Cui bono?
I’m going to air a pet peeve of mine. It’s the commonplace use of the concept of cui bono to determine who did something. First, the definition:
…a principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain…
[Example of use:] One of the most important questions in an investigation is about establishing motive, summed up by the Latin phrase cui bono, or Who benefits?
The question can be useful – for example, in criminal cases in which someone is murdered and there’s a life insurance beneficiary who becomes a person of interest. But if you were on a jury, I would hope you’d require a lot more evidence than that. And yet I constantly see people rushing to judgment on political issues, using the cui bono principle.
Actually, non-actors and non-perpetrators benefit all the time, which makes the principle a highly highly unreliable guide to establishing guilt. It raises interesting questions, but that’s about it. Cui bono makes me grind my teeth, but I have a lot of tooth-grinding to do because it’s almost constantly used to explain events for which the perpetrators are unknown and remain unknown.
I expect a fair amount of disagreement on this.
I agree with you!
And generally said with a knowing air.
How FDR managed to finesse the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor in the first place, and then picking a Sunday so most sailors were ashore and not to hit the dry docks or fuel tank farms. Smooth move. But…knowingly….who benefited?
I agree as well. While “who benefits?” is often an interesting question to ask you have to keep in mind that the answer(s) to such a question is/are not in and of themselves evidence of anything and could potentially lead to wrong conclusions. Real world events are often complex and can’t be explained in succinct, clear ways as they might be in a novel TV show, or movie.
I agree as well. “Cui bono” can be an investigative tool, but who actually did whatever it is can be demonstrated only with evidence beyond possible motive.
A current example is the question of who blew holes in the Nordstream pipelines. Lots of speculation, scant evidence.
I used that phrase in a post on Ricochet.com. (https://ricochet.com/1319716/quote-of-the-day-who-benefits/) to examine who might have sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines (assuming it was sabotaged, and not an accident). One of the things I pointed out was that although Turkey is the country that benefits most from the pipeline going down, it is unlikely to have been the saboteur.
Similarly the two nations most often cited for “having done the deed” (Russia and the US) don’t benefit. Russia is a big time loser, and the US has nothing really to gain and a lot to risk by sabotaging the pipelines,
I did not claim the pipelines were sabotaged, just examined who might have sabotaged them based on gain and loss. The post was the result of a conversation with my son, a pipeline engineer who designs these types of pipelines. He is extremely skeptical that maintenance issues caused both pipelines to fail at the same time based on 15 years experience designing and building pipelines.
Cui bono is a good question to ask when starting an examination to focus further investigation. But it is no more than that.
When Cui Bono and Occam’s Razor collide is often a good starting point.
I do agree that more evidence is generally necessary. The answers to the above do not prove anything.
But it doesn’t take much to analyze politics these days. Do the actions of the left advance Marxist power dynamics? Yes. What more do you need to know?
Often perpetrators do things that negatively impact themselves thinking it will benefit them. This is because many people are stupid or at least act stupid. Often people make poor risk reward calculations and commit horrific crimes for a small return that never materializes because they also get caught.
The US under democrats rarely if ever does something to benefit the US. This doesn’t go to determine if we were involved in the Nord Stream pipeline event.
Related — evidentiary presumptions and logical conclusions
— if you violate elections rules (and especially when you have a history of fraud), we can and should assume that you are trying to commit fraud again. When you throw opposition poll watchers out of the counting room, it’s appropriate to assume you intend to cheat. When you counted in secret without opponents present, you cheated.
— when you impede investigations, we should assume you don’t want the truth known because it will refute your position.
— when you destroy evidence, it’s appropriate to presume the evidence would hurt your case.
— when you censor opposing views and information, we assume your assertions are dishonest and your policies corrupt.
— we should assume that you have marshaled the best evidence to support your claims. If the “evidence” you present is weak, contradicted or demonstrably false, we can assume that your claims are unsupported and false.
— if you cannot present any witnesses to support your claim, your claim is false.
