Nicholas Grossman: I’m skeptical that X did in fact cause Z, when Z is Russia launching a war of choice and X does not include the Russian govt making a choice. But even if one assumes Russian actions aren’t due to Russian agency here, there’s no good reason to think reversing X would therefore reverse Z. It’s done.

The "Ukraine never in NATO" crowd seems to think they're avoiding confrontation with Russia, but they're actually encouraging Russia in a confrontation that's well underway. Events are past the point where "don't make Russia nervous, don't push back, or they might get aggressive" becomes denial.

A lot of the "realist restraint" arguments suffer the same fallacy: that if X caused Z, then doing ~X would => ~Z.

I’m skeptical that X did in fact cause Z, when Z is Russia launching a war of choice and X does not include the Russian govt making a choice. But even if one assumes Russian actions aren’t due to Russian agency here, there’s no good reason to think reversing X would therefore reverse Z. It’s done.

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