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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

It's not being dismantled at all. It's engaged in a sudden retrenchment which has been brought on by years of slow decline.

They even say this - Rubio said that we do not live in a unipolar world any more - a comment which attracted weirdly little notice.

Biden's approach assumed a unipolar world which did not exist. That's why the Ukraine war, from the American imperialist perspective, backfired.

The achilles heel of the American empire was, ironically, always profit and greed. If there is one thing that could be used to persuade America to let its industry rot it is profit and its industrial malaise is largely responsible for the ever-more-obvious decline in hard military power.

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> It's not being dismantled at all. It's engaged in a sudden retrenchment

Sounds like a destruction. The administration is abandoning both the US soft power and its abilities to project through allied countries.

USAID and NED propaganda and agitation are nowhere near as effective as they used to be and they have a stronger tendency to piss off foreign leaders and push them into the arms of rival powers. The golden days of the color revolution are over.

The failure in Georgia to push back on the "pro Russian law" (a law similar to one the US has which required all foreign propaganda to be clearly labeled) was probably seen as a watershed moment that it was about time to hit the reset button on that stuff. That one didnt just fail it backfired.

No US military bases have been closed though, have they?

Germany must be wondering why it is keeping enemy bases on its soil.

Japan was just asked why the US spends so much defending it...

Because they went in to protect their own interests in the world after the world war 2. They dropped 2 nukes on Japan, remained in the country, and now they want money. Crazy people.

We also wrote their constitution that they can't have a military.

They still have the jdf but we kinda forced this position, it's a bit of a baffling question.

Of course it's only baffling if you assume it's asked in good faith.

Given that all continuity of agenda posts are downvoted, they are probably true. Political truth is always downvoted.

What is expected is to react to the latest headlines, accept them as truth and fight an approved R vs D battle.

> Biden's approach assumed a unipolar world

Incorrect, Biden treated China as a rival power and pursued an industrial policy based on this view.

Incorrect. He tried to box in China and contain it as a solely regional power by building military bases along the first island chain and flipping countries into the US sphere of influence.

If China started doing something similar in North America the US would probably invade that country almost instantly (e.g. like it almost did to Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis).

Probably not - the Cuban missile crisis was about nuclear missiles and nothing else.

Cuba remained an ally of the USSR after the missile crisis and continued to host Soviet conventional forces, including fighter jets permanently stationed just 10 minutes from Miami, and regular temporary rotations of nuclear bombers like the Tu-95: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/guest-bloggers/tupolev-tu-9...

"backfired" makes it sound like you believe the US started the war

Few wars have exactly one cause, but to deny that NATO expansion was the main cause of this one is to be a western equivalent of an unequivocal and passionate Putin apologist.

Even Donald Trump now admits that stalling NATO expansion and not treating Russian security concerns with utter contempt could have prevented this.

NATO didn't expand. More countries joined it. That's rather a significant nuance.

Im not sure it's a distinction worth drawing. Other kinds of gang also expand by luring in fresh meat who join voluntarily in a fractious security environment.

It's very vulnerable position being a prospective member of a gang. The fact that you try to join one for protection doesnt mean you wont end up being sacrificed when the gang leaders demand you "prove yourself" first.

From whom do the joining countries feel they need security, in this "fractious security environment"? :)

That's not a gang against another here.

Those are democratic, sovereign countries, in an international order governed by law. Joining voluntarily a _defense_ alliance.

And one bully country that keeps on bullying, and pretends to be the victim of everyone, and unlawfully attacks a neighbouring country.

Despite its own twisted narrative, if someone took the wrong decision, that's Russia.

NATO has participated in 4 wars in the last 20 years, 4 of which were offensive. Unfortunately underlining the word defense doesnt magically make it less of an offensive alliance.

The horseshoe theory applies here. Putin's supporters take equally orwellian positions to this.

In the past 20 years, I see 2 that could be qualified as offensive, at most.

NATO's command in 2003 in Afghanistan came following an unanimous UN Security Council resolution; Russia even provided support. But yeah, let's count 1 here, given the disaster of the whole thing.

Involvement during the Libya campaign in 2011? under a UN mandate again; Russia didn't veto, abstained, and afterwise criticised how it's been interpreted on the ground. Let's count 1.

That makes 2.

NATO did not join the USA in Iraq.

Kosovo Force is a peacekeeping mission.

Ocean Shield was an anti-piracy mission.

Baltic Air Policing, following the Baltic states joining NATO in 2004, is practically a shared border patrol across these states.

Enhanced Forward Presence, since 2016 is a deterrence in response to Russia actions in 2014 in Crimea.

Lying to the security council about the intention to overthrow the government in Libya was probably the main action that changed Russia's view of NATO from "a risk" to "overtly hostile threat". Quite rightly.

It puzzles me why some people (you, but you're not the only one) think that gaining the UN mandate to conduct a humanitarian mission under false pretensions and THEN saying "we came. we saw. he died" exculpates NATO. It makes it so much fucking worse.

The orwellian/Putinesque thinking is evident here also. If you can excuse this you can excuse the invasion of Ukraine just as easily.