My pet peeve is constructions of the form “What Would X Do Differently If He/She/It/They Wanted to Destroy America?”
https://www.johnlocke.org/what-would-biden-do-differently-if-he-wanted-to-destroy-america/
It’s a fallacy much like “Cui bono?” when used as proof. It’s a rush to indict an enemy, because that’s the desired conclusion.
At least “Cui bono?” can be a useful question to ask. “What would X do differently” mostly strikes me as unpleasant rhetoric.
@Richard Aubrey
Honestly he didn’t “manage” to finess that. He was very much in the dark. The latest round of sanctions against the Japanese had been meant to try and keep the Japanese stalled and Prevent them from attacking either the Soviets or Western Allies while FDR tried to focus on the ongoing war in Europe (which had begun to expand to include the US Navy. Basically an attempt to buy time for FDR and the other Western leadership to “circle back” to Japan later.
. It was a terrible miscalculation, and rather than pushing the Japanese into inactivity or cowing them, it pushed them to try and act.
FDR learned that around the fall of 1941, and he DID know a Japanese attack was coming, he just didn’t understand where. He certainly doesn’t seem to have seriously considered Pearl Harbor as a target, let alone Pearl Harbor and almost every other available target that the Japanese hit.
It was a pretty big case of FDR being utterly outplayed.
Seawriter,
“the US has nothing really to gain and a lot to risk by sabotaging the pipelines,”
Days before the sabotage (confirmed by Sweden) the German public’s demands that the pipeline be reopened by acceding to Putin’s conditions were growing sharply in intensity.
Days before the sabotage US Military helicopters from the USS Kearsarge, a military special ops ship assigned to NATO and operated by the US were seen circling for hours over one of the sabotaged spots.
1.2.2022
Victoria Nuland: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
February 7, 2022
Joe Biden “If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again, then there will be no longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,”
Oct. 1, 2022
Secretary of State Blinkin on the Nordstream sabotage;
“ultimately, this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”
I believe Richard was being sarcastic.
Well, my Father would tell me this from time to time,”The race isn’t always to the swift, nor the contest to the strong-but that’s the way to bet”. He said he took that from somewhere, but he forgot where.
That’s exactly how I feel about cui bono.
Oh, the Babylon Bee had the the best idea for ending the Ukraine war. Their headline read ‘In a surprise move Putin has Russia join NATO.’ I laughed at this, then started thinking what would be the downside? If Russia joins NATO and then the EU they could be an economic juggernaut! Of course they would loose getting to invade who they want. And Putin and company would have to fade into the background and pretend they don’t run Russia. But Russians have done that before.
“It was a pretty big case of FDR being utterly outplayed.”
I don’t think he was outplayed. The US was trying to delay the start of war with Japan for at least 6 months while weapons and reinforcements poured into the Pacific. I found out only recently that we sent mustard gas to the Philippines.
See “Racing the Sunrise”
https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Sunrise-Reinforcing-Americas-1941-1942/dp/1591149568/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EH7YWS7ST0TS&keywords=racing+the+sunrise&qid=1665012533&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjAwIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=racing+the+sun%2Cstripbooks%2C142&sr=1-1
‘Who Benefits’ always carries the assumption that somebody was making logical, well thought-out choices before deciding to commit to the act. Is this always the case?
The Nordstream incident is indeed a good example, particularly of how much people are unknowingly baking their bad assumptions into the pie. I’ve seen a long list of responsible actors named: WWII unexploded ordnance; Putin / Russia themselves; Gas hydrates; The poor standard of Russian maintenance; Greenpeace; The USA; The Germans; the list goes on.
There are two concrete-coated 48″ pipelines. One was brought into service in 2011, one in 2019. They have a 50 year design life. Most importantly, they are owned and operated by a Swiss-based consortium, with the 51% majority stake owned by Gazprom and the remainder by 4 different European energy companies, EU-based.
Like all pipelines it’s a long-term investment, with huge up-front capital outlays. It is operated to DNV standard, not by Russian vodka-fueled incompetence. It’s not Russian-owned. It hasn’t corroded itself into holes in 3 years, or in 12. These things are protected cathodically and micromanaged, with frequent internal and external inspections and I would expect, going by existing evidence, that they can go a lot longer than 50 years, no problem. And before they ever lay the first section, they survey the seabottom with an array of intensive imagers and samplers, at the mudline and below, to make sure nothing is there within the fairway. Every single foot.
