We're seeing that most key global infrastructures for telecoms, internet, finance, etc. and pretty much all global tech companies are controlled by the USA and that they will weaponise everything against you as they see fit.
The logical conclusion is that, if you can, you should build your own alternatives, which is what China has been doing. Things are going to become more fragmented from now on.
There is also another alternative you forgot to add to the list that Russia could consider - don’t invade neighboring countries, don’t murder people. It seems to work fine for, I don’t know, let’s say Iceland - much smaller, much weaker country. Wonder why is that?
What's happening to Russia is because they are not the West and are acting against the West, not because "an actual aggression against another sovereign country using actual weapons", which something the West and allies routinely do as well (and with no less horrible consequences to populations but without any sanctions).
Russia was a mess, weak and poor for 20 of the last 30 years. All the West did during this time was invest and assist trying to integrate a former adversary into the world economy.
Over 2mil refugee exodus from Ukraine in a mere 2week span is the flood of lives, not the emotional narrative.
Any practical ideas to halting the still ongoing Russian effort to demolish Ukraine? Asking the Russian state to "just stop" does not seem to work for now.
So it's not used a force of good, just as a cudgel to maintain US hegemony.
But that doesn’t make me unable to judge other events on their merits. Two wrongs don’t make a right, false equivocation and all that.
It has nothing to do with the moral content of anything, really. It's clear that the main criterion for whether this happens or not isn't morality, it's just whether the US approves.
Jumping ahead, my guess would be you are talking about Saudis? Or would it be Israel?
Any single of these countries in the last 20 years have engaged in wars of aggression that have done more damage than Russia has and is likely to inflict on Ukraine, and thus deserve a similar magnitude of response.
Ethnic minority suppressed by majority. Declares independence. Fights back. The US/NATO intervenes with military force against targets in Serbia, offers a path for accession into EU and NATO.
Ukraine and Donbass(very bad):
Ethnic minority suppressed by majority. Declares independence. Fights back. The EAEU/CSTO intervenes with military force against targets in Ukraine, offers a path for accession to EAEU/CSTO.
I struggle to find the difference. How is Kosovo different from Donbass?
Slobodan Milošević was committing genocide against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, protecting them was the right thing to do. Nothing similar is happening in Donbas. In Donbas Putin funded rebellion and backed it with his soldiers to create the tension that existed prior to the invasion.
Very different situations in my opinion.
I guess the 3000 dead civilians just bombed themselves.
And the reason the area has many folks who identify with Russia is due to mass killing of Ukrainians in the area and sending Russian families to take their land: https://www.britannica.com/event/Holodomor
Keep in mind, the 3000 dead you claim are, best as we can tell, fabricated by Putin. Please look into it further before repeating it. Here's a good rundown of Donbas:
https://theconversation.com/putins-claims-that-ukraine-is-co...
It's impossible to have a rational conversation about this topic when data about civilian casualties provided by the UN[1] is framed as fabricated by Putin without providing even the smallest piece of evidence.
Also, the second article you linked to is arguing about the semantics of the word "genocide". If you want we can argue semantics, but even that seems quite difficult when since 2014 the neo-Nazi Azov battalion has been officially integrated into the Ukranian army. Of course, the article conveniently skips mentioning both the word "Azov" and "nazi".
[1] https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/Conflict-...
It isn't semantics to suggest terms should be used correctly. People dying because Putin's ruthless ambition is not the same as genocide. Attempting to eradicate a people is. That is not something Ukraine was doing in Donbas - they were protecting their own territory, and yes civilians die in combat. Again I point out, combat started by Russia.
Bringing this back to the earlier topic, this is different from Kosovo because Russia (Putin) are the ones causing the conflict and getting people killed. There was no ethnic cleansing that Putin stopped with his invasions into Ukraine.
Seeing as the US has funded opposition movements for years, sent military aid and trained neo-Nazi militias which took on a promiment role during the Maidan revolution, I don't see how it can be a problem that Russia interevenes to support ethnic-Russians in the region. This kind of double standard is mind boggling.
No, in those regions the will to stay Ukraine outnumbers the will to become a Russian vassal or part of Russia: https://www.iri.org/resources/ukraine-poll-majority-want-don...
