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
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).
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.
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.
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.