I've read a bunch of articles on this conflict and this video by Prof Mearsheimer from University of Chicago explained it the best to me:
edit: to say nothing as well of the anti-war protests that are happening in the streets of Moscow and across Russia. If they continue and grow they will pose a risk to regime stability.
More likely he will try to cleave off strategically important territory with Russian majorities (forming a land bridge to crimea, maybe all the way to transnistria) and leave Kyiv having extracted a promise to remain unarmed, "neutral" and providing no aid to insurgencies or face another bloody assault.
Theyre already offering to negotiate, but now theyre demanding total demilitarization.
Also they probably want to destroy/capture military central command.
In principle.
Direct occupation would be dumb. We live in a century of illusions
Essentially undoing the 2013 coup (or whatever we call it in the US)?
Everything that Mearsheimer stated would happen to Ukraine has now come to pass. He predicted it perfectly 7 years ago. He was not wrong. Neocons and Liberal Imperialists, as he calls the "war party", have now sacrificed Ukraine and left them to be massacred by advancing Russians. If you want to debate any of his arguments, please do so.
If you accept the latter rather than the former, I think it's hard to lay the blame on the West for simply having a defense alliance that sovereign states chose to join -- unless you would argue that NATO should simply not exist.
Strictly speaking that isn't true.
That doesn’t justify Russia’s action - you aren’t justified in invading your neighbour over the mere inchoate possibility they might join a potentially hostile military alliance. (Ukraine still hasn’t joined NATO, and there is no evidence they were likely to be accepted as a NATO member in the near future.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing
The really bad part is that they were acting during the 'first installment' against people that weren't part of the attack on the United States to begin with (it was essentially a pretext), and the second time they outright lied about the intelligence regarding the WMDs (of which there already was conflicting data collected by the UN weapons inspectors).
NATO’s own resources are essentially office buildings, computer and communication systems, bureaucrats, and seconded military planners. The US didn’t need them for the Iraq War, although it would have liked to have had them involved, because of what that would have meant politically/diplomatically/symbolically.
Despite claiming a broad “coalition”, only three countries actually contributed fighting assets to the initial US invasion - the UK, Poland, and Australia - only the first two are NATO members, and Poland at the time had only recently joined (only 4 years prior). 3 more NATO members (Netherlands, Italy and Spain) provided non-combatant support. I don’t see in what meaningful sense it could be said to be something NATO did.
More NATO members joined in the occupation forces after the initial invasion. But that was never an official NATO operation because those require unanimous approval, and certain member states (most notably France) were always opposed to that.
NATO eventually did become involved in Iraq - training the new Iraqi government’s military. But no fighting ever happened in NATO’s name.
NATO was very careful to obtain requests from the UN in both cases, resolutions 1244 and 1973.
How is Putin ceasing to throw Russia's unwilling and unwitting armed forces onto Ukraine not easy?
"The treaty was created with an armed attack by the Soviet Union against Western Europe in mind, but the mutual self-defense clause was never invoked during the Cold War."
After WW2, it became clear that a new world order had emerged around what would be called "First World" (US-led countries members of NATO) and "Second World" (Soviet Union-led communist countries members of the Warsaw Pact). The "Third World" were non-aligned countries, often confused with "poor countries".
The roots of the current crisis trace back to these power structures. The fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of China could be seen as the beginning of new alignment, but so far, we haven't seen it fully taking shape (China is certainly working on it). Russia, while nowhere near its Soviet Union peak, remains a military superpower and the owner of vast natural resources.
Russia's current role in the world is unstable - there is a dissonance between its hard power and its actual influence in world matters. It doesn't accept being relegated to a weak geopolitical player, and the invasion of Ukraine is part of an attempt to assert its position in the world.
And they just changed again.
Putin believes that the "Soviet Union" is simply another name for Russia, the name of a particular phase of Russian history.
In his mind, the ex-Soviet states were all part of Russia, and their people were Russian–Ukrainians and Lithuanians and Georgians are not neighbouring foreign nationalities, they are Russians, traditional Russian ethnic minorities just like Chechens or Tatars or Tuvans. He views their independence in the breakup of the USSR as a historical mistake, for which he blames the Communist leadership.
He wishes the Communists had never introduced the idea of a "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" because he believes it planted the seeds for the breakup of Russia–yes, Russia, since to him the Soviet Union was just another name for Russia–in 1991, and his current invasion of Ukraine is an attempt to partially reverse that breakup – even though he probably doesn't plan to annex the whole of Ukraine in the near-to-medium term, installing a puppet government in Ukraine which will promote Russophilia and Russification would bring Ukraine back into the Russian fold, and might even eventually lead to full annexation further down the line.
> Since then, however, NATO has revived admirably. Under President Joe Biden America sounded the alarm about Russia’s build-up and co-ordinated the Western response. “Putin has single-handedly given NATO a vitamin injection,” says Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, an annual transatlantic talkfest that begins on February 18th. NATO’s three decades of angst about its role after the end of the cold war has been dispelled. Having performed “out of area” operations in the Balkans and counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, it is going back to basics: the territorial defence of allies. The theological rivalry between institutions in Brussels over whether the EU should have an autonomous defence capability has for the moment been stilled.
In other words, I feel like some people have a consistent standard on what constitutes acceptable aggression depending on who the aggressor is.
This kinda borders on the radio station justification - a rogue terrorist attack does not justify an invasion, and most of the attackers were Saudi, so its not even consistent.
That was a really eye-opening moment for many people, I felt the same as now about Ukraine.