> Lying...

The problem is proving it was a lie and not a change of circumstances/opportunities during the operation (which doesn't make it right either, but at least dismisses the disingenuous intent).

So your attribution to my thinking is pretty unwelcome. I don't think it was ok, I don't think either it makes Putin's perspective more reasonable or acceptable.

Putin's track record is way worse than that: multiple military or mercenary invasions, journalists, activists and politicians murders, multiple meddling with foreign elections.

This does not diminish the defence fundamentals of NATO. Putin's strategy only reinforced NATO making sense for its own members and for candidates. He could have acted differently, and favour democratic changes rather than making himself a defence to autocratic regimes, both at home and abroad.

> Even Donald Trump now admits that stalling NATO expansion and not treating Russian security concerns with utter contempt could have prevented this.

Even person who panders to Putin repeat bullshit Russian propaganda? How surprising. The NATO expansion excuse is just ignorant talking point. Russian imperialism is the very reason why every neighbour of Russia (apart from the ones that are it's puppet states) want to be in NATO, not the other way around.

The NATO Expansion line has been disproven to death.

Putin sees the fall of the USSR as a historical wrong that must be righted. He uses NATO Expansion as an easy excuse to sell to the rubes, but it's just that, an excuse.

He was going to go after Ukraine and Georgia NATO or not.

It hasnt been disproven even once. The usual attempts to do so deny geopolitical realities (e.g. assuming the Finland-Russia border is as vulnerable as the Ukraine border).

Georgia was, obviously, left alone after it dropped its NATO ambitions, disproving the rather quaint theory that Putin is intent on reforming the USSR.

Excuse me? Are you claiming that occupying 20% of Georgia's land mass is "leaving them alone"?

Abkhazia and South Ossetia are to Georgia what Kosovo is to Serbia.

Serbia did not get Kosovo back did it?

Does russia support Chechnyan independence?

Obviously not. Neither do we (officially). Unofficially we do.

I don't know who "we" refers to here, but consider that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are to Georgia what Chechnya is to russia

And what Kosovo is to Serbia.

If you wish to grandstand on this issue you must condemn the war against Serbia also.

And what Kalingrad is to Poland, and what Transnistria is to Moldova, and what Abkhazia and South Ossetia are to Georgia, and what Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea are to Ukraine.

If you wish to understand this issue, you must condemn the russian invasions and annexations in Poland, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, and many others.

According to the Kremlin, this means Russia dictating security policy to a population double its own. You may choose to believe that you can count on one hand the number of countries in the world with genuine sovereignty, but I assure you the citizens of the other countries will beg to differ.

Also it's not clear what "Even Donald Trump now admits..."is intended to mean here. Donald Trump has always repeated Kremlin talking points so I'm not sure why anyone would think of this as novel.

>Also it's not clear what "Even Donald Trump now admits

Obviously American left coast DNC die hards and neoliberals hate him with a passion that beggars belief but he's basically still a different face of American imperialism repesenting similar goals with a changed strategy. Patching things up with Russia is part of that.

The conspiracy theory that he's a Russian plant is amusing, but a delusion to which even the most die hard Putin supporter cannot reach. I guess it's easier to admit than the idea that America lost.

> Even Donald Trump now admits that stalling NATO expansion and not treating Russian security concerns with utter contempt could have prevented this.

EVEN Donald Trump? As if minihands is the staunchest critic of Russia? I mean, c’mon. Pretty much _only_ Donald Trump claims this outside the context of actual Russian propaganda.

It’s a terribly flimsy argument. Like, no-one has ever, as far as I know, said that Poland should invade Belarus because it joined the CSTO, say. Because that would be obviously ridiculous; actually joining, never mind wanting to join, a defensive treaty organisation is no sort of excuse for invasion. None of this makes any sense unless you accept to start with that Russia has some sort of rights over Ukraine, and no-one really buys that except for Russia.

Putin is the reason why NATO had more members join. This war is 100% all Putin's making.

"Even" Donald Trump? The man who many accuse of being a Russian asset and having more sympathy for Putin than for decade-long allies? That Donald Trump?

The cause of a war is the first illegal action in it.

Allying with other countries is not illegal, therefore it cannot be a cause of a war.

russia invading a sovereign country is illegal, therefore it was the cause of the war.

>Even Donald Trump now admits that stalling NATO expansion and not treating Russian security concerns with utter contempt could have prevented this.

I'm confused why you would phrase it as "even Donald Trump", as if we should somehow expect Trump to not buy in to Putin's propaganda line? The fact that Trump "admits" that he agrees with Putin should not give any weight to what Putin claims.

So you do blame the US. I never understand people who defend Russian actions like this, as if it is entitled to control its neighbors.

I assume they meant that the Biden administration's approach backfired because instead of isolating Russia on the world stage it strengthened its ties with other countries and China in particular.

A good guess but evidently not (see neighboring comment)

It's not the only reason but it is absolutely true. You must be misreading the neighboring comment.

I don't think you understand some terms you are using, ie unipolar

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