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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> I know it sounds devastating, but you have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun. The pre-war era.

It is madness that we're in a position where this can be baldly stated by a PM and there has been no "huh?" moment when people stop and assess how badly the broader West's military, economic and diplomatic efforts have failed over the last 30 odd years. Possibly longer. I wasn't expecting to see land wars in Europe even before the cold war ended.

Humanity has unprecedented destructive power at our command and the systems that sustain 8 billion people are delicate. We can't afford to be in a "pre-war era" and act like this is just going to be something to deal with when we get to it plus a little prep in specialist domains.

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What kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours?

Picking on Ukraine, the US not having a policy of signing new people up to the anti-Russia military alliance every few years [0] seems like low hanging fruit. Or not working to integrate their intelligence with the CIA [1] for the last decade. I don't speak German but apparently Merkle said that we weren't negotiating in good faith to keep the peace either [2].

These are the sort of thing I suspect Russia would see as escalatory. I certainly do. A better diplomatic policy would have been to encourage neutrality. The western powers weren't going out of their way to make sure that the situation stayed peaceful. We could have treated this as the Russian equivalent of the US invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq and let it go away.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/23/ukraine-cia-...

[2] https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/77139/what-posi...

> US not having a policy of signing new people up to the anti-Russia military alliance every few years

Weird how all of Russia's neighbors are eager to join a military alliance protecting them from Russia. I wonder if that has something to do with Russia's actions towards its neighbors? No, no, surely the US is to blame for that...

Yeah, sure. But the US chooses who it integrates with militarily. An alternative approach would have been to say "hey, yeah we can see why you'd want to join - but this will foment tensions with Russia, so you can't".

That is the kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours. It would have been difficult to get worse outcomes with that approach than what the powers that be managed to get us to - we could be staring at the start of a major pattern of wars here and the US's deterrence has been spectacular in not quite succeeding. The Russian border is still closer to Moscow right now than it was in the 80s, but it has gotten a lot bloodier than the 90s.

The only thing that would have changed is that Russia now also could invade the baltic states. Why do you think Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if the NATO had not been expanded?

>Why do you think Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if the NATO had not been expanded? Because the main reason for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is a miscalculation about resistance. With the expansion of NATO, the prospect of invasion would be assessed closer to reality and dismissed as counterproductive

Under what circumstances would Russia feel a need to invade Ukraine if they didn't fear NATO involvement? It is pretty clear in the current war that exactly what the Russian leadership feared was happening - a pushover country on their border was being militarised by the US. In hindsight they must feel naive for not being more paranoid and bulking up their military before going in. The NATO enlargement is a broad strategy of threatening Russia and building up force to use against them. And the political rhetoric out of the US on Russia has been unhinged since at least 2016. The Russians would be stupid not to be scared and this invasion of Ukraine looks like a desperation play through that lens.

Ukraine is a great example of what US support does - if the US had told them that they're on their own, Ukraine would have just gone with whatever Russia wanted diplomatically.

Instead, a lot of Ukrainian's are dead, they've lost a double-digit percentage of their country, the west is hell-bent on destabilising the leadership that controls the world's largest nuclear arsenal, it looks like we're escalating into a WWIII style situation because the US deterrence is failing and Ukraine is STILL likely to end up having to do what Russia wants. Technically not maybe because they've lost the territory that Russia was most interested in.

The US shouldn't be involved in militarily organising Eastern Europe. It has not helped, it seems to be making war a certainty.

are you saying that if US was kot involved then Ukrainy would have to do whatever Russia tell yhwm yo do and that would be better for Ukraine?

And yes sure, Russia is nust defending itself

Ukraine was faced with a choice - do what the US wanted, or do what Russia wanted. The US choice resulted in massive death, destruction and so far it looks like Russia is going to get what they wanted anyway.

What would the downside have been of just folding before the troops started moving?

> And yes sure, Russia is nust defending itself

Best defence is a good offence. They're flailing under strategic pressure from the US.

The Ukrainians made their own decision to fight.

They knew perfectly well it would involve massive death and possibly years of fighting. But they know their long history with their "brotherly" neighbors to the north, and hence, that even these costs would be preferable to perpetual subjugation.

If you can't recognize this fact -- if you think they're just passive puppets who do whatever the US tells them to; or that they aren't capable of evaluating the costs and risks and making a decision to side with their families and their future -- then not only have you not been following the chain of events since the start of the invasion (in which the US basically told them capitulate, after all); you really have no understanding of how human beings work when their families and communities are threatened.