Honestly, that is going to be tested when Russia attacks one of them. How eager the rest of NATO will be to support or abandon them.
Joining NATO won’t protect you and will just antagonize Russia. Maybe next time they’ll just try and remain neutral?
My understanding is the Ukraine was “up” for consideration of NATO membership at some unspecified date in the future?
On the other hand, around 20 years ago Putin said he could imagine joining Nato one day...
Of course the west is ultimately not to blame for Russia to invade. There were bad choices...
Here is the actual treaty:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.ht...
Article 4 is quite deliberately vaguely worded. And the treaty also explains why NATO only got involved in Libya after the UN requested it to.
Even the Yugoslavian war did not - though it almost happened - ended up pitting NATO against Russia, and I believe that if Russia had followed through on the reforms instead of turning into a Dictatorship/kleptocracy that they just might have joined NATO at some point.
Moreover he explicitly says that NATO/US does not want to expand to Ukraine as it is not a vital strategic interest to the United States, instead US will have to focus on Asian alliances to counter China.
UN security council is how things like Srebrenica happen. In my eyes, disregarding it is justifiable if there is a high enough likelihood of something like that repeating.
It’s fine to have a principle of non-intervention but the situations are not really comparable outside of both being interventions. The Iraq War is a better comparison, and the US should have been sanctioned for it.
And that has exactly nothing to do with defensive NATO core mission.
Sectarian violence happens all around the world, except NATO chose to invade Kosovo under the pretext of ethnic cleansing / "genocide", again current RU excuse, which later investigation pointed out to be unfounded. The real cynical reason was for NATO to rationalize its existence post USSR collapses by reinventing itself as an offensive alliance for LIO/US geopolitical interests, which is how it has been wielded since causing untold deaths in various interventions. NATO is a hegemonic instrument disguised as a humanitarian one. RU sees through the "defensive" narrative. Ultimately, the point is US opened pandora box of bad norms in terms of prosecuting wars and upsetting balance of power. It won't get sanctioned for it, instead wielding sanctions to deter geopolitical adversaries from pursuing more pertinent self interests. Until the sanctions stop working, and US adversaries use US playbook for their own interventions.
Mearsheimer points the finger at an enthusiastic expansion of NATO here and draws a line from it to the West being at fault, but I don't think it was really the case.
So it wasn’t independent peoples joining a defensive pact, but Russia dislocating its arms onto stolen territory.
Only exceptions are Belarus, which effectively remains under Russian thumb, and Ukraine which didn’t make it (and had, now dead, significant pro Russian sentiment).
Either we agree that countries have sovereignty and can enter whatever pacts they so please or we do not. You can't have it both ways. NATO is an alliance that Baltic nations joined of their own accord. The US doesn't even enter the picture here.
I completely agree. The problem is that for the past 70 years or more, this has not been like the US has behaved. They set the historical precedent that it's ok to respect other countries sovereignty if and only if said country aligns with your own interests. When that's not the case, it's fine to overthrow the government to make it more "democratic".
> Joining NATO--not that the Ukraine was even doing that
Ukraine was actively seeking NATO membership since 2014, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations
I find it completely overestimated. The makes it US responsibility to prevent Ukraine from considering to enter defensive act. And when US does not shut it, somehow US is responsible for Russia invading Ukraine.
US is not responsible for making sure Russia can take over Ukraine whenever they please. US is not responsible for making Russian emprire to happen.
Setting aside other countries for a moment, the actions of a country is ultimately decided by its leader and the leader of Russia went to war. We can debate how other countries influenced the leader, but before that, are you in agreement that Putin premeditated a troop build up around ukraine and then invaded despite no immediate threat to russian soil?
Can you please state that ultimately the buck stops with putin russia freely chose to do this war, and then we can get into the debate of how other countries may have pushed him that way only once that clear acknowledgment has been made without any digressions that may come off as unintentional prevarications.
In the video, around 23:30, he says putin is too smart to invade ukraine and that an invasion will not happen...
He seems to be right in many other points, so go watch the video.
Reminds me of; Putin will not insist on outrighouts terms, he will know his own weakness......
WHEN will the lesson be learned. WHEN will be the lesson be learned.
How many more dictators must be wooed, appeased - good God, given immense privileges - before we learn?
You cannot reason with a tiger, when your head is in its mouth!
- Winston Churchill ( Gary Oldman ) in Darkest Hour
That’s exactly what Mearsheimer has been saying. He has said that it would be a terrible mistake for Russia to invade Ukraine.
With the information we have at hand this invasion is nonsensical and a fiasco but Russia and China are information black boxes. The world is slowly opening eyes to China and Russia tyranny and now that the US left Iraq/Afghanistan and the West defeated Covid, the future is not so favorably for those that are cultural antagonists (democracy enemies). US economy is facing high inflation but there are rumors of China economy collapsing. It might be that Putin and Xi decided to escalate and show hands sooner than later.
I wouldn't be surprised by China invading Taiwan in the next weeks. Specially after NATO committing assets to deal with an ongoing humanitarian crisis far from the Pacific. As the Fallout franchise summarize: war never changes.
Did you know Navalny’s court case has started? It should be front page news, but now it’s barely mentioned. That’s not directly why the invasion happened, the court case is probably timed by the invasion not the other way around, but there is a connection. Now anyone protesting against Putin will be anti war and therefore traitors. Sanctions will also consolidate his factions grip over the domestic economy, and provide an excuse to do away with the already flimsy rule of law in the economic arena.
