Comment by jajko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jajko | Hacker News Reader

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Its funny with Hungary, Orban is such an incompetent ruler that currently Hungary is paying way above market prices for gas from Russia. So much for being friends with benefits with russia. You can see how it all is a series of really not that smart moves for Hungary for a long time, borderline treason.

And one point generally - please lets stop calling whats happening in Ukraine in any other way than War. putin's war - its a perfect name I'll keep repeating till it sticks around, or I'll die trying.

Its relatively personal to me, my home country (former Czechoslovakia) was basically enslaved by russian cough cough soviet forces for decades, people shot or electrocuted when trying to escape (around 500 recorded officially), tens of thousands murdered in other indirect ways (gulags or uranium mines with no ticket back, or just beaten to death in some cold dungeon). I see basically 0 change from that russia to modern one and how it values things like human life, freedom etc.

It looked briefly better, much better, but those times are over for good and russia is firmly back at cold/not so cold war with whole western world. Currently trying to subvert quite a few places in Africa. I hope western 3-letter agencies are few steps ahead.

This comment really illustrates the hollowness of the "NATO expanded too aggressively" claim. NATO didn't force any of these ex-Soviet countries to join. They ran to join NATO as soon as they could. They'd experienced living with the Russian boot on their neck, and they were eager to join a collective security organization to prevent it from ever happening again.

I have a different perspective. If NATO hadn't expanded to Turkey, Sweden and Finland would have had a much easier time not being blackmailed. NATO expanding to essentially-dictatorship countries was too eager.

And yes, I understand Turkey's geographical position giving it power over sea routes, and why that was desirable to NATO. But choosing to include a fickle ruler in a unanimous-decisions-only organization is just asking for trouble.

(The Baltics wanted in on NATO, and it's good that they got in. They're largely decently run small countries in a tough spot, not world stage bullies.)

To be clear, Turkey has been undergoing pretty decisive democratic backsliding since the mid 2000s. It was added to NATO at the same time as Greece, and at that time, Turkey was the more democratic of the two countries (see, e.g., the electoral democracy index for 1952 on https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/CountryGraph/ ).

edit: note if you're trying to find Turkey by searching on that site, it uses the endonym Türkiye

Türkiye is probably the first western country to not secure its demographic dividends, with maybe Greece (hard to say because the EU mess things up with free movement of people and stuff). It did not fail hopefully, but the infrastructure gains are small compared to even ex-USSR countries. I fear the same is happening in slow motion in India (we'll see in 15 years i guess).

In 1951, when Turkey joined NATO, the country was not actually all that dictator-like.

Turkey brings more value to NATO then Sweden and Finland combined. It has a standing army (2nd biggest after US in NATO) with combat experience, defense sector with proven capabilities. Not to mention 11th economy in the world by GDP PPP and growing.

It's better for Turkey and NATO, that Turkey is in NATO. I would say it's far more important than Sweden or Finland being in NATO.

> This comment really illustrates the hollowness of the "NATO expanded too aggressively" claim.

In the US, only wingnuts and "useful idiots" (really the same group) are repeating this talking point.

Mearshiemer got quite a favourable hearing on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30559136

Good lord. I was not aware of this guy before, but his position seems to be akin to suggesting a woman deserved to be raped because of how she was dressed.

Even people pretty forgiving of his essays acknowledge he's habitually at odds with basic facts and history.

Not a wingnut, per se, but on the same spectrum of people divorced from reality. It's too bad as well, because US foreign policy is deserving of more scrutiny than it gets, and it gets a fair amount.

I have mixed feelings on him. On the one hand it is a bit - woman should expect to be raped because of how she was dressed. On the other hand he's predicted Putin/Russia's action quite accurately.

I think he errs a bit in suggesting such behaviour is normal for all great powers. The Americans and Chinese while imperfect aren't that bad. And the EU if you can call it a great power does nothing like that - the rape pillage invade stuff. Though of course a couple of centuries ago Europe was invading all over the place. It goes to show these things can change. Probably with Russia we need to make things enough of a pain the the neck for them that they'll see the wisdom of changing eventually also.

He's said in a few different pieces that Putin 100% does not want to ingest Ukraine into Russia, that he's only interested in "lopping off its limbs" and keeping it out of NATO.

Which is at odds with what Putin has said many times, that Ukraine is not a real nation, but a part of Russia, and Kyiv historically was central to the Russian empire. It's really clear that Putin wants all of Ukraine, not just bits of it. Putin has almost (but not quite) come out and said it. It's an open question on whether Putin would stop with Ukraine (we'll find out only if he takes Ukraine), but there's things he's said which hint that he won't.

> On the other hand he's predicted Putin/Russia's action quite accurately.

So far. At some point, he's going to have to reckon with all the stuff Putin has said about his ambitions that he ignored.

I really never understood how this statement and "NATO expanded to aggressively" were seen as contradictory. Putin's government wants to put the boot on Russia's neighbors, and NATO was in the process of taking that option away from them, and that's why they committed to war. They're not lying about their motivations, they are phrasing them in head-of-state speak. The same goes for denazification, which is thinly veiled code for intervening in who's allowed to govern Ukraine.

Orban and his team don't work for Hungary. They work for themselves (for a small group around Orban's family), trying to take out as much money and power from every opportunity as they can. This might explain purchasing the gas on higher price (and a huge amount of other controversial deals) and preferring partnerships with corrupt governments and politicians. It's all about business and power.

There are good meticulously researched articles about their businesses here (one of the few remaining independent, reliable sources in Hungary): https://www.direkt36.hu/en/

The 'Empire' podcast ran a series about Russia: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921

It is clear from listening to the podcast that Russia has always been nightmare to live in (unless you perhaps belonged to a tiny elite) or have as a neighbour. Serfdom wasn't abolished until 1861.

Putin's war isn't a useful term though, because there are so many of them.

Regarding change from "that Russia" to the modern one, I'm afraid there has been change, to the worse. The Soviet incarnation of the empire was at least nominally bound to the progressive ideas of socialism (which is completely orthogonal to wether those ideas are workable or not), whereas the current incarnation is openly worshipping the fascist ideas of strength and domination, and the struggle to get there.

When Russians claim that they don't understand why someone would willingly ally with others who don't prove worthy by actively coercing them, chances are it's genuine, they really don't understand. Sometimes I wonder if their language even has a word for friendship based on equality that is separate from an asymmetric allegiance based on status gradient. Perhaps all the non-gradient terminology was gobbled up by socialist ideology and now the very idea of peers is out, except where seeing it through the socialist lense still fits?

For more understanding of this difference in Russian mindset, see this thread from Kamil Galeev, a Russian independent researcher: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1761855753290191129

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