Best defence is a good offence. They're flailing under strategic pressure from the US.

Nobody pressured them to do anything. Russia's actions are all offense, full stop.

> ...if you think they're just passive puppets who do whatever the US tells them to

They're obviously not passive puppets. They had a choice - they could do what the US wanted, or what Russia wanted. That is more agency than most countries get when facing an existential crisis.

However, given that they chose to align with the US and we now have people talking in uncontroversial statements about it being a "pre-war era" the unfortunate reality here is that the option the US gave them was/is a diplomatic disaster that is very much in line with the US's NATO expansion strategy that they've been executing for the last 30-something years. It is a bad strategy that is leading to war.

> Nobody pressured them to do anything. Russia's actions are all offense, full stop.

Avoiding war requires both sides to reach some sort of mutual understanding. The Russian's aren't going to buy that bullshit. A lot of their troops just died because of NATO arms, held by troops that were at least in part NATO-trained, using NATO intelligence and NATO-approved strategies in a war that is part of a broad strategic push, by NATO, into Eastern Europe. They've figured out the role that NATO is playing here; the plan is obviously to contain and militarily cripple Russia.

That style of rhetorical bullying is very prevalent amongst western leadership, but if we want to find a peaceful solution they should be more honest. They provoked this.

Avoiding war requires both sides to reach some sort of mutual understanding.

When the aggressor stations 200,000 troops at your border -- it isn't about "reaching a mutual understanding". The only "understanding" he is asking for by that point is that you lay back and let him have his way with you.

You're basically repeating standard propaganda lines here; I don't see this being a productive discussion.

> The only "understanding" he is asking for by that point is that you lay back and let him have his way with you.

Ukraine seems to have lost about 25% of their population, 10% of their land and their electricity network is being shelled. Who knows how long it will take for their economy to recover. There is a lot of room among those statistics for debate about whether just folding immediately would have been better or worse.

And Ukraine isn't really holding any cards here, any negotiations need to happen between there US and Russia. Getting good outcomes requires the US state department to get some actual statespersons involved instead of whoever has managed to push Europe to this pre-war mindset.

> You're basically repeating standard propaganda lines

If we're going to start slinging insults here, you're showing a dire lack of tactical empathy. You're not going to understand diplomacy unless you can get in to the headspace of people you don't agree with.

I wasn't seeing a great deal of tactical empathy in some of your own carefully chosen phrasing (e.g. "that bullshit").

So that, plus my sense that you were deeply mistaken about certain things, brought me to the view that the discussion had run its course.

I don't think Russia invaded Ukraine because it threatened to join NATO. Russia invaded Ukraine because it threatened to have a color revolution leading to a viable democracy in a culture/society that was similar to Russia's. Putin, personally, could not allow that to succeed. It threatened him, personally, too greatly.

>it threatened to have a color revolution leading to a viable democracy

Threatened? They tried that two or three times but Ukraine never stopped being Ukraine. Always losing a couple million people between these attempts.

So what was first, Russia invading neighbors, or neighbors wanting to join NATO?

I'll give you the answer: Chechnya.

Thinking that Russia would never invade an independent Georgia or Ukraine is very naive, to say the least.

If you want a "neutral" country, take a look at Belarus. A neutral country in Russia's eyes only has connections with Russia, not with the West. They make it very clear which countries they want "under the influence sphere of Russia".

Ukrainians want a sovereign democratic country, and they are willing to pay a very high price for that.

Ukraine will no longer be democratic come May 21st, unfortunately.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/05/16/volodymyr-zelen...

This is a nonsense statement.

Every poll performed on Ukrainians shows that a clear majority doesn't want elections right now, and Ukrainian law permits this during wartime. The logistical challenges are insurmountable particularly when one things about local elections. People are displaced all across the country and to other countries, soldiers that are fighting on the front lines cannot just rotate simply to be able to cast their votes without creating unnecessary chaos and risks, there's the legitimate threat of bomb attacks on polling places.

The UK didn't hold elections during WWII despite being vastly more secure on their island than Ukrainians are.

Some of us don’t believe in fair-weather democracy. If they can run a poll, they can run an election. Ukrainians have the right to decide their own future, don’t you think? Or perhaps some are afraid that they might vote “wrong”?

