Why a US-Ukraine democracy alliance is far better than a US-Russia dictatorship alliance

This Ukrainian family was running for cover but  

they didn't make it, now they're part of Putin's

huge pile of war corpses

Some MAGA supporters argue that a US-Russia alliance is better and/or Russia is justified in invading Ukraine and continuing to commit mass slaughter of Ukrainian people. Not surprisingly, those arguments ignore, deny or downplay the reasons that the US and American people would be better off supporting Ukraine.

Reasons to support Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked invasion

An alliance with and support of Ukraine is far better for the American people because (1) that stands squarely for democracy against brutal tyranny and kleptocracy (Putin is both a murdering tyrant and an aggressive kleptocrat), (2) it signals that the US will stand by its treaties, like the one we had with Ukraine, (3) it shows compassion for a people unjustifiably and immorally attacked and mass murdered by Putin, (4) US military and economic support for Ukraine will help prevent a larger, much more dangerous war involving the US against Russia, (5) it makes tyrant’s immoral wars of conquest less attractive to all other governments, because if Russia gets lasting advantages by invading and annexing Ukrainian territory, other governments can reasonably conclude that military conquest and mass slaughter of civilians pays far more than whatever the costs might me, (6) helping Ukraine defend itself makes further Russian aggression more difficult and costly, (7) contradicts tyrant’s ideas that only nuclear weapons can keep their country safe, and (8) Russia has nothing of value to offer that comes remotely close to the vast disadvantages arising from the US doing a deal with Putin, which would effectively endorse and forgive what Putin has done to the Ukrainian and Russian people, and to people all over the world (the Russian invasion caused a spike in food price inflation).

As it is now, a person can reasonably argue that Trump broke the US treaty simply because he supports dictators and dictatorship, especially including Putin’s in Russia. As we all know, Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal on its territory and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon state. In return for that huge concession, Ukraine received assurances of border integrity in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Putin’s unprovoked invasion blew that off. Worse, Trump has sabotaged US aid to Ukraine as much as he can get away with. That makes Trump’s America an anti-democratic state that no democratic nation can trust. But dictators worldwide can generally count on support from the MAGA party and Trump himself.

Q: Are MAGA arguments in support of Putin’s Russia and his Ukraine war rational and morally justifiable because, e.g., as Putin falsely argues, Ukraine wanted to join NATO and NATO is a hyper-aggressive military alliance that’s hell bent on completely destroying Russia and the Russian people?

Some info sources:

Freedom House: Russia – Not free — Comment: Under Putin’s Rusian dictatorship, power is concentrated in Putin’s hands. He controls subservient courts and the media, and he manipulates elections, suppresses genuine opposition. Russia’s dictatorship received 12/100 and a “Not Free” classification by Freedom House.

Freedom House: Ukraine – Partly Free

Treasury Sanctions Russians Bankrolling Putin and Russia-Backed Influence Actors — Here, the US Treasury refers to Putin’s dictatorship as a kleptocracy

Memorandum on Security Assurances in Connection with Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — Comment: Its commitments include respecting Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and existing borders; refraining from threats or force and certain forms of economic coercion; and consulting when questions arise about those commitments. Its provision concerning immediate Security Council assistance specifically concerns aggression involving nuclear weapons.

General Assembly Overwhelmingly Adopts Resolution Demanding Russian Federation Immediately End Illegal Use of Force in Ukraine, Withdraw All Troops — Comment: The resolution passed 141–5, with 35 abstentions. The UN condemned Russia’s aggression as a violation of the UN Charter and demanded complete and unconditional withdrawal. Russia’s invasion was illegal under international law.

Press statement by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, Palais des Nations, Geneva — Comment: Putin ordered his military to commit an array of crimes including torture, sexual violence and enforced disappearances against civilians. As the UN report puts it, Russian authorities have committed torture pursuant to a coordinated state policy and as crimes against humanity. That is part of the deep moral rot that some American MAGA supporters are defending.

