Reply to all those saying this is not whataboutism: The question as posed has no value and is meant only to obscure the issue at hand.
Here are some critical questions that would have been worth asking:
- Russia has a legitimate gripe against NATO expansion. Why aren't you citizens of Western democracies doing something to keep your governments from expanding?
- Sanctions will hurt average Russians that have no voice in their government. How do you citizens of sanctioning countries justify this?
- US arms makers will make a fortune off of this conflict. Give me one good reason not to tax the revenues at a 100% windfall profit rate.
Dropping the intellectual equivalent of "No, you!" is just lazy.
>Russia has a legitimate gripe against NATO expansion.
The successor to the occupying CCCP, that did wildly shady stuff all over the Caucasus, invaded Georgia, supported a rebellion in Donbas, annexed Crimea and invaded a corrupt but nonetheless somewhat democratic Ukraine using GRAD strikes against cities has a legitimate gripe over countries WILLINGLY joining a defensive pact.
Don't get me wrong, NATOs involvement in MENA was/is pointless and counterproductive, even criminal, but it's a voluntary alliance.
I will always support self-determination. Ukraine was obviously justified in wanting to join BUT you cannot expect a country that counts casualties in the millions every time it gets invaded to not get its hackles up about a nuclear armed alliance specifically aimed at containing it expanding up to its doorstep.
I look forward to seeing Putin on trial in the Hague, but if you're not willing to do a hard-headed logical analysis of the situation then you're doomed to watch history repeat itself in an endless cycle.
NATO started out bordering Russia, it hasn't “expanded up to it's doorstep”. Get a map and a list of the original NATO countries.
EDIT: Anyone interested in this topic, search YouTube for Norther European Plain. There are quite a few good videos.
If you meant neutralized in the military sense (combat ineffective) I agree.
If you meant politically (seeing as you wrote 'friendly' for Belarus): Ah yes, when I get kicked in the teeth I tend to be quite neutral about it afterwards.
His overt claim that Ukraine naturally belongs to Russia I his war announcement speech and the premature, quickly deleted victory announcement from state media announcing that the victory in Ukraine was to be follows by a new pan-Russian union between Belarus, Greater Russia (a historic term for Russia proper) and Lesser Russia (a historic term for Ukraine) suggest that “neutralized” is not the goal.
> They already succeeded temporarily once with the Warsaw Pact.
None of the Warsaw Pact members (especially not Ukraine, which was a republic of the USSR) were neutralized, or even merely friendly, they were Soviet-dominated states that would be invaded of they strayed from the Soviet line too far.
Yes, establishing the borders the metropolitan state had and the control of the peripheral states it exercises under the Warsaw Pact might be what Putin wants, but that goes far beyond “neutralized Ukraine” and threatens a number of current NATO members.
IIRC Romania is in NATO, Moldavia isn't. So invading Moldavia too would just, by eliminating a bit of border with a neutral country, give him an even longer border with NATO. Thus even more putting the lie to his alleged "Must avoid NATO countries on my border!" motivation.
OTOH, if Moldavia is already in, then AFAICR from its shape on the map the length of the Russia / NATO border would hardly change at all (because Moldavia's western and eastern borders are about equally long), so neither would the "calculus".
Why; is there anything wrong with it?
[P.S:] Oh, and it wasn't my "calculus" originally; it was @usrusr's. At least if I understood them correctly.
Bringing up some other terrible thing for comparison does not change in any way whatsoever the severity of what is happening in Ukraine. Whataboutism propaganda is designed to muddy the waters around that indisputable fact.
People are reacting appropriately given the situation.
NameCheap operate an office in Kharkiv, a city which currently finds itself under Russian rocket attacks and indiscriminate shelling with cluster bombs, and you create an account to criticise the company for stopping operations in Russia and then imply people are overly emotional and foolish about this issue?
If I operated a business which had staff and operated in Kharkiv I would do exactly the same thing.
That's not what you're doing. Whataboutism is a method of _stopping_ interrogation via deflection and redirection.
I think a lot of people that engage in whataboutism do actually think they're trying to start a discussion or analyze the situation more deeply. They just fail to see what their actually doing due to not being particularly skilled analysts (trying to be nice here...).
> he basically did nothing.
Unwarranted assumption
So what tool can we use to make you see that your whataboutism propaganda is shit? So far you haven't seemed able to get that, so any tips would be welcomed.
Not all Russian companies wanted the war, not all companies are complacent, and they only financed it by contributing to the GDP of the country.
Is it fair to sanction them? No. Should we do it if it helps destabilizing Putin? Yes, absolutely, even more than we are doing now.
As someone who was from a country where sanctions were supposed to destabilize our leader, it doesn't work, never did, never will. In the tough times people rally behind their leaders, just look at Zelensky or Boris Johnson right now.
Did you rally behind your leader because of sanctions?
More importantly, what would you suggest, given your previous experience? Start an actual war to depose the leader (not always turning out great, and I'm assuming your country wasn't a nuclear superpower)? Leave everything as it is, let the leader invade neighbors with no repercussions?
