That people can say that Ukraine is being manipulated by others into defending their country to the death makes no sense at all. The remaining claims are wife beater logic: Look what you made me do! Russia had to invade Ukraine because they wouldn't behave, because NATO wasn't cowed and showed no respect!
A necessary consequence of the logic of opposing interventionist US foreign policy is acknowledging that there will be no “Team America: World Police” to help countries like Ukraine in regional conflicts. There’s nothing ideologically inconsistent about it.
You can’t micro-focus on a single incident. Maybe we are doing the right thing by arming the Ukrainians. But maybe we’re not. We thought we were doing the right thing arming Afghan freedom fighters against the Soviet Union. Look how that turned out. The US was ready to oppose the independence of my home country, to support western-aligned Pakistan against Soviet-aligned India: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kissinger-nixon-tape-declass.... There is a long track record of global powers intervening in regional wars that we can evaluate to see if on the whole the policy is a good one.
I completely accept that opposing interventionist foreign policy in the case of Ukraine support is a valid stance for US citizens.
However, I hope that in this case the US continues to support Ukraine - we need it - as the price Ukraine has paid for Russia's truly barbaric aggression is already too high.
While given a particular set of moral values this may be a legitimate argument, it is strangely inconsistent with other comparable events. Virtually nobody on "the left" will ever claim that France and the UK should have not declared war on Germany when it invaded Poland so as to decrease suffering.
Going to a more local context, in my home country of Spain, many on the left hold a historical grudge against France and the UK for not coming to the support of the legitimate Spanish Republic in 1936 when a military/nationalist coup triggered what eventually became the Spanish Civil War and lead to Franco's far-right dictatorship. The USSR, in contrast, did come to the aid of the Republic for better or for worse. However, funnily enough, whenever I bring this point up with those who claim the West is "prolonging suffering" by supporting Ukraine, they never concede that France and UK's decision at the time would be consistent with their claimed non-interventionism, nor that the USSR prolonged suffering by supporting the eventually defeated Spanish Republic.
[0] I hate the oversimplification and forced dichotomy that results from talking about "the left" or "the right", hence the quotation marks.
For this I have the following possible explanations:
- They supported a war against Germany not for the protection of Poland but in order to topple the fascist government and stop the atrocities that were being committed.
- They supported an early war against Germany because they believe that the German government would keep going with their demands and that the war was inevitable.
- They are against the war but admitting it would be a social suicide.
- They don't have an opinion about it or just have not voiced an opinion about it. (as it is an event that happened decades ago instead of one that is happening at this moment)
"funnily enough, whenever I bring this point up with those who claim the West is "prolonging suffering" by supporting Ukraine, they never concede that France and UK's decision at the time would be consistent with their claimed non-interventionism, nor that the USSR prolonged suffering by supporting the eventually defeated Spanish Republic."
This is interesting. What is their usual counterargument? I Presume that they either don't have a consistent logic behind it or they believe that protecting Ukraine would not benefit the common people (or would benefit them marginally) in comparison to the Spanish civil war which in their mind supporting the republican side would benefit the common people enough to counterbalance the loss of lives.
> - They supported a war against Germany not for the protection of Poland but in order to topple the fascist government and stop the atrocities that were being committed.
What on Earth are you talking about? France and the UK did not come to Poland's help in September 1939 not due to an altruist aspiration to stop Nazi atrocities that had not yet begun, but due to a mere fact that neither country was ready for an all out war with a heavily industrialised Nazi war machine.
Nazis invaded Poland on the 1939-09-01, but the first ever death camp at Bełżec in Poland had not been built and had not become operational until March 1942 (Operation Reinhard) with more to follow over 1942-44. The truth about the nature and the scale of Nazi atrocities had not surfaced to Western Allies until 1943 which was well into the WWII, and when it did surface, the Western Allies at first refused to believe in reports due to the unfathomable and previously unseen scale of the atrocities.
According to the official Nazi racial doctrine, all Slavic peoples (Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Russians – all of the Slavs, indiscriminately) – with Poles specifically – were subject to a complete and indiscriminate extermination; from Himmler's speech on 1940-03-15 in Poznan:
Himmler spricht in Poznan vor den versammelten Kommandanten der Konzentrationslager. Eine seiner Aussagen: "Alle polnischen Facharbeiter werden in unserer Rüstungsindustrie eingesetzt. Später werden alle Polen aus dieser Welt verschwinden. Es ist erforderlich, dass das großdeutsche Volk die Vernichtung sämtlicher Polen als seine Hauptaufgabe versteht.".
The worst was yet to begin in 1942, not in 1939.
> > "What is their usual counterargument?"
One that stuck to my mind was, believe it or not, that an internal armed coup against a democratic government does carry the moral obligation of other democracies to intervene and defend it if said government requests it—which is not the case apparently when a democratic government requests support to defend itself from a neighbouring state which invades it without the slightest provocation. It's basically all post-hoc rationalisations of their emotional beliefs.
