I value the diversity on HN.
I mostly value when my view are reputed by facts and reasoning.
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.