Hacker News Reader

Comment by nyolfen | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

This a standard Russian talking point. It's a red herring and a fairly weak justification for Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The US can make demands and so can anyone. In the case of Cuba they were met by the Soviets willingly who withdrew their missiles and made a deal with the US.

Russia objects to NATO membership because it makes bullying and invasion of those with NATO membership impractical. It doesn't threaten Russia but rather it weakens Russia's hand and that is its main complaint. It didn't have a basis for a deal with NATO or the US. Russia has had nukes adjacent to NATO countries for a long time.

There is no moral justification for invasion unless you've already been invaded by that party.

Let me do something similar to you what you did with this comment: allowing Russia to develop nukes shouldn't have been tolerated, the morally correct course of action was to prevent it.

You're assuming a symmetry that doesn't exist.

I think you skipped several steps in this argument. Can you explain more please?

I think the argument is, if its okay for eastern European nations to run to NATO (and we defend it as self determination), it should be fine when countries decided to run the opposite way (toward the USSR in this case). I will be honest, I agree.I believe Ukraine has the right to self determine their own relationships on the international stage, and I also believe Cuba does too. Although to me, the biggest fuck is, we didn't have like Cuba, we just needed a relationship sufficient enough for Cuba to side with us instead of the USSR. And I think that was a mistake. We do this Saudi Arabia, we should not be on as good of terms with Saudi Arabia as we are. But the reality is, if we are not, some other heavily influential country on the international stage will.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com