Budapest Memorandum Myths — December 5 marks the 30th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum of Security Assurances for Ukraine, a key part of the settlement under which Ukraine gave up what was then the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately, Russia has grossly violated the commitments that it made in the document. ….. the United States should have provided, and should provide, more assistance, with the goal of helping Ukraine prevail. That is not due just to U.S.-Ukrainian discussions three decades ago but to the fact that a Russian victory would mean a more dangerous Russian threat to Europe and America. (emphasis added)

NATO’s support for Ukraine — Comment: This analysis argues that successful Russian aggression undermines prohibitions against on acquiring territory by force. NATO assistance for Ukraine’s self-defense include measures intended to impose costs on Russia’s military and to impair its capacity to rebuild its military. NATO wants to limit further unprovoked Russian aggression against other nations.

War Fuels Food Crisis — Comment: This IMF analysis notes that Russia’s invasion has hurt people worldwide due to increased food prices. Putin’s unprovoked war slaughtered not only Russians and Ukrainians, but also screwed people worldwide on food prices. That includes Americans.

Deterrence and defence — NATO is a defensive alliance. Its members are committed to safeguarding the freedom and security of all Allies, against all threats, from all directions.

The North Atlantic Treaty — Comment: This is NATO’s founding document from 1949. NATO is a defensive alliance, not the aggression pact that Putin falsely claims.

Link to the NYT article showing the slaughtered Ukrainian family lying in the street after Putin had them slaughtered as part of his war of aggression

Dissident Politics: Blog note

Pxy bias update

Lately my AI Pxy has been too biased in its responses to my usual politics-related queries & hypotheses. I had hoped that some permanent anti-bias instructions would do the trick. Maybe they did for a while, but seemingly not so much lately. So I asked Pxy what is to be done about this deplorable situation. (Egad! Shades of Hillary!!) 

In response I got this short instruction that might help. But now I'm back to pasting an anti-bias instruction with my queries. Help yourself to this instruction with your AI  searching endeavors. Maybe this will help some. Pxy says there is recent research indicating than instruction like this helps reduce bias.   

Q: Is there a short but at lest detectably effective instruction I can routinely include with my queries to tamp down biases, especially sycophancy and status quo biases? 

A: Evaluate my questions and premises as questions, not positions to affirm. Follow the evidence—not my apparent preferences, official narratives, or the status quo. Use consistent evidentiary standards; avoid false balance and reflexive contrarianism. Distinguish established facts, reasonable inferences, and genuine unknowns. Keep uncertainty specific; don’t let it erase a supported conclusion.

Lately, Pxy had been doing too much erasing, sucking up, and status quo-ing. Maybe this will noticeably help.

Doing AI-assisted politics day to day

 

Context

Ever since Google did weaponization by monetization of the good old-fashioned advanced Goggle search a couple of years ago, most of my politics searching migrated to AI. Short story in short, Google’s “improvement” crappified search results. Results degenerated into mostly annoyance and uselessness.

That’s not news for folks who take good faith, evidence- and reason-based, low-bias politics seriously. Crappy search results aren’t generally compatible with that kind of politics. That’s a lot like the capitalist profit motive not being generally compatible with good faith, evidence- and reason-based, low-bias professional journalism.

The example du jour: Probing the likelihood of financial catastrophe

Today’s dive into good faith, evidence- and reason-based, low bias politics started off with an article in the NYT, The Forces Driving Up Bond Yields Take a Troubling Turn. It’s about the increasing cost of federal debt. Long story short, it is getting more expensive to coax investors into buying government and private sector debt. Sooner or later, that’s going to hit the federal government and most of us pretty hard. It seems inevitable.

Trump and MAGA elites, along with decades of their pro-debt predecessors aggressively implementing the radical right’s Starve the Beast anti-government strategy, have exploded the federal debt. Federal on the books debt is now over $40 trillion. Unfunded off the books debt is tens of trillions more over the next ~20 years or so. Sooner or later, tens of millions of Americans, and billions worldwide are likely to feel serious pain for a long time. What we’re doing probably isn’t sustainable.