Keep in mind, the only reason there are large Russian populations there are due to the USSR killing ethnic Ukrainians purposefully and sending Russians there to take their homes. Read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Beyond that, even if you take Putin's propaganda that eastern Ukraine wants to be part of Russia you must reconcile his statement that Lenin made a mistake allowing Ukraine to exist and the fact that he has invaded all of Ukraine and is trying to decapitate the government. He even has kill lists of Ukrainians to exterminate: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082096026/russia-kill-list-u...
From the IRI report:
> The sample consisted of 2,400 permanent residents of Ukraine aged 18 and older and eligible to vote, and is representative of the general population by gender, age, region and size of settlement. An additional 1,378 respondents were also surveyed in the Ukrainian-controlled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
So basically they only surveyed people from Ukraininan controlled areas and the result is they want to stay with Ukraine, what a surprise.
I understand the argument about the Holodomor, but the fact is that at the moment the majority of the population in those area are pro-Russian. If you look at history then, Crimea was historically Russian and only given to Ukraine in 1954 as part of a deal. According to your reasoning you must've been favorable to its annexation then, otherwise this is another example of applying double standards only when convenient.
In respect to Iran US has poor history as it relates to the Iranian Revolution, but with things as they currently are - do you believe Iran should be unopposed?
By the way, it’s not that I think people should ignore what happened 80 years ago, but at the same time I think it’s a long time, politics change and old conflicts are not as relevant as some like to argue. UK is not the colonial Britain, modern Germany and Japan are not the Axis of WW2.
Though Russia appears to be good ol’ scarecrow Russia, so I guess some things change and some stay the same…
And call me naive, but I am of the opinion that US of the last 30 years honestly tries to be on the right side of history and it’s not the hegemon real despots of the world try to paint it as.
And lastly Afghanistan - I mean you can argue with me I guess, but I think the 20 years and trillions spent can serve as an evidence that there US really tried to do something at least well intentioned.
I guess what I am trying to say that these days I hear a lot of “but look over there!” kind of argument, and they often even contain some truth to them, but I think they also contain a lot of differences that are overlooked to better serve the argument.
But even if they were exactly the same - you don’t justify an atrocity by pointing at another atrocity.
I brought up an example of three countries that have been similarly condemned and were not invading anybody.
Regarding The Iran comment. Why are you even thinking about a far-away country needing to be "opposed"? This is a very weird world police mindset to me. Do you think NATO shouldn't be opposed?
America spent 2 trillion on it's own military budget in Afghanistan. Half of which were interest payments. The US didn't spend trillions to sponsor Afghanistan's infrastructure.
The US occupied that country for 20 years and destroyed not only it's infrastructure but the fabric of that society as well as the mental well-being of several generations of Afganis. The toll is incalculable. How you spun 20 years to be evidence of benevolence, I'll never know. So I assume Russia occupying civilized Ukraine for the next two decades, despite violent, traumatic and desperate resistance will also be seen as benevolence?
In ~May 2020 when US and Colombian mercenaries sponsored by the CIA attacked the country in military speed boats near the capital Caracas with the aim of killing/capturing the President and linking with dissident groups inside Venezuela and do a coup
I mean to say that I am sure Maduro will claim that he foiled a CIA plot there, but I haven’t seen any evidence that US government has anything to do with that action.
Sorry, 60 of them. This is what wikipedia has to say about that:
“ Commentators and observers, including Guaidó officials who initially contacted Silvercorp, described the operation as amateurish, underfunded, poorly-planned, having little or no chance of success, and a suicide mission.”
Western propaganda?
I was honestly keeping an open mind to hearing some convincing evidence or even some mainstream reporting sources that this wasn’t a poorly put together private mercenary action.
that’s an open mind. wow.
I suppose just not open enough to accept the MSM is a government distribution pipeline of pre-approved thoughts for opinion shaping purposes.
Also, not everyone can build their own. Most of the world will continue to use the current one. Some other like Russia will use China’s one. Do you think China will be less aggressive than the US in weaponizing everything against you as they see fit? Russia will be a lesser partner to China. The dream of Russia Empire glory will still be a dream only.
