Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault | Hacker News Reader

Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault

foreignaffairs.com

14 pointsmixmax17 comments

Foreign Affairs is an interesting periodical, but it might be worth bearing in mind that it's something of a talking shop between various International Relations academics and policy wonks. It's not uncommon to see people completely contradicting each other in successive issues or even the same one - which is not altogether unreasonable since International Relations is far from an exact science and seeing the different viewpoints is educational in itself. However individual articles can often come off as tendentious - sources are not required and arguments are often implicitly based on a worldview that is expected to be known to regular readers, whether or not it is agreed with. It's not a scholarly journal, despite the scholarly affiliations of many contributors.

This article strikes me as unusually shallow - while I agree with the basic premise that Vladimir Putin finds western encroachment on Russia's borders intolerable, the author argues as if he had little choice other than to annex Crimea or to announce a referendum and then move it to an earlier date, twice. One might ask why Putin didn't go through the motions of presenting his complaints to an international body like the UNSC or levying sanctions, even if only as a fig leaf for his eventual strategy.

Lastly, I think it's quite reasonable to have some articles about this complex topic here on HN, even quite partisan ones. It's not just that it's generally newsworthy, but the strong possibility of international conflict casts a long shadow over topics that hackers care about, from network security to surveillance to path-dependent technology trends. If, as seems likely, we are headed for a new and protracted cold war, or worse, some sort of hot one, there will be major feedback effects in the sphere of technology - which is, after all, where the West's major comparative advantage lies.

Can we try and leave politics to other sites ? There are many great technology stories under /new that don't make it to the front page because of flamebait like this.

Guidelines state that we shouldn't complain about the appropriateness of submissions. Just flag them and move on.

Don't forget to flag clutter like this to keep HN on-track.

This strikes me as blatant Putin apologism. Would Mearsheimer rather the US and NATO turn away, let Ukraine and its people slip behind Putin's Teflon Curtain, and encourage him to continue his empire seeking in other former Soviet dominions, like Finland or Hungary?

Blaming the US and Europe for "provoking" Russia's aggressive foreign policy is no better than blaming the US for "provoking" Bin Laden. It reeks of the worst kind of moral relativism that puts Putin's unmasked and shameless colonial ambitions on par with America's interests in protecting free trade and human rights abroad.

I don't see the article apologizing for Putin, it's simply explaining where he's coming from and why he views the West's overtures to Ukraine as such a threat to his own interests.

Like the article says, "Imagine the American outrage if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico." To stretch the point, what if Canada held a referendum where its people voted to resign from NAFTA, join a Chinese free-trade block and offered land for Chinese bases? Do you think the US would stand by idly? Remember, we came awfully close to World War 3 when the Soviets put a few silly missiles in Cuba.

I understand that the article explains Putin's position, but explaining Putin's own reasons for his actions doesn't come anywhere close to implicating the US or Europe.

And even so, it's not the article's main focus. This is: "the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis."

Most of the responsibility? Really?

It would be one thing if he said "Putin's crossed the line, but the US and Europe could have played better politics to prevent this crisis." Then, maybe, he'd have a point.

But he's putting the responsibility of the invasion of a sovereign nation and the annexation of its territory with no regard for the self determination of its peoples on the shoulders of the US and Europe, which is just backwards. Mearsheimer can't make NATO responsible for Putin's thuggery, for the same reason that you can't make the twin towers responsible for 9/11.

I have to dismiss your analogy outright because clearly, Ukraine didn't get to vote to have itself invaded by Russia. If there was a whiff of credible evidence that Ukrainians en masse had a democratic desire to be a part of Putin's Russia, it would be a different story.

Um, no. The analogy would be Canada deciding to host a Chinese base and getting invaded by the US.

Why would the US invade Canada in that position?

Those missiles were hardly 'silly'.

The entire thing may be a silly example of human squabble, but it was a squabble where the power to end it all, was held in the hands of a few men, not leaders of nations, but the military leaders in charge of the troops who's jobs were to handle, use and guard these weapons that could have wrought untold devastation...

Its worth remembering that 1 single man prevented the first hostile use of a nuclear weapon since WW2. Its quite likely most of us owe our lives to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov

The US had around 5000 missiles pointed at the Soviet Union; having 40 missiles pointing back in and of itself did not pose an existential threat to the US. But Kennedy & co chose to play a very public game of chicken over them, and fortunately for the world, Khrushchev blinked.

blah blah blah the US Is evil blah blah. Same old trope.

I like the part where he's ignoring the wishes of the countries joining/trying to join NATO/EU. The fact that Russia does not want them to join is not an excuse for Russia getting buttmad when they do.

People love writing articles about how everything that happens in other countries is inevitably the west's fault. Just go up the causal chain far enough 'til you find a westerner doing something and bam, it's the west's fault. Non-western people in this worldview have no agency, they simply react to the things the west does, so it's no surprise that everything is always the west's fault.

Inevitably "the West's fault" in these sorts of articles should always be read as "the fault of Westerners with whom the author disagrees politically". When people blame "the west" it's always those other westerners buggering the west up for everybody, not those westerners of whom the author is one, who have the correct, enlightened political opinions.

dear colleagues, just keep in mind that there are hundreds of PR agencies in Russia (and hired agencies around the word) hardly working on formation of public opinion today. This is a good example of it. The subject is a common "mem" that seeded by the campaign and used in official western oriented Russian public rhetoric.

IMHO the right approach for that -- ignoring and downvoting as non relevant.

Yes I'm Russian and I'm watching the situation [or situation watching me :) not sure]. And I'd like to keep this site political free as well.

One can judge if the author is honest or not for himself.

I would offer the readers the essay he penned 21 years ago in 1993: http://johnmearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0020.pdf

There he goes at length to explain why Russia is very likely to try and re-conquer Ukraine. Interesting how he comes up with a whole different set of reasons for this eventuality today.

Amazing, thank you for this link.

Heh, this completely contradicts this recent piece. Thanks.

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