A 30 second conversation with any Ukrainian living in Ukraine right now would clear this confusion up for you. Not getting people needlessly killed is awfully high up on the priority list. If you think Russia is above bombing polling places, you'd be wrong.

The Ukrainian stamps in my passport suggest I’ve spent more than 30 seconds talking with them…

Your comment suggests this was some time ago, since traveling to Ukraine after the invasion doesn't seem to be something most people would do.

I have plenty of Ukrainian colleagues, both still in and outside of Ukraine. Opinions differ a lot. There is only this truth:

1. Ukraine is at war

2. Martial Law helps a country at war

It's logical that governments take decisions that some people don't like. Martial Law is there to take quick, hard and possibly unpopular decisions. Ukraine as a country is trying to survive right now. Their martial law doesn't even allow elections!

Call me crazy, but I believe the Ukrainians themselves should get to make the hard decisions involving their lives and future.

True, they are free to decide not to hold elections during martial law. Even the opposition doesn't want it.

Then I have "good" news for you: Ukraine is at war and so doesn't have to, and isn't even allowed to hold elections. Neither did UK during WW2, so it's not that uncommon.

"Scholars have stated that the Ukrainian constitution does not allow to hold national elections while martial law is in effect."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Ukraine

It’s also in the Russian constitution that Putin basically gets to be president for life. Guess that makes it okay…

A democratic institution making laws is very different than an undemocratic institution making laws.

Are you suggesting Ukraine wasn't democratic when that law was made?

And like stated somewhere else, UK did the same thing during WW2. So it's not that uncommon.

Do you believe that the current Ukrainian government is a democratic institution up to Western standards?

>Ukrainians want a sovereign democratic country, and they are willing to pay a very high price for that.

Doesn't seemed to be true, considering Ban for men's leaving country, forcefull conscription and cancelled elections

Any country at war does that. UK cancelled elections during WW2, look it up.

So what? This doesn't invalidate my argument.

> That is the kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours.

Really? You believe the Russian claim that it attacks its neighbours because they're mumbling about NATO membership?

Russia attacks its neighbours because it regrets its loss of a "zone of influence" at the end of the Cold War. Like all former imperial powers (I'm a Brit!), loss of empire is hard to swallow.

What do you think the distinction is between Russia losing it's zone of influence and countries joining up with NATO? I agree with you and believe the Russians simultaneously.

Russia is losing its zone of influence because it didn't hold on to it tightly and the US took it. Pretty much the same thing happened to the British, although they got beaten down by the Germans first so they weren't in a position to do much more than pretend to resist.

Although in this case the US is much closer to the British analogue. They've got financial problems, they've got industrial problems, they've got a lot of upcoming challengers and their diplomatic mis-management could easily lead to a massive blow up that unseats them.

> That is the kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours.

Only if you subscribe to the argument that Russia has no intention to gobble up countries west of it at least to the furthest extent of USSR and its satellites.

No European neighbors of Russia subscribe to that anymore. Finland and Sweden were the last holdouts who thought that having a "responsible" diplomacy would prevent war with Russia, but the absurd and fabricated excuses Russia uses to justify the invasion of Ukraine have destroyed almost overnight all credibility of that line of thought.

Assuming imperialistic intentions, staying neutral and out of alliances only lowers the cost of invasion for Russia. If Russia decides to invade a country like Poland, then at the moment they risk a large multinational response that can go far-far beyond Poland's own means, up to a nuclear war. If Poland didn't have solid allies, the potential cost associated with the invasion would be considerably smaller for Russia.

> Only if you subscribe to the argument that Russia has no intention to gobble up countries west of it at least to the furthest extent of USSR and its satellites.

Russia doesn't have any intention of doing that. Putin is currently 71 and we've seen no particular interest in grand campaigns to reconstitute the USSR so far in his lifetime, it isn't going to start. It turns out they weren't even militarily prepared to take Ukraine! They thought they could just launch a quick decapitation strike and be done. The USSR leadership disbanded the USSR in the 90s, so if they've culturally reversed position on that completely in 30 years it shows a stunning failure of western diplomacy to support them in doing the right thing.

> No European neighbors of Russia subscribe to that anymore.

Things like this is why letting them in to NATO would worry Russia. They are paranoid and panicking. I can understand why; I would be if I were a small country with a Russian border or close to one. But, nevertheless, their attitudes are one risk factor for escalating the situation from bad to catastrophic.

> Russia doesn't have any intention of doing that.

