The west needs to wake up, we're slowly sliding towards a world conflict. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
Edit: Russia is pushing westward not eastward!
Is there any examples in history of appeasement leading to less bloodshed?
I'm proposing we wake up and start doing the same, planning and drawing "do not cross" lines in the sand to hopefully limit the total/final scope of the conflict.
Yes this will force an earlier confrontation -- but WWII would have been a lot less bloody if Europe had stood up to Hitler earlier -- problem was everyone thought that appeasing him would make things better.
It's clear both Russia and China can't be appeased at this point. Both need to be checked.
The irony here is unreal. Yes, drawing red lines is a good way to avoid runaway escalation, if only world powers are willing to honor them.
Europe still prides itself for having female ministers of defense in every major country (who remembers them? We give the job to women when we just need to maintain things; Men traditionally seize the head-of-war position by force when someone wants to get things done, the position of Minister of Defense is figurative and should not exist) and feminist warfare (=give priority to women in war). Europe also prides itself for its glorious occupation by … ahem… by the thing I’m not allowed to talk about because we’re under occupation. Our kids get smashed at school, that’s for sure, under the eye if teachers who forbid them from responding with force.
If I were Russia, I’d pay all the leaflets and papers on which the “Vivrensemble with enemey people” posters are printed. We’re vegans, we’re trans, we’re using non-violent communication, we’re in discord on our soil, we destroy every trait of masculinity during education: We’re incapable of war, and we’re incapable of being a threat to Russia.
For as long as I’ve been hearing Macron’s minister say we’re “doing a total economic war” with Russia (literal words), for as long as I hear the West is winning and Russia is on its knees, I see that every battle is one step closer inside Europe.
We’re losing.
> We’re vegans, we’re trans, we’re using non-violent communication, we’re in discord on our soil, we destroy every trait of masculinity during education
Remind me what exactly do these have to do with Russian aggression again?
Going by your post, French men are so masculine that their masculinity feels threatened by pretty much everything.
Xi might go, but that party isn't going anywhere.
Lol
Geographically probably not, but politically the Chinese Communist party already covers a very broad spectrum with Xi and others currently at the top being the most insular, paranoid, and economically impractical of all the various factions. A "fix" to the situation is unlikely, but changes that yield improvements are all but inevitable at this point.
Painting a great picture of party unity - and national unity - is a key propaganda goal of the CCP, so if that's what you see then they are succeeding. In practice, the party has almost 100 million members so naturally it is composed of people with many different points of view, although those differences are rarely expressed openly and they're all still shaped by the overall political and educational environment of the PRC.
It's generally accepted that Xi Jinping has used his anti-corruption drive to wipe out rival factions, and one unlikely conspiracy theory is that he somehow orchestrated Bo Xilai's fall from grace in 2012 so he could take control of the party. The whole thing could provide material for stacks of palace intrigue thrillers... and in fact it did, which resulted in the Causeway Bay Books disappearances of 2015. Gotta control that narrative, after all.
If you're interested in the propaganda side, I recommend reading China Media Project: https://chinamediaproject.org/ If you just want to know about the party maneuvering, all the usual thinktanks (CSIS, Brookings, CFR etc) publish a ton of English language content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_clique
I am not a historian, but I have always found diversity of thought inside large political bodies: Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Jimintou, etc. Surely if you have a large political party where you are from, you have also seen that they have factions as well?
We overthrew communists in 1991, USSR crumbled, in 1992 Pentagon declared that America's "first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival" [0] and 17 years later NATO, after multiple rounds of expansion, announced that it would expand into Georgia and the Ukraine [1] despite all the promises given by Western leaders [2].
The trust between Russia and the collective West will not be rebuild for a very long time.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/excerpts-from-penta...
[1] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm
[2] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...
This gets repeated a lot, but who on the Russian side has ever confirmed it? Many people from that time are still around. Both the USSR's last minister of foreign affairs (1985-1990) and the first Russian minister of foreign affairs (1990-1996) have called that bullshit, with the latter adding in a recent interview that people believing this are "chumps and useful idiots"[1].
[1] https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/russias-ex-foreign-ministe...
I gave a link to the documents, not to hersay.
"who on the Russian side has ever confirmed it"
You mean apart from 'nationalists', 'hardliners' and 'communists'?
It's a speculation that has been categorically refuted by the very persons it mentions.
> You mean apart from 'nationalists', 'hardliners' and 'communists'?
Apart from people like Putin, who at the time was nowhere near the foreign policy circles, but served as an enforcer for St Petersburg's mayor, collecting protection money and bribes from businesses.
