>These are obviously false.
The purpose of the Ukrainian military is to exhaust the Russian army's materiel and test out our weapons. "Years-long stalemate with Russia? Yes, please." -the US. Seems like an overwhelmingly common Scott Alexander L.
Since when does country A decide what the purpose of country B's military is?
On smaller scale, this is the (in)famous "fire and motion"[0], which works in business as much as it does in military tactics. Make a move, forcing competitors to respond to it. If you're better at it than them (and lucky), you can choose your moves to make their responses go to your advantage.
--
[0] - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
In any case, the blog is well regarded in these circles.
however, from his follow-up post https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comment...:
> When people insist on the confusing and inappropriately-strong version, I start to suspect that the confusingness is a feature, letting them smuggle in connotations that people would otherwise correctly challenge.
i find this comical because it reads like a slightly-differently-worded POSIWID argument :)