6. War and soldiers

   1. Drone strikes

• Use of drone strikes decrease psychological barriers for a society to vote for war as there are no risks for its soldiers. Example: video of atrocious murdering of US soldiers in Somalia pressured US government to end the intervention.

• Drone pilot do not risk her life and as such acts more rationally and are less likely to commit human rights violations. Number of mechanisms: (1) Fear of being killed; (2) Actual injury and acting on PTSD; (3) Access to advise from her superior officer and the field psychologist; (4) Pilot is under constant control and her superiors can take control in case of wrongdoing.

• Use of drone strikes destroys the moral justification for the legal status of combatants as they do not risk their lives at all.

7. International politics

   1. Russia

• Unstable political institutions that tend to produce authoritarian leaders with a nationalistic rhetoric. It's the most popular political discourse among Russian people. Three examples: the setback in 90th, the surge in popularity of Putin during the war in Georgia and Ukraine despite an enormous economic decline, nationalism as a rhetoric is employed by all main political parties including non-puppet opposition (Navalny).

• Russian nationalism perceives their neighborhood countries as their legitimate sphere of influence. Therefore Russian political elite would tend to mend into the neighborhood countries regardless whether it's a NATO member or not. However, the principal difference here would be that NATO creates the absolute guarantee of their sovereignty therefore doesn't let Russia to military intervene to NATO members.

• Even if Russia will have some pro-western government. It doesn't guarantee the long term security interests since Russian political institutions are historically volatile and could be easily reversed by coup, Revolution.

• The history of Russian military encroachment both recent and past is so massive that demonstrates regardless of a political figure in charge of Russia the neighborhood countries in the Eastern Europe is under threat to be occupied.

• The reason for it is a perceived threat from the West that comes through Eastern European borders. It's based on four things: a. The history of devastating invasions into Russia by Napoleon and Nazists. b. The animosity with the West based on the Cold War narrative of Russia being a losing power that is continued to be further attacked by the West. c. The perception that Eastern European countries tend to be stooges to the Western interest in the Eastern Europe. d. The military calculation to have a buffer zone as far as possible from your borders to guarantee a tactical advantage in the case of invasion.

1. NATO

• Individually or collectively at the local level Baltic countries, Poland and etc. are not able to protect themselves from Russia due to a huge military disparity with Russia. If they'd like to do so they would have to hugely militaries their countries which would be a devastating economic burden on the developing economies.

• EU doesn't provide the absolute security guarantees in the event of attack against their members. The security is guaranteed by the collective NATO response that ultimately supersedes the Russian military potential. Therefore only NATO creates a sufficient barrier to Russia not to intervene if it consider to do so.

• Moreover being a NATO member gives an additional bargaining power against Russia within economic and diplomatic negotiations. The Russian option to threaten them military almost virtually doesn't exist. Therefore countries can peruse their own policies without taking into the account the military response from Russia.

• Also it minimizes significantly  the incentive of Russia to interfere into the  internal politics of Eastern European countries. It makes almost impossible to employ the rhetoric of fear mongering by the backed pro-Russian politicians like saying we should do or not to do smth because Russia may backlash (historical memory, military infrastructure, energy contracts)

• It pertains especially to the context of Baltic countries with a significant proportion of a Russian ethnic minorities that have a natural sentiments to pro russian rhetoric.

1. Brexit

• EU has no moral right to punish UK for Brexit as it consented to possibility of Brexit by means of the Article 51 of the Lisbon treaty and as such consented to suffer from all related harms. It is not a kind of anti-EU move by its nature directly intended to harm the EU – the UK voters haven’t been asked whether they want to cause harm to EU. It is like if my girlfriend decides to split up it does create a moral right for me to punish her regardless of the level of pain I feel because of that.

• Eurosceptic narratives: (1) Racism – migration aversion; (2) EU does not respect member’s sovereignty; (3) EU does not respect individual members’ economic interests; (4) Exit from EU will make individual members’ economies stronger.

• UK – EU economic relationships: (1) UK mostly exports financial services & media to EU; (2) EU mostly exports industrial & agricultural goods to UK (55% of UK import); (3) London City strength is in the access to investments to the large single European market. (4) UK benefited a lot from re-allocation of EU corporations’ headquarters to London to benefit from low taxes & London financial infrastructure (Airbus, German-French corporation is listed in the London Exchange).

• Problem of Ireland: (1) UK is the biggest trade partner of EU – half of all exports. (2) Northern Ireland will blow up if there is no reasonable arrangement to keep the border open.

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