While the West failed to seize the opportunity and some diplomatic mistakes were made on both sides, the United States and NATO were on the right side of history by admitting new democracies to the Alliance and being willing to find an accommodation with Russia. It was Moscow that returned to its antagonism toward NATO, which has been intensifying ever since. Yeltsin’s chosen successor president, Vladimir Putin, tried to hinder the West with a charm offensive in the early years of the 21 century and even hinted that Russia might join NATO. In the meantime, domestic anti-American and anti-NATO propaganda has continued to gain momentum. Today the Kremlin has left little doubt about its attitude toward the Alliance in words and in deeds.
NATO remains the main power to safeguard the liberal world order. It is under attack from autocratic, populist and extremist forces who claim that the organization is outdated. The Kremlin’s champs and chumps in the West portray NATO as a bloc promoting American hegemony, expanding to the East and cornering Russia. It is reassuring however, that the U.S. Congress continues to display firm bipartisan support for NATO.
The prospects of a new opening in Russian–NATO relations will depend on the resilience and firmness of the Alliance and on deep changes in Moscow’s domestic and foreign policy. I believe that sooner or later the Russian people will follow the suit of other European nations in finding their national interest in democratic reforms and cooperation with NATO and other Western institutions.
"On July 1, the delegationhad a meeting with M. Woerner—NATO Secretary General. ... Woerner stressed that the NATO Council and he are against the expansionof NATO (13 out of 16 NATO members support this point of view). In the near future, at his meeting with L. Walesa and the Romanian leader A. Iliescu, he will oppose Poland and Romania joining NATO, and earlier this was stated to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. We should not allow, stated M. Woerner, the isolation of the USSR from the European community."
"didn't pressure it enough towards becoming a civilized country"
That was rich.
[0] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16144-document-30-memoran...
There is nothing in the document confirming an eternal commitment to not accept new members into NATO.
Until late-1990s, the position of most NATO countries was indeed that Eastern Europe was too underdeveloped and unstable for membership, and the document accurately reflects that. This undermines the narrative of how NATO has always wanted to surround Russia.
By the time new members were accepted into NATO almost a decade later, Wörner was long dead, the USSR was long gone, Russia had started its descent into a totalitarian dictatorship, and all 13 opposing countries had changed their position.
"By the time new members were accepted into NATO ... Russia had started its descent into a totalitarian dictatorship"
The decision to expand NATO was made in 1997 [0]
And by the way, here is a passage from wikipedia on that first round of NATO enlargement [1]:
"That year, Russian leaders like Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev indicated their country's opposition to NATO enlargement. While Russian President Boris Yeltsin did sign an agreement with NATO in May 1997 that included text referring to new membership, he clearly described NATO expansion as "unacceptable" and a threat to Russian security in his December 1997 National Security Blueprint."
And a bit from "What Eltsin heard" [2]:
"On December 1, Foreign Minister Kozyrev unexpectedly refused to sign up for the Partnership of Peace; and on December 5, Yeltsin lashed out about NATO at the Budapest summit of the CSCE, in front of a surprised Clinton: “Why are you sowing the seeds of mistrust? ... Europe is in danger of plunging into a cold peace …. History demonstrates that it is a dangerous illusion to suppose that the destinies of continents and of the world community in general can somehow be managed from one single capital.” "
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Madrid_summit
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO#Visegr%C3%...
[2] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2018...
I am not inventing anything. I have not seen a single source that would indicate a commitment not to accept new members into NATO until the present day. Nor have you cited any high-ranking Soviet or Russian officials from those times saying that they had a firm commitment. The constant unmet Russian demands that you cite also point that way.
> The decision to expand NATO was made in 1997 [0]
By that time, liberals had lost influential posititions in Russia and hardliners had been consolidating power for several years. Putin had risen from St Petersburg's mayor's errand boy to presidential staff in the Kremlin, to become the head of Russian security service (FSB) a year later.
The first Chechen War started in 1994 and Russian atrocities committed there were a key turning point in taking Central and Eastern European security concerns seriously:
The First Battle of Grozny was the Russian Army's invasion and subsequent conquest of the Chechen capital, Grozny, during the early months of the First Chechen War. /---/ The battle caused enormous destruction and casualties amongst the civilian population and saw the heaviest bombing campaign in Europe since the end of World War II.