You can try to rationalize a distinction by saying in that case, the US failed to support the people seeking independence. But then you have to be in the business of deciding which people’s claim of independence is legitimate. Supporting the jihadists in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union didn’t exactly end up well. Intervention is always rationalized in the moment.
(Preemptively: you do not under any circumstances "gotta hand it to them", etc, etc).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_cabinet_crisis,_May_1940
WW2 could have been stopped before it started if Britain or France marched into Germany (ad they could have won at many points) at any time between 1933 and 1939.
So by arming Zelensky et al, maybe we are creating a monster (unlikely) but maybe we are stopping a much worse monster from starting WW3 (more likely).
First, when a country with nukes is involved in a conflict I think a good case can be made the "region" is the whole world if there is even a small chance nukes might be used.
Second, Russia, the US, China, and others have an agreement to not use military force against Ukraine (the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances). Russia is violating that agreement, which automatically makes it a conflict with the US and so not regional.
Many things in history and politics are dense. It's expected that people will disagree on these things.
But every so often something happens which is genuinely quite simple to understand. This Ukraine invasion allows you to discriminate between those who are still committed to reality and those who are not.
If you cannot understand that countries desire to join Nato (because they understand the Kremlin better than most Westerners); that ex-KGB Putin holding a candle once a year doesn't make him the grand protector of Christendom; that Russians are victims of this regime too; that this invasion was predicted by many (see Kasparov); etc etc... Then I really cannot take you serious anymore.
So it's possible to say he's anti-imperialist, but not sincerely so and be correct.
This opportunity has existed for some time. It’s clear to me at least where most Americans stand on this matter. I watched an In Depth with Chomsky on C-SPAN about a month back when in my opinion he summarized the position succinctly: America is willing to fight Russia and the invasion with every last Ukrainian.
It's the opposite of nuanced.
It's propaganda, and makes no sense - against barbaric Russian soldiers committing countless rapes and civilian executions... Ukraine would fight to the last Ukrainian even without any external support.
I think you can be an anti-imperialist and not have a strong preference for neither USA nor Russia controlling Ukraine.
And you can be against the war, and against imperialism and so naturally be against arming Ukraine to keep the war going and becoming even more vile and bloody.
Yes it does [1][2], the list is huge [3]. I don't know how you could possibly be this ignorant with the Internet existing.
1. https://github.com/binka/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism
3. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/how-many-...
I’m sure Central and South America are glad to know now.
Self-determination and agency is only available to those who have the means to fight for it. Ukraine has none, it has whatever the nations providing 10s of billions in military aid allow it to have.
Wishing for a fair world does not make it so.
> Self-determination and agency is only available to those who have the means to fight for it. Ukraine has none, it has whatever the nations providing 10s of billions in military aid allow it to have.
Self-determination and agency is available to those who have the will to fight for it. Clearly they do have the means to fight for it based on their ability to secure vast military support from the west.
Oh okay, it's just a coincidence that almost always get what they want and when they don't there's just coincidentally disaster.
Fascinating claim about a country that has been successfully resisting a Russian invasion for 3 months with predominantly locally-produced (and upgraded) weapons.
Nevertheless, if we steelman your argument and agree that Ukraine can never be truly self-determined and that it must choose between US or Russia, then not choosing a country that has done to Ukraine what the Russian Federation has been doing at least since 2003[1] seems favorable.
There's also the matter of centuries worth of historic memory of repression and subjugation, tortures, rapes, murders, man-made famines, forced mass deportations, etc. perpetrated by Russian autocrats and dictators. And now, quite alarmingly, we are seeing Stalinist-style atrocities being committed in 2022[2,3]. With this in mind, falling under Russian occupation is the worst case scenario for Ukraine and Ukrainians.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Tuzla_Island_conflict 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_filtration_camps 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre
This isn't even close to true... Where have you been?
Perhaps there is more nuance than “controlled by the USA vs controlled by Russia - equally bad?”
And then USA's actions in Ukraine seems a lot like their Middle Eastern or South American policies. Which I doubt is in the interest of the vast majority of Ukrainians.
this is a bold claim to make without any tangible evidence to support it. Especially as it contradicts your very next statement about not having "a strong preference for neither USA nor Russia controlling Ukraine". It seems like you are claiming that Ukraine has no agency and autonomy in this situation or that the country is only allowed to resist with the armaments it has? Care to elaborate?
As for the war becoming "even more vile and bloody": do you believe Ukraine should just give up so that the Russians could be able to indiscriminately torture, rape, murder and disappear countless citizens of Ukraine, as they have been doing for centuries in the region? Again, Ukraine used its own armaments to resists and Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and other bloody and vile atrocities still happened.
Everything for the victory, I guess?
> US Congress quietly enables funding for Ukrainian neo-Nazi-led Azov Regiment
> David Levine
> 1 February 2016
> The 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act, signed into law by US President Barack Obama late last year, did not include a previously expected ban against the funding of the Azov Regiment, a military organization that originated as a volunteer militia in May 2014 and was subsequently incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine.