That's a strange thing to say while Russia is in the middle of of gobbling up Ukraine (a country west of it within the extent of the USSR)

It is not an anti-Russia alliance, we Romania enter NATO to survive teh eventual Ruzzian invasion, as you can see from Ukraine war our politicians, even the communist regime was sure that a Ruzzian invasion is unavoidable (yeah, makes your mind segfault when you find out that communist Romania had better relations with USA and was preparing to resist a USSR invasion).

You need to talk with Russians to understend their Zed mentality, they think God gave them the right to dominate half of the world, they will tell it to my face that genocide my nation is not personal, it is geo politics and Ruzzia must do it.

the way to avoid the Ukrainian war would ahve been if Ukrainians would ahve not been stupid and would ahave joined NATO with Romania and Poland, but the idiots still believed in brotherhood with the Zeds.

P.S I am using Z to refer to the Russians that are Zed supporters and to make it clear I am not referring to the entire Russian population, since there are a few educated Russians there that can see the truth.

Everything you outlined applies to US politics too :DD

>Everything you outlined applies to US politics too :DD

What? that Canada made an alliance with soem other neighbors so the evil USA would not invade them ?

> they think God gave them the right to dominate half of the world, they will tell it to my face that genocide my nation is not personal, it is geo politics

This part could well apply to Americans.

>This part could well apply to Americans.

What about USA?

But honestly I never chat with an american that would claim that half of the world belongs to them and they are not sorry for the future genocides that they will have to do to achieve it.

Nice of you to confirm here for our HN community that what I said is true, Ruzz claim that God gave tehm half of the world to make a "sphere of influence" and that Moscowites are OK with genocides because is geo politics and not "personal"

> half of the world belongs to them

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine

Not strictly limited to the Western hemisphere. See also: Vietnam War

I've never heard a single bad word about Romania or its people, and I definitely have a lot more ties to Russia than you do. No idea where you read shit like this, but you should probably avoid those places from now on to keep your sanity.

I'm Russian, and I've heard plenty rhetoric about "Romanian Nazis" when talking about Transnistria.

More so since 2022, because Moldova is clearly one of the prime next targets after Ukraine.

It is history, maybe read about USSR invasion of Czechoslovakia and Romania refusing to participate and condemning the fact that USSR is tring to force their will on other communist states. It was not enough that USSR forced communism in eastern Europe, they really wanted Moscow to control everything, no different communist approaches were allowed since Moscowites know better what other countries should do.

So Romania built infrastructure to handle an invasion, build roads over the mountains to be able to quickly move the armies, and is a very known fact in Romania that everything was prepared for an USSR invasion like in Czechoslovakia, so first read about the USSR invasions and meddling in communist countries.

Then if you really want to know more , I mean really want to learn and not spread Ruz propaganda I might find for you english documentation of all douzens times Ruzzians invaded Romania lands.

So Romania has very good reasons to enter NATO, all political parties were in agreement, even our president who was a communist and who studied in Moscow was for NATO. Super hard for Ruzzians to admit that all those country that entered NATO had a good reason, and some "special" people in Africa, Asia and West might fall for the ton of propaganda that claims that NATO brainwashed everyone to join them, it is pure Ruzzian projection.

The USSR invasion of Romania? That's insane revisionism. Who, exactly, started the invasion? Like you realize the Romanians were literally guarding the front of the Germans at Stalingrad? Maybe Romania should've have invaded the Soviet Union with Germany?

Do you understand cause and effect, before Romania allied with Germany, guess who was allied with Germany ?

Yes USSR, and guess what happened? Stalin and Hitler had a deal where Ruzzians were given parts of Romania.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_Bessarabi...

So here is the impressive Ruzzian logic, show me your mental skills explaining it

USSR collaborates with Hitler and steals Romanian land, This is OK in Ruz logic

later Romania enters the war against the USSR thieves to get the land back, but this in Ruz logic is NOT OK.

So in Ruz logic, only Ruzzia can collaborate with Hitler, and Ruzzia can grab lands but other country is not allowed to recover lands grabbed by Ruzzians.

This is a shit logic, where the distance from A to B is not the same from B to A, it depends if A or B are Ruzzian or not, because Ruzzian logic is always relative to their interests and Satan given rights to them to bring suffering to the world and their own subjects.

