I'm wondering how Russiagate conspiracy theorists square this. Just the other week they were telling me Russia orchestrated the war on Iran (a key military ally and a billion+ dollar trading partner) because they wanted oil prices to increase, so they're definitely creative enough to find a way!
Putler is an evil mastermind and also stupid and nearly dead. Russia will keep going all the way to the Atlantic and also a gas station with nukes.
I guess you could say: through constantly shifting rhetorical focus the enemy is both weak and strong.
You’re not analyzing anything here. You’re just mocking a strawman version of things to avoid facing what you don’t understand.
Putin thrives on ambiguity, and Trump has served that strategy again and again, openly and with intent.
If you studied asymmetric warfare instead of ridiculing what you haven't yet grasped, you might begin to dispel the ignorance in yourselves as well as in your perceived enemies.
We understand your understanding perfectly well. How could we not, when the media have been broadcasting it to us for over three years? We just think that understanding is wrong. The asymmetric warfare is coming from the US, it goes back decades, and it is bipartisan.
That you can only call out the US, but not name names or other countries and their leaders, all but proves that you don't understand.
Good day.
EDIT: Again is it clear you all don't understand asymmetric war, because if you did, you would be able to see that your circlejerk is just a case of building up and tearing down strawmen.
EDIT 2: And still, in all your rationalizations and gyrations, you can't admit that anyone other than the nebulous "US" can engage in asymmetric warfare. This alone shows the limitations of your thinking.
And trying to use the "debunking" of great man theory as proof that Putin and Trump aren't important actors is bonkers. Both clearly act with autocratic "self-determination."
No one is saying they are great men. At best they are "generals" in the byzantine generals problem. Again, you need to do more research on the topic of asymmetric warfare before you will be able to make a coherent argument against the foundational thesis: "Putin thrives on ambiguity, and Trump has served that strategy again and again, openly and with intent."
Likewise, the straw-manning I called out was in the original circlejerk between you and the other original commenters.
The thesis I have put forth is the "steelman" that you are now flailing against. You are learning that it is harder to make rhetorical progress against an actual argument/thesis than a bullshit one.
Read and research more. Then maybe you will make actual progress in understanding the moment.
EDIT 3: If one can't understand the relevance of the byzantine general's problem to asymmetric warfare, they have no idea what they are talking about here.
One needs to understand the history of the problem before it was applied to computers. The computer science concept was taken from the asymmetric warfare that the Byzantine Empire engaged in for over a thousand years...
And the question of the falsifiability of the central thesis is easy:
All you have to do is show how the seeming ambiguity from Putin isn't really ambiguous. Show he wasn't lying about all the different reasons who gave for entering Ukraine. Show us the biolabs. Show us how Zelenskyy is a nazi.
Show us how Putin hasn't backed off nuclear red-lines. That he said he hasn't threatened energy blackmail on one hand and then said he is using it for blackmail on the other. That he hasn't denied the little green men, then later admitted to using them. That he didn't deny he used Wagner PMC, but then later admitted it. Show us how he is actually interested in a ceasefire. Etc.
The problem of course is that you can't show these things because the thesis is correct. Putin lied his people into war with Ukraine and has kept many of his actual motives and actions ambiguous. The only reason this part of the thesis is "unfalsifiable" for you is because the evidence that it is true is overwhelming.
There is a term, Strategic Ambiguity, and Putin is doing it. Hell, he would probably think you were insulting him if you reported he wasn't smart enough to use ambiguity.
The second part of the thesis is, in theory, just as falsifiable. The problem is, we have a history of Trump covering for Russian and Putin. It goes back decades. He even admitted in a truth social post, that without him, "really bad things" would have happened to Putin's Russia.
The fact is the argumentation you are using against the thesis is pedestrian at best. It reads like someone had others accuse him/her of using a fallacy-ridden argument, and then they tried to use the same rhetorical approach themselves, but only after doing a cursory google search on the fallacy in question.
Sadly though, one has to understand a fallacy before accusing someone of it, not just shit it out whenever they are losing.
That’s a non sequitur undeserving of a response, but my above previouslies name a dozen names and several countries’ leaders.
Again is it clear you all don’t understand asymmetric war, because if you did, you would be able to see that your circlejerk is just a case of building up and tearing down strawmen.
You haven’t even made a case to be strawmanned. You’ve just claimed that Putin thrives on ambiguity and thrown the term “asymmetric war” around. I can’t strawman a vaguepost.
There is no shortage of examples of the US engaging in asymmetric war, directly or by proxy. Who do you think funded and trained the Ukrainian Banderites since 2015, (and how far back do you think that relationship goes[1][2][3])? Who do you think green lighted the 2014 Maidan false flag massacre by Red Sector/Banderite fascists, and why was Victoria Nuland handing out cookies in the square? What do you think the National Endowment for Democracy does? It doesn’t promote democracy, quite the opposite. It regime changes through proxy insurgencies and proxy NGO shenanigans. The NED is an engine for manufacturing “color revolutions.” The blueprint of regime change operations
Edit to add:
To misunderstand Trump as merely foolish or chaotic is not a lesser kind of error. It is a strategic failure in an ongoing psychological war. Trump is not improvising. He is executing. Every delay of sanctions, every attack on NATO, every lie about Ukraine, every moment of confusion sown into American political discourse—these are not missteps. They are victories for his benefactors in Moscow.
This is asymmetric warfare: not about winning arguments, but about breaking systems. Not about consensus, but the destruction of consensus. Putin’s strategy, followed to the letter by Trump, is not to win through force but to make force unnecessary by rotting out the institutions that might resist it.
Never go full Maddow. This is founded on great man theory, where world history is steered by the personages of Putin and Trump. Historical materialists reject that theory.
I didn’t say that only the US can engage in asymmetric warfare, nor did I say that Putin and Trump are not important actors. Who is strawmanning who?
And what’s with “the nebulous ‘US’”? No one is confused about what the US is. And how is the Byzantine generals problem relevant, when secure, real-time, two-way communication is at their disposal?
“Putin thrives on ambiguity, and Trump has served that strategy again and again, openly and with intent.”
Your foundational thesis is so vague that it’s unfalsifiable, which is why I didn’t even try. Like I said, it’s just a vaguepost, ripe for annoying motte-and-bailey argumentation.
I don’t care. Whatever ends up weakening the US. I’m tired of it turning my region into a shooting range.
Yeah I'm just a stupid animal and can't grasp the genius thoughts of your giant brain.