Scott Alexander often seems surprisingly unaware of his priors, especially when speaking about things beyond the American shores.

> The purpose of the Ukrainian military is to exhaust the Russian army's materiel and test out our weapons.

Since when does country A decide what the purpose of country B's military is?

Since country A pays for country B's military.

So the EU is deciding?

It's not even applicable here.

I wish my tax dollars weren't being used to murder Russians on the other side of the globe, but sadly they are.

In practice, always. It's similar to the claim that during the cold war, US basically controlled USSR economy, and vice versa, and that US won because USSR economy just couldn't keep up.

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.

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[0] - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/