> "On December 1, Foreign Minister Kozyrev unexpectedly refused to sign up for the Partnership of Peace; and on December 5, Yeltsin lashed out about NATO at the Budapest summit of the CSCE, in front of a surprised Clinton: “Why are you sowing the seeds of mistrust? ... Europe is in danger of plunging into a cold peace …. History demonstrates that it is a dangerous illusion to suppose that the destinies of continents and of the world community in general can somehow be managed from one single capital.” "
Kozyrev is who wrote the three paragraphs I cited previously. In the PDF I linked to, he gives a description of NATO-Russia relations during his tenure (1990-1996). In the end, he concludes that Russians were on the wrong side of history and Americans and Europeans were on the right side of history. The outcome - peace and prosperity in Europe, death and destruction in Russia and everywhere they go - certainly supports his view.
You are inventing a strawman again. 1997 isn't present day. Bye.
In fact, western governments can't give such informal guarantees further than their election term even if they wanted to, because unlike in Russia, governments change every 4-5 years and the current president, prime minister or cabinet ministers can't promise what their successors will or won't do, because the successors are often completely different people from different political parties with vastly different political platforms. That's why we have written treaties. Soviet and Russian diplomats are without any doubt educated enough to know that.
There's a lot of things the West can do without throwing nukes at the problem:
- arming ourselves and our allies (especially Taiwan) to the teeth
- supporting exiled and in-country opposition
- intervening against hostile operations (such as "police stations") on our own soil
- strengthen links with "global south" countries to minimize Chinese/Russian influence on them, support local rebels against regimes that have already fallen towards Russia/China.
These games played by global powers hurt a lot of the smaller countries. Lot's of Ukrainian civilians have needlessly lost their lives
Russia does not honor the rules of law so we should not negotiate with them in good faith. They are a terrorist state.
UN Charter
Budapest Memorandum
INF Treaty
Minsk 2 / Minsk 1
...
Generally you avoid conflict by being scary, not agreeable.
As a rule of life, that's a pretty bad idea. I don't avoid conflict with family, friends, neighbors, coworkers by being scary.
In international relations, it's by far more effective to be agreeable. Alliances are far more stable than competitive balance between 'scary' countries. Look at the EU; look at Korea - which relationships are more stable, the scary or the agreeable ones? Look at Israel, where by far the most stable relationships are the agreeable ones with Egypt, Jordan, and the US, even now. Look at the US and Canada. The list goes on forever.
Also, this is how russia was defeated - mix of US being simply too strong and one sane russian leader who realized how bad this is (Gorbachev, he is deeply hated by all russian elites who now try to bring good ol' times back).
What you propose is a position of weakness, that leaders of russia see as a sign of weakness and will act accordingly.
I just wish all these naive commenters would spend a decade living in russia to understand what we're actually dealing with and what kind of conflict is inevitably coming to the western Europe.
Shrewd tactful negotiation can be valuable, but I think people are mainly emphasizing the need for strength and clear emphatic boundaries, not for being a "monster."
Are they trying to conquer and kill you? If not, your analogy doesn't hold.
There is time and place for both.
Some people live in much rougher environment, where you must demonstrate strength, if you dont want to be eaten. (Not in the family, but once you go outside)
Russia is not a guy that you met at a library, Russia is a gangmember that runs a “protection” racket.
As if the west hasn't already destabilized the middle east for many decades now.
We are screwed in the long run because there is no antidote to this that is compatible with our constitution.
> The west needs to wake up, we're slowly sliding towards a world conflict. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
I think there's an essential connection there: The West's values and their power, and peace and freedom. The West's power comes from its values, not only because it captures the hearts and minds of others but because the power freedom and universal human rights gives to its own people.
As many in the West disparage or undermine those values, they are doing the work of Putin and Xi (at times, I'm sure, led by their disinformation campaigns).
No more time for games. It's time, as you say, to wake up and stand up for our values.
This makes a nice tweet. But what does it actually mean in practice?
Everyone and every institution is a hypocrite. If that's going to stop us, we might as well have submitted to the Nazis or Bolsheviks or someone long before that - after all, we were hypocrites then too!
But who am I to say that - I'm a hypocrite. No hypocrites allowed on HN!
Generally speaking, the west has been significantly improving the living conditions and human rights protections for its citizens over the last several hundred years, many times in direct response to some horrible mistake that was made and then subsequently learned from (slavery, Vietnam, etc.)
The same cannot be said at all about Russia. All the intelligent, brave people who could see through the propaganda or who had the bravery to do something about it have largely either been killed off or emigrated away at this point. The country has been in a continuous cycle of totalitarian suffering for hundreds of years, with no end in sight.
