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Comment by Oranguru | Hacker News Reader

> We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity.

As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. I believe they have made that choice clear through democratic means, something Russians have not experienced in a long time. If Russia is allowed to take Ukraine, it will move on to Poland next, and then to claim the remaining former Soviet states. A line must be drawn somewhere.

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> As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity.

Much like Iran. And yet we took out their leadership just this year (again) because we think they picked the wrong flag.

Apparently such behaviour is tolerable. If it is tolerable, we should tolerate the Russians doing it too, even if it is on their own border instead of the other side of the world.

> Apparently such behaviour is tolerable.

No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this. It wasn't even a good idea in Iraq with Saddam Hussein (second time, the first at least was to stop him invading Kuwait), probably not even Afghanistan.

> No, it was incredibly stupid for the US to do so, everyone who has done more than a cursory look at the results of wargames and previous interventions knew this

And yet there are no sanctions against the US for its obviously reckless interference in other countries.

No disagreement there, if you look at "sanctions" then yes, there have been none of relevance for a very long time.

I guess "tolerable" has more than one meaning, so I should have checked which one was intended before starting my previous comment with just plain "No", but before reading your reply I hadn't considered that.

The lack of sanctions is due to how power works rather than anyone else agreeing with them in any specific case: the USA has got too much of the money that everyone else wants, and too many weapons which everyone else wants pointed in the right direction rather than to find they're now standing in a position to read the sign saying "front towards enemy" with a wire trailing off to a nearby bush.

This does not change that it was incredibly stupid for the US to attack Iran in particular, so stupid that it cost the US a significant part of its own matériel, made the remaining matériel less scary as a threat, and reduced the economic relevance of the USA's money, all at the same time.

Every US leader before Trump made sure to not damage those things, and thus retained both hard and soft power. Trump's throwing both away rapidly, at such a pace that it's no longer inconceivable that the rest of the world will be able to sanction the US without fear of what retaliation may result. Consider that Trump's poor choices mean in particular that the EU got away with telling Trump to take a hike over Greenland, and China got away with telling Trump to take a hike over tariffs. With the kind of damage he's doing to the USA's power, this shift may be shockingly sudden when it does happen, with nobody being able to see exactly how close the transition is even 12 months before the world order changes. (I am not saying this is 12 months away today, I'm saying nobody will know even when it is 12 months away).

So, stuff is shifting today specifically because of the USA's "reckless interference in other countries", with emphasis on the "reckless" part. There is a degree of governmental tolerance for the "interference" part, out of fear, meaning the condemnation (such as it is) is somewhere between "toothless" and simply not joining in with the misadventures. Trump appears to be trying to punish every nation who didn't help him attack Iran, but between them and all the nations the US failed to defend from Iranian counterstrikes are rather a lot of nations who are all now looking to each other for military and economic collaborations.

It may not look much on paper; it remains to be seen if it is much in practice. China will of course be happy to substitute for the USA everywhere, but for the rest of us this changes which hyperpower we find ourselves forced to kowtow to, this time less metaphorically and more literally. Reasonable chance a lot of nations make their own nuclear deterrents either way, with all the extra risk that comes with. I didn't want to predict anything past 2031 even before all this geopolitical rifting started.

« no sanctions against the US for its obviously reckless interference in other countries » – Definitely not enough, not even remotely. But there have been sanctions (though not labeled such) against the US under the guise of grounding the Boeing 737 MAX (21 months, sufficient to deal a blow to Boeing).

Allegedly this was in reaction to the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on March 10, 2019, near Addis Abeba, killing all 157 people on board. The factuality of the incidence is, however, questionable. I haven't seen a single convincing photo of the crash site. The 737's large modern turbofan engines are said to have been buried in a crater 10 m deep, which is totally implausible and reminiscent of the Shanksville part of the 9/11 hoax. Well, it's just mirroring brazen US lies, basically any BS will do.

https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo-contest/202...

The story goes that a UN delegation was among the victims of the alleged crash. I read somewhere that this was, basically, “world leaders uniting in protest” against the wave of airline terrorism perpetrated by the US (CIA/NSA/wtf) via cyber attacks, one of which was GermanWings 9525 which was crashed into a mountain via remote cyber hijack (remote control system compromised, probably industrial espionnage) on March 24, 2015, shredding to pieces all 150 people on board, mostly from Germany and Spain. The perpetrators had the NYT announce it was “wilful pilot action”, which is factually correct, but they blamed it (via French investigative authorities) on Andreas Lubitz instead of on the CIA or whatever US agency was responsible.

Not sure to what extent US cyber terrorism has been “covered” by HN, probably close to zero, although it couldn't be more “on topic” for US “Hacker News”.

Why do you only care about being fair to the Russians? It's not a two player game. This is not the cold war. Russia is a borderline failed state, not a superpower. Yes, they have nukes, but so does Pakistan and I don't see Americans talking about Pakistan's sphere of influence.

