Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "William Spaniel" channel.

  1. 1:45 "nor am I an agent of an intelligence organization" That's exactly what an agent would say!
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  2. 9:20 On the other hand, there's another reason why exchanging conscripts can make sense. They can be expected to be on average less effective on the battlefield than volunteering contract soldiers. In theory, the Kremlin could take that into account when negotiating the prisoner exchanges but the political pressures you mentioned might also make them willing to even pay a premium for released conscripts.
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  3. It should be noted that some countries, like France, are also in the Red Sea protecting cargo ships without participating in the Operation Prosperity Guardian. Presumably this is, at least in France's case, because they don't want to subject their ships to American command.
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  4. I think one possible game theoretic reason you missed is dynamic inconsistency. If you're invaded then reaching a negotiated settlement with the invader might the lowest cost option for you once an invasion begins. However, what if you instead take the attitude that when invaded you're going to always fight to the bitter end and cause as much damage as possible to the invader regardless of the cost to yourself? If you take that kind of "irrational" position and credibly signal that to would-be invaders then they might rationally decide that invading you is not worth it after all and thus you avoid invasions entirely. However, if you still get invaded then the only way to really signal your "irrational" intention is to fight to the bitter end even though it seems more costly.
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  5. What if it's just Shoigu wanting his own Bakhmut?
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  6. I think destroying the Iran deal was one the worst things he did.
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  7. When it comes to Austria, they recently had a dispute with Russia and they were not going to get more gas from Russia in any case.
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  8. Or was it an excursion instead of an incursion?
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  9.  @jotfohm4644  In case it wasn't clear, he was just making a Doctor Who reference.
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  10. I'd say "east bank" would be understood correctly at least 99% of the time despite the Dnieper having twists and turns.
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  11. I have some comments: 1) Putin has less reason/justification to invade Finland. Finland doesn't have a large Russian minority nor any separatist regions and it doesn't hold any territory that used to be a part of the Soviet Union. 2) I think to join NATO you need to have no territorial disputes. At the present moment that would hinder Ukraine's, Georgia's, and Moldova's ability to join NATO (and I think Moldova hasn't been interested anyway so far, though that might change at some point).
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  12.  @alexhumble7653  "14000 innocent civilians were killed in Donbass by Ukraine's artillery since 2014." No, that is just incorrect on multiple levels: -This figure includes people killed both by Ukrainian forces and those killed by separatist/Russian forces. -It includes deaths from all sorts of weapons like assault rifles and grenades, not just artillery. -It includes both soldier and civilian deaths. In fact, civilian deaths are a clear minority. They number about 3k, i.e. less than 1/4th of that estimated total. -Almost all of those deaths happened in 2014 & 2015. In recent years the number of deaths before the present invasion were something like 10 per year and that figure includes shelling by both sides as both sides have been doing that. "How long could it continue and who could stop it?" Due to the points listed above, especially the last one, it hardly makes sense to launch a full scale invasion to prevent deaths from cease-fire violations (committed by both sides, mind you). By launching the current invasion Russia has vastly increased the number of people from Donbass dying.
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  13.  @joshadams8761  Not by definition. Celcius and Kelvin are defined based on water's triple point, not boiling point. Boiling point would be a tricky definition because on a temperature-pressure diagram it's not a point but a curve. I guess you can define a single point on the curve by fixing the pressure. However, the triple point is probably still less ambiguous.
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  14. "No my man, we do not see the median-voter-theorem play out in the US. The policy positions of both parties shift to the right for decades now." It's far from obvious that that would be an argument against the median voter theorem. It could possibly be explained simply by the median voter (or the politicians' perception of the median voter) moving to the right.
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  15. I'd say "just as much" is a wild exaggeration.
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  16.  @gloverfox9135  They did rejoin NATO command in 2009, though.
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  17.  @kenirawadi4689  What do you mean "forgets"? China was explicitly mentioned towards the end of the video.
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  18. But he didn't say that directly and it might have been unintentional. Thus, your logic might not apply in this particular case.
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  19. Partition is something that might happen whether it's wanted or not.
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  20. But Spaniel is from the States and likely a significant chunk of his audience is too so it's not too weird for him to describe the difference from his perspective.
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  21.  @hamzamahmood9565  I'm pretty sure some large conventional explosions had also had mushroom clouds before. If you meant that he didn't expect the mushroom could to be as big as it was that's more plausible.
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  22. I forgot to say that conscripts can be even less effective if the Kremlin doesn't want to risk them in combat.
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  23.  @alexhumble7653  "However Russia’s surrounded with NATO’s bases all around and even Ukraine was a candidate for NATO." First I want to say that most of this isn't relevant to my original comment. It was about how it can be beneficial to be "irrationally" stubborn in resistance to make invasions less likely if it can be signalled credibly. This was a general comment and the specifics you mention don't affect the logic that much. However, what you just wrote (in the part I quoted) is just false. Ukraine wasn't a NATO candidate and in practice it wouldn't have been able to join for the foreseeable future anyway because the territorial dispute with Russia would have prevented it. Ukraine has since left an application but that was only about half a year after the current invasion had started and it still seems unlikely that Ukraine could join.
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  24. "I'm not sure Trump could cancel Ukraine aid. It's been signed into law with a 2/3 supermajority." He could (try to) veto any further aid once that package runs out.
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  25. 7:25 I think this is a little bit misleading. The Soviet Union did also claim to be a democracy and held elections, though those elections only had one candidate on the ballot for the voters to choose from. Ideologically, the Communist party's claimed legitimacy came from that it purported to represent the people, or at least the proletariat.
