact falling apart, and NATO enlarging as a military alliance instead of pan-european (Atlantic to Urals) security arrangement. Russia was at its very weakest, and not in the position to object much; plus missteps by Gorbachev and Yeltsin contributed to enlargement.
You've got Yeltsin wanting Russia to join NATO, back when US enjoyed quite a bit of good will, only for them to slowly realize that plans like Partnership for Peace is meant to enlarge NATO; the US is not going to let Russia join NATO, despite some wishful-thinkng; NATO membership being dangled in front of Ukraine to encourage them to return the soviet era nukes back to Russia or have them destroyed; NATO's enlargement policies is basically neo-containment of Russia at the get-go...
I'm sure it's only going to get more colourful as the book goes on.
In any case, it's rather disingenuous for US and NATO to dangle membership to Ukraine. They know even in the 80s and 90s that Russia would strongly object to a military alliance that has Article 5 in it, not to mention a NATO member state would generally be required to have foreign troops and weapons (among other things nukes) on their soil. At the end of the day, US is probably not going to risk nuclear war over this, but at the same time, it just keeps using Ukraine to try and stick it to Russia. Regardless of what Ukraine's wishes actually are (and it's more diverse than the media generally likes to portray), realistically it's not something that Ukraine has the only say in the matter - US will continue to find any which way to further is neo-containment aims; Russia would continue to oppose that.
At least from the late 90's on, those countries knew what's up and they tried to assure their chances of survival. OF course there are multiple interests as always but after a World War and 50 years under communism can you blame them?
The Cold War never ended, its just that one side was temporarily out of commission and the geniuses from the other side just stopped caring.
Just hope this "Ukraine is West's fault" doesn't turn into some realpolitik's version of affluent white guilt.
In the end, just follow the money: if Russia enters into a war, the US is the only to benefit, the same way that in WW2 the US was the great beneficiary. It is always nice to incite wars far away from your country, when you're the main seller of weapons.
Suggestions otherwise are conspicuously in-step with Russian propaganda.
but maybe im just cynical and jaded?
And the industrial-military complex will laugh all its way to the bank while stepping on the innocents corpses
Yet, the Russian propaganda machine continues to claim it's the West that wants war.
Can you explain how the West is the aggressor here?
The Russian military was in the Crimea back when redcoats were stationed in New York City, and has been in the Crimea ever since.
Any amount of reckoning (fact checks?) for these past incidents (dangerous misinformation?) would go a long way.
So who's still agitating for war?
The zero-evidence claims that Russia was about to invade sure look like pure propaganda from the same people who are thirsty for it.
The current actions are great marketing for NATO and for increased defense spending in Europe. For some time there was hope that Europe would be heading towards a peaceful time and it was harder to justify increases military expenses. This will change all that for a long time.
Russia is going to go to war with Ukraine if Ukraine does things Russia doesn't want them to do. And they told everyone they would ...
How is that not agitating for war?
>Russia made it very clear, that ain't happening and they'll go to war over it.
Which one is it?
>The zero-evidence claims that Russia was about to invade sure look like pure propaganda from the same people who are thirsty for it.
The massive troop build up along Ukraine's border and in Belarus?
You're spreading Russian propaganda.
While it seems to be fashionable to make excuses for a murderous dictator like Putin, Putin’s intentions are clear and include at the very least regime change in Ukraine to install a puppet regime.
If you call massing hundreds of thousands of troops at two borders, invading two parts of a country and staging massive war games at another puppet state nearby ‘zero evidence’, your denial of reality is chamberlainesque. I hope you accept you were deeply wrong about this if Russia does invade again.
The insane media drum beats are exactly like before Afghanistan and Iraq. It is so depressing how absolutely nothing has changed.
Do you still feel this way?
Putin. Putin is agitating for war.
Um... Replace "Russia" with the name of any nation on earth, and the sentence remains true.