Putin will install a pro Russian client government, like that in Belarus, and make allowing Ukraine to become ‘independent’ in name alone conditional on easing sanctions on Russia. The west will play along because there are no votes in not doing so.
If he believes he will win this war, he may either do so on grounds of something we do not know, possibly bad intel.
If he does not believe he will win this war, he may think he must on grounds of something we do not know, possibly bad intel. It could also be he doesn't want to win the war, for some reason we do not know.
Mostly addressed to his own subjects.
Putin is not a moron, he is not impulsive. If anything he is ruthless in his cold calculations. The only logical reason for this is desperation. Putin's popularity is dwindling and more and more people are vocal about it.
Invasion of Ukraine is last ditch attempt to rally support from ussr sentiment of global power people. But this is quickly backfiring, in terms of PR it a disaster. Common people in Europe support Ukraine and the politicians probably will have easier time imposing restrictions as their own people will be ok paying the price. Remember that Putin's hope is that divided europe will not come together and will fail to react.
I think it lays too much of the blame on the US and the West and ignores the fact that Ukraine itself is an entity with its own autonomy and not as simple as just being a US pawn. Mearsheimer's analysis seems to dismiss it completely and assume that basically everything that occurs in Ukraine are just machinations of the US political machine, but very reasonably, since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it is rational for Ukraine to seek closer ties with NATO.
That said, I do appreciate his perspective on why Putin might act like he does, but "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault" is... interesting framing.
I feel like we largely lack any perspective because so many of things that are happening are something so completely foreign to us that it's difficult to even realistically imagine it. Imagine if Russia formed a 'defensive' military alliance whose primary mission was to contain the US. And they then gave speeches, such as McCain's, in Mexico City shortly before a pro-US Mexican government was overthrown by an insurrection and replaced with a pro-Russian one. And then they now moved to integrate the new Mexico into their military alliance which would undoubtedly result in 'defensive' weapons, arms, soldiers, etc being placed right along the US border - possibly to the point of imperiling our credible nuclear deterrent.
I would certainly agree that Ukraine is not just a US pawn and wants to decide it's own fate, and deserves that. But there's also no doubt that it's political present and future is instead repeatedly decided by outside actors.
But this didn’t happen! Ukraine did not join NATO.
As for the John McCain bits, you ask whether it would be in the US’s interests to invade Mexico if Putin went and gave a pro-authoritarian speech there? Of course not! We would be fucking insane to do that.
It is somewhat ludicrous to suggest that russia would invade ukraine because ukraine might join NATO decades after putin leaves power.
Especially since putin has explained himself that he does not see ukraine as a souvereign nation on historical grounds and wants to correct that mistake.
The problem seems to me that there is a real breakdown in competency and responsibility in the russian regime. Just take a look at: https://twitter.com/peterliakhov/status/1495851796782362628
This might be far more serious and dangerous than it might look.
Memberstates might be amenable to vow to block certain admissions, or maybe not. There is zero chance of an unanimous vote to admit a country that has open territorial conflicts with russia.
Its not within the power or responsibility of NATO to decide about ukraines neutrality. The charter of Paris, Budapest memorandum, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm .. (russia signed all those) all guarantee ukraine a free choice of military alliance.
In my humble opinion, his story lacks lots of context, both cultural and historical. Russia has never belonged to the Western culture, not even in the XIX century. Its mindset is radically different and not reducible to analysis based on the assumptions common in the Western societies. Treating it as a "partner one can civilize" has been a mistake made repeatedly in Europe and resulted in many tragedies in the last ages. I hope the current conflict will open eyes of many naive idealists looking for the rational outlook on the modern world.
Let us please not be so passive aggressive and dismissive. Serious diplomats have been warning about this for decades.
Just because what's happening is evil and revisionist does not mean we should sweep all of that under the rug and buy into the mainstream a la the 2003 WMD hysteria.
Pointing at one person and yelling "he's a bad man" has not been helpful and yet we can't help but do the same thing every single time.
Anything else is highly irrelevant.
Russia is a repressive dictatorship and has a combination of a brainwashed and scared population. We don’t need unnecessary nuance there.
I'm sure that if Cuba or Venezuela entered a pact with Moscow that placed ICBMs on their territory, we would respect their sovereignty the same way.
There are a few things I'd like to respond to below but the rate-limit hammer has dropped.
What I will ask is that we refrain from calling the brave people who stood against the grain apologists or naive. They warned of the dangers decades ago.
We owe them better than that; they were prescient.
We don't care about sovereignty when we're violating it.
You are trying to imply a hypocrisy that simply isn't there.
The distinction isn't meaningless. You can't reach the conclusion that "we don't care about sovereignty" if we only violate it in the face of perceived imminent threats.
- How is Ukraine joining NATO different from Cuba or Mexico joining a military alliance with Russia?
- Dictatorship argument is moot since US actively supports many evil dictator and provides them with financial and military support.
- Any country is right to be scared of the US as it has invaded/destabilized many countries in the last two decades including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya.
Well, it's different than Cuba doing that in that it never actually happened.
Mexico has entirely different problems.
Neither of these countries got invaded or had their regime changed by the USA.
But I fail to see what this has to do with the Ukraine and the Russian invasion there, which is not theoretical.
Cuba did, in fact, get invaded by the US. But not like Russia is doing to Ukraine.
That said, despite how shitty the US is towards it in terms of sanctions etc., there's certainly no boots on the ground invasion by the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
I'm not sure what your point is.
