"Back in October 2022, I wrote that the war in Ukraine provided a “Rorschach Test” between two contrasting worldviews about international politics and foreign policy.
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One might think that the past year and a half would have led outside observers to reconsider some of their views—or at least hedge their bets a little. The failure of Russia’s initial invasion, the imposition of far-reaching sanctions, and Ukraine’s successful counteroffensives during the summer of 2022 did not convince Moscow to abandon the war, and its military performance has improved since then. Ukraine’s current counteroffensive has yet to achieve meaningful gains, although Kyiv has yet to launch an all-out effort against the main Russian defense lines. But instead of absorbing these new developments and revising their views, many observers have simply doubled down on their prior commitments and interpreted recent events as a vindication of their previous positions.
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What’s going on here? Why did so many people see this event as confirmation for what they already believed?

The explanation for some of these interpretations is obvious: It’s wartime propaganda.
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Second, none of us is immune to wishful thinking.
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A third reason, as the late Robert Jervis repeatedly stressed, is the universal tendency to interpret new information as consistent with one’s prior beliefs. This isn’t simply “wishful thinking”: It is a consequence of the way our brains process information. We all rely on a set of frameworks or theories to make sense of the world, and it’s easier to insert a new piece of information into our existing set of beliefs than it is to rethink our entire understanding of some situation."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/21/putin-prigozhin-russia-west-rorschach/