Think of it like a bus: Gas gets on, gas gets off. The pipeline consortium has nothing to do with sales, inventory ownership, or delivery. It just provides the service of transport, and their customers have been watching over $300 million boil out of it over the past week or so.
If there weren’t multiple breaches, the first suspect would have been a ship dropping anchor. That happened to me once, a numskull captain dropped his anchor and then backed down the chain about 1000 ft to set it, draping it right over our 20″ line. I had to hire a special Master, a guy I knew and trusted, to go on board and supervise the recovery of the anchor *very*carefully*.
Right now Nordstream can’t get the permits to go in with their own service providers and investigate the breaches, try to understand what happened. The Danish and Swedish governments (military) have ownership of the locations, and are conducting their own investigation first.
Who benefits? Well; The Russians have lost an export route to market, one that was bringing in tremendous revenue and slated to grow dramatically, before sanctions. So: They lost, present and near future opportunities. The EU, especially the Germans, lost big time. Depending on how long they are out of service, Germans will suffer this year and probably suffer even worse next year. Their manufacturing base for heavy industry is going to get a severe pruning.
The US does not have the capacity to replace Russian gas. The infrastructure does not exist for LNG deliveries on that scale, either in the US or in Europe. Nor do we presently have surplus production capacity, thanks Joe. But they remain my most likely thought-culprit, mostly based on my initial comment and their past track record.
Aggie, didn’t something like that anchor accident (or negligence) happen recently off of Long Beach, CA? But this (Nordstream) was two locations at two different times.
Yes, there was an anchor-dragging incident off Long Beach (I seem to recall) that breached a line and caused a minor spill. Even though pipelines and undersea cables appear as clearly marked navigation hazards on every single navigation chart real and virtual, there are still a lot of imbeciles piloting ships out there.
If you go here:
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:16.7/centery:55.2/zoom:8
…you will see the four gas plumes marked as little red dots (Danger Area). You can hover your mouse over these to see the descriptions – there are three plumes to the NE of Bornhol, and one to the S. Similarly, you can hover the mouse to learn about the individual ships. And right now there are several naval vessels, coast guard, and civilian support vessels that are contracted to the military around these focus points. Busy place!
It will be interesting to see the nature of the damage, and to see who / what is finally blamed. The energy analysts have a lot of work to do, figuring out how Europe is going to get through next winter, where they are going to find supply, and how it will be brought to the market.
Right now I am reading that Drax has been clear cutting old-growth, historic Canadian forests (irreplaceable) in order to make wood pellets for Europe. Drax ???? Where have I heard that before?
https://youtu.be/ep4vVEEaGlM?t=42
‘Cui Bono’ does not mean much by itself. But in conjunction with opportunity and demonstrated agency, it’s compelling to a jury.
As for Nordstream, Putin’s interests need not be Russia’s.
There are three ways he benefits: oil price has been falling for a while. Thus, there’s an incentive to capture more by taking that sales Avenue out of the possibilities and punishing Germany — which is usually popular in Russia.
Second, Putin sends cost of EU energy protection much high and indefinitely. Nice pipeline or cable you’ve got there, kid. Shame if something should happen to it.
This is game Putin know well and plays well.
Finally, Putin takes away the incentive fir oil oligarchs to topple him because now it means the status quo ante cannot be swiftly renegotiated by a Russian withdrawal in Ukraine, were it to occur. Thus Putin gains double insurance, at home and a new sword abroad.
But icing on the cake may be the weaselling out of enforcements off the old oil contract if the culprit remains conveniently unknown (or more so if unproveable). How much this may mean depends on details I’ve not heard about. Yet one can imagine this sum is sizeable and compelling.
Cui bono? As noted by many others, this has recently been applied to the Nord Stream pipelines’ sabotage.
German manufacturers of wood stoves are the clear beneficiaries, and so also the clear culprits. Logic is a harsh mistress.
Mike P. That’s correct. But I think it’s pretty accurate about what the cui bono folks say.