But then when push comes to shove and we are shown clear evidence, the only arguments they can find to justify real aggression against a sovereign state is whataboutism.
It's funny how many people here constantly repeat that it's a crime to attach and split an independent country, but I could not hear such voices anywhere in any western country when NATO bombed civilian targets in Serbia for months to support Kosovo independence.
As a remainder, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Panama, Cuba, Guatemala, Mali, Yemen ... all independent countries attacked by NATO and its allies. Sorry if I added a few extra or missed a few, the number is just too big to remember correctly, since the number of independent countries worldwide attacked by NATO and its allies is bigger than list of countries attacked by Nazi Germany in WW2.
There is no NATO blood on my hands, can I condemn Russian action without you scolding me with "whataboutism"?
US is a misinformed bipartisan country and has a combination of brainwashed and scared population
In the world sphere, there is no de facto government. The UN is an attempt to create some sort of world governance, but as we know it's quite imperfect and it doesn't have the stick (i.e., the equivalent of a police force) to enforce its resolutions. Thus, the world works in a fragile equilibrium of military and economic power, with multiple countries forging alliances and pacts to try to put in place some form of civility.
So, while Ukraine "can decide" what alliances to join, there is nobody to ensure that it "can decide". Ukraine was relying on the West/US/Nato to get some say in its future, but we are seeing how that's unfolding. Ukraine unfortunately has to "earn" this right by forging alliances or building a stick big enough to ensure that others respect it.
Ukraine doesn't have a stick (it gave it up after the fall of the Soviet Union) but Russia does. Thus, Russia gets away with enforcing its own view of the world.
Unless other countries use their own sticks to enforce their point of view about what should happen with Ukraine, Russia will simply get away with it. "Rights" have very little to do with will happen.
I cannot think of a time in human history when things didn't work like this.
Quite frankly your comment adds nothing of value.
Nonetheless, I'll try again to not leave you empty handed... What I'm saying is that "right" and "wrong" have little to do with the situation. I suggest you read Wikipedia on Realpolitik: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
Russia guaranteed ukraine free choice of alliances with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Charter
There is no chance of NATO acceptance while there are still ongoing territorial disputes like crimea and donbas. Solving those could take decades if not longer.
Putin himself has said that the ukrainian state is a historical mistake and has no claim to statehood.
He just wants some juicy bits of strategical importance like a land connection to crimea and a broken country as a buffer zone that he can show to other aspirants what happens if you misbehave.
Whether we have a dictatorship or a democracy, there is an apparatus that IGNORES the legitimate concerns of others, and for whom it is a net positive for their country to impose its will on others through violence.
Eisenhower gave it a name in the US: the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex. And we can add the mainstream Media to that as well.
To put it in perspective, what Russia was doing supporting the Donbass separatists against the Ukrainian government is what the US has been doing in Syria…
What is currently being done by Russia is analogous to the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO forces despite UN opposition, combined with a recognition of Kosovo’s independence, something that shocked Russians at the time…
If Russia continues with a full scale invasion, occupation and regime change in Ukraine, that would be analogous to what USA did in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last few years.
So the US has done it all, and other things too:
propped up friendly rulers against rebels in Yemen, leading huge humanitarian crises
trained guerillas against the government in Nicaragua and elsewhere
trained dictators like Manuel Norriega in the School of the Americas
installing friendly regimes around the world
carved off and annexed large parts of Mexico in the Spanish American war
Russia at least does it in its own back yard and to protect its interests. USA goes all around the world and for some reason sees fit to be a “world police”. But both are incredibly imperialistic. And of course, Russia’s freedom of speech internally is far worse than in USA.
But when USA does it, it never gets any sanctions. So there is no threat of escalation to nuclear mutually assured destruction. When Russia does it, the same actions are criticized badly by the world, but everyone is afraid to escalate further because of the nuclear consequences.
It's pointless to argue really--there's 0 hope that we'll do anything differently.
To be clear, there are limited options now wrt to Ukraine. Nobody wants to go to war with Russia. But being hardline and not pragmatic means we'll set ourselves up for similar issues in the next few years and decades.
We strung Ukraine along knowing we wouldn't come to their six when it counted. Honesty has to be the preferable approach.
NATO has to invite Russia to join. Or Russia has to apply.
Someone has to go first, but neither country’s nationalist cold war war hawks would do it. That’s why we need moderates in office.
Trump should have done it, but it never occurred to him to di that!
At the end of the day, NATO was created to counter the USSR. When the USSR collapsed, we had an opening to integrate Russia, and we squandered it. That was the real opportunity.
George W Bush wasn’t a “dictator” but he and his inner circle got us into the war in Iraq which destroyed huge swaths of the middle east. Perhaps in practice, the US President can wreak just as much if not more havoc than a Russian one?
Let me know what borders for the renewed USSR you find acceptable. Should they include Poland? Maybe former East Germany or France perhaps?
I think many war hawks in the West just want to cut Russia down to size, one less “superpower” to worry about. If it is invited into NATO them the whole raison d’etre of NATO kind of disappears: the big bad enemy is only Russia.
Personally, I don’t care too much for imperialism. But we all know how well USA or China would react to secession. USA’s bloodiest was began to “preserve the union”. EU and USSR was actually kind of nice to have a way to let some members secede.
To become a member, a country must apply and agree to settle disputes using peaceful means. Does not look like Russia has any interest in that.
What should Russia do if Georgia is massacring separatists in Ossetia? (Similar situation to Ukraine.) Just stand by and watch? Should Georgia be inducted into NATO but Russia not?