This is such an American/Anglo point of view, who can only think in terms of empire, master/slave, etc.
As an American, it's clear we're making increasingly poor and erratic decisions because we simply refuse to understand that there isn't one universal culture (Western) that everyone should have, and if they don't, they're evil.
We've done a lot of feel-good things in response to Russia's military operation in Ukraine, but I don't think it works out well in the end. America is significantly weaker because of the actions we've already taken, and I'm confident we'll double down a few dozen more times before things stabilize again.
BRICS countries can sense the opportunity Russia's isolation by the West has given them.
No, this is a human point of view. China has been consistently engaged in this exact practice since before the idea of 'China' even really existed. Strong groups will ultimately culturally / economically / militarily subsume weaker ones. It's how families grow into tribes grow into federations grow into city-states grow into nations grow into empires. China well and truly understands how this works. Pretending that everyone on the continent is actually Han Chinese is practically the state religion, for good reason - it helps to expand the in-group and galvanize the tribe against the out-group for the purpose of perpetuating the above cycle.
It's fashionable to pretend that western imperialism is the only imperialism. It's only because the west is so good at cultural and economic imperialism (and rarely actual military imperialism) that people make this point. The west is generally successful at spreading it's values because people want to adopt those values. The same is not true of more autocratic systems.
The United States has 750 military bases outside the US.
One is an empire, the other…isn't.
P.s. Britain has 145 overseas military bases.
What? It's entirely military imperialism. It's what everything else built upon.
> The west is generally successful at spreading it's values because people want to adopt those values.
No. It's because we forcefeed foreign populations with propaganda.
> The same is not true of more autocratic systems.
Yes, the autocrats are more honest about it. We do it in a very insidious and sneaky way.
You are just repeating the "white man's burden" propaganda. The white man needs to christianize and civilize the world. Now, it's the white man needs to spread "western values". I guess african, muslim, chinese, indian, etc values don't matter. Africans, asians, native americans, aborigines, etc didn't want to adopt christianity. It was forced upon them. Just like "western values" will be forced upon them in due time unless the world free itself from western domination.
I agree with you that imperialism isn't a solely a western tradition. The arabs, persians, chinese, indians, etc all have dabbled in it. I'm against all of it. If it was arabs, chinese, persians, indians, etc doing what you are advocating, you'd call it genocide. But somehow you twist "genocide" as something these people want done to them by us.
Simply false. It's because the west was able to steal continents from native and aboriginal peoples and colonize indians, africans, etc. The west became rich before much of the west became a "liberal democracy".
> People like you are unable to believe this, and choose to misguide yourselves that it’s “military imperialism” or “propaganda”.
I'm from the wealthiest country in the world. I know how we became rich. Not sure where you are from and what "liberal democracy" has to do with anything. It wasn't "liberal democracy" which allowed us to expand from 13 states to 50 states. It wasn't "liberal democracy" that allowed Rockefeller to become the wealthiest man in the world via Standard Oil. Britain didn't become wealthy via liberal democracy. Neither did france and the rest of "the west".
> The Soviets had both of those things and what happened to them?
They lost the cold war. That's what happened. If you lose a war, you suffer. Applies just as much as to a liberal democracy as it does to a communist state.
Which country became wealthy from liberal democracy? Not a single one. Not taiwan, not south korea, not japan, not the US, not any country in europe. The trick is you become rich and then you can play around with liberal democracy. I used to believe the liberal democracy nonsense too. Then I started to think and like most propaganda, it turns out it is nonsense.
If you want somewhere to start, I can recommend the work of Daron Acemoglu.
I gave you historical and economic facts. All you have done is respond with childish ad hominems.
> and I think you’ll realise that distribution of power and decision making played an incredibly outsized role in the rise of the European continent and later the United States.
The british empire, french empire, etc became wealthy as monarchies. And the US became wealthy while 75% of the population weren't allowed to vote.
Unless you are saying the US, britain, france, etc became wealthy after ww2.
You say liberal democracy is why the west is rich. I proved to you its false. The US, britain, france, etc were all wealthy before liberal democracy. When facts disprove your premise, you don't attack the facts, you dismiss the premise. It's basic logic and reasoning.