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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Or they see it like Poker as an "all in" move.

The “all in” move was when they suggested they NATO not meeting their demands to permanently commit to excluding Ukraine and withdraw allied forces from Eastern European members of NATO was an aggressive act pushing them to war in Ukraine. When NATO didn't fold, they either had to invade or show the Putin regime as a paper tiger, which is a mortal blow for an authoritarian regime.

They spent many years on efforts to weaken governments of the West and relations between them for the purpose of doing something like that and having Western unity collapse. Maybe they misjudged and thought that would pay off.

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...mortal blow for an authoritarian regime.

Let's not pretend we can just torment Russia until a "good Russian leader" emerges to attend to our every desire. No politician who would ever receive 1% of the vote in Russia would support Ukraine joining NATO. NATO was formed to impoverish Russia and its allies, and that is still its obvious and declared purpose. Likewise, USA has relatively few politicians who would support China installing missile batteries along the Mexico border.

> Let's not pretend we can just torment Russia until a "good Russian leader" emerges to attend to our every desire

Let's not invent ridiculous strawmen to argue against. Pointing out that Putin was politically all-in long before the invasion began doesn't even remotely imply what you are arguing against.

[Apologies for the delay in replying; I am rate-limited on HN due to excessive pacifism.]

Perhaps I misunderstood because the idea that Russia has no options remaining is goofy. Putin wasn't "all-in" years ago, not least because he isn't "all-in" even now. He hasn't even turned off the existing pipeline yet, and it's still February.

You agree that tormenting Russia is unlikely to bring about the political changes many claim to desire. That being the case, why do we persist in tormenting Russia?

Because we saw what happened when a dictator took one country and we let him, thinking it would bring "peace in our time". We've learned that you can't just do nothing. If you do what is unacceptable, we have to push back. And Russia is doing what is unacceptable. We need to make it as painful as possible.

> [Apologies for the delay in replying; I am rate-limited on HN due to excessive pacifism.]

Snide comments insinuating that penalties on HN are based on particular views are always a dumb idea, but not nearly as bad as characterizing your apologia for Russian aggression as “excessive pacifism.”

> Perhaps I misunderstood because the idea that Russia has no options remaining is goofy.

I never said Russia has no options remaining. I said that Putin, having setup the propaganda position he did of framing NATO failure to accede to his withdrawal demands as a provocation of war I Ukraine, had no good option to avoid showing weakness from the standpoint of his domestic political position within Russia except invading Ukraine when the threat of force failed to get the West to capitulate.

> You agree that tormenting Russia is unlikely to bring about the political changes many claim to desire

I have neither agreed with that, nor agreed with your ridiculous characterization of Western actions as “tormenting Russia”.

Let's not pretend we can just torment Russia until a "good Russian leader" emerges...
. . . .
Let's not invent ridiculous strawmen to argue against.
. . . .
You agree that tormenting Russia is unlikely to bring about the political changes...
. . . .

I have neither agreed with that, nor...

Either you agree with it or you don't? Perhaps I should leave this argument, as you seem capable of continuing it all by yourself. Anyway, those who have a clue about sanctions agree that they harm innocents most of all. [0]

[0] https://sanctionskill.org/2021/10/06/sanctions-punish-childr...

>>> You agree that tormenting Russia is unlikely to bring about the political changes...

>> I have neither agreed with that, nor...

> Either you agree with it or you don't?

No, an invalid statement requires neither agreement nor disagreement. And statements of the form "You agree that [premise] is likely / unlikely to bring about [consequence]" are invalid if the premise is invalid. I can't answer either "yes" or "no" to "You agree that the Moon being made out of green cheese is likely to bring about an oversupply crisis in the dairy industry once it comes crashing down"; the only valid answer is "Mu".

Likewise nobody here knows whether "tormenting" Russia would be likely or unlikely to bring about political changes there, since nobody in this world is doing that. You'll have to pop back over to your alternate reality and check how it works out there.

If NATO had met the Russia's demands, wouldn't the invasion have been prevented?

I don't understand how the west didn't see that they should at least accept to exclude Ukraine from NATO. Why, giving in to Russia's demand (even partially) would be a loss for NATO?

> If NATO had met the Russia's demands, wouldn't the invasion have been prevented?

Probably not, in the long term, and the ability to prevent similar coercive efforts against other nations near Russia would be far less.

Maybe there was a chance for a solution without invasion. But it seems West did not believe/want this. Either this was because West not wanting to look weak or they have a secret plan and wanted Russia to invade... Either way, Western actions leading to this weren't in Ukraine's best interest.

because caving to totalitarian dictators has historically incited them to decided to take over Europe.

This is an important point

> I don't understand how the west didn't see that they should at least accept to exclude Ukraine from NATO.

What would the world have got in return from Russia? A solemn promise, a ratified agreement in writing and everything, that Russia would make no demands or incursions on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity?

Yeah, something like that would be great.

Except that's what the world already got from Russia, in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes back in the 1990s. And look how much that piece of paper was worth.

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