What should anyone do if Pakistan is massacring separtists in Bangladesh?
Just curious what is the standard really for when a country should intervene.
Come on, man. This is such bullshit it's just insulting. How many "separatists" will there be left after Russia stops paying their wages?
They tell me Kiev’s attitude towards the Russian speaking population there. You can ask them yourself. Where do you live?
The situation is exactly as you’d expect … some guerilla fighters shoot rockets and then Kiev shoots back and civilians have to sit in basements… so there is escalation and the local residents feel that Kiev is bombing them… just like in any other separatist situation.
Hardly a “genocide” as Putin characterized it but also not exactly welcomed by Kiev. They say they offered Kiev to be an autonomous region with its own Russian language etc. and not bother anyone but Kiev sends troops.
I just listen, I am trying to piece together what the situation was like on the ground from people who are there.
I honestly think Russia is motivated only by NATO being a long term geopolitical existential threat. And what it sees as the wresting of its allies by “the West”. Honestly, seeing how nations fare after trusting the USA (eg Kurds) I can’t really blame them for that.
What I do blame them for is sucking at public dialogue and messaging and then lashing out militarily. I blame the USA and others for that last part too. But at least the USA is good at meesaging so people know what we are concerned about.
Remember, after all, this is the prevailing sentiment around the world every year: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/05/us-threat-demo...
(I bet that poll will change this year, though)
> And what it sees as the wresting of its allies by “the West”. Honestly, seeing how nations fare after trusting the USA (eg Kurds) I can’t really blame them for that.
I think the USA treated the Kurds poorly, but how is that relevant to this? The Baltics were eager to join NATO and are very happy they did. Are you arguing that Russia invaded Ukraine so that they wouldn't join NATO and be treated badly by America in the future?
Separatists overreacting to news of civil war in Odessa and moving to declare independence from Ukraine
Kyiv blowing the separatists out of proportion and sending its army in a protracted siege war against them instead of sitting down based on Minsk agreements
Putin blowing the “fascist Kyiv government genociding Russians” thing out of proportion and sending his army in a blitzkrieg to destroy Ukrainian capabilities instead of sitting down with Zelenskiy’s government at the highest levels
NATO ignoring Russia’s repeated concerns over the years about expansion and surrounding it with the same kind of thing that made JFK ready to go to war during the Cuban missile crisis
Basically on every level, sending an army backfires. Better to just not react with violence and use diplomacy. But seems that cooler heads do NOT prevail
How can you not have seen the invasion of Ukraine that started yesterday?
That is like saying Israel took Golan Heights because of its ambitions to expand and take over as much Arab land as it can. Rather than limited strategic control for security guarantees.
Every country wants to have a buffer against enemy troops so they can’t shoot as far into its main population centees. In my opinion this is not going to be a thing in the 21st century but it was a thing all throughout history before.
USA is just “lucky” to be surrounded by two oceans because frankly they managed to either exterminate or ethnically cleanse and demilitarize all the previous inhabitants on the continent through war or disease. Otherwise it would act the same way. (The Monroe doctrine kind of declares the whole hemisphere to be under USA protectorate btw.)
It might pay off to regain parity with current affairs then.
And maybe read a bit about Chechnya while you're at it or any one of the pages linked from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Post-Soviet_conflicts
But I also feel that it’s important to acknowledge that if it was wrong for the US, it is wrong for Russia. There are too many people out there who aren’t really being sincere with their arguments and are using US crimes to justify Russian ones.
(I'm not even American)
For example counterfactually i am pretty sure that Ruanda would have fared better with an intervention.
You can't imagine how angry this makes me.
Russia is twice the size of the US. Their direct "sphere of influence" was three times the size of the US.
Romania, for example, never wanted to have anything to do with Russia, yet here we are 2500+ kms away from the Russian heartland, stressing out about this stuff, because apparently it's "Russia's backyard". We've been here 2000+ years, it's <<our>> backyard. The same goes for many of the countries next to Russia.
And modern Russia, just like the USSR, is highly interventionist. Who do you think is propping up the Assads? Or was propping up Marxist militias in Latin America and in Africa?
Join the club, it seems to be in the water or something:
The entire Caribbean is in USA’s sphere of influence. We toppled Hawaii’s kingdom and annexed that, too.
Actually, the entire hemisphere, going back as early as President Monroe (200 years earlier)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
USA seized territory during the Spanish-American war, which is now Texas / Arizona etc.
In short, as angry as you are, I am sure many South American countries were and are angry at the USA as well, for propping up fascist dictators (Pinochet), or toppling regimes for fruit companies (Guatemala), or arming rebels (Nigaragua) in violation of our own laws (Iran-Contra affair) or training terrorists and dictators (School of the Americas). Whether or not we are “a dictatorship” is beside the point.
I was simply pointing out that Donbas has ethnic Russians so it is more their business than Iraq was ours, Iraq has no credible threat to us at all. Neither do the dozens of other countries that USA effected regime change in.
https://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peopl...
Pointing out total hypocrisy and asking both sides to stop doing bad things is somehow hitting below the belt eh
It’s a sad state of affairs when being evenhanded and keeping a sense of proportion is considered extreme bias.
When you say that a member of group X is bad, then you have to have a baseline. When it comes to superpowers we have Russia, China, USA. They all do terrible imperialistic things and we the people living in them should maybe try to get them to let up. “Whataboutism” is a stupid non-rebuttal that just says “let me just be biased and keep navel gazing at one specific country while ignoring even worse things by other countries because I care not about the actual humanitarian issues but about proving how bad a particular country is, and you’re making me care about the actual issues”.