I don't have evidence, but my gut says that's not by accident. This slippery slope we've been heading down for the last few decades (no more right and wrong, all values are equal, anyone who says otherwise is a problem/oppressor/colonizer) look to me like a well funded / coordinated / long term political warfare campaign in order to build a country of "appeasers". People who refuse to stand up for anything -- we all know that's how bullies win.
I often wonder how much of what we're doing to ourselves is actually being funded by bad actors, fake patriots, etc.
I don't trust any free news. Someone is paying for a message to be delivered to my eyeballs, and I don't know who that is. Maybe 1% of stories are from bad actors, maybe it's 25%. Who knows? The answer matters -- a lot.
No one trusts anyone anymore. We've lost faith in our government and each other. No better way to conquer a nation than from within.
But that whole view is self-contradictory. If all values are equal, what's wrong with being an oppressor or colonizer? By calling people oppressors and colonizers, they are saying that some things are wrong. Their position destroys itself.
You see this in formal philosophy. If the conclusions of an argument disprove the premise, then the premise is wrong.
In this case, we aren't dealing with a formal position. We aren't even dealing with the clearest-spoken advocates of a position. We're dealing with culture warriors whose specialty is yelling, not clear argument. Nevertheless, there are people out there who say that, if you say one culture is better than another, then you are a Nazi. This is not taking their argument to a logical extreme. This is listening to their words. And based on that, you can say that that position shows that they aren't thinking, because it's absurd.
But you're right, you can't go too far with it. The worst, most thoughtless advocates of a position only let you say that those advocates' position is flawed. They don't tell you anything about the steelman version of the position.
Things were set in motion years ago and they are slowly unraveling. When the West rejected Russia's deeper integration into its structures after the Cold War ended and expanded NATO towards the East this path was set in stone. The late 2000s were the absolute breaking point.
Major Eastern players are asymmetrically breaking US hegemony through proxies and internal conflict. They cannot face the US conventionally but it doesn't mean they cannot face the US. They can, they do and they will continue to do so.
Brexit, MAGA, Mideast conflicts, Ukraine, EU refugee crisis, inflation, energy crisis, recent development in North Korea, social media disinformation etc. etc. etc.
The BRICS countries (and others) are pursuing a multipolar, non-democratic world with heavily reduced US influence over Asia and Europe, who are now discussing defense independence and their own nuclear umbrella after Trump strategically placed some Russian talking points (again).
Like the multi-generational families some of their members living in Ukraine, some in Russia? Didn't seem to stop the war sadly.
Boris Yeltsyn was proposing to Bill Clinton to admit Russia into NATO. This way Russian ambitions would be tamed and channeled into something more constructive.
But a few red flags - Russia just barely held together at that time and had its own civil war. Also, there's the risk of Russia joining just to walk away with the keys to the kingdom at any later point. If the CFE inspections (1) were anything to go by, Russia didn't exactly play fair.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
Your own link says: "The treaty proposed equal limits for the two "groups of states-parties", the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact" and later "most former non-USSR Warsaw Treaty members subsequently joined NATO, followed later by the Baltic states and the states of the former Yugoslavia".
"CFE-II took into account the different geopolitical situation of the post-Cold War era by setting national instead of bloc-based limits on conventional armed forces. NATO members refused however to ratify the treaty..." [0] What a surprise.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
I just don't think Russia joining NATO is an apparent slam dunk success. Maybe it would have been great, we can never know for sure, but I can understand the suspicion.
With what goal?
Nobody in Russia would've supported such an unthinkable war.
It took a coup in Kiev in 2014, burning people alive in Odessa, all the slogans 'Hang the Russians', dozens of streets named after Nazi collaborators, the war of the new Ukrainian government on the separatists in the East and eight years for people in Russia to start thinking that not all Ukrainians are brothers.
The tone struck by Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, head of the Social Democrats (SPD), contrasts with that of conservative Merkel who has pinned responsibility on Russia for exacerbating the crisis, which has soured ties between Russia and the West.
"Certainly, the European Union has also made mistakes, although this does not justify Russia's behavior," Gabriel told the German daily Rheinische Post.
"It was certainly not smart to create the impression in Ukraine that it had to decide between Russia and the EU," the Economy Minister added." [0]
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/german-official-says-it-was-wrong-m...
Nobody would be against, in the same way there isn't anyone against this unthinkable war now. Why are you on HN. Maybe you should go and try to denazify some other website instead?
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-the-us-broke-kosovo-and-...