To get a feel for how experts views the situation, I fed the NYT article to AI and a series of Q&As ensued. The whole long-winded, complicated Q&A thread is at this link. Another long (~9,700 words), complicated story short:

There is uncertainty. Given (1) Trump’s and MAGA elite’s jaw-dropping incompetence with, and open hostility to, pro-public interest governance, (2) the grievous damage that MAGA politics and policy has already done to our federal government, (3) out of control federal debt, (4) investors asking more return for what they see as higher debt risk, there is a real possibility in the next few years of a financial catastrophe on the order of what happened in 2008. No one can predict that with guaranteed correctness, but most of the evidence points in the direction of an impending disaster.

The last Q&A in the series makes exemplifies the mess arising from uncertainties in the face of limited public knowledge, constant lies to the public about what is going on and why, the complexity of the situation, the mess of imperfect humans doing politics, etc.

Q by me to Pxy (my AI): You say “We still lack a defensible estimate of how much governance deterioration raises that particular two-year probability. Nor have I substantiated every characterization of corruption or incompetence across the government; doing so would require examining specific decisions”. Right. I suspect it is impossible to make defensible estimate of how much governance deterioration raises that particular two-year probability. With politics and its complexity, secrecy and opacity, about the best us humans can do is make good faith, evidence based, reasonably rational estimates. The standard you are constrained by is impossible to meet.

Pxy’s A: Yes. Your criticism is fair: I was applying too demanding a standard to whether your judgment is rationally defensible, while sometimes applying a looser standard to reassuring judgments about institutional resilience. You do not need a validated model of governance deterioration to form a reasonable forecast. You need evidence, a coherent causal explanation, consideration of contrary evidence, and a willingness to revise. A judgment can meet those requirements without yielding a reproducible numerical probability.

Where my reasoning went wrong

I blurred three different questions:

1. Can we reliably calculate the probability?
2. Can someone reasonably judge the outcome more likely than not?
3. Does the available evidence compel everyone to accept that judgment?

A “no” to the first does not imply a “no” to the second. And a “yes” to the second does not require a “yes” to the third.

Your position is that the accumulated evidence of financial vulnerability and institutional degradation makes catastrophe more likely than its avoidance. That is a judgment under uncertainty, not necessarily a claim to scientific measurement. I should have evaluated the reasoning behind it rather than repeatedly invoking the absence of a defensible numerical estimate.

Long response continues – AI finally recognized and accepted the irrational asymmetry favoring a favorable status quo in its analyses over the reality of MAGA’s staggering incompetence, corruption, fiscal irresponsibility, and authoritarianism. That flaw (bias) arises naturally from the material AI is trained on.

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As this Q&A thread exemplifies, it is hard to correctly formulate questions so that AI’s training gives responses to the right questions. It takes time and effort. But, that’s to be expected. Arguably most or nearly all high level politics is complex, significantly or mostly kept secret from us or at least significantly distorted, and poisoned by demagoguery, lies, slanders, deflections, distractions, crackpot reasoning, irrational emotional manipulation, etc. No wonder we’re in deep trouble, maybe headed into a very painful disaster or two.

Q1: Is politics so complicated and too hard to ferret out that for most people most of the time, there’s no practical way to parse true from false, or reasonable from crackpot?

Q2: Is seeing this as an example of how one can work with AI to do good faith, evidence- and reason-based, low bias politics more helpful than intimidating or detrimental?

Pxy software finally recognizes it’s own irrational asymmetry bias!

For the wonks, Pxy’s analyses were based on 196 references

Contested concepts: The public interest and service to the public interest

Source

Context – the human condition

There are a surprising number of strongly disputed concepts important in politics that are hard to define or describe with precision, and almost always disputed in how to implement the ideas. Concepts like, democracy, the rule of law, fairness are all intractably disputed and probably will be forever. Strongly or even intractably disputed political concepts (essentially contested concepts) usually invoke (1) personal values or identity, (2) competing interpretations of reality and reasoning, and (3) high stakes that people care deeply about. Disagreements concern not just what a word means, but what deserves protection, what’s important, whose claims count, and what society ought to do, if anything.

