In this article, you seem to make two points: about the draft in Ukraine per se, and about its coverage by NYT.
In case of draft, you admit that it is generally not considered a human rights violation… but then you still conclude that is bad if Ukraine does it—because Ukraine is a hybrid regime; because although Zelensky won with 73% of votes, his approval ratings later dropped a lot; because people in post-communist countries are skeptical towards their governments; and because the war will be long and bloody. (That makes it sound like draft is acceptable only when a highly popular leader in a democratic country intends to fight a short and bloodless war.)
You also link an article discussing draft from the perspective of human rights, but that article actually talks about draft in Russia. That is, it talks about soldiers drafted for an offensive war rather than for the defense of their homeland, and its point is roughly: “before you condemn the attacking soldiers as individuals for the invasion, consider the fact that most of them are probably there unwillingly”.
I could agree in general with the principle “draft is bad”. I mean, we are talking about 18 years old kids who get a probabilistic death penalty for the sole crime of being born male! But that is not what you are saying. You seem to suggest that the draft in Ukraine is a special kind of evil, as opposed to… a normal draft.
In case of media coverage, you say NYT “routinely and brazenly lied” in the title, but in response to DanielFilan you kinda admit that your actual problem is that NYT does not talk frequently enough about how draft is bad.
In summary, it seems to me that you are twisting facts in order to support your perspective.
Also, draft in Ukraine was only for people older than 27 years old, which is not obvious from this blog post. Closing borders for males was not equal to draft. Many found legal ways to leave—eg by becoming students in foreign universities.
How does knowing about Ukraine’s draft affect an NYT reader’s opinion of the war? I mean it’s not going to be like
Reader: “Ukraine’s justified in defending itself from Russia!”
NYT-whistleblower: ”But Ukraine drafted soldiers to do it, and the NYT didn’t tell you!”
Reader: ”Oh, well, screw those guys, Ukraine should lose!”
… so what is it like?
Some ways a reader could respond include:
More instinctive patriotic fervour (Glory to Ukraine’s presumably-voluntary heroes!) (… and this seems like the likely propaganda angle in question)
Increased salience of hellishness of the war, therefore Russia should win asap to minimise bloodshed
Increased salience of hellishness of the war, therefore arm Ukraine to punish Russia for starting it
If you turn up the prior belief of collusion between the NYT and a military-industrial-political complex, you can imagine a “pragmatic” situation where the West arms Ukraine enough to keep Russia embroiled in a war of attrition, thereby pouring Russia’s armed forces into a meatgrinder for, from Western accountings, pennies on the dollar, and this might be pragmatic, or even hard to improve on (because arming Ukraine too much could provoke nuclear response from Russia), but, damn it all, it doesn’t feel very heroic. So, NYT is left waving the banners and playing the trumpets?
If you mistakenly assume that all Ukrainian soldiers in this war are volunteers, it would mean that X people oppose the Russian invasion so much that they are literally willing to risk their lives to stop it. When you learn that actually most Ukrainian soldiers are drafted, you should decrease your estimate of X. (Yes, some of those soldiers really want to defend their homeland; and some of them kinda want their homeland to remain independent, but would prefer to increase the chances of their own survival; and finally some of them actually want to become a part of Russia, but are forced against their will to fight against.) Ukraine being a “hybrid regime” and Zelensky being not very popular right before the war is indirect evidence that many people might oppose the official policy of resisting Russia, and that Ukraine might be the kind of country that would send them to die by thousands regardless.
For an American reader, assuming that all Ukrainian soldiers are either professionals or volunteers would be an easy mistake to make. NYT is lying by omission by not mentioning this fact (frequently enough).
The expected reaction of a reader is probably something like: “I assumed, based on the number of soldiers, that opposing Russia is very popular among the Ukrainians… but now I realize that those soldiers were literally forced at gunpoint to go fighting, so this is actually not evidence of a popular support… now I have no strong evidence either way, and maybe the fact that NYT was manipulating me in a certain direction should make me update in the opposite direction… so the conclusion is somewhere between ‘Russia is right’ and ‘we actually don’t know who is right’, and in either case we should stop interfering.”
.
This of course works better if the reader has no other information about Russia and Ukraine. Then again, that might actually be the case for a typical NYT reader.