As an individual with an Economics graduate degree, The Economist strikes me as such a flimsy propaganda rag, it's sad and pathetic it has any attention at all.
Elites have power everywhere. True. But Russia is right now a dictatorship where the elite who kiss the ring of Putin are protected. The others get jailed or worse.
There's an inner circle that decides to go to war and can make that decision without congressional approval. They can mount false flag operations (as they are doing right now) and literally attack unprovoked against the interests of the Russian people.
> Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.
> These are big goals, and they might not be achievable. But Putin’s beloved Soviet Union also had big, unachievable goals. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors wanted to create an international revolution, to subjugate the entire world to the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately, they failed—but they did a lot of damage while trying. Putin will also fail, but he too can do a lot of damage while trying. And not only in Ukraine.
* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukra...
It would also explain the Russian operations with regards to Brexit and the 2016 US election: the more chaos the West has, the better it is for Russia.
See also funding of more extreme political parties in the EU, with a focus on the far-right in recent years:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia–European_Union_relation...
Also, calling Ukraine a democracy is a bit of a stretch. They shut down 3 tv stations critical of the government, and imprisoned a political rival. I am sure there are people here that would love to shutdown RT, but we don't do that in a democracy.
[0] 2020: Russian Military Exercises Near Ukraine. 100 to 120 thousand troops. No WW3, no threat of nukes. https://empr.media/news/conflict-zone/russian-military-exerc...
earlier:
2016 https://www.vox.com/2016/9/1/12729426/russia-troops-ukraine-...
2017 https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2017/09/13/whats-putin-up...
2019 https://radiolemberg.com/en/ua-articles/ua-allarticles/almos...
This post hasn't aged well. :)
All this is in the site guidelines—would you mind reviewing them, and sticking to the rules when posting here? We'd appreciate it. The idea on HN is curious conversation. Comments like the one you posted one, and the others you posted to this thread, nuke that.
That sounds like America now...
Are you familiar with the Economist? They were saying this stuff in 1843, way before it became popular. They're the real deal!
This article has a lot of pure speculations, that oversimplify the internal politics and decision making process in Russia. Yes, there’s a relatively small inner circle of people loyal to Putin and sharing his views. Yes, those views are conservative and nationalist. Are those people committed to a war and occupation of Ukraine? Unless you are reading minds you cannot be sure, and for the same reason we do not believe in the world government, it does not make sense to believe in this war conspiracy, when there are explanations of Russian strategy that do not rely on insanity.
They were supposed to finish the "exercise" and instead they're adding troops. Will you "accept this as facts" when they march through the entire country or will that just be "an extended exercise". I understand it's hard to admit your own country is run by a power hungry dictator. Mine is too. It sucks.
That is not hard. What is hard, is to realize that sometimes politics transcends particulars of the power structure and the character of the ruler, when it looks more and more like a nation has to do what it must, given the circumstances (no matter how they got there).
That said, there is no evidence that this military buildup will result in anything and all those parrot talks about invasion or false flag operations are based only on mind guessing and wild assumptions of Putin’s insanity. There is more plausible explanation of what is going on. To understand it, it is necessary to look at the Russian military doctrine, its history of diplomatic interactions with NATO and the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Something that most of American and British media are apparently too lazy to do (German media are trying hard to understand what’s really happening and to present a nuanced picture).
I fail to see what the same reason is. We don't have a world government. War seems quite likely.
This piece is clearly war mongering propaganda, but the discussion in the comments here is somewhat decent. It’s too bad HN immediately kills any concrete discussion about world events like this.
US: The russians are about to invade.
Russia: No we aren't.
Honestly, as someone on the outside of this I really have no idea what to believe. Is Putin just putting up a show of force but not actually going to pull the trigger, or is this the real deal preps for imminent invasion?
Bloomberg even had a headline prepared that the attack already happened. Then they “accidentally” released it, and then of course, apologized. But they still got everyone’s attention.
