> Professionals like Kozyrev, who was the minister or foreign affairs of the Russian Federation (1990-1996) and in charge of rebuilding RF's international relations after the disintegration of the USSR, have openly called this bullshit that only manipulated idiots believe, because the "security goals" argument makes no sense whatsoever if you spend more than 10 seconds on it.

Obviously, it’s not just “manipulated idiots” that believe the realpolitik analysis of the causes of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

I had not read Kozyrev but took a look at this article [0] of his from 1995. I think his view is more nuanced than you present here and by the end of the article you can even see his apprehension about how NATO is acting as though Russia is strictly an opponent and not a potential ally. He discusses how this is inciting nationalism in Russia. The argument about free security only makes sense if Russia perceives itself to be within the fold of NATO, which as early as 1995, ostensibly pro-NATO Russians could see they were not.

[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/e2bc4375-e9ea-3c1f-99f6-d75004d...

This is awesome, I will certainly use it for some of my recent embedded work. Will try and contribute back as well.

The easiest demonstrative example is looking at someone like Leni Riefenstahl‘s work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/opinion/ukraine-russia-in...

A sect of realpolitik theorists outlined why Russia would be compelled to invade Ukraine. Even Kissinger thought that expansion of NATO westward would compel war with Russia. To say no one predicted this or that it’s self-defeating for Russia is a mistake of analysis. The war logically follows from Russia’s security goals.

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/i-wouldnt-say-pangram-i...

Let’s take a basic example: Wikipedia, which hosts pornography, easily could be a target of such legislation. Now there is infrastructure in place to know when you read about “Criticisms of policy X” and maybe it’s handled safely or maybe it’s handed directly to the government.

What about news? It’s a hop skip and leap from “age verify pornography with ID” to “age verify content about sexual abuse or violence.” Now the infrastructure is in place to see the alt-news criticisms you read.

Twitch or YouTube wouldn’t even wait to comply, ID verification is something that these corporations are already perfectly fine with. Now, you watching a history of your government’s crimes is a potentially tracked red flag that you’re a dissident to be watched.

Do you think if this sort of legislation is enacted, it will stop at large websites? It will be an excuse used by the government and supported by big tech firms to shut down any small websites which don’t comply. After all, Google, MS, et al, they would rather that your entire concept of the internet start and end in a service they control.

Others may say “what about Uighurs?” or “what about Hong Kong?” but I think that the rest of the world is not doing all that much better on terms of civil repression.

In the UK, you can be arrested for voicing disagreement with the rationale for another person’s arrest (not generally, but on a specific hot button issue they’d rather not anyone talk about). French politicians are attempting to make illegal criticism of Israel, carte blanche. Don’t even get me started on Germany, which is so self-shamed from the last century they have overcorrected into legitimating an external state above all else. Across the pond, you hardly even have to convince anyone that it’s on the downtrend, unless they’re 30% of the population who believe the Don is christ alive (but don’t like if he says it).

The world is very unstable at this point and China is a country that strongly values and incentivizes stability, at the expense of individual rights. This is contra a lot of the west which is both unstable and actively undermining individual rights.

They would all use another term to distinguish between themselves and those living in Iran.

Collective punishment is a war crime.

Kidding aside, the US has had libertarian pipe dreams for the better part of its history. The aberration was the New Deal period up until the mid 60s.