Trevor, I have noticed previously that you keep making allusions to the Ukraine war. I prefer that you have now approached the topic directly, so that I can be more sure that this is something you actually care about, rather than merely a random example to illustrate a more general point. (Sensor Exposure can Compromise the Human Brain in the 2020s; Helpful examples to get a sense of modern automated manipulation; An intuitive explanation of the AI influence situation)
In this article, you seem to make two points: about the draft in Ukraine per se, and about its coverage by NYT.
In case of draft, you admit that it is generally not considered a human rights violation… but then you still conclude that is bad if Ukraine does it—because Ukraine is a hybrid regime; because although Zelensky won with 73% of votes, his approval ratings later dropped a lot; because people in post-communist countries are skeptical towards their governments; and because the war will be long and bloody. (That makes it sound like draft is acceptable only when a highly popular leader in a democratic country intends to fight a short and bloodless war.)
You also link an article discussing draft from the perspective of human rights, but that article actually talks about draft in Russia. That is, it talks about soldiers drafted for an offensive war rather than for the defense of their homeland, and its point is roughly: “before you condemn the attacking soldiers as individuals for the invasion, consider the fact that most of them are probably there unwillingly”.
I could agree in general with the principle “draft is bad”. I mean, we are talking about 18 years old kids who get a probabilistic death penalty for the sole crime of being born male! But that is not what you are saying. You seem to suggest that the draft in Ukraine is a special kind of evil, as opposed to… a normal draft.
In case of media coverage, you say NYT “routinely and brazenly lied” in the title, but in response to DanielFilan you kinda admit that your actual problem is that NYT does not talk frequently enough about how draft is bad.
In summary, it seems to me that you are twisting facts in order to support your perspective.
Also, draft in Ukraine was only for people older than 27 years old, which is not obvious from this blog post. Closing borders for males was not equal to draft. Many found legal ways to leave—eg by becoming students in foreign universities.
How does knowing about Ukraine’s draft affect an NYT reader’s opinion of the war? I mean it’s not going to be like
Reader: “Ukraine’s justified in defending itself from Russia!”
NYT-whistleblower: ”But Ukraine drafted soldiers to do it, and the NYT didn’t tell you!”
Reader: ”Oh, well, screw those guys, Ukraine should lose!”
… so what is it like?
Some ways a reader could respond include:
More instinctive patriotic fervour (Glory to Ukraine’s presumably-voluntary heroes!) (… and this seems like the likely propaganda angle in question)
Increased salience of hellishness of the war, therefore Russia should win asap to minimise bloodshed
Increased salience of hellishness of the war, therefore arm Ukraine to punish Russia for starting it
If you turn up the prior belief of collusion between the NYT and a military-industrial-political complex, you can imagine a “pragmatic” situation where the West arms Ukraine enough to keep Russia embroiled in a war of attrition, thereby pouring Russia’s armed forces into a meatgrinder for, from Western accountings, pennies on the dollar, and this might be pragmatic, or even hard to improve on (because arming Ukraine too much could provoke nuclear response from Russia), but, damn it all, it doesn’t feel very heroic. So, NYT is left waving the banners and playing the trumpets?
Steelman:
If you mistakenly assume that all Ukrainian soldiers in this war are volunteers, it would mean that X people oppose the Russian invasion so much that they are literally willing to risk their lives to stop it. When you learn that actually most Ukrainian soldiers are drafted, you should decrease your estimate of X. (Yes, some of those soldiers really want to defend their homeland; and some of them kinda want their homeland to remain independent, but would prefer to increase the chances of their own survival; and finally some of them actually want to become a part of Russia, but are forced against their will to fight against.) Ukraine being a “hybrid regime” and Zelensky being not very popular right before the war is indirect evidence that many people might oppose the official policy of resisting Russia, and that Ukraine might be the kind of country that would send them to die by thousands regardless.
For an American reader, assuming that all Ukrainian soldiers are either professionals or volunteers would be an easy mistake to make. NYT is lying by omission by not mentioning this fact (frequently enough).
The expected reaction of a reader is probably something like: “I assumed, based on the number of soldiers, that opposing Russia is very popular among the Ukrainians… but now I realize that those soldiers were literally forced at gunpoint to go fighting, so this is actually not evidence of a popular support… now I have no strong evidence either way, and maybe the fact that NYT was manipulating me in a certain direction should make me update in the opposite direction… so the conclusion is somewhere between ‘Russia is right’ and ‘we actually don’t know who is right’, and in either case we should stop interfering.”
.
This of course works better if the reader has no other information about Russia and Ukraine. Then again, that might actually be the case for a typical NYT reader.