Yes, we'd all prefer peace and leaving each other alone, but if some other nation comes to kill your countrymen and replace your democracy with a puppet, suddenly just relying on pacifist ideals doesn't work well anymore.
Most of the time, these commenters don't want to engage with reality as it currently exists. If you ask them what exactly you're supposed to do without a war machine if some other guy invades, they just have the silliest deflections and hand waving. Ultimately, they just want to say "war bad" from atop their high horse, as if other people didn't believe that war was, in fact, bad.
Ukraine is an obvious example. Ukraine wasn't doing anything to Russia other than choosing to gradually move culturally towards the West, which is their right. Before the big invasion in 2022, there were repeated attempts by Ukraine or by Western countries to try and forestall Russia's invasion by opening up negotiations and talking things out, and Putin didn't give a shit.
Diplomacy didn't work there. What would've worked? Having a stronger military, or even better, being allied with other strong militaries. Putin doesn't invade the Baltics for a reason.
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"They actually hoped until nearly the last moment that they could press us into signing this agreement, adopting neutrality. That was their biggest priority. They were willing to end the war if we took on neutrality, like Finland once did, and gave assurances that we wouldn’t join NATO. That was essentially the main point. Everything else was cosmetic and political embellishments about ‘denazification,’ the Russian-speaking population, blah blah blah"
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He goes on to elaborate that the main reason they didn't agree to such is because (1) they didn't trust Russia and (2) Boris Johnson told them they should "just fight." And maybe Russia would have "really" invaded with the sort of logic you put forth in your post later on, but that was clearly not their goal in this invasion. Not joining NATO is hardly some Hitler level appeasement as our propaganda spins it.
Russia was paranoid about NATO, which has gradually been working to surround it with nuclear weapons, having a base setup in Ukraine which has a geographically clear path straight into Russia's heartland. And I don't find such paranoia particularly unreasonable. Countries that strongly turn against America tend to find death and destruction at their doorstep soon enough.
And none of this is to justify Russia's invasion, nor condemn Ukraine's decision to fight. Rather I emphasize that we live in a world that's a million shades of gray, even if propaganda from one side or the other invariably frame it as the clearest thing ever. And enough people will believe such unquestionably, ensuring war will be with us til our final days.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davyd_Arakhamia
[1] - https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/11/28/we-had-to-buy-time
The point remains is that this war was a choice. They could fight now, or not. Ukraine could have, instead, spent the next 5 years setting up an unprecedented series of defense in depth series of barriers around the border, akin to what Russia did when preparing for the Ukrainian counter-attack. This was not an obligatory war for self existence, but a choice - a choice made at the urging of the West.
Ultimately I think the complete catastrophe this war has turned into is largely due to multiple miscalculations. Russia obviously thought they were 'ambushing' Ukraine and would be easily able to impose their demands. And the US/UK, in turn, thought they were 'ambushing' Russia and would be easily able to impose their demands. There's some extreme parallels with WW1, where I think everybody thought they were going to be able to go in and just finish the job pretty cleanly. If those nations could have seen out outcome they were signing up for (win or lose), WW1 would have never happened. And I think the same is true here.
So that leads me to wonder then, what is the future that we're signing up for now 5 years or another decade down the line? Does what sound good today, instead lead to regrets tomorrow? And that consideration is what drives my views, today.
5 weeks. Typical Russian tactics is to invade, then call for peace, then reinforce area, perform ethnical cleansing, solve problem with logistic, then blame other side for something and invade again.
> Ukraine could have, instead, spent the next 5 years setting up an unprecedented series of defense in depth series of barriers around the border
We spent 5 years preparing our defenses, spending 5% of GPD on that, BUT huge border with RF (1974 km) and Belarus + shore (1500 km) are not easy or cheap to reinforce. Ukraine has the largest border in Europe between two countries.
> This was not an obligatory war for self existence, but a choice - a choice made at the urging of the West.
LOL
Because they live in fear, they cannot afford being trustworthy. And because they are not trustworthy, Russia's neighbors seek protection from other powers. Which in turn fuels the fears of Russian leadership.
Russia could break the cycle by stopping to be afraid. They could find role models in Europe. Germany, France, and the UK are all former major powers that started behaving like normal countries. With varying degrees of success.
But if you accept this then it becomes clear that trust is impossible. You have a power that wants to overthrow you surrounding you with military bases and pointing countless nuclear weapons at you. That, by the way, is also not necessary to maintain mutually assured destruction type deterrence. But it is necessary if you want to consider a rapid first-strike complete annihilation type attack, hitting them before they can return fire.
Of course, vice versa, imagine the US disarmed. They'd be invaded by like 80% of the world within a fortnight. Unfortunately I think the cycle is unbreakable. I don't think there's anybody that actually likes war, but it's been with us since the advent of civilization, and I expect it to remain with us til the end of civilization.
The US is protected from 95% of the world by being conveniently located behind two oceans and having two friendly neighbours.
And again, the US cant even be bothered to kill off Russia by supplying some insignificant amount of aid and you think that there would be boots on the ground?
In truth, absolutely nobody is interested in invading Russia, perhaps China notwithstanding as it is also authoritarian and carries some bad blood from Russia annexing its territory back in the day. Western countries have no such interest and likely would outright reject any suggestions of returning the lands Soviet Union stole within Europe.
Russia would still of course not survive in its current form without military, but that's because it's a colonial empire that would quickly break apart if given a chance.
We in the western world tend to see such conflicts like a game/puzzle where there is always a winning door that leads to happiness for all participants. Since there are only two choices and the current situation is bad, Ukraine must have made the wrong choice and we would be living happily ever after, if they only had agreed to a deal.