No one does anything unless they perceive some kind of benefit to themselves. But people also make mistakes and do shortsighted or self-destructive things all the time.
In addition, people are terrible at judging what benefits or harms themselves, and terrible at judging whether there’s more benefit or more harm, especially when the two are separated in time or the chain of causation gets long. Not to mention that people place very different values of “harm” and “benefit” very differently from each other. (If I break glass on my property, I have to clean it up and replace the glass, so there’s little benefit and much harm, but a teenage vandal doesn’t see it the same way.)
Generally the people who argue “cui bono” are giving a highly selective view of events; it’s not like they are exhaustively listing all possible benefits and detriments and adding them up before pronouncing judgment. Even assuming they could do that correctly for the person they accuse.
“Cui bono” is nothing more or less than looking for a motive, and worth no more or less simply because it has a Latin name. But a motive by itself is not very strong evidence. There also needs to be means and opportunity at minimum. And even if all three are present, that person may STILL not have done it, simply because there’s nearly always multiple people of whom that could be said.
Frederick: You get the same knowing expression with “follow the money” which means pretty much the same thing as long as money is an issue as opposed to…um…. climate change. No. Ukraine….No. Um…something or other must be important and attract partisans and not involve money at two or three removes.
Somebody think of one.
“Days before the sabotage US Military helicopters from the USS Kearsarge, a military special ops ship assigned to NATO and operated by the US were seen circling for hours over one of the sabotaged spots.
1.2.2022
Victoria Nuland: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
February 7, 2022
Joe Biden “If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again, then there will be no longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,”
Oct. 1, 2022
Secretary of State Blinkin on the Nordstream sabotage;
“ultimately, this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.””
None of the three quotes show what benefit the US gets from blowing up the pipeline. The Biden Administration are masters of making empty threats. And this once they carried through? Even though there is no benefit to the US and the risk of involving us in a nuclear exchange with Russia. It’s not credible.
The coincidence of helicopters over the scene does not add plausibility. It is an operation better mounted by a boat and UUVs, not frogmen and some type of helicopter op.
Again, Ukraine has a lot more motive, a lot better technical capability for planning this, a lot more motivation, and a lot better operational security. If the US had really done this we would have leaks in the press by now.
It could have been a US op and here’s how it could have been done.
https://www.monkeywerxus.com/blog/the-nord-stream-2-pipeline-sabotage
“What that means: the flight path and altitude of the P8 in question are indeed capable of conducting a “bomb run” on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. Now let’s look at the flight specifics. Note the last flight path just before exiting the area runs right along the pipeline in which they could have released the ordinance and continued their climb out, thus exiting the area and returning to the United States. Also, note the little hump just before the climb out (red arrow). That is consistent with a weapons release. Pitch down, increased AoA, weapon release, little bubble up, then a climb out (the blue line is the inbound leg of the same flight). You may also not the flight path. It circles over the area first, then flies downrange and starts the initial bomb run, then it does a quick readjustment on a final bomb run, releases, and exits immediately. “
Gerard vanderleun:
Thanks for demonstrating another version of the kind of muddled thinking and lack of evidence I’m talking about.
The US could do lots of things that it doesn’t do.
How do you know?
How do you know?
What a maroon!
Everyone and everything could do lots of things they don’t do. Infinite possibilities, finite time.
Gerard vanderleun:
How do you know WHAT?
Are you really asking anyone to prove that sabotage by the US is impossible? Or that the US doesn’t do every single thing of which it’s capable?
Absurd.
They have made enough starements before and after the fact to make it very likely they were involved so the us govt prevents otherwise
Gerry van jumps the shark.
The only party that seems to be benefiting is china in manifold ways
Where’s Agatha Christie when you need her…..
@ JFM – that quote rang a bell with me, being as I’m a fan of “Guys and Dolls,” as should be a verity for every good-thinking person.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/04/race-swift/
The Idea is a lot older than 180 years if you count Ecclesiastes (9:11) and Aesop, but he’s looking at the maxim in its modern humorous form.
There is no new adage under the sun! Or even in The Sun, given the way newspapers are so prominent in disseminating variants of the “original” witticisms.
Cui bono?