I read some comment stating that invasion of another country could never be justified (in the context of Russia and Ukraine), and decided to write down a non-exhaustive list of several scenarios that come to my mind, that follow the Augustinian principle of justified war.

1. State A is committing genocide against nationals of state B within its borders. State B wants to protect its expatriate nationals by invading state A, stopping genocide and changing the regime of the state A into some non-genocidal option.

2. State A has complete control of a vital resource (i.e. water) which it refuses to share with state B (for instance by diverting a river flow) with the understanding that the state B will be weakened and easy to conquer later, or perish on its own and be removed as competition. State B attacks state A and forces it to share the vital resource.

3. State A attacked state B with the goal of conquest and genocide, but the tide of war turned and the state B now invades state A and takes it under control in order to remove the threat. (Example: German invasion of the Soviet Union in WW2 and Soviet eventual invasion of Germany)

4. State A is a persistent threat and implacable foe to state B, performing constant hostile actions that kill its citizens, damage its infrastructure, degrade its economy and remove the feeling of safety. Having exhausted diplomatic options to resolve the situation, state B invades state A and regime-changes it.

5. State A (bordering state B) serves as a proxy for state C, who is a strategic enemy of state B, and allows dangerous weapons of mass destruction to be placed on its territory, increasing the vulnerability of state B to a strategic threat. State B threatens invasion of state A and immediate strategic retaliation against state B unless the threat is removed. If threat doesn’t work, it follows up on it. (Example: Cuban missile crisis)

6. State A is blocking trade routes over sea, land or air, or in other ways inhibiting trade, performing acts of piracy and so on, consistently harming the interests of state B and demonstrating implacable hostility. State B invades state A, changes its regime and removes the obstacle to free international trade.

Basically, all of the above examples imply self-defence, or defence of one’s own vital interests, and imply using only the minimum of force necessary to accomplish goals.

Russian invasion of Ukraine is justifiable according to principles in examples 1 and 5, and possibly 4; Ukraine was performing genocide against its Russian population, and served as a proxy for the strategic enemy who was using it as a platform for several attack vectors. The conditional classification under example 4 is justifiable by the fact that its government is an insanely criminal Nazi regime that is based on hatred against Russian people and state and is put into power and financed by Russia’s strategic enemies who are developing biological weapons there, targetting Russians, and performing international pressure against Russian attempts to diversify ways of exporting gas that wouldn’t include Ukraine, basically subverting Russian economy by direct hostile actions. They also openly stated the desire to acquire nuclear weapons. The combination of local ill-will and cooperation with strategic enemy creates a very serious threat level, but the concrete and persistent genocidal actions against the Russian population of Ukraine push the thing very strongly into the area that makes military intervention justifiable, especially since a peaceful solution was tried (the Minsk accords) and it turned out to be only a ruse with the purpose of buying time in order to create a more powerful military that could defeat Russia. It would be hard to imagine a clearer case of justifiable military intervention.

In the recent days, a significant number of Ukrainian high government officials have either resigned, been killed, or been fired. This looks like a combination of a night of long knives, infighting in Hitler’s bunker during the 1945 defeat, and some very suspicious possible CIA involvement that would have Zelensky removed and replaced by the supposed “moderates” who would be stalling the Russians for months until their military is re-armed and recovered, because they are presently facing total defeat. I don’t know what’s actually going on there, but something is definitely going on.

Let me share some of my thinking.

The Russians have a set of goals and a set of constraints. Their main goal is to establish themselves as a free and independent major global player whose security is not compromised by the constant attempts of America to put advanced weapons systems at their borders and finance indoctrination of neighbouring countries’ populace with anti-Russian fascist ideologies. They also want to create the kind of world where all countries participate in mutually beneficial transactions based on international law that is strictly obeyed and enforced. Basically, they wanted to be a free country with good relations with other free countries.

Their main constraint is not having a nuclear war in the process of achieving their goals.

Russian main goal could be realistically possible only if, by some miracle, devil or blue sea swallowed America whole and without a trace. Barring that, America is going to work hard on achieving their goal of total global full-spectrum dominance, where all other countries are reduced to American vassals. While America is in a position of power, controlling finances, military, media and political class of subservient states, and everybody thinks America is militarily invincible and financially omnipotent, America will be able to start more fires than Russia will be able to put out, and it will be able to continue this process until all of its subservient countries have expended their financial, human and military assets fighting Russia, and in the end Russia will be left weakened and still having to fight America with nuclear weapons.

The irony is that the Russian attempt to spare the innocent peoples of Europe creates the strategic framework in which those countries will be completely destroyed first, and their main strategic enemy will be left unharmed and in a position of greatest strength before the final conflict. Russia is playing for the scenario where Europe gradually rebels against the American agenda, but I can’t see that happening; those countries are all in debt, and their debt is controlled by America, who owns the “risk assessment” agencies, who can trivially bankrupt any such country by simply increasing their risk level. Also, America controls fiat currency, and all the political elites and media establishment are American-owned. Everywhere in the American-controlled world, people are in debt, overworked and deeply disenfranchised. Most of them would rather inject themselves with American bioweapons than realise what’s going on.

Russia is trying to play the game of very slow escalation, giving their opponents time to think and change course, and this graduality is, ironically, increasing the probability of everything being swallowed by the pit of chaos. The option that actually has the greatest probability of a good global outcome is a sudden large scale Russian nuclear attack on America and Britain. Barring that, a gradual increase in strength and intensity of blows between parties will slowly grind everything to a Mariupol-like rubble before the inevitable end.

So, Russia is barking at the wrong tree, trying to grind Ukraine and the European armies present there, into a bloody pulp. It’s like trying to stop a car by hitting the brakes, while another person is pressing the trottle. Without America, nothing else would be a problem, because they are the evil and rotten brain behind all the evils we are seeing in the world; with America, you can grind everything else into dust and still be left with the inevitable task of defeating America. Therefore, it’s better to just strike at the heart of the problem immediately and be done with it, while you are still at your peak, rather than wait until you are degraded to the point where the enemy might actually defeat you. The problem is that Putin very strongly doesn’t want to be the person who started the nuclear war, which is the reason why the war might not just become inevitable, but also more likely to be lost.