>Start an actual war to depose the leader (not always turning out great, and I'm assuming your country wasn't a nuclear superpower)? Leave everything as it is, let the leader invade neighbors with no repercussions?
I don't know, I am not a world leader but I know that those sanctions are not going to have the intended consequences, just about the opposite.
If I had to say something, I would recommend to let them battle em out, with substantial military aid to Ukraine. Throwing out common Russian people from universities and jobs across Europe is just going to feed a siege mentality and its plainly speaking, racist.
where is this happening? who is advocating this?
Look at what happened to Ceaușescu... Putin risks to end up like him.
Tell me, if Google banned you from all their services because you only lived somewhere and you were a "soft liberal", would you support Google in their decision or would you dig in and go the other way? Or in more simpler terms, take football fans, are they hungry at their ultras when they get fined for something or are they angry at UEFA?
All Europe is doing by these discrimination measures is creating a siege mentality among Russian citizens.
These sanctions and moves spread an unambiguous and clear message which can’t be blocked by state news channels which is “no matter what your government says, nobody supports you”.
>“no matter what your government says, nobody supports you”
Exactly my point, people at this point flock toward their country not against it. They develop this "so fuck 'em" mentality which would just enable wars to go on.
But in any case, the whole point is that sanctions are unfair, as they will hit plenty of people that are not involved in the war in any way and do not support it. "We" use them because "we" believe that they work (I hope so, but you might be right of course, I'm no expert), not out of spite for a whole population.
>not out of spite for a whole population
You may see it that way, but you and average Russian were consuming different media up to this point, and if we admit or not, media has an enormous influence on our worldview.
It’s not a wild stretch to say that the whole thing was financed through selling gas and oil to the West.
Google and Apple removed Russian opposition apps from their app stores and Facebook censored groups that they used to coordinate because, you know, “we have to comply with the laws of the country we operate in”. They also pay taxes in Russia.
Are you trying to hold Russian IT companies to a higher standard than SV giants?..
Energy prices may soar soon for Western consumers and companies. BP and Shell may need to write off multi-billion-valued stakes in Russian gas companies. Air travel routes between Europe and Asia may be about to get a lot crappier. So there are many ways that companies and individuals outside Russia will also be paying a price to put the squeeze on Putin and his military in response to what they've done.
It really isn't. It's a short of counterfactual and it's actually quite useful in checking if you are morally/intellectually consistent. This strategy even has a name (some Bostrom thing that I can't remember right now).
When evidence fly in the face of a narrative, whataboutism isn't a defense. Whataboutism would be if they said it's fine for Putin to commit atrocities in Ukraine because the US commits atrocities in various countries. That's not what was pointed out. It was pointed out that the narrative doesn't follow past precedent.
Interestingly, the political party in the US which most favors Putin - the GOP - is also the most comfortable with the US committing atrocities on foreign soil (and at home TBH). Not a coincidence if you ask me. Looks like there can be messed up people in more than one country!
You claim “this isn’t about the human suffering caused by Russia”. You sure about that? I think most people feel like a primary issue with invading another country is the amount of human suffering it causes.
Oh people most definitely do, an I am sure you and I both do. But clearly the countries imposing sanctions, almost every single one of which engaged in a bloody war of agression in the recent past, don't. Actions speak louder than words. >
But sure, US citizens might not have had much say in whether the US invaded Iraq. That doesn’t mean that sanctions wouldn’t have created political pressure which could in turn have made an invasion less appealing to the neocons in power at that time. So while I’m sorry to see average Russians (or at least those opposed to the war) suffer as a result of these sanctions, I can also acknowledge that sanctions may actually put pressure on Putin to de-escalate this conflict, and also warn him of the consequences of future aggression. It’s possible Putin will ignore these sanctions, but doing so risks improving the position of his opponents within Russia.
The Russian aggression case is much clear cut, but it may not look like it is clear cut if you live inside a different information bubble (especially if you want to believe that your country did nothing wrong, or that it's just "an internal matter", or that "we don't want foreign missiles at our doorstep; the USA wouldn't want Russian missiles at cube why should we accept <insert threat>".
What we're learning in this day and age is that information poisoning cannot be cured by just throwing more information.
I mean, should we not be imposing economic sanctions on Iran and NK? Sure, they hurt ordinary citizens, but they’re still a strong bargaining chip.
I’d argue that a large number of ordinary citizens would be brainwashed with or without sanctions because of the degree to which dictators like Putin have subverted the media.
And the point is that you got this information from the ruling class who were for those wars. Or their allies abroad.
And as for Ukrainan democracy, from the Freedom house report in 2019 it sits between Burkina Faso and the Philippines.
That's just a somewhat deniable -- i.e. more chickenshit -- way of saying the exact same thing.
Ergo: Yes, it's whataboutism.
There is absolutely no justification what Putin (NOT "the Russians" mind you) is doing right now.
But to answer your question: yes, I do feel that about US companies as well, and I have avoided them (or services offered by them) where ever possible in the last two decades. But sadly it's way easier to avoid Russian services, than US services.