Needless to say that Putin loves to play on this mindset by saying all the things all the time. There will always be many groups in the west that will pick out quotes to bolster their favorite narrative and ignore the rest.
Sorry, I find it unlikely that even you believe this line of reasoning.
Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. It is delusional to think that Russia is remotely at risk for a Iraq/Libya/Yugoslavia type situation.
Russia might not like its neighbors joining NATO, but maybe they wouldn't feel the need if being Russia's neighbor didn't suck so much?
In any case, Russia's actions in the last decade culminating with February 2022 have essentially convinced all post-1989 NATO inductees that it was the right move.
There's also simply misreading other leaders' intentions. If the US does not believe that Putin would respond to a conventional attack with nuclear weapons, then that also dramatically increases the chances of such an attack. And in fact one could argue that we're currently trying to probe how Russia would respond to slowly escalating types of provocations.
There's also the future. As we enter into a multipolar world it's possible the dollar could collapse, which could create unimaginable chaos. Russia could have some degree of turmoil once Putin permanently leaves office, which could be seen as an opportunity for the US. We might even develop a means of completely mitigating nuclear weapons, and so on. And so Russia is going to be looking at scenarios probabilistically. You're absolutely right the chances of the US trying to directly invade are extremely low, but they are also nowhere near 0. And that's in the current state. Who knows what the future holds? And once a country is right there, in NATO, it's there 'forever'.
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Like try to take yourself back to WW1. Tensions were of course very high, but try to imagine what you'd think would happen if a Bosnian Serb (with secret state backing) assassinated an Austro-Hungarian royal. Would you expect to see Brits killing Germans over it, and tens of millions of people being killed? It just seems like a highly improbable outcome, to say the least. And in fact we could be living in a timeline where some 0.00001% probability event played out, and has completely shaped our world ever since. Such things can, and will, continue to happen - history makes this clear.
All that feigned "paranoia about NATO" talk is trivially invalidated by the fact that Finland joined NATO, it was obvious that Finland would join NATO no matter the outcome of the Ukraine invasion, and it's obvious that Putin understood this. The only threat NATO poses is to Russia's ability to re-colonize its neighbours.
Ukraine is fighting a bloody attrition land war in Russia. They are currently losing and will likely fair worse as time goes on.
Mind you Ukraine could have prevented all of this if they had decided not to break the Minsk agreement which would have ended the conflict in Donbas. Instead the US and EU used it to buy for time so they could further arm Ukraine for war with Russia.
This conflict has been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Ukraine. Entire generation of youth killed or crippled. Millions fled the country and may never return.
Whatever comes after the if, unless it's "surrender sovereignty unconditionally", it's wrong. Putin's goal was, and is now, to incorporate Ukraine into his empire as a client state, similar to Belarus. And eventually to take even that decorative residual bit of sovereignty. Of course at this point, taking over Ukraine will mean mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people and an erasure of Ukrainian identity and language.
Just want you to be clear about what outcome you're defending.
https://www.mearsheimer.com/public_talks/why-is-ukraine-the-...
Andrei Kozyrev, the minister of foreign affairs of the Russian Federation (1990-1996), had this to say about the purpose of the club and people like Mearsheimer:
I ask Kozyrev about a debate that has roiled the American foreign policy establishment in the leadup to this war. Did NATO go too far? On the contrary, he thinks it didn’t go far enough.
“One thing among many I admire about the American character is your ability to look into what you did and to be very, very critical of your mistakes,” Kozyrev says, in what I’m right to assume is a slightly philosophical preliminary to an incoming polemic. “Like when Congress unanimously passed a ban on any kind of lynching. It’s a little late, but it’s important because it’s a form of national repentance. That’s what Russia doesn’t do. Russia doesn’t repent. It hasn’t really for Stalinism or for cutting a deal with Hitler. Instead, it blames Ukraine for Nazism, which is ridiculous.”
As to the pundits and policy mandarins who think the West sleepwalked into this crisis, which now threatens to bleed out beyond the borders of Russia and Belarus and Ukraine, Kozyrev thinks that’s simply nonsense. “Unfortunately, there are many wishful thinkers especially in academia here and intellectuals who have ties to Russia. They go to Valdai [a Russian think tank forum]. They consume caviar and vodka and are treated like kings by those who exist solely to manipulate them. This argument about NATO is just propaganda fed to Americans who then regurgitate it in their opinion and journal essays. The only real analysts who come here from Russia are dissidents. The rest are front people, just like in the Soviet Union, and they manufacture Western champions of the Putin regime, chumps and useful idiots.”
His longer account of Russia-NATO relations is also quite a bit different from how Russian lapdogs try to depict the history in 2024: https://transatlanticrelations.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/0...
But Ukraine's und USA's way to deal with the revanchists (full confrontation) was reckless and stupid.
Locations and dates, please.
https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/f/b/469734.pdf
"Out of the total 946 civilian casualties confirmed by the Mission, shelling and fire from small arms and light weapons (SALW) accounted for 625 casualties (77 killed and 548 injured). More than 85 per cent of these casualties occurred in Donetsk region."
It is a political question of how to deal with Russia's claims to power in Ukraine or the Caucasus. Georgia was smarter in my opinion. Ukrainian nationalists and their neoconservative supporters from the USA were less wise.
There should be a political discussion.
https://www.rnd.de/politik/krieg-in-der-ukraine-botschafter-...
The situations are not really comparable, given that Russia's designs on Ukraine are very different. Categorically different in fact.
Perhaps in the years 2014-2022 they were somewhat comparable (when Russia was more or less trying to keep Ukraine in an extended "punishment box"). But definitely not since.