We shouldn't have pushed the coup a few years back, and we should leave our mitts off now.
Oh, and lets stop starving Afghanistan while we're at it. The last time we screwed them over, Bin Laden came back at us.
No, he didn't. Gorbachev, one of whose vague comments later about feeling betrayed by NATO expansion into the East beyond united Germany is the origin of the myth, subsequently explicitly clarified that not only was no promise about NATO expansion made, but the issue was never even raised by the USSR.
> Russia can not accept Ukraine joining NATO.
Well, it should learn to accept that it's not the USSR any more and its sovereign neighbors have the right to make the security arrangements they choose.
> Oh, and lets stop starving Afghanistan while we're at it. The last time we screwed them over, Bin Laden came back at us.
Bin Laden didn't come at us for anything having to do with Afghanistan (where are policy benefited his interests), but because he was mad that his home country of Saudi Arabia turned to us rather than his network for defense when Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened SA in 1990.
What do you propose as punishment?
Why is the US or NATO justified in doing the same to Russia then ?
[Edit] Since the algo won't let me post too many comments too fast.
Sanctions/War/whatever . . . the point is that the actions of the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are many orders of magnitude worse than anything Russia has done to Crimea or is planning on doing to Ukraine, so any retort saying "We are not going to war, we are applying sanctions" is about as paradoxical as it gets.
If those actions justify sanctions or war, surely the US should be first in line to sanction itself?
[edit] I mean look, call it what you will. The United States having invaded other countries on no pretext is an explanation for why Russia thinks it can get away with this, but it’s not a justification in the moral sense. They are still agents. And sanctions are not war. Threatening war would be saying we’re going to tell our soldiers to kill Russian soldiers if they invade, and we’re not doing that.
Ever stop to wonder what triggered the change in Russia's force posture?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11014-us-anti-missile...
In the early 2000s they were entirely focused on counter-insurgency in the Caucasus. They had restructured their military to be brigade-based, so they could deploy small formations easily. What convinced Russia to re-focus on larger, nation-state threats in their near abroad? There was a really good article on the subject which I can't find now, written when Russia reformed the 1st Guards Tank Army in 2014. That reformation meant they assessed a serious risk of a peer conflict from their Western border, and needed a powerful combat formation optimized for such a fight. Russia has eaten 3 nation-shattering invasions along the Western axis of approach to Moscow (1812, 1915, 1941), where there are few natural geographic/terrain barriers. Do you see how sticking weapon systems in their near abroad that undermine their nuclear MAD deterrence, while expanding your military alliance ever-closer to their territory, might make them paranoid?
The actual security of Russia re: NATO is not really in question here, though you're right that he may not believe this, and we can't be sure that he does. However given the lukewarm international response to his annexation of Crimea, I'm inclined to believe the economic explanation more. He has just decided (probably correctly) that Ukraine is not a country that NATO will go to war to save.
1611 definitely on that list - it's no fun when your capital gets captured and destroyed, and possibly 1242 (the Northern Crusades, although that particular time it wasn't nation-shattering)
Punishment is what Germany, Japan received. Stripped of their military power and made to pay hefty fines. Has the US ever paid any country reparations for their invasions of soveriegn states?
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/22/clash-of-the-titans/
"legitimate" is a loaded word, but the game theory strongly supports one of these options.
“Might makes right”.
Though, to be fair, it's not the most popular theory of legitimacy in international relations.
Surely that was a decision to be made by the relevant countries themselves and not Bush Sr of the United States.
Until then, the 900# red white & blue gorilla of NATO is driving. Folks don’t like it? Well, time to stop whistling “The Yanks Are Coming” every time they want to tussle with their neighborhood.
Obama and Clinton (as Secretary of State) very openly supported Ukraine, and the EU sort of played along, although much more apprehensively. They were playing with fire.
In the words of a European ambassador I'm acquainted with: "They don't know what the f** they are doing. This will cause a war.". He said this in 2013.
Losing Ukraine as a buffer zone to the west and even the small possiblity for a direct border with a Nato or EU was way too much for Russia to accept, so they acted aggressively. With the assumption that neither the US nor EU countries would be willing to seriously intervene. Which proved correct, apart from some lackluster sanctioning.
Who did he promise, when, and did it make it into a treaty? Because it seems to not basically not exist.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/18/bill-clintons-role-i...
> Interviewer: One of the key issues that has arisen in connection with the events in Ukraine is NATO expansion into the East. Do you get the feeling that your Western partners lied to you when they were developing their future plans in Eastern Europe? Why didn’t you insist that the promises made to you – particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East – be legally encoded? I will quote Baker: “NATO will not move one inch further east.”
> M.G.: The topic of “NATO expansion” was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either. Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces from the alliance would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement, mentioned in your question, was made in that context. Kohl and [German Vice Chancellor Hans-Dietrich] Genscher talked about it.
> Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled. The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been observed all these years. So don’t portray Gorbachev and the then-Soviet authorities as naïve people who were wrapped around the West’s finger. If there was naïveté, it was later, when the issue arose. Russia at first did not object.
> The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed.
[1]: https://www.rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbac...
And I can't accept the cute redhead turned me down, but just like Putin I will have to suck it up.