> The Azov Regiment is notorious for the openly white supremacist and anti-Semitic views of its members, and its use of the Wolfsangel, a swastika-like symbol once used by certain divisions of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, as well as its leading role in the Battle of Mariupol in May-June 2014. The regiment’s leader is Andriy Biletsky, a current member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) and also leader of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly. In a characteristic statement, Biletsky was quoted by the UK Telegraph last August as stating, “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
I'm waiting for your explanations.
There's also a significant % of the so-called "left" which has inherited from the dark and vile Stalinist past some sort of bizarre Russophilism. A kind of binary thinking that divides the world into "imperialist western bloc" and "anti-imperialist bloc" [that somehow Russia and even Iran and Assad's Syria are a part of]. Idiots like George Galloway are parroting lines like this.
Chomsky is literally an anarchist who opposes the existence of all states.
Ukraine is just another Iraq or Afghanistan because of similar incompetent and selfish leadership who care more about politics than the suffering of their fellow citizens.
I have no doubt that by the time the conflict ends, US and Russia would have balkanised Ukraine, and the war will turn into a stalemate prolonged low-intensity conflict with proxy battles between the superpowers in this region. Both Russia and US want to prolong the battle, as it is in their interest to do so, and the incompetent Ukranian leadership is totally blind to this.
I think he needs weapons but he has no money, so he is running the biggest tv donation marathon ever.
Also the "snubbing another", i.e. Russia is quite the victim-blaming. Ukraine snubs Russia, which it has the right to do, therefore Russia is allowed to invade?
Also Iraq and Afghanistan were attacked by the US, which according to your words means the leadership there should have just surrendered to the imperialist USA instead, instead of caring about "politics".
Yes, it is, obviously! India was once the wealthiest country in the world. It was then conquered by the British who ruled over them for 300+ years to become one of the poorest country in the world by the time the British left. Why? Weak, incompetent leadership that lacked vision. Incompetent politicians ignorantly or deliberately create suffering for their country. This war happened because of the political incompetence of the current Ukrainian leadership, and perhaps even because of their own selfish ambition to cement their political positions.
> ... and they should just surrender to Russia's interests, which would somehow would end the suffering?
Temporarily, if need be. But don't consider it as a surrender but a strategic retreat. International pressure against Russia can be diplomatically used to soften some of the demands they make, but yes, Ukraine will have to yield more. And whether the suffering ends really depends on the kind of leadership Ukraine's politician are capable of. Right now, Russia is winning the war (it is clear that they are not looking to occupy all of Ukraine and are willing to carve up the country in the long term. They are selectively targeting and occupying areas of Ukraine they consider necessary to protect its strategic interest, in case whatever remains of Ukraine after the war does manage to join NATO in the distant future).
> Ukraine snubs Russia, which it has the right to do, therefore Russia is allowed to invade?
It's the reality of the world order the super-powers have created for themselves. Yes, it is unfair.
As for Iraq or Afghanistan, the point was that they caught the interest of the superpowers, but their political leadership was politically incompetent to deal with them appropriately and couldn't protect their own country's interest. Leaders of both nation snubbed the superpowers. And look at them now. That's what the Americans and Russians will do to Ukraine too, unless Ukrainian politicians understand and accept the reality of their own standing in the world order.
You've predicted 2014.
The left is basically parroting the exact same language the right did for all its foreign interventions.
The left is basically parroting the exact same language
the right did for all its foreign interventions.
GWB's invasion of Iraq was America breaking international law. I was against that.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is Russia breaking international law. I am against that.
I am for whatever strategy (military aid? diplomacy? alliances?) most effectively addresses the Ukraine invasion and limits future illegal invasions. Nobody can know yet which strategy would be best, but it's not hypocrisy to be open to military aid, etc. I want to live in a world where leaders obey the rules.
And I’m not sure I understand the jump from “i oppose X” to “the US must get involved with X”.
Noam Chomsky is critical of Russia’s invasion, just like you.
But doing “something” is an entirely separate decision. People seem to be operating with the default of “if there is a problem, the US has an obligation to fix it”
It’s that mentality that has gotten us into so much trouble over the past 60-70 years.
My opinion is the default is “we do nothing”, and anything more needs justification and a careful analysis to ensure we don’t make things worse (which has been the outcome of almost every intervention since WW2).
One bad thing about GWB's wars is that the global community failed to prevent or meaningfully punish them. That precedent increases world-wide recklessness and paranoia.
I worry that if the outcome of the Ukraine is not a spectacular failure for Russia, the world will continue backsliding (I bet there are Chinese generals rallying already to take Taiwan)
What faith remains in the rule of law internationally is important to preserve. Eg: if the Hague had managed to imprison Cheney et al, would Russia today dare to invade neighbors?
My worries there are why I am open to escalation, though, like you, I fear it could escalate up to some kind of extinction event :(