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  26.  @alexhumble7653  "There WAS promise to accept Ukraine in NATO, which was widely announced." No, there wasn't. "Where is your own indignation" What indignation? My (original) comment had nothing to do with indignation. I wasn't talking about who's in the right. I was talking about a game theoretic concept called "time inconsistency" or "dynamic inconsistency" which is relevant to what Spaniel was talking about. Why do you go on this Ukraine rant under my comment which has little to do with what you're talking about?
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  27. "The 2% standard is a blunt tool" But it's not easy to come up with a better criterion.
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  28. I strongly disagree. I think it's good that neither side in the Ukraine War seems to have used e.g. chemical weapons.
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  29. But there are a couple of reasons why Finland might have less to fear when it comes to escalation. Firstly, Finland is a much smaller contributor so Russia can more easily ignore it. Secondly, weapons that Finland has donated aren't to the same degree long-range rockets and missiles so they're less relevant for this purpose anyway. Thirdly, Finland doesn't have scattered possessions around the world nor military presence in numerous countries around the world so there isn't an opportunity for Russia to carry out the kind of retaliation it has been hinting at when it comes to e.g. the UK giving a green light to strikes into Russia-proper using British weapons.
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  30. @Boababa-fn3mr In what way was destroying the Iran nuclear deal a good decision?
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  31. In Finnish the bird is called "kalkkuna" which comes from the city of Calicut (a.k.a. Kozhikode) in India.
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  32.  @alexhumble7653  I don't think Russia needs to conquer a part of Ukraine to survive. However, even if that were the case it doesn't necessarily affect the logic I described. A country wishing to deter invasions by being "irrationally" stubborn in resistance probably has to do it against any invader to be credible, including invaders who wouldn't be deterred by cost.
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  33.  @broadestsmiler  In principle, the Article 42 of the Lisbon Treaty does provide for collective defense, though it's weaker than the Article 5 of the NATO Charter.
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  34.  @george_m641  At least the current government in Hungary clearly does care about Hungarians in other countries. They have e.g. given them voting rights in Hungarian elections. Also, many nationalists in Hungary don't like the fact that the areas that these Hungarians live in had to be given to Hungary's neighbors as per the Treaty of Trianon. "I care only about Ukrainian citizens" That's one possible attitude to have but not all people are like you. Some may care less about citizenship and more about ethnicity or historical claims to certain lands.
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  35.  @justskip4595  "where did you get the number of 180 000 strong army for Finland?" The website of the Finnish Army (Maavoimat) lists its war-time strength as 180k men. You can easily check this yourself. Of course, the Navy and the Air Force come on top of that but they'd likely wield much smaller numbers. "planned war time strength with total reserve of 870 000" I think that's just the total size of the reserve, i.e. it's the amount of people who have gone through military training and are still military age (and haven't fallen out of the reserve for some other reason). That amount of people couldn't actually called up, at least not very soon, so it's more of a paper figure.
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  36. "Israel has always established its capital as Jerusalem, and sat its government there." I don't think this is quite true. The Provisional State Council after the declaration of independence but before the first elections sat in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.
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  37. Among the "freeriders" Canada is near the top.
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  38.  @JSK010  My understanding is that according to IAEA inspectors they were in compliance with the deal.
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  39. That has more to do with how much and how strongly Israel would choose to target Iran. It might want to pull its punches so that Iran does the same. This video was more about what to strike in Iran, not how strongly to strike Iran.
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  40.  @nenadmitrovic3469  "They have pioeline to china and nkr long ago finished another one." But those come from different gas fields than the fields that were supplying Europe. The gas that was flowing to Europe cannot (mostly) be diverted elsewhere for several years at least.
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  41. "It is especially dangerous for European members to freeload since they’re on the frontline of the main adversary Russia." It's not Russia's neighbors that have been freeloaders.
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  42. "EU sanctioned Russia for no reason." For no reason!? Are you kidding? Russia invaded Ukraine, in case you haven't noticed. That's the reason.
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  43. "A town founded in 1494, saved an entire country from being annexed." You could argue that the existence of that town, or rather the airport in it, is what endangered Kyiv in the first place. If there was no airport there then there wouldn't be a reason for such an airborne assault on it.
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  44.  @killingtimeitself  I think that would be a bit misleading term.
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  45.  @alexhumble7653  "Loss of Alaska or texas would also help deter future American invasions." If that happened as a result of an American invasion somewhere that would indeed be a deterrent. Still, it probably also matters that Alaskans and Texans probably don't want to fall under the rule of some other power.
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  46. "The more available oil will lower crude prices worldwide." It's not that simple. Less refined products in Russia can mean that Russia imports more or exports less of those products. That could increase the demand of crude by non-Russian refineries. The assumption (or one of them) in this video was that Russia's imports/exports of refined products wouldn't change because of barriers to trade (either due to sanctions or other effects).
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  47.  @SweBeach2023  "What could US possible win entering Vietnam?" Possibly a friendly country if the intervention was successful. You can take the two Koreas or the two Chinas as examples.
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  48. 2:45 I don't think the idea of an information war necessarily implies that the underlying truth is known even privately. Both sides might want to shape the public's beliefs about that truth even if they themselves don't know it or are at least not very sure about it.
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  49. Can't wait for him to get the economics Nobel for that insight.
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  50. "I think one of the main issues is that the "median voter" does not exist, talking to people you'll quickly find that many of them have wildly divergent, often confusing opinions." That's a rather weak argument. If one talks to people, as you suggest, how big is your sample size going to be? Probably far to small to make such conclusions.
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