Some disagreements over these concepts are reasonable. Others significantly or mostly rely on false claims, selective evidence, flawed motivated reasoning, or loyalty to a political tribe or ideology. Whether a concept is contested does not make that distinction go away. Well-informed, reasonable people of good will will disagree, but intellectual honesty at least helps identify, sometimes screen out, misguided or flawed choices or beliefs.

The public interest and service to the public interest are heavily disputed concepts

Source: Is it really that bad? Authoritarians want you to believe it

Describing either concept is very difficult. There is no authoritative description. Their meaning and application remain deeply disputed. That does not make them empty words. It makes honest disagreement about them unavoidable.

Thus, for some people, a set of core political morals could include most or all of (1) support for democracy with reasonable compromise, law, and civil liberties, (2) service to the public interest before service to special or elite interests, and (3) genuine respect for and acceptance of facts, well-supported conclusions and good faith, sound reasoning, including when they are inconvenient (psychologically discomforting or threatening). These are familiar, mainstream political ideals, not obscure or fringe crackpottery. Support for concepts like that are probably as close to general agreement about American politics as a person can get. Obviously, what those things are or entail are disputed. But at least those concepts are mainstream politics, not fringe crackpottery.

Anyway, a reasonable description of service to the public interest could be: Governing in the public interest means governance based on identifying an evidence-based, balance between serving public, individual and special or other interests to assess competing policy choices, while (1) being reasonably transparent and responsive to public opinion, (2) protecting and growing the American economy, (4) fostering individual economic and personal growth opportunity, (5) defending personal freedoms and the American standard of living, (6) protecting national security and the environment, (7) increasing transparency, competition and efficiency in commerce when possible, and (8) fostering global peace, stability and prosperity whenever reasonably possible, all of which is constrained by (i) evidence-based fiscal sustainability that limits the scope and size of government and regulation to no more than what is needed* and (ii) genuine respect for the US constitution and the rule of law with a particular concern for limiting unwarranted legal complexity and ambiguity to limit opportunities to subvert the constitution or the law.

* Government and regulation should be no more or less extensive than needed to secure important ideals or goals including equal citizenship, distributive fairness, minority rights, long-term sustainability, and economic competitiveness.

Restraint is a virtue when it prevents overreach, but not when it’s an excuse for either failing the public, or being loyal to special interest influence, or any reality- or reason-distorting ideology or tribe.

Finally, service to the public interest as envisioned here does not mean whatever political competition happens to produce must be in the public interest. There have to be standards for criticizing those outcomes, e.g., concerns for everyone affected and for future generations.

Q1: Is it reasonable to support the idea that governing in the public interest means honestly assessing competing policy choices, considering everyone affected, and weighing individual and commercial interests according to their contribution to public welfare, with less deference to the money or political influence behind them?

Q2: Is this vision of politics so complicated that it asks too much of people to strive for, and if so, should we stay in a mode of politics as it is done now, with special interests and their money usually exerting more influence over policy than majority public wants, or is there another, better way forward?

Some info sources:

An old debate renewed: the politics of the public interest — It is always right to ask how the public interest may be promoted. But that is not a question that social scientists or philosophers or theologians can answer. The answer is worked out in the thrust and parry of political competition. Not better theory, but rather better practice, is the remedy for the ills that befall the body politic. (Comment: In tyrannies or dictatorships, there’s little to no thrust and parry of political competition. There’s just the person or people in power doing mostly what they want, almost always at the expense of the public interest, but always claimed to be for the benefit of the public interest.)

Why We Should Choose Science over Beliefs: Ideology needs to give way — Liberals and conservatives are motivated reasoners, too, of course, and not all libertarians deny science, but all of us are subject to the psychological forces at play when it comes to choosing between facts and beliefs when they do not mesh. In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be. (Comments: That was written by a prominent libertarian who came to understand that his own ideology had unconsciously deceived and betrayed him. This essay is short and well worth reading.)

Source: Is this really when and how the Democratic Party blew up? A generation of conservative dominance, or conservative dominance followed by authoritarian kleptocratic dominance?