Edit: IMO you have 2 choices,

1 keep suck on Putin propaganda that all of Ruzzia;s neighbors are gay, nazi, satanists that hate the straight, democratic, Christian, God Chosen people Rusky

2 the hard choce, where you need to do a bit of effort, just be open for new info, ask me about why we entered NATO, try to understand our point of view even if you dissagree, understanding your neighbors (or maybe your enemies, future victims) is important

This has literally nothing to do with Putin what are you even talking about? You are justifying the Romanian invasion of the USSR and their collaboration with the nazi state. That's fine I guess, it just makes it hard to play the victim card. Again, this is about events that happened before Putin was even born. It's not Russian propaganda to say that Romanians were complicit until the very last moment when they decided to switch side in 1944.

You're also just saying stuff that doesn't even make sense. Can you give me a source about splitting up Romania, as in that Romania attacked the USSR because they wanted to split it up? Also, if you're saying that both the Nazis and the USSR wanted to take Romania, why did they ally themselves with the nazis? It's as if they were on the nazis side for more than that!

Also, remember that the USSR wasn't just Russia. The Romanians also killed thousands of Ukrainians while invading the USSR. When you invade a country, you get what you deserve when said country fights back. Like Russia is having now after attacking Ukraine. In your weird point of view, Russia would be the victim because they had no choice or whatever due to alliances, right? That's how you're justifying the fact that Romania attacked the USSR in 1941 lol

We got lost in this big comments.

I am trying to tell you that Ruzzians refuse to accept that everyone in Eastern Europe, Baltic so Romania had good reasons to enter in NATO, to defend themselves.

I attempted to give you examples why Romania needs to defend themselves, it sure a Ruzzian will say that we should ahve stayed netural because Ruzzia would never, ever invade a neighbor (but then a big list of contra examples follows of invasions)

I don't disagree with that. Romania would be foolish not to be in NATO, I completely agree

OK then, I was explaining all the times Ruzzia (they had different names for the empire in the past now is a "federation" ) invaded our lands, some Zeds still complain that their neighbors had no reason to enter NATO or some are claiming it was all CIA, Satan, Israel or Illuminati that made this countries dislike or hate Ruzzia and Rusky the chosen people.

One of my coworkers, who is Moldovan, is well acquainted with Russian chauvinistic attitudes towards Moldova / Romania.

The gunboat kind.

That's a great way to get countries to promptly ally with China and Russia instead.

I see why one might think that, if they lacked all knowledge of the history of region and Russia’s involvement.

As if the west is so much better with its "gunboat diplomacy". You know, the "diplomacy" where they bring ships to your coast to let you know they can just shell you with complete impunity if you do not submit to them.

Autocracies are inherently unstable and dangerous in this regard. They have every incentive to be irrational and unwilling to negotiate. They call it “sovereignty”, which it isn’t — just a sparkling dictatorship.

Autocracies have no place in the modern world.

And yet autocracies are historically the most "successful" types of governments. Humans always and eventually end up selecting autocracies with thunderous applause.

History is young, there’s too little data to go for meaningful conclusions yet, particularly post-industrial revolution.

But yes, I agree, autocracy is a natural state of affairs. Democracy is a miracle to keep.

There is not much difference in the capability of human experience. I bet a baby born in 494AD, teleported to the modern period and raised by modern humans will be indistinguishable in capability to every other human being.

150K NATO troops in Ukraine.

Basically the opposite of this “advice”: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

Can’t speak for Europe, but the US used the same ineffective playbook they’ve been using for decades. I believe more creativity and more “Is this working?” strategy assessment could have been effective.

As a few examples, what if Putin specifically was targeted with information warfare? Leak information on his health, finances, etc to his rivals. Fire up the meme factory to influence the military. Disrupt oil production via cyber attacks. Threaten to give Ukraine a couple nukes back.

The US doesn’t do aggressive (effective) things like that because “What if they do it to us?”

I mean you're either in a war period or a pre-war period ...

Although yeah the whole propping up non-democracies because they have cheap labor or cheap materials for decades does seem to have been a poor decision in the long run.

"You" are still doing it, your Western governments looked the other way at killing of more than 300+ pro-democracy protesters by our government forces at the beginning of 2022 because it was convenient for them to do so. Half of worldwide supply of uranium fuel and all that. These things will be remembered for decades.

> I wasn't expecting to see land wars in Europe even before the cold war ended.

You are the ultimate example of your own statements. Take another look at history and tell me again that war in Europe is a surprise.

Not exactly the first post cold war european land war either

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