This is not one of those things where there is a bit of truth on both sides. One country just invaded another.
https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-whatab...
> That’s why you usually hear “whataboutism” used by people who are punching down, not punching up. The nation that is more powerful, or more assured of their moral superiority, tells a Bad Nation it is Bad.
At this exact moment, the US isn't punching anyone, neither up or down.
Russia... well, you can see it on livestreams.
Could you expand on that a bit? I'm genuinely curious.
Greece, Germany, Peru, Columbia, Angola, you name it, Soviet funded.
Some others were funded by China, but those were a minority.
Let's not be biased or naive and assume that the authoritarian USSR was all of a sudden only sponsoring socialist democracies around the world...
The US withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq, ending mistakes made almost 20 years ago.
Russia attacked Ukraine 2 days ago.
So we should follow the model of the current day aggressor, not of the country that's at least trying to change its ways?
And how is all of this relevant in a discussion about Russia attacking Ukraine, anyway?
Some call this the Chomsky principle: "My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century." - Noam Chomsky
Nobody can fix the past, just apologize for it.
Right now we need to fix Ukraine.
The USA is far from perfect, but nearly all the interventions you listed were much more justified than what Putin is offering: the explicit aim of securing Ukraine as part of a new Russian empire, regardless of their will. (E.g. Afghanistan was a base for an attack on the USA; there was ethnic cleansing in Kosovo that needed to be stopped; populations in Syria do need to be protected. On the other hand as Devereaux points out, there isn't even a plurality of people in Donetsk and Luhansk in favour of secession, and Ukraine hadn't gone on the offensive against the separatists.)
The argument "the USA has done bad things; therefore we should turn a blind eye when anyone does any bad thing" is total nonsense.
Zelensky should have listened to Donbas separatists and met to address them (Minsk agreements)
Russia should have listened to the Ukrainian democratically elected government and met to address them
And yes, NATO should have listened to Putin and other Russian officials saying over and for years about the bright lines, and should have listened to internal voices including the architects of the USSR containment strategy WARNING about NATO expansion, and realized they should invite Russia into NATO.
No one listens because of the apparatus within their country, and the idea that cities do not have self-determination, only countries do. People believe in their flag so much because of mass media and government schools, they are willing to kill and be killed for it.
But if you look at a time-lapse of most places on the globe, you’ll see flags changing so quickly that you wonder what is the big deal. Most people if left alone would just earn money and raise their families.
Every city should be able to choose what country it belongs to, periodically. These nationalities are making people go crazy killing each other for a flag to fly over a specific territory. Most of the local populations are radicalized using mass media or government schools. It’s sad to see.
My developers are in Ukraine and Russia and I attended one of their weddings in Chernovtsy a few years ago. We all work together and we don’t want to kill each other. I’m in the USA. The vast majority regular people would not want their country killing anyone in their name. They’re just fed propaganda about how benign their country’s actions are, and how bad the “other guys” are.
Take Crimea for example. It is majority Russian because Stalin deported the vast majority of Crimean Tatars because many of their men fought against USSR in WW2. Ethnic cleansing. Then Khustchev just gifted Crimea to Ukraine for no apparent reason. But when they had a referendum they voted to rejoin Russia. In an ideal world, no one would give a shit what flag flies over Crimea. They could vote every 4 years to be 80% Russian and 20% Ukranian. By removing the need to choose a discrete variable, you’d eliminate almost all conflicts between separatists and imperialists. Catalonia vs Spain. Basques vs France. Kurds vs Turkey. But no. People need to fight for what flag flies over that territory…
IMHO, you are talking about Crimean Goths. They are speaking German dialect, so they were used by Germans as translators. Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Italians, are killed or deported just because their land was promised to soviet officers.
Anyway, number of Crimean Goths participated with Germans (140) is minuscule in comparison to Russian Liberation Army (ROA) AKA Vlasov Army (3 millions). By your logic, all Russians must be punished for ROA crimes. BTW, they wear ROA flag even today.
USSR was brutal. World War 2 was extremely brutal - they lost 30 million people
Anyway it is all war crimes, I totally agree !
I don’t know if it is “just” because Russian officers wanted their land. They already could get land through crooked courts easily.
USSR was pissed at how rabidly some Ukrainians and others killed people when they sided with the Nazis. I am Jewish and two sisters of my grandma were brutally killed by Ukrainians (not Germans) while being under 10 years old. One German wanted to quietly save them but the Ukrainians wouldn’t let him.
People want independence and appeal to have their rights, but during war time they can often abuse weaker people too a lot.
As far as Tatars read the last two paragraphs here: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/krimchaks
Yes, but most Russians are still not punished for their crimes like Crimean Goths. Moreover, they openly wear fascists symbol: ROA flag, and Russian Eagle is surprisingly similar to German Eagle.
> USSR was brutal. World War 2 was extremely brutal - they lost 30 million people
USSR lost 12 millions in WWWII, fighting Poland with Germany (1939), Finnish, and Germany with England and US. Losses are raised to 42 millions to hide 30 millions Ukrainians killed during Holodomor (7 million adults and 23 million children). RF accepted number (02.04.2008) is 7 millions only, but they are still hiding them in WWWII losses.
> USSR was pissed at how rabidly some Ukrainians and others killed people when they sided with the Nazis.
Guess what? If you kill millions of Ukrainians, they remember that for a long time.