Things like student exchanges, etc, were also severily limited in scope. Russians only ever saw EU as tourists, not as neighbours. And tourists can sure swap one destination for the another. Russians knew that they live in Europe, but did not feel the neighbourly presense of the EU.
This is not accurate. In the USSR and after its collapse, Russians generally don't consider themselves European. I also think this aligns more or less with how the rest of the world sees Russia if you consider the standards of living and the freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech; not being able to freely travel to most of the world). On top of that, don't forget that geographically, most of Russia is in Asia.
> standards of living
Comparable and exceeding some countries in EU (e.g. Bulgaria)
> freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech)
Some freedoms are there, some are not. Before 2022 it was similar to some parts of Europe.
Also, freedom is not synonymous to Europe.
> able to freely travel to most of the world
It is not that bad. 127 visa-free countries, more than e. g. Montenegro, Moldova, Albaina - all of which are 100% European.
> geographically, most of Russia is in Asia
This is a meaningless argument. Britan was 90% not in Europe in the year 1912. But no one would say it was not European.
The current conflict is going to break it up into smaller chunks sooner or later. I'm going to enjoy watching it burn.
No more tariffs. No more visas. Vastly more economic cooperation between Russia and the European Union. That's the vision presented by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an editorial contribution to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday.
"We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros." [0]
[0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-v...
Your point would have been better made without weaseling in a Mearsheimer apology for authoritarian states. Russia snatching Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with NATO's expansion. Indeed, had NATO expanded earlier, we wouldn't have found ourselves in this mess, with Ukraine left to fend for itself.
NATO grew because of the desperation of former USSR satellites to shelter themselves from their abuser.
As to the other bit here about rejecting Russian integration as a cause for war: I think that point has been proven quite wrong with Merkel's absurd fantasy that trade with Russia would bring peace.
Of course part of the goal was to give Russian rocket scientists a more peaceful task to work on than spreading out to Iran, North Korea etc, but it was also a great chance for Russia to integrate further with the West and expand their historical prominence in space technology.
Instead, they've done everything to ensure that they never get such a deal again, and have allowed their space industry to atrophy significantly.
There's talk about how if Russia had been allowed into NATO they'd have been able to channel their energy into more constructive pursuits, but they were given an opportunity to do that for space technology and did not do so.
Absolutely false. We cannot prevent wars if we refuse to engage with reality as it is not as we wish it to be. https://twitter.com/battleforeurope/status/17000929447142730...
In any case, the full quote with the missing section emphasized in italics is:
> Then lastly on Sweden. First of all, it is historic that now Finland is member of the Alliance. And we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.
> The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
> So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member. Because at Vilnius Summit, we agreed a statement where it was clearly expressed how Sweden will do more, follow up the agreement we had in Madrid on fighting terrorism, and also address issues related to export of military equipment, and then Türkiye made it clear that they will ratify as soon as possible.
For those who don't see the problem with removing military infrastructure from every former satellite state that fled the USSR it's this: throwing your allies back to the wolves who hunted you is as about as morally bankrupt as it comes.
And just to really make it clear which countries Russia wanted put back to the wilds, it's Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Finland.
For anyone who is interested, the full speech is available at https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm
We know this is true from a map the dictator of Belarus was seen in front of showing more conquest after Ukraine, specifically of Moldova. We know President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called the collapse of the Soviet empire “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” His desire for a return to the days of empire is obvious from every aggrandizing speech he makes.
His intentions have been obvious for a very long time for anyone who wants to see them.
The recent Tucker Carlson interview confirmed that Putin has an uncontrollable obsession with a made up version of history, and he gets visibly upset when his long rants about Ukrainian statehood being an anti-Russian conspiracy by the Austrian General Staff and the Pope get interrupted. Nazis running Ukraine is only a small part of that persecution complex.
Putin's speeches deserve as serious consideration as Hitler's. Until tanks started rolling, his speeches were also dismissed as rhetoric.
However, it does not change how the Russians perceived NATO expansion which matters in todays conflicts:
> "The final assurance was Clinton’s agreement (despite Russia’s brutal Chechen war and multiple domestic pressures) to come to Moscow in May 1995 for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the victory over Hitler. In Moscow, Yeltsin berated Clinton about NATO expansion, seeing “nothing but humiliation” for Russia: “For me to agree to the borders of NATO expanding towards those of Russia – that would constitute a betrayal on my part of the Russian people."
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2021...
The Russians see the developments of the early 1990s as humiliating and as the spark of the modern conflict. It became much more serious in the late 2000s under Putin but the developments of the mid-90s already set things on a rotten path regarding the relationship between the West and Russia.