War crimes have never been anything more than a way the west can punish its enemies. It’s hilarious people think this norm continuing is some refutation of the system as designed.
> War crimes have never been anything more than a way the west can punish its enemies.
They're the way winners can punish their enemies.
If Germany and Japan had won WWII, US/British/Russian military and political leaders absolutely would've been on trial.
At the same time, agreements between peer countries to follow basic rules have generally held. Note that neither side in the current conflict is using dirty bombs, or dropping nerve gas or bioweapons on civilians, etc.
> War crimes have never been anything more than a way the west can punish its enemies
That's a fair point, the major change isn't that we suddenly started committing war crimes, it is that we've dropped all pretenses of trying to justify why what we did isn't one.
Isn't that an improvement? It seems better to have people who are honest about what they're doing, even when committing war crimes. At least then people can have an honest conversation about whether the policy is working.
One of the most frustrating things about wars is people adopt policies that don't advance their objectives and then lie about what they're doing, what happened and why. This sets up an environment where militarys do things that aren't even in their own interests, let alone anyone else's, and the public discourse is busy arguing about some wild imaginary scenario that isn't related. Better to have people focused on the real world and accurately understanding both (1) what the policy was and (2) what the outcome of the policy was.
If I admit to killing someone in court, because I regret it, I acknowledge I have a debt to society I need to pay, and honesty is the first step on my route towards eventual reform - that's an improvement.
If I admit to killing someone because I want everyone to know I'm a tough, viscous killer and they'd better not piss me off or they'll be next - that's not an improvement.
You'd rather a vicious killer who pretended to be harmless and actively tried to fool you?
As to the behavior itself, I imagine the merits are heavily dependent on context. International politics depends to some extent on demonstrating a willingness and ability to engage in violence. That's not the whole story but it's definitely part of it.
Not really, IMO. Their goal isn't honesty and transparency, they just DGAF to hide it because they correctly realize there won't be any personal consequences for their actions.
They are still lying about most everything else - why the war was started, suppressing the amount of causalities, etc.
Some very rough math. $16 billion in EBITDA with 9million customers. This translates to about $1800 average annual subscription. Per month this is $150.
That is I think Starlink's target customers are ISP deprived. I asked Gemini estimate the size of that market. It said about 10 million in the US and over a 1 billion worldwide. I assume the Elon is pushing the 1 billion number. The problem I see is that outside the US, not everyone can pay $165 per month for internet.
It hasn’t. There hasn’t been a war in centuries where America didn’t obliterate its opponent. It loses politically because its people don’t want war, but it’s defeated militarily everyone it’s engaged with.
If you can not win a war because your population is unwilling to bear the cost, then you are still unable to win (that is in fact a very typical way for a war to end).
Nobody is disputing the fact that the US spends more money on arms than anyone else and has the shiniest of toys as a result, but "winning" in war is about effecting the outcomes that you want, not about whether your weapon systems are superior.
The US military has clearly failed to deliver the outcome that Americans wanted in many recent conflicts (Vietnam, Taliban); counting those wars as "lost" makes a lot of sense.
One of the reasons to do a war is to simply show the enemy that you are able and crazy enough to go to war with them over whatever grievances you had. This is called strategic deterrence.
You are making the folly of thinking of war like lawsuits, where one side wins and the other side loses, and the losing side goes home with nothing. This is not so.
If you're walking home from work and some person tries to mug you, even if they are unsuccessful, that will permanently change your behavior as if they had successfully robbed you anyway. Maybe you'll change your route. Maybe you won't walk and drive instead.
You can both "win" or both "lose" if your goals are not in direct conflict (rare).
I'd argue that the most important thing when trying to win wars is to aim for realistic outcomes.
The first gulf war was arguably a win because of realistic goals (get Iraq out of Kuwait and stop them from invading it again), while most other interventions in the region were basically "designed to fail", and unsurprisingly never achieved anything of note (and the problem was not lack of military capability).
Yes but if you spend some billions of dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, you have only demonstrated that you are willing to make your own citizens suffer with diminished resources for no outcome.
>If you're walking home from work and some person tries to mug you, even if they are unsuccessful, that will permanently change your behavior as if they had successfully robbed you anyway. Maybe you'll change your route. Maybe you won't walk and drive instead.
In global politics, this tends to make you want to increase your defenses so it doesn't happen again, and find local partners for that defense. This usually comes at the cost of US influence, not its increase.
Like Iran is looking at its current situation and going "The literal only deterrence we could have to prevent this is to develop a nuclear capability. The US cannot be trusted to deal with, and it is pointless to try."
A nuclear Iran can now only be avoided by scorched earth. Scorched earth will now just cause an already partly US hating population to hate them more and create matyrs. Theres no possible upside to this conflict.
With Afghanistan, I think people fixate on the fact that the Taliban is still there and while that's true, Al Qaeda has completely been wiped out (except fringe groups that have adopted the name) and OBL, the person most responsible for 9/11, was successfully killed by an attack launched out of Afghanistan. The current Taliban and whatever terrorist groups remain in that region no longer have an interest in hurting the US directly. The current Taliban is also very different from the one in 2001, almost geopolitically flipped in some ways (allied with India instead of Pakistan, and almost certainly responsible for majorly disrupting China's OBOR project in that region, another win for the US.
Not to mention, 20 years of no Taliban. An entire generation of Afghans grew up without being under a Taliban government.
“A Kourier has to establish space on the pavement. Predictable law-abiding behavior lulls drivers. They mentally assign you to a little box in the lane, assume you will stay there, can't handle it when you leave that little box.” - Snow Crash
Is it strategic deterrence, or just being so unreliably and inconsistent that insider information becomes more valuable?
Is it strategic to demonstrate a lack of planning or that you are a poor ally incapable of garnering support (either domestically or abroad)?
Yes absolutely they would and insurgencies are not the same thing as two nations fighting each other. America has twice as many gun owners as there are people in Afghanistan, a large chunk of them have combat experience.
Civil wars happen all of the time. Not only is propaganda effective, but militaries have ways to mitigate this, like moving soldiers far away from home to fight in places they don't have familial/cultural/economic/etc ties, which also makes it more likely that the propaganda will work.
That is not the primary purpose of LinkedIn though. It is used extensively by a class of people who are generally decision makers and those selling services to them.
No study of ai can ever be done or be relevant because ever couple of months they are a new number to the name of the model thus invalidating all work around model behavior
Yes, you are right. Sorry, I missed that out. It's just that all the open-weight models mentioned were... One year old or older. I just forgot that, firstly, such research is rarely done on frontier models because it takes time (you start with Llama 3.3, but look, one month later there's Llama 4), and secondly, there's also a publication delay. I think I'm just too used to the world of software, where everything moves at lightning speed. Sorry : )
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