Anyway, Berlin was taken by First Ukrainian front and Second Ukrainian front. No Russian army was involved in the taking of Berlin, because Russian Liberation Army (ROA) was on Nazi side.
(USSR took his family’s house and everything earlier during the civil war, they came to live in the city)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Novorossiysk
The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought up a question of headquarters relocation to Novorossiysk. In September 1994 Novorossiysk Naval area was reestablished, three years later it was officially reorganised into Novorossiysk Naval Base.[62] To ensure its modernisation and development the government initiated special federal programme 'On Black Sea Navy Fleet Base at the Territory of Russian Federation in 2005—2020'. [...] The naval base is equipped with 5 berths (including floating dock) capable to receive up to 100 vessels from 1500 to 30,000 DWT. The submarine base shelters all 7 diesel-powered submarines of Russian Black Sea Navy.[citation needed]
But anyway, I'm confused, because you're saying not only countries but cities should have self-determination, but ALSO Putin gets a veto over Ukrainian policy?
the moment somebody attacks Europe with missiles diplomacy is over. I think we should call out all the Putin apologists in our own ranks and make sure they recuse themselves. Next we need to hit them where it hurts. Not with "a strongly worded letter" or "a frown" as we usually do in the EU but right in their money. Let's make it impossible for Russians to visit their money in Cyprus, Malta or London. Make it impossible for Russian oligarchs to strut around European capitals flashing their dirty money, anchor their yachts in the Mediterranean, or spend winters in the Swiss Alps.
Also anyone calling for diplomacy, while Russia is bombing civilian infrastructure in Europe, should have their ass handed to them and be called out for what they are: at best useful idiots, at worst propagandists.
This includes whataboutist statements like:
> a la the 2003 WMD hysteria
What we see right now is exactly the opposite. It's the effect of that fallout when we listened to the IC too much and realized the damage it caused to our credibility & foreign affairs.
What we _actually_ have now is the effect of what happens when we ignore the warnings of the IC for a whole year, a bit like the late 98/99 when we should have known that 9/11 was coming.
None of this is a surprise for anyone who has half-assedly been following Russian politics in the past 2 years, the murdering of journalists, the disappearance of an opposition media, the attempted murder and imprisonment of Navalny, the assassination attempts on people in UK and Europe.
In fact if you're Russian and not waiving an UA flag and a sign opposing these actions outside a RU embassy right now you should also be considered sus.
I value the diversity on HN.
I mostly value when my view are reputed by facts and reasoning.
I'm Ukrainian. I lived in Kiev, Dnipro, Odessa and Kharkiv.
Apparently Zelenskyy thought Ukraine had a chance of joining NATO, and was actively partnering with NATO.
I don't see any reason why Ukraine couldn't join us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%80%932022_Russo-Ukrain...:
On 14 September 2020, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved Ukraine's new National Security Strategy, "which provides for the development of the distinctive partnership with NATO with the aim of membership in NATO." On 24 March 2021, Zelenskyy signed the Decree No. 117/2021 approving the "strategy of de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol."
It's a very "US-centric" video, and the comparison to the Monroe Doctine is imo a false equivalency. Russia is not even the Soviet Union, let alone the US. Russia isn't a match militarily to NATO, and it's not even a match economically to the EU. It has nukes and oil, so it's a thug and a bully. If it was any other nation, it would be wiped off the face of the planet.
The 90s born generation like myself, mostly see Russia as neutral, from the neutral-positive way we saw them in the 90s, when we were still relying heavily on their bootleg electronics.
Romania joined NATO way back as it saw it as a way to get closer to the west and ultimately into EU. Not because of Russia but because the bad state of the local economy (and associated poverty) lead by incompetent, post revolution, ex-communist party, people. That couldn't be improved without outside investment, guidance, and trade partners.
Absolutely not true[1]. Soviet Russian-Romanian friction dates as back as early as the 70s, and let's not even talk about WW2. Soviets raping and pillaging Transylvania is well documented.
[1] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-soviet-romanian...
Where we were taught to have beef with Russia, was on the large amount of gold/valuables we shipped there during WW2 for "safe keeping" and which were never returned back to us.
The 90s romanian propaganda was against the west in general, and Hungary in particular. You see, even if Hungarians were the first to bring large convoys of humanitarian help in our country after our revolution, the politicians made sure to make Hungary a boogeyman that is trying to steal Transylvania from us and support separatist movement in majority ethnic hungarian regions.
It's not a black and white kind of thing, and it seems that trade relationships also shape up the perception of those trading partners.
Don't get me wrong, people's perception of Putin and his actions are mostly negative (we have our fair share of people that cling to the extremes).
You tell me what life was like as a vassal state of Russia.
Opinion on life during communism is very much a mixed bag. Depends who you ask. I don't know why people keep painting Romanian communism as a black&white kind of issue.
https://jacquesmattheij.com/a-western-kid-living-in-communis...
Imagine your friends informing on you to the secret police either because of ideological reasons, or simply because they want to get ahead in life and you're a convenient stepping stone.
Imagine empty stores.
Imagine family members taken in for 'questioning' never to be heard from again.
Imagine winters without fuel.
And so on...
Really, the life in the countries that were plundered to power the failing economy of the USSR was pretty harsh, especially if you were smart and not part of the party.
FWIW I love Romania, have lived in Bucharest for two years and have friends and family there. Enjoy your freedom, it was paid for in blood.
