I truly hope the same measures will be taken against US or other nation's acts of aggression in the future. e.g. Yemen, Afghanistan,Iraq. This is a great precedent to set.
Afghanistan after 9/11 is a good of example of something that was hard for another western nation to argue against the justification for starting (how it went is another story).
On a case-by-case basis. As you note, the international community probably wouldn't have reacted against the US regarding Afghanistan (and probably should have regarding Iraq).
Be aware that most people cannot read Chinese or Russian, and as such their whole world perspective is fed by an one sided narrative.
I suggest you listen to these[1][2] talks, and Putin's speech[3] on NATO expansion in Munich in 2007. Pozner[1] pointed out that up to 2007, Putin really tried to be friend with the West, including asking to join NATO.
Of course they were "the enemy".
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ
I made no reference to good aggression, only justifiable aggression. Even then, while it would be fine to form an argument that no such thing exists, it's unrealistic to despise the man who returns a punch.
As for Russia's reasonable concerns about the West and the nigh-impossibility of objectively or thoroughly observing foreign points of view - both are true and important, yet neither serve in the least to justify attacking Ukraine's capital.
Did he? All I could come up with this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-s...
According to this person he didn't ask to join, he asked why he wasn't asked to join, and wanted to skip the process that countries-that-don't-matter have to go through.
And slightly more edgy: https://niccolo.substack.com/p/fuck-it-russias-final-break-w...
Ukraine would never had joined NATO because it was an active war zone anyways. Putin didn't have to do anything to avoid Ukraine joining NATO.
Listening to his current explanations for the invasion doesn't make him sound like a good guy no matter the language or the perspective.
> Putin really tried to be friend with the West
And relations were relatively good until he decided to invade Ukraine, he just severed every diplomatic bridges and every single chances of progress for the next decades(s).
Putin's not the Devil but he clearly is the aggressor here. Ukraine was a sovereign state with a democratically elected government. You'd be hard pressed to use the "b-bu-but it's both sides" rhetoric here.
It does not prevent NATO from supplying weapons and training the Ukrainian army. The US reconnaissance planes have conducted regular patrols over Ukrainian territory. The British even tried to build naval bases in Berdyansk and Ochakovo. And with active and heated territorial disputes it's easy to see a hypothetical scenario of Ukraine trying to re-capture Donbas and Crimea by force after it felt it's sufficiently strong or Russia is weak enough, like Georgia tried with South Osetia.
>And relations were relatively good
I suggest watching the following videos if you want to learn about alternative points of view:
If he was a normal president and with a functioning democracy, I doubt we would even be at the current situation. I saw the videos of Putin with his advisor (the Spy chief) and that was an exercise in “tell me what I want to hear.”
And I wouldn't be terribly surprised if most Russian voters will end up approving of the invasion provided Russian casualties and costs don't get too high.
US foreign policies have been a series of failures without any real consequence save for 9/11. No one is gonna sanction the US nor start a war with it.
Saudia Arabia attacking Houthis and Yemen seems like a clear illegal action. At least the ongoing attacks.
Chomsky's take is not bad: https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1495330478722850817
And this is why the offender is currently suffering under the heavy weight of sanctions having exterminated boatloads of people.
Oops. Sorry. Move along. Next.