By what metric do you consider them a failed state?

You’re on HackerNews, this website attracts free thinkers, we’re not the group that our influenced easily by propaganda, open your mind, read some data, visit the country and then form an opinion. Dont parrot the propaganda of non-free media.

How about visit Ukraine, the country that was invaded who doesn't want to be absorbed by Russia. The country whose civilian population is deliberately targeted. Russia is run by a cold war dictator who doesn't care how many lives he wastes.

This website has nearly no moderation and attracts tankies, the alt-right and various contrarians, not to mention Chinese, Russian and Iranian bots.

I don't need to read our media (that's perfectly free, thanks for your concern), to have an opinion about Russia. Especially on this very day.

> As sovereign citizens of their own country, Ukrainians have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity. I believe they have made that choice clear through democratic means

It's always amusing to hear this and point out what some Ukrainians are... not equal to other Ukrainians and therefore are not allowed to have the right to decide under which flag they want to collectively pursue peace and prosperity.

Somehow it's always only one flag what is 'right' and anything other is 'not right'.

Most nations do not allow regions to become independent. The USA famously had a kerfuffle over this.

And that's even without statements like "it's really obvious that Russia fakes votes".

Eh, I think there's lots of valid cases for secession.

In the case of the South though, I believe they could have had a peaceful secession had they not fallen victim to their own version of the "sphere of influence" argument: they refused to tolerate a free North to which slaves could escape, resulting in opening fire on Fort Sumter.

That you think it’s valid for the South to break away so they could continue to treat black people as property says a lot of things, none of them good.

> That you think it’s valid for the South to break away so they could continue to treat black people as property says a lot of things, none of them good.

They didn't actually say that, though I can see how one might read it that way.

  valid cases for secession. In the case of the South though

Is two things. I wrote a thing and an example, he's replied to both the thing and the example.

It's like Al Gore "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" being taken as "I invented" rather than "This was invented, I took the initiative in supporting it when that happened".

That is of course not what I said; "valid" a complicated question, depending on whether we want to get all land acknowledgement and question whether any of the US should have existed at all, including but not limited to the slave states.

An example of "valid" secession is the split of Czechoslovakia.

"Peaceful" is introducing a what-if about whether and why the Confederacy started the actual armed conflict part of the secession.

I have introduced a line break into the original comment as a demilitarized zone.

(we can also see the sort of "historical sliding window" effect as to legitimacy here. At what point does de facto line on the ground become baked in to legitimacy? Does California have a right to exist? Clearly more so than the occupation of Crimea, but is it just time that makes it so?)

If you're not aware of Crimean demographics, it's never been majority Ukrainian. It was majority Tatar but then they got exiled by Stalin for allegedly colluding with the Nazis. After that it became and remained majority Russian. [1] The reason for the exceptionally high approval is that the demographics made the poll largely a formality - everybody knew it would pass, and so those that opposed secession chose to boycott it, in part on principle, and in part to undermine the poll numbers. But exit polling and various Western polls showed similarly overwhelming support for joining Russia.

As for the US - you could say we had two kerfuffles along these lines, or we'd still be Brits. Win some, lose some. And notably we probably would have also lost against the Brits if not for the French. Granted they didn't then try to take us under their wing as part of France, so the similarities end somewhere - but on the other hand that might have indeed been the exact outcome had we been majority ethnic French. Kind of an amusing parallel timeline to imagine.

[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26598832

> After that it became and remained majority Russian

It became 'majority Russian' 50 years before that, pay attention to the bar labeled 10. Don't use BBC as a source of anything.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea

It's even more amusing to anyone who knows the history of 28th state. "Really obvious, ya 'now".

« Ukrainians have the right to decide » – Well, they did decide, but the U.S. didn't appreciate, so overthrew their government back in 2014, remember? “The most blatant coup in history”, see Nuland/Pyatt intercept. Instead, the U.S. (and UK) decided there would be a war, as simple as that. Good for business (“make America great again”).

In Brazil, 2014, President Dilma Rousseff was reelected and the US intensified their effort, resulting in a coup that opened the way to Bolsonaro, which is kind of not what the US wanted (they usually prefer more moderate and controllable authoritarians) but still happened because the only credible opposition to him was the party they ousted in 2015/16

Sovereignty is contingent on the ability to prevent others from telling you what to do. Ukraine has not yet proven this ability

I would argue that the continuation of the war is Ukraine preventing Russia from telling Ukraine what to do.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, Russia is still strong enough to count as a sovereign nation, Russia is not yet weak enough that it is unable to prevent others (Ukraine) from telling them (Russia) to stop throwing high velocity explosives over the border. That had too many negatives in a row, I hope I phrased that right.

That’s crazy. I guess Ukraine must have fallen in the 3 day operation and definitely hasn’t stalemated the larger country. Might as well pack it up and go home since they’ve lost all their territory and resources.

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