Unless you were in the Communist Party, everyone hated the Ceausescu regime and it's absolutely NOT a mixed bag. I was born in 86, my sister in 90, and both of my parents fought in the Romanian revolution in Timisoara. I still remember yelling "Jos cu Ceausescu" and my parents telling me to be quiet; I also remember having to hide in our tiny apartment, and bullets flying outside; I was around 4 or 5.
We're Christian, and my dad was interrogated by the Romanian Communist Secret Police many times (he was trafficking Bibles), and was also threatened with my murder and my (at the time pregnant) mom's murder.
Putin is an extension of that same old Communist cancer that the Russian people need to excise. I have dual citizenship, and if the Russians stepped foot on Romanian soil, I would gladly pick up arms.
And stop with the revisionist garbage, people literally died.
During communism they had the safety of a job, and housing. The basic premise of a living condition. Just like some might one day hope adoption of something like UBI could do.
Now we have village life slowly "going extinct". Back then you could continue to live in villages because of mandatory cooperatives, there was always work available. There was stability.
When communism fell, those citizens were left to their own devices. It gave them maximal individual freedom, but no the same state-level safety nets.
The population that just wants to live their family life regardless of politics, and those that lost their safety is reflective in voting preference, and also in the low parliamentary vote turnout (31.02% of voters).
I was born in the late 80s like you, but we're still 90s kids. My father had his own run-ins with the state security police, and everyone was happy for the fell of communism for a very brief moment of time. Maybe you were well of in the 90s but most of the population really struggled with economical change and poverty. It was less about communism-era scarcity and more about the month to month livelihood.
Instead of just stating things unilaterally in a certain light, I would ask you to allow yourself the time to listen to the ordinary people that are living worse of now than during communism.
This mixed feeling about the fall of communism is very well illustrated in Recorder's documentary (30 years of democracy). Documentary that also touches upon my original point where Romania joined NATO with the ultimate goal of joining EU due to disastrous economy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUbN6DXJwFg (english subs are also available for anyone else interested)
Respect to your parents actively fighting during the revolution.
Is incompatible with the rest of your comment.
Only if you were part of the Nomenklatura or the Secret Police. The rest hated communism quite uniformly.
Yeah, people who didn't live through the cold war and didn't suffer aggression or witness it being used against a nearby country are prone to being blue-eyed in that way.
I guarantee that a lot of the 90s kids are now having second thoughts and start to think more like the older population.
Overall, I'm happy that Poland is a NATO member. At least it adds another deterrent (or failing that, a speed bump) in the way of a Russian invasion. Were NATO not to exist, and Russia to re-awaken it's conqueror instincts at some point, we'd be screwed yet again.
> or witness it being used against a nearby country are prone to being blue-eyed in that way.
I agree, awareness and proximity to direct effects give you a different perspective.
Based on my experience, I can tell you that those 90s kids are having second thoughts on the EU&West this time around. Might be Russian propaganda derived, but EU skepticism is on the rise in that same age group, especially for those that live in the country.
Only the ones unable to succeed in modern times. Which is a quite incredible feat considering the astonishing wealth of opportunities the EU opening offered the Eastern Block.
How can you not succeed when you can move and work anywhere in the EU?! The only way I know is by being a child of ex-communist politicians, a child of Nomenklatura parents. The pain they feel is quite like the nostalgy Putin feels when remembering good old Soviet Union.
The idea that Putin is invading to counter a possible extension of NATO into Ukraine is beyond silly. NATO members have been directly bordering Russia through the Baltics for almost two decades at this point.
And any observer can see that there is zero interest in any sort of NATO aggression against Russia.
The only threat to Putin is internally, either too many Russians thinking he is weak (causing Putin to invade other countries to maintain a mirage of strength) or too many Russians seeing successful neighboring democracies.
Mearsheimer is kidding himself if he believes an unaligned Ukraine (remember, Ukraine is unaligned right now, and several NATO member states are on the record unambiguously opposing Ukrainian membership, which requires unanimous approval) would be allowed to prosper. Any NATO justification for Putin's actions holds no water. Pretetending that the goal is to demilitarize Ukraine as Putin is doing now is also nonsense because Ukraine's military was never threatening Russia. Putin doesn't care if his puppet government lasts or not as long as Ukraine remains poor.
The West should've stopped Putin (and other madmen like him) a long time ago instead of appeasing him.
Of course, the idea is to prevent people from the same circle - with similar or worse ideas - to have the power. Robustly that's to be solved by the people of the country - who apparently suffer from lack of learning on the previous mistakes. Also, getting best solution takes longer time... to the initial results.
Except for the generation of Afghan girls that got to attend school for the ~20-years that the US was in charge.
No leader or country will ever start a war because of some diversity concerns.
It only shows humanitarian aid is partisan.
You can't, on the one hand, claim that the Western allies were a malign influence in Afghanistan and also claim that Western aid is the only thing that can keep Afghans from starvation.
Did I? I don't think so.
> also claim that Western aid is the only thing that can keep Afghans from starvation.
I didn't claim that eiter AFAIR, but since you are bringing it up : sanctions were imposed, aid was halted and the economy collapsed.
I am not saying that, the US admin is saying that : https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/us/politics/us-sanctions-...
I am not sure what your beef is, but you sound like a neocolonialist.
Oh, now I get you.
There is at least a good chance it will have a better leader after Putin. Because Putin has become a terrible leader.
So now I ask, can you provide any evidence that prof. Mearsheimer has ties with Russia/Putin that influence his opinions?
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/moscow-s-tried-...