The scare of the attack is also beneficial for the Biden administration. If Putin doesn’t attack, he will claim he saved the word from WWIII. If Putin attacks, he will say, of course he did, we told you so. But will he send American soldiers to defend Ukranians? I am guessing not. Just send few blankets and MREs.
Well he happens to be the US president. His constituents and the rest of the world might care.
> The problem is that the same logic was just as true eight years ago when the fateful decisions were made to annex Crimea and to stir conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Crimea is the location of Russia's Black Sea navy fleet, and the population there is majority Russian speaking and sided with the pro Russian government during the Euromaidan protests.
The other day the US envoy to the UN, warned in an official speech that Russia might make the discovery of a mass grave as a casus belli for invading Ukraine, a few hours later Russia Today reported on having found a mass grave of native Russians.
This is not counter espionage, it is counter trolling, watch these joke by Putin how these scary KGB people think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0oic-ix9bM
You might think, oh it's just a board game, computers are better at it. You could say that.
Apparently the strategy right now is get right next to the border of Ukraine and do military exercises, then watch as NATO loses its shit with every passing second.
Why isn't Russia instead building bridges, establishing stronger economic bonds, and addressing its own issues inside itself to help increase the quality of life of its people?
And they seem to answer it by saying that Putin and entourage love chess and are really good at it, that's why.
Thus the conclusion is that they are more focused on themselves then what's best for their people.
I don't know if that's true, but it's what I understood from the article.
What, exactly, is the strategic advantage there?
Germany is heavily reliant on Russian gas and has been unenthusiastic about sanctions, never mind stronger action. France is being "diplomatic". The UK is an incoherent mess because of Brexit and a mentally ill prime minister.
Also, energy prices. Which happen to benefit both sides.
It's exactly the strategy Russian trolls farms use on social media. Find multiple wedge issues, weaponise them - typically with narcissistic gaslighting and DARVO - inflame grudges and bad feelings on both sides, try to destroy the other side's common identity and purpose.
Putin will have to declare a victory of some sort, but it's likely to be formal annexation of a fairly small region. He'll also be able to blame poverty in Russia on Western sanctions.
The real weapon is the constant psychological and emotional pressure and deliberate confusion.
What exactly is stopping Putin from acting? Every day that goes by and Putin fails to act is it better to say "NATO is losing it's shit" or "Putin is afraid to act and is trying to find a way to declare victory without the burden of acting"
He's winning the war before it even begins.
If you or anyone want further explanation, see these links:
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
from one of the worst publications to get one’s opinions from this graduated into comedy
edit: for some people it was a serious enough proposition to entertain that i had to check and indicate that no, the analysis shows that russia won’t lose because of dirty roads
Doesn’t really line up with your comment, but perhaps you’re talking about a different article?
american imagination about this conflict surely runs wild
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-...
Russia - lets be clear, the country that is threatening an all out invasion of a Sovereign nation it's already attacked and occupied; has the possibility of gaining territory, blocking NATO expansion, threatening it's former Warsaw Pact partners into favourable deals, gaining control over Ukraine's enormous agricultural resources, etc etc.
The revival of Ukrainian nationalism in the modern era was actually a major project of Lenin's. The west is picking up and working on Lenin's own project, although in a slightly different form.
The Cuban government has for decades asked the US to remove its military presence from Cuba, including the detention center where it kidnaps people from random countries (again, against protest from those countries) and tortures them. Perhaps white upper middle class western liberals can rally to the Cubans cause.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1252149.shtml
US needs Ukraine crisis to harm European economy, and legitimize its military presence
...
Chinese analysts said Sunday that keeping the crisis intense will benefit the US in several fields: legitimizing its military presence in Europe by demonizing Russia and poisoning Russia-EU ties, increasing uncertainties and concerns to harm the eurozone economy so there will be more capital flight from the continent to the US and thus easing the US inflation pressure, and using the tension to stir up trouble for China-Russia ties.
...
