Comment by throwawaymedia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaymedia | Hacker News Reader

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I support Mearsheimer's reasoning because there is a logic behind it. There are no scientists that would provide an opposite reasoning as logical as the Mearsheimer's one.

> CATO Institute is fucking dumb :)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> Do you believe it's right for a country to invade a neighbouring country in the 21st century?

I do not support wars. But you can't ask a question like that. It doesn't make sense.

War is a mechanism for dispute resolution. Yes, we, people, don't like such mechanisms. But such is the life. These mechanisms are used by the US all the time. The US shows the world that this mechanism can be used. So, the US can, but Russia can't? It doesn't even matter whether it's Russia or any other country.

In the case of Russian-Ukrainian war, the dispute that the war is trying to resolve comes from the expansion of NATO and military bases next to the Russian borders. No expansion -> no war.

> Do you believe it's right for a country to invade a neighbouring country in the 21st century?

It doesn't matter which century we are in. The society hasn't reached a state in which a fairly complex dispute can be resolved without a war. Right now there is no state in which war is an impossible option. To make it more clear, for example, we are in a state in which the humanity cannot travel with the speed of light. We are simply not there yet. When it comes to wars, we are in state in which a war is a possibility.

When Putin asked the US (early 2000s) why NATO is expanding, they just mumbled some bullshit in response. How can military bases across the world create peace? You can't create peace by throwing weapon around the world. There will always be someone who won't like it.

The US should've take Putin more seriously in the first place, but they kept belittling his requests to stop the expansion for 15+ years.

> I support Mearsheimer's reasoning because there is a logic behind it.

There was a logic behind Hegel. Marx believed it.

There was a logic behind Marx. Lenin believed it.

There was a logic behind Lenin. Both Stalin and Mao believed it.

There was a logic behind Schopenhauer. There was a logic behind Nietzsche. Hitler believed it.

If the 20th century taught us anything, it was to be extremely wary of fine-sounding philosophers with their arguments about "logical necessity" and "historical inevitability". Way too often it was a rationalization of evil, or at least it was used by evil men to put a veneer of "necessity" on their evil.

Mearsheimer's position may be pragmatic, but it is deeply morally nihilistic. Are you also? Can you even spell "wrong"?

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is wrong. Russia's missile attacks to destroy infrastructure are wrong. Russia's actions toward civilians in the territory they conquered are wrong.

Why is NATO expanding? It's really simple. Because nations on the periphery of Russia are terrified of Putin! They're terrified of Russia's "sphere of influence" being a "sphere of military operations". They've seen it too many times. Why did Sweden and Finland just decide to join NATO, after more than half a century of neutrality? Because they saw what Russia is doing in Ukraine, that's why! It wasn't because they were pushed into it by the US. They were pushed into it by Russia! They wanted a very clear sign that told Putin in no uncertain terms: "Don't try that here."

Your morals are leaving victims to their oppressors because "realpolitik". That's Quisling's morals, and Chamberlain's, and it's sickening.

> Why did Sweden and Finland just decide to join NATO, after more than half a century of neutrality?

It's a nitpick but one I believe just expands your point here, I live in Sweden and this country has been neutral and out of wars for more than 200 years. Putin has broken a 200 years stance on neutrality and forced Sweden, under a Social Democrat government nonetheless, to join NATO, something that was unthinkable and unsupported by the population barely a year ago.

And here, go watch this interview and check your morals against a literal mouthpiece of the Russian government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICDCWFHzlq0

If you see yourself agreeing to many of his points, I'm sorry for your soul.

Do yourself a favour and read "Fascism: A Warning" by Madeleine Albright. After that we can discuss how similar you are falling to Putinism as many other seemingly level-headed people fell for Mussolini, Hitler, Henlein and so many other fascists of the 1920s and 1930s. Seriously, just read this book and get back to me.

You don't believe in the values of democracy, you don't like wars but is supporting the side that's starting a war in name of Fascism and you don't even see it.

Do yourself a favour before you repeat history.

And once more you are a coward trying to evade a simple question: what ars your morals? What do you stand for? And I mean for, standing against stuff is an anti-model, it's meaningless as morality. So far you only showed to stand for the justification of Putin's flavour of Fascism, you're eating that and it's sad and enraging to watch.

Farewell.

I stand for truth and justice.

NATO is the threat. The US cannot simply lie about NATO's good intentions, because in Eastern Europe they are not.

It's unfortunate that Russia has to use "the war" mechanism to prevent the expansion. But such mechanisms are widely used across the globe.

If you stop the US, you'll stop the war.

If you stop US pouring my money into Ukraine, right that minute Ukraine will enter into negotiations with Russia.

There is no need to throw more gas into the fire.

>The US cannot simply lie about NATO's good intentions, because in Eastern Europe they are not.

NATO is a voluntary defense alliance, and countries from Eastern Europe want to join NATO due to the (don't even say it's only perceived, as history shows over and over again) risk of being invaded by Russia.

The US are not forcing countries to join NATO.

What do you think is not good about NATO's intentions from Eastern Europe's perspective, besides Russia not being able to invade their neighbors anymore?

If you stop Russia, you'll stop the war. They started it, they can also just put their tanks in reverse and get out.

This is a proxy war between the US and Russia. Nobody gives a shit about Ukraine. Why do you think the US is pouring money into this war like crazy? There was no threat from Russia before 2007. There were no events to push other countries to join NATO.

> Nobody gives a shit about Ukraine

The outpouring of support, and weapons would disagree with this statement.

> Why do you think the US is pouring money into this war like crazy?

The US gets to decimate an opponents military, damage there arms export industry and damage their economy for just surplus military gear.

The US is destroying Russias military for pennies on the dollar.

> There was no threat from Russia before 2007

Georgia and Moldova would disagree but okay.

> There were no events to push other countries to join NATO.

The wars involving Russia invading former USSR states would disagree.

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